Power Play (10 page)

“We’ll text in the morning,” Philby said, “and figure all this stuff out. Like what to do next. Like if there’s some way to stop them from crossing us over.”

“Like, why they chose me,” Charlene said.

Finn stretched on his tiptoes holding the Return over the junction of pipes. As they crossed back, the Return would fall from his fingers, lodging in its hiding place. They would need to know where to find it the next time they crossed over.

With the three of them all holding hands, Finn counted down, “Three…two…”

He pushed the button.

B
EING BACK AT SCHOOL
was a major letdown. A regular part of almost every day, it was still the forgettable part; his time as a Keeper dominated Finn’s thoughts. The one bright spot in the school day was, of all things, lunch. Not that the food was edible. It was not. But lunchtime was Finn’s chance to hang with Amanda.

He stopped in the boys’ room to make sure he didn’t have something stuck in his teeth, or a booger lodged up his nose.

When his eyes shifted focus in the mirror, he saw Greg Luowski standing behind him.

“Hey, Greg.” Finn was mindful of the Security photograph showing the Evil Queen talking to Luowski and three other kids. He was a bundle of nerves, especially because Luowski didn’t say anything.

There was something different about Luowski’s sneer. Maybe it was seeing his ugly mug reversed by the mirror. Maybe it was his piggish eyes, or greasy skin. Or maybe it was just Luowski trying so hard to look menacing. It was working. If they’d given grades for imparting terror, Luowski would have gotten an A.

Finn cupped his hands beneath the faucet, filled his mouth with water, and swished it around in his teeth to get rid of any cereal that might be lingering from breakfast. He did this in part to pretend that Luowski’s presence didn’t concern him, in part because his hands were shaking and he didn’t want Luowski to see the effect he could have over him. When Finn stood up and looked in the mirror, Luowski was gone. The door to the boys’ room hissed shut and Finn let out a sigh of relief. But he also wondered why Luowski had passed up the opportunity to bully him. The silent treatment was not Lousy Luowski’s style.

Finn looked around to see if a teacher had entered; looked for
some
explanation. As far as he could tell, he was alone. He tried to let it go, to forget about it, but Luowski had gotten under his skin. He felt slightly sick, edgy, jumpy. His skin was crawling.

Amanda was sitting off by herself in the lunch room, a hopeful look in her eyes, which brightened as she spotted him. Her tray held salad, a bowl of fruit, and a glass of water. The lettuce was mostly white, not green; the fruit, canned. Even the water looked gray through the scratched plastic cup. He arrived with a yellowish mass on his plate that had been labeled creamed chicken and rice. With enough salt, it could be swallowed.

“Have you seen Greg-the-Gross?” he asked.

“Yes, you may join me,” she said, ignoring his question completely.

“Lousy Luowski,” he said.

“I’d be happy to have you.”

Finn sat across from her. He stabbed at the yellow mound. “It lives,” he said, putting his fork beneath the mass and causing it to wiggle.

She laughed. “In the hall earlier,” she said, finally answering him. “His usual oafish self.”

She looked pretty today, like every other day.

“Did he look…
different
?”

“A few more zits?” she asked. “A few less brain cells?”

Some creamed chicken and rice caught in Finn’s throat. He washed it down with warm milk.

She stabbed her fruit. The consistency of rubber, it resisted her fork, like she was trying to stab an eraser. “I’m not exactly a fan,” she said. “I don’t usually pay attention to him.”

She had trouble chewing her fruit. She said, “But did
you
happen to notice Sally Ringwald’s new contacts?”

“Might have missed that.” He sat up taller and listened carefully: Sally Ringwald had been one of the kids with the Queen in DisneyQuest.

“Pigmented. You know? Green. You can’t believe the difference. She’s much prettier now. Kind of Irish-looking.”

“One of my mom’s friends wears the blue ones. It’s really disturbing. It’s like I’m not supposed to notice or something. I’m supposed to pretend her eyes always looked like that. As if!” He paused. “Don’t ever do anything like that, okay? Don’t go changing yourself like that.”

She blushed and returned to stabbing her fruit. Or trying to.

“Where did that come from?” he said.

“I don’t mind.”

In a desperate effort to change subjects, he blurted out, “Philby and I crossed over into Epcot last night to rescue Charlene.”

“Rescue?”

“To help her Return.”

“Did she ask you to?”

“No. It’s just that Philby…he hadn’t arranged for her to cross over in the first place.”

“So you’re the DHI police now? Is that it?”

“Ouch.”

“She can’t cross over without Philby’s permission? What about Wayne? Or maybe the Imagineers? What if they crossed her over?”

“It…” He didn’t have a great answer for that. “As it turned out, it was a good thing we went in after her. We ended up battling some trolls. The CTDs were out everywhere—probably looking for her.”

“
Probably
,” she said, stinging him.

Should he tell her?

“You can tell me,” she said.

How come girls could read his thoughts like that? He never had a clue what a girl was thinking.

“We think she was under a spell.” He lowered his voice. “The Evil Queen.”

“Seriously?”

He reached into his back pocket—he only changed his pants about every four days—and passed her the time-stamped photograph of Charlene and the Evil Queen entering the DisneyQuest washroom.

He said, “There were two photographs last night. The one of the Queen with Luowski and Sally Ringwald, and this one. Notice the times.”

“You kept this one from us?” She sounded upset.

“We kept it from Charlene, yeah.”

Finn ate some more of the yellowish mush, but bit down on gristle and pushed his tray aside. He said, “She has no memory of the Queen being in the girls’ room with her.”

Amanda’s concern carved lines across her face.

“Maybe the plan,” Finn said, “is to cross one of us over each night until we’re all stuck in the Syndrome. That would get us out of the way.”

“If that ever happened,” she said, “Jess and I would cross over and come find you. The OTs can’t possibly know that you made it so we can be DHIs.”

He spotted Sally Ringwald across the cafeteria. She was too far away for him to see her green contacts, but it prompted him to reconsider his encounter with Luowski.

“What if they were green?” he said.

“What if what were green?”

“Luowski.”

“What about him?”

“His eyes. Contact lenses,” he said. “What if Luowski looked different to me because eyes were green?”

“That’s ridiculous. Greg Luowski has boring eyes,” she said. “Hazel. Red hair, hazel eyes.”

Finn said, “But what if his boring hazel eyes are now green like Sally Ringwald’s?”

“Greg Luowski wearing pigmented contacts? Not possible. A guy like him never thinks about how he looks.”

“But
we
should think about it,” Finn said, persisting. “The Evil Queen corners Sally, Luowski, and a couple of others at DisneyQuest. Then, a day later, they both show up at school wearing green contacts. It’s like those Goth groups, right? Green, as in Maleficent. Get it?”

“You’re sick.”

“It’s not me, it’s them!”

“It’s your idea.”

“We’ve got to look for others. And you have to get close enough to Luowski to see if I’m right.”

“Why me?” she said.

“Because if he sees me he goes all Neanderthal.”

“He didn’t when you were in the bathroom.”

“Just do it. Please! He’s right over there by the drinks.”

“Okay. I’ll walk by him on my way out.”

“What are you doing after school?” he asked.

“Jess and I were grounded by Mrs. Nash. She found out about our little trip to Epcot. We’re in serious trouble. It’s her three-strike rule. She threatened to send us back to the Fairlies,” she said.

“That’s not going to happen.”

“No offense, but I don’t think you’re going to have a lot of say in it.”

The school buzzer sounded. Lunch was over.

“See you.” She stood along with half the kids in the room. She walked toward Luowski and the exit. Finn watched her every step. As she passed Luowski’s table, she said something to him.

Then, at the door, she turned around and found Finn. She pointed to her eyes and nodded.

Her lips mouthed, “Green.”

For a second he thought he might puke. It had nothing to do with the creamed chicken and rice.

* * *

Philby felt the prickle of hairs raising on the back of his neck, and knew he was being watched. Worse, he only associated that same level of dread, of impending disaster, with the Overtakers. But in school? Normally, it wouldn’t have made any sense, but the photo of students with the Evil Queen had changed all that for Philby. No one was to be trusted.

The hallways of Edgewater High were jammed with students. Some were hurrying to class, some were flirting, some facing their lockers. But someone was watching him.

He crossed past Mrs. McVey’s classroom and stood with his back against a bulletin board filled with thumb-tacked essays on the promise of electric cars. He hoped the new angle would make whoever was watching him reveal himself. But the only person he saw was Hugo Montcliff, his neighborhood friend.

“Checking out the girls, or what?”

“Or what,” Philby answered. He looked hard for someone focused on him.

No one.

“We’ve got Algebra.”

“Yeah, so?”

“You okay?” Hugo asked.

“You ever get that feeling someone’s watching you?”

“Like a girl? Me? Not so much.”

“Do you think of anything but girls, Hugo?”

“Xbox. The new Guerrilla Warfare two-point-three.”

The sensation had passed. “I was trying to have a little private time here,” he said, wounding Hugo. For the first time he took his eyes off the kids in the hallway and looked over at Hugo. He must have hurt him bad because Hugo didn’t look like Hugo at all.

“Hey,” Philby said. “I’m sorry.”

“Enjoy your private time,” Hugo said. He charged off.

“Hugo?!”

He was about to run after him when he caught a pair of eyes staring at him from across the hall. A girl with dark hair. She looked vaguely familiar, though he couldn’t remember her name. The girl from the photo? She broke off the stare and moved on.

Philby joined the river of students, trying to catch up with her. The more he pushed, the less progress he made. He pulled to the side and tried working along the lockers. He made some headway. There! He reached out and grabbed her shoulder, turning her around.

The wrong girl.

“Sorry!” he said.

“Loser,” the girl said, brushing his hand from her shoulder.

He dragged himself out of the way of the crush. Against school rules, he pulled out his phone and sent a group text:

we hav 2 talk. Crzy glaze. after skool

Philby believed in science. Empirical proof. He believed in forming a theory, developing evidence, reaching a conclusion. He lacked all of that. He had only a few hairs tickling the back of his neck and some girl who might have been staring at a hallway clock for all he knew.

And yet he had no doubt—none, whatsoever. There were Overtakers in his school. They were watching him.

It turned his world upside down. There’s no place safe, he thought.

* * *

Finn left school with Dillard Cole, his closest non-Keeper friend and full-time neighborhood pal. Dillard was neither athletic nor particularly fit, but he had a good imagination, a huge appetite, and was probably the best gamer Finn knew. At one time—what seemed like many years ago to Finn but wasn’t actually so very long ago—the two had spent endless weekends and evenings “working the thumbs,” as Dillard called video gaming. Following Finn’s modeling as a DHI and his recruitment into the Kingdom Keepers by Wayne, their friendship had fallen off. The reason for the fallout had been, in large part, the secrecy under which the Keepers operated. But now, with newspaper stories “alleging” that Finn was one of the five Kingdom Keepers, Dillard understood the complications of the past and was letting the friendship come around again.

Finn found himself preoccupied with the idea of Luowski’s green contact lenses. He and Amanda had blamed Charlene for their wild, near-death simulator ride in DisneyQuest, but a film had been playing in Finn’s memory: Luowski bumping into Charlene and helping her to pick up the virtual roller coaster tickets off the floor when she’d dropped them. What if Luowski had substituted the killer ride for the one Charlene had designed for him and Amanda?