As a matter of fact, Tina was waiting for us. And under the circumstances she seemed relatively calm.
“I suppose Lien Hua told you about Mr. Talbert,” she said, running an emery board across a perfectly manicured nail. “By the way, those gray contacts look great on you.”
“How did Mr. Talbert die?” I asked, feeling nervous.
“The light above his desk fell on his head,” Tina told me.
I winced in horror. “What?” I wailed. “Oh, no! That’s terrible. How on earth did something like that happen?”
Tina shrugged. “Beats me,” she said with a laugh. “You know the architecture in these new buildings. It’s so shoddy!” Like she was trying to prove it, she leaned against Mr. Talbert’s office door, and it fell over with a huge bang. I looked at the hinges and saw that they had snapped in half.
“It was probably built in the sixties,” Lien Hua said with a casual smile. “All the doors at my house do the same thing.”
“They do?” I said flatly. That sounded weird to me.
“Yeah,” she said. “I think it’s because they’re made of aluminum instead of steel. Right, Tina?”
“Most likely,” she agreed.
Suddenly Mrs. Ellis, one of the secretaries in the office, yelled, “Is everything okay back there, sir?”
“Of course,” Tina called sweetly in a deep masculine voice, that didn’t sound like it could possibly have come out of her body. In fact, she sounded exactly like Mr. Talbert. I was stunned.
“How did you do that?” I squeaked.
“Tina has all gifts,” Lien Hua reminded me.
“It’s great fun,” Tina said with a laugh. “I used to make tons of money at summer camp doing impressions of the counselors.”
Suddenly, though, things weren’t so funny. I turned and saw that Mrs. Ellis had gotten up from her desk and was now making her way toward Mr. Talbert’s door.
“Oh, no!” I shrieked, pointing at her. “Look!”
“Oh, her?” said Tina, not batting an eyelash. I watched in amazement as she stuck out her emery board and pointed it at Mrs. Ellis. A green and black zigzag, like skinny lightning, shot out of the end of the emery board and zapped poor old Mrs. Ellis right between the eyes. She fell down and started twitching, as if she had been struck by lightning or eaten the cafeteria meat loaf or something.
“Mrs. Ellis!” I cried in horror, dropping to my knees. “Tina, what did you do to her?”
“Nothing really,” Tina told me, tossing her hair. “She’s just stunned. She’ll snap out of it—eventually. Really now, Jendra, I can’t have her parading into Mr. Talbert’s office—she’d find his body for sure.”
“Do you mean you haven’t told her he’s dead?”
“Of course not,” said Tina. “I haven’t told anybody. Except Lien Hua and Stephen, of course, because he’s filling in.”
“Stephen?”
“You know,” she said. “Dr. Murphy. The science teacher.”
Lien Hua informed me, “He is a fellow follower of the goddess gray-eyed. He’s almost as Athena-crazy as we are. It’s really cool.”
“So, is he in the office right now?” I wondered.
“No, not quite yet,” said Tina. “He’s got to wait until he finishes his Chem. II class at the high school. Besides, the office is still all messy with guts and stuff everywhere.”
“Guts?” I said. “I thought he was hit on the head.” I peeked around the doorway. The office looked pretty clean to me, and I didn’t see any sign of a body. Maybe Tina was blinding me with her psychic powers or something.
Before I could get a really good look, though, Tina grabbed me by the shirt and yanked me back through the door. “We have to clean up,” she said.
I was afraid that was going to be my job since I was low man on the totem pole, but, fortunately, Tina didn’t mention anything about that. She just handed me a small metal lunch box. It must have been really old because it was decorated with the original cast of Star Trek.
“What, exactly, is this?” I asked, raising an eyebrow at Mr. Spock, who returned the gesture.
“Sacred stuff,” Tina told me. “For the ceremony tonight. Guard it with your life.”
I was afraid to ask what ceremony that would be, but I did start to lift the lid to see what was inside. Tina practically screamed at me, “Don’t open it!!!”
“Okay,” I said, slowly backing up. “Okay. Sorrrry.”
“Oh, and Jendra,” said Tina as I started backing out of the office. “One more thing. Try to stay off your feet as much as possible. You’ll be dancing at the ceremony tonight.”
“Dancing?” I chirped.
“Yeah, you got the gift, remember?” Tina reminded me. “You haven’t used it yet, but don’t worry, it’s there. You won’t need to practice. It will be entirely out of your control.”
Lien Hua leaned over and informed me, without opening her mouth once, You’ll start dancing automatically whenever anybody says the word hungry.
“Hungry?” I said out loud, wrinkling my nose.
“Hungry,” Tina repeated. Then, all of a sudden, I started dancing. At first, it really scared me. I mean, I had absolutely no control over my feet. They just started flipping around, and I had no choice but to follow them.
“What am I doing?” I wailed in terror as I danced like a maniac.
“I’m not real sure,” said Lien Hua, biting her lips. “It looks like the Charleston. But, anyway, you’ll stop whenever anyone says the word turkey.”
Immediately my happy feet took a rest. “Turkey?” I repeated, staring at her. “Are you insane? You mean I start dancing whenever anyone happens to say hungry, but I can’t stop until somebody says the word turkey? That’s not fair.”
“Relax,” Tina said. “You’ll hardly even notice the difference. Besides, you won’t be doing any more dancing until the ceremony tonight.” She smiled playfully, “Unless I say . . . hungry!”
Right away I went into a strange version of the funky chicken. “Turkey!” I yelled helplessly at the top of my lungs. “Turkey! Turkey! Turkey!” But for some reason I kept on dancing. “Hey!” I hollered. “What?”
“It doesn’t work if you say it,” Lien Hua told me with a laugh. Then she added, as a pun, “You turkey.”
I stopped dancing and took a deep breath.
“Don’t worry, Jendra,” said Tina. “You’ll probably make it through the rest of the day with no problem.”
But I wasn’t so sure about that. I was positive that a lot of people were going to be hungry at lunch.