Late February.
The rest of the month was awful.
Millie and the Braver Ravers hated me – no surprise there.
Arnold wouldn’t stop adding to my list of chores for him – one of which was catching up on Dexter’s homework that he had failed to turn in first semester. I was currently working on his report about the history of the Seven Keys.
I was in the library, at a table covered in books, when Noah and Penny showed up.
‘Where’s Jordan?’ I asked.
‘It’s over ten degrees outside,’ Penny said. ‘So he’s tanning in the courtyard.’
‘But … he’s invisible,’ I said.
‘I know, right?’ Penny sighed.
‘Dude, take a break,’ Noah said. ‘Come and eat lunch with us.’
I pulled out a Pop-Tart and some juice. ‘I’m good.’
‘Why are you doing this?’ Penny asked, fidgeting absently with the open books that surrounded me. ‘Why are you letting them push you around?’
‘Because my secret might make a lot of kids mad,’ I said. ‘Because I deserve it for lying and cheating? Because I’m a bad friend? Because I won’t remember any of this once my mind gets wiped anyway? I don’t know, pick one.’
‘I don’t think anyone’ll even care that you don’t have a power,’ Noah said. ‘It’s not like you faked saving the school last year. That was real.’
Penny suddenly picked up one of the books, studying it carefully. ‘Wait, I thought you were doing Dexter’s homework,’ she said, confused. ‘Did you reopen the case of Fifteen without us?’
The case of Fifteen?
The mystery kid from orientation day?
What’s that got to do with—?
Penny slid the open book in front of me.
There was a picture of Richard Kepler and his wife, Mary, on their wedding day. Richard was one of the original Seven Keys, but I didn’t see how that connected with Fifteen.
‘What’re you talking about?’ I said.
Penny took my pen and drew on the picture, giving Mary a Bride of Frankenstein beehive, and my jaw dropped.
‘What the what?’ I whispered. ‘Kepler’s brother and his wife … They’re Fifteen’s parents? That means he’s also Headmaster Kepler’s nephew! Then Fifteen was a descendant, so why wasn’t he in the yearbooks?’
‘Are they still around? Maybe we can just call them and ask,’ Penny said, holding up her phone.
I skimmed the page. ‘No, it says they disappeared a month after the school opened.’
‘Oh, I didn’t know that,’ Penny said.
‘Me neither,’ Noah said. ‘They don’t teach us what happened to the Seven Keys after the academy opened. Everything we know about them is from before that.’
‘Maybe he disappeared like his parents?’ I said, racking my brain for the answer.
‘Maybe he just never got a power,’ Penny said.
‘Guh!’ I grunted. ‘I wish the Kepler Cave wasn’t caved in! I bet all the answers are down there!’
Penny set her phone on the table, and the universe slapped me across the face.
How could I have been so stupid?
‘The Kepler Cave’s been in Penny’s pocket the whole time!’ I said, snatching her phone off the table. ‘All we need to do is print those pictures and piece them together like a giant puzzle!’
‘I can print these here!’ Penny said.
‘No! If this is some kind of cover-up, then we need to do it secretly so nobody knows. We need to print them online.’
‘Are we reopening this case?’ Noah asked.
‘Maybe,’ I said, trying not to get my hopes up. ‘I just wanna know who this kid is now.’
Fifteen was probably a nobody.
I almost didn’t care.
But at least it would take my mind off everything else.