Two Schools Out - Forever Read online

  "No, no, but-," said the woman.

  "But nothing!" the headmaster snapped. "Surely you can handle this one simple task, Ms. Cox. Put the files where you can find them but no one else can. Or is that too much for you?"

  Iggy shook his head. The headmaster was such a total jerk. He hated him. Someone should teach him a lesson.

  "No," said the woman, sounding defeated. "I can do it."

  "Very well then."

  Iggy heard the headmaster turn and stalk off, and Ms. Cox sighed right outside the file room. Then the door opened. Iggy heard the slight crackling buzz of the overhead fluorescent light coming on. He felt Gazzy tense beside him.

  A metal drawer opened. Papers rustled. The drawer closed. Come on, leave, Iggy thought. But instead the footsteps came closer, in their direction. No, turn around, leave, Iggy mentally urged her. If only he could do mind control like Angel. Next to him, Gazzy was holding his breath, not making a sound. If she found them, it would be very bad.

  The light snapped off. Footsteps left the room, and the door closed again. The Gasman breathed out at last.

  "Close call," he whispered, and Iggy nodded, his mouth dry. "Let's split."

  They were almost back to the stairs when the door at the top of the stairs opened. They froze, with Iggy straining to hear what was happening. The next moment, they heard voices coming from the other end of the hall. They were trapped, with people coming from both sides.

  "Crap!" Gazzy whispered.

  "Do you have the thing?" Iggy asked tensely.

  "Yeah. But Max said-"

  "We're going to get caught!" Iggy interrupted him. "Get the thing!"

  64

  "Okay, now you're creeping me out," I told Nudge. We were in the school library, and it was like she was able to extract information from the computer by osmosis, practically. We didn't even need Mr. Lazzara the librarian's help. First, we went on Fang's blog and saw that he was adding stuff on a daily basis-his point of view on what had happened to us so far. Now he was adding drawings as well. Next, I had Nudge search for more ter Borcht mentions and also for any notices about missing infants during any of the years we were born. We couldn't narrow down the months, but the years we were pretty sure about.

  "Okay, fourteen years ago," Nudge said, concentrating on the screen. "We might have the most luck with that, because there's three of you." She scrolled down. "Unless, you know, one of you was born in the fall of one year and the others were born in the spring of the next year. But in general I think we-"

  "Is this school related?" The chilly, hate-filled voice, quivering with suppressed rage, could belong only to... the headhunter.

  "We're looking up newspaper articles," Nudge said innocently. "For civics class."

  That's my girl. Able to lie on a moment's notice.

  "Really?" Mr. Pruitt sneered, his lip curling. "And exactly what part of the curriculum-"

  Boom.

  The whole library shuddered slightly. Mr. Pruitt and I looked at each other in surprise, then his fuzzy eyebrows came together. The next instant, the school's fire alarms started clanging, making us all jump.

  For a moment we just stood there, too stunned to react. Then a loud hiss came from overhead. My head snapped up just in time for me to see the ceiling's sprinkler system cranking on, showering us with icy water.

  "What?" shouted Mr. Pruitt. "What is the meaning of this?"

  My guess was it meant that Iggy and the Gasman had just shot to the top of my "so in trouble" list, but I didn't say anything.

  Everyone scrambled for the doors, yelling and pushing.

  Mr. Lazzara cupped his hands around his mouth. "Orderly, please! Fire drill forms! Children!"

  Mr. Pruitt charged toward the doors, practically mowing kids down in his effort to get out from under the sprinklers.

  Nudge grinned at me, water dripping off her curly hair. "I didn't know school would be this much fun," she said.

  65

  "This is grounds for expulsion!" Mr. Pruitt screamed, veins popping out on his forehead.

  I watched him with interest, calculating the chances of his keeling over from a heart attack within the next five minutes. Right now it looked like 60, 65 percent for.

  The six of us were standing soggily in his office, half an hour after the last fire truck had left. Pruitt had insisted on seeing all of us together. We were chilled and bedraggled, and just wanted to get our butts home.

  But nooo.

  First we had to listen to the headhunter chew us out. Granted, being chewed out by someone as horrible as the headhunter was a walk in the park compared to, say, having Erasers try to kill you. But still, an afternoon-ruiner, for sure.

  "The stink bomb was reason enough!" Mr. Pruitt shouted. "But I stupidly gave you a second chance! You're nothing but a bunch of street rats! Vermin!"

  I was impressed. Vermin was a new one on me, and I'd been called everything from arrogant to zealous.

  Mr. Pruitt paused to suck in a breath, and I jumped in.

  "My brothers didn't do the stink bomb! You never proved it. Now you're accusing us again with no evidence! How-how un-American!"

  I thought the headhunter was going to pop a vessel. Instead he reached out and grabbed the Gasman's hands, holding them in the air.

  My heart sank as I saw the smudges of black powder, ground into his skin when the bomb went off.

  "Besides that!" I blustered.

  The headhunter seemed to swell with new rage, but just at that moment, the assistant showed Anne into the office.

  She didn't work for the FBI for nothing-somehow she managed to calm the headhunter down and shooed us out of the office and into her Suburban.

  For half a mile there was silence in the car, but then she started in.

  "This was your big opportunity, kids," she began. "I'd had higher hopes..."

  There was a bunch more, but I tuned it out, gazing through my window at the fading autumn color. Every once in a while words floated into my consciousness: grounded, big trouble, disappointed, upset, no TV. And so on.

  None of us said anything. It had been years since we'd had to answer to any grown-up. We weren't about to start now.

  66

  What Anne didn't get was that only weeks ago we'd been sleeping in subway tunnels and scrounging for food. So being "grounded" and not able to watch TV was, like, meaningless.

  "We still have this whole house," Nudge pointed out in a whisper. "It's full of books and games and food."

  "No dessert, though," Total said mournfully. "And I didn't do anything!"

  "Yeah, no dessert," said the Gasman indignantly.

  I glared at him. "And whose fault is that, wise guy? You and Iggy screwed up again. For God's sake, quit bringing explosives to school!"

  "We did hear the headhunter telling Ms. Cox to bury some files," the Gasman reminded me. "If we could find them, it might give us something to use against him."

  I sighed. "How about we just stay under the radar until we leave? Don't retaliate, don't do anything else. Just quietly get through the rest of our time here."

  "How long will we be here? Did you decide when you want to leave?" Angel asked.

  "Yeah," I said drily. "Two weeks ago."

  "Can we just stay through Thanksgiving?" Nudge asked. "We've never had a Thanksgiving meal. Please?"

  I nodded reluctantly. "If no one else messes up, that should be okay."

  I went upstairs and headed to my room. As I passed Anne's open door, I heard the TV. The words missing children caught my attention, and I paused, listening.

  "Yes, the recent disappearance of several area children has brought back difficult memories for other parents who have lost children, whether recently or years ago. We're talking now with Mr. and Mrs. Griffiths, whose only son was taken from a local hospital right after his birth."

  I froze. Griffiths was Iggy's last name-we thought. I remembered that much from the legible papers we found at the Institute in New York-before they disappeared. But the
Institute file had also said that Iggy's father was dead. So these people couldn't be his parents-could they? Riveted, I edged my way forward a few inches so I could watch the TV through the partially open door. I heard Anne in her bathroom, brushing her teeth.

  "You'd think that after fourteen years, it would get easier," said the woman sadly. "But it doesn't. It's the same pain, all the time."

  My breath caught in my throat. Fourteen years? Griffiths? The reporter's image cleared and was replaced by a couple. The man had his arm around his wife's shoulders. They both looked sad.

  One other thing.

  The woman looked just like Iggy.

  67

  Fang looked intently at me, peering through the strands of hair that always covered his eyes.

  "They were standing in front of their house. I saw enough to recognize it if I saw it again," I told him in a fast whisper. It was late, and everyone else was asleep. I'd waited till now to tell Fang what I'd seen. "Their name was Griffiths. Their kid disappeared fourteen years ago. And the woman was the spitting image of Iggy."

  Fang shook his head slowly, thinking. "I can't believe you would just happen to see that."

  "I know. But how could it possibly be a setup? We weren't even allowed to watch TV today. I just-I think we have to check it out."

  Fang shook his head again. "How many houses are there in the DC area?"

  "This house had a big, dark church behind it, like on the next block. It was old-fashioned, and the spire was really tall. How many of those are there?"

  Fang sighed. "About a million."

  "Fang! This is a huge break! Of course we should go check it out!"

  He looked at me. "But we're grounded," he said with a straight face.

  I stared at him for a second, and then we both burst out laughing.

  68

  "What's wrong?" Fang had been acting a little off all night. Now we were flying high over the lights of DC, and he kept wiping his forehead and rolling his shoulders.

  "I'm way hot," he muttered. "But I don't feel sick. Just-way hot."

  "Like I did?" I raised my eyebrows. "Huh. Give it a week; you'll be flying like the Concorde. I think. Or, you know, you're dying." I shot him a grin, which he didn't return. "What? You feel really bad?"

  "No. But I just thought of something. I have your blood in me."

  I looked at him, his wide, dark wings moving smoothly, powerfully through the night air.

  "So? It was just blood."

  He shook his head. "Not our blood. The red cells have DNA, remember? I got transfused with your DNA."

  I thought. "Uh, so?"

  He shrugged. "So maybe that's why this is happening. Maybe it wasn't supposed to happen to me."

  "Hmm," I said. "And we don't know if that's bad or good or nothing."

  "Guess we'll find out," he said.

  Turns out there are practically hundreds of freaking tall church steeples in the DC area. Though finding the right one tonight seemed amusingly unlikely, we cruised around, looking for a steeple in a residential neighborhood. We dropped down more than a dozen times, but once I had scanned all the close-by houses, we took to the air again.

  After three hours of this, we were hungry and tired. We didn't even have to speak-just looked at each other, shrugged, and turned in unison to head back to Anne's place.

  It was around 3:00 a.m. when we got back to Anne's. We headed toward the window we'd left open, in a little-used storeroom on the second floor.

  "Fang." He looked at me, and I gestured at the house with one hand.

  We could see Anne's silhouette clearly in the window of her room. She was awake and looking for us at 3:00 a.m. Didn't that woman ever sleep?

  Was Anne just a spy? For the FBI or someone else?

  Suddenly I felt exhausted. We coasted down to the house, tucked our wings in at the last second, and zipped through the window. We stacked hands and tapped them, then went to our separate rooms. I kicked off my shoes and fell into bed in my clothes. I didn't expect Anne to come to my room.

  She'd already seen everything she needed to see.

  69

  The next couple of weeks were the most surreal ones of my life, and that's saying something, since it beats growing up in a cage, being on the run, finding other mutants in a lab deep below the subways of New York City, and, oh yeah, having wings.

  This was way weirder than that.

  Nothing awful happened.

  We went back to school, and it was business as usual, except that Gazzy and Iggy somehow managed to get through their days without detonating anything. A first.

  The headhunter stayed out of our way, perhaps for health reasons, trying to avoid an apoplectic fit.

  Angel's teacher seemed to behave pretty normally-like, she didn't suddenly take her class to a toy store and buy them anything they wanted. That would have been a tip-off for me.

  Nudge got invited to a birthday party. A nonmutant birthday party. Anne promised to help her find an outfit that would hide her wings but still look normal.

  And-brace yourself. I saved the best and the worst for last:

  That guy Sam asked me on a date.

  "You what?" Iggy burst out.

  "I got asked on a date," I repeated, flinging mashed potatoes onto my plate.

  "Oh, Max!" Nudge said.

  "You're kidding," said the Gasman with his mouth full. He laughed, trying not to spit food. "What a loser! What'd he say when you shot him down?"

  I busily cut my steak.

  "You said yes, didn't you?" Nudge asked.

  "Oh, my God," said Iggy, his hand on his forehead. "Max on a date. I thought we were trying to avoid tears and violence and mayhem."

  Yet another frustrating instance of dagger glances not working on Iggy.

  "I think it's great," said Angel. "Max is beautiful. She should go on dates."

  "What are you going to wear?" Anne asked with a smile.

  "Don't know," I muttered, my face getting hot.

  And did you notice who didn't say one word?

  Right.

  70

  "Just think of it as a recon mission."

  Fang leaned against my door frame, watching me stare at myself in the dresser mirror.

  "What?" I asked testily. "I'm fine." I tucked my shirt in and pulled on the oversize velour hoodie that would hide my wings. I hoped.

  "Uh-huh. Usually when you look like that, I know you're about to hurl."

  "I'm fine," I said tightly, trying not to hyperventilate. What was I doing? How stupid was I to agree to this? Maybe I should call him and cancel. I could say I was sick. I could-

  The doorbell rang. Fang gave me an unholy grin and headed downstairs.

  "Gosh, five brothers and sisters," Sam said.

  "Yeah. What about you?" We were waiting in line to buy movie tickets.

  "Three older sisters," he said. "They make my life a living hell. Fortunately, the two oldest are off at college now."

  I smiled. Talking to Sam was easier than I'd expected. And for the next two hours, I wouldn't have to talk at all.

  The film we saw was an incredibly violent military-espionage-action thing that looked like home movies from my childhood. Mostly I sat in the dark, analyzing fight scenes and praying that Sam wouldn't try to hold my hand. What if my palms were sweaty? I nervously rubbed them on my jeans.

  When the movie was over, we decided to get ice cream at a little shop down the block. As I was trying to think of something to say, Sam reached over and took one of my hands.

  Just like that, we were holding hands.

  It wasn't bad.

  At Ye Olde Ice Cream Shoppe, we got our orders and sat down at a little marble-topped table. I was wondering how far I could throw the table, if necessary, when Sam asked, "So what are you doing for Thanksgiving?"

  "Just having dinner with Anne, I think," I said.

  "It's too bad you won't be with your parents."

  "True." I nodded and applied myself to my sundae.


  "We're going to have hell dinner with the relatives," Sam said. He held up his maraschino cherry. "Want mine?"

  "Yep." He put it on top of my sundae and smiled. I smiled back. "Why is it hell dinner?"

  He made a face. "My two oldest sisters will be back. There will be much hogging of the bathrooms, phone, and TV. My uncle Ted will talk nonstop about his business, which is insurance."

  I winced in sympathy.

  "Mom will try to keep Aunt Phyllis away from the liquor, but it won't work. Dad will be trying to watch the football game, so he'll be shouting at the TV and spilling corn nuts on the carpet." Sam shrugged. I liked the way his chestnut hair sort of fell over his forehead. And he had nice eyes. Hazel colored. Kind of tortoiseshell.

  "Sounds pretty bad," I said. Was that kind of Thanksgiving common? I had no idea. I only knew what I'd seen on TV. What kind of Thanksgiving would my old friends Ella and Dr. Martinez have?

  Sam shrugged again. "It'll suck. But then it'll be over, and I'll have four weeks to brace myself for Christmas."

  I laughed, and he grinned back at me. A slight movement behind him caught my eye. Sam had his back to the big plate-glass window, and someone had walked past it. No-someone was still there.

  My hand froze in midair, and my heart felt encased in ice.

  Ari was outside, giving me a predator's grin and a thumbs-up sign.

  71

  Right in the middle of my freaking date.

  Quickly I glanced around the shop. There was an exit behind the counter. I could knock over this table to slow him down...

  "Max? Are you okay?"

  "Uh-huh," I muttered absently, my eyes locked on Ari. He grinned again at me, then walked past the window. I saw a flash of streaked hair next to him, and then I saw my reflection in the window.