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Chapter 31
“STEP BACK, EVERYBODY. Give him room. Here comes Albert Daniel Einstein,” some wise guy said as I came out of history class.
One of the school tough guys was talking to his buddies in the hall. I was trying to walk around him when he grabbed my shirt and shoved me hard against a locker.
“Guys, feast your eyes on Daniel Hopper, the mindless new kid. Stand back! I speak brain-dead.”
“Me Jake,” another kid said, patting his Abercrombie amp; Fitch polo shirt. He poked me hard in the chest with his finger. “You halfwit.”
My instinct was to deal with bullies the way all pathetic, attention-seeking, disturbed individuals need to be dealt with-by ignoring them. But I was on edge that morning, and he was picking at a nerve.
I stared at his index finger, debating whether I should snap it at the first knuckle or the second.
A janitor’s mop bucket across the hall solved my dilemma. At a speed approximating that of sound, I shot my left leg behind Jake’s and shoved the six-foot, two-hundred-something-pounder with my right palm. He actually went airborne before he landed, butt down, in the slop bucket.
“Watch those wet floors, and have a super day,” I said before I disappeared around the corner.
Only to barely avoid a head-on collision with Phoebe Cook coming out the door of the bio lab. She looked incredible again today.
“I was hoping to bump into you, Daniel,” Phoebe said. “Well, not literally, I guess, but do you have a free period now? I was wondering if we could talk. Please?”
I actually had geometry class, but why bring up pesky details? “Of course,” I said. “I finally figured out where the library is.”
Which made her laugh.
Which made me kind of goofily happy.
Chapter 32
PHOEBE AND I SAT on a couple of footstools in a far corner of the library stacks. Our knees were almost touching, and mine were knocking a little. No one else was anywhere around.
For about a minute, she stayed there staring at me while she gnawed on her lower lip. Then her eyes welled up with tears.
“What is it?” I whispered.
“I can’t fake it anymore,” Phoebe said in a shaky voice. “I lied to you about my dad moving us because of his job. We relocated because something awful, really awful, happened to our family.
“Last July, my little sister, Allison, went out to chalk on the driveway after swimming lessons and… she never came back. She was abducted. Somebody took her, Daniel. She was six years old. She’d be seven now.”
I sat there stu
Phoebe started to sob. She balled her fists in my shirt, and I could feel her shuddering against my chest.
“I’m sorry,” I finally managed. “I’m so sorry, Phoebe.”
As I wiped away her tears, I felt the worst kind of sadness inside myself. This was what was so different about Phoebe, I realized. It was our co
“I know what you’re feeling,” I said. “I lost a sister too.”
Her name was Pork Chop.
Chapter 33
I LEFT PHOEBE at the doorway of her next class and immediately headed for the nearest exit. I was too wired to be in school right now. I needed to figure some things out. Maybe her sister’s disappearance wasn’t a coincidence. According to The List, Ergent Seth abducted kids. Was it possible that he had Allison? Of course it was. Keep this in mind: there are no coincidences.
I was coming across the teachers’ parking lot when I heard a low, whooshing sound, like a bottle rocket or something. The side window of the BMW in front of me vaporized in a shower of flying glass.
There were two more barely audible whooshes as I flipped and somersaulted along the asphalt between two parked cars, trying not to be hit. A couple of deep gouges blew out of the concrete where my head had been.
So this is what Seth meant when he said the gloves were off.
I poked my head up and spotted a muzzle flash at the top of the football equipment shed. Another projectile zipped past my ear, close enough for me to hear the air pop. This craziness had to stop right now, before somebody got hurt. The problem was that a whole football field stood between me and the enemy with a rocket launcher.
I closed my eyes and concentrated hard. When I opened them again, Willy was crouched there beside me.
“Whoa! What’s going on, dude?” he said. “I was sleepin’ in, y’know?”
“I’m getting shot at. The shells are about the size of bowling balls.”
“Cool!” Willy said.
“Not cool,” I said.
He glanced at the car we were crouched behind. A third-generation Chevy Cavalier. “This will do,” he said. Then Willy punched a hole in the window. He yanked open the driver’s door. “I’m in. Nice interior.”
He kicked at the steering column until he cracked the plastic.
“Damn! Ignition wires are supposed to be red. This looks like colored spaghetti. Daniel-color of ignition wires for a ’97 Chevy Cavalier?”
I went through pictures and pages of the car manual-yes, in my head, there’s lots stored in there, trust me-till I found what I was looking for.
“Pink!” I said.
“MacGyver, eat your heart out!” Willy giggled, then yanked the two pink wires out. He touched their sparking ends together. There was a chug-chugging sound and then the engine turned over.
“Willy, you kick butt,” I said, and crawled into the driver’s seat. I ripped the transmission into reverse, then pounded down on the accelerator.
Last but not least, I disappeared Willy again. “Thanks, dude! Catch you later.”
I hope.
Chapter 34
THE CAVALIER’S BACK WINDSHIELD got blown away as I gu
My fiendish opponent wised up when I was at the ten-yard line and closing on him. Talk about a touchdown dance! I flattened the uprights before I hit the corrugated steel equipment shed at about fifty.
It sounded like a bomb had gone off on the athletic field. The air was filled with shoulder pads and tackling dummies and helmets sporting big blue G’s for Glendale.
I threw the Cavalier into park and jumped out just as the sniper landed loudly on the car’s hood.
The first thing I noticed was his gun. It was definitely an off-world weapon, a notorious Opus 24/24. The kind of gun that killed my mom and dad. I really didn’t like them, so I snapped it in half over my knee.
The gunman was moaning as I picked him up over my head.
“You. Are. Toast. Unless you tell me where Seth -” I started to say as a steel chain swung around my throat. Alien-hunting lesson number thirty-seven, I thought. Save the wisecracks until you’re sure your opponent is working alone.
This really muscular walking tattoo parlor was trying to strangle me. I gave the gunman a heave and rammed myself and, more important, Mr. Muscles back against the remaining equipment shed wall. Once! Twice! But the third time was the charm. Now he was out for the count too.
I dragged the two of them together and placed my hands on their heads. What to do, what to do? I took a deep, centering breath, and all my power was there.
There was nothing, nothing like the feeling. Think of the best you’ve ever felt physically, lying down after a long run, dropping yourself into a favorite chair after a long day at school, plunging into a pool on a hot day.