Noisily I hoofed it down the stairs and then slid out the front door and toddled off down the street toward Jamey Fitzhughston’s house and the shrine to the pompon Athena.

  Should I be honest? I didn’t want to go. I had this funny feeling in the pit of my stomach. Well, not a funny feeling so much as an ache. And not in my stomach so much as in my feet, because even with my gift, I still wasn’t the most graceful dancer, and I kept stepping all over myself. But what I’m trying to get at here is that I was scared. And even though I kept telling myself, “That was only a dream,” I couldn’t shake my sense of dread—no matter how many times I shook my bootie.

  I’m sure I must have looked like a total lunatic, or at least, a Britney Spears wanna-be, shuffling down the street like that in the lamplight. Fortunately for my reputation, it was about two o’clock in the morning and none of the neighbors were up. For some reason, though, I had the eeriest feeling that somebody was following me. I didn’t know why, exactly, but every time I turned around, I expected somebody to be standing there. Don’t ask me who. But that feeling just wouldn’t go away.

  By the time I got to the sanctuary, I was doing that bizarre little dance from Pulp Fiction. You know the one I mean, right? Maybe you haven’t seen Pulp Fiction, but don’t worry, I haven’t, either. I know the dance, though, because my cousin Amy saw the movie, and then she acted it out for me, scene by scene. Amy’s kind of weird. I’m not, of course. I mean, I was just dancing down the street in the middle of the night. Nothing abnormal there!

  Tina was waiting for me on the other side of the wall. “You know the way inside,” she whispered.

  “Sure,” I said, following her through the scary black back door.

  “Oh, by the way,” Tina said and added “turkey.” Finally I stopped dancing.

  I thought I locked the back door behind me. At least, I was pretty sure I did . . . kind of . . . I mean . . .

  Oh, well.

  Tina had already disappeared by the time I got into the kitchen. Even though I had done it before, I was still totally nervous about climbing through the oven. But I didn’t have much choice. If I didn’t show up at the ceremony, the other cheerleaders would come and get me. I knew that for a fact. It didn’t matter how bad I wanted out. They needed a mascot—so they needed me.

  The oven seemed a lot darker than I remembered, and so did the staircase. And as if that wasn’t spooky enough, I also thought I could hear somebody behind me, breathing ever so quietly. But then, whenever I turned around, the noise just stopped. So I figured it must be my imagination.

  I had to cross the canal myself, which, I must say, I didn’t enjoy. I felt kind of like Charon, the skeleton guy who rows across the River Styx. Of course, I didn’t know what Charon looked like, so I formed a mental image of Karen, this annoying, whiny little girl I used to go to Brownies with back in second grade. Boy, Karen was a real brat. And it seemed like she always had a runny nose. And one time she slept over at my house, and when it was time for breakfast . . .

  Just when I had gotten myself all worked up remembering that little girl Karen, I looked up and realized I was on the other side. Quickly I jumped off the raft and walked up to the steaming green door.

  Nobody would dog-paddle across black, bubbling water, would he? I mean, that doesn’t seem logical, right? So those swimming noises must have been my imagination, too. I sighed deeply and knocked on the door, three times in the middle, the way I had seen Tina do it.

  After only a few seconds the door slowly creaked open, and I joined the rest of the cheerleaders inside. I thought I closed the door, but evidently I left it open a crack.

  22

  Confessions

  “Hey, Jendra!” called Lien Hua with a smile. She was dancing around the room, shaking her butt. “Ready to do your ceremonial dance? Tina’s got the toupee.”

  “And the dentures,” said Jamey Fitzhughston darkly, pulling them out of the lunch box.

  “Gross!” I exclaimed. “Put those away! They’re disgusting.”

  “Jendra,” said Tina in a reprimanding tone. “Are you trying to say our sacred ceremony is disgusting?”

  “Well,” I said slowly. “That wasn’t what I was saying, but . . . yes.”

  Tina sighed and tossed her hair. “Well, we weren’t asking for your opinion,” she said shortly. “Now come over here so we can start the ceremony.”

  “I’d rather not,” I told her.

  “What?” Tina acted shocked that I would question something she said.

  I tried to work up my courage. “I said I’d rather not,” I repeated. “Tina, I don’t know how to tell you this, but . . . uh . . .” Finally I just spit it out, saying, “I don’t want to be a part of the cheerleaders’ conclave anymore.”

  “What?” Tina screeched. From its sacred place inside the glass case, the pompon seemed to stir. Then it started to glow with a strange green light. The room got even warmer than usual, and I began feeling really scared. The whole glowing thing made me remember that freaky dream—the dream about Athena and Ares in the science room, and I started getting kind of worried. I mean, what if it was true?

  “Nothing,” I said hastily. “Nothing.”

  Tina smiled slowly, and the pompon settled down. “Well, that’s good,” she said. “I wouldn’t want you getting any crazy ideas. Jendra, that could be dangerous.”

  “Yeah,” said Jamey Fitzhughston sinisterly. “We wouldn’t want to have to do to you what we did to Chrystal.”

  “What you did to Chrystal?” I repeated, taking a step back.

  “Jamey!” Tina exclaimed, glaring at her good and hard. “Stop. You’re scaring her.”

  “Hold on a minute,” I said. Now I was getting really worried. “I thought you said the guys on the basketball team were harassing Chrystal and made her leave.” Just as I said that, I remembered that in my dream Tina had said, “We shouldn’t have tried to frame the basketball boys.”

  “Tina,” I began hesitantly, not quite sure how to put it. “Were you completely honest with me about what happened to Chrystal?”

  “Let’s not talk about that right now,” Tina said as she tossed Mr. Talbert’s dentures back and forth between her hands.

  “No, I think we should talk about it right now,” I told her, feeling really suspicious. “If you guys did something sinister to Chrystal, I think I have a right to know. I mean, after all, I am her replacement.”

  “All right,” said Jamey with an evil chuckle, “we did. There. Are you happy now?”

  “No!” I exclaimed. I turned in the direction of the door, but Tina stopped me by grabbing my arm.

  “Jendra,” she said. “Don’t get the wrong idea.” Her voice sounded friendly, but her fingernails were sharp, and they were really digging into my skin.

  “Ouch!” I yelped. “Tina, let go of me!”

  “You can’t leave yet!” Tina insisted. “Jendra, you don’t understand. We had to get rid of Chrystal. She turned her back on the conclave. She was going to betray all of our secrets.”

  “What secrets?” I whined, trying to twist out of her grasp.

  “Well, we wouldn’t tell you now,” said Jamey Fitzhughston, like I was totally retarded. “You just said that you wanted to leave. Besides, Chrystal did more than that. She also stole Ares. She stole him, and she threw him into the furnace. I saw her with my own eyes. She was a traitor.”

  “Yes,” Tina agreed. “She was a traitor to the conclave, and that’s why we banished her to another dimension.”

  “Another dimension!” I exclaimed in horror. “You banished her to another dimension just because she stole some stupid pompon?” Just then I made a chilling realization. “Mr. Talbert was on to you, too, wasn’t he? He figured out that you were the ones who stole his pants that day, and the ones who got rid of Chrystal. And so, you’re the ones who—”

  “Of course,” said Jamey. “You didn’t believe that old a-light-fixture-fell-on-his-head story, did you? That’s the lamest excuse Tina’s come up with in a long time.”

  “Tina!” I confronted her.

  Tina sighed in exasperation. “Well, Jendra!” she justified. “We have to have a sacrifice! The pompon must be appeased!”

  She turned to face the back wall, and I noticed for the first time that somebody was tied up in the corner. He wasn’t wearing his toupee or his dentures, but still I was pretty sure it was Mr. Talbert.

  “I don’t believe this!” I yelled. “You weren’t planning a memorial ceremony for Mr. Talbert at all. You had a much more sinister reason for needing his toupee and dentures. You were planning to banish him to another dimension.”

  “Sure,” Jamey said. “Well, that or kill him. We were going to flip a coin.”

  Then suddenly I realized something else. The Twinkies. “You poisoned the whole basketball team with Twinkies, didn’t you?” I said. “To make it look like they all took the day off so they couldn’t be blamed for Chrystal’s disappearance, which made them look doubly suspicious. And that means that I gave Mrs. O’Donnahee a poisoned Twinkie, too. It made her sick! And that’s why you didn’t want me to eat that Twinkie!”

  “Well, that,” said Tina, “and plus Twinkies are really fattening. Did you know that Twinkies have a shelf life of twenty years? Now, honestly, Jendra, do you really want a big yellow hunk of saturated fat sailing through your veins? I saved your life!”

  “Why, so you could sacrifice me?” I screamed theatrically.

  “No,” Tina said, trying to calm me down. “Why would we want to sacrifice you, Jendra? We only sacrifice traitors.”

  “And is Mr. Talbert a traitor?”

  From the back corner Mr. Talbert was looking really worried.

  “Mr. Talbert,” said Jamey, “is a threat to our survival. We have to sacrifice him to appease the pompon. Don’t you understand?”

  “I understand you’re all a bunch of psychos,” I said, starting for the door again. I finally managed to twist away from Tina, but when I got to the door, I found that I was blocked by an invisible wall.

  Running’s no good, said the voice inside my head. They’ll only chase you. They might even push you into the canal. And then you could drown.

  “LaKaisha will never let you out,” Jamey said ominously. She sounded really evil, and now I was starting to get scared.

  “LaKaisha, let me go!” I screamed, banging into her temporarily transparent body with my fist. I’m telling you, LaKaisha must have been the girl of steel or something because she never budged an inch.

  But then, when I looked past LaKaisha to the doorway, I saw a sight that horrified me, in every imaginable way.

  “Leah!” I exclaimed, my eyes bugging out of my head.

  Standing behind me, in the doorway, in her pajamas, wet from head to toe, was my best friend Leah Livingston, looking a little sleepy—and a lot scared!

  23

  Traitor!

  “Leah!” I screamed. “Oh, my gosh! What are you doing here!”

  “I followed you,” she explained. “After I opened up your lunch box this afternoon and found those disgusting dentures and that slimy toupee, I figured that something was for sure wrong.” She batted her eyelashes furiously. “Jendra, what’s going on here?”

  “Gee!” I said. “You sure picked a lousy time to show up!”

  “Traitor!” Jamey yelled suddenly, charging forward. “You see, Tina?” she said. “I told you she was a traitor. Your little friend Jendra led a stranger to our sacred shrine.”

  “I didn’t mean to,” I argued. “She just followed me. I don’t know how it happened.”

  “Well, it wasn’t exactly hard,” said Leah. “You were the only person out on the street, and you looked like one of the Rockettes. Just exactly why do you keep dancing like that, anyway?”

  Glaring at me viciously, Tina declared, “Because she’s so hungry!” Right away I started doing my own special version of the Mexican Hat Dance. I felt like an idiot, but I couldn’t exactly do much about it. Meanwhile, Jamey Fitzhughston grabbed Leah and tied her up in the corner.

  “Why are you doing this?” I wailed, stamping my foot rhythmically. “Leah and I didn’t do anything to you!”

  “You sent your friend to spy on our sacred ceremony,” said Jamey Fitzhughston ruthlessly, “and the penalty for that is death.”

  “Death!” I squeaked, twirling around in a perfect pirouette. “That’s a little harsh isn’t it? Couldn’t you just send us into another dimension like everybody else?”

  For her part, Leah started whining and blinking her eyes so much I’m sure she couldn’t see anything at all.

  “Wait a minute!” I said in horror. “Death? Lien Hua, you said that the band director ran away to a cemetery in Wyoming last year.” I turned on all of them savagely. “But you killed him, too. Didn’t you?”

  Tina looked confused.

  “No,” Lien Hua said with a laugh. “He really did move to Wyoming. I just made that up to be funny.”

  “Lien Hua!” I shrieked.

  “Silence!” Tina commanded solemnly in a booming voice. She dropped to her knees and declared in an eerie voice, “We will ask Athena for her guidance.”

  “Athena?” Leah croaked.

  “She means the pompon,” I said, nodding toward the giant glass case. “Over there.”

  Leah’s eyes just kept on widening until they were enormous. “Oh, my gosh!” she said. “Jendra, do your parents know about this?”

  Meanwhile, Tina’s head was tilted back, and for some reason, she was making these weird, otherworldly gurgling noises in the back of her throat. Abruptly she sat up and announced, “The pompon has spoken.”

  “Does she say to let us go?” I hoped as I bounced gracefully from one corner of the room to another.

  “No!” Tina boomed. “She says that there must be a sacrifice.”

  Tina paced around me cagily. Suddenly she snapped her fingers and yelled, “Turkey!” As soon as I stopped dancing, Jamey hurried over and tied my hands behind me.

  “How could you do this?” I wailed. “I thought you were my friend. Besides”—I suddenly remembered—“you can’t kill me. You need a mascot for the Pompon Follies.”

  “We can always find another seventh grader just as gullible as you,” Tina predicted ominously. “The Pompon Follies aren’t until next week. Don’t worry. Every girl at school is dying to be a cheerleader mascot.” She cackled wickedly. “And there’s just about to be an opening.”

  24

  Judge and Jury

  Just when I had all but given up hope, I heard that tiny voice in the back of my head assuring me, Don’t worry. I won’t let Tina kill you. Just be patient. There’s got to be some way you can escape!

  Lien Hua? I thought. Finally I recognized the voice, and for once I had brains enough not to yell, “Stop doing that!” It was Lien Hua all right. I saw her smiling at me from over in the corner.

  But how can I get away? I thought back. Tina’s obviously going to kill me and Leah and Mr. Talbert tonight. How can I possibly stop her?

  There’s always a way, thought Lien Hua. Just leave it to me.

  Like I had a choice!

  She smiled and then she said out loud, “Tina, before the sacrifice, shouldn’t we offer a ceremonial prayer to Athena?”

  “A ceremonial prayer?” Tina repeated, interested.

  “Yeah, you know,” said Lien Hua. “We ought to pray that our sacrifice will be acceptable in her eyes.”

  “Sacrifice?” Leah whined in terror. “I don’t want to be a sacrifice! I don’t want to be anyone’s sacrifice!” She batted her eyelashes like there was no tomorrow. “Get me out of here!”

  “Shut up!” I told her. “Screaming’s not going to do you any good.”

  So Leah tried whining. She seemed so pathetic, like a tiny puppy dog wearing too much mascara. I almost started crying myself, as a matter of fact.

  “Jamey!” Tina commanded, sounding solemn. “Run to the utility closet and get me the ceremonial knives.”

  “You’ll never get away with this!” I told her. I didn’t know what to say, and that’s what they always say in the movies. Then I thought of something else. “Why don’t you go upstairs now, Tina, and leave the room for a few minutes?”

  “Nice try, Jendra,” Tina said tossing her hair, “but I’ve seen that movie.”

  “Really?” I squeaked. “What movie was that?”

  “Shut up!” snapped Jamey Fitzhughston, giving me the evil eye.

  I closed my mouth fast, but I was getting pretty worried and sweating pretty hard. The pompon shelf was starting to glow again, and I didn’t like that one bit—believe me.

  “Athena has spoken her divine word,” Tina announced, climbing to her feet. Jamey returned from the recesses of the room with silver-tipped knives, daggers, and swords. That did not look too encouraging. Predictably enough, there were thirteen of them.

  “You see, Jendra,” said Tina, grabbing a long silver sword, “I’m the judge, and the verdict is guilty. The sentence, of course, is death.” She stepped closer and drew the sword, pointing it at my throat. “Jamey,” she bellowed, “how do I make the ceremonial cuts?”

  “I don’t know,” Jamey whined. “Just kill her. We’ll worry about the ceremonial stuff later. As long as she’s dead, she can’t cause any trouble. Just hurry up, Tina.”

  I shut my eyes tight and started saying my prayers. At first I couldn’t really think of any prayers to say. Then I meant to start reciting the Lord’s Prayer, but I was so nervous, I accidentally started reciting the Pledge of Allegiance instead. I get all that memorization stuff mixed up.

  “Jendra!” Leah whined, wrinkling her nose. “What the heck are you talking about!”

  “Oh, well,” I decided with a sigh, “at least I’ll die a patriot!”

  I shut my eyes tight again, sure I was really done for. But all at once, Lien Hua came to my rescue by saying the one word that could set me free.

 

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