“I guess I never thought of it that way before.” Piper suddenly realized that things were more difficult and complicated. Maybe she was hurting her parents and she certainly didn’t want to do that. Maybe all of the folks in Lowland County had a point.
“Piper, I know that you are a very sensitive and caring girl. I also know that you’d never do anything to knowingly hurt anyone.” Dr. Hellion paused, looking at Piper with deep kindness in her eyes. “Sometimes we have to make hard choices, though, and consider all perspectives and other people’s feelings too. Sometimes our true happiness comes from creating a balance between what we like and what’s in the best interest of others. And that’s called being a grown-up.”
What Dr. Hellion said made a lot of sense to Piper. She’d never liked deceiving her parents and flying on the sly. The urge to fly was just so overpoweringly strong, it got the better of her.
“I didn’t mean to hurt anyone.”
“Of course not. And I know that.” Dr. Hellion put an arm around Piper’s shoulder, comforting her. “Sometimes it’s hard to figure things out on our own and we need help. That’s only natural.”
Dr. Hellion walked forward, gently guiding Piper next to her. “While you think about all that, and also for your safety as well as that of the rest of the class, I’d like you to consider staying on the ground. Would you be willing to do that?”
“You mean not fly?” Startled, Piper looked to Dr. Hellion.
“Just for now. Perhaps in a little bit we can talk about it more and see. Okay?”
The last thing Piper wanted to do was promise not to fly, but Dr. Hellion was so smart and had so many good points. Not to mention the fact that she’d been so kind to Piper. She didn’t want to be ungrateful. “Well, I guess. If you think it’s for the best.”
“I do.” Dr. Hellion smiled. “That’s my girl.”
CHAPTER SEVEN
WHILE DR. HELLION consulted with Professor Mumbleby, Piper stood helplessly at the front of the science laboratory. Like everything else Piper had seen that day, the room was equipped with only the finest and most innovative technology. Bunsen burners, glass beakers, gleaming silver metal instruments, and shining white plastic containers were readily available at each student’s very own learning station, which had been constructed to meet their particular academic needs. Currently the learning stations were occupied by science projects, all of which were in varying degrees of completion.
Piper counted eleven children in all, ranging in age from about five to fourteen years old. They shared an acute curiosity about their newest class member and each pair of eyes was fixed intently upon Piper with a merciless stare.
“Not much to look at, is she?” Smitty whispered to Kimber. Kimber punched him in the arm. She was a very strong girl. “Umph,” Smitty wheezed.
A whispering firestorm was sweeping through the rank and file as they unabashedly dissected Piper, who had been left before them like a sacrificial offering.
“What’s her thing?” Lily Yakimoto wanted to know.
Job one with a new student, besides intimidating them or generally ignoring them, was to identify their particular talent. Once uncovered, that talent would determine their place in the class pecking order. Not every ability seemed to have a purpose, thus the more interesting, unusual, or powerful the gift, the higher the ranking. Figuring out where Piper stood was potentially going to affect each of their standings and so it was of immediate interest.
“She don’t have the looks of a genius.”
“Maybe she’s a fire-starter.”
“Betcha she’s another thought-thrower.”
“It’s called being psychic, stupid.”
“She’s psychic? God, not another one. We just got rid of Beth.”
“Ten bucks says she’ll break. She looks like a crier,” Smitty judged. It wasn’t uncommon for kids to crack up when they first arrived—what with being away from home for the first time and missing parents and the like. The class had turned this homesickness ritual into a game that hinged on the ability to accurately predict the breakdown’s exact timing. Betting often topped fifty dollars, competition was fierce, and dirty tactics the norm. Opponents would egg a new kid on by reminding them how much their parents missed them, or perhaps how a much-loved pet might die before their return home, all of which was said in a calculated effort to push them over the brink at the appropriate moment and thus win the bet. The bigger and more violent the breakdown, the better.
“Those tears’ll be flowing ’fore lights-out.” Smitty squished his face up in mock sobs. “I want my mommy. I want to go home. Sniff. Sniff.”
“She’s no crier,” Violet shyly ventured.
“Shut it, Violet, unless you’ve got the dough to back it up.” Like a chihuahua who fancied himself a pit bull, Smitty was a pimply geek who had somehow mistakenly developed the notion that he was actually a muscle-bound tough guy.
“I’ll see your ten, Smitty.” Kimber stepped up to the plate. With her fiery red hair and temper to match, she was the sort of girl who embraced challenges, conflicts, and anything that involved getting the best of Smitty.
“Like taking candy from a baby.” Smitty smacked his lips. “Better kiss that money bye-bye, Sparky.” Sparky was Smitty’s pet name for Kimber because (a) he knew she hated it, and (b) Kimber’s personality was best described as shocking.
“Uh-hum.” Professor Mumbleby cleared his throat loudly, interrupting the roar of quiet chattering. “Zis is Piper McCloud. She vill be joining us from now on.”
Professor Mumbleby was seventy years old if he was a day. His German accent was so thick it was often unintelligible, and while he should have retired years and years before, he proved to be the only teacher capable of keeping control of completely uncontrollable children, which made him utterly irreplaceable.
“You vill make Piper feel velcome,” Professor Mumbleby stated flatly.
Despite Professor Mumbleby’s decree, Piper could see absolutely nothing welcoming in the expressions of her new classmates. In fact, they appeared to be regarding her with a strong mixture of suspicion, dislike, and mischievousness.
“I’m right pleased to meet you all.” Piper smiled, hoping to win them over.
“I’ll leave you to settle in now, Piper.” Dr. Hellion quietly brushed past her on her way to the door.
“No!” Piper whispered urgently. “Don’t go.”
“Not to worry. I’ve explained your situation to Professor Mumbleby. He understands that you lack classroom experience and he’ll help you out.” Dr. Hellion placed a hand on Piper’s shoulder comfortingly. “Just relax and you’ll have fun. I’m excited for you.”
“But—” Piper wanted to grab hold of Dr. Hellion and never let go of her.
“My door is always open for you, Piper.” Dr. Hellion smiled and then slipped away, leaving Piper alone with them.
“Ze class is presenting their initial work on science projects, Miss McCloud. I’ll schedule a meeting zis week to decide on your project, yah?” Professor Mumbleby waited for Piper to respond and Piper stiffly nodded. “In ze meantime, you vill sit with Miss Bella Lovely and she vill help you follow along.”
Professor Mumbleby nodded to a petite girl with long, golden hair who immediately pulled an empty chair up next to her. Piper tentatively settled into the offered seat next to Bella, thankful to be released from the center stage spotlight at the front of the room.
“Hi.” Bella smiled and her smile betrayed the joyous, smiling nature of a very bright soul. Bella was endowed with an unrelentingly sunny and effervescent disposition, which was in no small part due to the fact that her mother was a painter, her father was a sculptor, and she’d grown up on an organic communal farm in the San Francisco Bay area, where she was daily pummeled with massive amounts of unconditional love. This had left Bella without a mean bone in her body and enough positivism to single-handedly reverse global warming.
“This is Princess Madrigal.” Bella presented Piper to her plan
t that was blooming on the desk in front of them. “She’s my science experiment and I created her myself. Wanna smell?”
Bella had cross-pollinated a rose with a daffodil, a lilac, and an orchid. The by-product of these unlikely parents was the most exquisite-looking and -smelling plant that anyone had ever seen, and which, under Bella’s loving attention, was daily becoming even more remarkable.
“This yellow blossom is for hope and that red one is for faith and devotion. But look over here.” Bella pointed excitedly to the other side of her plant. “This bud is just about to open and it’s going to be a glorious pink. See?”
Piper had never much taken to flowers, but there was something really special about this one. Besides which, it was clear to Piper that she and Bella were sure to be fast friends. Any girl with such a keen appreciation for beauty was someone Piper could see eye to eye with. “Holy cow, she smells like . . . paradise”—Piper wasn’t even close to exaggerating—“and looks like heaven. That pink bud will set off those purple bits.”
“Exactly what I was thinking!” Bella sparkled, buoyed by the praise and thrilled that someone appreciated her flower as much as she did. She smiled at Piper and Piper smiled back, each girl excited by the other.
“Class, ve vill now begin your science presentations.” A groan emerged from several throats but was promptly silenced by one look from Professor Mumbleby. “Bring your project to ze front of ze room and tell ze class vhat progress you have made with it.” As there were no volunteers, Professor Mumbleby quickly selected candidates and tolerated no excuses or resistance.
Piper leaned forward in her seat, excited to be part of her first real class.
“First ve vill hear from Mr. Mustafa and Mr. Mustafa.” Professor Mumbleby had the habit of addressing all of his students in a formal way.
Ahmed and Nalen Mustafa, identical twins, presented a miniature but fully functional weather station. On the top of it was a rotating steel disk.
“This is called a—” Nalen (or possibly Ahmed) said, pointing to the disk.
“—sensor and it collects—”Ahmed (or maybe Nalen) continued spinning the disk.
“—atmospheric data and—” ditto,
“—reports it to these—” ditto again,
“—sensors that—”
Their presentation went on in this manner and Piper was more riveted by the way the two boys completed each other’s sentences than the content of their explanation. The fact of the matter was that in all of their twelve years, neither Nalen nor Ahmed had ever completed an entire sentence independent of the other. They were never apart, no one could tell them apart, and they never revealed who was who. After a while people started thinking of them as one person, which suited Nalen and Ahmed just fine.
As their presentation continued, Piper became aware of loud thunder. Not long after, a thick fog began to gather in the classroom and it got so that Piper could hardly see her own hand.
“Zat vill do, Mr. Mustafa and Mr. Mustafa.” Professor Mumbleby cut their presentation short and asked them to sit down. Curiously enough, once the two boys were seated, the thunder ceased and the fog quickly dissipated.
Jasper, a small boy as thin as a whisper and the youngest in the entire class, was called up next. As soon as he came to the front of the room he began to whimper uncontrollably and cry so that he couldn’t get a single word out. Professor Mumbleby finally had to ask him to sit down.
Then Myrtle Grabtrash, a tall, lanky girl with dirty brown hair, zipped to the front of the classroom so quickly and spoke so fast that she was back in her seat before anyone realized that she’d even started. As far as Piper could tell, her project was about the velocity of light.
“Mr. Harrington, you vill be next.”
The commanding presence of Conrad Harrington III swaggered to the front of the class. He had blond hair, perfectly even features, and was by all standards handsome, a fact that no one ever actually noticed because his face was always contorted into the sourest expression. His father was a very important senator and his mother was a British diplomat with a lineage that rivaled the royal family. They had passed onto their only son what Conrad’s aunts called “good breeding,” and promptly left him to his own devices. The general feeling between his parents was that good breeding alone was more than enough parenting and Conrad couldn’t possibly expect or need anything else from them. As they later learned, that was not the case.
When Conrad arrived at the facility he was seven, and after four years, he had become the longest resident. (For those not good at math, that made Conrad eleven years old.) He also had the most acute and extraordinary ability ever recorded, which placed him, uncontestedly, as the alpha kid in the class. Without Conrad’s permission, the other kids wouldn’t dare breathe, let alone think.
“My project is on time travel,” Conrad announced, causing Piper to sit forward in her seat with anticipation. This’ll be mighty interesting, Piper thought to herself.
Conrad approached the dry-erase board and began writing out a very long, very involved, and completely confusing formula. “To fully appreciate the complexity of time travel, the time/space continuum must be further broken down by . . .” Conrad spoke quickly and his hand moved even faster. By the time that he was finished, every single board in the entire room was covered with his numbers.
“. . . therefore time, space, and matter intersect on the probability axis here, which creates the opportunity to slow time and possibly, under the right conditions, reverse it.” He turned back to the class with a flourish.
Absolutely no one reacted or moved. Piper, along with the others, was completely confused, and by the looks of it, Professor Mumbleby was no more enlightened. An unmistakable look of disappointment moved across Conrad’s face and his sour expression intensified.
“Hmmm, vhat is zis, Mr. Harrington?” Professor Mumbleby barked. “Ve agreed your project vas to be on effects of polarized magnets. No?”
Conrad threw down his marker on the floor so hard that it cracked open. Using his foot, he stamped on it. “And I told you that I wasn’t going to do that.”
“I say you vill.” Professor Mumbleby was not one to be bullied.
“Like pearls to swine,” Conrad mumbled so quietly that only Piper was able to hear it.
“Vat is this you say, Mr. Harrington?”
“This, this,” Conrad fiercely said, pointing at his many numbers and formulas, “proves time travel. It proves it, and you want me to do a project on magnets?” Conrad looked like he was on the verge of throwing something.
Professor Mumbleby got to his feet and fixed Conrad with a stare that could turn water to stone. “Mr. Harrington, vould you care to speak of this to Dr. Hellion? Is that vhat you vant?”
It looked like Conrad was going to do something radical, but at the critical moment he took a deep breath and unclenched his fists.
“No.”
“A vise decision, Mr. Harrington. And I expect your project on magnetism next week zhen?”
“Yes, Professor Mumbleby.” Conrad sat down in such a way as to suggest calmness, but it was clear to Piper he was on the verge of exploding.
“Princess Madrigal has grown two inches since last week,” Bella happily reported to the class after Professor Mumbleby called upon her.
Bella went on to explain her cross-pollination process while Conrad silently seethed, getting madder and meaner by the second. At that moment, he was meaner and madder than he’d ever been, but mainly at himself, which is the worst kind of mean and mad to be, because the only thing to do about it is to take it out on someone else. Which was when Conrad’s attention settled on the perfect target—Bella.
Bella’s science project had been a massive success. Conrad could not, quite frankly, have cared less about her stupid flower. Horticultural science to him was for lesser or feeble minds and certainly a waste of his time and energy. But that wasn’t the point. The point was that he hated the plant so much and, in a way that he couldn’t explain, he
needed to see it dead. And for Bella to suffer the loss of it.
It would serve Bella and her sickeningly loving family right, Conrad reasoned. He could conjure a snapshot of Bella’s daily home life in his mind.
“I love you, Bella. You are the perfect daughter and wonderful beyond measure.” That is what Bella’s sickening mother might say while covering her in kisses.
“But I love you more, Mother.” This is how Bella would probably respond.
“And I love all of you unconditionally. Group hug! And then we’ll eat some yummy tofu,” Bella’s stupid father would say and throw his arms open wide.
It was enough to make Conrad vomit. Which was why he was going to lop off the head of her stupid, ugly flower and watch it roll across the classroom floor.
Out of the corner of her eye, Piper caught sight of Conrad carefully folding a piece of paper, and then moments later lifting a paper airplane into the air. It was, of course, no common paper airplane. Having been designed by Conrad, it was more like a fighter jet. Piper watched as Conrad quietly but quickly took aim and launched it with great precision across the classroom.
And this is what happened—
The plane zipped past Smitty and surprised him. He jumped backward to avoid being hit by it and ended up knocking into Kimber.
Startled, Kimber grabbed hold of Smitty and delivered ten thousand volts of electricity into his arm.
“Yeaowwwww!” Smitty yowled with enough force to shatter a person’s eardrum, smoke rising from the singed hairs on his arm.
Startled, Professor Mumbleby dropped the book he was holding right on Violet’s head.
Thwack!
Piper stared in disbelief as Violet shrank to half of her normal size.
Because of her reduced state, so to speak, the fighter jet passed easily over Violet’s head. Next it veered past Daisy, course-corrected on Myrtle’s earlobe, and set a target straight for Ahmed and Nalen Mustafa.
As the jet approached the weather station, both Nalen and Ahmed reached out to snatch the plane from the air. Because they both lunged forward at exactly the same time and in precisely the same way, they collided in midair and sent their science project flying.