The Silver Moon Elm (19 page)

Bobbie undressed and put on the clothes she had lent Jennifer. “Thank goodness I had these for both of us today, huh, Jenny?” She opened up her locker—revealing a glimpse of the soccer ball, but not much else—chucked her dress clothes in, and slammed the locker shut. “You girls get dressed quick. Jenny and I will meet you out there.”

Without another word, she grabbed Jennifer’s wrist and pulled her through the locker room.

Jennifer panicked. “Bobbie, please, I don’t—”

“Shut up.” The larger girl tugged harshly, making Jennifer stumble. Then her tone changed back to fake-sweet again. “You know, Jenny, Andi and I had the most interesting conversation with Skip in the hallway. Andi told him we learned about your little secret—the daggers, she meant—but that it was no big deal. I even mentioned we had kinda helped you out. He seemed pretty happy to hear it, and so he got to talking a bit more freely. Imagine my surprise when he didn’t talk about daggers at all!”

Jennifer was momentarily distracted when Bobbie didn’t go through the outside exit, but rather took her past it to the locker-room exit that led to the gymnasium. They must practice indoors because of the cold. Wanting very much to go anywhere but wherever Bobbie was taking her, she strained against Bobbie’s grip and managed to kick the door open. That was as far as she got. The larger girl yanked her along the hallway, and all Jennifer had to show for her trouble was a covering of goose bumps from the sudden blast of cold air through the open doorway.

“I got tons of information from him about you, without him suspecting a thing! Oh, by the way, I invited him to practice, but he said he couldn’t make it. I told him we’d get you home later.”

Bobbie’s eyes gleamed with sapphire malice. Jennifer got the message: Skip would not be around to help her.

“Of course, Andi wasn’t surprised by what Skip told us.” Bobbie’s tone turned a bit harsher. “No, Doctor Andi apparently knew already. Why she didn’t tell me, I’m not sure. I’ll handle her later. But you—” She pulled Jennifer to a stop right in front of the gymnasium door. “You I deal with now.

“You’re going to go through that door,” she continued. “Most of the varsity squad had free time last period, so there are a bunch of players already out there practicing, not counting coaches and parents and everyone else. Big game coming up Saturday, remember?”

“Yeah.” Jennifer’s throat was getting dry. “I remember.”

“Good. Anyway, when you go through that door, you’re either going to look like you look now”—she reached out with a fast hand and snapped the elastic of Jennifer’s underwear with a cruel grin—“or you’re going to change into what you really are.”

Jennifer swallowed hard. “You don’t have to do this.”

“Through the door, Jenny.”

“I’ll leave another way. Please. I’ll never come back if you don’t want me to, I swear.”

Bobbie’s eyes traveled up and down her body. “If you wanna lose what little you’re wearing, keep talking.”

The sounds of girls whispering and laughing increased. Bobbie’s friends were coming, having wasted no time in changing so they could see what would happen next. Jennifer couldn’t go back that way. But she couldn’t go through this door either—not dressed like she was, and certainly not as a dragon.

“Bobbie—”

“Fine.” The girl lunged forward. As Jennifer lost her breath against the cement wall behind her, she felt Bobbie’s hand reaching under a shoulder strap and pulling hard on the sports bra. A sudden kick to Jennifer’s wounded calf made her gasp.

“Bobbie, no! Don’t! Please!”

A fast, stiff elbow caught her across the chin. The shock of the blow disoriented Jennifer long enough for Bobbie to flip her around so she faced the wall, with an arm twisted painfully against her bare back. “Don’t try to fight, Jenny. You can’t win.”

Head swimming with pain, fear, and humiliation, Jennifer closed her eyes, clenched her teeth, and began to cry. Where were her friends? Where was her school? Where were her parents? Wasn’t anyone going to help her?

The catcalls from down the hallway answered her question. “Hey, Bobbie, wait up! We’ll get the bottom half!”

Blubbering in short, mucus-filled whistles, Jennifer shoved back against Bobbie, but the larger girl had her pinned. “They’re all going to see you,” she whispered in Jennifer’s ear, breath reeking of onions. She managed to get one strap down over an elbow. “All of you.”

Jennifer’s muscles strained violently and her spine rippled, but she couldn’t go anywhere. Her left arm was pinned by Bobbie’s efforts to pull down the bra strap. The right was secured by Bobbie’s superior strength. Her brain buzzed with the struggle for freedom.

Change
? the dragon inside asked desperately.

Not unless you want to die faster, she answered herself.

The humming in her brain got louder. Her ears were pounding. Her whistling breaths got shorter and shriller. The other girls were shrieking with laughter. Someone besides Bobbie grabbed her ankles and pulled her feet up off the floor. As she struggled helplessly against the army of hands that held every limb, they took her over to the gym doors. She felt a hand slide down her hip—

—and then the shrieks turned to screams.

The arms and hands on her abruptly let go. Jennifer collapsed to the floor as hundreds of black needles flew through the hallway, wings buzzing furiously as they drove themselves into the other girls’ arms, legs, and heads.

Dragonflies, she told herself, barely believing the swarm that had come to save her. Not quite fire hornets, but let’s not be choosy. She crawled a few feet away as Bobbie and the others flailed at the gathering swarm of insects. Looking up, she realized she only had one real way out of this, and it was now or never.

She got to her feet, steeled herself…and burst through the gymnasium doors.

If those she saw next were surprised at the nearly naked girl that came running at them, Jennifer was no less stunned at the scene before her.

The gymnasium at Pinegrove High was the exact dimensions as the one she remembered from Winoka High. The floor was familiar hardwood painted cobalt and maize, and the bleachers on either side of her entrance were still uncomfortable plastic. The entire wall opposite was glass, which had always given an excellent view of the athletic fields outside. This November afternoon, there was the slimmest of crescent moons in the darkening afternoon sky.

Everything else was deeply wrong.

There was a soccer net on each end of the gym—or at least Jennifer guessed they were nets. Really, they were two massive webs stretched over the painted cement walls, thirty feet high and thirty feet across. Between these nets, five or six students in spider form were kicking around soccer balls—several at a time—and jumping higher than Jennifer had ever seen a player jump. It looked like eight soccer games happening in midair at once.

What kind of soccer is this?!

Not important! she answered herself angrily, forcing herself to keep running. Get moving! You have to do it now!

She sprinted between the bleachers and out onto the gymnasium floor. Turning, she could take in the dozens of human-shaped parents, little brothers, and others—Cripes, is that the school’s AV class with a video camera?—in the bleachers she had just run past. The spiders stopped playing and stared. The parents and little boys stopped talking and stared. The AV team stopped talking, stared…and apparently kept filming.

They don’t know what you are, she tried to reassure herself as goose bumps had their way with every inch of her skin. Not until the others get out here. Taking a deep breath, she forced more tears down her cheeks and put a hand up to her mouth in her best imitation of a horror-stricken teenaged girl. Given her surroundings, it wasn’t difficult.

“Bobbie Jarkmand’s a weredragon!” she screamed in despair, pointing back with an unsteady finger. “She’s in the girls’ locker room, attacking Andi and the other girls with a swarm of dragonflies!”

A gasp went through the crowd. “That’s impossible!” one of the coaches said, but Jennifer could see his doubt and fear. “I’ve seen her morph! She’s no dragon!”

“She’s half-and-half, I swear!” Jennifer persisted through renewed sobs, mind racing to stay ahead of her audience. She swatted vainly at thin air. “We didn’t mean to make her do it, I’m sorry, we didn’t mean to! We were teasing her about her skinny spider shape after she morphed for practice, and then she got angry, and we got into a fight, and she changed again, but this time she…Oh, God, somebody please help me! HEEEEELP MEEEEEEE!!!!”

With that, she took one last swipe at an absolutely harmless dragonfly that possessed the good grace to wander into the gym at that moment. Then she turned to run for her only possible escape route—the double doors that opened to the outside.

It worked brilliantly. Seeing clear evidence of Jennifer’s sinister dragonfly-assault theory, every person in the gymnasium roared in outrage. Parents bloated themselves into eight-legged shapes, and the players already in spider form charged for the door to the girls’ locker room. Jennifer had an uncontested path to freedom.

As she charged through the glass doors—which, to her delight, set off the fire alarm and automatic sprinkler system—Jennifer thought with no small satisfaction of how beaten and bruised Bobbie might get in the ruckus, before anyone could figure out what had really happened.

Feeling the chill of November on her skin, she slipped into dragon form and took to the air, saying a silent prayer of thanks to the dragonflies she left behind.

“Jennifer?!” The voice from below startled her.

Pulling up and hovering, she turned to see Nakia Brandfire on the sidewalk below, in jogging sweats and sneakers. Her elegant Egyptian features stared up in terror. She saw me change, Jennifer realized.

“That’s right,” she answered defiantly. “My name’s Jennifer Scales. I’m a weredragon. And so are you, I’ll bet. Your grandmother was Winona Brandfire, who’s the eldest dragon. When the universe is right. I can get it back, Catherine. I can make it right for dragons like us. But I need your help. Change now, and come with me!”

“Change?” The question came meekly.

“Yes!” Jennifer turned nervously to the gym’s glass walls. Everyone was still stuffed into the hallway to the locker rooms, but this wouldn’t last long.

“Um…okay.”

Nakia flexed her body…and to Jennifer’s horror sprouted two huge brown claws, eight milky tan legs, and a black stinger that dangled over her segmented midsection.

“Oh, Catherine…”

“My name’s Nakia,” the huge scorpion insisted with a sudden vehemence that made Jennifer pull back in midair. “And I don’t know why you keep calling me Catherine, but my grandmother Winona was the shame of our family. I’m glad she’s dead now! Really glad!”

Jennifer heard a new commotion in the gym. Looking up, she saw three or four spiders coming back out of the hallway. Among their bulbous shapes walked Andi, still in human form, who stared at Jennifer with fresh awe.

There are no allies here. It’s time to go.

She turned to Nakia. “I won’t forget who you really are. Not ever.”

And then without letting the scorpion think of a reply, Jennifer was off again, chasing the moon.

CHAPTER 9
Wednesday Night

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Her first stop was a bit less than a mile away, in the middle of a birch forest behind the school. It was dangerous, she supposed, to be this close to where she had played her little trick and escaped with her life. But she was trembling too much to fly straight—and walking around undressed was not an option. Besides, it could only help her to wait until it was a bit darker.

That theory didn’t hold up. By the time she felt calm enough to slip over the treetops in the deepening sky and head for Skip’s house, she could make out the flashing lights of police cars from more than ten blocks away.

Of course, she chastised herself. Skip’s house would be the first place they’d check! You can never go there again.

She veered away from the threatening strobes and tried to think of where else she could go. Of course, heading out of town was an option—she had been waiting for an excuse to escape for two days—but now she was not so sure. If everyone was looking for her, was this the best time to be flying around?

Not if there was another good hiding place—someplace no one would think to look for a while. Thinking of Skip’s family, an idea came quickly.

Instead of up in the air, maybe I should be down under the ground.

The sewer culvert where Skip had betrayed her to his father last spring was not far away. She flew low to the treetops the entire way, avoiding streetlights and large clusters of homes. Once again, from above she was struck by the architecture in this town. These houses were so elegantly built, touching the darkening sky with elegant peaks and spiraling chimneys. While disorienting in the sunlight, their strange colors were almost beautiful at dusk.

As she retraced part of the path she had taken away from the school, she caught sight again of the northern grounds. From this angle, she had a clear view of the strange observatory she had hoped to investigate this evening. That would now be impossible, she admitted as she took in the strange dome strapped to the earth within a steel web. By angering Bobbie, alienating Catherine/Nakia, and frightening Andi, she had pulled the equivalent of setting off a fire alarm everyone could hear.

Scratch that, she corrected herself. I did set off a fire alarm. With a sprinkler system.

Before she let the observatory slip away behind the horizon to her left, her eye meandered over the last sliver of its shape. She could not help admiring the striking architecture. It was more than just a building devoted to science—it was a fortress of ignorance.

Visitar tutos, imperar tutos.

The words from the Pinegrove city limits sign came unbidden to her mind. She had asked her Spanish teacher yesterday what they meant. The well-groomed, heavyset man with a clip-on tie, thinning hair, and polyester pants had told her with a booming bounce to his voice: See all, rule all.