“Trey showed me the key before,” I explain to Quinn. “It’s to his dorm room—to your dorm room.”
“I don’t have a dorm room,” she says. “Just a regular bedroom in our regular house. Though I wouldn’t mind having a dorm room right now. If I went to school with Bella, I wouldn’t have to see you!”
“Listen, Quinn,” I say sternly. “We don’t have time to go over and over and over this. You are Trey now. You have a dorm room. And I’m willing to bet that dorm room has a computer in it. So if we go there, we can log on, call Uncle Max, and get everything fixed.”
“All right,” she says.
“All right?”
“Sure. Lead the way.”
“Hang on.” I turn in a circle again, to make the glittering map reappear. But the sidewalk stays a plain, ordinary sidewalk.
“Some genie you are,” Quinn says.
“Like you could do any better if you were a genie.”
“I totally could,” she says. “But I wouldn’t want to be one.”
I don’t want to, either, but I can’t get into all that. “I guess we can go around to every building and test the doors. But that’ll take a long time.”
“Ugh, I’m SO TIRED,” Quinn says. She yawns for dramatic effect. But she does look a bit more glassy-eyed than usual. “I have a better idea—a faster idea. Let’s ask someone.”
She steps out from behind the building and starts walking. “I don’t know,” I say, hanging back.
“Your plan takes too long. You said that yourself. Plus, it looks like it’s going to rain, and I don’t want to get my hair wet as we race from building to building.”
Not that I care about Quinn’s hair, but she’s right about my way taking too long. I don’t want to be running around outside in a thunderstorm. “Okay,” I agree. “We’ll find someone to ask. But I think there should be a few rules—no asking adults. You don’t want the wrong teacher wondering what you’re doing here visiting on a Saturday instead of a Sunday, or thinking we’re going to steal from Trey. Or thinking—”
“Stop worrying so much.”
“Quinn, I’m serious. We could be sent to the police.”
“Fine, I’ll ask a kid.”
“A kid,” I repeat. “But a nice-looking one.”
Quinn presses forward, toward Food Hall. No surprise that that’s where she figures we’ll find the right kid to ask. Inside there’s a short hallway that opens up into a MASSIVE dining hall. A digital sign proclaims, “Today’s Specials: Three-Cheese Lasagna! Make Your Own Tacos! Full Salad Bar! Do-It-Yourself Ice-Cream Sundaes!”
The tables are empty. Farther down a few adults are setting up food stations for whenever the next meal is. I see taco shells being lined up, and a salad bar with all the fixings still covered in plastic. There’s a freezer section and I don’t have to peek to know that if you lifted the lid, you’d find ice cream in every flavor.
“They really do have all my faves,” Quinn says. “Let’s eat!”
I shake my head. “We can’t take food before it’s mealtime,” I tell her. “That’s asking for trouble.”
“So just levitate the food over to us, genie.”
“The Food Hall workers would notice levitating food for sure,” I say. “Besides, I don’t know how to make my powers come out like that.”
Quinn leans against the wall and closes her eyes for a few seconds. I can’t tell if she doesn’t want to look at me anymore, or if she’s just thinking.
She opens them again. “You know you can send people flying with a sneeze,” she says. I nod. “So if one of them sees us and gets angry, you can just give ’em one of those supersonic sneezes, and we’ll run out.”
“I can’t just sneeze on command.”
Quinn reaches out and lightly runs a finger above my upper lip, just under my nose. Ahh Ahh Ahh . . . She pulls it away just before the sneeze comes out. “If we need a sneeze, we’ll make it happen,” she says. “Come on.”
I glance across the room. The thing is, the lasagna does smell delicious. From a distance it looks delicious, too. And when I look back at Quinn, she seems a little pale. Maybe food would be a good idea for us both.
“Okay, fine. I’ll go—alone.” I can’t risk Quinn going out there, too. What if the tornado sneeze sends her flying this time? “If I need to sneeze, I’ll tickle my own nose.”
“So let me tell you what I want . . .”
I’m not really listening because I’m looking at the Food Hall workers, two women and one man bent over platters. And I’m looking at all the places to hide behind along the way—I can run and then duck under a table. I can go a little farther and duck under another. And then crouch by the wall. And then hide behind the freezer.
It’s good to have the Sneeze Plan as Plan B. But Plan A is to not get caught at all.
“GO!” Quinn says. She pushes me out. My heart is pounding as I dart to a table and crouch down, dart and crouch down, dart and crouch, until I’ve crossed the room and there’s nothing left to do besides get the food. I have no idea what Quinn said she wanted, but it doesn’t matter because tacos are the only thing I can carry back.
The three workers have gone into a back room, probably to get more supplies. Now’s my chance. I run out and grab two taco shells. But I accidentally knock a third one, and the rest of them fall like dominos to the floor.
“Did you hear that?” one of the women says.
“Hear what?”
The back door is pushed open. I dive down, behind a juice cart. One of the women is walking closer. And closer. I’m tickling my nose and forcing sneezes out: Achoo! Achoo! Achoo!
They’re so weak, they’d hardly budge a fleck of dust. It seems the genie magic only works about half the time I want it to.
“Hank, you set the shells up wrong and they’ve fallen over again!” the woman calls.
She bends down to pick them up. I say a silent apology in my head to Hank, and run back to Quinn—run and crouch, run and crouch, run and crouch. She’s been watching from the doorway this whole time, so she knows about the close call. But if she’s concerned about the near miss, you can’t tell. “Zack, you didn’t get anything!” she complains.
“I got taco shells,” I say, and I hold the crushed remains out toward her.
“No, thanks, I’ll go.”
A fourth adult is at the food stations now.
“Uh-uh, no way, it’s not safe,” I say. “What happened was a sign that we shouldn’t be in here.”
“More like a sign of how clumsy you are,” she said.
Behind us the front door flies open and two kids walk in. Shaggy and Buzz Cut.
“Kids to ask!” Quinn exclaims.
I grab her arm and pull her back. “Not those kids.”
“Can you believe that twerp?” Shaggy says. “I can’t believe we have kitchen duty all week now. When I get my hands on Trey’s little neck. . . .”
Quinn elbows me. “They know Trey!”
“We’ll just make sure he’s quiet next time,” Shaggy says.
“Hey!” Quinn calls out.
“Stop it,” I hiss. “They’re Reggs—they hate Trey.”
“They still might know where he lives,” she says. She steps forward, toward them. “You guys know Trey? Do you know where he lives?”
“Hold up,” Buzz says. “You mean to tell me you’re here for the twerp?”
I step up behind Quinn and say as softly as I can, “We’ve got to get out of here. You’ve got to trust me.”
“Please excuse my brother. He doesn’t know how to act around people because he doesn’t have any friends.”
“Your brother?” Buzz asks, sputtering out a laugh.
“I know. We don’t look alike. I was just telling him I thought he was switched at birth.”
“Look, she’s talking to herself,” Shaggy says.
“Weirdo,” Buzz says. “Look at her, even her hair is weird.”
Quinn reaches up and pats the side of her head with hair hanging down loosely over her shoulder. “My friend just didn’t finish braiding it, that’s all,” she says defensively. “And don’t you see him?”
“Of course I see him. Helloooo, phantom brother.” Buzz waves a hand toward the space on the left side of Quinn. But I’m standing on her right side.
Holy smokes! I’m invisible!
The real kind of invisible. Not the fake kind I feel most days at Pinemont Elementary.
“They can’t see me,” I tell Quinn, speaking softly even though I’m fairly certain they can’t hear me, either. “And, Quinn, you gotta trust me when I tell you, they’re not good guys. Trey’s not the best guy himself, but he knows something about them—something bad.”
“Trey knows something bad about them?” Quinn asks softly.
“What did you say?” Buzz asks.
“Nothing,” she says quickly.
Shaggy knocks Buzz in the side. “We could get points for this.” Buzz nods, and Shaggy takes a step toward the double doors. “Come with us,” he tells Quinn. “We’ll take you to Trey’s dorm. It’s in Twendel One.”
Twendel One. I’ve heard that name before. “That’s where Trey said Heddle’s office is,” I say. “The head of school.”
Quinn takes a step back. “No, thanks. On second thought, I don’t need to find Trey. I don’t need your help at all.”
“She’s onto us,” Shaggy says.
“Get her!”