Death, Doom, and Detention

DETENTION

“Nutrition bars?” Brooke moaned as I walked up to her. “Granola? What the heck is up with that?” She grabbed one out of my hand and pointed accusingly. “That machine has Cheetos. I’ve seen them. Orange.

Crunchy. How am I supposed to live on this stuff?” I plopped down beside her and let her get it out of her system. After a rant that lasted two whole minutes, she opened the nutrition bar and took a bite.

“Strawberry. Yum.”

I sat on the bench beside her in a trance. “You will not believe what just happened.”

“Is that a MoonPie wrapper?” She finally spotted the evidence in Cameron’s hand.

“N-no.”

I handed over her milk before Cameron lost a leg.

“Oh, yes. Milk from my favorite color of cows: brown.”

“Brooke, seriously, you will not believe—”

“I was starving,” she said. “I’m surprised you didn’t have to revive me. You took, like, forever.”

Ashlee and Glitch walked up then, Ash’s eyes darting around furtively. “Did that kid try to hurt you?”

“What?” Brooke’s gaze bounced back and forth between Ashlee and me. “Who? What happened?” She finally realized I was taken aback. “Lor,” she said, putting a hand on mine, “what happened?”

“That boy from the Clearing. He’s possessed.”

“What boy?” she asked. “That kid in the army jacket?”

I nodded and told her the whole story of what just happened.

“So, what does that mean?” she asked, as clearly disturbed by the idea as I. “Cameron?”

“It means he won’t live much longer with that thing inside him.”

I gasped.

“And it means he knows something. I’ll have to see if the sheriff can find him. Before Vincent does.”

I glanced up in surprise. “Vincent?”

“Did you see his reaction when you mentioned the descendants? There’s no love lost. Did you find an address on Vincent?” he asked Ashlee.

“I’m sorry,” she said, clearly disappointed. “I couldn’t get his file. The cabinets were locked today because Mrs. Terry is out sick.”

“Oh, crap.” I stuffed wrappers in my pockets when I saw Mr. Davis walking toward us. I had no idea why. It just seemed like the right thing to do.

I was so hoping this day would be incident-free.

He turned his big mustache-covered head toward Ashlee. “Ms. Southern, would you mind giving us a minute?”

“Oh,” she said in surprise. “Not at all. I’ll see you later,” she said to Glitch.

He eyed her a long moment. “Oh-kay.”

Maybe he was getting a clue. He turned back to us and shrugged.

“We can do this out here, or I can take you into my office one by one,” Mr. Davis said, his expression grave. “I’m fine with either, but I want to know what happened yesterday.”

Brooke said, “Didn’t the sheriff talk to you?”

His mouth formed a solemn smile, and while it wasn’t actually out of appreciation or humor, it wasn’t harsh or derisive either. It was almost sad. “You kids did a lot of damage yesterday. I don’t even know what to say to the superintendent. To the school board. But one thing I can’t tell them is that you went completely unpunished. One month of after-school detention for all of you, starting today. And that includes Kovach when he comes back.”

“Oh, man,” Glitch said, kicking up dirt.

Brooke stood, indignant. “What? That’s—that’s—”

When Mr. Davis leveled a challenging stare on her, she caved.

“That’s more than fair, Mr. Davis.”

“I don’t think that’s a good idea,” Cameron said to him. He wasn’t so much challenging Mr. Davis as —and I could hardly believe it—as confiding in him. “And I’m certain Lorelei’s grandparents won’t think so either.”

Mr. Davis stepped forward menacingly. Or at least he menaced me. “Then when you can explain to me what happened, we’ll talk about it. I’ll be in my office.” He glanced at each of us. “If any of you would like out of ASD.”

After he left, Glitch scoffed at Cameron. “You couldn’t have taken Jared outside where your little wrestling match wouldn’t have caused so much damage?”

Cameron looked down at him. “Why don’t you take some Midol, little man?”

To everyone’s utter surprise, Glitch actually took a swing at Cameron. A swing! Cameron easily sidestepped it, his brows raised as though impressed. But I was not. I ran forward and got in between them. Unfortunately, Glitch was already in the process of trying again. Noble but suicidal.

His fist struck me on the temple, and unlike Cameron, I ate dirt.

In an instant, Cameron had Glitch by the throat and pressed against the wall in a chokehold that was more choke than hold. Brooke and I both ran to him, pulling on his arms.

“Are you psychotic?” Cameron asked him.

But Glitch was just making these gurgling sounds.

“Cameron,” I said in a loud whisper, worried Mr. Davis was still around.

But he didn’t listen to me. Not really a surprise. What did surprise me was when Brooke took her turn at him. “Cameron Lusk, drop him this minute.”

He did. Glitch went down hard. He grabbed his throat and coughed a full minute.

“What are you thinking?” I asked him.

He pushed my hands away, stood, and strode off.

“What has gotten into him?” I asked.

“What has gotten into you?” Brooke asked Cameron.

“He took a swing at me. What did you want me to do?”

“Cameron, you know he can’t hurt you.”

I put a hand on Brooke’s shoulder. “I think that might be the problem.” I strolled to the trash can and started emptying my pockets of trash. “But this is just not the time for these kinds of antics. I’m worried about Glitch.”

“Me too.” She turned and watched him disappear behind the building. “Me too.”

Maybe I had been accosted one too many times lately. School was beginning to feel more and more like a prison where I didn’t know whom to trust or whom to fear. When I scanned the faces around me, I saw anger. Envy. Excitement. Despair. Jealousy. Distrust. Euphoria. Boredom. All the emotions that ran rampant every minute of every day at every high school across the country—and yet suddenly, I didn’t know anyone. Every emotion was directed at me. Every look of distrust, of anger and jealousy. And I realized I might be a tad egocentric at the moment.

“Okay, I cannot be trusted,” I said as we headed to detention after our last class.

Brooke stopped chewing the granola bar she’d saved and nodded. “Got it,” she said, her words muffled. “Don’t trust you. These things are fantastic.”

By the time we got to detention, all I wanted to do was get back and check on Jared. Instead, I was stuck at school even longer.

Turned out, detention was like prison too, only without uniforms or the constant threat of being shanked. Though Hector Salazar—math geek, chess champion, and all-around overachiever—sat on the opposite side of the room, wearing the angriest scowl on his face I’d ever seen. Maybe shanking was a real possibility after all. He didn’t want to be there any more than I did.

Brooke and I had never been in detention, so we had no idea what to do. Thank goodness Cameron and

Glitch had the routine down. They sat at one of the many desks that lined the walls, leaving a space only where the door was and the warden’s desk. Each desk was enclosed on three sides so the students’ backs were to the warden, but allowing the warden to see what the students were doing. That would certainly cut down on note passing.

“I hope I’m not claustrophobic,” Brooke said, sitting at a carrel next to me.

Due to the partition between us, we could see each other only if we leaned back. So, naturally, we leaned back.

“Me too. Now what?”

The moment the words left my mouth, the warden walked in. No, Ms. Mullins walked in. Humiliation burned my cheeks. She now knew my dark secret. My time in the big house was not going as unnoticed as

I’d hoped.

“Okay,” she said, her voice a little sharper than usual, “Mr. Gonzales has been detained. Until he gets here, you got me. So get out your homework and get busy.” I figured she had to become a bit harder with us problem students. We were being locked up for a reason.

“You girls better hop to it,” she said to Brooke and me. Pointing us out. Drawing attention our way.

We’d be labeled do-gooders in no time. Or worse, snitches. I’d seen enough prison movies to know that was bad.

“Detention or not,” Brooke said, “I have to go to the bathroom.”

“Didn’t you go before we left?”

She ignored me and walked to Ms. Mullins. They spoke for a moment, then Brooke headed out.

“Two minutes,” Ms. Mullins said, her tone edged with warning. She was taking her job as prison warden very seriously.

I dragged out my homework.

“This is ridiculous,” I heard a voice say from the hall. A female voice with a distinctive nasally twang.

It was her. The creature.

But …

She walked in accompanied by the saucy click of her heels, clearly appalled at having to be in detention. I couldn’t help but wonder what she did to end up there. What dark path she’d taken, what bad hand fate had dealt her.

But …

She stopped at the warden’s desk. “I was tardy. I’d been at the dentist. Really? That requires after-

school detention?”

But she didn’t even come to school this morning. She must have shown up that afternoon. This day just got better and better.

“No, but the five tardy slips before today does. Take a seat, Tabitha, and get out something to work on.

You aren’t going anywhere for the next hour.”

After exhaling a sigh that lasted longer than my attention span, she headed to a seat with all the fuss and flourish of a Hollywood starlet. It was the most dramatic entrance I’d seen since the Riley’s Switch rendition of Cat on a Hot Tin Roof.

I couldn’t help but notice the look of horror on Cameron’s face as he watched her settle in. He wasn’t good with people. If he were, he’d realize his look of horror would be wasted on Tabitha. No look, horrific or otherwise, would faze the creature whose name shall not be spoken aloud.

But she glanced over at us, like she’d been ignoring us but just couldn’t manage it anymore. Her cheeks turned pink. Just barely before she looked away. And in that instant, I felt bad for her.

Not bad enough to offer her solace, but bad.

Glitch leaned over to me. “We can pass notes underneath the partitions.” He wiggled his brows, and I realized he was right. The partitions were just sitting on the desks. Sweet.

Just when I was about to write him, ask him how he’d been since sixth hour, Brooke came back. But not just back. She tore into the room and skidded to a halt by my chair.

“Brooklyn,” Ms. Mullins said, her tone admonishing, but Brooke didn’t seem to notice.

She stood panting with a hand on her chest. “Mr. Davis must have spilled something,” she said before swallowing and trying again. “He’s coming.” The fact that she was out of breath didn’t alarm me. Brooke could be just as melodramatic as Tabitha when she put her crazy little mind to it. It was the look of sheer terror on her face. The genuine fear in her eyes.

A feeling of dread crept over me.

Cameron knelt beside my chair and looked up at her. Glitch cast a quick glance toward Ms. Mullins, then leaned over to listen.

Brooke stopped, forced herself to slow down, and leveled a panicked gaze on me. “Mr. Davis changed ties.”

“What?” I asked, wondering what that had to do with anything.

“It’s red. He’s wearing his red tie.”

Then her meaning sank in. No. That was impossible. It was Wednesday. He only wore his red tie on

Fridays. It was tradition, practically an unwritten law. As sure as the sun rose each morning, Mr. Davis wore his red tie on Fridays. And then I remembered there were no desks in the middle of the room in my vision. Nothing we could use for cover. All four of us turned to look around the room.

Everyone was staring at us. Ms. Mullins stood and started toward us when Hector stood, turned, and raised a gun. His expression turned into a sneer. I almost fell back in my chair, but Ms. Mullins stepped between us.

Time slowed. I tried to say something, to warn her, but it all happened so fast, I froze, my mind not quite able to absorb the truth of what was happening. My vision was coming true right before my eyes.

And I was back in the dream. Shocked and catatonic like a deer in headlights.

But something had changed. Cameron was there, and he hadn’t been in my vision. And unlike me, he did not freeze. He reacted with the decisive speed of a cobra. Before Hector could pull the trigger, Cameron had shoved Ms. Mullins out of the way, but that’s as far as he got before the gun went off.

The sonic boom of gunfire ripped through me, startling me into action. It did the same for Glitch. We both tackled poor Ms. Mullins to the ground as another round was fired. We tumbled to the floor, the eerie sound causing bile to surge hotly into my throat.

While screams of terror filled the room, Brooke rushed toward Cameron. Glitch reached out to grab her but missed. With a curse, he covered Ms. Mullins protectively. I turned to help Cameron as well, and my heart sank when I realized where the bullets were landing. Into Cameron’s chest. Point-blank. One shot after another. Before I could get to my feet, a third shot hit its mark. The blast echoed against the walls as Cameron finally stumbled back, grabbing his chest in pain.

Hector walked forward, each step full of purpose, full of malicious intent, the gun held steady, a smirk in place. He clearly thought he had Cameron beat. He clearly didn’t know Cameron.

Another shot. This time, Cameron didn’t stumble. With a speed too quick for my eyes to register, in a single movement too smooth for my mind to comprehend, Cameron lunged forward, knocked the gun aside, and twisted the boy’s head around. The next sound to meet my ears was the sharp crack of a neck being broken, and Hector slumped to the ground in a heap of torso and limbs.

In the next instant, Brooke was on Cameron. He caught her to him, used her for support as he fell to his knees first. But she was little use when he collapsed all the way to the floor. I got to them as quickly as I could. He groaned with the pain that etched his face, that welded his teeth shut.

Mr. Davis ran into the room, weaving his way around terrified students scrambling to safety.

It happened so fast. So impossibly, impossibly fast.

Had I just traded Cameron’s life for mine? For Ms. Mullins’s or Mr. Davis’s? He wasn’t even in my original vision. What had happened to change the events?

I blinked and Glitch was there, kneeling, putting pressure where Mr. Davis instructed. His hands were covered in blood faster than I thought possible. I heard Ms. Mullins as though from a distance calling for an ambulance. I heard Brooklyn screaming Cameron’s name, tears running in thick rivulets down her dark cheeks. I couldn’t focus on any one thing. It all hit me like a hurricane, strong and fast and overwhelming.

Cameron grabbed Glitch’s collar and jerked him forward. “This is what they want,” he said, his voice hoarse as he spoke through clenched teeth. “They got us out of the way. She’s vulnerable now. Get her to the Sanctuary.” Then he pushed. Hard.

Glitch pitched back and looked at me, his gaze frozen behind a shocked expression. I took over for him. I put pressure on one of the bullet wounds. The thick, warm blood seeped through my fingers.

“Glitch, damn it!” Cameron ground out between labored breaths. Now that he’d put Glitch in charge of my well-being, Cameron’s expression was murderous.

Glitch started forward slowly. He didn’t seem to want the job, and I could hardly blame him—but no way was I leaving Cameron like that. When Glitch took my arm to pull me away, I shook him off.

“We have to stop the bleeding,” I said to Cameron. Then, despite the fact that Mr. Davis was right there, I added, “You have to stop the bleeding. You’re different, Cameron. You heal really fast. Can’t you do something?”

He raised a bloodied hand from around Brooklyn and placed it on my cheek. “Not that fast, shortstop.

And if I have to say it one more time, Blue-Spider, the last thing you will ever see will be the satisfied smile on my face as I snap your neck.”

Glitch took my arm again just as Sheriff Villanueva ran into the room. I looked up, relief flooding every cell in my body. Surely he would know what to do, how to help Cameron. But he barely spared

Cameron a glance. He took my other arm as Mr. Davis gaped in confusion. When I fought to stay by

Cameron’s side, the sheriff wrapped an arm around my waist and hoisted me off my feet.

“What are you doing?” Mr. Davis asked, appalled.

But the sheriff ignored him. He pulled his gun, handed it grip-first to Glitch, and said, “Shoot anything that gets close to us.”

Glitch nodded; then the sheriff whisked me out the door with him right behind us.

Before I could even protest, we were out the side doors.

Thank goodness the final bell rang twenty minutes earlier. The last of the kids to be bused were on the other side, and there were only a couple of stragglers leaning against the building on this side. They straightened when we passed them, startled.

This being dragged away from school was becoming a habit. I just wanted to get back to Cameron, to

Brooklyn and Ms. Mullins.

“Stop!” I yelled, but the sheriff thrust me onto my feet, then dragged me to his car.

An ambulance pulled into the parking lot, lights flashing and sirens blaring. Right behind it was another patrol car, then another, all with lights flashing and sirens blaring.

“Glitch, we have to go back,” I said, pleading with him. He was scared. I could tell. He kept the gun pointed down and close to his body like a real professional.

When the sheriff stuffed me into his cruiser, I pushed his hands away. In one movement, he twisted my thumb back and had my face against the dashboard before I knew what was happening.

“ I will cuff you,” he said, the warning edge in his tone unmistakable. He let go, but he’d gotten his point across. I was not going anywhere except with him.

Glitch pushed me over and sat next to the door as the sheriff went around. Only then did I see the blood smears on his neck and shirt where Cameron had grabbed him.

We flew out of the parking lot, and somewhere in the back of my mind I realized I’d lost track of

Tabitha. She was so going to need therapy.

My vision blurred as hot tears pooled between my lashes. I gazed straight ahead. “I don’t want to do this anymore,” I whispered to myself.