“Nothing really,” Tina told me, tossing her hair. “She’s just stunned. She’ll snap out of it—eventually. Really now, Jendra, I can’t have her parading into Mr. Talbert’s office—she’d find his body for sure.”

  “Do you mean you haven’t told her he’s dead?”

  “Of course not,” said Tina. “I haven’t told anybody. Except Lien Hua and Stephen, of course, because he’s filling in.”

  “Stephen?”

  “You know,” she said. “Dr. Murphy. The science teacher.”

  Lien Hua informed me, “He is a fellow follower of the goddess gray-eyed. He’s almost as Athena-crazy as we are. It’s really cool.”

  “So, is he in the office right now?” I wondered.

  “No, not quite yet,” said Tina. “He’s got to wait until he finishes his Chem. II class at the high school. Besides, the office is still all messy with guts and stuff everywhere.”

  “Guts?” I said. “I thought he was hit on the head.” I peeked around the doorway. The office looked pretty clean to me, and I didn’t see any sign of a body. Maybe Tina was blinding me with her psychic powers or something.

  Before I could get a really good look, though, Tina grabbed me by the shirt and yanked me back through the door. “We have to clean up,” she said.

  I was afraid that was going to be my job since I was low man on the totem pole, but, fortunately, Tina didn’t mention anything about that. She just handed me a small metal lunch box. It must have been really old because it was decorated with the original cast of Star Trek.

  “What, exactly, is this?” I asked, raising an eyebrow at Mr. Spock, who returned the gesture.

  “Sacred stuff,” Tina told me. “For the ceremony tonight. Guard it with your life.”

  I was afraid to ask what ceremony that would be, but I did start to lift the lid to see what was inside. Tina practically screamed at me, “Don’t open it!!!”

  “Okay,” I said, slowly backing up. “Okay. Sorrrry.”

  “Oh, and Jendra,” said Tina as I started backing out of the office. “One more thing. Try to stay off your feet as much as possible. You’ll be dancing at the ceremony tonight.”

  “Dancing?” I chirped.

  “Yeah, you got the gift, remember?” Tina reminded me. “You haven’t used it yet, but don’t worry, it’s there. You won’t need to practice. It will be entirely out of your control.”

  Lien Hua leaned over and informed me, without opening her mouth once, You’ll start dancing automatically whenever anybody says the word hungry.

  “Hungry?” I said out loud, wrinkling my nose.

  “Hungry,” Tina repeated. Then, all of a sudden, I started dancing. At first, it really scared me. I mean, I had absolutely no control over my feet. They just started flipping around, and I had no choice but to follow them.

  “What am I doing?” I wailed in terror as I danced like a maniac.

  “I’m not real sure,” said Lien Hua, biting her lips. “It looks like the Charleston. But, anyway, you’ll stop whenever anyone says the word turkey.”

  Immediately my happy feet took a rest. “Turkey?” I repeated, staring at her. “Are you insane? You mean I start dancing whenever anyone happens to say hungry, but I can’t stop until somebody says the word turkey? That’s not fair.”

  “Relax,” Tina said. “You’ll hardly even notice the difference. Besides, you won’t be doing any more dancing until the ceremony tonight.” She smiled playfully, “Unless I say . . . hungry!”

  Right away I went into a strange version of the funky chicken. “Turkey!” I yelled helplessly at the top of my lungs. “Turkey! Turkey! Turkey!” But for some reason I kept on dancing. “Hey!” I hollered. “What?”

  “It doesn’t work if you say it,” Lien Hua told me with a laugh. Then she added, as a pun, “You turkey.”

  I stopped dancing and took a deep breath.

  “Don’t worry, Jendra,” said Tina. “You’ll probably make it through the rest of the day with no problem.”

  But I wasn’t so sure about that. I was positive that a lot of people were going to be hungry at lunch.

  16

  Hungry Turkey

  I already know what you’re thinking. You probably figure that I went to lunch, and right away, somebody complained about being hungry, and I started busting a move all over the place. Well, sorry, but wrong.

  Actually, I made it through lunch rather incident free, because I spent most of it eating pretzels with the cheerleaders. I did stop by Matt and Leah’s table for a minute, though, which turned out to be sort of a mistake.

  Instead of saying “hi,” Matt greeted me with, “I wish I had some lunch money. Man, I’m hun—”

  At that point I knew I had no choice. I had to cut him off. Clapping a hand over his mouth, I said in my gushiest voice, “I love you, too, honey.” Then I ran across the cafeteria as fast as possible. After that, all these rumors started circulating through the school that Matt and I were going out. Wonder why.

  Anyway, the rest of lunch was a breeze because Tina and the cheerleaders sure didn’t want to blow my cover.

  Unfortunately, Texas history was next, and I’ve never yet spent a period in that class that didn’t end up being unfortunate in some way.

  At least Matt and I didn’t have any problems getting back into class. Tina had definitely worked her magic. Ms. Long acted like she didn’t even remember what had happened the day before. It was like she had never kicked us out of class.

  Still, I was really worried that something would go wrong.

  Sure enough, just as Ms. Long had dimmed the lights to show us her award-winning slides of the Alamo, some idiot blurted out, “Lunch was over too soon, man. I am so hungry!”

  “Noooooooooooooooo!” I wailed in agony, but it was too late. A split second later I was up on top of my desk, strutting my stuff. Disco this time.

  “Jendra?” Matt croaked in alarm. “What the heck are you doing?”

  I tried to be cool. I thought maybe if I played it just right, I could turn my mad dancing fetish into a trend, so I threw my hands up in the air and started clapping and yelling, “YMCA. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. YMCA!” Okay, so I don’t exactly know the words, or the tune, and my voice is not exactly the greatest, so, come to think of it, this really wasn’t one of my better plans. Plus, right away some smart-alecky guys in the back of the room started to sing their own off-color version of the lyrics.

  “Boys!” Ms. Long interrupted in horror. She immediately ran to the other side of the room and flipped on the light.

  “Jendra MacKenzie!” my teacher raged at me. “Get down from there this instant! What are you thinking of!”

  “I know this looks bad!” I exclaimed, doing some moves from that old seventies movie Saturday Night Fever. “But I can’t help it!”

  “Go to the office at once!” she screamed.

  “The office?” said Matt. “Are you sure you shouldn’t send her to a disco?”

  “Perhaps you don’t like my slide shows,” Ms. Long said to me crisply.

  I had to think about that one, “Well, yes,” I said, kicking up my legs can-can style as I jumped from desk to desk, “that’s true. But that’s not why I’m dancing. I promise, I can’t help it! I’d stop if somebody would say turkey.”

  “Turkey?” Ms. Long repeated suspiciously. Instantly I stopped dancing and fell off the desk. The Star Trek lunch box, which I’d been holding in my hand, landed on the floor beside me with a clatter. I started to kneel to pick it up, but before I could, Ms. Long swept down from on high and seized it in her talons. Then she soared back up to her nest and started puking up earthworms to feed to her young. (Sorry, I was just trying to use an extended metaphor. I won’t do it again.)

  “Ms. Long!” I said, grabbing for the lunch box. “I really need to hold on to that. Can I have it back, please?”

  “No!” she yelled. “Are you insane? Go to the office!”

  “But I need—” I started to protest.

  Ms. Long interrupted me. “You need to learn some manners,” she said, ruffling her feathers and flapping around the room. Okay, sorry. I did say I’d drop the bird metaphor.

  “Can I at least pick it up after school?” I begged.

  “No,” she snapped instantly. “I’ll be holding on to it for the rest of the year.”

  “For the rest of the year?” Oh, no! The cheerleaders were going to kill me!

  “Please, Ms. Long,” I whined. “Please.”

  “I’ll think about it,” she said coldly, fingering the latch.

  “No!” I screamed, charging forward so that I crashed into her and we both fell backward against the window. Good thing it wasn’t open, or we would have been lawn decorations. I jumped back to my feet and said, “Ms. Long! Whatever you do! Please! You can’t open that lunch box.”

  “Why?” she demanded. “What’s in it?” She narrowed her eyes suspiciously and guessed, “Drugs?”

  “Drugs?” I exclaimed. “Do I seem like the kind of person who would have drugs?”

  The whole class burst out laughing.

  “Well, frankly,” Ms. Long replied, “yes.”

  “You can’t open that lunch box,” I insisted. I tried to think of some reasonable excuse. “The hospital scheduled me to be an organ donor, and one of my kidneys is in there. Honest. Some guy needs it for an operation this afternoon.”

  “Miss MacKenzie,” Ms. Long began cynically, but just at that moment thick coats of green slime started dripping down the seams on the sides of the lunch box. It landed in clots on the floor.

  “Gross!” yelled Matt. “Jendra, what’s in there?”

  “I don’t know,” I told him. Actually, I was beginning to feel a bit concerned. I decided to go get Tina. “Excuse me, I’ve got to go to the office now,” I said. Without waiting for a reply, I dashed out the door and took off down the hall.

  17

  Disaster!

  What was happening to my life? It was like I had somehow entered The Twilight Zone. And what had been in that lunch box anyway? Was it really somebody’s kidney? I shuddered at the thought and hurried to the office, hoping to find Tina.

  She was there, all right. So was Dr. Murphy.

  The first thing she said when she saw me was “Hungry.” While I was dancing up a storm, the next thing she said was, “What happened to that lunch box?”

  “What lunch box?” I asked pathetically.

  “You know what lunch box,” she replied suspiciously. “Where is it, Jendra?”

  “What was in it?” I asked, tangoing around the office. That, at least, made it hard to look her in the eye.

  “You’ll find out at the ceremony tonight,” she said. “Now where did it go?”

  I groaned as I started break dancing on the floor. “My teacher took it away,” I admitted.

  Tina seemed mildly horrified. “Stephen,” she said to Dr. Murphy, who was now sitting behind the principal’s desk. “What are we going to do? Oh, for heaven’s sake, Jendra, will you stop dancing? You’re driving me nuts.”

  “Well, it’s not my fault,” I told her, jumping on top of the late Mr. Talbert’s desk to do a cute little tap-dancing routine. “I feel like I’m stuck in some stupid Shirley Temple movie. I warn you, I might start singing ‘On the Good Ship Lollipop’ any time now.”

  “I always liked that one,” said Dr. Murphy, humming a few bars.

  “Turkey!” Tina shouted. “Turkey! Turkey! All right?” Usually Tina was so calm and cool. She was definitely much more upset than I had ever seen her before. “Stephen, what should I do?” she wailed.

  “You’ll have to go and get it,” he told her.

  “Yes,” said Tina, half closing her eyes. “The pompon will help me.” Suddenly she dropped to her knees and lifted her face to the ceiling. “Athena!” she called loudly. “Hear my cry and answer my call of distress.” Then she rolled her eyes back in her head for a few minutes. She looked weird.

  “Listen,” I said. “I’ve got to be getting back to class now.” I started to move toward the door, but just then Tina jumped up, all energized, and blocked my path.

  “No!” she said. “Not alone! The pompon has given me wisdom. I will accompany you.”

  I had kind of dragged my feet on the way to the office, so by the time we got back to the classroom, Texas history was over. I knocked timidly on the door before Tina boldly led me inside. Ms. Long was sitting behind her desk, grading papers. I didn’t want to talk to her, but I sort of felt like I had to say something.

  I hoped she’d look up, so I just stood there quietly. Finally I worked up the nerve to clear my throat softly, only it ended up being much louder than I’d intended, and for some reason I sneezed at the same time.

  Ms. Long looked up and saw me there. “God bless you,” she said. It must have been Tina’s influence.

  “Thanks,” I told her. “Hey, listen, Ms. Long, I know I shouldn’t have behaved so badly in your class. But . . .” I looked down. Then I blurted out, “Could I please have my lunch box back?”

  Ms. Long seemed surprised. “Your lunch box,” she said slowly. “Didn’t I already give it to you?”

  I exchanged a worried glance with Tina. “Noo,” I said. “I’m pretty sure I would remember.”

  “Oh, that’s right,” said Ms. Long, remembering. “I gave it to Leah.”

  I felt my heart stop beating. “To Leah?” I repeated flatly. That was bad news.

  “Yes,” said Ms. Long. “She stopped by my desk after class and said she wouldn’t mind picking it up for you. That was awfully nice of her. Of course,” she said reflectively, “maybe she was just hungry.”

  She shouldn’t have said that.

  “We have to go,” Tina said as I danced out the door. “Thank you for your time.”

  Out in the hall Tina immediately whispered, “Turkey!” and then said to me, “Jendra, this is terrible. How could you let your stupid little friend get her hands on that lunch box? Didn’t you know how important that was?”

  “There’s no need to panic,” I said. “Leah just picked up the lunch box to give it to me. And we have computer science together next period. You know, Mr. Grady’s class. I can just go and get it from her now. It’s no big deal.”

  Tina sighed heavily. “Let’s just hope she didn’t open it,” she said darkly.

  “Why?” I wondered again. I was really dying to know. “Tina,” I said, “what’s in it?”

  Tina looked worried. “Mr. Talbert’s toupee,” she said.

  “His toupee!” I exclaimed in horror. I almost fainted right there in the hall.

  “And his false teeth, and some green slime,” she finished, adding, “it’s not as bad as it sounds, Jendra. We need them for the memorial ceremony tonight. Mr. Talbert’s ghost might jinx the Pompon Follies for us if we don’t have a decent memorial ceremony for him.”

  “We’re going to have to have a memorial ceremony for Leah if she opens that lunch box!” I exclaimed. “She’ll completely freak out! I mean, this is Leah, the girl who totally lost it when she found a cigarette in her brother Brian’s saxophone case. A bunch of slimy dentures will definitely send her over the top.”

  “Well, hurry up, then,” Tina urged me. “Go to your stupid class and get the lunch box back before she can open it.”

  That’s just what I did. Well . . . at least it’s what I tried to do. But when I got to Mr. Grady’s class, I made the shocking discovery that Leah wasn’t there.

  “She had a dentist’s appointment,” Mr. Grady informed me. “Her mother picked her up a few minutes ago. Is there something wrong, Jendra? Jendra?”

  I didn’t have time to stay and chat. I tore out of the building as fast as I could, with Tina right behind me.

  18

  Dive-bombing Downward

  Tina and I stopped for breath at the foot of the flagpole at the front of the school. Once we got there, we bumped into Lien Hua, the Jennifers, Amber, and someone else I couldn’t see.

  “Hey, ow!” that someone said.

  “Sorry,” I said, looking around in concern. “Who did I step on?”

  “Oh, that’s just LaKaisha,” Lien Hua told me with a smile. “She made herself invisible again. She’s always doing that.”

  “Lien Hua, wipe that stupid smile off your face,” said Tina. “This is serious. Our brilliant young mascot here just lost Mr. Talbert’s toupee.”

  Lien Hua gasped. “And his dentures?” she asked in concern and held her breath.

  “Gone,” Tina assured her. “Just like the green slime. This is a total disaster.”

  “But who would steal dentures?” asked LaKaisha. It was weird to hear her voice without seeing her face. It was kind of like watching a dubbed Japanese movie. Well, actually, it wasn’t really like that at all, but I was just stalling because I don’t like this next part of the story, so I’m trying to take my time getting to it.

  “Mr. Talbert’s toupee and dentures,” Tina told them, “which, incidentally, we need for tonight, are in that Star Trek lunch box. I gave it to Jendra for safekeeping. But somehow she lost it. And now her whiny little friend Leah has it, and she’s in a dentist’s office somewhere. Jendra, do you know what dentist she goes to?”

  “No,” I said blankly.

  Tina threw a fit. “What?” she shrieked. “Do you mean to tell me that she’s your best friend, and you don’t even know a thing like that?”

  “Well, jeez, I’m sorry, okay?” I said. “I also don’t know the name of her vet, or which brand of toothpaste she prefers. There are some things that just never come up in conversation.”

  “She should use Colgate,” said Lien Hua with a smile. “It has less sugar than the leading brand, and that means it’s less fattening.”

  “Oh, who cares about that,” snapped Tina. “We’ve got to get those fake body parts back!”

  “Ow!”

  “Oh, sorry, LaKaisha.”

  Suddenly Amber decided to say something, which was a big deal, since I had never heard her speak before. “That bird knows where she went,” she declared, pointing to a cardinal, sitting on top of the flagpole. “He saw her leave just a few minutes ago, didn’t you, Red?”

 

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