Avalon High (15 page)

I spun around just in time to see Mr. Morton turning the corner toward the guidance counselor’s office, one hand protectively hovering over the center of a slender woman’s back. It was hard to tell from behind, but it looked just like Will’s mom.

When I heard Mr. Morton’s clipped, British tones saying, “This way, Mrs. Wagner,” I knew it
was
Will’s stepmom.

What on earth was Mr. Morton doing back at school? Shouldn’t he have been on a plane to Tahiti?

And why was he with Mrs. Wagner, of all people?

This, I knew, could only mean trouble.

“I’ll see you later,” I said to Jennifer, who’d continued
down the hallway, oblivious to what was going on behind us.

“Oh,” she said, glancing back at me over her shoulder. “Uh, sure.”

I whirled around and ran after Mr. Morton, who was holding open the clear glass door to the counseling office for Mrs. Wagner.

“This way,” he was saying. “I’ll just see if the conference room is free—”

“Mr. Morton,” I said, barging in behind them.

Mrs. Wagner turned and blinked at me. “Oh,” she said. Amazingly, in spite of the dozens of people she had to have met the night of Will’s party, she seemed to recognize me. “Hello, again. I’m afraid I forgot your name.”

“Ellie Harrison,” I said quickly. “Mr. Morton, can I just have a quick word with you out in the hallway here?”

“No, Miss Harrison,” Mr. Morton said firmly. “I’m afraid you may not. As you can see, I am quite busy with Mrs. Wagner, here. Mrs. Wagner, if you’ll just come in here and have a seat, I’m sure Mrs. Klopper”—the guidance office receptionist rose from behind her desk obediently—“will find you some coffee while we wait for your stepson to arrive.”

“Wait.” I stared at Mr. Morton, who was making not very subtle
go-away
gestures at me behind Mrs. Wagner’s back. “You’re meeting with Will
and
Mrs. Wagner?”

“Yes, I am, Miss Harrison, if that’s quite all right with you. We have some important things to make clear to
Will. Don’t you have a class you need to be getting to right now?”

Important things to make clear to Will
? No way was I going to miss this. I sank down onto one of the blue couches in the outer office, picked up a copy of
National Geographic
, and said, “Actually, I have a meeting right now with my counselor.”

Mrs. Klopper, returning from the coffeemaker with two cups, looked at me curiously. “I don’t have you on the schedule,” she said. “And Ms. Enright stepped out.”

“I need some guidance,” I said, trying to look upset. “About something personal. It’s an emergency.”

Mrs. Klopper’s expression turned into one of concern. “Well, I’ll see if I can find someone to speak with you, dear.” She handed Mr. Morton the cups of coffee and hurried back to her desk to see if there was a counselor on duty who could speak to me.

While she was on the phone, Mr. Morton whispered to me, “I wouldn’t be doing this at all if you hadn’t guilted me into it. The least you could do is not make it harder for everyone.”

“How am I making it harder for everyone?” I started to whisper back.

But at that moment, Will himself appeared in the doorway, holding an office pass and looking quizzical.

“Someone wanted to see me?” he asked, his voice trailing off as he noticed his stepmother through the glass walls of the conference room. “Jean? Mr. Morton? What’s this all about?”

“Nothing to be overly concerned about, young man,” Mr. Morton said, in what had to be the biggest understatement of the year. “Come in here, will you? I just wanted to clear a few things up between you and your, um, Mrs. Wagner.”

Will moved slowly past my couch, toward the open conference room door. The eyebrow he lifted at me as he walked by said it all:
What is going on?

I don’t know
, I mouthed at him, from behind the pages of the magazine I held up to shield my face from Mr. Morton’s view. Because I really didn’t know. At least, not what Will’s stepmom could have to do with any of it.

Will grinned, a little lopsidedly, at me, then went into the conference room. Mr. Morton, with a final warning glance in my direction, shut the door. He didn’t bother lowering the blinds in the room, so I saw him pull out a chair for Will to sit in, and then take a seat himself. Then, his hands folded on the tabletop, Mr. Morton began to speak.

I couldn’t hear a word. I could only see the look on Mrs. Wagner’s face (I couldn’t see Will’s, since he was sitting with his back to me). She went from looking politely alert to genuinely puzzled to defensive in the space of two minutes.

What on earth could he be saying to her?

“Um,” Mrs. Klopper said, dragging my attention away from the scene unfolding behind the glass. “Ellie, is it? I’m afraid no one can see you at the moment, but Ms. Enright is on her way back and should be here in fif
teen minutes. You can wait that long, can’t you?”

“Sure,” I said, holding up the magazine and pretending to be engrossed in it. But really I was trying to read Mr. Morton’s lips. Why had I taken all those useless classes like bio and German when I should have been taking lipreading?

I didn’t need to have taken lipreading to interpret what I saw next. And that was Mrs. Wagner suddenly throw a hand up to her mouth in shock over something Mr. Morton said. Then she promptly burst into tears. The next thing I knew, she was nodding and stretching out a hand toward Will.

Will, for his part, had leaped away from his stepmother’s hand, getting up from his chair and backing away from the table. I still couldn’t see his face, but I could see that he was shaking his head.

What was happening? Had Mr. Morton just told Will he was the reincarnation of King Arthur? But that shouldn’t have made Will jump up, shaking his head. It should have made him laugh, because it was so ridiculous. What had Mr. Morton told him that could have made Will so upset and his stepmother cry?

“You’re not supposed to be here!”

Mrs. Klopper’s panicked tone was the only thing that caused me to drag my gaze away from the scene unfolding behind the glass walls. And only because I thought she was talking to me.

She wasn’t. She was talking to the guy who, without my having heard him, had entered the guidance office,
and was standing there staring at the trio in the conference room, as if no one else in the building existed.

“Marco,” I said, jumping up from the couch.

But he didn’t hear me. He was breathing hard, his car keys dangling from one hand, as he stared at his mother and stepbrother, his dark eyes filled with something I didn’t like. I didn’t know what it was, exactly. But I knew it wasn’t good.

“You know you’re not supposed to set foot on school grounds, Marco,” Mrs. Klopper was saying, in a voice that shook with fear as she lifted the receiver on her office phone and started punching buttons. “Not after what happened last time. I’m calling the police. You had better leave now.”

But Marco didn’t leave. Instead, he started toward the door to the conference room.

I don’t know what made me do it. I am not, ordinarily, a very brave sort of person…except maybe with snakes. There was nothing remotely snakelike about Marco at that particular moment. Or rather, he was like a snake, but not the half-drowned kind you find curled up in the pool filter; more like the very much alive kind you find coiled at your feet, ready to strike, with poisonous fangs.

But that didn’t stop me from insinuating myself between Marco and the conference room door…just as Mr. Morton looked up and noticed Marco’s presence for the first time.

“Marco,” I said, finding that, oddly, I was breathing
as hard as he was. “Hey. How’s it going?”

He didn’t even look down at me. His gaze was riveted on Will. “Ellie. Get out of my way.”

“I don’t think you’re supposed to be here,” I said, throwing an anxious glance over my shoulder. Mrs. Wagner, noticing Marco through her tears, was attempting to dry them. Will just looked stunned. “Mrs. Klopper called the police. You better go.”

“Not,” he said, his gaze still on his mother, “until I know what they’re talking about.”

“I think whatever they’re talking about is private,” I said. “Between Will and your mom.”

“And Morton?” Now Marco finally looked at me. And when he did, one side of his mouth twisted in a sarcastic grin. “What’s
he
got to say to my mother?”

“Whatever it is,” I said, fervently hoping it wasn’t what I was pretty sure we were both thinking it might be—Mr. Morton’s belief that Will was the reincarnation of King Arthur, “it’s clearly none of our business, so—”

“Wrong,” Marco said. “Move. Now. Or I’ll move you.”

“If you lay one hand on that girl, Marco Campbell,” Mrs. Klopper said shrilly, “you’ll regret it. You know you’re not even supposed to be here—”

Which was when Marco, obviously tired of hearing this, reached out and flung me aside, as if I were a shower curtain that had been in his way.

I fell to the sofa. I wasn’t hurt.

But that didn’t stop Mrs. Klopper from screaming and rushing to my side. Nor did it stop Will, who’d
apparently seen the whole thing, from tearing open the conference room door, and shouting, “Marco! What do you think you’re doing?”

“Funny,” Marco said coldly, “I was about to ask you the same question.”

Then he strode into the conference room, slamming the glass door behind him with enough force to cause the entire room to shudder.

“Oh, my dear,” Mrs. Klopper cried, as she tried to pull me up from the couch. “Did he hurt you?”

“I’m fine,” I said quickly. I couldn’t hear—let alone see—what was happening in the conference room with her hovering over me. Leaning over so I could look past Mrs. Klopper’s broad shoulder, I could see Mr. Morton trying to speak calmly to a very agitated Marco. Mrs. Wagner had stopped crying, and she, too, was saying something to Marco—something Marco didn’t look too happy to hear. He kept glancing at Will, who appeared to be experiencing a number of conflicting emotions, if his expression was any indication—rage; disbelief; and, finally, impatience, apparently for something Marco said.

Something Mrs. Klopper and I heard only too clearly, because Marco shouted it loudly enough to be heard even through the thick glass walls: “I don’t believe it!”

It was right then that the cops came bursting into the guidance office, and Mrs. Klopper, still hovering over me protectively, cried, pointing a shaking finger at Marco, “There he is! He attacked this poor girl! He’s violating the
terms of his probation by even being on school grounds!”

One of the cops, to my horror, reached for his nightstick. He said to his partner, “I know this kid. Call for backup.”

The partner reached for his walkie-talkie, while the first cop laid a hand on the conference room door and pulled it open.

And when he did, Marco’s voice—his back to us, he was oblivious to the entry of the cops—could be heard, loud and clear, shouting, “You’re not his mother! Tell him! Tell him it’s a lie!”

To which Mrs. Wagner, her hands clenched to her chest, murmured, “I can’t, sweetheart, because it’s true. I’m so sorry. But it really is true.”

Which is when the cop said, “I hate to break things up here, people, but we got a complaint—”

He never got to finish. Because Marco, wheeling around and realizing, at last, that he was in trouble, made a lunge that would have caused high-jumper Stacy to turn green with envy, propelling himself over the conference room table until he stood in front of the room’s single window…

…through which he hefted one of the conference room chairs, shattering the glass into a million pieces.

Then he leaped.

“Turn here,” I said to the police officer who was driving me home.

He made the turn down the long driveway to the house we were renting, the headlights from his squad car startling a deer that had been grazing at the edge of the road. Although it was still late afternoon, massive gray clouds had rolled in from the bay, blocking out the sun, moving as fast as smoke caught in a breeze. What I’d mistaken for the rumble of rifle fire turned out to be thunder, not practice down at the gunnery.

There was a storm brewing.

“The lights are all out,” Officer Jenkins observed, as the house loomed into view. “Your parents aren’t home?”

“No,” I said. The wind was beginning to gust, tossing the branches of the trees. “They went into D.C. for dinner.”

“Want me to walk you inside?” Officer Jenkins asked.

“No,” I said. “Really. It’s okay. I’m all right.”

It seemed like I’d been assuring everyone of this all afternoon—from the time the cops had arrived, to the time they’d finally finished taking my statement and agreed to let me go…right up until I realized I had no way home, and was forced to beg for a ride. With Mrs. Wagner having completely lost it, forcing a chivalrous Mr. Morton to offer to drive her home, and Will having taken off after Marco via the very same window he’d escaped through, Mrs. Klopper and I had been the only ones left to describe what had happened….

And we could barely believe it ourselves.

“Well, I don’t like to gossip about students,” Mrs. Klopper had said to Officer Jenkins, after Mrs. Wagner had been carefully led away by Mr. Morton, and the two of us were asked to make statements concerning the incident. “But since you ask, it appears—unless I’m mistaken—that Will Wagner’s stepmother is actually his real mother…and neither he nor his—well, I guess he’s his half brother, Marco—knew it until today.”

When the police officer had looked questioningly at me, I had just shrugged and said, “Yeah. I mean…that’s what I gathered, as well.”

What I couldn’t understand, of course, was why Mr. Morton had done it. Why had he come back? Had it
really been because of what he’d said—my “guilting” him into it with my speech about how Will would never have left him in
his
hour of need?

But how on earth was Mr. Morton’s getting Mrs. Wagner to admit that she was, in truth, Will’s real mother, and not just his stepmother as he’d been led to believe, supposed to have helped?

“Well, grab a flashlight as soon as you get inside,” Officer Jenkins said, “so you don’t have to look for one in the dark if we lose power. The electricity goes out a lot this side of the Severn during big storms.”

“Thanks,” I said to the police officer.

“And don’t worry about Campbell,” he said, in his big, reassuring voice. “I doubt he’ll show up here.”

I thanked him again, not mentioning that Marco Campbell showing up at my house was the
last
thing I was worried about.

Then I got out of the squad car and ran to the front porch, fumbling in my bag for my key. Officer Jenkins waited until I’d found it and opened the door before he pulled away, leaving me alone with the big dark house and the approaching storm and the forces of good and evil battling it out over the fate of a long-dead king.

Right.

I let myself into the house, flicking on lights as I made my way to the laundry room, where the professor who owned the house had left a plastic bin marked
EMER
-
GENCY
. I pulled back the lid and grabbed the flashlight and handful of candles I found there. Then I brought
them all into the kitchen and turned on the television.

The local news was issuing a thunderstorm warning for all of Anne Arundel County. They’d already had reports of dangerous lightning and high winds, coupled with torrential rain and some hail.

Great.

There was a note on the refrigerator. It said,
Hi, honey. Leftover ribs in the fridge. Just heat them up in the microwave. We’ll be home by eleven. Call if you need anything. Mom.

I opened the fridge and looked at the ribs. But I wasn’t really seeing them. Instead, I was seeing the rage on Marco’s face when his mother had made her gut-wrenching confession. I was seeing Will, as he’d followed Marco out that window, causing my heart to leap into my throat.

And, okay, it had turned out to have been a first-floor window. And when we’d all rushed to it, we’d seen both boys sprinting for the student parking lot, Marco first, with Will in hot pursuit, clearly none the worse for the stunt.

But I’d happened to glance at Mr. Morton at that moment, and I’d seen the fear on his face. Crazy or not, Mr. Morton was afraid for Will.

And his fear was catching.

I closed the refrigerator door. This was stupid. I couldn’t just stay here and do nothing while I knew Will was out there somewhere, trying to deal with a guy who was clearly off his rocker with fury over his mother’s unfaithfulness to his father.

I took a deep breath and picked up the phone.

“Here goes nothing,” I said to Tig, who was sitting in the middle of the kitchen floor, washing herself.

And I dialed Will’s cell number.

A recorded voice told me all circuits were busy.

I flinched and hung up. Well, so much for that.

I opened the refrigerator and took out the ribs. I wasn’t hungry, but I had to do something, or I was sure I’d lose my mind. I popped them into the microwave—then jumped, as outside the window over the kitchen sink, a brilliant flash of lightning lit the yard.

The power flickered off, then back on again. Tig, startled, quit washing herself.

I counted, like the kid in
Poltergeist.
One one thousand. Two one thousand. Three one thousand.

Thunder crashed, sounding nothing like distant gunfire now…more like a sonic boom from a fighter jet as it broke the sound barrier. Tig streaked from the room like a stone from a slingshot, headed for parts of the house unknown.

The storm was three miles away.

I tried Will’s cell again. All circuits still busy.

I put the phone down, thinking maybe our lines were crossed. He might, for all I knew, be trying to call me, right at that very moment. After what had happened today, you’d think he’d want to talk to somebody—somebody to whom he wasn’t related. I was kind of surprised, in fact, that he hadn’t called already.

But there were no messages on the answering machine.

Then again, maybe he’d turned to Lance or Jennifer
instead of me. After all, they’d known him a lot longer than I had. It made sense he’d call one of them before me….

A part of me will always love him
, Jennifer had said in the ladies’ room. Maybe he was on the phone with her right now, and they’d had a chance to talk things out, and now they were back together. Maybe they—

I shook my head, wondering what was wrong with me. I was losing it. I really was.

I sat down in front of the TV with the leftover ribs and a tub of potato salad, and ate—without tasting anything—as the newscasters read off all the events that were being canceled or closed in light of the approaching storm: high school football games; various lacrosse tournaments; the county fairgrounds; a regatta.

A reporter in Baltimore, where the storm—which had apparently appeared from nowhere—had already hit, stood beside a car that had been flattened by a tree felled by lightning and warned about the dangers of driving during inclement weather.

Another reporter came on to say that the Beltway—where my parents would be driving home later that night—had been shut down due to a severed power line that had electrified the guardrail.

Another reporter started talking about how this unexpected squall was the storm of the decade, then showed footage of raging floodwaters that washed an SUV right off the road and into a ditch, trapping a family of four inside….

Suddenly, I wasn’t blaming Mr. Morton so much anymore for wanting to go to Tahiti.

Which was just silly, of course. It wasn’t the powers of darkness causing this storm. The meteorologist came on and talked about nor’easters and cold fronts meeting warm fronts and storm surge and riptides.

Then, just as he was about to advise us what to do in the event of a power failure, a brighter bolt of lightning than any of the ones before lit up the sky outside.

But it didn’t turn the sky white, the way lightning usually does. Instead, just for an instant—so briefly that afterwards, I’d thought I’d dreamed it—the sky turned a deep bloodred before turning dark gray again.

Then all the lights went off.

The TV died. The air-conditioning churned to a halt. The digital clocks on the stove and microwave went black. The refrigerator stopped humming. There was complete total silence….

Until a terrific blast of thunder ripped through the sky, causing the glasses in the china cabinet to rattle.

Then the phone rang.

And I screamed.

I was being ridiculous, of course. It was just the phone. Of course the phone would still work in a power failure—the ones that weren’t cordless, anyway.

Still, my heart seemed to be rattling as loudly as the glasses had, and my fingers shook as I reached out to grab the receiver.

“H-hello?” I said.

“Ellie?” It was my mom’s voice, as comforting as a favorite blanket. Just hearing it slowed down my pulse. “We just heard Anne Arundel’s supposed to get the worst of this storm. Are you all right, honey?”

“The lights went out,” I said, trying not to sound as scared as I felt.

“Yes,” my mom said. “I guess that happens a lot. Look in the phone book and call the power company, just to make sure it’s the whole district, and not only us. Then sit tight. Daddy and I canceled our dinner, and we’re on our way home.”

“No, you’re not,” I said, in a tight voice. “They’ve shut down the Beltway. A downed power line has electrified the guardrails.”

I heard my mother convey this information to my dad. I heard my dad swear. Then Mom said to me, “Well, listen, honey…you got a flashlight?”

I reached for the one on the counter. I didn’t quite need it yet—there was still enough light from outside to see by. But I said, “Yes.”

“Good. Find a good book to read, and we’ll be there as soon as we can.”

“Will do,” I said. “Bye, Mom.”

Outside, lightning flashed again. I hung up and ran toward the window, craning my neck to see whether or not the sky was going to turn the same bloodred again.

It didn’t. It did turn a really pretty purple, though.

I picked up the phone. This time I dialed Will’s house. Busy.

Then I remembered I was supposed to call the power company, so I hauled out the phone book and found the number.

Then I entertained myself for a good five minutes listening to my options—press one to report lights that were flickering; two, if I smelled anything burning; three, if I was experiencing partial loss of power; and finally four, which I hit, to report a total loss of power.

The recorded voice told me they were aware of the problem and that crews had already been dispatched. I was glad I didn’t work for the power company. I would have hated being “dispatched” in this weather.

Then, just as I was contemplating turning on the flashlight and starting my trig homework, the phone rang again. This time when I answered it, I didn’t recognize the voice on the other end.

“Hello?” It was a woman speaking. “Is, er, Ellie Harrison there?”

“This is she,” I said, using the polite phone manners my mother had drilled into me.

“Oh, Ellie, hello,” the woman said, sounding relieved. “This is Jean Wagner. Will’s, er, stepmom.”

Suddenly I was clutching the phone very hard.

Still, I tried to remain calm. “Hello, Mrs. Wagner. I…I’m sorry. About what happened today at school.”

“So am I,” Mrs. Wagner said. “You can’t imagine how much. That’s why I’m calling, actually. I was wondering if by any chance Will was with you?”

By now I was clutching the receiver so hard, I thought I might break it in half with the force of my grip.

“No,” I said, feeling as if my heart might suddenly leap from my chest, it was drumming so hard. “I was hoping you might have heard from him.”

“Not since”—Mrs. Wagner coughed—“what happened at the school. I was hoping—I don’t know where either of them has disappeared to, and I wouldn’t have bothered you except that I know Will’s been spending time at your house lately, and I was hoping he might be there—”

As Mrs. Wagner had been speaking, I’d crossed the room to the sliding glass door that led to the deck. I hadn’t looked out at the pool since I’d gotten home, I’d been so wrapped up in the approaching storm.

Now I twitched the curtain back, telling myself that it was all going to be all right. I’d see Will down there, sitting on Spider Rock. I’d pull back the sliding glass door and yell,
“Hey, you big goof. Don’t just sit there. Can’t you see it’s going to rain? Come inside.”

Only he wasn’t there, of course. As I watched, my favorite raft was actually lifted up out of the water and thrown into the bushes by a powerful blast of wind. The water churned even though the filter wasn’t working, thanks to the power outage. It looked like a giant witch’s cauldron, set to boil.

I quickly moved the curtain back into place.

“—or that you might have some idea where he could be,” Mrs. Wagner was saying. “We checked the marina already, and he’s not there…not that he would take the boat out in this kind of weather. I’ve talked to his friend Lance and to little Jenny Gold, and neither of them have heard from him.” I heard barking through the phone line, then Mrs. Wagner’s voice saying, “Cavalier! Cavalier, be quiet!”

A second later, she said to me, “I’m sorry. Will’s dog…I don’t know what’s gotten into her. She’s normally so well-mannered. The storm seems to be upsetting her. The thing is, Marco…Well, I’m afraid Will might be in some…well, some danger.”

“Danger?” The hand clutching the phone had started to sweat now. I could barely hang on to the receiver, it was so wet. “What kind of danger, Mrs. Wagner?”

Not the powers of darkness, I prayed. Please don’t say powers of darkness. Had Mr. Morton gotten to her, too?