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“HOW ARE WE SUPPOSED to find out if one of the Jenkins clones is here or not?” Pris asked Ham under her breath. They were seated in first hour, waiting for the tardy bell to ring. Marrisa had taken to dropping Pris off early after she had found out Ham was usually there by seven.
“We can just look around, silly,” Ham replied nonchalantly. “This is America, you know. We can look around if we want.”
“And if the man with the gun decides he might want to keep us quiet, he just might shoot us, even in America,” Pris countered.
“Yeah, there is that,” Ham allowed.
The bell rang, and they were headed for their first period. Most of the other students were already in their classrooms, as Priscilla had yet to obtain the coveted faster chair. As they rounded the corner in the hall to go to their science class, Butch stepped out in front of them from behind the end of a row of lockers. His usually surly expression was slack this time, and he simply stared at them for 20 seconds.
Ham finally had enough and said, “Butch, either do something stupid or get out of the way.”
Butch took one step backward, without breaking eye contact. He reached toward the wall, and put his left hand on the doorknob of the janitor’s closet.
“It’s a trap,” Ham yelled. “Pris, back up, now!”
He commanded his chair forward, heedless the danger which might befall him. Butch grabbed his chair and manhandled it into the closet before quickly closing the door. The closet was narrow enough Ham couldn’t turn his chair around, and it was dark. Groping for the light switch he figured must be next to the doorknob, his fingers brushed the cover plate. As he reached again, someone grabbed him from in front, and clamped a hand over his mouth and nose.
Instantly, his right hand closed into a fist and he lashed out at whoever was holding him, with unexpected results. Whoever was holding him had not anticipated being punched by a thirteen-year-old boy in a wheelchair. They had especially not been expecting this boy to be telekinetic. When his fist made contact, there was a momentary resistance like punching a pillow; then there was nothing. The hand covering his mouth and nose was gone.
Gasping for breath, he punched the air over his head in a backward motion, thinking about the door bursting open; and it did. The knob rebounded off the locker next to the closet, and Ham was rolling backward into the hall. Glancing around, he spotted Priscilla being pushed down the hall toward the rear exit by a man and a woman, neither of whom he had ever seen.
“Hey, stop,” he yelled as he turned his chair and gave pursuit.
The woman looked back before redoubling her effort to push the chair faster. But Priscilla’s slow chair was now to her benefit. The gearing could be disengaged for pushing if one knew how, but apparently, these two did not. The gear drive in her chair complained loudly as the pair tried to move it faster toward the exit. Ham was gaining on them, and he was frantic with fear. What were they going to do with Pris? he thought in almost blind panic.
“Help,” he screamed at the top of his lungs. “Help me.”
And then he remembered what the police officer in the seventh grade had told him if there was ever anyone trying to abduct or harm him; yell fire.
“Fire,” he screamed, “Fire, fire, fire,” he repeated. A separate part of his mind told him he sounded like a captain in charge of a firing squad, but he ignored it.
Closing to within ten feet of where the couple had the door open, Ham could see a dark green service van outside with a driver and another large, muscular man standing beside the open sliding door. Still yelling, Ham released his hold on the joystick of his chair and thrust his clenched fist in the direction of the man’s back, even though he was still eight feet away.
Immediately, the man arched his back as if he’d been punched in the kidney, grunting in pain and grabbing his lower back with both hands. The woman whirled on Ham, flying at his face. Her hands were extended, fingers hooked into claws, and a harsh growl emanated from deep in her throat.
Ham punched at her hands as he caught a glimpse of the man outside lunging for the door. When his fist contacted her wrist, the woman vanished. The man outside skidded to a halt, eyes as large as the orbits would allow. Spinning, he leapt and dove into the open van door screaming, “Go, go!”
The driver spun the tires as he floored the gas pedal and the van hesitated for a moment, seeking traction. The man inside had seen his partner vanish, and suddenly his aching back was of little importance. He charged through the double-glass doors, striking the right one hard enough to crack the tempered glass.
In three leaping strides he dove into the van just as it rocketed away down the service lane behind the school. It didn’t slow as it reached the street, but slewed left as the driver cranked the wheel over, trying to turn into the thoroughfare. The two inside tires left the pavement, and the large, top-heavy vehicle precariously wobbled down the road for 30 feet. Righting itself, it fell back onto all four tires and swayed side-to-side as it sped away.
Ham was immediately at Pris’ side, calling her name. “Are you okay? Did they hurt you? Look at me. Say something, Pris,” he rapid-fired questions and demands.
“If you’ll shut up for a second, I will,” she replied, laughing.
“What could possibly be funny about this?” he bellowed.
“You saved me,” she smiled. “You really saved me,” she said again. “And, did you make that woman disappear?”
The question brought them both up short. Students were piling into the hallways, and Ham worried one or more of them had witnessed the woman vanishing. That would be really hard to explain. But all the students and teachers had apparently seen was the man charging out the door and the van careening away. One older male student had run out the door behind it. He came back in now, using his cell phone.
“This is Adam Banicker, I’m a senior at Chickasha West,” he said. “I’m a Citizen’s Corp VIPS cadet, and I just witnessed an attempted kidnapping. I have a vehicle description and partial license plate.” Adam continued to walk toward the front of the school, and the rest was unclear. Pris recognized him as the tall young man who had held the door for her the first day of class.
Pris looked at Ham with unfettered adoration in her eyes, immediately embarrassing him. “Aw, come on, Pris. Make a snide remark, be mean if you have to, but don’t look at me like that; I don’t know how to respond,” he groused.
She only laughed out loud before directing her chair as close to him as possible. Speaking softly, she said, “You’ll just have to get used to it, bucko. If I could kiss you, I would.” Blowing softly on the tube, she turned her chair toward the front of the school. “We need to talk to Frank, right now,” she called.