A World of Trouble (11 page)

“Like, with demerits?”

“Even better.” She stands, strides to the fireplace, and rests one elbow on the mantel. “Do you remember what I gave you and your friends the last time you were here?”

“Amazing fish sticks?”

“And?”

I try to recall what the rest of Capital T ate. Then I remember food wasn't the only thing on the menu.

“Questions,” I say. “One each. To you, about anything we wanted.”

“Precisely. Should you accept this position, you'll earn one question per week. And unlike the last time you were here, this time I'll waive my right to refuse to answer.” She faces me, smiles. “What do you think?”

I think I have a lot of questions. Like why my real-world combat mission was so different from everyone else's. And what it meant. And how Mom knew about Kilter's true purpose, and where she got all those weapons. I have to admit, it'd be nice to get some answers.

“Oh, one more thing,” Annika adds. “This must stay between us. No one—not Lemon, Ike, Abe, Gabby, or any of your instructors—can know about our little project. If they find out, you and whoever was told will be expelled immediately and permanently.”

Well, that settles it. I just got my friends back. There's no way I'm going to sign up for anything that could potentially make me lose them again.

I open my mouth to tell Annika this. But then she moves. And I notice a picture on the mantel that had been blocked by her elbow. It's the only one in the room that features a nature scene with people. There are four of them, on a beach. There's a beautiful woman with long dark hair. A man whose head has been ripped from the photo. A young girl with hair the same color as her mother's. Another young girl, with red hair . . .

. . . and eyes the color of worn copper pennies.

Heart thumping, I look at Annika.

“When do I start?”

DEMERITS: 275

GOLD STARS: 60

M
ission Monitor Mystery begins the
second I agree to Annika's terms. And for the first six days, the assignment is as exciting as clipping my toenails. Because after not seeing Mr. Tempest anywhere for days, suddenly he's everywhere. Reading in the library. Doing laps in the indoor Adrenaline Pavilion pool. Painting a still-life of a bowl of fruit in the art studio. For someone so elusive, he's pretty easy to find.

Not that I'm complaining. As long as I uphold my end of the bargain, regardless of how difficult that may or may not be, I still
earn the right to ask Annika questions. Which I need now more than ever since the Elinor sent-e-mail count is still me: 2, her: 0. Plus I don't want to be so distracted that I can't complete regular assignments or I fall behind in my classes, which are proving to be even harder this semester than they were last semester.

Take biology. A few days after my meeting with Annika, when Lemon, Abe, Gabby, and I get to class after lunch, we find Samara, our teacher, hugging a trash can and gagging like
her
lunch was still alive when she ate it and is now clawing its way out. Her hair hangs around her face, thankfully blocking our view, but the moaning and hacking is enough to make my own stomach turn.

“Oh no!” Gabby drops her backpack to the floor and dashes to our ailing instructor. “Are you okay?”

“Um, that might not be such a good—”

Abe's stopped by a loud, sloshy splat. Gabby freezes, her back to us and both hands in the air, like she's surrendering.

“Oops.” Samara wheezes. “Sorry about that.”

Gabby turns slowly. She looks at Abe, then Lemon, then me, trying to gauge the damage by our reactions rather than seeing it directly.

“It's not that bad,” I manage.

“I've seen worse,” Lemon adds.

“I'm sure it'll come out,” Abe offers.

We're all lying. Because the damage is yellowish-green. Wet. Slimy. It covers the front of her silver ski parka and drips down her pants. I want to help her, to run to the paper towel dispenser on the other side of the room, but like a fight in the school cafeteria, I can't look away.

“Gotcha.”

I peer past Gabby. Samara places the trash can on the floor, stands up, and brushes the hair away from her face. After what just shot out of her mouth I expect her skin to be white and sweaty, her eyes to be watery and bloodshot, her lips to tremble. But her skin's pink. Her eyes are clear. Her lips smile.

“That was a joke?” Abe asks.

“I'm not laughing,” Gabby says.

“That was a lesson. And you'd be crying if it had happened outside classroom walls.” Samara goes to the front of the room, where, I now notice, her desk has been replaced with a bed. She climbs in and pulls the blankets to her chin. “Because I'd have just gotten you like you've never been gotten before.”

“Hey.” Gabby tugs on the front of her coat. “It's gone.”

She's right. The yellowish-green slime has disappeared. There's not even a stain to indicate it was ever there.

“Evapo-Goo,” Samara says. “You're welcome.”

We take our seats. Our teacher waits for everyone to arrive before pulling the blankets over her head, groaning, and coughing so hard the bed's legs scrape against the wooden floor. After a few minutes Marcus Cooper, a chubby Troublemaker sitting in the front row who came in after the fake hurling incident, stands and starts toward her, concerned. As he nears the bed and reaches out one arm, she flings off the covers and sits upright.

“Are you sick?” she demands.

Marcus stops, his arm still outstretched. “Should I be?”

“You don't look it.”

“Then . . . I guess I'm not?”

“Wrong answer.” Samara hops out of bed and faces us. “Feigning illness is one of the most powerful weapons in your troublemaking arsenal. Done correctly, you can not only get out of school—if you ever return to the normal kind—but you can also keep away your parents and other bothersome adults for extended periods of time.”

“My mom takes me to the doctor when I get a hangnail,” Eric Taylor says. “Even if I can convince her, I can't fool him.”

“Of course you can. You have hundreds of ailments to choose from—headache, sore throat, upset stomach, dizziness, extreme fatigue, ear infection, sinus infection, chest congestion, food poisoning, heartburn, allergies, hay fever. The key is to exhibit the correct balance of measurable and immeasurable symptoms.”

She aims her K-Pak at the wall behind us. Swiveling in my chair, I watch life-size digital images appear. They look like a bunch of random adults—until my eyes land on the couple at the far end. He's wearing a yellow sports jacket. She's wearing a red wool coat and matching high heels. Both are smiling like they're having the time of their lives.

Which, for most of Parents' Day, when this picture was taken, Mom and Dad were.

“We'll start with the basics,” Samara says. “Flying fluids.”

“Like lunch chunks?” Abe asks.

“Lunch chunks, boogers, saliva—whatever you can launch from your body to theirs. Adults claim such lofty maturity, but the truth is, they're grossed out by the same things we are. Probably even more so.”

“So you want us to, like, hock loogies at our parents?” Eric asks, sounding much happier about this than I feel.

“Among other things, yes.” Resting her K-Pak on the headboard, Samara flops onto the mattress and crosses her arms between her head and the pillow. “Five demerits for each hit below the belt, ten for belt to neck, and twenty for neck up. Bonus demerits for firing from a distance or while lying down, since in a real-world situation, you'd likely be giving this performance in bed.”

I raise my hand.

“Yes, Seamus?”

“Um, I'm actually feeling a little dry today.” I press one hand to my throat. “I think it's the cold outside combined with the heat inside. And I didn't eat much at lunch, so I'm not sure if—”

“Fake it.”

“Sorry?”

Samara sits up. “You're not really going to be sick when you try to convince your parents you are. So fake the fluids. That's the point.”

“But I don't have any Evapo-Goo.”

“Neither do they.”

I follow her nod to the back of the room, where my classmates
are already sliming their respective adults. Some hock real loogies. Others fill up at the room's water fountain before firing. One kid squeezes a ketchup packet and a mustard packet into his mouth, swishes the contents together, and shoots the orange spray at his dad's forehead.

For the next thirty minutes, I try. I really do. But it's not as easy as it looks. For one thing, my throat
is
dry. For another, when I fill up at the fountain and try to spray water, most of the liquid ends up running down my chin and pooling on the floor by my feet rather than hitting my target.

And that's the biggest challenge. My target. Because despite everything, I can't seem to fire fluids, fake or not, at my parents. Call me crazy (and I do, silently), but something about it just feels wrong.

So I'm relieved when Samara finally gets up, turns off her K-Pak and the pictures of our parents, and says, “There is a shortcut.”

We swallow. Wipe our mouths. Face her.

“By the end of this semester you'll all be projectile pros. But it never hurts to have backup, so with that in mind . . .” She raises one fist clutching what look like two short drinking straws. “Volunteer. Please.”

Abe drops his cup of water, hurdles two desks, and joins her
at the front of the room. Samara points one of the straws at his face, then sticks the tip in his open mouth. Five seconds later, she takes it out again and brings it in front of her eyes.

“Ninety-seven point eight degrees,” she says, making me realize the straw is actually a thermometer. “A little chilly.”

“Must be my cold heart.” Abe grins, thumps his chest with one palm.

“Right. Try this one, Frosty.”

Samara pops the second thermometer in Abe's mouth. He's barely pressed his lips together when the device starts beeping and squealing. Stunned, his lips part. The thermometer falls. Samara catches it.

“A hundred and
two
?” she gasps. “You poor thing! You'd better go to bed—but
not
the doctor, since you're clearly very sick but still two degrees shy of real physical danger—and sleep this off
immediately
!”

Her reaction's so sincere Abe nods and starts for the makeshift bed. He stops only when Samara taps him on the head with the second thermometer.

“The Foolproof Fever Reader,” she announces, facing the rest of us. “Parental concern guaranteed or your credits back.”

“Credits?” Lemon asks. “The Kommissary sells that?”

“Indeed. Except this is a superexclusive, limited-edition model. The Kommissary could only order two, which just came in last period. I got one, which means . . .”

There's one left. Given my inability to spew chunks on demand, the Foolproof Fever Reader is definitely something I want in my medicine cabinet.

Apparently, I'm not the only interested customer. Because when Samara checks the wall clock and nods to the door, giving us permission to leave two minutes early, every single Troublemaker charges across the room.

The Kommissary's on the other side of campus. Capital T starts out in a dead heat along with most of our classmates, but eventually Abe pulls ahead. Gabby gets distracted by a flock of Troublemakers making snow angels in the main garden, and drops out of the race to join them. Lemon and I keep pace for a while, but his legs are twice as long as mine, and I feel bad for slowing him down.

“Go ahead,” I say. “Just don't let Abe get it. His ego doesn't need that boost.”

Lemon nods and powers on. By the time I reach the Kommissary
several minutes later, he and the rest of my classmates are already inside.

I stop at the entrance, pull off my mitten, and press one hand to the print pad just inside the door. The glass box glows as words scroll across its screen.

WELCOME, SEAMUS HINKLE! YOU HAVE . . . 215 CREDITS!

I wave to Martin the cashier, but he doesn't notice because he's busy trying to figure out how to break a four-way tie between Lemon, Abe, Jill, and Eric. Since I'm dead last, I head toward the marksman supplies at the back of the store.

I pick up a pack of Hydra-Bomb water balloons, which I've been meaning to try out with snow, and some batteries for the Kilter Smoke Detector with Automatic Flame Eliminator. I'm checking out the Koiffurator the Kommissary Krew e-mailed me about over vacation when I hear a series of strange sounds coming from the next aisle. There's a grunt. Sharp tapping. Whistling and humming. More tapping, then more whistling and humming.

“Good afternoon, Mr. Tempest,” someone says.

Mr. Tempest. In the hair dryer's mirrored side, I see my eyes grow wide.