Two Schools Out - Forever Read online

  "That's because they're pigs," I pointed out. Just then, Total leaped out of my arms, scratching me.

  "Hey!" I said, and then saw a large black-and-white shepherdy-looking dog bounding up. Total braced his front legs and barked loudly, and the other dog barked back.

  "Total!" I called, clapping my hands. "Stop it! It's his yard. Angel!"

  Angel was already trotting over, and she grabbed Total's collar.

  "Since when does he have a collar?" I asked.

  "Okay, Total, calm down," Angel said, stroking his head. Total stopped barking, then shook his head in disgust and said, "Putz."

  I blinked in surprise and opened my mouth-and then saw Gazzy loping up, hands in his pockets, whistling. I absolutely refused to give Gazzy the satisfaction of freaking out over his latest voice-throwing trick and didn't say a thing.

  "Come on, guys," I said. "Let's go chow."

  24

  "Okay, let's see what we have here," I muttered. The six of us were in "my" room. The notes we'd gotten from the Institute in New York were spread out on my bed. When we'd found the files in the computer and printed them out, some of the information had been readable. Now those pages were gone, leaving us with lines of numerical code. What had happened to the readable pages? Dunno. Was it another test?

  So basically, we were looking at reams of numbers. Every once in a while a real word leaped out at us. Some of the real words were us, our names. Somewhere in these pages was info about our parents.

  "How about we each take two pages and comb through them," I suggested. "Figure out what we can. See if anything about the numbers looks familiar or has a pattern."

  "Sounds like a plan," said Iggy. "Except for me."

  "I'll read you out some numbers," said Fang.

  Iggy nodded, and I passed out the sheets. Fang started reading softly to Iggy, who concentrated hard, nodding every so often.

  I took my two sheets and sat at the desk. For the next hour, we tried every basic code-breaking technique we knew. We looked for patterns, hexagons-and came up with nada, nothing.

  Another hour later, I dropped my head into my hands. "This is impossible," I said, ready to scream in frustration. "This is probably a computerized code. If it is, we'll never break it."

  "But isn't everything a test?" the Gasman asked, his small face tired. It was almost ten. I had to get these guys into bed. "Didn't Jeb tell you that everything is a test, back at the School, when we were rescuing Angel? So that would mean we're supposed to be able to break this somehow."

  "I thought of that," I said. "That's what's so irritating. I've tried everything that would occur to me. So I guess I'm flunking this test."

  A tap on my door interrupted us. The door opened a bit, and Anne poked her head around it.

  "Hey, guys," she said with a smile. "Sleepy yet? Krystal? Want to get ready for bed?"

  "Yep," said Nudge. "I'm beat."

  Gazzy looked at me, and I nodded at him.

  "Yeah," he told Anne. "We were just about to crash."

  "Good," she said easily. "Anyone need anything? Before you crash?"

  "No, we're fine," said Angel, following Anne out. They walked down the hall, and I heard Anne say, "Ariel, how about letting Total out one last time?"

  "Okay," said Angel.

  I stood in my room, feeling a little bad, feeling as if someone else was taking care of my flock.

  25

  Welcome to another day at Camp Agent!

  To start, a hearty breakfast that Iggy and I made. That's because on our first morning here, we had discovered that single-woman Anne Walker considered a protein bar and an orange-flavored sports drink to be an acceptable breakfast.

  Which, if we were Dumpster diving or stealing from a 7-Eleven, would be great. But since we were in a seven-freaking-bedroom country chateau with a Sub-Zero fridge and Viking range at our disposal, it didn't cut it.

  So it was massive infusions of scrambled eggs, bacon, toast, etc., for everyone.

  Next, quaint housekeeping issues. Anne made each of us responsible for keeping our bedchambers tidy and worthy of a photo shoot. And here's what really ticked me off: The flock actually did it.

  Had I asked them a thousand times to keep their rooms straight at home, when we had a home? Yes. Had they done it? No. However, they were all over the bed-making and shoe-lining-up situation here, for a stranger. Little buggers.

  Then, rousing exercise in the country-fresh air. Flying, sparring, playing, swimming, horseback riding.

  Lunch. Anne got the fine art of making sandwiches down to a science.

  Post-lunch rest, play, etc. Anne occasionally took us aside one by one and interviewed us, had us show her what we could do. She loved to watch us fly-made us feel like marvels, swooping around in the sky.

  She would watch us for hours, with binoculars, and the look of wonder and delight on her face could be seen from two thousand feet away.

  Dinner. Anne really tried. But this was a woman whose main source of nutritional comfort came in single-serve microwavable packages. After the first day, she'd gone shopping and brought home fifteen bags of groceries and a cookbook. With mixed results.

  But you know what? The food was hot and someone was fixing it for us, which made it fabulous in my book.

  After that first day, I tried to start getting the flock ready for bed before Anne could do it. It bothered me, her doing it. Taking over my role. I was still the leader. Soon Anne and her comfy house would be just a memory. Just like Jeb. Just like Dr. Martinez and Ella. Just like everything in our temporary lives.

  One night after we'd been there almost two weeks, I was lying in bed listening to my favorite, favorite singer, Liam Rooney. Liam, Liam, you are my inspiration. The younger kids were already asleep. There was an almost silent tap on my door.

  "Yeah?"

  Fang came in.

  "What's up?"

  "Look." He put some of the coded sheets from the Institute on my lap, then hauled a big spiral-bound book onto the bed. He opened it up across my knees.

  "I was looking at this stuff, going nuts, you know? And suddenly it looked like map coordinates."

  I drew in a breath. As soon as he said that, I could see the possibility.

  "This is a book of detailed street maps of Washington DC," he said. "I got it out of Anne's car. Look-each page is numbered, each map is numbered, each grid of each map is numbered. And look at this clump of stuff here, by Gazzy's name. Twenty-seven, eight, G nine.

  "So I go to page twenty-seven, and it's a section of town, see?"

  "Yeah," I breathed.

  "This section has twelve smaller maps. I go to map eight." He turned pages. "Which is a blowup of one section. Then I go to column G and trace it down to row nine." His finger slowly moved down the map. "And it's a pretty specific little chunk of streets."

  I looked at him. "Oh, my God," I said. "Did you try any others?"

  He nodded. "This one by Nudge's name. Same thing-I actually end up with a real place."

  "You are so brilliant," I said, and he shrugged, looking almost embarrassed, except that Fang never gets embarrassed. "But I thought Nudge was pretty sure she'd found her parents in Arizona," I added.

  He shrugged again. "I don't know. The woman we saw was black, but it wasn't like Nudge was a photocopy of her. You think this is worth checking out?"

  "Absolutely," I said, swinging my legs out of bed. "Everyone else asleep?"

  "Yeah. Including the Annemeister."

  "Okay. Gimme a minute to get some jeans on."

  26

  "Hmm," I said.

  Fang propped the map book on a fire hydrant and braced it with one knee. He took out the page of code, and I held the penlight so he could see. He double-checked the coordinates, showing them to me. I looked at the street signs at each end of the block.

  "No, you're right," I said. "This is it. If those are map coordinates, then this is where we should be."

  We looked at the building across from us. It was not
a cute house with a picket fence, suitable for bringing a baby home to, a baby that would later be turned into a mutant bird kid by mad scientists. No, it was a pizza parlor.

  On this block were a car wash, a bank, the pizza joint, and a dry cleaner. On the opposite side of the street was a park. No houses, no apartment buildings, no place where someone could have lived.

  "Well, crap," said Fang.

  "I concur with that assessment," I said, crossing the street. "Maybe there was an apartment building here and it got torn down."

  We stood in front of the darkened store and peered inside. Hanging on the wall was a black-and-white photo of a bunch of people standing in front of a new, shiny version of the store. "Here since 1954," the caption under the picture said.

  "So much for that theory," said Fang.

  "Do you want to swear this time or do you want me to?" I asked.

  "You can," said Fang, stuffing the page back into his pocket.

  "Well, crap," I said. "Okay. Let's try the next one. Maybe we'll get lucky."

  And we did get lucky-in that the next address was actually a house.

  Unfortunately, it was an abandoned apartment house in the middle of a hellhole block inhabited by some of the more scum-sucking members of society-many of whom were conducting "business" right now, at two in the morning.

  "Let's check it out anyway," I said, drawing farther back into the shadows.

  We had landed on the tarry roof of the building next door. Half an hour of waiting and watching had shown us that at least two guys, and maybe more, seemed to be squatting in this bombed-out wreck of a building.

  Twenty minutes after the second guy left and didn't come back, I stood up. "Ready?"

  "Ready," said Fang, and we jumped across to the other roof.

  27

  "Least favorite place," I whispered to Fang. "Sewer tunnels of New York? Or abandoned home of squatting crackheads?"

  Fang thought about it, moving silently across the room, staying out of the squares of moonlight coming through the gaping windows.

  "I'd have to go with sewer tunnels of New York," he whispered back.

  We started on the second floor and moved down, opening doors, looking up fireplaces, tapping walls for hidden compartments.

  Two hours later, I rubbed my forehead with a filthy hand. "We got nothing. This stinks."

  "Yeah." Fang breathed out. "Well, get this last closet and we'll split."

  I nodded and opened the hallway coat closet. It was empty, its walls nothing but broken plaster, showing the bare laths within.

  I was about to close the door when a thin strip of white caught my eye. I shone the penlight on it, frowning, then reached down to pick at it. Something was wedged in back of a lath.

  "What?" Fang asked quietly.

  "Nothing, I'm sure," I whispered back. "But I'll just get it..."

  I pried it out with my fingernails, and it turned out to be a square of paper, about four inches across. I turned it over, and my breath caught.

  It was a photograph.

  Fang leaned over my shoulder while I focused the light on the photo. It was a picture of a woman holding a baby in her arms. The baby was plump, blond, blue-eyed... the spitting image of the baby Gasman-cowlick and everything.

  28

  "Holy moly," I breathed. Just then we heard heavy footsteps coming up to the front door.

  "They're back," Fang whispered. "Upstairs!"

  We whirled and ran up the steps. But the moonlight streaming through the windows cast our shadows down the stairs.

  I heard the front door shut, and then a voice bellowed, "Hey!"

  Heavy, uncoordinated footsteps pounded up behind us, and it sounded like someone swung a baseball bat against a wall. We heard a heavy thunk and then the sound of breaking plaster.

  "That's your head!" one guy shouted. "We're gonna bust you up!"

  At the top of the stairs, I darted to the right, the way we had come in. I was past several rooms when I realized Fang wasn't with me. I skidded to a halt and spotted him at the other end of the hallway.

  I motioned to Fang, but just as he started toward me, the two crackhead squatters lurched into the hall between us.

  One of them slapped the bat against his open palm with chilling smacking sounds. The other held a broken bottle.

  "So," one growled. "You think you can pop our crib?"

  Pop their crib? Come again?

  They stopped for a moment, then their smiles grew wider. Grosser.

  "It's a chick, man!" one exclaimed.

  The bottle-holding slug pulled a wicked-looking knife out of his belt. He held it up so it caught the moonlight.

  Fang? You go ahead and make your move. Any time now, I thought tensely. Where are you, Fang?

  "We don't care whose chick you are," one said. "For the next hour, you're gonna be our chick." The guys were totally scuzzy, grinning horribly, showing holes where teeth should be.

  "Excuse me?" I said acidly. "Can we say sexist?"

  They didn't have time.

  "Boys, God doesn't like you," Fang intoned behind them.

  Whaaaaat? I thought, dumbfounded.

  "Wha!" they said, whirling.

  At that moment, Fang snapped out his huge wings and shone the penlight under his chin so it raked his cheekbones and eyes. My mouth dropped open: He looked like the angel of death.

  His dark wings filled the hallway almost to the ceiling, and he moved them up and down. "God doesn't like bad people," he said, using a really weird, deep voice.

  "What the hell," one of the squatters muttered shallowly, his mouth slack, his eyes bugging out of his head. "I'm trippin'."

  "I see it too," whispered the other one. "We're both trippin'."

  I whipped my own wings open-impressive as all get-out. Fun, anyway.

  "This was a test," I said, using my best spooky voice. "And guess what? You both failed."

  The bums stopped dead, looks of horror and amazement on their faces.

  Then Fang growled, "Rowr!" He stepped forward, sweeping his wings up and down: the avenging demon. I almost cracked up.

  "Rowr!" I said myself, shaking my wings out.

  "Ahhh!" the guys yelled, backpedaling fast. Unfortunately, they were standing at the top of the staircase. They fell awkwardly, trying to grab each other, and rolled down two flights like lumpy bags of potatoes, shrieking the whole way.

  Fang and I slapped each other a quick high five-and we were out of there, jack.

  And then my Voice was in my head. So glad you're having fun, Maximum. While the world burns.

  29

  I'll say this for the world, and civilization: The whole hot-shower thing totally worked for me.

  Reluctantly, I turned off the water and got out, then wrapped myself in my own personal towel, Dove fresh. On the other hand, civilization had its own quirky demands: remembering to brush your hair, wearing different clothes every day-details I wasn't used to.

  But I was dealing.

  "Max?" Iggy knocked on the door. "Can I come in? I just have to brush my teeth."

  "No-I'm in a towel," I called back.

  "I'm blind," he said impatiently.

  "No! You're kidding! Are you sure?" I grabbed my comb and rubbed a hole in the fogged-up mirror-then stifled a shriek. Eraser Max was back.

  "Very funny," said Iggy. "Well, don't take forever. Primping's not going to do much for you, anyway."

  I still hadn't taken a breath by the time I heard his footsteps reach the end of the hall.

  Swallowing hard, I reached up with trembling fingers and touched my cheek. It was smooth skin. The mirror showed a hairy paw with ragged claws, caressing my muzzle.

  "How is this happening?" I whispered, terrified.

  Eraser Max smiled at me. "But we're not so different," it said. "Everything is connected. I'm part of you. You're part of me. We can help each other."

  "You're not part of me," I whispered. "I could never be like you."

  "Max, Max," Eraser Max s
aid soothingly. "You already are."

  I whirled away from the mirror and burst out of the bathroom. Quickly I went to my room and shut the door, before anyone could see me.

  I sat on my bed, shaking, and kept touching my face over and over to make sure I was still me. "Am I really, finally going crazy?" I murmured.

  30

  A little tap on my door made me jump, every muscle bunched with fear. It had to be Iggy. "I'm out of the bathroom," I called, hearing my voice shake a little.

  "Yeah," Fang said. "I can tell, 'cause your voice is coming from in there."

  "What do you want?"

  "Can I come in?"

  "No!"

  So of course the door opened. Fang leaned in the doorway. He saw how I looked, pale and big-eyed and freaked. Compulsively I touched my face, looked down at my hands. Still covered with plain skin.

  One of his dark eyebrows rose, and he came in and closed the door. "What's going on?" he asked.

  "I don't know," I whispered. "Something's wrong with me, but I don't know what."

  Fang waited for a moment, then sat next to me on the bed and put his arm gently across my shoulders. I was all huddled up, damp in my towel, feeling miserable and more scared than I'd been in-days.

  "You'll be okay," he said.

  "How do you know?"

  "Because I know everything, as I keep reminding you."

  I was too miserable to smile.

  "Look," he said. "Whatever this is, we'll deal with it. We always have before."

  I swallowed. I was dying to tell him about Eraser Max but was too afraid and ashamed.

  "Fang-if I'm changing, if I'm turning into something... bad-will you deal with it?"

  He was silent, his eyes on me.

  I took a deep breath. "If I turn into an Eraser," I said more strongly, "will you deal with it? To protect the others?"

  Our eyes met for a long time. He knew what I was asking him. If I turned into an Eraser, it would be his job to kill me.

  He looked down at his feet, then up at me. "Yes. I'll do what has to be done."