Melissa, Queen of Evil

by Mardi McConnochie

  ‘Wait!’

  He stopped, alert. ‘What?’

  ‘Soph’s dad’s supposed to be picking us both up at eleven. If I’m not here there’ll be major consequences for both of us.’

  ‘We don’t have time for this,’ Ben said, exasperated.

  ‘You don’t understand,’ I said. ‘My parents make a big deal out of that whole trust and responsibility thing and if I’m not where I’m supposed to be they get really cranky.’

  ‘There are two more agents of order out there,’ Ben said. ‘They’re trying to neutralise us.’

  ‘If I leave the party without telling anyone my dad will kill me and Soph’s dad will kill her and it’ll be a world of pain we don’t want to get into. I’ve got to get someone to cover for me.’

  ‘All right. But be quick.’

  We turned and headed back towards the gym. I had no idea where Soph had disappeared to, but I hoped that if I gave a message to the rest of the gang they might pass it on if they saw her. Which just left me with the problem of what exactly I was going to tell them.

  But then I had a stroke of luck. As we hurried towards the gym I saw Soph appear from between two classrooms just ahead of me. She was alone, and I wondered what had happened to Ravi.

  ‘Soph!’ I yelled.

  She stopped and turned. ‘Meliss?’

  I hurried over to her, wondering what had happened. From the condition of her lip gloss, I guessed Ravi had been exercising his amazing kissing technique again.

  ‘Where’s Ravi?’ I asked.

  ‘Long story,’ said Soph flatly, and I began to suspect things hadn’t gone entirely to plan.

  ‘Melissa,’ warned Ben. ‘We’ve got to go.’

  For the first time, Soph noticed Ben and her expression changed from troubled to intrigued. ‘Hi,’ she said. ‘Ben, right? I’m Soph.’

  ‘Hey, Soph.’

  Soph studied him with brazen curiosity and I felt something I’d never felt before: the fear that my newest friend might not win the approval of my oldest friend. It suddenly seemed desperately important that she should like him, and I couldn’t quite tell from her expression whether she was impressed, or miffed, or just plain weirded out. ‘So you do exist,’ she said.

  ‘We’ve got to go,’ I said. ‘Can you tell your dad I got a lift home with someone else?’

  ‘Sure,’ Soph said, giving Ben a sharp, assessing look. ‘So where are you going?’

  ‘I can’t tell you,’ I said. ‘I’m sorry.’

  Suddenly it occurred to me that this might well be the last time me and Soph ever saw each other. I pulled her shoes off my feet and handed them back to her. ‘Thanks for lending me these,’ I said. ‘And – everything.’

  Soph frowned, and I could tell she knew there was something wrong. ‘Meliss,’ she said, ‘what’s going on?’

  ‘I’ve got to go,’ I said, worried I was about to cry, and gave her a hug. And then me and Ben ran off into the night, leaving her standing there.

  The tree-lined street looked deserted in the bright moonlight as we left the school gates and ran for the car. But as we ran I realised there were parents sitting in parked cars up and down the street. It was a quarter to eleven and the social would soon be over. Any one of those cars could hold an agent of order.

  Ben already had his keys in his hand. I padded after him barefoot, hopping and swearing as I stepped on prickles and stones. He made it to his car and was just unlocking the door when they emerged from the shadows: the last two agents of order. One of them was young, probably not much older than Ben, while the other was older, the same age as the one who’d ambushed me at the social. He was dressed in chinos and a natty pink polo shirt and he looked like a lawyer on his day off. Come to think of it, they all looked like lawyers on their day off.

  Before I had a chance to bolt, the younger one grabbed me, and as soon as he touched me I felt that familiar heaviness creeping into my limbs, as if someone had turned gravity up to eleven.

  But then I saw Ben reach into his car and grab something from the front seat. ‘Let go of her,’ he said. ‘Now!’

  It was a cricket bat.

  The agent didn’t release his grip. Black spots were starting to dance in front of my eyes, and the small part of my brain that was still processing realised that this time, the agents meant business: they were going to neutralise me. I no longer had a sense of up or down. I was losing contact with my limbs. I was falling –

  And then I heard a howl of anger and pain and the agent released his grip. As my sight came flooding back I saw Ben flourishing his bat, and realised that he must have whacked the guy on the arm to make him release me. The agent was staring at Ben, a look of outrage on his face, clutching his arm.

  ‘You broke my arm!’ he howled.

  ‘Don’t be such a baby,’ Ben said coolly. ‘It’s just bruised. Here’s the deal. We’ve already taken out three of your team. That leaves two of us and two of you. What I want you to do is get back in your car and drive back where you came from and tell your central committee that you couldn’t find us.’

  ‘And if we don’t?’ asked the older agent, equally coolly.

  ‘Then we’ll just have to see what happens,’ Ben said, giving his cricket bat a warning swish.

  The older agent looked at him with a smile. ‘I guess we will,’ he said.

  And then, to my horror, a third figure charged out of the darkness and crash-tackled Ben, hurling him to the ground. He lost his grip on the cricket bat and it went clunking away under a nearby car. As Ben struggled to free himself from the agent’s grip, I realised it was the guy I’d sent off to hospital with a heart attack.

  ‘They took you off in an ambulance!’ I cried.

  ‘It’s amazing what they can do these days,’ he said, as he got Ben in a chokehold. Mr Pink Shirt went to his assistance and the two of them pinned Ben to the ground while the younger one used his good arm to grab me again.

  So this is how it ends, I thought, as my vision started to blur.

  But then a voice rang out. ‘Get your hands off her!’

  It was Soph’s dad!

  ‘I mean it!’

  ‘Yeah, let them go, you filthy perverts!’ Soph yelled joyfully.

  To my astonishment and relief, the younger agent let me go. Energy shot through my body and threatened to blast its way through the top of my skull, and I felt my powers beginning to boil and surge. But I didn’t have enough to take on all three of them, and the two older agents weren’t relinquishing their grip on Ben. I ran to grab the cricket bat from its resting place and threatened them with it.

  ‘You heard,’ I warned.

  The two older agents exchanged ‘now what?’ looks.

  ‘I’m calling the police,’ Soph’s dad warned, brandishing his mobile.

  Mr Pink Shirt let go of Ben and started walking towards Soph’s dad, a conciliatory expression on his face. The other agent kept a tight grip on Ben, while the younger agent eyed me, waiting for his opportunity to grab the cricket bat off me. I waved it at him threateningly.

  ‘This has all been a misunderstanding,’ Mr Pink Shirt said silkily. ‘We were just trying to help her. I think this young man may have drugged her.’

  Ben wasn’t moving, and I knew he was sinking fast.

  Soph’s dad hesitated, looking from the men to me. Curse the forces of order for looking so respectable, I thought.

  ‘It’s not true!’ I shouted. ‘Tell them to let him go! They’re killing him!’

  Soph sprang to our rescue and started whacking the agent who was still holding Ben with the shoes I’d borrowed from her. They had big heels and were surprisingly heavy. ‘She said, let go!’ Soph shouted.

  And this time, the agent obeyed her. I ran to Ben and grabbed his hand.

  ‘Are you all right?’ I gasped.

  He opened his eyes and looked at me and I saw the life force come flooding back into him. He looked at me for a long moment, and there was more going on in that look than anything
I’d ever felt before, and then he tightened his grip on mine and a staggering surge of power went sizzling between us. A gust of cold wind blew down the street and I saw the younger agent glance nervously at the sky.

  ‘They were trying to drag us into their car,’ I shouted. ‘Call the cops!’

  A thick black cloud was beginning to creep over the face of the moon.

  ‘Come on,’ Mr Pink Shirt said, and began hurrying towards his own car.

  ‘Wait!’ shrieked the younger agent, his voice cracking. ‘We can’t just let them go!’

  ‘Forget them!’ shouted Mr Pink Shirt, jumping into the car and starting the engine.

  A second gust of wind hit us, stronger than the first. Thunder rumbled warningly. Our clothes started to flap against our bodies like sails in a stiff wind and the branches of the trees began to lash.

  ‘But we’ll never have another chance like this!’ the younger agent cried.

  Mr Heart Attack leaned out from the passenger side. ‘It’s over,’ he said sharply. ‘Get in the car!’

  Soph’s dad was talking on his mobile phone. ‘Police, please. Sophia, make sure you get their licence number.’

  ‘Come on!’ shouted Mr Pink Shirt to the younger agent. But he still didn’t move, so Mr Pink Shirt gunned the motor and took off down the street with a screech of tyres.

  Overhead, the wind was moaning and the trees were lashing wildly.

  The younger agent looked appalled. ‘Wait for me!’ he screamed, chasing after the departing car.

  ‘They’re getting away,’ I said.

  ‘No they’re not,’ Ben said.

  He squeezed my hand, and together we sent a wuthering shriek of wind tearing down that quiet street, roaring through foliage and stripping tiles from roofs, and in a shuddering crescendo a huge plane tree thrashed, bent, fought – and succumbed. The tree fell with a crash directly in front of the car, blocking their way.

  ‘Come on,’ Ben said, giddy with excitement, and started sprinting down the street towards the car.

  ‘But there are two of them –’ I said, my feet already flying.

  But there was no holding us back now. I was so brimful of energy I felt like my feet weren’t even touching the ground, as if a hurricane was carrying me down the street, and when we reached the car, which was all crumpled at the front where a branch had crushed the bonnet, I felt no fear, no doubt, only exaltation, and the connection between us was so intense that it didn’t even seem to matter whether we were holding hands or not, we formed a circuit that was so powerful it arced across open space. I grabbed Mr Pink Shirt while Ben grabbed Mr Heart Attack and we pumped them full of destruction until the very air seemed to be alight, and it wasn’t until I’d poured out every last vestige of destructive energy I had in me that I remembered there was one more agent, the younger agent. I looked up and saw him staring at me, with a look of absolute hatred. I gazed back, realising that I’d made my first real enemy. And then he disappeared into the night.

  Soph and her dad came hurrying up to see what the damage was.

  ‘Wow,’ Soph said. ‘That was one weird storm.’

  I looked nervously at Soph’s dad, wondering if he’d seen what we’d done, but astonishingly, he didn’t seem to have noticed anything. Was it possible that the destructive energy that seemed so strikingly tangible, real and present to me was invisible to civilians? I began to suspect that it must be, because Soph’s dad looked way too calm for someone who’d seen a firefight between agents of the elemental forces that controlled the universe.

  ‘Are you all right in there?’ Soph’s dad asked, looking in the driver’s side window.

  Mr Pink Shirt turned a vacant gaze on him and burbled a happy string of baby talk. Soph’s dad stared.

  ‘Drugs,’ I said. ‘I’m pretty sure they were drug dealers.’

  Ben nodded solemnly in agreement.

  Soph’s dad looked from me to Ben. ‘I don’t believe I’ve met this young man,’ he said, daddishly.

  ‘This is Ben,’ I said. ‘We’re just friends.’

  ‘Hi,’ said Ben, and shook hands with Soph’s dad. No-one said anything for a moment. Then Soph’s dad glanced at the two agents, still sitting in their car. ‘I’d better call an ambulance,’ he said.

  ‘They should have just left one here on standby,’ Soph observed.

  While Soph’s dad made the call, I turned to Ben.

  ‘What are we going to do about that fifth one?’ I whispered.

  ‘I reckon it’ll be a while before he comes after us again,’ Ben whispered back.

  Soph gave us both a knowing smile. ‘Can I just say,’ she said, ‘that was totally awesome.’

  ‘Thanks,’ I said modestly.

  ‘What did you do to those guys anyway?’

  ‘It’s hard to explain,’ I said.

  ‘Are they going to be okay?’

  ‘They’ll be fine,’ Ben said firmly.

  Soph looked at him curiously, and then she gave him her most fascinating smile. ‘Well, I guess that’s okay then,’ she said.

  Soph’s dad came back. ‘They’re on their way,’ he said. ‘Now would you mind telling me what the hell that was all about?’

  I saw Soph’s eyes glitter with amusement as she looked at me expectantly.

  ‘Well –’ I began.

  ‘We’ve got no idea,’ Ben said earnestly. ‘Look, I won’t lie to you. We snuck out of the social. I know we weren’t supposed to leave the gym, but it was really noisy and crowded in there and we really wanted to have a good talk –’

  ‘That’s all we were doing,’ I added anxiously. ‘Talking.’

  Man, was I going to have some explaining to do.

  ‘And then these guys tried to drag us into their car,’ Ben continued. ‘I’ve got no idea what they wanted or what they were on, but – it’s lucky for us you came along when you did or I don’t know what would have happened.’

  I knew it wasn’t true, but when I listened to Ben, with his honest, blue-eyed sportsman’s gaze and his reassuringly expensive accent (an accent I’d never heard him use before, by the way) even I wanted to believe him.

  This, more or less, was the explanation we trotted out for Soph’s dad, the ambulance officers, the police and, later, my parents (Ben had gone home by then). It had the virtue of being simple, even if it seemed to leave a lot of odd details unaccounted for (like the agents being capable of action and speech one minute, then being reduced to gibbering idiots the next). Soph’s dad thought we should press charges, but Ben said he didn’t want to, and I agreed.

  ‘We just want to forget it ever happened,’ he said, looking all blue-eyed and innocent.

  ‘Why didn’t you tell me he was such a hottie?’ asked Soph, as we were driving home.

  ‘Why didn’t you tell us you had a boyfriend?’ asked my mum, when I’d told her everything I thought she needed to know.

  ‘I’m glad to hear he’s a cricket fan,’ said Dad. ‘He obviously has excellent taste.’

  A Blessing in Disguise

  By the time I’d finished explaining things to everybody it was very, very late, so it was Sunday before Soph and I had a chance to debrief about the really important stuff: what had happened with Ravi.

  ‘He asked me to go out with him but I said I wouldn’t,’ Soph said with studied nonchalance.

  ‘What? Are you kidding me?’

  ‘I was going to say yes. But then I thought about it and it just felt kind of wrong. Vicky Lind’s a complete cow but it’s a bit mean of Ravi to dump her just because she spewed in front of two hundred people.’

  ‘He dumped her?’

  ‘Well, I don’t know if he actually told her. I think she was unconscious so I don’t think he would have had the chance.’

  ‘Maybe he wasn’t actually going to dump her,’ I suggested.

  ‘That would’ve been worse,’ Soph said. ‘It would’ve meant he was sneaking around with me behind her back. But he said that this time he was definitely going to du
mp her, because I was so pissed off with him about what happened last time. But anyway, I said no.’ She paused. ‘I heard he got off with Lucinda Cowan after that.’

  Lucinda was a girl in our year who was famous for her breasts. I’d never noticed them but the guys went on about them endlessly.

  ‘Lucinda? Really?’

  ‘Yeah. So I guess he’s her problem now.’

  ‘There’s something a bit pathetic about someone who can’t go five minutes without having a girlfriend,’ I suggested, hoping I’d guessed Soph’s mood right.

  ‘Yeah, I know,’ Soph sighed. ‘But it kind of sucks too, because I really thought he was a special person. Only you can’t be a very special person if you’d dump a girl just because she’s sick.’

  In all the excitement I had almost forgotten about Vicky Lind being carted off to hospital.

  ‘Do you know what’s wrong with her?’ I asked.

  ‘Misha and Lacey said she’s got some kind of stomach ulcer. It’s not something you die from, unfortunately.’

  Soph paused, looking at me uncomfortably. ‘I’m sorry about – you know – asking you to blast her for me. I didn’t get it before, but I see now why you can’t. Your powers – they’re kind of scary, aren’t they?’

  ‘Yeah,’ I admitted, ‘they are.’

  We were both silent for a moment.

  ‘Soph,’ I confessed, ‘when you asked me to blast her, I’d already done it.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘It was kind of an accident. You remember that day when we found the perfect outfit at the mall and we saw her?’

  Soph’s expression darkened. ‘Oh yes.’

  ‘She was so mean that day and I just got so mad at her so I blasted her and – well, you saw what happened.’

  Soph stared at me for a moment, and I couldn’t work out whether she was happy or whether she was pissed off at me. Then she started to laugh. ‘Well, you could at least have told me,’ she said. ‘But anyway. What’s the story with you and Ben?’

  ‘He’s my guide,’ I said.

  ‘Yeah. And?’

  ‘That’s it. Really.’

  ‘If he was my guide I’d be totally making the most of it.’