Rita Morse and the Sinister Shadow

  Part Three took the most time so far to load up. Nearly ten minutes later, Gabe Cruz sat at his desk, breathing like he’d run a marathon. My stomach turned. I knew how he felt.

  “Hey there,” he puffed out. “I don’t know what’s going on. I saw the shadow thing again. I was walking home from my friend’s house and I felt like I was being watched. I looked behind me and it was there in the middle of the street, and I ran all the way home. I think I lost it.”

  A shudder raced over me. I knew how that felt, too.

  Gabe took several more deep breaths, sinking into his chair a bit.

  “I don’t know what’s going on. But let’s get back to business. The letter didn’t work and the sign’s still up. I’m resorting to Plan B now. What I’m going to do is have a bunch of people at school sign a petition to have the sign taken down.”

  “Oh, no,” I said. “No, Gabe. Address. They’ll see your address!” I felt like I was yelling at a horror movie character about to walk into a basement and get killed. Half the classroom stared at me, but I didn’t care.

  “He didn’t know,” Penny told me. She’d stopped typing. “And this happened months ago. It’s already done, whatever it is.”

  The screen faded to black for the third time. We had fifteen minutes left. Desperate to finish the videos, I clicked on the second to last one. The red buffering bar seemed to slow down as I watched it. “Please hurry,” I pleaded, heart pounding. “I’ve got to know what happened to him, please.” Mainly because I wanted to know what I got to look forward to and how to avoid it.

  Gabe Cruz appeared for the fourth time, still in his room. Sweat rolled down the sides of his face and his eyes looked like they’d pop out of his head if someone slapped him on the back.

  “Well, I’ve started getting people to sign the petition,” he rambled. “But things get weirder. I think that shadow’s after me because I’m doing this. That’s all I can think of. Seriously, this is no joke. I went to school early this morning and it stepped out from the woods and beckoned to me. I froze and the shadow lightened and turned into some guy wearing—I don’t know—this outfit from the nineteenth century. I sketched him in class today.”

  Gabe reached down, grimaced, and pulled up a piece of computer paper with A. Gist himself drawn on it. It was all the proof I needed that he was facing the same thing I was. He had every detail right. The hat. The jackboots. The cape. The cocky grin.

  I hugged myself and squirmed in my chair. The more of this I saw, the worse I felt. How many people had the Shadow Regime tormented like this? Why were they waging war on teens? We’d never done anything to them. I felt ready to burst with questions.

  “This is a widespread phenomenon.” Penny’s mouth hung open. “It must happen to everyone who tries to fight this kind of stuff.”

  Gabe lowered A. Gist from view, which made me feel a little better. “This guy said something about taking me through a portal…something about a procedure. I didn’t hear all of it because I booked. Luckily a school bus came around the corner and let me on.” He put his head down on his desk for a long moment and sat up again. “There’s something else, too. The guy threw what looked like blue fire at me. I don’t know what it did, but I wound up with this on my arm.”

  He rolled up his sleeve to show his forearm. Cringe time.

  Because he had the exact same blue A I had on mine.

  “I don’t know what’s happening here.” Gabe rolled his sleeve down. “I might pack up and go hide at my grandmother’s.”

  The screen went black again. Penny shot me a look. It wasn’t an everything’s going to be okay look, either. I tried to swallow, but my throat had turned into a desert. One video left. The Saga of Gabe Cruz, Part Five.

  The bell rang into the room and the sounds of everyone packing up surrounded us. I let out a breath. So much for that. I took the CD out in frustration and put it back in its orange case. I wanted to hit myself for not watching the last entry first. Now we’d have to wait until after school to watch it.

  The electric pulses came screaming back into my arms.

  I froze and gripped the table. Heat gathered in both of my hands as my heart started to pound. Something was way off here. This wasn’t right.

  “Rita?” Penny’s voice sounded a trillion miles away.

  I took a deep breath and let it out, and slowly the pulses died. That was the third time this week that happened. If it didn’t clear up soon, I’d have to break down and tell my mom to take me back to the doctor. “I’m fine. Just had a head rush.”

  I couldn’t get my latest episode out of my head as I made my way to my next class. Yeah, the doctor would want to do all kinds of scary tests on me, if I even made it long enough to make an appointment. Or maybe I should run away so A. Gist couldn’t find me, and worry about my weird episodes later. The thought nagged me as I weaved around people in the hall, smacking into a few on the way. The Shadow Ones knew where I lived. I could take Gabe’s cue and hide out somewhere. It would kill my parents, but I could always call them and let them know I was okay.

  But had it done Gabe any good? I wouldn’t know until I saw that last entry.

  Dan stood right in the doorway to Language Arts. I almost ran right into him.

  “Did you look at it?” he asked before I could apologize.

  Oh. He meant the disc. Since he hung out with Sean all the time, he’d know about it.

  “We got through four video entries in computers. We didn’t get to see the fifth one or the other file. Ran out of time. What’s on the last one?”

  “Look at them as soon as you can. I’d go to the library during lunch.” Dan went to his desk, slapped his book down, and sat as if he didn’t want to get caught talking to me. Which, with everything going on, he probably didn’t.

  “Good idea. Didn’t think of that. You can just go in there and use the computers? And you didn’t tell me what the last video is.”

  “I think you can. I’d try,” he said from the corner of his mouth, nose almost touching his book. Conversation over.

  Since Dan refused to talk to me (and the teacher’s lecture prevented that anyway) I ran over everything that happened yesterday in my mind. Even the bad parts, which was, well, all of it. Nothing new came to me, so in my next hour, World Issues, I put my head down to think some more. Mr. Langspur was one of those laid back, obsessed-with-sports teachers who told us to read the first section of our books, so that left me plenty of quiet time.

  Slowly I replayed the last twenty-four hours in her mind, detail by horrible detail. Me passing out. The vision. A. Gist standing there across from my house, as if he’d expected me to show up there. But how did he get my address? He couldn’t have come near me in school. He couldn’t blend in with high school kids. Heck, he couldn’t blend in with a crowd of adults with an outfit like that. No way could he stroll down the hall, into class, or into the cafeteria.

  There it hit me.

  I sat bolt upright in my chair, swallowing. Man, I felt stupid. Why hadn’t I realized?

  I ran to the cafeteria when the bell rang, plowing through a group of girls who yelled names after me on the way. But I didn’t care. I had to tell Penny and Ryan about this before we took any more damage. The narrow brick hall of the lunch lines was still pretty empty, so I stood there tapping my feet and wringing my hands as I waited for my friends. After two agonizing minutes, they rounded the corner.

  “We need to talk right now. Get your lunch and sit where there aren’t a lot of people,” I said. “Actually, skip lunch, because you’re about to lose your appetites.”

  Penny let her backpack dangle from her hand. “What is it?”

  “Let’s sit down,” I said.

  We skipped the lines and rushed over to the far corner of the cafeteria, to a table near a huge window. I took a deep breath and eased myself onto the stool.


  “Okay,” Ryan asked, setting his art poster up on the table. “What happened?”

  “Nothing, really,” I said. “I was just going over everything in Mr. Langspur’s class. It just suddenly hit me.”

  “Is it about Gabe Cruz?” Penny leaned across the table.

  “Worse,” I whispered. “It’s Josh and Kristina. They’re the ones working for A. Gist, not Mr. Gorfel.”

  Chapter Ten