Rita Morse and the Sinister Shadow

I groaned. My limbs trembled with weakness and my stomach gurgled and rolled. A chill swept over me, so I pulled the blanket over myself.

  Great. I probably had the flu.

  A fog like no other filled my mind. Like someone had put my brain through a blender and stuffed it back into my head. Now I had to get up and tell my mom there was no way I was going to school.

  I struggled to open my eyes and finally succeeded.

  Wait. This wasn’t my room.

  This was some kind of hospital room. Plain white sheets covered me and plastic rails guarded me on both sides of the bed. Blue and white checkered curtains blocked out everything except the opposite wall. I looked around for a doctor, or my parents, or even an orderly. Nobody. No call button sat next to me. Nothing but a black leather-bound book sat on the bedside table. What kind of hospital was this? I didn’t even have a TV playing some boring soap opera.

  Something wasn’t right.

  I sat up a little and the room spun around me. Someone shifted on the other side of the curtain. So I wasn’t alone in here.

  There were several tall, narrow windows across from me. A dark purple sky stretched out over a city of tall buildings in the distance. Next to a window hung a white sign with bold black lettering:

  RECOVERY CENTER

  PLEASE REMAIN IN BED AND REST

  READING MATERIAL IS PROVIDED

  A horrible thought, a muddled yet terrifying thought, slowly crept to the surface of my mind. I tried to shove it down, to bury it, but it refused to go away. Maybe I could go back to sleep, and I’d wake up in my room. This crap would go away. I leaned back and stared at the tiled ceiling. I tried to close my eyes, but I couldn’t now. How could I sleep, not knowing for sure?

  Someone groaned from somewhere farther down the room. It sounded like Ryan.

  I should get up after all. Maybe it would clear the thick mud from my mind.

  I sat up and the room spun again. Once it stopped, I swung my legs around the edge of the bed and started to stand.

  Uh, oh.

  I froze in place as if slapped. The horrible thought sprang all the way up to the surface of my mind.

  I wore an ugly blue jumpsuit. With a curly A sewn on the front pocket.

  Without thinking about it, I reached back and grabbed a handful of my hair. Here it came. The moment of truth. I yanked it in front of my face, heart pounding. No. Please no. For the love of all things good, please no.

  A gagging sound rose in my throat. Mixed in with my long brown hair were several thin streaks of bright blue hair.

  I fell back onto the bed, the world spinning around me. I yanked the sheet over myself and crammed my head under the pillow in shame.

  “NOOOOOOOOO!”

  Okay, my reaction was straight out of a movie, but I think I’d earned the right. Everything I’d done was for nothing. It had all been useless, hopeless. I had become one of them.

  I spiraled down into total misery, staring at the darkness underneath the pillow. I never wanted to come out. I just wanted to disappear.

  Now my day couldn’t possibly suck any worse.

  Ryan’s groggy voice cut in from somewhere. It sounded muffled from under the pillow, but it was definitely him. “Uh? Someone screamed.”

  “What the—” Penny began somewhere.

  I lifted the pillow from my head. Penny and Ryan were here too. I could guess that they were suffering the same fate as me.

  Blankets rustled. “What am I wearing?” Ryan asked. “Where—” He started to scream.

  Listening to my friends only made me feel worse, if that was possible. If only we’d run from the office as soon as Mr. Gorfel had run into the hall. If only we hadn’t gone to the office at all. None of this would’ve happened.

  At last, silence fell. It was somehow worse. I buried my face in the pillow again, half-hoping to suffocate. Penny sniffled on the other side of the curtain. I don’t know what Ryan was doing, but it sure wasn’t smiling. He’d probably passed out from the horror of it all.

  I’d failed them. I’d failed, period.

  I lay there for several minutes like a rock and finally gave up trying to suffocate. Get a grip, I thought. You’re Rita Morse. Do something!

  My silent pep talk did nothing to make me feel any better. What could we do, other than sit here and feel miserable? “Now what?”

  No one said anything.

  I remembered a book on the night table. Would it have anything helpful? What was it, anyway? I forced myself to sit up, averting my gaze from the jumpsuit I was stuck in. The black book waited on the night table. Like everything else in this world, it had a shiny blue A on it. It also had some blue lettering on the spine:

  The Book of Rules and Regulations.

  “Maybe there’s something in this book,” I choked out. Well, we had nothing else to go on. “Do you guys have one?”

  “Yeah.” Penny sniffled again. “I don’t think it’s there to help us, though.”

  “It’s all we’ve got.” I started to lift the cover.

  “Drop that!”

  I jumped and dropped the book onto my lap. Gabe Cruz stood at the foot of my bed, ashen-faced and wide-eyed. He breathed heavily as if he’d just run across an entire state.

  “What are you doing here?” I snarled. Blood roared in my ears at the sight of him. He’d done nothing to help us out.

  “Don’t read the book!” Gabe waved his arms and looked up and down the room. “Don’t even open the cover. If you do, you’ll never get out of here!”

  “O…okay,” Ryan said somewhere.

  I sat bolt upright and glared right into Gabe’s huge brown eyes. “You helped do this to us!”

  Hatred pulsed through me. I wanted to hurl myself at him and start pounding, but my wobbly limbs wouldn’t let me. So I settled for the next best thing. I grabbed the lamp off the night table and hurled it at Gabe as hard as I could. He jumped to the side as the lamp exploded on the floor.

  “Please! Listen!” Gabe put his hands in the air. “Do you think I wanted to? I had no choice—”

  “I hate you!” I screamed at him, sliding out of bed and landing on the floor. “You helped ruin my life!”

  “I didn’t want to. I was forced. He ordered me to do those things. When he orders us to do something, it’s like being a puppet on a string. Your free will disappears and you can’t control what you’re doing.”

  I froze and unclenched my fists. Oh, yeah. That.

  “Well, what are you doing here now?” I snapped.

  “Did any of you three read the book yet?” Gabe looked back and forth across the room again.

  “I haven’t,” Penny said from the other side of the curtain.

  “Me neither.” Ryan made a gagging sound. “I can’t believe this happened.”

  “Good,” Gabe said. “There’s still hope.”

  “Hope?” I asked. Now he wanted to help? “We’re stuck here. And you said you couldn’t help us.”

  “I said that I couldn’t help humans,” Gabe said, nodding. “Well…I can help you now. Do you think you can walk?”

  I forced myself to stand. No easy feet, considering that my legs still felt weak. “You can help now? Wow, great timing.”

  “As long as we keep this quiet,” Gabe went on. “And as long as none of you opens that book. What we’re about to do is make use of a loophole.”

  Loophole. The word rolled through my head, slowly making more and more sense. It sounded even better than you’ve won a million dollars or Mr. Gorfel got fired. Maybe we could reverse the transformation, or at least get back to Earth. Hopefully both.

  “Why can’t we open the books?” Penny asked as the bed creaked on the other side of the curtain.

  Gabe shook his head. “I can’t tell you. Take it with you, though. Look at it when you’re human again—it’ll be safe to look at it then—and the
n you will understand everything.”

  Ryan echoed my thoughts exactly. “You can get us out of here? Seriously? This isn’t some sick joke?”

  Gabe smiled a little. “No joke. As long as you can all walk. The transformation takes a lot out of you. They put you in here because it takes a couple of days to regain your strength. Now, we need to move before someone comes in here to assign you jobs.” He faced me and grimaced. “A. Gist said he was going to come here and do that personally. That can’t be good.”

  Shudder. I didn’t even want to know what he’d make me do. Probably polish his boots for all eternity. Or clean bathrooms, if Shadow Ones even needed them. That thought got me moving. I stopped at the wall next to Gabe and leaned on it. Yeah, it was still hard to stand.

  Ryan staggered out from behind the curtain. He was stuck in the same jumpsuit as me. His hair now looked like a blue fire perched on top of his head. “Oh.” Ryan clutched his stomach. “I don’t feel so good.”

  I ignored him. Feeling like crap was the least of our problems. “Penny! Do you think you can get up?”

  “I think so.”

  I peered around the curtain. Penny sat up on the hospital bed and gazed at the floor like she wanted to melt into it. Her short black hair now had wavy blue stripes running down through it.

  “We don’t have a lot of time,” Gabe reminded us, nervous. “A. Gist told me to charge the portal. That’s the only way we’ll be able to get near it. The thing is, charging it only takes a few hours. After that he’ll go check on it.”

  “How long were we out?” Penny asked.

  Gabe backed towards a steel door at the end of the room. “Two hours. We have got to go!”

  Penny managed to stagger out of bed. I leaned against the wall and looked down the length of the building. A row of ten beds, all with curtains, sat in here. Nothing else. One had the white sheets thrown off—Ryan’s—but two beds farther down the room had curtains drawn.

  Uh, oh.

  “Who—” I began.

  “No.” Gabe tapped my arm. “There’s nothing you can do.”

  “Dan?” I called. “Sean?”

  I staggered toward the two beds. I heard a page turn behind the closest one, and my stomach dropped. No. It couldn’t be. It would be too late if—

  “Dan! Sean!” I called again. “We can get out of here.”

  I reached the first curtain and pulled it back.

  Dan sat up in bed, also in a blue jumpsuit. Little spots of blue had appeared all through his hair. And he looked completely engrossed in a copy of The Book of Rules and Regulations. He didn’t even look up as I stood there, staring at him.

  Dan turned another page of the book. At last he spoke, sounding as if someone had died. “I have to finish reading this.”

  “You can read it later,” I demanded. “Gabe says we can get out of here.”

  “I can’t read it later,” Dan said. “Get out of here if you can, Rita. I can’t go anywhere. I’m doomed.”

  Chapter Eighteen