Chapter 3

Once she’d changed, Dorothy trudged after Jade into the brightly lit gymnasium. The room was abuzz with girls giggling and talking, which fortunately drowned out the high-pitched squeaks Dorothy’s shoes made on the shiny linoleum.

“So much for wearing something normal,” Dorothy grumbled, looking down at the sparkly tiger-striped jumpsuit she had found in her backpack. Her regular gym clothes had disappeared, replaced with the jumpsuit and a note that read, “Don’t say I never gave you anything. Love, Grandma.”

“I think it’s kind of cool,” Jade said.

“Really?” The outfit looked like something Dorothy had seen an aerobics instructor wear on a TV show called “Groovin’ with the Geezers.”

“Sure,” Jade said with a smirk. “You look…GRRRrrreat!”

Dorothy groaned.

Jade came to a sudden stop. “The Pompoms are at it again,” she said, nodding in the direction of two pretty girls in cheerleader outfits, each with a blond ponytail sticking out of the top of her head like a tree. One of them had dazzling white teeth and the other had shiny, lip-glossed lips. They were throwing a book over the head of a very tall girl with braces and thick glasses.

“Give me back my Space Fleet manual!” the tall girl pleaded, waving her skinny arms awkwardly above her head.

“No way, geek!” the lip gloss Pompom said, lobbing the book back to her grinning friend.

“As an official Federation Science Officer, I order you to return my manual!” the geek shouted desperately.

“Or what? You’re going to zap us with your photon torpedoes?” Both Pompoms laughed devilishly.

“Wait here,” Jade said. She crouched and approached the Pompoms, silently springing up, intercepting the book as it sailed through the air. Jade placed the manual into the geek’s shaking hands and strolled calmly back to Dorothy.

Wow. Nice move, Dorothy thought.

“You’re a good Earthling, Jade,” the geek called, holding the manual to her chest as she skittered away.

“And a dead one,” the Pompom giggled.

“Hold up,” the other girl said, grabbing her friend’s arm as she caught sight of Dorothy. There was something in how she smacked her shiny lips together that made Dorothy think of hungry lions during feeding time at the zoo. “Alexandra is going to flip out when she sees this!”

The other Pompom bared her dazzling, white teeth. “Hey, Alex!” she shouted to a group of girls with the same treetop hairdos. They were all blond and beautiful and impossible to tell apart.

“Lovely,” Jade groaned. “Whatever happens, just stay behind me, okay, Dorothy?”

Dorothy’s hands began to tremble and her tongue felt like it had turned into cotton. From over Jade’s head, she watched a gorgeous girl emerge from the group of Pompoms, toss a silky blond ponytail over her shoulder, and walk in their direction. The tree-haired girls followed like a pack of obedient puppy dogs.

“You called?” the gorgeous girl said while casually zipping up a pink velour jacket.

Jade pushed up her sleeves to reveal slender arms covered with several menacing temporary tattoos. “Just back off, Alex.”

The lip gloss Pompom pointed at Dorothy. “Check out Jade’s new freak!”

Dorothy cowered behind her petite friend, but Alex had already targeted her with ice blue, laser beam eyes.

“Her name is Dorothy, and she is not a freak,” Jade snarled.

They’re going to eat us alive, Dorothy thought, surveying the group of girls that surrounded them.

Dorothy forced herself to smile and stepped out from behind Jade. She wiped her sweaty hand on her outfit and presented it to Alex. “Um, hi! Nice to meet you.”

Alex gasped as she got the full effect of Dorothy’s gym outfit. “What are you wearing? Are those…sequins?”

Dorothy’s courage shrank like a wool sweater in the dryer. She withdrew her hand and opened her mouth to say something, but nothing came out. She was wearing sequins. The tiger-striped outfit was covered in them.

Alex took several steps backward, staring at Dorothy as if she might catch a terrible sequin disease if she stood too close.

One of the tree-haired Pompoms tittered and said, “Did your crazy granny dress you?”

Dorothy bit her bottom lip and shrugged. Grandma Sally strikes again.

“Are you wearing her underpants, too?” another girl teased. The Pompoms roared with laughter, except for Alex, who raised a manicured hand to cover her face. Dorothy tugged self-consciously at the back of her sparkly jumpsuit.

“You can’t make fun of her!” Jade hissed. “Not while you’re wearing those stupid ponytails. What are they supposed to be, anyway? Nuclear mushroom clouds for some awareness project?”

“Nuh-uh, Jade,” one of the girls said. “Bombs Are a Bummer Day isn’t until next week!”

“Right,” agreed another Pompom, fluffing the top of her ponytail. “These are whale spouts. They remind everyone of how adorable whales are.”

“Adorable?” Jade exclaimed. “What ever happened to saving the whales?”

A whistle blew, and all the girls turned to see a muscular woman with a buzz cut and camouflage shorts marching their way. “Having a problem, are we?” the gym teacher said, her single black eyebrow making a V in the middle of her forehead.

“Great,” Jade mumbled. “Ms. Nailer.”

Phew! We’re saved! Dorothy thought.

“Why don’t we resolve this problem the sportsmanlike way, shall we?” the gym teacher said, a gleam in her dark, beady eyes.

“Dodgeball!” the Pompoms cheered.

Not dodgeball, Dorothy thought. Why can’t it be something I’m good at, like beanbag toss or the parachute game?

“How about you give us an automatic A if we send the new girl to the nurse’s office,” the lip gloss Pompom said cheerily.

“You will get yourself into a heap of trouble with that kind of talk, missy,” Ms. Nailer said to lip gloss, smiling at Dorothy with yellow, sharp-looking teeth. “But, in about five seconds this new recruit will see that I demand my soldiers give me an aggressive, 110 stinging percent.”

Ms. Nailer gave one of the Pompoms the first pick, and teams ended up with Pompoms on one side and everybody else on the other. Ms. Nailer arranged red rubber balls down the center of the basketball court as Dorothy surveyed the collection of misfits on her side of the line. Besides Dorothy and Jade, there was a big girl with rosy cheeks who giggled like a nervous hyena; a short, hyperactive girl who jumped around like there were fire ants colonizing in her gym socks; a girl with chestnut skin and long jet-black hair that fell into her eyes, staring at the floor; and the tall Star Fleet geek, who still clutched her manual like a security blanket.

“We’re dead,” Dorothy whispered to Jade.

“Speak for yourself,” Jade said, crouching into a ready stance.

Ms. Nailer blew her whistle, launching the Pompoms into attack mode.

“Nobody touch the new girl!” the lip gloss Pompom yelled as she and her teammates rushed to the line of balls. Dorothy couldn’t believe her ears. Did the Pompoms feel bad for her after all? The girl scampered back to Alex and handed her a ball saying, “Dorothy is all yours.” Dorothy gulped and skittered to the back of the court.

“Pssst…You’re going down, Thunder Thighs,” a Pompom growled lowly as she pitched her ball at the big girl’s feet. The girl sprang into the air, but instead of jumping over the ball, she landed on top of it. Her arms flailed, and she shuffled her feet backward as the ball whisked her right into the Pompoms’ court. Dorothy was astounded by the girl’s raw power as she unwittingly steamrolled the Pompom who had thrown the ball. Like a bulldozer, she uprooted three other tree-haired Pompoms before she finally crashed into a support beam at the far end of the gym.

“Oh, gosh! My bad! My bad!” the girl apologized, and went into a fit of nervous giggles.

“Off the floor, Ruth,” Ms. Nailer ordered.

The Pompoms regrouped, and one of them yelled, “The geek is next!” A ball rocketed toward the Star Fleet nerd.

“That’s enough,” Ms. Nailer said, with her lips curled into a hint of a smirk.

Dorothy held her breath, but to her surprise the tall girl didn’t flinch. Calmly, she took a calculated step to the right and extended her manual to the left. The ball smashed into the book and returned to the Pompom who had just thrown it like a heat-seeking missile.

The ball smacked the top of the Pompom’s head, smashing her whale spout hairdo. “No fair, Lizzy!” she shrieked.

“Brains over brawn,” Lizzy said, pushing her eyeglasses up her nose in satisfaction.

“Heads up!” Ms. Nailer shouted near Alexandra just as Jade let her ball fly. Alex twirled out of the way with the grace of a dancer and then tossed her ball in a pretty arc toward Jade. Jade somersaulted forward, landed in a crouching stance, and then vanished like smoke between Lizzy and the hyperactive girl.

The energetic girl clapped her hands like a windup monkey. “Wow, that was supercool!” she said. “First Alex was like…” she spun in a circle, “and then Jade was like…” the girl launched herself into a flying somersault, and landed with an “oof!” on her back.

“Dinah’s down!” Ms. Nailer yelled. Dinah struggled to pull air into her lungs as the Pompoms pummeled her with every ball they had.

“Stop it! Stop it now!” Jade yelled. “Are you okay, Dinah?” she said, helping the twitching girl to her feet.

“Oh, yeah. Yeah, totally,” Dinah wheezed, shaking herself off. “Hey, did you see me flip? First I was like…”

Ms. Nailer blew her whistle. “You’re out, Dinah.”

Dinah skipped happily off the floor, reminding Dorothy of her seven-year-old sister.

I hope Sam’s having a better day than I am, Dorothy thought as she looked around for somewhere safe to hide.

The shy, dark-haired girl was standing alone in the back corner of the gym floor. She was so quiet and still that she almost disappeared into her surroundings.

The Pompoms will never find me there, Dorothy thought as she made her way over to the girl.

The shy girl peeked out through the curtains of black hair that framed her face. “What is you doing?” she whispered in a heavy Spanish accent.

“Oh, nothing,” Dorothy said innocently as she tip-toed behind the girl.

“Dorothy’s behind Juana!” a Pompom shouted, zinging a ball toward the dark-haired girl.

With the reflexes of a panther, Juana snatched the ball out of the air. She swiveled and pressed the ball firmly into Dorothy’s sequined chest. “Leesten, Dorty. You needs to be brave.”

Dorothy gulped. “Brave?”

“Trust me. Dey will picks on you until you show your…strongness, no?”

Dorothy sighed and accepted the ball reluctantly. Juana was right. Alex and the Pompoms weren’t going to stop hunting her—unless she found a way to make them stop.

Dorothy scanned the playing floor. Jade’s pace had slowed to a jog as she launched balls at Alex like a tennis ball machine. Alex leapt and spun gracefully out of the way of Jade’s attacks.

If Jade is so tired, why doesn’t she pass some balls to her teammates? Dorothy wondered.

When Jade finally ran out of ammo, Alex bent over to pick up a ball of her own.

Juana gave Dorothy a thumbs-up. Now or never, Dorothy thought, her heart thundering in her chest. She took aim at Alex, closed her eyes, and threw the ball with all her strength.

Dorothy heard cheering, shouting, and laughter. She opened her eyes…just in time to take a face full of hard rubber ball. Her face stung, her ears buzzed, and she tasted something like pennies in her mouth. She reached up to touch her throbbing nose and felt something wet. Her head swam. She felt her knees buckle and the world suddenly went black.