by Gabby Fawkes
“CODY! TALA! YOU PLANNING ON JOINING US?”
Apparently Kian and Jenna’s duel for the best sword had been short-lived.
Cody snuck a glance at Kakernacker. “Dickwipe took my mp3. Stashed it in his office.” He gave me one last so? look before grabbing a wooden sword and walking away.
As I sparred with my two friends, swiping our swords somewhat-effectively, I told them the plan.
“Bad idea,” Demi confirmed, with a sigh. “But we have to.”
“Jeremy would do the same for us,” Kian agreed.
“But how…?”
We looked Kakernacker’s way. Our gym teacher was a literal protein bar factory, consuming one – or a block of pure honey – about every ten minutes or so. He was constantly in and out of the gym, going back to his office to get another one, even sometimes mid-bar. How were we supposed to ensure he wouldn’t pop into his office for the few minutes we’d need to retrieve Cody’s mp3? How were we even supposed to get the mp3 to Cody for that matter?
“If you can get it there,” Cody said, passing by us casually with a point to the front of the gym. “I could slip it in my big-ass pockets.”
He indicated his gray tie-up gym shorts which, admittedly, did have big-ass pockets.
“Planning on making another poor life choice?” Jenna asked sweetly, smirking as she looked from Cody (who had moved on and was dueling Owen), back to me again.
“Careful, Jenna,” Kian said. “I’d hate for my sword to ‘accidentally’ break your nose a second time.”
Jenna’s hand darted to her nose protectively as her eyes slitted. “Can’t wait until you all are gone to the Room – like Jeremy.”
As she twisted away, my hands hardened on my sword. Bash her face in and locket shall be ours...
I took a breath, my gaze falling to her hands. “Uh, Kian?”
“What?” she said, glower still fixed on Jenna, probably imagining all the ways her sword could come in contact with her head.
“Your hands,” I whispered.
They were… well… glowing.
“What the…” she hissed, shoving them up her sleeves. “Not again.”
“Excuse me?” Demi said.
“I don’t know what’s going on,” Kian grumbled. “It happens when I’m angry or excited, okay?”
Not okay. Dragons on the TV, homicidal voice in my head, and glowing hands? What the hell was going on?
My hand shot into my pocket, but there was no paper there. My fingers grabbed my short fabric and twisted it.
“Tala, you good?” Demi asked, her gentle touch on my shoulder making me jump.
“I’m okay.” I forced out a laugh, which sounded as convincing as Jenna trying to be nice.
Shit. I had to keep my cool right now. At least until we’d gotten Jer back safe.
“No worries.” I patted Kian. “I have a murderous, greedy voice in my head, so we all have our things.”
And I’m in a fool of a weakling, subjugated to all who bloat her with lies and filth…
Glancing down at my tummy guiltily, I snark-muttered a response back – “I overate pasta at lunch. Leave my food baby alone.”
“Tala?” Demi said.
“Uh, yeah?” I said in an I-totally-wasn’t-talking-to-myself voice.
Kian’s gaze was on Kakernacker. “Think I have an idea.”
A minute or so later, Demi and I were headed to his office as Kian chatted him up – asking about his old glory days, when he’d won every race and triathlon and marathon and competition he went in, and almost made it all the way to the Olympics.
Demi stood watch at the door while I rifled through the drawers on Kakernacker’s painfully clean-smelling metal desk.
“Hurry,” she urged.
“I’m trying,” I said, opening drawer after drawer, careful to close them again as well.
Each and every one contained – surprise, surprise – protein bars. As well as some weird forms I didn’t have time to look at.
“Tala,” Demi shrilled.
Looking around, I slapped my hand on my forehead. “Oh my John, I’m an idiot.”
There it was – Cody’s mp3, on the shelf literally right under my nose.
“Tala!” Demi said.
But next second I was out, the two of us disappearing in the bathroom. We went in the big stall and closed the door behind us, breathing heavily.
“Damn,” was all Demi could say.
“That was close,” I agreed.
I didn’t want to think about what would’ve happened if Kakernacker had caught us – nor did I have time.
A knock rapped on the stall door. “Got my mp3?”
“You are so not in the girl’s washroom,” I said.
“You so did not break into Kakernacker’s office,” Cody shot back as I creaked open the door. “Anyway, it’s not like I haven’t been here before.”
“Don’t wanna know,” I said, handing over the mp3.
As he stashed it in his pocket, I eyed him. “How are you going to explain getting it back again?”
“I won’t.” Cody smirked, patting his pocket. “I can keep this little baby on the lowdown for another two months easy. Kakernacker has a shit memory anyway.”
That much was true - Kakernacker had, on occasion, called me Talitha, Tabitha and, most perplexingly, Agnes.
“About the Room,” Cody said. “It’s in the abandoned section. You go through these metal double doors, take a left, then go straight for the rest of it. You’ll know it – it’s got green walls and a single chair. On the way, there’s a bunch of junk and….”
“Asbestos?” Demi supplied.
I remembered them warning us about that when we were kids too.
Cody shook his head. “The guards who escorted me weren’t wearing any masks.” He kicked at a crack in the floor with the toe of his sneaker. “Forget it.”
“You seriously gonna hold out on us?”
“I’m not holding out,” he said, though his face looked oddly uncomfortable. “I just… it’s stupid and I could see shit-all, but some of the shit looked… familiar. I dunno.”
I didn’t have time to digest this.
“How do you and Hulda even know this, anyway?” Demi said. “Thought they blindfolded you.”
“Dunno about Hulda. But when you spit on the blindfold it goes translucent. Oh yeah, they lock the door too, so good luck with that.”
“Great, more good news,” I muttered, but Cody was already heading away.
I stopped him. “Hang on – what about inside the Room, what happens there?”
All the easy humor on Cody’s face was wiped away. He looked me straight in the eye in a way I’d never seen before. He was always talking around you, in your general direction. This metallic blue gaze smacked into me.
Without another word, he walked out of there.
“Guess that’s that, then,” Demi said. She bit her lip.
Her normally spacey look had been replaced by one fully aware of just how bad this was. Cody hadn’t been able to even talk about what he’d experienced – and this was what Jeremy was going through right now?
We had to get to him ASAP. Faster than ASAP. No way could I have him stuck in there suffering because of me.
I cast another hopeful look at Demi, who just shook her head. “We can’t go now. You know if it’s light out they’ll spot us.”
“And they probably guard it better than at night too,” I acknowledged with a sigh. “You’re right.”
“Plus Kian would kill us for going without her,” Demi said.
As little as I liked it, she was right. We had to get back to class.
As soon as Kian spotted us, she sped-walked away from a smile-plastered Kakernacker.
“Thanks for going fast,” she said sarcastically. “Any idea how excruciating it is having to listen to an hour-by-hour play-by-play of his daily exercise regime?”
I gave her shoulder a supportive squeeze. “My bad – but we got it. We know where the Room is.”
“Hopefully,” Demi said. “The Room is in the abandoned section, and the door is locked. But I’m sure we can find a way in.”
“Maybe I can pick it,” Kian said. “Anyway. I’ve heard the abandoned section isn’t so bad.”
“Doubt it’s that kind of lock,” I said. “But we’ll see. Not like we can just waltz away right now. And as for the abandoned section-”
“It’s not like you’ve ever been,” Demi pointed out to Kian.
“Duh.” Kian did a dramatic eye roll. “I do value my never-been-in-the-Room status, thank you very much.”
“Tonight that track record may be broken,” I said quietly.
“HEY! TALKING IS NOT A FORM OF EXERCISE! MOVE, LADIES!” Kakernacker roared, waving the latest protein bar he was in the process of devouring.
“That was short-lived,” Kian commented. “Thought my feigned interest would’ve had him chill for at least five minutes.”
“C’mon and grab me,” I told her, my gaze going to our sparring classmates. “We just have to make it through the rest of today.”
“With pleasure,” Kian said, coming at me so hard I practically fell over.
10
The ‘just’ part of making it through the rest of the day was complete BS. There was nothing ‘just’ about it – only painstaking near-excruciating waiting.
I couldn’t get Jeremy out of my head, his resigned face when he’d gone away with the guards and taken the fall for me.
We waited through gym and dinner, waited through Jenna ‘accidentally’ bumping into me while laughing her head off about Jeremy, and Kian ‘accidentally’ dumping her milkshake on that bitch’s salmon-pink top. We waited as, in the hallway, we ran into Timmy, who, out of the blue, in one long word, hissed, “Heardyoumighttrygoingintotheabandonedsection – don’t.” When we tried stopping him, he rushed off, his face tensed with more fear than I’d ever seen on it.
We waited through nighttime, when I ran into Sammy on the way to the dorms.
“I’m really sorry about your friend,” she said. “Jeremy was actually pretty nice. One time I saw him taking his mouse outside for a walk.”
She giggled.
“Maurice, yeah.” I couldn’t even smile at that. “His roommate Timmy would go all ape on him whenever he spotted him, but Jeremy held firm.”
Talking to Sammy like this, I suddenly had an idea. A wildly risky one. But one that felt necessary, too. Ever since we’d become close, I’d almost felt like Sammy was my younger sister, like I was responsible for her. Even now I was on high alert over nothing, tensing at the sound of footsteps, although I kept my attention on her as I said, “Sammy, about the school, have you ever considered…”
“Oh, isn’t that sweet. Tala, you’re corrupting the younger girls too.” Jenna fanned her hands out into a faux ‘wow’ gesture. Looks like me going high alert wasn’t over nothing.
“’Corrupting the younger girls’? What are you, eighty-seven?” I retorted, as Sammy turned beet red and muttered, “Gotta go,” before speed-walking away. Jenna was a legendary bitch to the younger girls too.
“Considering your friend-to-Room track record, I’d be careful who you talk to,” Jenna said with a stiff smile. I looked at her point-blank and an image flickered in my mind.
Jenna covered in flames, doubled over, screaming. Satisfaction ran through me as the voice noted, Singed would suit this one.
“In that case,” I said, moving swiftly on. “Here’s hoping the next one is you.”
That wiped that holier-than-thou smirk right off her stupid face.
Once I got into my room, Demi and Kian were already there.
“I’m freaking out,” Demi confessed.
“She is,” Kian allowed, letting out a big sigh.
“Oh come on.” Demi crossed her arms and frowned over at her. “You’ve reapplied your lip color like, four times.”
“Because I don’t want to be caught just because I’m wearing Neon Flamingo Sundae instead of Shy Honey Mauve,” Kian said in her surer than sure voice.
But we all knew that Kian reapplied lip colors when she was stressed. Which was a luxury she couldn’t really afford, considering all of our makeup came once a year from half-expired crap that department stores were about to toss. It sucked feeling like a charity case 24/7, but at least Kian was dealing with all this madness in her own way.
I, on the other hand, felt like I might lose it at any moment. Taking a breath, I shifted my attention to the wall and, seeing the time, said, “I better get changed too.”
You’d think, with every school room containing a massive numeral clock covering an entire wall, that we’d be perpetually aware of the time. But instead, we’d come to tune out whatever Roman numeral the brass hand was pointing to as easily as Miss Mildred’s diatribes about what atrocious students we were.
Right now it was 10:14 pm; curfew was in another 15 minutes. Another 15 minutes after that and we’d be good to go. Although we would still have to avoid the late-night teachers patrolling.
Once we were all in our super-stealth gear – black hoodies and sweats for all of us – I glanced to Kian. “You got the mirrors?”
She held the pink phone-shaped things up, one in each hand, then handed one to me.
I opened it, smiling at the still-working light that came on.
The outside world never failed to puzzle me – how exactly did things work out there? Like this, for instance – why on earth would someone need a lit-up compact mirror? To apply makeup in the middle of a forest at night?
Whatever the reason, I was just glad these two had slipped past admin. So far, we’d brought them along with us to our rooftop trips just in case. We’d only used them twice – when Kian had almost stepped on one of the Headmistress’s cats and freaked, and another time Jeremy just got nervous, but they’d definitely come in useful tonight. No way did I want to be creeping through the abandoned section blind.
“Guess this is it, then,” I said quietly, closing the mirror and looking to the door.
“Yep,” Demi said.
“Mm-hm,” Kian said.
We stood there for another few seconds, prolonging the inevitable.
“K, let’s do this,” I said, making for the door before I could chicken out.
Pure velocity, that was what it was all about. Opening the door, stepping out – and then we were doing it. Setting out on our biggest rule-breaking mission yet.
The hallway itself was all black and white, exactly how it looked in scary movies when the doomed lead set out to investigate a noise they shouldn’t.
But with Kian on my one side and Demi on the other, I didn’t feel as scared as I probably should have. Maybe we were taking a huge, stupid risk – some rescue mission to a locked room we didn’t even know the exact location of. But doing it to save Jeremy was worth it.
“Guys?” Demi said nervously.
“Magnificente,” Kian hissed, seeing what was approaching us.
Ghost was here again, along with Chocolate and Grandma, their tails flicking in the dark. A whole pack of the Headmistress’ cats was not a good sign.
“Think they have little radio antennas to report back to Her?” I asked.
“Definitely,” Demi said without missing a beat.
We exchanged strained smiles before Kian shushed us. Kinda unnecessary since we’d been whispering, but she was right – we were getting closer to the abandoned section. Shit was getting serious. While there were excuses we could cite for why we were wandering out past curfew (a forgotten book, a lost earring, needing some fresh air), there was none for being in any of the restricted areas, other than the true one. We had a friend to save.
“If we find him, do you think we should….” Demi’s voice trailed off into nothingness.
“Let’s just focus on finding him first,” I said.
Although I’d been thinking exactly what she’d been. With Aerwyna having so suddenly disappe
ared, and now all of us slated for our own Room punishments as soon as Jer was done with his, there seemed no better a time to run away than now. And no worse.
We’d all had our little kid dreams of escaping – of packing up our bags and gliding over the grassy field, into the trees, never to return. But they’d always involved planning, anticipation. While Aerwyna’s plan had reawakened in me the dormant thrill of escape, since this whole craziness with Jeremy, I hadn’t even had time to consider whether the whole idea was worth even trying. It wasn’t like we’d get another chance if we messed up. Nope, it was as one-shot a deal as they came.
“This it?” Kian whispered, looking at the double metal doors we’d finally reached.
I grabbed the handle, turned it. Nothing.
“It has to be,” I said, trying again, yanking hard. “The abandoned section is on the third floor and these are the only metal doors I even know about anyway.”
Demi and Kian tried the doors again, Kian even getting a kick in.
“What?” she said to our incredulous stares. “Sometimes kicking works.”
“Yeah, maybe when it’s the library’s Windows ‘97 machines,” Demi hiss-whispered back. “We have to be quiet now.”
As if summoned to back up her point, Ghost, Grandma and Chocolate appeared again, sitting down in an accusing row to stare at us.
“I say we go back,” Kian said.
Demi said nothing.
“This isn’t the only entrance,” I said quietly.
“Nope,” Kian said flatly. “You’re not suggesting…”
By the time I’d gone over to the other entrance, her whispers had gone frantic. “Nope. No way we’re getting through that.”
“Maybe there’s another way?” Demi said, sounding dismal.
Ahead of us was what would’ve been an entrance if it didn’t have all sorts of different wooden slats all hammered and piled together like a Jenga game gone horribly wrong. The biggest space through them was about the size of our Latin textbook, if that. With the haphazard way the wooden planks were joined together, it looked like a one-way ticket to get an unseen piece of metal in the head – or equally as bad, just get stuck.
“We have to try,” I said, crouching down, trying to feel for jutting-out nails. It felt okay, but still.
