Here Comes Mr. Trouble

10

Eric walked in a daze toward his history class.

Twice that day, time seemed to have jumped. Fiona had even commented on it, said it was normal. Eric really wished everyone would stop using that word because he was starting to lose all sense of what normal really was.

He turned into the corridor where his next classroom was located.

“Whoa, there, tiger.”

Once again, he had to stop in his tracks to prevent himself from running into someone. Only it wasn’t just one person this time. It was two. Fiona and Keira were standing shoulder to shoulder, blocking his way.

“We need to get you out of here,” Fiona said. “The situation is more serious than we expected.”

“Uncle Colin and Uncle Carl expected it,” Keira said under her breath.

Fiona shot her a look then turned back to Eric. “Here.” She held out a piece of paper.

“What’s this?” he asked.

“An excuse to get you out of class.”

How would a note from a fifteen-year-old girl who was pretending to be a thirteen-year-old eighth grader get him out of class? “So the office is going to let me go because you excused me? I don’t think so.”

“Just take it.”

He grabbed the note and opened it.

Eric had to read it twice to make sure he was really seeing what he was seeing. The note looked like it written by his mother. He’d recognize her handwriting anywhere.

“How did you do this?” he asked.

Keira beamed. “Like it?”

“You did this?”

“Kind of a hobby.”

“Writing like my mother is a hobby?”

“Well, not just your mother.”

“How did you even know what she wrote like?”

Keira shrugged. “Same way we were able to start school today. Ronan and Uncle Carl made a late-night visit to the school office. After they entered us into the computer system, they checked out a few files, specifically yours, where they found old notes from your mom.”

“Hello? None of this matters,” Fiona said. “We need you to drop this off at the office so we can get out of here.”

“But I have to go to class,” he protested. “Our report’s due today.”

“Your report? Eric, if you go to class, it might be the last one you ever attend.”

“Wh…what?”

“Let’s move it,” she said, pushing him in the direction of the office. “There’s not much time.”

The hallways were deserted now, everyone having already entered their fifth-period classrooms. Eric was sure Vice Principal Rose would suddenly appear and order all three of them to class, but they made it to the office without getting stopped.

“You’ve got to do this on your own,” Fiona said outside the door. “If we come in with you, someone might get suspicious. You can do that, right?”

“Yeah,” Eric said, not exactly full of confidence. “I guess I can do that.”

“Good. We’ve got something we need to do, so we’ll meet you in front of the school in a few minutes.”

Eric entered the office, again expecting to run into Vice Principal Rose, but the vice principal was either in his private office or off somewhere else terrorizing other students.

“Can I help you?” Mrs. Cameron asked.

Eric hesitated, then said, “I have to go to the doctor.”

He put the note on the counter, suddenly sure he was about to get caught.

Mrs. Cameron opened it and then looked at Eric over the top of her reading glasses. “Are you sick?”

“No, ma’am.”

“Then why are you going to the doctor?”

What an obvious question. He should have prepared an answer for that. All he could think to say was the truth. “I don’t know. I didn’t have anything to do with it.”

Mrs. Cameron looked at him a moment longer, then chuckled. “No, I guess you wouldn’t have.” She wrote out a pass allowing him to leave the campus and handed it to him. “Have a good weekend.”

“Thank you, Mrs. Cameron. You, too.”

When he reached the hallway, he couldn’t contain his nervous energy any longer and started running. He didn’t care if Vice Principal Rose popped out of nowhere and tried to stop him. He wanted to get out of there. Now!

To get to the main school entrance from the office, you had to go to the end of the hall and turn right into a shorter corridor that led to a set of glass doors. Two minutes tops at a fast walk. Running, he would make it in a quarter of the time.

“There you are,” Peter Garr said as he stepped out from behind one of the pillars along the hallway wall. Once more he was talking in the strange monotone.

Eric stopped and tried to take a step backwards, but someone pushed him from behind.

“I don’t think so,” Tommy Bird said, his hand on Eric’s back. Like Peter, his voice was also a monotone.

“I…I…I’ve got to go,” Eric said. “My dad’s waiting for me. Doctor’s appointment.”

He tried to duck around Peter, but the plump Kyle Sanders got in his way, his tiny eyes staring down at Eric.

They closed in around him, using the corridor wall to box him in.

“Hard to run now, huh?” Peter said.

Tommy pulled Eric’s backpack off his shoulder and slipped it over his own arm.

“Hey!” Eric said.

“You don’t need it any more,” Peter told him.

Eric reached for it. “Give it back!”

Tommy’s focus seemed to waver and he started to hand the bag back to Eric but Kyle reached out and stopped him. “Peter said you don’t need it.”

Eric looked at each of them. “What do you guys want?”

Peter moved in close, then tilted his head back. Sniff, sniff.

He smiled. “You, of course.”

What Eric would have done to have that unicorn necklace in his pocket at that moment. He was sure there was a lesson in there somewhere, but he didn’t have time to figure it out right then.

“Why me?” he asked. “What did I ever do to you?”

“Nothing,” Peter said.

“Then why do you and your friends keep trying to beat me up?”

Peter moved his head to the side in the way a dog did when it heard an odd noise. He seemed to lose focus for several seconds but then he looked Eric in the eyes.

“That was…preparation. Are you ready? Or do we need to…intimidate you again?”

It was quite possibly the strangest question Eric had ever been asked, and that was saying a lot after dealing with the Trouble family. “I’m ready. Sure. No need for any more intimidating.”

Peter’s laugh was almost mechanical. “Good. Then you need to hold this.”

He pushed something into Eric’s hand.

Eric looked down to see what it was, or, rather, in his mind he looked down to see what it was. Because though his mind sent out the command, his head didn’t move. He tried to raise his hand but it wouldn’t move, either.

Peter grinned, and then he and his two friends started walking down the corridor away from the entrance.

No longer surrounded, Eric knew this was his chance.

Run! His feet didn’t budge. Run! Nothing. It was like his shoes were glued to the floor.

Peter laughed again, then said a single word, “Come.”

Completely out of Eric’s control, his body turned around and began walking after the three other boys.

This is SO not good, he thought. Not good at all.

He tried to tell them to stop it and give him his body back, but his lips wouldn’t part. He had absolutely no control over anything but his thoughts.

Peter’s little gang moved through the empty corridors with Eric following right behind like a trained pet. As they passed classroom after classroom, Eric could hear teachers lecturing and students talking. If one of them, just one, would look into the hallway and see what was going on, maybe that would break whatever — spell? magic? hypnosis? — Peter was using on him.

But no one looked. No one asked them why they weren’t in class. No one noticed them at all.

And where was Vice Principal Rose when you really needed him? Sure he was right on the spot when someone was running down the hall. But when Eric was being led to who-knew-where like a zombie by a gang of monotone-talking bullies? The vice principal was nowhere to be seen.

And what about Fiona and Keira? Even without rubbing the unicorn, shouldn’t they have come back to see what was keeping him by now?

So many options for rescue, but none happening. If he could have screamed in frustration, he would have.

The only thing he could do was try to figure out where they were going. His best guess was outside to a less populated part of the campus. But that idea vanished when Peter turned down a small, dead-end hallway near the auditorium.

The first thing Eric saw once they turned was a sign on the wall that read “Everyone Has a Brain. It’s What You Do with It That’s Important.” The second thing was the door to the basement.

He was sure he was about to be taken down to some kind of medieval-era torture chamber, all set up and waiting for its next victim. Racks and chains and boiling oil and who knew what else.

But Peter walked right past the door.

Now Eric was really confused. If they weren’t going into the basement, then where were they going? There was nothing else in the hallway.

Peter answered the question five seconds later, when he stopped in front of one of the two windows at the dead end and pushed it open.

Just outside was the top of the hedge that surrounded the building. Beyond it was a green van that looked like one of the maintenance vehicles used by the school district.

As soon as the window was open all the way, a man outside popped up from underneath. Though he was wearing the same kind of coveralls the school gardeners wore, Eric didn’t recognize him.

Peter waved at Eric to come forward, and despite his unwillingness to do so, Eric did exactly that.

Somewhere in the distance, Eric could hear a single set of footsteps running down a corridor. The other boys either didn’t notice or didn’t care as they positioned themselves around him, tilted him back, and raised him into the air like a piece of plywood.

The runner was approaching fast, the steps growing louder and louder with each second.

Peter and his friends got Eric level with the window and then started moving him toward the opening, feet first.

With a loud clomp, clomp, skid, the steps halted at the end of the corridor. “Put him down!” Keira demanded.

The boys faltered only a second before they continued feeding Eric to the man outside.

“I said put him down!”

This time her words had zero effect. Eric’s knees were approaching the window frame. Soon he’d be all the way out, so if yelling at them was the only trick Keira had up her sleeve, then he was a goner for sure.

Suddenly the gardener stiffened, his eyes rolled back, and he dropped straight to the ground.

That was good in one way, but bad in the sense that now no one was holding the part of Eric’s legs that was outside. His feet were starting to tilt downward, but then someone grabbed them and pushed them back up.

Eric thought it was the gardener making a sudden reappearance, but it was Fiona.

“I believe my sister told you to put him down.” She held an odd-looking gun in one hand, Eric’s legs in the other.

Peter and his friends stopped. As one, they looked first at Fiona, then at Keira.

“That’s right,” Fiona said. “We’ve got you surrounded. See this?” She wiggled the gun. “Sleep juice. You’re not going to be much use once you’re unconscious. Now put him down.”

Peter and his two friends backed Eric away from the window. “Sorry,” he said. “You are not as smart as you think you are.”

Eric could see confusion pass through Fiona’s eyes. He could also see something else— another gardener just on the other side of the hedge behind her. He wanted to yell out and warn her, but his lips still wouldn’t move. Maybe Keira would see him and alert her sister. Then he realized his body was blocking her view.

“Smart or not, you’re about to go to sleep,” Fiona announced.

Just as she started to pull the trigger of her gun, the gardener reached across the hedge and grabbed her arm. A dart flew out of the gun’s barrel and bounced harmlessly off the hallway ceiling before crashing to the floor. At the same moment, Eric heard something solid clatter against the tiles as Keira yelled out behind him. But whatever was happening back there, he was facing the wrong direction to see it.

Outside, Fiona was struggling to get loose from the second gardener but having little luck. Just then, Peter and Tommy lowered Eric’s shoulders a few inches so his body was now lying flat. Gravity then took over and Eric’s head fell back, giving him an upside-down view of the hallway.

Now he could see Keira. Just like her sister, she wasn’t alone. But the person holding her was Vice Principal Rose. What was he doing? And why wasn’t he telling Peter and the others to put him down? Then Eric saw it in the vice principal’s eyes — that same odd look he’d seen in Peter. It was as if Vice Principal Rose wasn’t really himself.

Eric started to panic. Fiona and Keira were out of action and he was no better than a statue. Was Mr. Trouble nearby? Would he show up? There was no way to know so they couldn’t count on that. If only his body would listen to his brain and move like it was supposed to. If only he could do something! If he could move, even if it was just a little—

His finger twitched.

Eric held his breath. Had he imagined it? He concentrated again. This time he could feel his left pinky finger move up and down. It wasn’t just in his mind. It was real.

But if I can move my finger, then… He kept only one thought in his mind. I can do this. I can do this.

Suddenly, warmth bathed over his skin, and the numbness he hadn’t even realized he’d been experiencing began to fade away. Carefully, he moved his toes inside his shoes then twisted his head just a tiny bit to prove that he could.

Yes!

Vice Principal Rose was walking Keira toward him. Eric could see her struggle, but he knew she was no match for the vice principal, even in his odd, robot-like state. He tried to catch her eye but she wasn’t looking in his direction.

Then he noticed an odd-looking gun on the floor maybe five or six feet away. It was just like the one Fiona had been holding. A dart gun. Keira must have dropped it when she’d been grabbed.

Trying not to draw attention, Eric lifted his head until it was level with his body, then shifted his gaze so he was looking over his chest and out the window at Fiona. She was still fighting with the gardener, the bush between them keeping the man from getting full control of her.

Though they continued to hold Eric in the air Peter, Tommy and Kyle seemed to be frozen in place like they were waiting for something. That something was undoubtedly the moment the Trouble sisters were under full control. As soon as that happened, he knew the boys would start moving him out again.

He counted to three in his mind, then jerked up so that his hips quickly sagged toward the floor. He rolled to the right, freeing first his legs from Kyle’s grip and then his shoulders from Peter and Tommy’s.

With a thunk, he landed on the floor.

Pain shot up his right arm, but he ignored it as he scrambled across the floor toward the gun. He had definitely caught the three boys by surprise. They hadn’t even tried grabbing him until he’d fallen out of their grasps.

The gun only two feet in front of him, he reached out to grab it with his right hand, but his fingers remained curled in a tight fist, not moving. Apparently, it was the only part of his body he still hadn’t regained control of.

He switched hands, thrusting his left out, but just as he was about to latch onto the dart gun’s handle, someone grabbed his ankle and yanked him back. He looked around and saw Peter Garr grinning at him.

Eric kicked at the other boy’s hand and said, “Let me go!”

Peter’s grip loosened but he didn’t let go. As Eric kicked again, his left hand knocked against something on the floor. He looked. It was the misfired dart Fiona had shot. Hoping it would still work, he grabbed it, sat up, and jabbed it into Peter’s arm. Peter froze for a moment, then looked at Eric, surprised, before passing out on the floor.

Free now, Eric dove for the gun. Once it was in his hand, he moved it around so that all the others could see it. “Let my friends go and leave us alone,” he said.

Everyone stared at him, including the Trouble sisters.

“I said, let them go,” he repeated.

There was silence for a moment, then Vice Principal Rose said, “We’ll see you soon.”

One by one, Tommy, Kyle, the vice principal, and the gardener outside fell to the ground.

The second she was free, Fiona scrambled through the window. “What happened? Did it fall off of you?”

“Did what fall off of me?” Eric asked.

“You were frozen, weren’t you? You couldn’t move?”

“Well, yeah.” Then he remembered. “You mean this?”

He pried open the fingers on his right hand. In his palm was a gold ball, not much bigger than a bearing for a bicycle wheel. As he tossed it to her, he was suddenly able to move his fingers again.

“Watch out!” Keira shouted, scrambling backwards.

Fiona swung her arm out in an attempt to bat the sphere away, but missed.

It fell to the floor, bounced once, and then—

“This is just—”

— landed on her shoe.

Instantly, her voice was cut off and she froze in position.

“What is that?” Eric asked.

Instead of answering, Keira walked over to her sister and smiled. “I kind of like her like this, don’t you?”

“Don’t get too close!” Eric warned.

“Relax. It only works on one person at a time.”

In the distance, Eric could hear someone walking slowly down one of the hallways.

“We’ve got company,” he said.

Keira studied her sister for a moment longer then said, “Well, it was great while it lasted.”

She pulled a pair of tongs out of her bag and carefully used them to pick the gold ball off her sister’s foot.

“—great,” Fiona finished saying, glaring at her sister.

“Don’t look at me,” Keira said. “He’s the one who threw it at you.”

Fiona shivered like she’d just tasted something horrible and then stood up.

“At least it didn’t touch your skin,” Keira said, looking back at Eric. “There’s a sandwich bag in my backpack. Grab it for me.” When he didn’t move right away, she said, “Now would be good. Before whoever’s coming shows up.”

Eric shook himself, then found a bag with a half-eaten sandwich still inside. He held it out to her.

“Just the bag. Not the sandwich.”

He dumped the sandwich into Peter Garr’s lap and then handed the bag over.

In one smooth motion, Keira moved the tongs over the bag and dropped the ball inside. Once she sealed it, she smiled. “All done.”

Fiona frowned at Eric. “Why didn’t you use your emergency beacon?”

“I…I left it at home,” Eric said.

“You left it at home?” She was not happy.

“It was a unicorn necklace,” he pleaded. “I can’t carry around a unicorn necklace.”

She covered her eyes with her hand.

“Hey, Eric,” Keira said. “Catch.” She tossed him the bag.

Unable to jump out of the way, he reached out, caught the bag by the upper edge, and then held it out at arm’s length.

“Relax,” Keira told him. “It can’t hurt you now.”

“But this bag is just thin plastic,” he countered.

“That’s all it takes.”

Whoever was walking toward them was getting closer.

“Time to leave,” Fiona whispered. She grabbed the dart Eric had poked Peter with, then moved over to the open window and climbed through.

Eric grabbed his bag from where Tommy had dropped it, stuffed the sealed gold ball inside, and went to the window. But before he could go through, Keira pushed past him.

“Girls first,” she said.

He glanced back at the other end of the corridor, knowing someone was going to come around the corner at any second.

“Come on, come on, come on,” he whispered to Keira.

The moment she was clear, he threw his leg over the windowsill, rolled through the opening, and dropped to the ground outside.

Just as he got to his knees, he heard Ms. Lindgren’s voice from inside. “What in the world is going on here? Vice Principal Rose? Is that you?”

Fiona tapped Eric on the arm and mouthed, “Let’s go.”