* * * * *
I called home just to make sure my mom was there before we headed to my house. She was, entertaining a couple of her friends. Even better.
She sat at the kitchen table with Charlotte and Karin, eating a salad and talking about the latest diets. Not that she needed one. The three of them were in the middle of discussing how many calories salad dressing had when we got through the door, a muddy mess.
Total silence fell, and three pairs of gaze landed on us. My mom’s jaw slowly dropped. Her gaze flicked down to the vacuum tracks on the white carpet and back up to us.
“How did you get so muddy?” My mom’s shrill voice filled the house.
Charlotte and Karin both jumped in their chairs. Excuse time. And fast.
“We took a shortcut home from school and there was this muddy spot,” I invented wildly. Well, that was the truth. “It didn’t look bad and we stepped in it and slipped.”
“Well, take a towel and get that mud off you!” she demanded, tossing me one of her new kitchen towels. “Don’t track that on the floor. I just vacuumed. I‘ve had a lot of stress today since I came home and found a virus on the computer.”
I shot Penny and Ryan another look. They returned it. “Virus?”
“I opened an email that looked like something from Celebrity Buzz and the computer gave me this weird screen,” my mom said, slapping her hand to her forehead. “It’s there every time I turn it on. I can’t get it to stop. And by the way, did you turn in your sign-up sheet to the Fashion Designers club yet?”
I gulped and ignored her question. “Don’t tell me it was the Blue Screen of Death.”
She nodded. “It was blue, all right. It had a bunch of gibberish on it, too. I’ll have your dad look at it when he gets home, but he’ll be late tonight. His work called a meeting.”
I sighed, took the towel, and headed to the bathroom.
The three of us spent a good twenty minutes wiping the dried mud off ourselves. “Geez, your mom freaked out,” Ryan said as he wiped the mud off his shirt.
“What was I supposed to tell her?” I said. “That we got muddy because we were being chased by beings from another dimension? And I’m not surprised the computer’s broke. My mother couldn’t resist opening that email the Shadow Regime must’ve sent her.”
We finished wiping the mud off ourselves and headed into my room. I double checked that my window was locked. I pulled the curtains closed while I was at it.
“What about your computer?” I asked Penny.
“We can try that,” she said. “It’s slow, though. Let me call my parents to see if it’s still working.”
She whipped out her cell phone and made the call. I sat on my bed, dry-mouthed, waiting for the answer.
“Hi, Dad. I heard there’s a virus going around and I was wondering if our computer’s okay. Rita needs to do some homework on it because hers isn’t working. Oh…really?” Her face fell. Uh, oh. “From the Morses’ email address? That’s weird. Okay, thanks.” A pause. Here came the part where her dad chewed her out. Penny slumped a bit as his voice droned through the phone. “Yes, I know I’m late. I’m sorry. I’ll be home in ten minutes.” She hung up and heaved out a long breath. All her spirit of rebellion seemed to have vanished in that one phone call. “Apparently that virus your mom got sent itself to our email address after it hit your computer. It must be one of those ones that hits your whole email contact list. Whoever wrote this virus knew what they were doing. Our antivirus software didn’t even block it.”
I leaned back and let my head bang against the wall. “Must be the Shadow Ones have some techies in their ranks. Great. Now we have to wait until tomorrow.”
Chapter Thirteen