Rita Morse and the Sinister Shadow

I shot up as soon as my alarm beeped the next morning. A wave of nausea hit me as soon as I did. Today was the day everything was going to happen. I knew it. And it didn’t help matters that Josh and Kristina were ticked at me and I had to go to school with them. Even without the Shadow Regime, it was going to suck big time.

  I scanned the room for intruders but found none, unless you counted a fly buzzing in my window. Just my drawings, my boxes of stuff, my stacks of CD’s. And the clothes my mom tried to make me wear that I hated. A horrible pang seized my gut. I might not return home this afternoon, or ever. If I made it through today, I swore, I’d join the Fashion Designers without complaint, and even pretend to like it. I’d never argue with my parents again. Okay, maybe that was a stretch, but I’d try to get along with them better.

  Rain pounded against the windows. I’d have a good excuse to wait inside for the bus. That worked for me, because I would’ve done that with perfect weather, too. My mom wouldn’t leave for work for another half-hour, and it would definitely pick me up by then.

  I heard my mom rinsing some dishes out in the kitchen, and the pang returned. By time I got dressed (in another long-sleeve shirt) and went out into the kitchen, she sat at the table, drinking a cup of coffee and trying to pin her hair up at the same time.

  “Ahhh. It’s finally Friday,” she said with a smile. “I have half a day at work again today. Why don’t we all go out to dinner tonight when your father gets home? Then we can go get a manicure together.”

  Manicure. The idea was alien, but if this was my last day, I might as well make my mom happy, even if it was only for a moment.

  “Sure,” I said. “That sounds great. I’ll try it.” Not my thing by a long shot, but I realized something weird just then. I wanted to go. I needed to survive the day and make it to that. My throat constricted, but I wouldn’t cry. No way.

  My mom sat up straighter. “Really?”

  “Yes. Really.”

  She made a noise between wow and squee. It just made me feel worse. This was the first time I’d agreed to do anything girly with her that I could remember, and she could be in for major disappointment later.

  “You’d better take the bus today,” my mom said from behind her makeup mirror. “It’s raining off and on this morning. The weather says it’ll stop by noon, though.”

  “Trust me, I was planning on it.”

  Ten minutes later, I swung my backpack over my shoulder and ran across the wet sidewalk. The bus squeaked to a stop. A bunch of people sat on it already, shadows behind the tinted windows. Without bothering to look at the bus number, I ran on, shuffled past half-asleep students, and found an empty seat in the middle section. Then I squashed down as low as I could as the bus began to move again.

  Do you blame me any?

  I fidgeted and gulped every time we stopped and picked up more students, afraid A. Gist or someone in a horrible armor uniform would step up and take control of the bus. I didn’t even know where we were until Penny came up the steps. She stopped cold in the aisle when she spotted me.

  “You ride this bus?” Penny asked. She sounded very relieved. “I didn’t know we had the same bus.”

  “We must,” I said as she sat next to me. “We just didn’t know because we never ride it.”

  “Did anything weird happen after me and Ryan left last night?”

  “No. Nothing. Unless you count my dad banging his elbow on the table and swearing.” And the fact that I’d agreed to go get a manicure.

  “Oh, that’s good. I called Ryan last night, and nothing happened to him either.” She took a long look out the window. “That is, when my dad was done lecturing me for being late.”

  “I think today’s going to be a different story. I wonder how Ryan’s getting to school.” I glanced outside at the pouring rain. He wouldn’t walk, that was for sure.

  The bus rumbled down Dobbs Street and past the Kool Spot. The blue sign still hung there, but that was the least of my concerns right now. I heaved out a huge sigh of relief when I spotted Jerry unlocking the front door. It was the first time I’d seen him in two weeks. I was relieved to say he didn’t have any black eyes or broken limbs from torture. A. Gist didn’t have a reason to interrogate him anymore, because he’d already found me. I fought the urge to roll the bus window down and yell at him.

  “Check the bikes!” Penny leaned over me to peek out the window as the bus pulled up to the front of the school. “If Josh and Kristina’s aren’t there, they probably didn’t meet with A. Gist yesterday.”

  My heart leapt into my throat as I searched the racks. Empty. Nobody rode their bikes to school in this weather except Josh and Kristina. “They’re not there. You’re right. If they’d met with A. Gist yesterday they’d probably have them repaired and back now.” I knew they couldn’t have ridden the bus. They weren’t allowed on any of them.

  Penny pointed out the window. “There they go now.”

  Josh and Kristina sulked into the main entrance, completely drenched. They’d walked to school. Kristina’s hair stuck to the back of her red-and-black striped shirt, and the entire bottom half of Josh’s name-brand jeans were soaked with muddy water. He couldn’t be too happy about that.

  “Now we just have to totally avoid them,” I said. “You know they won’t forget yesterday for the rest of their lives.”

  I followed Penny off the bus and checked to make sure Josh and Kristina weren’t waiting inside the front entrance. They weren’t. The two of them seemed to have stalked off somewhere.

  “Penny! Rita!”

  Ryan walked out of the office, grimacing. “Josh and Kristina went by. Luckily my bus dropped me off before they got here, but I think they’re looking for us. I saw them head for the art hall. We might want to get to class before they come back here.”

  “Great,” I said. “Let’s go. Hopefully Mr. Gorfel will be in there.”

  Ryan’s jaw dropped. “I can’t believe you just said that.”

  Gazes flickered towards us on all sides as we made our way to class. I knew why. We’d pulled off the bike theft in front of everyone. This was the worst thing I’d ever done, and I’m including the toilet paper and super gluing my teacher to his chair in the sixth grade. I figured there was no one in the school that didn’t know by now.

  “Did you hear?”

  “They ripped off Josh Carver’s and Kristina Lanoran’s bikes!”

  “In front of them!”

  “Josh and Kristina’s bikes!”

  “I wouldn’t want to be them right now.”

  Yeah, I didn’t want to be me right now, either. For more reasons than they knew.

  The voices faded behind us in the Science hallway. Mr. Gorfel’s door stood wide open. The plastic frogs croaked. Several other students were already sitting down and Mr. Gorfel sat at his oversize desk.

  He looked up and grinned. “Remember your detention tonight. Be here no later than five minutes after school.”

  I sighed. Even if she made it through the detention, I had my parents to deal with after school. I hoped to have to deal with them, though.

  Weaving around the tables, I led the way to the table by the tarantula tank, the one Kristina didn’t want to go near anymore. Penny and Ryan plopped down next to me, silent.

  The bell rang and Mr. Gorfel stood to write something on the board. Josh and Kristina stalked into the room a minute late, shoes squelching. The plastic frogs croaked into the ominous silence.

  Kristina shot us the most hateful look I could imagine. “You’re dead,” she mouthed. As if I hadn’t figured that out already.

  Josh swung himself into his chair, nose flaring. Only when they were both seated did I realize I had a death-grip on the table. Yeah, me.

  Mr. Gorfel looked around the class and broke the tense silence. “We will be doing the chapter one review for the rest of the hour,” he told us. “There are four pages
of multiple choice, short answer, and essay questions. What you don’t get done will be homework, of course. Open your books to page twenty-eight.”

  I shifted in my chair when Mr. Gorfel said twenty-eight. An ugly reminder or what? Could he know something about what was going on? But when I opened my Biology book, I saw that the section started on page twenty-eight. Duh. I couldn’t believe how jumpy this week had made me.

  It was hard to concentrate on the assignment when I didn’t know if A. Gist was going to burst through the door at any second. The fact that Josh and Kristina glared at me every few seconds didn’t help.

  The bell rang seemingly hours later, and I did something that Rita Morse does not do: I ran.

  Without a word, Penny and Ryan shot out of Mr. Gorfel’s class and ran down the hall. I followed them, pumping my legs. We had to put as much distance between ourselves and Josh and Kristina as possible. Kristina screamed something at us over the crowd, but I couldn’t make it out. Not that I wanted to.

  “See you at lunch!” Ryan called. He ran for the art hall, backpack bouncing on his back.

  He vanished into the crowd. Swearing and profanity drew closer and closer behind us as the crowd grew thicker.

  Penny seized my arm. “Quick! Up the stairs!”

  We plowed past a group of football players and thundered up the stairs. I didn’t dare look behind me. Josh and Kristina couldn’t be far behind. As if on cue, Kristina’s voice met my ears over all the chatter.

  “Run! Run!” she mocked. “You’d better run!” She added a long string of insults. I’m not going to describe them.

  I darted into Mr. Harvey’s class behind Penny, praying they didn’t see us going this way.

  “Back here,” Penny whispered, running for the very back of the room. I realized we were the only people in here. Which was bad.

  “Where did they go?” Josh growled out in the hall.

  “I’ll kill them!” Kristina spat.

  Penny nodded. “Duck.”

  I dropped on the other side of a row of computers. Penny joined me, chin quivering. Josh and Kristina stomped past the door, trying their best to fit as many swear words into one sentence as they could. Finally, the swearing faded. I didn’t realize I’d been holding my breath until I let out a huge sigh.

  “I don’t know how long we can keep this up,” I muttered, standing. “We can only do this so long.”

  “Yeah. I know,” Penny said. She bit her lip, probably to make her chin stop moving.

  We didn’t make our way back to our usual seats until more students filed into the room. Only then did I see that every computer in the room was off. Fantastic.

  “I think they crashed these computers too.” I hit the ON button. The computer turned on okay, but all I got was the Blue Screen of Death. I squeezed the sides of the chair in frustration. The electricity raced down my arms again, but I ignored it this time. I had way worse things to worry about.

  “Well, we kind of knew this was going to happen,” Penny said, slumping in her chair.

  Mr. Harvey ran into the room as the bell rang. His hair was messier than normal, his purple glasses were crooked, and he’d put his bright red shirt on backwards. The tag stuck out of the front. He’d had a bad morning. “Good morning, class,” he said, out of breath. “I hate to tell you we can’t do anything on the computers today. I think we must have gotten a virus, because yesterday all the computers in the library shut down. I walked in this morning to find these ones not working, either.” Mr. Harvey took the attendance at breakneck speed. He sat down at his desk and turned to a large pile of computer books. “I don’t normally do this, but I’m going to have to give you book work today. I’d take you down to the computer lab, but there’s already a class using it this hour.”

  I stared at Mr. Harvey like he’d just handed me a trip to Hawaii. “You mean there’s still some computers in the school that work?”

  He rummaged through the books without even looking up at me. “Yeah. If you need to get any homework done on them, I took them off the school’s network before the virus could hit them, so they should be safe. You can still get on the Internet. But if you get an email labeled Celebrity Buzz, don’t open it. That virus is spreading around town like crazy.”

  I wanted to get up, run over there, and hug Mr. Harvey. Finally, I had a way to see Gabe’s last video. The problem would be getting down to the lab before the Shadow Regime found a way to shut it down. The sooner we got there, the better.

  “We both need to try ducking out of class as soon as we can to go down there,” I said to Penny. “Starting next hour. If neither of us makes it down there by lunch, then we go at lunch.”

  Penny nodded. “Agreed. I don’t like the idea of one of us going by ourselves, but I don’t see any other choice.”