I about died when the bell rang. We didn’t have much time to pull this off. The three of us bolted out into the hall as people started pouring out of classrooms. I wanted to turn around and run, but I couldn’t. I had to do this, because nobody else was going to.
“If they’re unlocked, we take the bikes and run,” I said. “We can always ride them if we have to.”
“There’s three of us,” Penny said, running alongside me.
I sighed. “Great. We might have to put someone on the handlebars.” I wasn’t thrilled about the idea, but it beat letting Josh and Kristina tell the Shadow Regime about detention.
“Do you know where the bikes are?” Ryan puffed out, nearly colliding with half the football team.
“Main entrance,” I said.
We thundered down the stairwell and burst into the Social Studies wing. For one sickening moment I saw Josh heading in the opposite direction, and I swore he gave us an evil grin as he passed. Not his usual nose-flaring at all.
“Come on!” Ryan pushed his way down the hall, cutting in front of me.
I shoved against a tide of students as fast as I could. Angry yells surrounded me, but I didn’t care that I was now officially the rudest person in the school.
Sunlight glared down on us as we burst out the front doors. Sweat started to soak the back of my black shirt as I checked the row of buses for Josh and Kristina. All clear. Now for the bike racks. Josh and Kristina rode their bikes to school every day, since the buses kicked them both off permanently in the seventh grade. Now I had to remember where they’d parked them.
Penny raised her arm and pointed. “There!”
The silver bikes sat in the middle of the bike rack, shining in the sun. I ran for them, my friends right on my heels. As I got closer, I made out something I hadn’t noticed before. Both of the bikes had a curly blue A on the frames, matching the one on my wrist exactly. It sure didn’t stand for Assenmacher.
Well, it proved my point. At least I knew I was targeting the right people this time. Any reservations I had about doing this blew away. I wanted to chuck both those bikes down a ravine.
“Are they locked?” Ryan asked from behind.
I hunted all over. Josh and Kristina hadn’t bothered to lock them up at all. The bikes sat there, no chains around them. I knew why. No one ever got up the bravery to take them, and they knew it. “No.”
Ryan sure didn’t sound calmer. “Let’s just take them and run!”
He was right. Josh and Kristina would come out of the school any minute. Penny took one bike, Ryan the other. I guess that left me the one to ride on the handlebars.
“You’re stealing Josh and Kristina’s bikes?” someone asked behind us.
I whirled around. Gerald Salinger stood there with an obnoxious grin on his fat face. My heart leapt into my throat. He was one of the jerks always bothering Penny in middle school. I’d even had to punch him one time when he squirted pop on her shirt. But it wasn’t the fact that it was him standing there. It was the fact that he sometimes hung out with Josh and Kristina.
“This is none of your business,” Penny snarled at him.
“Do you know what they’re going to do to you?” Gerald asked, his grin growing wider. “I wouldn’t steal their bikes if it was a life or death situation, man.”
“This is a life or death situation!” I yelled. I couldn’t help it. I was losing my cool. “Just leave us alone.”
“Now how do we do this with three people?” Ryan asked, his voice getting higher and higher. He seemed to know what I knew. Gerald would rat us out for sure.
“Can I get to my bike?” Gerald asked, still grinning.
I followed his gaze to the most pathetic bike on the rack. Most of the purple paint had chipped off, rust covered the gears, and the seat had a bunch of huge rips on it. And it was way too small for anyone over the age of ten. But I didn’t feel like laughing at it now: it was the only other bike on the rack that wasn’t locked.
“Josh!” Gerald bellowed behind us.
Oh, no.
Josh and Kristina stood outside the main entrance. Their eyes got bigger and bigger as they stared at us. Kristina’s jaw dropped and Josh trembled like a volcano ready to blow.
In other words, time to go. I wasn’t even going to mess with this.
“Now!” Ryan hopped onto one of the silver and blue bikes. Penny did the same while I yanked out Gerald’s third grade bike. I swung my legs over it and flailed for the pedals.
“What are you doing?” Gerald yelled. Yeah, he finally caught on.
We pedaled over the grass and for the sidewalk, dodging people. Swearing erupted behind us as Josh and Kristina gave chase.
“Go!” Penny yelled, as if I needed convincing.
We rode alongside the line of buses and burst out of the parking lot. The swearing and footfalls faded behind us. Man, that hadn’t gone well at all.
Penny and Ryan rode smoothly in front of me, while Gerald’s old bike kept making funny noises. Mostly clunks. I didn’t dare peek behind me until we got way down the next street. Josh, Kristina, and Gerald stood at the corner, gasping for breath. Josh snarled something at Gerald and shoved him down onto the grass.
Nice friend.
“This way,” Penny breathed, waving us around another corner and towards an empty house. Her voice shook. “Let’s hide until we know what they’re going to do.
“Well, they know we took the bikes now, obviously,” I said, dismounting Gerald’s bike and following her around the side of the house. “At least we have them distracted. They’ll probably spend all afternoon hunting us down instead of going to meet the Shadow Regime.” Well, I hoped.
“H…how do you know they won’t go right to A. Gist?” Ryan wondered out loud, setting the bike against the house. “They might go whine to him that we took the bikes.”
Penny looked into the air for a moment. “We’ll know in a minute. They have to come this way to leave the school. It’s the only road out of here.”
She was right. They’d have to go someplace private to meet with A. Gist, since he couldn’t stroll onto the school grounds with everyone hanging around, doing after-school stuff.
Penny sighed. “I can’t believe we did this. I didn’t know they’d leave that fast.”
“Yeah. N…now we’re dead no matter what,” Ryan said. He faced me. “Want to trade? I’d rather not ride something the Shadow Regime made.”
I opened my mouth to tell him no thanks, but a sound met my ears. Footsteps. “I think they’re coming.”
Grumbling laced with profanity grew closer and closer. Yeah, it was them. I ducked behind a bush and strained to listen.
“Where did they go?” Kristina asked, only with some pretty bad words thrown in.
“I don’t care if they went into their houses,” Josh growled. “I’ll break down their doors and go after them.”
“Yeah, I hope you know where they live,” Gerald grumbled. “They took my bike too, you know.”
“I don’t care about your bike!” Josh roared at him. “They only took it because they needed to get away. You couldn’t pay someone to steal it.”
I almost felt bad for Gerald for a minute. Almost.
Gerald sighed as loud as he could. The three pairs of footsteps stopped. They must’ve stopped right there on the sidewalk. I just prayed they didn’t sneak back here to have a smoke.
Kristina’s voice rose. “You should’ve stopped them while you were standing there.”
“I couldn’t,” Gerald argued. “There were three of them.”
Josh’s temper finally broke. “Get out of here!” He called Gerald something pretty bad. I’ll let your imagination fill in the blank. Then I heard a thud. Josh had punched him on top of it.
“Fine!” Gerald yelled. “I’ll look for them myself!”
Footfalls scraped against the concrete as Gerald stomped off. He’d ne
ver try to fight Josh.
Josh called more insults after him. Then, after a minute, Kristina sighed in relief. “There. We got rid of him,” she said.
Penny tensed next to me and parted the bush a bit. Here it came. The moment of truth.
“Now what?” Josh asked. “Do we look for those idiots first or get the Regime? We still have to tell them.”
My stomach untied a little. So they hadn’t met with the Shadow Regime yet. We still had a chance of making sure A. Gist didn’t know about the detention.
“Maybe we should go tell him first,” Kristina said. “He’ll get those bikes back for us. Or have new ones made. He said not to do anything to them yet. Remember?”
“Yeah. And we get something big for the assignment tomorrow,” Josh said with relish. “I hope it’s killing them.”
A long, horrible silence followed. My arms grew cold. Whatever Procedure Number Twenty-Eight was, it was going to make the two of them happy.
“What time is it, anyway?” Josh asked. “We have to be there at three-thirty or he’s leaving. He never hangs around if we’re late.”
“Two forty-five.” Kristina swore—big surprise. “Now how do we get there without our bikes?”
Ryan gave me a thumbs-up, smiling. We only had to make sure Josh and Kristina couldn’t get to their destination by three-thirty. Then all I’d have to worry about at detention were my parents. Oh yeah, and them.
Josh’s footfalls started to fade. They’d started to run.
I looked at my friends. Some color returned to Ryan’s face and Penny was getting back on the bike. Time to go.
“It sounds like A. Gist is somewhere kind of far from here,” Penny said. “That’s even better. It gives us more time. Let’s go.”
I got back onto Gerald’s small bike and slowly pedaled out of the yard, Penny and Ryan right behind me. We had to follow close enough to see Josh and Kristina, but we had to stay far enough back to escape if we had to. And I had a feeling we might have to.
All the buses pulled out of the high school, rumbling past us as we rode out from behind the empty house. Josh and Kristina ran up towards Dobbs Street about as fast as they could. It would’ve looked funny under other circumstances.
A bus turned left, and I lost view of them for one scary moment. But the bus cleared the corner, and Josh and Kristina ran past the Kool Spot without a glance. I grit my teeth and pedaled harder, thinking of Jerry in there. I wondered if those two had anything to do with him getting blackmailed. Probably. The fact made me hate them even more.
“Ride slow. They can’t run very fast,” Penny said.
“I hope they trip and land on something sharp,” Ryan said, bitter. “Then that would solve both our problems.”
“Well, they won’t,” I said. “We have to do something to keep them from getting to wherever they’re going.” Unfortunately, I couldn’t think of anything that didn’t put us in mortal danger.
“It’s got to be at least a mile away,” Penny said. “They said they might not make it without the bikes, and they have forty minutes left. That means it might even be out of town.”
I groaned. “I don’t like the thought of following them out into the middle of nowhere.”
Ahead, Josh and Kristina sprinted around a corner. They were headed for the other side of town, the side I rarely ever strayed into.
“They’re heading for the rich neighborhood,” Ryan said, raising his hand to block the sun from his eyes. “You know—that one with the perfect lawns and the swimming pools.”
“I think that’s where Josh lives,” I said. “Maybe they’re meeting A. Gist at his house.” Especially if his parents weren’t home. I had a feeling they weren’t too often.
Penny spoke up. “I doubt it. That’s too close for them to be running like that.”
I swallowed. She was right. Again. Why couldn’t I think like that? “Well, we’ll need to stop them before we end up out of town.”
Josh and Kristina slowed down ahead of us. They were running out of steam. I forced Gerald’s bike to reduce speed without making any noise—no easy feat. So far, they hadn’t spotted us, but it wouldn’t take long.
The houses got bigger around us and the yards neater. The cars got newer and shinier. The minutes flew by. My mind worked feverishly, trying to think of some way to stop them. I even thought about calling the cops, but what would we tell them? We were the ones who stole the bikes. Josh and Kristina hadn’t done anything wrong—yet.
Ahead, a field stretched out past the last of the houses. We were almost out of town. Almost out to where no one else was around. My stomach tied in a knot, for obvious reasons.
“It’s been t…ten minutes,” Ryan said. “We need to think of something fast.”
“Maybe we can throw something at them,” I suggested. That meant not actually going near them. “We just have to make them late to wherever they’re going.”
Josh and Kristina started to run again. They were desperate. I pedaled Gerald’s bike faster to keep pace, scanning the ground for rocks. The rich neighborhood was way too neat to have even one. All the lawns looked the same. I didn’t even see a bed of those decorative rocks some people have out in their yards. “There has to be something we can throw.”
“Maybe we can yell at them,” Penny said. “Rocks might just make them run faster, anyway.”
Good point. That’s what I would’ve done if someone threw something at me.
Okay. Here went.
“Hey!” I screamed at the top of her lungs.
Josh and Kristina both jumped and whirled around. I stopped Gerald’s bike with an awful grinding sound as they stared us down. Kristina screamed something at us, trembling with rage. I couldn’t make it out, but I didn’t think I wanted to.
“It’s working,” Penny said, stopping next to me.
“Who were you going to meet, anyway?” I yelled at them.
I don’t think she heard me, but Kristina screamed something else, waving a nasty hand gesture in the air.
“We should try to get them to chase us,” Ryan suggested, catching his breath. Sweat rolled down his face. I could tell he didn’t care for the idea.
“They won’t,” Penny said. “They know they can’t catch us on foot.”
Josh tugged Kristina’s arm, and the two of them turned and ran away from us again.
I scrambled to pedal the bike forward. “Great! Since when do they run from a fight? A. Gist must’ve really promised them something good this time.”
Pavement crawled past under me as I rode between Penny and Ryan. The huge brick houses got farther and farther apart and a bunch of empty fields and woods got closer. Sweat soaked the back of my shirt under the hot sun. This was it. We had to do something, and now.
Penny cut into the tense silence. “We might need to do something desperate. We might have to get in front of them and cut them off.”
“That’s nuts,” Ryan said. He glanced at me with wide eyes.
“Like stealing these bikes wasn’t nuts?” I asked. My hands almost slipped off the handlebars, I was sweating so much. “We have to.”
Penny drew in a long breath. “They’re not going to stop otherwise.”
“Let’s go.” Gerald’s bike clunked as I pedaled with all my might past the final house. Trees and ditches surrounded us on both sides. Bad news.
Josh and Kristina jogged faster now, towards a big patch of woods a couple of fields away. Their meeting place, probably. Penny and Ryan shot ahead of me and whizzed towards them. I struggled to keep up on Gerald’s bike, passing a dirt path that cut into the trees. I hunted the area for people, but only saw a van rolling up the road about a mile away. Not good enough for me.
“I don’t like this.” Ryan slowed down and let me catch up. “This is the middle of nowhere out here.”
“Faster. Last chance.” I p
edaled ahead of Penny and Ryan.
Josh and Kristina slowed down to a walk and stopped, panting so hard that their chests heaved up and down. I pulled up in front of them, Penny and Ryan joining me.
Kristina’s eyes grew wide like an alien spaceship had just landed in front of her. “What are you following us for?” Kristina rasped, open-mouthed.
My temples throbbed. The A on my forearm burned again, like someone had struck a match across it. I ignored it. Here stood the two people who were partly at fault for everything that had happened. I wanted to hurl myself at Kristina, but stopped myself. It was time for my big mouth to come into play. “I know what you’re doing. I know how you got those bikes. And the cell phones.”
“That’s not any of your business!” Josh roared, hoarse. Sweat rolled down his face and his nose flared dangerously.
I expected them to charge at any moment, and kept my feet on the pedals of Gerald’s bike. Penny trembled and Ryan stayed as far as he could from the two of them. He was about to fall in the ditch.
“We just have friends,” Josh continued. “Friends that are going to make sure you don’t live to see Saturday.”
I couldn’t stop my big mouth. “You don’t have any friends. Maybe because you shove them around and treat them like crap.”
“I’m not talking those friends!” Josh roared again.
Kristina’s gaze flickered up the road, and back to me. She stared hard at me and smiled savagely. The van coming up the road—the blue van—loomed larger and larger, and all at once I understood.
“You see that van coming up the road?” she growled. “That’s our friends. Say goodbye, Rita.”
Chapter Twelve