As she was finishing her truth pledge, a huge gob of hot KFC mashed potatoes landed on both Candace’s and Fern’s heads, with giant plops. The steaming, gooey potatoes were now running down Fern’s face, into her eyes and mouth. They were burning her forehead and cheeks. She scraped them away from her eyes, looking frantically for the source of the attack. She could feel residual grease from the butter on her forehead.
The walkway around the second level of the mall overhung the picnic table where Candace and Fern were sitting. Someone could have easily dropped the potatoes on them from above, with enough time to take aim and then flee.
Whoever did it had made a direct hit. Fern tried to pull the buttery potatoes out of her hair, but ended up smearing them. Rage began to permeate her entire body, making its way up her throat and into her head.
When Fern had cleared enough of the mushy white potatoes from her eyes to see more clearly, she spotted Lee and Blythe. Sure enough, they were running down the stairs from the second level toward the food court. As soon as Fern spied them, they squealed with laughter and gave each other a high five.
Other kids began to point and laugh at Fern and Can-dace. Candace looked like she was about to cry as she tried in vain to remove potato clumps from her bangs.
“Look! A pair of potato heads!” a student from another school shouted. Fern was enraged. She imagined walking up to Lee and Blythe and punching each of them.
Fern caught a glimpse of Sam. He was staring at Fern, almost with a blank expression. Fern squinted through the potatoes and realized that he looked like he was ashamed of Fern. Perhaps he was tired of his sister being such an easy target. Lindsey sat across the table from Sam. She looked disgusted.
Sadness mingled with anger in Fern’s mind.
They had watched Fern being humiliated, and they didn’t even care. This realization hurt more than anything Blythe and Lee could have possibly done. It wasn’t so long ago that they would have come to her defense in the span of a single heartbeat. In fact, it was only yesterday. Things could change so quickly in middle school.
Suddenly the energy in the food court shifted, almost as if someone had released a large electric charge into the open space.
Someone yelled at the top of his lungs, “FOOOOOOD FIIIIIIIIIGHT!”
Once the universal battle cry for a culinary war had sounded, hundreds of individual armies were instantly on the move. First, one lone sandwich flew through the air. Then someone’s full Coke took wing, as an explosion of ice cubes lit up the food court sky. The pace of flying food quickened at an astonishing rate until dozens of food missiles were whizzing in every direction. Soon the bottom floor of the Pentagon City Mall became a scene of complete chaos.
One cluster of students decided to man a post behind a large trash can, hurling Johnny Rockets fries across the length of the entire food court. Big Macs, Five-Dollar Footlongs, gorditas, and KFC fried chicken soared through the atmosphere, creating a blurred cloud of fast food hovering over the food court.
Before long, it was raining pizza slices, Pik-a-Pitas, and Dippin’ Dots. From behind the protection of his red cafeteria tray, a chubby sixth grader launched an entire peach-mango smoothie high into space, generating a momentary beautiful creamy orange rainbow, which quickly collapsed on a dozen students and Headmaster Mooney himself. The St. Gregory chaperone’s normally bald head was now dripping in peach-mango goodness.
A few chaperones from the various schools dining at the food court stood up in the middle of the hexagonal food battlefield, with their hands raised like desperate traffic cops. But as soon as they stood, they were bombarded with a barrage of Cajun sandwiches and pad Thai noodles and were forced to retreat to a protected position. Screams and shrieks rose four stories in the air, echoing off the mall’s store walls.
Fern and Candace were hiding under their white picnic table. From their position on the perimeter, they could see the conflagration unfolding. Candace was smiling now, delighting in the complete pandemonium. She nudged Fern, pointing to their left. Blythe and Lee had taken refuge behind a condiment station, where they were laughing at the anarchy they’d instigated. Fern saw that Candace was pointing to a spot slightly beyond the evil blond duo.
“Oh my . . . ,” Fern whispered to Candace. Immediately beyond the wicked girls’ position, Lindsey and Sam slowly snuck up on Lee and Blythe from behind. Sam was cradling a whole tub of mayonnaise in his arms. Lindsey had a ketchup dispenser in hers. They’d pirated them from an as yet unscathed condiment station on the other side of the area and unscrewed the pump tops from each jug.
Candace and Fern watched excitedly from their position under the table as Lindsey and Sam got closer and closer to their targets. Sam counted to Lindsey silently with his fingers.
One. Two.
Both raised the large plastic tubs over the heads of Lee and Blythe.
Three.
Sam and Lindsey flipped the jugs over in one deft move and began shaking them down on Blythe and Lee with a vengeance. Waves of red and white cascaded on the girls, covering their upper bodies in a matter of moments. They howled, temporarily blinded by the gobs of mayo and ketchup running down their faces.
Fern smiled from ear to ear.
“I know!” Candace said, matching Fern’s wide smile with one of her own. “That was amazing!” Candace still had tiny flecks of mashed potato in her hair. Fern could only imagine what she must look like herself.
It no longer mattered, though. Sam and Lindsey had staged a retaliatory attack on her behalf! They may have been ignoring her, but they still had Fern’s back. If Fern hadn’t thought she’d be hit by a volley of flying burritos en route, she would have run over and hugged both her brother and Lindsey.
“Stop this immediately,” a blaring voice commanded from the loudspeaker. “Stop immediately. Those who are caught throwing food from this point forward will be prosecuted.”
Slowly, partially dazed, the chaperones stood up from their hiding places. An errant final hot dog whizzed by, but the food fight was over as quickly as it had begun.
Headmaster Mooney was intent on finding someone to punish. Earlier, security had informed him that the food fight had originated from within the cluster of the St. Gregory’s students and spread from there. Every kid in the food court had been rounded up and cleared out. Those in the St. Gregory’s group were ordered to stand in single-file lines behind their chaperones in Auxiliary Section C of the parking lot behind the mall. Headmaster Mooney walked up and down the lines of silent students with his hands clasped behind his back, like a drill sergeant about to chastise his new recruits, glaring at each student as he walked by.
“We can stand here all afternoon, for all I care,” the headmaster yelled, pacing back and forth. The hooded sweatshirt and fanny pack he’d been wearing were ruined, covered in now sticky orange ooze. “Until I find out who’s responsible for the disgrace that has just occurred, we are not moving. Most students find the Air and Space Museum to be one of their favorite stops . . . but we’ll miss it entirely if I don’t learn who started the food fight. There is always an instigator. Always”” Fern, who had been on the receiving end of her fair share of angry Mooney tirades, had never seen Headmaster Mooney seethe to the extent he was seething now.
The extraordinary thing about food fights, of course, is that it’s nearly impossible to pin the mayhem on a single offender. Likewise, it is also difficult to punish every participant, because the best food fights involve everyone in some capacity. Besides, there’s something undeniably thrilling about winging a McNugget through the air.
All of this was certainly the case with the Pentagon City Mall food fight—which, according to mall security, was the worst food fight in the mall’s twenty-plus-year history. Not only was every kid at St. Gregory’s implicated, but students from the other four schools eating there had also participated.
It was what Headmaster Mooney referred to as a disciplinary nightmare.
Fern noticed Candace shivering. She’d
taken her mashed-potato-covered jacket off, which meant she had only three layers on—far too few for her thin frame. Fern had little doubt that Mooney would keep them out there until the sun went down and they all froze solid, in order to force someone to confess. Without any waffling, Candace took a step forward and raised her hand
“Headmaster Mooney.” Her normally squeaky voice was now shaking. The headmaster’s head whipped around. When he saw that it was the strange girl genius who had stepped forward, he couldn’t hide his shock.
“Yes,” he said, moving toward Candace. “What is it?”
“The food fight,” she said, shuffling her feet. “See, the food fight began . . .” She was speaking with none of her usual confidence. Every single St. Gregory’s student, including Fern, was on edge, wondering what Candace was about to reveal.
“The food fight began when Blythe Conrad and Lee Phillips dumped mashed potatoes on me and Fern McAllister.”
Fern winced as soon as she heard her name announced to both Headmaster Mooney and the entire St. Gregory’s contingent.
“LIAR!” Blythe Conrad shouted from behind Candace, jumping out of line. Her hair was greasy from the mayonnaise and her clothing was stained with red drippings. She looked positively crazed. Mrs. Phillips stepped toward Headmaster Mooney from her position at the head of the line.
“I hardly think we should believe the accusations of one jealous little girl,” she said, looking worriedly at her own daughter, the accused Lee Phillips.
Headmaster Mooney swiveled his head, turning his gaze from Mrs. Phillips to Candace to Lee and Blythe as he considered the situation. The Tutter girl had a perfect disciplinary record up until this point, and he was unable to conjure up a reason why she would lie.
“Candace, is there anyone who can substantiate your claim?” Headmaster Mooney asked.
Candace’s pleading eyes turned to Fern. Fern trembled. She wanted to back up Candace, but that meant becoming a rat. It would be yet another label, another nasty thing all the kids at school would call her. Blythe and Lee would redouble their efforts to torment her. If she didn’t support Candace, though, Candace would surely be crucified, both by Mooney and the rest of her grade. In the back of her mind, she remembered how overjoyed she’d been when Sam and Lindsey came to her defense during the food fight. Candace deserved that kind of support from her. As Fern was about to step forward, someone else spoke.
“I saw Lee and Blythe dump the mashed potatoes.”
The voice came from the Washington group. Fern whipped around.
It was Lindsey Lin. A few of her fellow eighth graders gasped. Lindsey Lin was the last person at St. Gregory’s anyone would suspect for a rat. She was aligned with nearly every popular person in school, precisely because she never told anybody anything. In addition, Lee and Blythe were the unofficial mean girls of the school. No one dared cross them. Until now.
Headmaster Mooney stalked over to Lindsey.
“You’re sure?” he inquired.
“Positive,” Lindsey said, holding her head up with a defiant gleam in her eye.
“I saw it too,” Sam said, standing right behind Lindsey. There were more gasps. If there was anyone less likely to turn narc than Lindsey, it was Sam.
“So did I, Headmaster Mooney.” Mary Eileen moved forward from the line, taking a place next to Sam.
“I’m sure I saw it too,” Preston Buss said.
Soon dozens of students at a time were volunteering; all confirming that Lee and Blythe had dumped mashed potatoes on Fern’s and Candace’s heads. Lindsey Lin had made it acceptable for every single student who harbored a grudge against Lee and Blythe to step forward. Their popularity was a house of cards—built on an unstable foundation of intimidation and cruelty. Once someone as well-regarded as Lindsey stood up to them, their whole empire crumbled.
Candace beamed.
She felt she’d fomented a mutiny in the Pentagon City Mall’s auxiliary parking lot. The evil queens of St. Gregory had been dethroned. Candace clenched her fist symbolically and thrust it in the air. It was a coup!
“Psssst. Candace,” Fern whispered, “put your stupid hand down before anyone notices.” Candace obeyed, but her joy had not been dampened in the slightest. None of the hundreds of adventure books she’d read had ever made her feel quite this exhilarated. The thrill was positively electrifying!
“Enough,” Headmaster Mooney said, trying to silence the chatter that had erupted as soon as both the seventh and eighth grades had turned on Lee and Blythe.
“Lee, Blythe, you two please come over here,” Headmaster Mooney summoned.
Both girls, with their greasy, mayonnaise-covered hair and ketchup-splattered clothing, wore steely expressions. They didn’t look remorseful in the least. Fern knew Headmaster Mooney would find a way to make them so.
“Everyone else, please board the bus in an orderly fashion. The Washington group will board first and so on from there.”
Headmaster Mooney motioned to Mrs. Phillips, and the two adults moved to the side and began speaking in angry voices to Lee and Blythe. In the past, Fern would have wanted to overhear exactly what Headmaster Mooney was saying to the girls, delighting in their unhappiness. But she didn’t care anymore, sure that irreparable damage to their stranglehold over St. Gregory would ensue.
As always, the Lincoln group was the last to board the bus. When Fern finally climbed on, she was reminded of the scene in The Wizard of Oz where Dorothy’s house had just landed on the Wicked Witch of the East and the Munchkins are celebrating her demise. Only in this case, of course, there were two Wicked Witches, Lee and Blythe, and the Munchkins were the carousing students on the bus covered in small chunks of assorted fast foods.
Fern slumped into the seat next to Candace. She hadn’t even looked to see if there was a seat next to Lindsey Lin, figuring she would have time to catch up with her and Sam about everything at their next museum stop.
“That was a gutsy thing you did,” Fern said, looking at Candace and wondering if she looked as greasy as Candace did.
“There’s nothing that brave about telling the truth,” Candace replied matter-of-factly.
“You may be a genius and everything, Candace, but you are totally wrong on this one,” Fern said. “Sometimes telling the truth is the bravest thing anyone can do.”
Candace smiled brightly. “What do you think’s happening to Lee and Blythe?” she asked.
“With any luck, they’re being sent home.” Fern paused.
She knew she wouldn’t be completely relieved until she got something off her chest. “Candace . . . I want you to know that I would have backed you up, out there in the parking lot. Lindsey beat me to it.”
If she was being completely honest with herself, Fern wasn’t completely sure she would have supported Candace’s assertions—but Candace was turning out to be a very loyal friend.
“It’s okay, Fern,” Candace said. “You’re just slow. But I know you would have eventually corroborated my story, just like I know you’ll eventually tell me how and why you disappeared from the bathroom. When you’re ready.” With that, Candace reached into her backpack, which had somehow remained mashed potato free, and pulled out her spiral notebook. No doubt, Fern thought, Candace would document the entire food court incident, from start to finish, with the discerning and impartial eye of an apprentice social scientist.
Candace’s last statement had started Fern’s mind reeling. She closed her eyes. For the last hour, she hadn’t thought once about being an Otherworldly. She hadn’t thought about Miles in his cage or how she would rescue him and stop Silver Tooth. For a short time, she was a normal seventh grader who had been in a gigantic food fight, who had seen her two best friends jump to her defense with jugs of mayonnaise and ketchup, and who had witnessed her two blond nemeses toppled by the testimony of a new pint-size friend. The drama had a simplicity to it. Regardless of whether Fern ended up telling Candace her whole story, she knew her craving for a normal life would remain just t
hat—a craving, never to be satisfied.
As thoughts of Miles and Silver Tooth consumed Fern, Candace Tutter, meanwhile, began the day’s journal entry in a rather remarkable way. Abandoning her neutral scientific perspective, the words flowed from Candace’s pen in a manner unlike any she had used previously.
Today, Candace wrote, her handwriting messier than usual due to the leftover adrenaline in her body, was the BEST day ever.
Chapter 14
Air & Space & Admissions
Fern thought Headmaster Mooney was probably exaggerating for effect when he claimed the National Air and Space Museum was many students’ favorite stop during their DC trips. But after a half hour of exploring, she was convinced he was right. Outside the museum stood a large shiny silver pole with what appeared to be stars hovering around it. The museum itself was divided up into four cubelike structures.
Because of the day’s earlier fiasco, Headmaster Mooney had instituted a new policy where each student chose a buddy, and all buddy pairs were required to remain within view of their designated chaperone. None of the St. Gregory’s students had completely succeeded in wiping off the chunks of food and residue of mustard, mayonnaise, ranch dressing, and grease stains from his or her clothing. This meant any gathering of St. Gregory’s students was met with stares and confused sniffs as stale cafeteria aromas wafted toward other unsuspecting museum visitors.
Unfortunately, since Mrs. Phillips had been dispatched to deal with her delinquent daughter and her daughter’s friend (who Fern was still hoping were being sent home), Headmaster Mooney himself had taken charge of the Lincoln group. Fern hadn’t been implicated in starting the food fight, but judging by the way Headmaster Mooney was monitoring her, she might as well have been.
Even so, it was nearly impossible for Headmaster Mooney to diminish the experience of Air and Space. Candace and Fern had chosen each other as buddies, and now with Lee and Blythe absent from the Lincoln group, they didn’t worry about being bullied. They both agreed that it was a huge relief. For the first time in months, Fern wasn’t glancing behind her, afraid of what kind of torment Lee and Blythe were dreaming up.
The Siren's Cry Page 13
