by Betsy Uhrig
Vincent’s parents looked impressed, anyway, and Karen couldn’t allow that.
“So it’s you and a group of girls sitting around crocheting?”
“Not at all,” Vincent said. “Olaf Olaffson is a member. And he’s really good. He’s been teaching me a ton.”
Olaf was a kid from Iceland who barely spoke English.
“So it’s you and Olaf and a group of girls?”
“No.”
Karen did the math. “You and Olaf are the only members, aren’t you?” She made another calculation. “Which makes him club president.”
“So?” said Vincent.
Karen just laughed. But Vincent would have his revenge. I’d already seen the hat he was crocheting for her.
* * *
We were in bed, thoroughly brushed and flossed, at nine thirty. But we had our clothes on. Vincent set the alarm for eleven fifteen in case we fell asleep.
Which we did. When the alarm buzzed, Vincent pressed the snooze button and rolled over. When I poked him, he whined, “Just a couple more minutes,” so I was forced to poke him harder.
“Ow!”
“Sorry. We have to go. Steve’s waiting outside.”
I could see the gloss of his hair below the window, under the streetlight.
Vincent flopped out of bed and put on his sneakers. We grabbed flashlights, Vincent took a house key, and we moved silently (except for that one creaky step) downstairs and out the front door.
“How’d you escape?” Vincent asked Steve.
“I told my parents I needed their help with my math homework,” said Steve.
“And they bought it?” Steve didn’t need help with his math homework. Ever.
“They were flattered but totally out of their depth. I kept saying I didn’t get it until way past their bedtime. They were practically crying when I finally let them go. They’d sleep through a meteor strike now.”
The three of us didn’t discuss why we were going where we were going. Or how potentially stupid our plan was. We just talked about how strange it was to be walking to school in the dark with no one else around.
The school looked downright eerie when we got there. It wasn’t totally dark, because of the security lights, but the vaporish white glow only made it look more like the first scene in a horror movie. Like vampires, we shunned the lights, keeping to the shadows as we crept around to the back, where the door to the gym was.
Steve slid the key into the lock, and the door opened easily—to my disappointment, I admit. We slipped through the doorway one by one, then paused. The big clock behind the protective cage on the gym wall said 11:40.
“Perfect timing,” said Steve. “Right?”
“Um, sure,” I said.
Vincent didn’t answer. He kept glancing around like something with rows of needle-sharp teeth was about to lunge for his throat. “I’m going to turn on my flashlight,” he said.
“We don’t need it,” said Steve.
We really didn’t. There were security lights in the gym and in the hallway beyond.
“I just don’t like all these shadows and dark areas,” said Vincent. “I feel like the ghosts of kids who were bullied in gym are hovering nearby.”
If you’re thinking he had an overactive imagination, keep in mind that we were there with the specific purpose of finding out if alternate versions of ourselves somehow sprang to life at midnight in the cafeteria. So why not the ghosts of kids targeted in ancient games of dodgeball dodging vengefully around in the gym?
Steve and I switched on our flashlights without comment, and the three of us made our way toward the hallway, sneakers squeaking loudly on the shiny floor. We were out in the hall, halfway to the cafeteria, when we heard a voice from somewhere ahead of us.
“Hey!” it yelled. “Where do you kids think you’re going?”
Chapter 17
GYM GHOSTS? CAFETERIA GHOULS? ACTUAL security guards that we weren’t aware the school had? Did it matter, really?
We froze.
Then three figures emerged from the cafeteria.
If we hadn’t already been frozen, we would have then.
Steve had the presence of mind to shine his flashlight at the figures as they came toward us.
“Is it them?” whispered Vincent.
“Who?”
“The other us.”
“You boys are in so much trouble,” one of the figures said loudly. It was the shorter, curly-haired one. The other two laughed.
“Ohmygod,” said Vincent as the three got closer, “it’s the other girls.”
More laughter. “We’re not the other us,” said Hoppy. “We’re the us-us.”
And if you know what she meant by that, you’re way ahead of where Steve, Vincent, and I were at that point.
“Huh?” said Steve, speaking for me and Vincent as well. Then, when he’d gotten up to speed: “What are you three doing here?”
“Sonia has this theory about the kids in the cafeteria at midnight,” said Hoppy. She sighed. “Sonia, maybe you should explain it.”
Sonia did her best. “I was thinking that, you know how some people believe there are alternate universes? Where stuff that almost happened but didn’t in our universe did happen?”
Vincent and I nodded politely.
“Sure,” said Steve.
“Well, what if the cafeteria is some sort of point of connection between our universe and another one, and—”
“And what we’re seeing is a small tear in the fabric of space-time between the two that occurs at midnight?” Steve interrupted.
“Yes!” said Sonia. “See?” she said to Laura and Hoppy. “Steve knows what I’m talking about.”
Steve doesn’t even know what Steve’s talking about, I thought but didn’t say.
Hoppy concluded: “So we decided we’d check it out.”
“Us too!” said Steve. “But how did you get in?”
“I went to the office for a bus pass this afternoon,” said Sonia. “There was no one out front, and there were all those shiny keys dangling there.…”
“Right?” said Steve.
Sonia made an I’m-so-bad face and confessed: “So I lifted one of the keys to the loading dock by the kitchen. And I decided to test out my theory. With some help, of course.” She nodded at her henchwomen.
“Brilliant,” said Steve.
Sonia rolled her eyes modestly and beamed.
“It’s almost time,” said Hoppy. “We should go back in the cafeteria. We only came out here to see what the noise was.”
“We weren’t making any noise,” said Vincent.
“Then what was that crashing sound?” said Hoppy.
“We didn’t make a crashing sound,” I said.
“It sounded like someone knocked over a trash can.”
“It wasn’t us.”
“Huh,” said Hoppy. “Oh well. We better get inside if we want to see anything.”
“Wait a minute,” I said. On the one hand, I thought Steve and Sonia’s theory of a tear in space-time was ridiculous. On the other hand, what if you could get sucked in?
“Why?” said Hoppy and Steve together.
“Well,” I hedged, “maybe we should wait outside the cafeteria. Watch what happens from here. So we don’t, um, interfere with the space-time continuum or whatever.”
“He has a point,” said Sonia.
“He has no idea what he’s talking about,” said Vincent.
“Neither do y—”
“It makes sense,” said Laura.
She spoke so rarely that we stopped bickering and looked at her.
Laura went red under the glare of our attention. Then she said, “We don’t want to interfere with whatever is going to happen, do we?”
“No, we don’t,” said Steve. “We can watch from outside the doors. We’ll prop them open—that isn’t interfering, is it?” he asked Laura.
I don’t know why he’d decided that Laura was the expert on interference, when I was the one who’d brought it up
originally.
Laura didn’t seem to know either. She just peered at Steve from behind her hair.
Sonia and Vincent propped the doors open.
As the dimly lit clock in the cafeteria ticked toward midnight, the six of us assembled like a studio audience right outside the doorway. I carefully positioned myself behind Steve and Sonia. Who knew what kind of alternate-universe energy waves might come splashing out at us when midnight arrived?
Chapter 18
“IT’S MIDNIGHT,” HOPPY SAID NEEDLESSLY.
I could feel Vincent’s hot breath on the side of my neck as he leaned to see into the cafeteria. It was kind of comforting, to be honest.
“Is anything happening?” I asked, since I couldn’t really see past Steve and Sonia.
“Nope,” said Steve. “Nothing.”
My armpits were starting to prickle with emerging sweat.
“How long do we wait?” Sonia asked.
“It always happens right at midnight on the recording,” said Hoppy. “It’s three past now.”
“Maybe the clock is fast,” said Vincent.
“Maybe.”
We waited some more. Then Steve said, “I think I saw something move. In the cafeteria. Over by the drink machine. See?”
Vincent shoved me aside and I let him.
“It’s people!” Sonia whispered. She paused. “But why is it still dark in there? Shouldn’t the lights be on?”
“It’s Nikhil,” said Hoppy. “And Andrew.”
“Where’s everybody else?” said Sonia.
“Wait,” said Steve. “Are they coming over here? They shouldn’t be able to see us, should they?”
“Why not?” said Sonia. “We can see them.”
“But we’re not part of their universe,” said Steve.
“And they’re not part of ours,” Sonia replied. “It makes sense.”
Whatever she meant, it didn’t.
The whole group was now moving backward, away from the doorway and the alternate Nikhil and Andrew. I can’t speak for the rest, but I was gearing up to run for my ever-loving life.
“Guys!” said the other Nikhil. “What are you doing here? You’re interfering. No wonder nothing happened.”
Nikhil stood in the cafeteria doorway, frowning at us with his mustache-less face. Andrew came up beside him, normal (for him) size, un-muscular, and clearly annoyed.
“You’re you,” said Steve.
“Of course we’re us.”
“We thought you might be—”
“The alternate us from another dimension?” said Andrew.
“Yeah.”
“No. Sorry.”
The entire H.A.I.R. Club spent some time getting used to the idea that we’d all showed up at school at midnight expecting something to happen that wasn’t going to.
“How did you two get in?” Hoppy said finally.
“Well, we were thinking we’d jimmy a window,” said Nikhil. “But—”
“Jimmy a window?” said Hoppy. “Are you kidding? Do you even know what jimmying is?”
“Not really,” said Andrew. “We were planning to improvise.”
“What, exactly,” Hoppy pressed, “were you going to jimmy a window with?”
“I don’t know,” said Nikhil. “Some type of jimmier?”
Hoppy let out a breath so forcefully some stray curls blew off her forehead, but she didn’t say anything. She admitted to me later that she had no idea what jimmying involved either.
“Anyway,” said Nikhil, “we didn’t have to do any jimmying, because someone left the door to the loading dock by the kitchen open.”
“Oops,” said Sonia.
“So we strolled right in.”
“At least that explains the noise a while ago,” said Hoppy. “Did you knock over a trash can or something?”
“No,” said Andrew. “We were totally silent. Weren’t we?” he asked Nikhil.
Nikhil nodded. “Like ninjas,” he said.
“Huh,” said Hoppy.
“I guess we should go,” I ventured when no one else had said anything for a moment. “Looks like the whole alternate-universe thing is a bust.”
“We’ll have to modify the A.U. theory, at least,” said Andrew. “Now that we have some data.”
“You guys interfered,” said Nikhil. “You interfered with the A.U. theory data.”
“You two were the ones inside the cafeteria,” said Steve. “If anyone interfered with the whatever data, it was you.”
“Um,” said Andrew, “can we save this argument for later?”
“Why?” said Vincent. “It’s already later. We might as well—”
“Because if we don’t get away from here now, we are going to be interfered with,” said Andrew.
He pointed down the hallway.
Sure enough, the one character still missing from the scene was making its entrance: The crouton-loving skunk was trotting toward us like a friendly dog expecting a treat.
Chapter 19
“EVERYONE STAY STILL,” SAID HOPPY. “And be quiet. Maybe it will keep going by us.”
We stood still, but the quiet part was more challenging.
“We’re standing in the cafeteria doorway,” Andrew whispered. “Doesn’t that put us between it and its croutons?”
“Crud,” said Steve. Because the skunk was still heading right for us.
“Okay, everybody shuffle sideways. Slowly!” said Hoppy. “Give it some room.”
We group-shuffled to make way for the skunk to enter the cafeteria. We were past the doorway now, leaving it free and clear.
The skunk regarded the wide-open passage, then sat down. And turned its attention to us.
Since I’d been at the back of the group looking into the cafeteria, I was now at the front of the group being looked at by the skunk. I tried to smile in a reassuring “we mean you no harm” way at it—without showing my teeth, which I knew from reading something somewhere was a bad thing to do with animals. Though maybe that was just dogs.
“Let’s back away slowly down the hall,” I said as clearly as possible while smiling idiotically and not showing my teeth.
We shuffled backward. I kept my frozen smile aimed at the skunk. We were almost to the door to the girls’ locker room and safety when the skunk got up and started following us.
“Do we look like croutons?” said Vincent.
Apparently we did. We backed right up to the locker room door. Sonia, who was nearest, pushed the door open and we all basically fell inside.
“Shut the door!” Hoppy hissed.
I obeyed.
“What’s it doing?” asked Steve.
I peered through the long, narrow window in the locker room door.
“Sitting right outside,” I said. “Grooming or something.”
It was dark in the girls’ locker room, and smellier than I would have guessed. A lot less smelly than the boys’ locker room, but still. I would have thought that the girls’ locker room smelled like perfume, or at least deodorant. Not so.
The girls guided us through a maze of lockers and shower stalls to the door that led to the gym. We emerged into the gym, and I took a deep breath of air that was better than the locker room’s but still had a ways to go toward genuine freshness.
“Let’s get out of here,” said Hoppy.
We were halfway across the gym when Andrew, who seemed to have some kind of skunk-radar, said, “Don’t look now, but our new B.F. is headed this way.”
Sure enough, the skunk was trotting eagerly toward us, nails clicking on the gym floor.
“Does that thing teleport?” Vincent asked.
“Maybe it came through the boys’ locker room,” said Nikhil.
I wondered if even a skunk would mind the smell in there. Probably.
“Okay,” said Steve. “Don’t panic. We’ll just keep moving calmly toward the exit.”
But as soon as we moved, the skunk darted at us.
“Okay,” said Steve again. “We’re goin
g to have to wait it out.”
So there we were, the entire membership of the Flounder Bay Upper School H.A.I.R. Club, somehow trapped in the gym by one skunk.
Eventually, tired and stiff from standing there, we started sinking one by one to the floor. The skunk sat down too, but it didn’t take its eyes off us.
“Maybe it’s lonely,” said Sonia when the standoff (now sit-off) had gone on for fifteen minutes.
“Then it should find some skunk friends. Outside. Where skunks live,” Andrew grumbled.
“I have a math test tomorrow,” said Nikhil. “And Jason, if you don’t stop humming, I’m going to grab that skunk and aim it at you.”
“We all have to be home before our parents wake up,” I said. “Or the janitors come in. What time do the janitors come in?”
No one knew.
“When do skunks go to bed?” Vincent asked.
“I think they’re nocturnal,” said Hoppy. “Sunrise?”
“Maybe if we act really boring, it will get tired of us and leave,” said Steve.
“I don’t see how we can act more boring than we are now,” said Nikhil.
He was right, but the skunk seemed more interested in us than ever. It got up and wandered over to our group. Our group responded by clustering together until things got pretty uncomfortable. The skunk ignored our discomfort. It walked right up to me and—to my horror—nudged its head under my elbow.
“Help!” I said in the tiniest whisper I could.
“Nobody move,” said Hoppy, even as she and the others started inching away from me.
“What does it want?” Vincent managed to whisper hysterically.
“It’s behaving like a cat,” Steve said. “Like it wants to be petted.”
“It is lonely,” said Sonia. “Poor thing.”
“Well?” said Steve to me.
“Well, what?”
“Pet it!”
“Are you kidding?”
“Pretend it’s a cat,” said Hoppy.
“Why don’t you pet it?”
“It chose you.”
Curse my friendly smile!
I closed my eyes and pretended that the skunk was a cat. I reached out and petted it, very gently, from head to tail. And it seemed okay with that. So I did it again. And again. I petted a skunk while my friends and colleagues continued to inch away from me toward the door to the outside.
