Night of the Pompon, page 10
25
The Hungry Turkey Strikes Again
“Hungry!” Lien Hua yelled. “Hungry! Hungry! Hungry!”
Suddenly I leaped up and started doing these really high theatrical kicks. Fortunately, I kicked Tina right in the face, and she fell backward and landed right on her butt. She dropped the sword and clasped her chin in pain.
“Turkey!” she yelled, rubbing her swollen jaw. “What in the world is wrong with you? How dare you hit me?”
“Well, sorry!” I told her. “But you’re the one who’s trying to kill me, remember?”
Tina picked up her sword and lunged at me again. “This time you won’t get away so easily,” she said sinisterly.
“Hungry!” Lien Hua yelled again, and I did another fantastic kick. Just like before, Tina went sprawling backward on her butt.
Struggling to her feet, Tina growled, “I am getting just a little bit sick of this.”
She hadn’t said turkey yet, so I was just jumping around like a maniac, dodging the sword she kept swinging at me, which was pretty tricky because my balance was off with my hands still tied behind me. Just then, I heard a shrill shriek behind me and turned to see that Mitzi and the Jennifers had hacked off almost all of Leah’s hair.
“Help, Jendra!” Leah screamed. “Help meeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!”
I would have, but I couldn’t stop dancing, and besides, Tina was gaining on me with that sword. I kept looking out for Lien Hua, expecting her to do something else to help us, but I couldn’t see her anywhere in the room. It was like she had just suddenly disappeared.
About that time Tina thrust the sword forward and stabbed it through the toe of my shoe. Fortunately, my black sneakers are about a size and a half too big, so she didn’t do any toe damage or anything. Actually, I just kept dancing, and the shoe flipped off the point of the blade and flew through the air. To my horror, it crashed into the pompon case, breaking the glass.
“Oh, my gosh!” I exclaimed. I was getting pretty tired of jumping around the room like a Riverdance reject, but unfortunately, Tina was still jabbing with that sword of hers. And, over on the other side of the room, poor Leah sounded like she was being tortured.
“Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah!” she wailed.
I whirled around to see what was wrong with her, and I noticed that the other cheerleaders had ripped off her Doc Martens and thrown them into the canal. That was a mistake. I mean, those shoes are sacred to Leah. They’re her most cherished possession, like her children or something.
I was scared to think what they would chop up next, so I danced over to the other side of the room and started crashing into the bloodthirsty cheerleaders.
“Where on earth did Lien Hua go?” I wondered as I knocked cheerleaders over left and right.
Tina, of course, was pretty angry by this time. “Listen, Jendra,” she snarled, “I’m getting sick of this. You had better hold still so I can kill you.”
“Do you even know how retarded that sounds?” I said, rolling my eyes.
“Turkey!” Tina spat out spitefully, and I dropped to the ground next to Leah.
Tina was gaining on us and the rest of the cheerleaders had flocked around us, looking as deadly as the most venomous killers that travel in a pack—cigarettes.
“This is it, Jendra,” Tina told me, closing in on us. “Say your prayers.”
But just then, I noticed feathers floating around the room, and I looked up to see a barn owl flying above us.
Letting out a gasp, Tina and the others dropped to their knees. “It is the goddess gray-eyed,” Tina said. “She has honored us with her material presence.” She took a deep breath and proclaimed, “We must stop to worship her. It’s the real Athena.”
26
The Great Escape
“The real Athena?” Leah whined to me. “What does she mean, the real Athena? Somebody needs to tell her that Athena is a fictional character.”
“Shut up!” I said in a harsh whisper. “Maybe they’ll leave the room.”
“Now do you believe me?” whined Leah, batting her eyelashes, about the only bits of hair she had left on her head. “I told you, Jendra, Tina Sheperd is a bad influence.”
“Silence, mortal,” Tina ordered in a deep, eerie voice. “Who dares speak in Athena’s sacred presence? We must all fall silent and listen to her divine speech.”
“Divine speech?” Leah squawked. “That’s a barn owl.”
“Shut up,” I whispered again. “Tina’s got a sword and a band of psychopaths on her side. You don’t want to get her mad.”
Suddenly the barn owl started flapping around and squawking a lot.
“Athena?” Tina asked in awe. “What is it, O divine one?”
To my surprise, the owl swooped in through the hole my shoe had made in the case, snatched up “Athena” in its talons, flapped out of the shrine, and flew out the green door.
“The sacred migration!” Tina exclaimed in that same eerie voice. “We will follow wherever you lead, O goddess gray-eyed!” Instantly all the cheerleaders chased after the owl, locking the door behind them, so that Leah and I were shut inside the shrine.
“See?” Leah screeched at me. “I told you, didn’t I? What did I tell you about Tina Sheperd?”
I know it wasn’t exactly an appropriate moment, but suddenly I just burst out laughing.
Leah started batting her eyelashes at me. “What is wrong with you?” she whined.
“Sorry,” I said with a giggle, “it’s just that you look so strange without your hair.”
“Jendra!” she whined shrilly. “That is so not funny.”
“Sorry,” I said again. “What do you want me to do?”
“Well, you could start figuring out how to untie us and how we can get away,” she said. “That barn owl can’t go far, you know, up and down the canal. And you can bet those cheerleader friends of yours will be back. Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah!” she suddenly screamed in terror. She pointed up at the ceiling and exclaimed in a panicky voice, “Here comes one of them right now! Look!”
I looked up and spotted Lien Hua, climbing down from the top of the glass case.
As she jumped to the ground, I exclaimed in relief, “Lien Hua! Where on earth have you been?”
“I went to the zoo,” she said with her usual smile.
“You went to the zoo!” Leah exploded indignantly. She was totally hysterical, and I can’t say that I blamed her much. “We’re here, in this sacred temple place, getting beat up and stabbed at by psychotic cheerleaders, and you’re going to the zoo?!”
“Well, I had to get the owl,” Lien Hua explained.
“What?” I said.
“Yeah,” said Lien Hua. “That materialization of Athena?” She grinned as usual. “No way! That’s just some dumb barn owl I stole from the nocturnal exhibit. But it will keep them busy for a while. Tina’s always waiting for a materialization of Athena. I knew my little trick would work. Come on,” she said as she knelt and untied my hands. “We’ve got to get out of here right away. Before they get back.”
“Why are you helping us?” I asked, standing up while Lien Hua untied Leah and then Mr. Talbert. He was too confused even to speak. (Well, either that or he was too embarrassed to talk without his dentures.)
“Because I like you,” Lien Hua replied, “and because I am getting so sick of getting rid of people for the sake of the pompon. I mean, first Chrystal, then Mr. Talbert . . .” She shuddered. “I’d hate to see you go, too. Now come on, hurry.” She held out a hand, and we followed her to the base of the glass case.
“Do we have to climb up there?” Leah whined, wrinkling her nose in distaste. “I mean, it’s so . . . evil.”
“It’s just a pompon case,” said Lien Hua, looking at her like she was nuts. “Besides, it’s the only way out. If we try to go back by the canal, Tina and the rest of them will get you for sure. And then it’s R.I.P. for you two. It’s not so bad. All you’ve got to do is hold on and climb.”
Uneasily, Leah, Mr. Talbert, and I followed Lien Hua as she scrambled up the side of the pompon case.
“You know,” Leah said, “I don’t like this at all.”
“Really?” I said. “That’s weird. I’m having a blast. In fact, I’m thinking of taking my next vacation here!”
“Oh, shut up!” she whined.
“You always were the sarcastic one, Miss MacKenzie!” Mr. Talbert declared.
With a wrinkled nose, Lien Hua asked Mr. Talbert with a weak smile, “You’re not going to give us detention when we get back to school, are you?”
“Oh, no,” he assured her. “For what you have done, you’ll get something much worse than detention.”
“Even after I saved your life?” she asked with a wounded smile.
“Hey, are you the one who made me have that weird dream?” I asked Lien Hua. She nodded.
“I can’t believe I trusted Tina!” I exclaimed. “Why does everyone follow her so blindly?”
To my surprise, Lien Hua replied, “Because she laces that gum she gives out with a mind-controlling chemical. Really, it’s true. She keeps it in a box in the science storage room. Luckily, it’s hard to chew gum when you’re smiling all the time. Aren’t you glad you have me on your side?”
“Yeah,” I said, “but what I still don’t understand is—”
“Jendra,” Leah grunted, “could you maybe ask questions later?” She was in a hurry to get to the top. Plus, every time I opened my mouth, I ended up slipping and accidentally kicking her in the head. Poor Leah was having a rough night!
Just as we reached the top of the pompon case, we got an extremely unpleasant surprise. Tina and the gang suddenly filed back into the room, and Tina picked up her sword again. When they noticed that we had nearly escaped, they all started freaking out in a major way.
“They’re getting away!” Tina screamed in outrage, pointing a finger at the ceiling.
Lien Hua grabbed a bronze ring that opened the trapdoor in the ceiling. “You’re too late, Tina,” she said, pulling down the door to open it. “The terror stops here. I’m going to help Jendra and Leah and Mr. Talbert get away!”
“Never!” Tina bellowed, and she started climbing up the case after us. Tina, we soon saw, was a really good climber.
“Oh, great!” Leah wailed. “She’s almost at the top.”
Lien Hua had already boosted herself through the trapdoor, and I was halfway through, when a few other cheerleaders started climbing the case, too.
“Oh, no!” Leah wailed, shoving my butt through the hole. “Hurry up, Jendra! Quit blocking the exit! I’m not about to be the one who gets stuck down here.”
“I’m going as fast as I can,” I assured her. I’ve never been much of a climber. I was that kid in grade school PE who always fell off the knot—at the bottom of the rope.
Suddenly I became aware that the pompon case wasn’t as secure as it had been a moment before. I guess all the weight was too much for it. It started to shake a little, and then it started to wobble big time.
“Quick! Jendra! Hurry!” Leah shrieked as the case started shaking underneath her. “Let’s get out of here! We’ve got to get out of here—now!”
I yanked myself up and out the door finally, pulling Leah and Mr. Talbert after me. Almost as soon as we got out, the entire case toppled over, crushing Tina and the other cheerleaders.
27
Return to the Scene of the Crime
Disgustingly enough, by Monday everything in my life was pretty much totally back to normal—except for the fact that Leah and I looked like a pair of twin pet poodles. Actually, she looked much, much worse than I did. I just had a big, gaping bald spot. All of her hair was gone!
“No way,” said this girl named Rebekah who sits next to me in algebra. “I do not believe you.”
“It’s true,” I told her. “Check out the latest issue of Seventeen if you don’t believe me.”
“But Jennifer Aniston’s hair always looks so cool,” she protested. “I can’t believe she would be sporting that awful bald cut.”
“Thanks!” Leah whined.
“Oh, ignore her,” I advised Leah. “She’s just jealous.”
“Whatever,” said Rebekah, turning around.
“Girls!” reprimanded Mrs. O’Donnahee from the front of the classroom. Yes, our teacher was back and in fine form.
“I still don’t understand what made me so sick,” she said.
“It was probably those Twinkies someone left in your box,” I told her. “I mean, do you know that Twinkies have a shelf life of twenty years? Those things are just little yellow balls of cream-filled saturated fat, waiting to attack your arteries.” I confidently pulled out a pack of gum (my own gum) and offered her a piece. “Here,” I said. “This is much better for you.”
“Jendra,” she said suspiciously, “is that gum in my classroom?”
Mrs. O’Donnahee was a nut about gum, too. Who knew?
So it was back to the office for me. Pretty much business as usual.
When I got there, though, I was in for the shock of my life. The whole place was cordoned off with yellow tape, and there were so many cops swarming around, it looked like a policemen’s ball. Well, I mean, actually, I’ve never been to a policemen’s ball myself. I always have wondered, though, do the officers go in uniform? I mean, they would all look the same, right? And then, what do they do? Just dance around together? They would look like total idiots! Actually, I think it would be really cool if all the police officers went to the ball in disguise, dressed as firefighters. Of course, they’d have to steal the uniforms from the fire station, and that would be kind of bad if there was a fire that night. Anyway, it’s probably not a really big surprise that I’ve never gotten an invitation to a policemen’s ball. . . . But I guess I’ve kind of gotten a lot off the subject, huh? I should get to the point.
Police officers were all flocked around the office door before I saw them leading Dr. Murphy away in handcuffs. Mr. Talbert was standing outside the door with a satisfied smile on his face.
“Hey!” I yelped loudly. “What’s going on?”
One of the officers turned around and told me, “Young lady, this man committed a major crime. We have reason to believe that he kidnapped your principal and poisoned some members of the basketball team with chemicals from the school science lab.”
“Yeah, well, you’re probably right about that,” I told him at the same time that another officer went, “Gary, don’t tell her all that.”
As I watched them lead Dr. Murphy away in handcuffs, I called after them, “Hey, by the way, do you all have dates for the policemen’s ball?” None of them answered, so I figured they already had dates.
Since the office was all taped off and everything, I decided to go back to class. On the way there, I stopped in the second-story girls’ bathroom. Not that I had to go to the bathroom or anything. But have you ever noticed how in movies and books, the characters always go back to the place where the story started? I figured just to keep the literary tradition alive and everything, I should probably retrace my steps and go back to the good old bathroom.
“Yep,” I said to myself as I stared into the mirror. “This is where it all started.” I took a deep breath. Then I realized that had been a major mistake. After I got done gagging, I decided I’d better head back to the classroom before Mrs. O’Donnahee came looking for me.
Just before I turned to go out the door, though, somebody fell on my head.
In case you’re wondering if you read that wrong, you probably didn’t. I said somebody fell on my head. I’m only repeating myself because I have this feeling that I might have lost a couple of people. I mean, that probably sounded pretty weird. (It didn’t feel so great, either.)
For a split second of heart-pounding terror, I found myself staring into the sweaty face of a ferocious-looking blond eighth grader. (No simple seventh grader could have looked so ferocious.) Our eyes met, and she focused on me intently. One of her eyes was blue and the other was gray, but they were both blazing with a crazed gleam. For a minute I thought I was in for it. But fortunately, she whirled around and ran out of the bathroom and off down the hall without saying a word.
At first I was in total shock. I didn’t know what to do. I searched the ceiling for some explanation, but this time not a tile was out of place. It was like a stray airplane had crashed down from nowhere and used the part of my hair as a landing strip. Well, technically, it was more like some weird girl had fallen on my head in the bathroom—in fact, that’s exactly how it was. But the airplane simile was kind of nice, don’t you think? Actually, I stole that one from Leah. She used it in a paper once—only she wrote about an ocean liner, not an airplane—and, of course, she wasn’t comparing it to getting hit on the head by a falling girl. At least I don’t think she was. She wouldn’t have gotten a very good grade in that case because our papers were supposed to be about Paul Revere.
“If only Paul Revere were here right now,” I murmured. Not that I’m such a big Paul Revere fan, but think about it. As an excuse for missing class, “A girl fell on me in the girls’ bathroom” just wouldn’t get me far. But “Paul Revere fell on me in the girls’ bathroom”? Now, that might turn some heads.
Paul Revere didn’t show up, though, so I figured the British weren’t coming, or George Washington, or anybody else unexpected like that. And since I didn’t really want to risk another encounter with that ferocious eighth grader, I decided I had nowhere to go but back to algebra.
“Sorry, Mrs. O’Donnahee,” I said, sliding through the classroom door. “I can’t go to the office. It’s become a crime scene. And the bathroom’s off-limits, too. People keep falling from the ceiling.”
That was sort of an exaggeration, but it did get her attention for a second.
“What?” she said, taken off guard. But before I could explain, she got distracted by a fascinating little thing called the quadratic formula. I’m not sure exactly what this celebrated quadratic formula did, but it sure did take up a lot of room on the board, and it looked highly suspicious to me.
