Dinosaur Boy (9 page)

As soon as Elliot and I moved to follow Sylvie down the steps of the administration building, it started to rain. Hard.

Which was actually pretty helpful. Turns out it's easy to follow people in the rain. Especially when they pull an enormous yellow umbrella out of their purse and hold it up like a beacon over their head. Which is exactly what Principal Mathis did. Sylvie, Elliot, and I just had to stay close enough to keep the yellow umbrella in sight. Plus, the rain was so loud we didn't even have to be that quiet.

I found myself hoping that Principal Mathis was leading us to the library or to the girls' restroom. Or somewhere else so boring that Sylvie would lose interest in her and stop forcing me and Elliot to accompany her on her stealth missions.

But then I realized that we were going in the opposite direction from the library. And then we passed three girls' restrooms without stopping. By the time we went by the art wing and entered an area at the very back of the school where the portable classrooms were kept, even I had to admit something weird was going on.

Elliot and I had both had an art class in one of the portable classrooms last year while the roof on the art wing was being fixed. But as far as I knew, the portables were empty this year.

Sylvie motioned for us to slow down and hide behind a row of bushes, just as the principal reached the door of the farthest portable. Principal Mathis closed her umbrella and leaned it carefully against the wall beside the door. She was holding a keychain in her hand. There was a single key dangling from a red circular disk the size of a silver dollar.

Then Principal Mathis suddenly whirled around.

I froze; so did Elliot and Sylvie. The rain ran off the hood of my jacket and dripped from the tip of my nose. I held my breath.

The bush was not thick. I could see Principal Mathis perfectly through a cantaloupe-sized hole in the foliage. We were
so
about to be caught.

“This is stupid,” Elliot muttered, crouched down awkwardly beside me so that his knees were practically in his face. “She can
totally
see us.”

“Wait,” Sylvie commanded him. “Just wait.”

We did.

Principal Mathis began a left-to-right scan of the area behind her. It was hard to tell, because I was too far away to see her eyes behind her thick glasses, but I was 90 percent sure that her eyes swept right over our bush. But they didn't stop, not until they got all the way to the edge of her vision on the right.

Then she nodded, put the key in the lock, and let herself into the portable.

• • •

“Interesting,” Sylvie marveled.

“She didn't see us?” Elliot asked, incredulous, as he wiped the rain from his face. A losing fight, considering it was raining harder than ever. “How did she not see us?”

“Maybe it was the rain?” I guessed.

But I knew that wasn't it. I didn't know what
it
was, but there was definitely something strange happening here.

“Sylvie, what's going on?” I asked. Because of the three of us, she seemed the most likely to know.

“Let's go see what's in the portable,” Sylvie suggested, and motioned for us to follow her around the back of the building.

There were two large windows there, covered with heavy blinds. But the slats were large enough that we could see through them if we squinted.

All the desks inside the portable had been pushed to one side, leaving a wide, open space in the center. The space was filled with obstacles: a balance beam, an inflatable tunnel, a wooden wall that came up to about head height, a climbing rope attached to the ceiling, and pull-up bars. A trail of tires continued into the portable next door. The wall between the two rooms had been removed, so there was now twice the normal amount of space inside.

Which was good, because there were at least ten kids running the obstacle course in a clockwise circle.

The whole setup looked like the sort of thing a desperate gym teacher would construct on a rainy day. But there was something off about the scene. I was trying to figure out what it was when one of the kids suddenly fell off the balance beam.

He hit the ground, then rolled right toward our window and out of sight. After a moment, the kid popped up again about a foot away from my face.

I froze as a pair of green eyes looked right at me through a mop of red hair and a mess of freckles.

Brad blinked and gave me a slightly unfocused smile. Then he lurched to his feet, staggered back toward the balance beam, and scrambled back up.

No one else came that close to my window, but now that I knew what to look for, I saw it all: Mary's long, black ponytail swinging back and forth as she jumped from tire to tire; Jeremy hitching up his overalls as he used a rope to pull himself over the wall; the pink sparkles on Emma's shoes flashing as she wove in and out of a line of poles.

“Holy cow,” Elliot marveled beside me.

The kids who had been kicked out of school were, most definitely, not at Camp Remorse.

Sylvie was right. Principal Mathis was a big, fat liar.

We could see her inside the portable too. She made a quick survey of the room, patted Mary on the head, and then went back out the front door.

The three of us peeked around the side of the portable and watched as she hurried back toward the administration building under the cover of her yellow umbrella. She was twirling the red keychain around with one hand, and she didn't look back once.

Elliot appeared to be having difficulty breathing.

“This is…” He trailed off, and looked around helplessly. “This is…
crazy
. First, they were missing. Then, they were at a bully rehab camp. Now they're in a building at the back of the school?”

“I told you,” Sylvie said, leading us back around to the front. “Principal Mathis lied to you.”

She walked right up to the front of the portable and pounded on the door. We waited expectantly, but no one answered.

Sylvie reached for the doorknob, gave a yelp, and pulled her hand back. I could have sworn I saw a spark fly from the tip of her finger.

“Ow!” she complained, sucking on her hand. “The doorknob is electrified!”

“Let's try the window,” I suggested.

I went around back again and knocked hard on the window. I squinted through the blinds, but all I could see was an endless circle of kids, their faces tight with grim determination, somehow managing to keep their distance from one another as they tackled one obstacle after another.

“Hey!” I shouted. “Mary! Emma! Can you hear me?”

There was no response. They just kept running, climbing, and balancing, as though the obstacle course was the only thing in the world. They all had the same glazed look as Brad. Something was very, very wrong here.

These didn't look like the kind of windows you could open from the outside, but I reached out to touch the metal frame anyway, just in case.

I jumped when the electrical charge shot into my fingers and up my arm.

“Ow!” I yelled.

“Would you guys stop touching things?” Elliot exclaimed, his eyes large. “We have to call the police!” He plunged his hand into his pocket and dug around for his phone.

Sylvie grabbed his arm and shook her head firmly. “No, Elliot. You can't do that.”

“Are you joking?” I demanded, and pointed to the window. “There are
kids
in there! You were right, OK? Principal Mathis
is
a liar. And we have to tell someone! Before something happens to them!”

Sylvie shook her head again. “No. You guys don't understand. This isn't something the police can help with.”

“What do you mean?” I looked at her suspiciously. “What aren't you telling us, Sylvie? How did you know Principal Mathis was lying? How do you know these things?”

“I just know, OK?”

“Not good enough!” I yelled. I could hear hysteria enter my voice, but I didn't care. Given the situation, I thought hysteria was rather appropriate. It was Sylvie's cool-as-a-cucumber calmness that seemed wrong to me.

“Sawyer, calm down,” she advised me.

“No!” I yelled. “I won't! Not until you explain things. It was your idea to be suspicious of Principal Mathis. And you were right. How did you know she was lying to us?”

“Because…” she answered, still dead calm and searching for the right words. “Because I don't think Principal Mathis is what she appears to be.”

“What does
that
mean?” I demanded. “You just got to this school. Did you know Principal Mathis before, from somewhere else?”

“No.”

“Then how do you know anything about her?”

“I just know.”

I shook my head.

“
How
do you know?”

Sylvie bit her lip. She looked caught.
I
had caught her.

“I know…” Sylvie began. She looked around nervously, but there was just the three of us standing there. Us, and a whole lot of rain.

“I know because of
this
.”

Sylvie yanked off the hood of her sweatshirt. Her hair was immediately soaked. The poofy curls were beaten down flat, making her look a couple of inches shorter than usual.

She reached up both hands and started rooting around under the hair at the crown of her head. All the while, Sylvie's eyes bounced intensely from my face, to Elliot's, and back to mine again.

There were two loud
snaps
as she unclipped her silver barrettes. As soon as she untangled them from her soggy curls, two pale pink antennae sprang free and stood up straight, right on the top of her head.

And that was how Elliot and I found out that Sylvie was a Martian.

“A half-Martian, actually,” Sylvie corrected me after school that same day.

We were at her mother's restaurant again. Mama Juarez's Cucina was open to the public now and, from the looks of things, it was becoming popular very quickly. It wasn't even dinnertime yet, and already almost every table was full.

In spite of the crowd, the three of us were given a prime booth. Those are the perks of being friends with the owner's daughter. That and free chips, which Elliot and Sylvie ate while I demolished a large bowl of greens (minus the molé this time, just in case). Our adventure in the rain had given us healthy appetites.

“So let me get this straight,” Elliot said. “Your mom”—he looked toward the kitchen door, behind which Mrs. Juarez had just disappeared—“she's human?”

“Yup. And my dad's a Martian.”

I looked warily at the people sitting around us. Sylvie was wearing her hood up, and underneath, I knew her antennae were fastened down with clips again. Now that I knew to look closely, I guess her skin was a little bit smoother and shinier than normal human skin. And her eyes may have been a little bit rounder. But other than that, she looked like an ordinary girl.

She was also making no effort to keep her voice down at all. If anyone around us was paying attention…

But the people around us were all busy enjoying their food. I don't think anybody even noticed my plates or my tail, let alone that there was a Martian at our table.

Elliot was still trying to get all of the details straight.

“So if your mom's human and your dad's a…a M-Martian,” he ventured. I could tell that he couldn't quite believe he was saying that last word out loud. “How did they meet?”

“Match.com,” Sylvie answered, totally straight-faced.

Elliot's eyes bulged.

“Seriously?”

“No.” Sylvie giggled and stuffed another chip into her mouth. “My dad is a restaurateur.”

“A what?” I asked.

“A restaurateur. It means he owns a bunch of restaurants. He specializes in exotic cuisine. He met my mom while they were both in culinary school in Artesia, just south of Roswell, New Mexico. When they graduated, they got married, moved to Mars, and opened a chain of Tex-Mex-Martian fusions places. They're
really
popular in Mars.”

“You mean, ‘
on
' Mars, don't you?” Elliot asked.

Sylvie shook her head. She was smiling. More than I had ever seen her smile since I'd met her. Maybe she hadn't really liked having to keep her Martianness a secret. She seemed very relieved to finally be able to talk about it with us.

“No, I mean ‘in Mars,'” she was saying to Elliot. “Martians live underground. So it's more accurate to say that we live ‘in' Mars, as opposed to ‘on.'”

Elliot looked at me across the table.

“My head hurts,” he announced, and lowered his forehead onto his crossed arms.

Sylvie gave him a slightly concerned look, then reached for another chip.

“You said your dad was away on a business trip,” I remembered suddenly. “You said that he lived ‘a little bit outside of Portland.'”

“That wasn't
exactly
a lie,” Sylvie said, delicately nibbling a chip. “Mars
is
outside of Portland. And it's a lot closer to Portland than, say, Neptune or Saturn. So relatively speaking, Mars
is
just a little bit outside of Portland.”

Elliot groaned into his arms.

“And your dad is on—er,
in
—Mars now?” I persisted.

Sylvie nodded.

“Until he comes here to get me, yeah, he is. He's working. When my parents separated last year, my mom brought me back to Earth. To New Mexico. But it was a little bit too sunny there for me.” She fingered her nose, which now had no trace of the sunburn she had had on the day we met her. “Martian skin is really sensitive. I think it's because of the whole living underground thing. So we moved here.”

“Because there's not as much sun?” I guessed.

“Yeah. That, and my mom had a contact in the Portland culinary world. That's how she got this restaurant up and running.” She gestured around us. “It's the first one she's done without my dad. It's kind of a big deal to her.”

“Oh,” I said, pausing to think through everything Sylvie had just disclosed. I was pretty sure Elliot was doing the same thing, only he was doing it with his face down on the table. “So…you said that all of this has something to do with Principal Mathis?”

“Oh, yeah.” Sylvie sat up a little bit straighter. “I'm pretty sure she's a Martian too.”

“Of course she is,” Elliot mumbled into his arms.

Sylvie shot him another concerned look.

“Is he going to be OK?” she asked me.

“He's processing,” I told her. “Just give him a minute.”

“OK.”

We chewed in silence for several minutes before Elliot finally raised his head out of his arms.

“So,” he said, “you're a Martian.”

“Half-Martian,” said Sylvie. “We've covered that.”

“And our principal is a Martian too?” Elliot continued.

“I didn't say that,” Sylvie corrected him. “I said I was ‘pretty sure' she's a Martian.”

“What do you mean by that?” I asked.

“Well.” Sylvie considered this for a moment. “It's just a guess. But I'm more sure now than I was when I first got to this school.”

“What made you more sure?” I asked.

“Well, she's pretty short. And Martians are pretty short. I've never seen her antennae, but she styles her hair pretty big, so she could be hiding them under there. That's two things,” Sylvie mused, ticking them off on her fingers as she went. “Oh, and she wears really thick glasses. That's a big giveaway.”

“Glasses?” I asked. “Martians wear glasses?”

Sylvie took a sip of her Coke and nodded.

“Most of us, yeah. Our eyesight sucks. At least, it does when we're above ground.”

I thought back to earlier that day, when Principal Mathis had looked right at our totally obvious hiding spot without seeing us.

“The only people who have worse eyesight than Martians are the Jupiterians,” Sylvie was saying. “I think it's because they come from such a gaseous planet. Their eyesight evolved differently than everyone else's.”

“Jupiter!” Elliot exclaimed. “There are people on Jupiter too?”

“There are people on almost every planet, Elliot,” Sylvie retorted, digging a handful of Pixy Stix out of her sweatshirt pocket. She set half of them on the table in front of her and tore the tops off the other half with one, large
riiiiip
. “You just have to know where to look.”

“But
you
don't wear glasses,” I pointed out.

Sylvie leaned toward me and pointed to her eye. I looked closely at the light brown circle around her pupil, and I could just make out the faint curve of a lens.

“Contacts,” she explained, then she leaned her head back and emptied all of the open Pixy Stix into her mouth. “But I barely need them. I had the best eyesight in my entire school back home.” She lowered her chin and batted her eyelashes proudly. “I have my mom's eyes.”

“So what you're saying,” I said, “is that we should suspect that all short, big-haired, glasses-wearing people are Martians?”

Sylvie shrugged.

“Probably not
all
of them are Martians,” she allowed. “But a fair amount of them probably are. There are more Martians on Earth than you might think.”

“And our principal is one of them,” Elliot surmised.

“Probably.”

“And she's keeping ten of the kids in our class locked in a secret classroom in the back of our school?” Elliot continued.

“Yes,” Sylvie agreed, looking pleased that Elliot had finally caught up.

“And
why
is she keeping them locked up?” I asked.

Sylvie shrugged.

“I don't know.”

Elliot's eyes suddenly grew huge.

“Martians don't…you know…
eat
humans, do they?”

“No!” Sylvie exclaimed, looking disgusted. “Why would they do that?”

“I don't know,” Elliot said, looking vaguely embarrassed and muttering something about
The
Twilight
Zone
that I didn't quite catch. He motioned to the Pixy Stix. “What about the candy? Is that a Martian thing too?”

Sylvie shrugged.

“Actually, it's more of an Earth thing. Earth candy is full of high-fructose corn syrup and processed sugar.”

“So…” Elliot prompted her.

“That stuff is illegal on pretty much every other planet,” Sylvie informed him.

“So there's no candy on Mars?” I asked.

“There's candy,” Sylvie said, making a face as she ripped open the remaining Pixy Stix. “But we don't have anything like
this
.”

She tipped her head back and poured so much sugar into her mouth that a small cloud of dust gathered around her face. When she looked at us again, there was a sprinkling of pink powder on her nose. And a giant smile on her face.

“Well,” I said, trying to get back to the point. “The kids in the portable are not made out of sugar. So if Principal Mathis is not eating them, what
is
she doing with them?”

“I don't know,” Sylvie said, licking her lips. “But we're going to find out. It's time to go back to our original plan.”

“Our original plan,” Elliot scrunched his nose as he tried to think. “Which was…”

“We're going to break into Principal Mathis's office,” Sylvie reminded him. “
Tonight
.”