I crashed to the floor of the school office. Pain surged through my elbow, but I didn’t care. I shot up and spun around. The portal spun in the middle of the office, growing smaller and smaller. It wavered again as if a shock wave had gone through it. Then, with a faint fizzling sound, it simply died.
Silence fell. Penny and Ryan appeared at my side, breathing heavily.
“Let’s go.” Ryan backed for the office door. “H…he can come back for us any second.”
“There’s no need,” I said, numb. The world seemed like a dream to me. “He’ll have to fix the portal before he can even think of coming back here. I made sure of that.”
“You…you broke it?” Ryan’s jaw fell. And then he did something that I’m sure he’d never have the guts to do in any other situation.
He hugged me.
Sure, it was one of those clap-me-on-the-back hugs, but still. My numbness broke and some heat rose to my cheeks.
He let go after what felt like a whole minute. That’s when I got a load of the office. The broken glass from the juice bottle lay on the floor, gleaming in the sunlight. The office chair was tipped over and broken, and the old maroon couch was pulled out from the wall. Papers lay everywhere on the floor. And nobody stood in here besides us.
The clock read ten after four. The portal had put us back to the time shortly after we’d been abducted.
“I can’t believe that,” Penny choked out, leaning against the door frame. “We escaped. We just might be the first people ever to escape Procedure Number Twenty-Eight.”
Her words made it all come back in a rush. I wanted to collapse into that couch and beat it with my fists. Dan and Sean were still trapped in the Shadow Home World, and I had no way to get them out. But I held back. I wouldn’t throw a tantrum in front of my friends.
Ryan gestured to the mess. “This all proves it. I…I’m never going to recover from that. I’ll have nightmares for the rest of my life!”
That made two of us.
I said nothing and staggered out of the office on shaky legs. My anger melted away as a dull ache thumped across my forehead. Now that the shock was gone, my limbs trembled and felt weak, probably from whatever power I’d used. “Oh…” I groaned, slapping my hand to my forehead.
Penny cut into my exhaustion and took my arm to help keep me standing. “Let’s get out of here.”
We made our way down the empty hallway without a word, past rows of lockers and classroom doors. Penny’s cell phone rang—probably her dad wanted to yell at her for not being home at three—but she reached down and turned it off. Good for her.
“I’ll be glad to see him, but I don’t need a lecture right now,” she said. “I’ll have the whole weekend for that. I have a feeling I won’t be leaving the house.”
Someone had propped an exit door open, and fresh air poured in. It was the best thing I’d ever smelled.
The silence got unbearable as we neared the exit. Penny and Ryan shuffled their feet, but wouldn’t look at me. I had to break it.
“My mom and dad,” I said. “So they’re not my biological parents?”
Penny stared at me and lifted an eyebrow. “I always suspected that, actually. I was just too afraid to say anything. I always noticed how you look nothing like your parents. Your mom’s tiny and blond, and your dad’s tall with black hair. You’ve got brown hair. Plus you’re creative, outspoken, and fun, and they’re…well…”
“Boring?” I asked. “They always try their best to just blend in with everyone else. If they were any more boring, they’d be robots. Not that they’re bad parents or anything.” I paused. “But you know what? I’ll be happy to go get that manicure tonight.”
“You? Get a manicure?” Ryan stared at me as if I’d grown horns.
We stepped into the sun and Penny stared at me again. “But how did A. Gist know about your history? He acted like he knew everything about you. He knows more about your past than you do.”
I shuddered. Yeah, creepy.
“That’s what’s bothering me about this,” I said. “I don’t even know what I am.”
“Well, whatever you are, it has to be good if A. Gist hates it.” Ryan smiled. “He said your kind caused him lots of trouble in the past. Maybe your real ancestors spent their lives fighting him.”
“Maybe.” A tingle of satisfaction ran through me at the thought, even though I felt ready to explode with questions as we made our way through the school parking lot. I’d have to do some serious thinking about all this later.
“Look!” Penny pointed to the other side of the pavement.
I snapped out of my confusion and noticed it for the first time. A police car idled twenty feet in front of us. Nobody sat in the front, but seated in the back were—
Ryan snorted and almost leaned over with laughter. “Josh and Kristina!”
I stopped to gawk. Hey, I deserved this after the day I had. Josh and Kristina sat with their arms twisted behind them. In other words, handcuffed. Kristina looked down at her feet, lip quivering. And Josh leaned back against his seat, tears rolling down his cheeks.
Yeah, tears.
“Oh…my…god.” Ryan gasped between fits of laughter. “Oh…my…god.”
I found myself holding in a fit of laughter, too. I walked past the police car slowly, making the moment last as long as I could. This memory was going to go up there with me kicking A. Gist in the face.
“We should get out of here,” Ryan said at last. “The cops are still around here somewhere. I don’t want them questioning us.”
“You do have a point,” I said. Throbbing pain beat at my head and my legs threatened to give out. I didn’t feel like having to tell the cops about Josh and Kristina today. Tomorrow would be better. Collapsing on my couch sounded like a much better idea.
“There they are!”
So much for that.
I turned. Mr. Greywood, Mr. Gorfel, and two police officers ran at us from the direction of the science wing. Mr. Greywood held an ice pack to the side of his head. Poor guy. And sweat rolled down the sides of Mr. Gorfel’s face. Both teachers heaved out a huge sigh of relief and stopped a few feet away.
“So you’re okay,” the Gym teacher said. “After that punk hit me over the head with that chair I woke up and found the whole office a mess. I don’t blame you three for running out of there. That kid was on a total rampage.”
I looked at Penny and Ryan, barely hiding a smile. Penny nodded. Mr. Greywood thought Josh trashed the office. The best thing we could do was go along with it. It’s not like I could say, no, a bunch of immortals called the Shadow Regime did it. “He came out of that door and just started trashing everything. He threw a juice bottle and then he was shoving chairs everywhere.”
Penny nodded. “We ran out of there. Then we saw Kristina coming down another hall at us. We ran out of here and then over to the middle school.”
“It was wise, getting out of the way,” the Gym teacher added. “I think they were looking for you.”
“We found them behind the bus garage,” the first officer added. “You don’t know how many times we’ve dealt with them before. They almost have a whole drawer to themselves at the station.”
That I could believe.
The female officer spoke. “There was nothing we could do until something serious happened. They’re not of age. We had to wait for something like this, sadly.”
“I never want them in this school again,” Mr. Gorfel growled. “Attacking teachers. Breaking down doors. Trashing everything in sight. Not to mention I think that girl locked me in my own classroom earlier. I had to yell until the janitor heard me. What is wrong with kids now?” Mr. Gorfel shot a nasty look at us as if we’d been the ones breaking down doors and attacking teachers.
“Ryan!” A woman’s voice cut across the grass.
We all turned. Mrs. Sullivan trucked her way across the lawn. I saw he
r car parked over by the football field gate. “I got a call from your teacher that you were missing. Are you okay?”
“Yeah, Mom,” he said, voice full of emotion.
I could only watch as Mrs. Sullivan swept him up in a hug.