A World of Trouble (27 page)

There's a click, like the sound a key makes turning a lock.

Elinor's fingers tighten around my arm. “I'll be okay. I promise.”

No wonder Annika doesn't like that word. In a situation like this, it doesn't carry much weight.

“But—”

She grabs the front of my coat. Pulls me toward her until we're so close I can see my reflection in her watery eyes.

“Listen to me,” she whispers. “If you don't leave now, you never will. Mother will throw you in a deep ditch where bugs bigger than your head will be your only company and food source. That's where you'll stay. Forever. Or at least until
you
become
their
food source.” She bites her lip. Puts her arms around my shoulders. Hugs me tightly and demands near my ear, “And then what will I do when I
really
need you?”

Gabby's right. Elinor definitely doesn't give herself enough
credit. Because up until these words leave her mouth, I'm confident nothing she says will convince me to go anywhere without her. But this does.

There's another click. The doorknob begins to turn.

Elinor pulls away. There are a million things I want to say, but we only have time for one.

“Be careful.”

She nods. I hold my eyes to hers a second more, then bolt to the bench, jump on, and grab Lemon's hand. I've just pulled my feet into the attic and slid the ceiling tile back in place when the door below is thrown open.

“Greetings, my little desert dev—” Nadia's booming voice falls silent. “What is this? Where are they?” Heavy footsteps pound the floor. “What did you do?”

“Nothing.” Elinor's voice trembles. “I don't know what you're talking about.”

“Of course you don't. Why should today be different from any other day?” It sounds like Nadia starts back across the sauna. Then the footsteps stop. The floorboards creak. The footsteps turn and stomp back toward Elinor. “Four blindfolds, no captives. Care to guess again, daughter dearest?”

The tube socks! I swallow a groan. We must've left them wherever we took them off. I look at Lemon, who's crouched next to me and in front of Abe and Gabby, listening. In the light of my K-Pak, I see him frown.

“No? Have it your way. You always do!” There's more stomping. The door opens. “Wait here. I just have to instruct your pool attendants to add two additional feet of beetles and spiders. Maybe I'll even ask them to toss in a cobra for kicks.”

The door slams.

“Um, guys?” Abe asks. “We gotta go.”

“He's right,” Gabby says. “I'm really sorry, Seamus.”

The attic is more like a crawl space with a dim light at one end. They start shuffling toward the light on their hands and knees.

“You all right?” Lemon asks.

I lift my chin, then let it drop. It's all I can manage.

He starts shuffling too. My brain orders my body to follow, but once again, my body has a mind of its own.

I move closer to the loose ceiling tile. Lift it up and move it aside. Lower my head into the sauna and finally share the huge secret I've been guarding even more carefully than my last huge secret.

“She's alive.”

Elinor's sitting on a bench. Her head lifts. Her eyes, now overflowing with tears, find mine.

“What?”

“My substitute teacher. Miss Parsippany. She isn't dead. I didn't kill her.” I try out the next words in my head before saying them out loud. “I'm not a murderer. So if anyone doesn't belong at Kilter . . . it's me.”

Click.
The lock turns. The door inches open.

Elinor looks at it, then at me.

I hold out my hand.

“
Five
cobras?” Nadia asks, apparently talking to someone just outside the sauna. “Fabulous! Maybe daughter dearest will finally learn something!”

Elinor jumps up. Dashes across the sauna. Takes my hand. Between the two us, we lift her up and replace the ceiling tile with exactly one second to spare.

In which time she brushes her eyes, smiles, and calls me the nicest thing anyone ever has.

“Liar.”

DEMERITS: 465

GOLD STARS: 300

A
s we crawl I tell
Elinor about GS George. The helicopter her classmates helped destroy. The time deadline. My plan to write our pilot and beg for his return. The chances of this happening growing smaller with each passing second.

She listens carefully. Then, once we reach the end of the attic, drop into the lobby, and leave the salon as easily as Houdini left Shell's Belles weeks earlier, she takes the lead.

“Are we sure this is such a good idea?” Abe whispers to Lemon and me as we run. “Following the director's daughter? What if
she's taking us to the lion's den to make her mom happy?”

“If she wanted to make her mom happy,” I whisper back, “she wouldn't have just helped us escape from the sauna.”

Abe doesn't look convinced. But he keeps running.

We sprint through town, passing an abandoned Laundromat. Gas station. Bakery. Post office. We stay low to the ground and away from flickering streetlights. Several IncrimiNators are out and about, and my heart feels like it'll burst through my chest every time we near one. But then Elinor clucks her tongue or whistles, they mimic her greeting, and we cross the street before they can get a good look at us.

Until we round a corner. And stop ten feet short of Shepherd Bull and his gang of grunge. They're holding shovels, rakes, and other assorted weapons, which makes me think they were scouring the town for sauna escape artists—before they got distracted. By the window display in what used to be the Blackhole Toy Shop. Now they face the three adults popping in and out of wooden crates covered in ripped tinfoil like sad, tired jack-in-the-boxes. As the adults force smiles and sway back and forth, the kids heckle and howl.

I lean toward Elinor to ask if there's a detour to wherever
we're going. The gang of grunge is taking up all of the sidewalk and most of the street, so it'd be hard to get by unnoticed. I've just opened my mouth when she takes my arm. Squeezes. And rips my coat sleeve.

“Okay,” I whisper. “We are in the desert. I guess I didn't need—”

I'm stopped by the handful of dirt she flings at my chest. I step back and look down like I've been shot, then raise my eyes to hers.

“Sorry,” she says softly, quickly. “But you look too good.”

I look too good? In front of her? Impossible.

“You, too.” She throws a handful of dirt at Lemon. “And you, and you.”

I try not to be disappointed as she shares the sentiment and soil with the rest of Capital T. Abe's face turns neon-red the instant he's hit. Before suspicion and anger cause a loud verbal explosion that could invite attention and kill us all, Elinor presses one finger to her lips, then points behind us.

To what was once the Blackhole School for Gifted Youth. And is now, according to the spray-painted correction, the Blackhole School for Doomed Adults.

“Shortcut,” she whispers.

“You want us to go in there?” Gabby asks.

“It's crawling with people,” Lemon says, peering through the dusty window.

“Lion's den.” Abe shakes his head. “I knew it.”

For a second, I actually wonder if he might be right. I understand wanting to make your parents happy, and Elinor helping us escape only so she could be the one to recapture us and save the day would certainly please Nadia. But then there's a loud whoop behind us. I spin around and see another armed gang of grunge heading our way. They seem to be looking past us, at Mr. Bull and company, but they'll spot us soon.

Which means the only way out of the lion's den . . . is through it.

I grab my other coat sleeve and pull. The material rips and feathers fly out. I bend down, scoop up as much dirt as my hands can hold, and throw it at my legs, stomach, and back. I pat my dirty palms to my neck and face. Untie my shoelaces. Mess up my already messy hair some more. At first Lemon, Abe, and Gabby look at me like the desert dust has gone to my head, but when there's another, louder whoop behind us, they all jump and do the same. Abe even drops to the ground and rolls around like a pig in mud.

By the time we enter the Blackhole School for Doomed Adults, we look like we belong.

Almost.

“What's
wrong
with them?” Gabby shouts.

I shake my head. Because I have no idea. The hallway's packed with kids. They run, scream, laugh, and bounce off of the walls—and one another. As we elbow our way through the crowd, one teenage boy uses another as a springboard to launch himself over our heads. When he passes above us, I notice his eyes are dark, unfocused. Then he slams into a locker, denting it, and falls to the floor with an excited shriek.

“Too much sugar, freedom, and power!” Elinor yells. “Dangerous combination!”

The effects of which I'd like to get away from immediately. Unfortunately, that's impossible. The hallway's so crammed we have no choice but to go with the slow flow. To keep from panicking, I distract myself by peeking into classrooms—and at the IncrimiNation curriculum.

First up is language arts. At least that's what the sign outside the door says. But the students inside aren't learning pig Latin, pig French, or how to speak granny-style, the way we do at Kilter.
They're bending over adults, who are kneeling on the floor and scrubbing tiles with toothbrushes. When we're right in front of the open door, I see that the adults aren't just cleaning the floor. They're scrubbing words into the gray grime. They make full sentences, like
BECAUSE MY SON SAID SO, THAT'S WHY
. And
MY DAUGHTER'S THE BOSS
. And
AS LONG AS I LIVE UNDER MY CHILDREN'S ROOF, I'LL DO AS THEY SAY
.

The kids dictate, the adults write. Some scrub the same sentence a dozen times. An older female teenager—I assume the teacher—walks around the room, surveying the progress and barking orders. She's wearing ripped shorts, a stained T-shirt, and no shoes. From here I can see the dark lines of dirt under her toenails. Houdini doesn't exactly dress to impress, but this girl's outfit makes his pajamas look like a three-piece suit.

Speaking of Houdini, the next class we pass is math. At Kilter, math is all about stealing personal belongings. Here, it's all about playing video games. A dozen old TVs are scattered throughout the room. Two players sit before each: one kid, one adult. Only they're not working as teams. They're playing against each other. The kids clearly have the edge, while the adults struggle to keep up. Every time a kid's game character causes an adult's to step on
a land mine, fall out of a plane, or somehow end his or her turn, the kid cackles in delight, forces the adult to guzzle a gallon of root beer, and restarts the game.

“Points!” Elinor shouts near my ear. “They have half an hour to get a thousand each. If they don't, they're grounded!”

The adults look so miserable trying to avoid being grounded, I can't imagine what that punishment might involve. Before I can ask Elinor, we reach the biology classroom—where rather than tooting with their armpits or hocking fake loogies, students are making fists, pounding them into walls and other hard surfaces, and simultaneously bulging their eyes and lunging forward. All to make the adults cringe and cower, which they do. The teacher, a tall, skinny boy, occasionally demonstrates other scare tactics, like leaping on top of desks and jumping up and down until the floor shakes.

“Monsters!” Gabby declares, shoving forward.

Next up is gym. It's in what probably used to be a normal gymnasium, complete with bleachers and basketball hoops. But no one's cheering or shooting. Once again, kids are yelling. And adults are running a very strange obstacle course.

“Sixty seconds!” Elinor shouts. “That's how long they have
to make their beds, pretend to shower, floss, iron, put clothes on over the ones they're already wearing, make a nutritious breakfast, pretend to eat it, wash and dry dishes, take the trash to one side of the room, and book it back all the way to the other side to catch the invisible school bus!”

“And if the invisible school bus leaves without them?” I ask.

“They try again—but with fifty seconds on the clock! If they fail a second time, they're grounded!”

As I watch two tired, dizzy adults run into each other and collapse between the fake bed and shower stall, I wonder if being grounded is really that bad. At least it'd give them a break from this.

We continue down the hall. I try to process everything we've just seen.

“So IncrimiNation teaches kids how to control adults?” I yell.

“Sort of!” Elinor yells back. “It also—”

She's cut off by the loud, long honk of a bullhorn.

“Greetings, my precious pupils!” Nadia sings from the opposite end of the hallway. “Sorry to disrupt your lessons, but it seems we have a small security breach!”