Someone had spread her underwear all over the lawn. Fern clenched her teeth and her fists in one movement. Her whole body stiffened as she turned around. Lee and Blythe were covering their mouths with both hands, stifling guffaws.
“What—what—,” Lee said, unable to form a complete sentence because she couldn’t stop herself from laughing. “What’s the matter, Fern? Lose something?”
Fern felt the anger pulsing through her veins. She was upset about her underwear, of course, but the idea that Lee and Blythe had searched through her things positively enraged her. What if they’d come across Phoebe’s letter or her bag of soil?
She scowled at Lee and Blythe and then shifted her eyes to the bottle of Coke that was open on the nightstand next to Lee and Blythe’s bed. Narrowing her eyes so all she could see was the bottle underneath her half-closed lids, she focused on it. Fern imagined the brown liquid streaming from the mouth of the bottle and spraying both Lee and Blythe in the face. She smiled, imagining them shrieking, as Classic Coke coated their designer clothing and turned them into a sticky brown mess.
Lee’s and Blythe’s screams broke Fern’s concentration. As if she were suddenly awakening from a dream, Fern saw the Coke bottle floating upside down close to the ceiling above where Lee and Blythe were sitting on the bed. It looked as if an invisible hand was suspending the bottle above their heads and pouring the brown liquid directly on them. The air was raining fizzling Coke, but only over Blythe and Lee. Fern blinked and the bottle fell rapidly, bouncing off Lee’s head and landing on the bed—its final resting place.
For a moment the four girls stood still, frozen in shock at what had happened seconds earlier.
“You MONSTER!” Lee screamed once she’d regained her power of speech. She ran into the bathroom.
“What did you do?” Blythe asked, boiling with anger.
“What do you mean?” Fern said coolly.
“How did you do that?” Lee exclaimed.
“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Fern echoed.
“I don’t know how you rigged that bottle, but you’ve ruined my sweater, you freak!” Blythe yelled, following Lee into the bathroom. The door slammed behind them and the lock clicked into place. Fern, still standing by the window, took a long, amazed breath as she stared at the now empty bottle, lying on the Coke-soaked bed.
Candace Tutter’s eyes had darted away from War and Peace as soon as the plastic bottle of Coke floated off the nightstand up to the ceiling and inverted itself. Now she rose from her chair and cautiously edged toward the bottle on the bed. She extended one finger and touched the bottle quickly, as if it were a recently used frying pan that was still hot. When nothing happened, Candace picked up the bottle with both hands and examined it at eye level. She twisted the bottle, inspecting for strings or anything out of the ordinary. Looking at Fern, she raised an eyebrow.
“How did you do that?” Candace said, her voice denoting an element of astonishment.
“What?” Fern responded. In truth, Candace’s question was one Fern was asking herself. She’d been able to move water before—it wasn’t so long ago that she’d put out the fire in a neighbor’s house by directing the water from a swimming pool onto the blaze—but this was something new. She’d moved a whole bottle.
“Unless I didn’t detect you moving,” Candace began, “which itself is highly unlikely, the bottle floated by itself over Lee’s and Blythe’s heads. Then it turned over. Telekinesis. From the Greek words for mind and motion. Moving something with your mind. That’s what.”
“I was standing right here. I didn’t do anything,” Fern said, trying to sound casual. Internally, she was starting to worry.
“If you did what I think I saw,” Candace said, cocking her head to the side and giving Fern an inquisitive look, “then you not only performed telekinesis, but in doing so, you also violated the laws of physics—specifically speaking, the second law of thermodynamics and, in addition, quite possibly the inverse square law.”
Candace calmly moved back to her chair. She searched through her backpack and pulled out the spiral notebook in which she kept the notes on her “Systematic Study” of St. Gregory’s students. Setting the empty Coke bottle carefully on the table next to her, she began writing furiously in the notebook.
Fern was sure she was the subject of Candace’s latest entry in her “Study.” Though she wasn’t quite sure what Candace would do with the information, the uneasiness was welling in her stomach and creeping up into her throat.
The bathroom door opened. Lee and Blythe, who had cleaned themselves up to some degree, stepped out of the open doorway with arms crossed and hatred on their faces.
“You are so dead,” Blythe said flatly. “You’ll wish you never met us by the time this week is over.” With that, Blythe and Lee opened the door to the room and marched out into the hallway, though it was in violation of Rule Four of the St. Gregory’s Spring Break Trip Regulations, which forbade any student from leaving his or her hotel room after the nine o’clock p.m. curfew. The door swung shut automatically. Fern figured they were probably going to the room of the boys they were friends with who’d helped with the underwear prank.
Fern and Candace were now alone in the room. Fern could only imagine the kinds of evil schemes Blythe and Lee were hatching. They could tell Mrs. Phillips what Fern had done. Or worse, they could be gathering forces to help carry out a plot to destroy Fern.
With a sigh, Fern collapsed onto the bed and put her arms over her face, waiting for Headmaster Mooney or the Commander to storm into the room and punish her. The Commander, Fern knew, was already frustrated with her daughter’s recent lack of judgment when it came to using her special powers. As recently as last week, Fern had caused a stream of water to splash in Sam’s face at the local Chili’s as a practical joke. The Commander gave Fern a stern lecture on the trouble she’d be in if she used her unusual talents unnecessarily and drew attention to herself. Fern imagined a very public scene where the Commander flew off the handle about this latest Coke bottle incident. Fern couldn’t totally blame her, though. If Fern herself didn’t understand what was happening to her, how could she expect her adoptive mother to? After all, the Commander had no possible point of reference from her own adolescent transmutation.
Fern opened her eyes in order to search for her headphones. Candace was standing over her, still wearing the curious look on her face. It was as if Fern was an exhibit at the zoo and Candace was a few feet away, outside her cage, observing her.
“A true social scientist is not supposed to express an opinion about her subjects,” Candace stated matter-of-factly. “But those two girls are horrible. And whatever it is you did to make that Coke dump all over them, I can’t help but admit that I’m very happy you did it.”
“Uh,” Fern said. She let a half smile creep across her face. “That’s nice of you to say, Candace.”
“I’m not saying it to curry favor with you. I only thought it should be express—“
Before Candace could finish articulating her thought, the phone rang again. Fern popped up. She and Candace looked at each other. Anger stirred in Fern again as she thought of what sort of trick Lee and Blythe had orchestrated this time. Candace saw the angry glint in Fern’s eyes and let the growing curiosity show in her own.
Fern got off the bed and took a step toward the phone. It rang twice and then a third time. Fern snatched the receiver from its cradle as she thought about every pair of underwear she’d brought displayed on the Marriott front lawn. Now what? Perhaps her pajamas were already hanging from the flagpole near the hotel’s entrance.
Fern gathered all her determination and anger and tried to transfer it into her voice when she spoke.
“What do you want this time, huh?” she said, shoring up her resolve.
Chapter 5
The Experiment in the Exercise Room
“Well, what is it?” Fern repeated into the phone after she got no answer.
“Fern?” the voi
ce on the other side questioned. ”Is that you?”
Fern exhaled as relief replaced her dread and anger.
“Hi, Sam,” she said. Candace, recognizing that no threat was imminent, at least as far as the phone call was concerned, went back to scribbling furiously in her spiral notebook.
“Jeez, Fern. Who died? I didn’t even recognize your voice at first.”
“It’s been a long night,” Fern confided.
“It’s only nine fifteen!” Sam blurted. There were a few seconds of silence before Sam spoke again. “Anyway, you can tell me all about it in ten minutes. We’re meeting in the Fitness Center.”
“Who’s we?” Fern said it before she realized that she had no reason to be suspicious of her twin brother.
“Um, me and Lindsey. Look, I gotta go. Ten minutes. Fitness Center. Don’t be late.” Fern hung up the phone and shook her head in amusement. Though she knew Sam, in reality, was a sensitive soul (who sometimes held funerals for birds that had died in the McAllister yard), her twin brother liked to pretend that he was destined for a career in covert ops. He wasn’t Navy SEAL material yet, perhaps, but it wasn’t for lack of trying. Fern loved that only she knew this about Sam.
Walking toward the window, she looked down at her underwear, still on display on the front lawn. She was surprised a hotel staff member hadn’t been sent to remove it, but maybe Fern’s underwear wasn’t as conspicuous at ground level as it was from seven floors up. Fern looked at Candace from the window and realized she was deeply involved in the latest journal entry she was writing. Quickly and quietly, Fern made her way to her suitcase, cataloging the items she cared about most. She located her bottle of W.A.A.V.E. eyedrops and W.A.A.V.E. lotion—both of which were gifts from Lindsey and offered some protection from the sun’s brutal effect on her.
She saved the search for her most important objects for last. Fern’s heart began to pound and she could feel beads of sweat form on her forehead as she unzipped the top compartment of her suitcase and then reached deep inside it until she felt the sealed black plastic bag.
Trembling, she peeked within it and found the single envelope and letter, as well as the small Ziploc of soil from the McAllister yard she’d packed and protected within the dark plastic bag. The letter, from Phoebe Merriam to the Commander, was her favorite of the series of letters the two women wrote to each other in their late teens and twenties. The Commander had given Fern a box of them to keep soon after revealing that Phoebe was Fern’s actual birth mother. Fern had read all of them dozens of times. In the one Fern carried around with her, Phoebe sounded happy, carefree, and, well, cool. It was exactly the way Fern wanted to remember a mother she had no real memories of.
As for the Ziploc of soil, Fern couldn’t sleep without it. She had kept this quirk to herself, until she finally worked up the courage to ask Lindsey if she was somehow weird, even by Otherworldly standards. Lindsey laughed and explained that because Otherworldlies, or vampires, lived such long lives and usually traveled many places, it was important for them to establish a bond with their original homes so they didn’t lose their sense of self. Around the time of transmutation, Otherworldlies always fixated on and became very attached to one or two things, called Amulets, that served to remind them of their origins. Otherworldlies became very uneasy if they were ever separated from these hallowed objects. Some famous Otherworldlies had even become deranged after losing an Amulet.
Fern figured the letter and the soil, representations of both her birth (Phoebe Merriam) and the only home she’d ever known (San Juan Capistrano) had become her Amulets. Which was why she couldn’t bear the thought of Blythe and Lee rifling her suitcase and stumbling upon them.
Holding the two items slowed her pulse. Fern’s breathing returned to normal. Blythe and Lee must have stolen her underwear by sneaking up to the room when the rest of the students were eating their pizza dinner. She couldn’t risk them exploring her suitcase once again and finding her Amulets. So Fern decided that she would carry them with her from now on, stowing them in her jacket for the time being.
The clock read 9:27. Fern had three minutes to get down to the Fitness Center.
“Hey, Candace,” Fern said, interrupting Candace’s writing binge. “I’m going to go downstairs for a sec and talk to my brother. So if the phone rings, say I’m in the bathroom, okay?”
Fern wasn’t exactly comfortable asking Candace to lie for her, but she didn’t have any other options. Hopefully, it wouldn’t come to that. Lee and Blythe hadn’t returned with Mrs. Phillips for the moment, which most likely meant they hadn’t ratted her out to the authorities yet.
“But that’s in direct contravention of Rule Four of the St. Gregory’s Spring Break Trip Regulations!”
“Say whatever you want, then. I’m not trying to get you into trouble. But I’ve got to go.” With that, Fern walked past both double beds and out the door. She felt a slight twinge of regret for being abrupt with Candace—the young genius was very strange, but she hadn’t really done anything to Fern except offer some words of support (even if that support itself was very odd). Aware that there were chaperone rooms on either side of her own, Fern crept quietly down the red-carpeted hallway.
What Fern was not aware of, however, was that not far behind her, Candace crept even more quietly, intent on following Fern’s every move. After all, Candace thought, an exceptional social scientist would never let her most interesting subject escape observation at such a pivotal moment. In the name of science (with a dash of nosiness), Candace Tutter shadowed Fern down to the fourth floor.
Sam aimlessly pushed the pedals on the stationary bike in slow circles. Lindsey Lin sat on a treadmill across from him, and Fern had taken a seat on the only rowing machine in the Marriott Fitness Center. It was a medium-size room with three treadmills, two stair climbers, a stationary bike, a rowing machine, a small television mounted on the wall in the corner, and a water cooler, complete with plastic cups and a stack of white towels on top. Besides Sam, Lindsey, and Fern, the room was deserted.
Although Fern had resolved not to tell Sam about her dream, seeing National Zoological Park on the itinerary had distressed her enough to realize she’d need Sam and Lind-sey’s help if she was going to act on the dream. Also, Fern was well aware that there was no way Sam would let the subject drop after he’d witnessed her reaction on the bus.
“You’re sure the crate said 'National Zoological Park’?” Sam asked. Having heard Fern’s recap of the dream involving Miles Zapo, he was having trouble interpreting it. If his theory was correct and Fern was seeing other Unusuals in the dreams, Sam thought it meant she had a special bond with the ten other Unusuals born at the same time she was during a series of electrical storms. Though, if his speculation was true, then this latest dream about the boy in the cage was all the more upsetting. Fern’s previous dreams had been of distant people in exotic places. However, if Miles was at the National Zoo, then he was close by, within walking distance of their hotel. Did it mean that Fern was meant to save him? Did she have some kind of responsibility?
“I know what I saw,” Fern said.
“We’ve got to find out more,” Lindsey said, trying to suggest a more practical approach. “Did he say why he was there? Or anything about who took him?”
“No,” Fern said. “Other than telling me he was from Mound, Minnesota—it was like he was drugged or something.”
“When did the itinerary say we’re going to the zoo?” Sam asked.
“Friday morning,” Lindsey recited from memory. “Can’t we look around then and see if anything appears out of the ordinary? That seems like the most obvious thing to do. . . .”
“Sure,” Fern agreed, though she wasn’t positive Lind-sey’s plan was the right one. “If Miles is being hidden somewhere at the zoo, there has got to be some sign of him, right?”
“Fern could teleport there tonight,” Sam offered, ignoring Fern’s comment.
“What do you mean, Fern could just teleport there tonight?
” Lindsey questioned.
“She knows what the place looks like, right?” Sam insisted. He stopped pedaling on the stationary bike, and a serious look came over his face. “Fern’s gotten very good at teleporting over the past few months. We’ve been practicing. She can totally control it.”
“Would you two stop talking about me like I’m not here?” Fern growled.
“Sorry,” Sam said.
What he had said was true, though. Over the last couple of months, Sam had been the best tutor a girl with supernatural powers could ask for. The first time Fern teleported, she’d disappeared from her English class and appeared, moments later, miles away on the beach. She’d had no idea what was happening. Several times after that, when Fern would get upset, she’d uncontrollably teleport to places without intending to. It was just such an episode that had put her on the evening news when she found herself atop Splash Mountain at Disneyland one afternoon. It was terrifying for Fern, not knowing when or where in the world she’d disappear to.
When Fern regained her strength after battling Vlad, each weekend she and Sam would head out into the backyard to hone her teleportation skills. Now Fern could instantly transport herself almost anywhere and, as the Omphalos prophecy predicted, it was a fearsome power to behold. The week before the Washington trip, Fern had teleported directly to the front of the Arc de Triomphe in Paris, France, staying for five minutes before teleporting back to the McAllister backyard. She would have dallied longer under the majestic arch at the western end of the Champs-Élysées, but she knew Sam would worry if she was gone for too long. When Mrs. McAllister found the picture Fern had taken of herself in front of the Arc, she received another lecture about the inappropriate use of her powers. The Commander reminded Fern that she was still a teenager and couldn’t travel alone wherever and whenever she felt like it.
The Siren's Cry Page 4
