10 p.m.
Later that night.
After a lame ‘Welcome Back!’ reception with a dinner fit for a funeral, kids spent the rest of the night unpacking in their rooms.
Students keep the same dorm until they graduate, so Noah and I were roomies for life, and Penny was still right upstairs again.
Jordan bunked with us, too, because his alternative would’ve been rooming with Dexter Dunn, my very own personal bully.
Even though I hated him, Dexter’s kind of the reason I was at the school to begin with. He was my neighbour back at home and almost killed me once, which is actually what brought Headmaster Kepler to my house to invite me to the academy.
So I guess Dexter’s not all bad?
Penny hacked away at the small hole in our ceiling that Noah had made last year with a fireball burp. It was almost big enough for her to climb through now.
‘You sure you know what you’re doing?’ Noah asked.
Penny hung upside down through the hole. ‘Not even a little bit.’
‘Did any of you see Headmaster Kepler outside?’ I asked.
‘No,’ Jordan said. ‘He’s probably livin’ it up in Cancún right about now.’
‘Doubt it,’ Penny said. ‘He stepped down “due to health reasons”.’
‘Maybe that’s a good thing then,’ I said. ‘It means we can investigate the mystery of Fifteen without worrying about him catching us.’
The first class at Kepler Academy had only fourteen superpowered students. Everyone knew that. It was taught in history class.
Except it wasn’t true.
At the end of last year, we found a photo that showed fifteen students instead. The headmaster had it hidden away in his creepy cave of secrets in the forest.
A cave overflowing with fake articles about full-blown superheroes, some villain named the Reaper, and the end of the world.
There was even a weird police mugshot of the headmaster, like he was some kind of villain.
But he isn’t – at least, I don’t think he is.
Penny had taken pics of everything with her phone for evidence, but we still didn’t have any leads.
‘Did you ask your parents about Fifteen?’ I asked her.
‘Yeah, but they didn’t know anything,’ Penny said. ‘Which doesn’t surprise me.’
‘Unless their memories were wiped,’ Jordan said. ‘Kepler has people for that.’
‘That’s just something he says,’ Penny said. ‘I think we’d know if any of us had our brains wiped.’
‘But we wouldn’t know, because our brains would be scrubbed,’ Noah said.
‘Fine, then I’d know,’ Penny insisted.
They agreed to disagree, mostly because nobody wanted to argue all night since school started the next morning.
Everyone said goodnight and fell asleep pretty much right away.
Everyone except me.
I stared at shadows, afraid that plant zombies would steal my body in the middle of the night.
Some hero I was.
Time crawled as the moon inched across my window. Five hours I stared into the dark, until I heard a sputtering outside.
I froze.
It couldn’t have been a worm-eater, right?
They don’t sputter. Go-carts sputter. Garbage disposals sputter. Butts sputter.
I slipped out of bed and army-crawled to the window. Slowly, I slid it open.
In the street was an old Vespa scooter, engine sputtering, with the rider standing in front of it.
Was I dreaming?
Was there really a Vespa ninja outside?
The biker’s helmet turned towards the forest.
I looked, too, but the trees were too dark to see anything.
She hopped onto her scooter and zipped off in a hurry.
She saw something in the trees.
She must have.
And then I saw Dexter and Vic stumble out, dragging their feet like zombies.
This couldn’t be happening!
They stopped next to the statue of Brock. Vic put his hand to his mouth and loudly slurped something out of it.
Worms!
It was dark out there, but I could see worms falling out of the goth-wannabe’s mouth!
Suddenly Vic’s head snapped in my direction.
I ducked.
They’re not really worm-eaters. My eyes are lying to me because they hate me! This is all just a really bad dream!
The wet sound of chewing worms grew louder in my ears as I crawled back into bed and pulled the covers over my face.
C’mon, brain! Wake up already!
Penny’s chainsaw snore ripped through the hole in the ceiling, and I remembered the look on her face when she was taken by Abigail last year.
It wasn’t just me who was in danger. It was Penny. It was Noah and Jordan. It was the whole school.
Dexter and Vic slurped again.
That was it.
Operation Save the Day was in full swing.
I jumped out of bed and ran into the hallway, pounding on the walls, shouting at the top of my lungs, ‘Worm-eaters! Everybody wake up! There are worm-eaters outside!’
But nobody was waking up.
I didn’t know what else to do.
… and then I saw the fire alarm.