I was still pretty confused over what happened with Trevor when I spotted Winnie McKinney in the hall. She was walking with Gerald Forster.
Naturally, I felt it was my duty to rescue her.
“Hey, Winnie!” I said with as much enthusiasm as I could fake. “Gerald,” I murmured.
Winnie threw me a courtesy glance.
“Do you need something?” she asked. She looked like she was warm enough in her pink sweater and fuzzy white boots, but her voice had an unmistakable chill.
“Nope. Just thought I’d come over and see what’s up. Sooooo . . .” My eyes shot to Gerald and my voice deepened to tough-guy level. “What’s up?”
“G-Force said he’d help me get things ready for the winter formal,” Winnie said. “Someone’s got to set up the lights and the speakers, and, well, he’s kind of a genius with electronics.”
Gerald’s grin was so cheesy, it almost made me lactose intolerant.
“Of course, I thought about asking you, Howard, but then I remembered what you said. You know — that formals are stupid. Isn’t that what you said?”
“Ummmmm,” I ummed.
“So, obviously, anyone who wanted to go to the formal would have to be an idiot, right? And I couldn’t ask you to waste your time on a bunch of idiots.”
Winnie was acting weird. She didn’t really sound angry, it was more like she was . . . hurt. What had I done? Quickly, I shifted to Plan B: continuous babbling.
“Well, you see, the thing is, when I said that, I . . .”
Plan B was getting me nowhere. It didn’t matter, though, because at that very instant, Joni Jackson, a girl with a jet-black ponytail and four earrings in each ear, came sprinting down the hall. She was screaming, “Napkins! We have napkins!”
And she’d brought proof. In her grip was a small purple paper square that she waved like a flag on the Fourth of July. I turned my attention back to Winnie. She was gone. Looking around, I saw a huddle of about ten or so girls who’d gathered to celebrate the glorious arrival of something you wipe your mouth with.
I was dumbfounded. Wendell Mullins stopped and stood next to me.
“Weird, huh?” he said.
“Yeah,” I answered. “What’s going on?”
“Prombies,” he said.
“What?”
“They’re prombies. It happened to my sister a couple of years ago just before the senior prom. One day she was just a regular person, the next day all she cared about was dresses and shoes and long, sparkly streamers. It’s the prom. It makes them lose all will of their own.”
“But this is middle school,” I said. “We don’t even have a prom!”
Gerald shrugged.
“Proms. Formals. Socials. Weddings. They’re all the same. If you’ve got fruit punch and a guestbook, you’re gonna have prombies.”
I looked at Wendell. He was a scrawny kid, a full head shorter than me, but his voice was as deep as a bullfrog’s. So when he told you something, you tended to believe it — mainly because he sounded like a TV newsman.
But Prombies? Nah . . . Not at our school. I knew these people. Then I saw the mob in the middle of the hall squeezing closer together, lured to the glorious napkin. And, just like that, I knew.
They were feeding! They were feeding on fanciness!
It all made sense now — the glazed eyes, the pack mentality, the bizarre hostility toward us “normals.” I’d seen enough monster movies to recognize the symptoms. Wendell was right!
“It’s an infestation!” I shrieked. “We’ve got to warn Winnie!”
I started to move, but Wendell grabbed my arm. He pointed to the crowd.
There was Winnie McKinney. She was performing a strange ritual that involved holding her hair in a twisted ball on top of her head. Apparently, she could not put it down again until she’d answered a series of questions about what earrings she’d be wearing. I felt my knees go weak.
Wendell put a hand on my shoulder.
“Too late,” he said. “She’s one of them now.”