Lexi did not believe what she saw at first. Cambree was covered in crickets, actual crickets. They were everywhere.
“Ahhh!” the girls screamed in unison.
As Lexi looked around, she saw them on the floor, on the table, in Cambree’s hair, everywhere. She felt something rub her neck and instinctively slapped at it. Her hand was covered in the guts of a dead cricket, and her neck was gooey and wet. She began dancing around, screaming louder. With each step, she heard the disgusting crunch of bugs under her feet.
“Don’t kill them! Don’t kill them!”
Cambree’s brother, Aiden, came running toward them. His voice sounded nasally. He was holding his head forward and had a blood-stained towel over his nose. In his other hand Aiden held an open box with tiny puncture holes. “Don’t kill them!” he said again.
“Get them off of me, you freak, or I’m going to kill you,” Cambree yelled as she stomped her foot.
Aiden picked the crickets off the girls and put them back into their box. “What happened?” Lexi asked. Her hands were trembling.
“Who cares?” Cambree answered. “I’m covered in disgusting bugs.”
Aiden took the towel away from his nose and wiggled it. “I was carrying my pet store crickets when the lights went out.”
“Why do you have a box of crickets?”
“They are for his stupid lizards,” Cambree answered.
“Is my nose still bleeding?”
Lexi examined Aiden’s nose and shook her head no.
Aiden continued, “They’re chameleons, genius. You would know that if you ever read a book. Anyway, I tripped when the lights went out and hit my nose on the floor. The crickets went everywhere.”
“Sorry about your crickets,” Lexi said, “and your nose.”
“Don’t worry about it. Sorry about your neck.”
“And I’m sorry I have a nerdy brother who doesn’t have any friends,” Cambree added.
Aiden rolled his eyes. “I have friends.”
“Who? The Sad Gnus?”
He pursed his lips and glared at his sister. “Bad Gnus. We’re the Bad Gnus.” He turned to Lexi and smiled. “Lexi, did you know that chameleons can show pink, blue, red, orange, green, black, brown, light blue, yellow, turquoise, and purple in their skin? The change in their pigment color is actually for social signaling rather than camouflage.”
“Nobody but you knows that, Aiden, because nobody is as big a loser as you are.” Cambree had her arms crossed as she waited for her brother to remove the last of the crickets. “Hurry up, loser. By the way, you’re buying me a new Hollister shirt.”
“Chameleons will blend in with their background to avoid predators, but it also helps them hunt prey. If a chameleon appears brown like a bunch of twigs and dirt on the ground, a cricket won’t even see the predator until it is too late.”
“Ughh,” Cambree said as the last cricket was removed. She grabbed Lexi by the arm and pulled her into the living room, yelling to her brother, “I wish you were a chameleon so I couldn’t see you.”
Cambree closed the doors behind them. “In the meantime, I can’t wait to post this on Facebook and Twitter. I’m going to embarrass her worse than the time I caught Aimee Abrahms coming out of the thrift shop.” A devilish smirk snaked across her face.
Lexi looked out the window at the downpour. “I need to get home. You should probably wait to post this until we get confirmation tomorrow.”
“Fine, but we should meet in the auditorium before school.”
Lexi thought about Cambree’s comment for a moment. Cambree had never been nice to her. She had never wanted to hang out and she had never wanted to meet before school. Perhaps the world is ending? Lexi paused. “Um, okay.”
She rushed out the door and sprinted home. It was a moonless, rainy night and she immediately regretted leaving. She was less than a block away from Cambree’s house when she got the sensation that someone was behind her. Lexi looked back at Cambree’s. At first she saw nothing, but when lightning illuminated the sky, Lexi was certain she could see someone slinking around the big house.
The wind was blowing and the heavy rain was blinding. Lexi blinked and tried to shield her eyes. She wasn’t sure she saw what she thought she saw. What else is new? she thought bitterly. A second later, all the lights went out again. When lightning again sparked across the sky, Lexi did not see anyone standing outside of Cambree’s home.
Nevertheless, a rippling impulse traversed her brain telling her to get home immediately. Lexi turned and sprinted away.
Chapter Nineteen
Changeling
“Nothing is easy, to the unwilling.”
-Thomas Fuller
Lexi paced her room. She chewed on her fingernails in the same nervous manner a squirrel might gnaw on an acorn. She would chew for a second, lift her head and look out the window, and begin chewing again. All the while, she considered everything that had happened.
She tried to calm down, but even her grandmother’s relaxation techniques failed her. Lexi did not want to go to sleep. She did not want to have another dream like the last three nights. What if the next one didn’t let her wake up?
There was a tap on her bedroom door.
“Lexi?”
Lexi opened the door. “Yes, Grandmother.”
“Would you like some herbal tea? It might help you rest.”
Lexi smiled at her sweet, dear grandmother. “How did you know?”
Lexi’s grandmother chuckled. “When you get to my age, you just know when something is off, and the last few days, you’ve been off.”
She could not hold it back. Lexi started crying. Her grandmother wrapped her arms around her and gave Lexi a much-needed hug. “It’s okay, sweetheart.” The two sat down on Lexi’s bed and her grandmother handed her the tea. Lexi took a sip, but did not feel much better. “Tell me what’s wrong, my dear.”
“Jill. She’s evil. She’s stolen my friends: Elle, Tyler, and Mattie. She’s coach’s favorite player. She hasn’t even been here a week and she’s our starting point guard, she won the poster competition, and she’s going to win class president.
“And I’ve been having the weirdest dreams. These giant insect creatures attack Pfearville and force us into slavery. And worse yet...”
Listening intently, her grandmother said, “Go on.”
“Worse yet, Cambree Meyers and I are now kind of, sort of, but not really, friends.”
Lexi’s grandmother chuckled. “Maybe that’s a good thing. I doubt Elle will be away for long. You and her have been friends since first grade and as far as Tyler goes, well, let’s just say sometimes boys are just plain dumb. He’ll come to his senses. Dreams are dreams. Maybe they mean something. Maybe they mean nothing.”
Lexi nodded. “I know, but they feel so real. It feels like it actually happened. When I wake, I feel like I was there. I’m afraid I’m going crazy.”
“You are under so much pressure. I know how you get before a game, and this is a very big game.”
Lexi knew this wasn’t it. It wasn’t because of the game.
“Here, lay back.”
Lexi did as her grandmother instructed after taking one last sip of hot tea. Her grandmother removed the small, gold lady’s compact from her pocket.
“You are calm. You are relaxed. You feel the weight of the world lifting from your shoulders.” Her tone was soft and composed, not monotonous or rushed. “You feel serenity bathing over you as your body becomes weightless. You have no concerns; you only have sleep, sleep, sleep.”
There was no earth-rattling blast or eruption of canon fire. It was dark and she was walking. She ducked under a pillar of rock and into a narrow, underground corridor. There were men, women, and children all mining the walls of the caves, using pickaxes and shovels.
When Lexi entered the open area, a few of the shackled workers glanced at her and promptly started digging faster. As she walked by, a few of the slaves cowered in her presence. She could tell they we
re scared of her, but she did not understand why. Lexi walked past a dozen more and the results were the same each time.
As she passed through the corridor, Lexi stepped onto a platform. She was in awe at what was beneath her. There was a giant pit filled with workers and corridors coming off the central pit. Thousands of slaves worked painstakingly to move rock and stone.
She turned around and found herself face to face with one of the giant insect overlords. Its mouth was a tiny oval with two small fangs sticking out. It was completely hairless and had a hard, brown carapace. The creature carried a machete on its hip and a whip in its right hand. Its arms were long and slender just like its legs, and its hands were comprised of three fat digits.
Her heart stopped as she stared into the beady red eyes. It looked as if it might push her off the ledge to her death.
The creature’s mouth moved and Lexi could hear the chirping sound that reminded her so much of cricket noises, but there was something different. She could actually understand what the thing was saying: “Master, these Earth slaves are perfect.”
Her jaw dropped and her eyes nearly popped from her head. “Master?”
She paused when she saw her own reflection in a puddle of water. She was one of them!
Leaping back, she nearly fell over the ledge, but the insect overlord caught her. She felt as if she might pass out. Looking at herself in the puddle, Lexi was wearing identical clothing to the slavers.
“Master, are you all right?” the overlord asked in the hissing voice.
“Stop calling me that.”
Her eyes sullenly scanned across the increasingly angry faces of her fellow students and townspeople.
“You failed us,” Maudie said as she continued digging.
“You never cared about us, did you?” Tyler asked.
“Why didn’t you help us?” Elle asked.
Lexi waved her hands. “I do care. I will help.” Panicked, Lexi began pulling on the chains that bound her friends. It was no use, but that did not stop her from trying. As tears rolled down her face, she said, “I do care. I will help.”
“You failed us,” the voices of her friends chanted. “You failed us.”
“No! I’m sorry.”
The last thing she heard was a familiar voice whisper, “Look away, Lexi. Look away.”
Chapter Twenty
Broken and Hopeless
“Abstain from every form of evil.”
-1 Thessalonians 5:22
“Noooo!”
Lexi’s eyes opened. She was safely in her bed, but she did not feel safe. She was covered in sweat, and her left hand was contracted in a claw-like form where she had been holding Elle’s forearm in her dream. Lexi sat up and wiped the perspiration from her brow.
What is going on with me?
The light to her room came on and Lexi’s grandmother came in. “Sweetheart, are you okay?”
Lexi thought for a second. Did she scream in her dream or in real life? The line between the two was becoming more and more blurry. Lexi shook her head. “No, I’m fine.”
Lexi’s grandmother smiled at her. “Do you feel better today?”
She did not want to alarm her grandmother, but she did not wish to lie to her either. If she told the truth, her grandmother would take her to the doctor, so she decided to fake it. “Yeah, I feel better.”
She picked at her breakfast. Her mouth chewed her food, but she tasted nothing. Instead, her mind replayed the horrible dream over and over. Lexi believed in ESP, déjà vu, speaking to the dead, paranormal activity, hypnosis, foreseeing the future. She wondered what her dreams meant—if anything. She feared her dreams were images of a future not yet realized, but what kind of future involved her friends enslaved to insect overlords?
Her grandmother always told Lexi that there was more to this world than meets the eye. Lexi considered asking her grandmother for help. After all, her grandmother was fond of saying, “When you’re from Port-au-Prince, you see all kinds of things,” but she was not certain her grandmother would believe this. Moreover, her grandmother would probably not consent to what needed to be done.
Lexi had an idea.
There was something about Jill that she could not quite pinpoint, but her mind kept going back to her meeting in the auditorium where her body felt frozen and stiff and she was certain Jill’s eyes changed colors.
She tossed her old tape recorder into her backpack along with a gentleman’s gold pocket watch and headed for the bus stop.
Her walk to school took her back down the alleyway where she first met him. She waited. When he did not immediately show, she sat on a tree stump, uncaring if she was late to school. After all, if what happened in her dreams came true, there wouldn’t be a school to be late to anymore.
When he still didn’t show, she said aloud, “Petr, where are you? I need your help.”
Lexi heard movement in the bushes a few houses away. She stood up, relieved to see her weird little friend. Instead, she heard ominous sound of angry insect chatter.
It made every hair on her body stand on end. Her face lost all color. Her lips trembled. “No.”
She took a step back. A long shadow was cast across the alley, and when Lexi saw the beady red eyes, she screamed and ran. It gave chase. The cricket noises got louder. Louder. Louder. It was about to overtake her. She never looked back, but she saw the shadow of her pursuer’s arm reach up to grab her.
She screamed again and made a sharp turn.
Her pursuer failed to make the turn and slipped in the mud. She heard it slam into a dumpster. Lexi dashed through the narrow opening between two houses and into the street.
The bus pulled up and just as it opened its doors, Lexi sprinted past Lisa, Michael, and the twins, taking the bus stairs in a single leap. Mr. Manuel gave her a shocked expression. Lexi moved through the bus, constantly looking out the window. She watched as the creature’s shadow slowly slunk away and the cricket noises faded.
Glancing forward, Lexi saw the expressions on everyone’s faces. They were staring at her in disbelief. Sweat was pouring down her face, her hair was matted to her forehead, and her chest was heaving for breath. She said nothing. Sitting down, she pulled her knees to her chest and buried her face in them.
Lexi remained silent and didn’t bother listening to the brainless chatter coming from the others on the bus. She did not need to hear. It all involved Jill in one way or another. Lexi did not even know the bus had reached the school until Mr. Manuel tapped her on the shoulder. “This is your school.”
Lexi nodded. She said nothing. There was no sense in conversing. He was like the others now, a disciple of Jill. If she said anything, the topic would soon switch to Jill and her exploits.
“You are lucky. Jill goes to school here,” Mr. Manuel added as Lexi exited the bus.
In the courtyard, there were children running, playing tag, and laughing as usual, but instead of their normal topics, they only talked about Jill. They still talked about sports and fashion and cars, but now those topics were laced with comments regarding Jill and all she had done, could do, and would do for the students. It was like they were zombies. But instead of being mindless, brain-eating zombies, they were mindless, Jill-infatuated zombies. They acted normal and yet were not normal at all.
If Lexi kept her mouth shut, she thought she could sneak past everyone without talking. She saw Sasha by the front door. As Sasha passed, she said, “Lexi, Jill said I could go with her to buy shoes at the mall tonight. Isn’t that great?”
Lexi nodded.
“I love her so much. Last night, I was like, ‘Please let Jill notice me today. Please, please, please.’ And guess what, she did!” Sasha’s voice was filled with excitement and relief. She was practically jumping up and down. It was the type of exuberance normally reserved for Elle, but now everyone had it. It was bubbly, cheerleader talk. Now, everybody had team spirit—Team Jill. Save Lexi and Cambree.
When Assistant Principal Stevens came over the intercom to
announce that everyone needed to get their tickets for the big game tomorrow as “Jill leads the Lady Ravens to certain victory.” Lexi felt a determination flow through her that had been absent for far too long.
Her classmates in the hall cheered and yelled, “Go Jill.”
“She hasn’t even played a game!” Lexi screamed as she reached her limit.
Sasha, Pelham, Meghan, and the others glared at her. She felt like a sheep that had just stumbled into a wolves’ den. Lexi clinched her fists and thought, But I’m no sheep.
One thing mattered and that was bringing down Jill, even if it meant allying with Cambree. Lexi was sick of everything Jill. The halls of the school were plastered with posters: “Jill 4 President, In Jill We Trust;” “A Vote 4 Jill Is An UN-Wasted Vote;” and “Don’t Ask What Jill Can Do For You, Ask What Can You Do To 4 Jill.”
“I’ve got to find Cambree. Time to end this.”
She turned and sprinted to the auditorium.
Chapter Twenty-One
Look Away, Lexi! Look Away!
“Desperation is sometimes as powerful an inspirer as genius.”
-Benjamin Disraeli
When Lexi reached the auditorium, it was pitch black and she had no idea how to turn the lights on.
“Cambree?” Lexi whispered. “Are you here?”
She walked toward the stage. “Cambree, where are you?” There was no response. Lexi took one step up the stairs when a single stage light flickered to life. She paused. First, she saw no one, but then, in the poorly lit background of the stage, she could see something move. It was followed by the sound of crickets.
With long, well-groomed hair that reached the middle of her back and wearing a short black dress that had to be designer brand, Jill stepped into the light and smiled. She smiled and waved cheerfully at Lexi. “Hello, Lexi, we’ve been expecting you.”
“We?”
All the girls in the school stepped out of the darkness and into the light. Elle, Mattie, Anastasia, Pelham, Sasha, Lisa, Amber, Meghan—everyone. And then lastly, Cambree stepped into the light.