Quinn herself is fine. She’s standing there, right next to me. I guess she wasn’t in the path of the tornado—er, the sneeze.
There’s no time to waste. I grab her hand and call, “Sorry,” over my shoulder. It’s not like I wanted to hurt the guy, after all. Seconds later we’re out the door and hiding around the corner of the building. I pull Quinn behind a tree, which frankly, isn’t that much bigger than the man. We are both huffing and puffing a bit from running so fast, but Quinn is huffing and puffing an extra amount. In my head I see Drew Listerman in the television studio. “That was amazing, Zack.” And I see everyone at home watching their TVs, nodding: amazing.
But when Quinn finally catches her breath, does she tell me I was amazing, or say thank you, or anything like that? Nope. She rubs her arms and says, “Ew, Zack, you spit on me!”
“I saved you,” I tell her.
Not that Quinn can give me credit for anything. “Yeah, well, now what?”
I’m about to admit that I don’t know, when suddenly, it comes to me. “How do you talk to Bella on the phone?” I ask.
“We don’t talk on the phone,” she says. “We Skype.”
“Exactly.”
“So?” my sister asks. “What good does that do us now? Do you have a computer in your pocket?”
“No, but check yours.”
“You think I have a computer in my pocket?” She’s rolling her eyes as she reaches in and pulls out a white piece of plastic in the shape of a credit card. “Huh. I don’t know what this is.”
“Quinn,” I say. “It’s a key.”
12
FOOD HALL
“Trey showed me the key before,” I explain to Quinn. “It’s to his dorm room—to your dorm room.”
“I don’t have a dorm room,” she says. “Just a regular bedroom in our regular house. Though I wouldn’t mind having a dorm room right now. If I went to school with Bella, I wouldn’t have to see you!”
“Listen, Quinn,” I say sternly. “We don’t have time to go over and over and over this. You are Trey now. You have a dorm room. And I’m willing to bet that dorm room has a computer in it. So if we go there, we can log on, call Uncle Max, and get everything fixed.”
“All right,” she says.
“All right?”
“Sure. Lead the way.”
“Hang on.” I turn in a circle again, to make the glittering map reappear. But the sidewalk stays a plain, ordinary sidewalk.
“Some genie you are,” Quinn says.
“Like you could do any better if you were a genie.”
“I totally could,” she says. “But I wouldn’t want to be one.”
I don’t want to, either, but I can’t get into all that. “I guess we can go around to every building and test the doors. But that’ll take a long time.”
“Ugh, I’m SO TIRED,” Quinn says. She yawns for dramatic effect. But she does look a bit more glassy-eyed than usual. “I have a better idea—a faster idea. Let’s ask someone.”
She steps out from behind the building and starts walking. “I don’t know,” I say, hanging back.
“Your plan takes too long. You said that yourself. Plus, it looks like it’s going to rain, and I don’t want to get my hair wet as we race from building to building.”
Not that I care about Quinn’s hair, but she’s right about my way taking too long. I don’t want to be running around outside in a thunderstorm. “Okay,” I agree. “We’ll find someone to ask. But I think there should be a few rules—no asking adults. You don’t want the wrong teacher wondering what you’re doing here visiting on a Saturday instead of a Sunday, or thinking we’re going to steal from Trey. Or thinking—”
“Stop worrying so much.”
“Quinn, I’m serious. We could be sent to the police.”
“Fine, I’ll ask a kid.”
“A kid,” I repeat. “But a nice-looking one.”
Quinn presses forward, toward Food Hall. No surprise that that’s where she figures we’ll find the right kid to ask. Inside there’s a short hallway that opens up into a MASSIVE dining hall. A digital sign proclaims, “Today’s Specials: Three-Cheese Lasagna! Make Your Own Tacos! Full Salad Bar! Do-It-Yourself Ice-Cream Sundaes!”
The tables are empty. Farther down a few adults are setting up food stations for whenever the next meal is. I see taco shells being lined up, and a salad bar with all the fixings still covered in plastic. There’s a freezer section and I don’t have to peek to know that if you lifted the lid, you’d find ice cream in every flavor.
“They really do have all my faves,” Quinn says. “Let’s eat!”
I shake my head. “We can’t take food before it’s mealtime,” I tell her. “That’s asking for trouble.”
“So just levitate the food over to us, genie.”
“The Food Hall workers would notice levitating food for sure,” I say. “Besides, I don’t know how to make my powers come out like that.”
Quinn leans against the wall and closes her eyes for a few seconds. I can’t tell if she doesn’t want to look at me anymore, or if she’s just thinking.
She opens them again. “You know you can send people flying with a sneeze,” she says. I nod. “So if one of them sees us and gets angry, you can just give ’em one of those supersonic sneezes, and we’ll run out.”
“I can’t just sneeze on command.”
Quinn reaches out and lightly runs a finger above my upper lip, just under my nose. Ahh Ahh Ahh . . . She pulls it away just before the sneeze comes out. “If we need a sneeze, we’ll make it happen,” she says. “Come on.”
I glance across the room. The thing is, the lasagna does smell delicious. From a distance it looks delicious, too. And when I look back at Quinn, she seems a little pale. Maybe food would be a good idea for us both.
“Okay, fine. I’ll go—alone.” I can’t risk Quinn going out there, too. What if the tornado sneeze sends her flying this time? “If I need to sneeze, I’ll tickle my own nose.”
“So let me tell you what I want . . .”
I’m not really listening because I’m looking at the Food Hall workers, two women and one man bent over platters. And I’m looking at all the places to hide behind along the way—I can run and then duck under a table. I can go a little farther and duck under another. And then crouch by the wall. And then hide behind the freezer.
It’s good to have the Sneeze Plan as Plan B. But Plan A is to not get caught at all.
“GO!” Quinn says. She pushes me out. My heart is pounding as I dart to a table and crouch down, dart and crouch down, dart and crouch, until I’ve crossed the room and there’s nothing left to do besides get the food. I have no idea what Quinn said she wanted, but it doesn’t matter because tacos are the only thing I can carry back.
The three workers have gone into a back room, probably to get more supplies. Now’s my chance. I run out and grab two taco shells. But I accidentally knock a third one, and the rest of them fall like dominos to the floor.
“Did you hear that?” one of the women says.
“Hear what?”
The back door is pushed open. I dive down, behind a juice cart. One of the women is walking closer. And closer. I’m tickling my nose and forcing sneezes out: Achoo! Achoo! Achoo!
They’re so weak, they’d hardly budge a fleck of dust. It seems the genie magic only works about half the time I want it to.
“Hank, you set the shells up wrong and they’ve fallen over again!” the woman calls.
She bends down to pick them up. I say a silent apology in my head to Hank, and run back to Quinn—run and crouch, run and crouch, run and crouch. She’s been watching from the doorway this whole time, so she knows about the close call. But if she’s concerned about the near miss, you can’t tell. “Zack, you didn’t get anything!” she complains.
“I got taco shells,” I say, and I hold the crushed remains out toward her.
“No, thanks, I’ll go.”
A fourth adult is at the food stations
now.
“Uh-uh, no way, it’s not safe,” I say. “What happened was a sign that we shouldn’t be in here.”
“More like a sign of how clumsy you are,” she said.
Behind us the front door flies open and two kids walk in. Shaggy and Buzz Cut.
“Kids to ask!” Quinn exclaims.
I grab her arm and pull her back. “Not those kids.”
“Can you believe that twerp?” Shaggy says. “I can’t believe we have kitchen duty all week now. When I get my hands on Trey’s little neck. . . .”
Quinn elbows me. “They know Trey!”
“We’ll just make sure he’s quiet next time,” Shaggy says.
“Hey!” Quinn calls out.
“Stop it,” I hiss. “They’re Reggs—they hate Trey.”
“They still might know where he lives,” she says. She steps forward, toward them. “You guys know Trey? Do you know where he lives?”
“Hold up,” Buzz says. “You mean to tell me you’re here for the twerp?”
I step up behind Quinn and say as softly as I can, “We’ve got to get out of here. You’ve got to trust me.”
“Please excuse my brother. He doesn’t know how to act around people because he doesn’t have any friends.”
“Your brother?” Buzz asks, sputtering out a laugh.
“I know. We don’t look alike. I was just telling him I thought he was switched at birth.”
“Look, she’s talking to herself,” Shaggy says.
“Weirdo,” Buzz says. “Look at her, even her hair is weird.”
Quinn reaches up and pats the side of her head with hair hanging down loosely over her shoulder. “My friend just didn’t finish braiding it, that’s all,” she says defensively. “And don’t you see him?”
“Of course I see him. Helloooo, phantom brother.” Buzz waves a hand toward the space on the left side of Quinn. But I’m standing on her right side.
Holy smokes! I’m invisible!
The real kind of invisible. Not the fake kind I feel most days at Pinemont Elementary.
“They can’t see me,” I tell Quinn, speaking softly even though I’m fairly certain they can’t hear me, either. “And, Quinn, you gotta trust me when I tell you, they’re not good guys. Trey’s not the best guy himself, but he knows something about them—something bad.”
“Trey knows something bad about them?” Quinn asks softly.
“What did you say?” Buzz asks.
“Nothing,” she says quickly.
Shaggy knocks Buzz in the side. “We could get points for this.” Buzz nods, and Shaggy takes a step toward the double doors. “Come with us,” he tells Quinn. “We’ll take you to Trey’s dorm. It’s in Twendel One.”
Twendel One. I’ve heard that name before. “That’s where Trey said Heddle’s office is,” I say. “The head of school.”
Quinn takes a step back. “No, thanks. On second thought, I don’t need to find Trey. I don’t need your help at all.”
“She’s onto us,” Shaggy says.
“Get her!”
13
PERKS OF INVISIBILITY
When Shaggy lunges for my sister, I stick out my leg and SPLAT! He’s facedown on the floor. A perk of being invisible. Shaggy didn’t even see it coming.
I don’t even have to tell Quinn what to do next. In a split second we’re both out the door and racing across the lawn. My feet are pounding the ground as hard as my heart is pounding in my chest.
Shaggy has scrambled up, and now he and Buzz are running after us. But Quinn is really dragging. “Faster, Quinn,” I tell her.
“I’m going as fast as I can,” she says, panting.
The Reggs are gaining on us. Up ahead, I spot the spout of a sprinkler. If only I knew how to wish it on. Maybe it would keep the Reggs off the lawn.
“Zack,” Quinn says, nearly breathless. “I can’t keep up.”
I tuck an arm around her, sprinting faster than ever. It’s like my legs are doing the work for us both. There’s a roar of wind in my ears. I barely hear the click, click sound in the background. The sprinklers! They’re on!
“My hair!” Quinn whines in my ear. “It’s soaked!”
The droplets bounce off me like Ping-Pong balls. I glance behind. The Reggs are farther in the distance now, on the part on the lawn that isn’t being swept with water.
“Hey, you there!” a voice rings out. “Off the grass!” Coming up behind the Reggs is a man waving a pair of garden shears in disapproval. He manages to catch up to Shaggy and Buzz.
Quinn and I have reached the sidewalk at the far end of the field. She bends over, holding her knees with her hands, trying to catch her breath. The end of her braid is drip, drip, dripping onto the cement. I know we’ve got to keep running, but I don’t know where to.
“We just seeded the lawn,” the gardener is yelling at the Reggs. “Didn’t you see the sign to keep off it?”
“But that girl,” Shaggy says. “She was on the grass, too, and she’s getting away!”
“You worry about yourselves,” I hear the gardener say. “That’s the trouble with kids these days—always more concerned with what others are doing and no-accounts themselves. I’ll deal with her after I deal with you.”
“He’s going to deal with me?” Quinn gasps.
I spin around, trying to think of where to run next, when I see the building with big black iron letters spelling it out, plain as day: PRESTON H. TWENDEL III HALL.
“That’s where Trey lives!” I say, pointing to the dorm that bears his name.
“How do you know?”
“I just do—get that key card ready.” We break into a run—well, I run and drag Quinn along with me.
We’re at Twendel Hall III. For a split second I think maybe I’m wrong about the dorm. Maybe Trey wouldn’t want to live in a building with his name on it. But when Quinn swipes the card in the slot, it totally works.
Inside is a lobby, not as large as the one in Twendel II, but still pretty fancy. There’s a dark wood floor so polished, I can practically see my face in it, and red leather wingback chairs on either side of a fireplace.
Quinn collapses into one of the chairs, while I look around. To the right is a hallway leading to dorm rooms, and a stairwell, which I guess leads to even more dorm rooms. From the outside, we could see the building was three stories tall. “Come on,” I tell her. “There’s no time to waste.”
She trudges down the first hall with me. I’d been worried about how we’d figure out which room is Trey’s, but now I see every door is decorated with a cutout of a big red balloon showing the names of the two kids who live there:
Adam Upton and Eric Ballard
Keith Washington and Derek Strausser
Gabe Pickler and Charles Martin
I don’t feel bad about going into Trey’s room without permission because we have his key card, and besides, technically Quinn is Trey now. But I feel a little strange about going into his roommate’s room without permission.
I shouldn’t have worried, though, because there at the end of the hallway on the third floor is the only door with just one name in the red balloon. The name that matches the name on the building: Preston H. Twendel III.
Well, to be accurate, there’s another name on the balloon. It’s blacked out, but I can see that the first name starts with an N and the last name ends with an X. Directly across the hall is a door with three names on it. The third name is squeezed in on the bottom of the balloon, and it says: Nick Marx.
My guess—this Nick Marx found out he was rooming with Trey and wasn’t having it. The other kids across the way felt bad for him, and they let him move in. I feel a pang for Trey, because I know what it’s like to not have friends.
But then I remind myself: I have a friend. Eli. Plus, Uncle Max, plus, my cousins. Plus, I didn’t exactly think Trey was so nice when I met him, and I wouldn’t want to room with him, either. I’d be a way better roommate. I’d keep everyone safe.
But there’s still
a problem. The door doesn’t have a swipe thing for a key card. There’s a keypad by the handle, and I guess to open the door you have to type in the right number combination. Figuring that out would take hours—days even. And we don’t have that kind of time.
“Now what, genie?” Quinn asks.
“I don’t know,” I admit.
14
NOW WHAT?
“Well?” Quinn asks.
“Shh. I’m thinking.”
I sit and think about how much I want the door to open—how much I need it to open. It worked on the creaky door—suddenly, just because I was thinking about it, oil appeared. But nothing appears to help me with this.
“Maybe we can climb in through the window,” Quinn says.
I’m about to tell her no way—I’m a genie, not Spider-Man, and do you know how many people are killed each year trying to scale the sides of buildings?—when Trey’s door swings open. Out comes a woman in a maid’s uniform, carrying a bucket of cleaning supplies.
“Excuse me, can you hold that?” Quinn asks.
“This is Mr. Twendel’s room,” the maid tells her. “No unauthorized admittance.” She pulls the door shut behind her . . . but not before I whip by, quick as a wink, and squeeze in before it clicks shut.
Now that I’m on the other side, I survey things. There’s one bed freshly made up with navy sheets and the puffiest comforter I’ve ever seen. Across the room there’s another bed, completely bare. Trey doesn’t have anything on the walls, but he does have a flat-screen TV and three different video game consoles.
Best of all: a computer.
There’s a soft knock on the door, and then Quinn’s voice: “Zack, open up. The coast is clear.”
I open it up, let her in, and close it quickly behind her.
“Ooh, a bed!” Quinn cries. She flops on it, and sighs. “This is the coziest bed I’ve ever lain on in my life.” Within seconds, her breathing deepens. I’ll have to remember to tease her about her snoring habit. But right now there’s the task at hand. I sit down at the computer and pull up the Skype page. Uncle Max is probably one of the last people in the world—or at least in Pinemont—to not have a computer at home. But luckily Skype lets you call actual phones. My fingers fly across the keyboard, punching in the numbers. When I finish dialing, there isn’t any ringing. Just an empty kind of swirling sound, like the sound you get when you hold a shell up to your ear to hear the ocean.
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