by Mike Jung
“Yeah, yeah, not all trumpet players.”
“Okay, HILLTOP SUMMIT!” Mr. D said in his not-quite-shouting voice, waving at us as he walked backward toward a bigger, more open part of the lobby. “HILLTOP SUMMIT MUSICIANS, THIS WAY!”
The Hilltop Summit band geeks broke away from the larger swarm, and when we were all completely clear of the check-in lines Mr. D started calling out names.
“LISTEN UP! EMILY, ANA, MADISON, SUMMER! COME GET YOUR KEY CARDS!”
“That must be the eighth-grade genius room,” Eric said as we slipped into the back of the Hilltop Summit mob.
“SKYE, GRACIE, EMMA, VIENNA!”
“And that must be the ‘girls who do martial arts’ room,” I said.
Mr. D called up four or five more groups, and then it was finally our turn.
“MATT, ERIC, HECTOR, JACK!!”
“Awesome,” Eric said.
“Yeah, let’s go!”
We were so ready to get out of the lobby that we abandoned our usual evasion strategy and went right past Sean on our way up. I didn’t realize he’d followed us until we’d walked away with our key cards in our hands and Mr. D had started calling out the next group.
“COLE, MALIK, ANDY, JAMES!”
“Room 622?” Eric said, holding up his key card, which was in a paper sleeve with “622” written on it by hand.
“Yup,” I said.
“622!” Hector’s grin was literally from ear to ear. Jack just nodded.
“Let’s go!” I turned around, and Sean was standing so close behind me that my face almost collided with his face.
“Excuse you,” he said.
“Ugh, what are you doing, Sean?” I said as I glared at him.
“Just waiting to find out my room.”
“Enjoy,” Eric said in a deadpan voice.
“Oh, I will,” Sean said. He wasn’t actively trying to block our way, but he didn’t move out of our way either, so I started walking around him. Then he got in my way by walking directly in front of me, practically stepping on my feet in the process. I kicked his foot on purpose, and when he turned his head to glare at me, I pointed at Mr. Drabek, who was still handing out key cards, and cupped a hand next to my mouth, like I was about to call out to him.
“Snitch,” Sean said with a sneer. “I was going over there anyway.”
“Great, that works out, then!” I said, seething on the inside.
Sean didn’t answer this time—his head came up like a dog spotting a squirrel, and he suddenly ran, not toward Mr. D, but past him.
“Man, what a jerk,” Hector said. “What’s his problem?”
“We’ll tell you later,” Eric said, sounding as annoyed as I felt.
The crowd of kids around Mr. D and the other teachers was shrinking as everyone got their room assignments, but there were still ten or eleven kids waiting. We were maybe twenty feet away at that point, and I looked around for Kenny—it’s always a good idea to know his location. He was on the far side of Mr. D, just enough to the side so I could see him standing next to Sean.
Ruh-roh. Kenny wasn’t using Sean as a punching bag—they were talking, in fact. That couldn’t possibly be good.
Sean was saying something to Kenny with a hand in front of his mouth. Kenny turned his head and caught my eye just before a passing group of kids from another school got between us. The look on his face when he saw me was … not friendly. Really, really unfriendly.
What did Sean just say to him??
We walked across a section of the lobby that was full of long, low couches and super-brightly colored tables. Right after that we turned a corner into a sort of big hallway where the elevators were. There were eight elevators, and maybe a hundred people waiting, so it took a while for us to actually get the chance to try cramming ourselves into one.
Finally an elevator opened up right in front of us—well, right in front of the row of people in front of us, anyway. There was a whole lot of jostling around and bumping of suitcases as the elevator filled up, and in the shuffle I ended up being the last person in our group to get on.
I would have been the last person to get on the elevator, that is, if someone hadn’t grabbed my backpack and pulled me back out. I yelped in surprise as I lost my balance—whoever the person was, they yanked me backward so hard that I actually left my feet. I only managed to avoid crashing to the floor because I spun to the side and got a hand down on the ground. Of course a hand clamped down on my shoulder, grabbed a fistful of my shirt, and started dragging me away from the elevators, which spun me around again so I was half stumbling and half falling. I whipped my head around in a panic, trying to see who had me, and of course it was Kenny.
“HEY!”
I turned my head back toward the elevators, and I saw Eric, Hector, and Jack pushing their way out, but they had to get past a couple of teenagers who’d crammed in behind them, and Kenny was really, really strong, and I couldn’t keep my balance because we were going so fast. He dragged me away from the lobby and around a corner. A sign that said “Restaurant of Amazement” flashed in and out of my sight as I thrashed and kicked. I tried to grab the corner as Kenny hauled me around it, but my hands missed the corner’s edge and slapped uselessly against the wall. I toppled backward again, and Kenny just kept dragging me along as I struggled to get my feet under me.
“LET ME GO!” I yelled. “ERIC, HELP!”
I heard shouting voices as Kenny hauled me past the entrance to the hotel restaurant and down a short hallway that ended at the bottom of a wide marble staircase.
Did they see us go this way? Did they see??
Kenny hauled me all the way up to a standing position, let go of my backpack, and spun me around by the shoulder, and as I flailed my arms to stop myself from falling, he punched me in the stomach. Hard. All the air went out of my lungs with a sound that was half grunt, half scream, and my legs felt like they’d turned into giant spaghetti noodles. I fell over on my side, trying desperately to catch my breath.
“You messed up, Wang!” Kenny’s voice was terrifying—he sounded like he was possessed. “Thought it was funny to tell people I’m queer, huh?”
I took in a huge, whooping breath and looked up at him. “Wh-wh-what are you talking about?” I said as tears ran down to my chin. “I didn’t—”
“LIAR!” Kenny roared. “You told everybody, but everybody knows you’re the homo!”
He pulled back his fist to hit me again, but then he said “UNGH” as something or someone I couldn’t see hit him from behind. A second later Eric basically wrapped himself around Kenny’s whole arm so he couldn’t punch me at all. I dragged myself to my feet as Kenny swung wildly behind him with his free hand, and he must have connected, because I heard an “OW” from behind him, and Hector staggered into view holding his ear.
Eric was still hanging grimly onto Kenny’s arm, which turned out to be a mistake when Kenny used his other hand to punch Eric right in the face. Eric made a horrible yipping kind of sound, let go of Kenny, and fell on his back.
Eric! Nobody messes with my best friend!
“Hey, you boys!” a random adult voice said from over by the restaurant. “HEY, STOP!”
I launched myself at Kenny and threw a punch, but he just grabbed my fist out of the air and pretzel-bent my arm behind my back, which hurt a LOT. I screeched.
“Let him go, Kenny!” Hector yelled. I was bent over so I couldn’t see what was happening, but Hector must have come at Kenny again and gotten hit again, because Kenny’s body moved forward, which shoved me forward, and I heard Hector go “AGH!”
“What’s wrong with you, Kenny?” I said. “I’m not the one who AAAAAAHH, OWW, THAT HURTS, OWWWWWWW!!!”
“Stop it, Kenny!” Eric sounded like he was crying and shouting at the same time.
Kenny had his thumb dug into my wrist, and he was hitting a nerve ending or something because the pain was unbelievable. I almost lost my balance, which only made the pressure on my arm worse, and I screamed,
boiling over with pain and terror.
“You don’t get to talk about me at all, Wang,” he snarled.
“AAAAAHHHHH—”
Kenny did something to my elbow that drove a spike of pain all the way to my wrist and shoulder at the same time. It felt like he was trying to pull the bones right out of my arm, and I screamed again.
“LET HIM GO!”
Mr. D. Finally.
Kenny suddenly let go and shoved me down hard. I went face-first into the floor, and my whole arm hurt so much that I had to roll over on my other side, cradle my hurt arm with my other arm, and push myself away from Kenny as fast as I could with just my feet.
“Move away from him, Kenny.”
Kenny made a kind of huffing noise.
“NOW.”
I backed up against the nearest wall and pushed myself into a sitting position. I didn’t hear Eric come over next to me because all I could hear was the sound of myself crying, and I flinched when he touched my shoulder. I was glad he was there, though, and suddenly Hector and Jack were there too. Hector had a bump on his cheekbone that was already pretty big, and Eric’s eye was puffy and red, but they were with me.
Kenny was backed up against the wall opposite from me, with Mr. D and another man in a blue jacket staring him down from a couple of feet away. The psycho-killer expression was gone from Kenny’s face; now he just looked like he was bored to death instead of trying to beat me to death.
“Are you boys okay?” the man in the blue jacket said. Kenny snorted.
“Shut it, Kenny,” Mr. D snapped. Kenny sneered, but he didn’t say anything else.
“Yeah,” Eric said, even though his eye was starting to turn seriously purple.
“Totally cool,” Hector said, and he sounded totally cool when he said it, like nothing was bothering him at all.
Mr. D came over and knelt in front of us, and I let go of my hurt arm so I could wipe the tears off my face with the other arm.
“Matt, how’s that arm?”
Kenny was looking right at me, so I stuck my arm out and bent it at the elbow, once, then twice. It hurt enough that I had to fight really hard to not show it, but no way was I giving Kenny any more satisfaction.
“It’s fine,” I said.
“You guys are pretty banged up,” Mr. D said. “And that was a serious armbar, Matt—we shouldn’t take any chances with your elbow and shoulder.”
No. I’m not getting sent home because of Kenny. No. NO.
“He was pressing down on a nerve, Mr. D,” I said, looking around at the guys for help. “It hurt, but it’s totally feeling better already!”
Mr. D frowned.
“You’ve got full range of motion?”
I lifted my arm again and rotated it, which made my shoulder hurt, but less than bending my elbow made my elbow hurt.
“We’re okay, Mr. D.” Eric pointed at his own puffy-eyed face. “It’s just a black eye.”
“You can get a concussion from being punched in the eye, you know.”
“Mr. D, it’s all good!” Hector had somehow gotten himself into full-fledged super-cheerful mode even though it must have hurt his face to grin like that. “I mean, you gotta do something about Kenny, but we’re good!”
Mr. D looked at us with that bushy-lipped frown still on his face, then looked down and chuckled, which is when I knew we were safe.
“Okay, but at least get some ice packs on those bruises.”
We nodded seriously.
“What about him?” Eric said, pointing at Kenny.
“I’ll deal with Kenny,” Mr. D said. “You guys don’t need to worry about him.”
I blew out a long, shuddering breath, because it was a relief to know Mr. D was on it with Kenny, but I still felt wary, because you never know what else is gonna happen. You just never know.
We finally made it into our room, feeling like we’d just lost a battle with the Plutonium Brothers, and there was no hot tub or wall-size TV, but there were two massive beds, a desk, a couch, and a mini fridge that we knew not to mess with.
“My dad says the hotel charges you if you even breathe on the little fridge,” Hector said as we spread our stuff around the room and flopped down on various pieces of furniture. Everyone else flopped down, that is—I took my time sitting down just because my arm still hurt.
“Yeah, no watching pay-per-view movies either—it’s like forty dollars per movie or something,” Jack said in a totally serious voice, and we all cracked up. We sounded a little hysterical, but who wouldn’t have after being beaten up?
“I’m sorry I didn’t get back fast enough,” Jack said.
“What??” I said. “You’re kidding, right?”
“Dude, Kenny was murdering us.” Eric sat up and leaned toward Jack. “Going for help was a genius move.”
“For real, Jack!” Hector got up and raised his hand to high-five Jack, which was the most Hector thing he could have done right then. “I mean, we could have taken him—”
“HA!” Eric and I said at the same time.
“—but you did the smart thing! Don’t leave me hanging!”
Jack smiled and high-fived Hector. “Well, I wish I’d been faster.”
“You were fast enough, Jack,” I said seriously.
We didn’t get to hang out in the room very long since the first event of the trip was an enormo-dinner with all twelve of the middle-school marching bands together. It turned out to be kind of fun. The food was awesome—really good burgers, super-crispy fries, and the thickest shakes I’d ever tasted—and we made the strategic choice to sit at a table within eyeshot of the teachers, which meant we were far, far away from anyone whose name rhymed with “Schmenny” and might want to punch us until we were dead. We spotted Sean at a table full of kids from other schools who were talking and laughing with him, not knowing all his secrets like we did. He was the only kid from our band at that table as far as I could tell.
I didn’t see Kenny anywhere, and I wondered if he’d already been sent home. I hoped so.
Our table was great. We were across the table from Emily Barshaw and Nora Dairman, who got into a hilarious fake trash-talking session about reality cooking TV shows with some girls from another school. The insults were all stuff like “you’d put truffle oil on a roasted portobello burger” and “you think General Tso really invented General Tso’s Chicken”—not insults, in other words. Although General Tso’s Chicken definitely has nothing to do with the real General Tso.
As dessert (an amazing slab of chocolate cake) was being served, Eric leaned over and talked quietly into my ear.
“Since the competition’s tomorrow, we should probably go review the plan for you-know-what tonight, huh?”
I nodded. “Definitely.”
Hector and Jack went with a bunch of other kids to check out the hotel arcade while Eric and I, keeping a sharp eye out for hostile life-forms, headed back to the room.
“So that was a super-long day,” Eric said as we took off our name badges and tossed them onto the desk.
“I know, right?” I said. “It was fun, but I’m wiped out.”
“Yeah, I’m gonna put my pajamas on,” Eric said with a yawn.
“Good idea. Review the plan, maybe watch some TV …”
“My thoughts exactly.”
We were halfway through the pajama-putting-on process when we noticed the smell. Eric finished pulling a T-shirt over his head and sniffed the air.
“Do you smell that?”
“Yeah,” I said, suddenly worried. “It smells like …”
“Something burning,” Eric said. He turned around in a circle, still sniffing the air, and I had to grab his bare arm to get him to look at the door leading to the hallway. A thick gray haze was leaking into the room from around the door’s edges.
Smoke! There was actual smoke coming into the room! And not just a little smoke—when I opened the door, thick gray smoke came pouring through it from floor to ceiling. I accidentally breathed in some smoke and we
nt into a coughing fit so harsh that it felt like being stabbed in the lungs with a fork. Eric pulled me back from the door and kicked it closed. A second later the smoke detector over the door started beeping, and I mean really, really loud.
“There’s a fire?” Eric said, rubbing my back as I choked and hacked. Eric sounded like I felt: completely freaked out.
I couldn’t answer because I was doubled over, coughing harder than I’d ever coughed in my life. I thought I heard someone shouting out in the hallway, but it was hard to tell over the smoke alarm going off and the sound of me coughing up my own lungs.
“People are screaming!” Eric said, sounding panicked. “We have to get out of here!”
That was when smoke started pouring out of the bathroom.
We looked at each other in panic.
“THE BATHROOM IS ON FIRE!” Eric yelled. “LET’S GO!”
He ran to the sliding glass door and hauled it open. The smoke in the room swirled as fresh air came in through the open door. We scrambled out onto the balcony, quickly slid the door shut behind us, and backed up against the side of the balcony farthest from the door, panting. I looked around to see if I could spot any flames shooting out of the building—I couldn’t really see very far up, but there wasn’t any fire coming from the balconies on either side of ours. The fire alarm was still going off, though, and I could hear sirens in the distance.
I looked back at the glass door, wondering if we’d actually see the inside of the room go up in flames. That was when Eric grabbed my shoulder and I heard the sound.
Whap. Whap. Whap.
The room was too smoky to see anything that wasn’t right up against the glass, so we couldn’t see a face or even the outline of a body, but we could definitely see the open hand that was hitting the glass, fingers spread open, with a second or two between thumps. The hand thumped one last time, then suddenly darted sideways, toward the door handle.
“Wait a minute …,” I said, a horrible thought dawning on me. Eric must have had the same thought, because we both took a step forward with our hands reaching for the door. We were too late, though—before we even finished taking that first step forward, we heard something else.
