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Chapter 9 – PretenseShe carefully used her telekinesis to grab her cellphone in her backpack, and dial 9-1-1, and then hold the phone up where the operator could hear what was going on. Then she played dumb. “Holy cow, Jo! What are you doing here again? I thought you were gonna get arrested when you threatened me Monday!”
Okay, she already knew the police hadn’t arrested Jo, because the really persistent officer who took her statement had said they would let her know when they did, so she could go to Jo’s arraignment and testify if needed.
Jo snarled, “You little bitch! I had to jump out my dad’s window and hide out! Last night, I had to hide under the Fourth Street bridge! You are so dead!”
Alex knew the 9-1-1 operator was getting all this, so she acted nervous and stupid. “What are you doing with that switchblade?”
“What do you think I’m doing? I’m going to cut you up into little pieces, bitch!”
Alex kept playing dumb and trying to sound like she was worried or maybe scared. She didn’t really think she was a good actress, but what the hey. “Jo, this is a really, really bad idea. Please don’t do this. Think about it. You’re just gonna get yourself in way more trouble!”
Jo growled, “I’m gonna get myself OUT of trouble. If you’re dead, there’s not gonna be anyone pressing charges against me and I’m home free!”
Alex kept trying to sound upset. “It doesn’t work like that. They’ll know it was you, because of the other day. And plenty of other people saw you on school grounds, and plenty of people saw you threatening me. They don’t need my testifying to lock you up. This is just making things worse! Can’t you see that? Please Jo, you’re making really bad choices!”
Jo smirked nastily. “So now when you’re scared, then you pretend you care about what happens to me. I’ve wanted to cut you up ever since you first made me look bad. And …”
Police cars swung onto the school grounds from either side, penning Jo in. Unless Jo thought she could run right through the chain link fence of the tennis courts, which Alex knew she couldn’t.
And Principal Wilson and Mister Edwards, the school security guy, were running toward Jo and Alex from the school. Jo looked around frantically before she focused on Alex again. “You little bitch, you called the cops on me!”
Alex just said, “Well, yeah. That’s what I was supposed to do, right?”
Jo took a step toward her, so Alex took a step back. Jo still got about half a foot closer, which wasn’t close enough to stab her, but was getting there. If Jo caught her off guard and jumped at her, she could get close enough to do the stabbing.
Jo looked away from her, so she slid a little farther away. Jo yelled at the cops, “Stay back or I’ll stab her!”
The cops just pulled out their guns and pointed them right at Jo. One of them said, “Put the knife down. If you try to attack her, we’ll have no choice but to pull the trigger. And this isn’t cops and robbers on TV. We won’t shoot the knife out of your hand. We’ll be shooting to kill.”
Principal Wilson called out from the other side of the tennis court, “Miss Baker! Please do what the police say!”
Alex said, “Jo, listen to them. I don’t like you, but I don’t want you to get hurt. You could get shot. It could be really bad. And if you’re doing stuff so bad the police have to shoot you, you know you’ll be in jail for pretty much forever. Please listen to them.”
Jo gritted her teeth. “I really thought you’d be a lot more scared.”
Alex said, “I’m plenty scared. It’s just … this isn’t as bad as when Danielle Atron kidnapped me and my whole family and left a timebomb with us to blow all of us to pieces. This is bad, but I’ve seen a lot worse. And she’s crazy. She’s way scarier than anybody I know, even you.”
Jo faltered. “A timebomb?”
“A real timebomb. The bombs that blew up part of the plant a couple years ago? We barely got outside when things blew up. I was this close to being blown to bits, and having my mom and dad get blown to bits, too. That was scary.”
By then, the police officers were a lot closer, and they had their guns trained on Jo. Alex knew that if they fired, Jo was going to be dead.
“Please, Jo, nothing you do is gonna scare me as bad as that. So what’s the point? Nothing you do is gonna get you out of this mess, and trying to use me as a hostage will make things way worse.”
One of the police officers took another step forward and said, “The young lady is right. If you try to use her as a hostage, you’ll come under the Hostage Taking Act, and if convicted, you can be put in prison for the rest of your life. The rest of your life! You’re only eighteen or nineteen. Do you want to be in a maximum security prison until you die of old age?”
Jo flinched. Alex mentally crossed her fingers and said, “Jo, please listen to them. Please!”
Jo finally dropped the knife and said, “Okay.”
The policemen rushed over and quickly handcuffed her and searched her, before shoving her in the back of a police car. One of them started taking a statement from Alex, while the other went over to take a statement from Mister Wilson and Mister Edwards.
Alex took her cellphone out of her backpack and said to the operator, “I’m sorry to be a bother. The police have her now.”
But the operator insisted on hearing that from the policeman, Officer Craig. Alex knew that from looking at his nametag.
Then the really un-fun stuff started. Alex had to spend the next hour pressing charges and giving a statement and filling out forms. And the police were really pretty cranky at her about going out here by herself when she was pretty sure Jo might try to sneak up and attack her again. And the principal and Mister Edwards were pretty cranky at her for risking getting hit or stabbed or something. She just let them lecture her while she tried hard to look like she was really sorry.
She wasn’t sorry. People had to stand up to bullies like Jo, or else everybody got bullied. And if people like Jo thought they could get away with bullying you, then they’d think they could get away with worse stuff.
On the other hand, she was sorry she was late to Spanish class, because she had missed it completely two days before, and Seņora Martinez was pretty cheesed off even if Alex had a note from the principal. So Alex got asked a whole ton of the phrases for the day, and had to try two of the sentences that went up on the board, instead of just one or maybe even none.
After Spanish, everybody wanted to know what was going on, and a couple people were really freaked that Jo snuck onto school grounds with a knife to go after Alex.
She explained, “It’s okay. I called the police, and I stalled her until the police came, and now she’s in jail, and she’ll probably be in jail until she needs Depends.”
Robyn complained, “Thank you for that lovely imagery.”
Ray said, “You could’ve gotten hurt.”
Alex insisted, “Someone had to stand up to her. Just like someone had to stand up to her a couple years ago. It just turned out that someone was me.” She added, “And I don’t really think she would’ve stabbed me with that knife. I think she just wanted to scare me and be mean to me.”
Kelly and her posse walked past them. D said, “I think Alex is maybe the bravest girl in school.”
Kelly turned up her nose and said, “Or the craziest.”
Alex looked at Ray and said, “I vote for ‘craziest’. How about you?”
Ray smiled at her and murmured, “I vote for ‘cutest’.” She squeezed his hands and smiled into his eyes.
Louis complained, “Oh, you guys! Get a room!”
Alex looked at him and said a little louder, “Well, it’s not like I could just sit around until Libby finally put on that superhero uniform and flew in and saved the day.”
Robyn grinned at her and then forced a fake frown on her face. “Hey! We’re not supposed to talk about Libby’s secret identity!”
“Oops!” Alex said with an ‘uh-oh’ face.
Nicole turned around and looked at the people around them. “You totally weren’t supposed to hear that part. Okay? Nobody talk about Libby’s superheroing.”
They all managed to get to their next classes without laughing.
* * *
The rest of the day went better. Science class was easy, and the assigned homework was really easy, because she was sure Annie’s books at home had all that stuff already, so there wasn’t a lot of ‘looking up’ to do. She got lots of stuff done in study hall, including about half her trig. She got some pretty good tips while she was working at Gloria’s, just because she gave a nice old couple some really good advice on picking doughnuts. No super-crooks tried robbing anybody. She got home first, so she got to pick what she wanted to do, and so she fixed dinner. She had the rice cooking in the rice cooker and the chicken broiling in the oven and the mixed vegetables ready to cook in the microwave before her folks were home.
So she even got more reading on “Much Ado about Nothing” done. And there was a message from Louis on her phone. Boy, did the Elizabethans have a ton of words for sex and naughty body parts. The more she learned about this stuff, the naughtier these plays got. It was like an Adam Sandler movie or something. Every time the guy characters were talking, someone was making dirty jokes, no matter what they were supposed to be talking about.
So how come people like her folks and her grandparents complained about all the dirty stuff in movies and TV today, when it was just as bad, or maybe worse, four hundred years ago? She wished she had Willow and Sam and Hermione around to ask about some of this stuff.
When her folks got home, she started the veggies in the microwave. Then she took the chicken out of the oven and started cutting it up. Her dad took off his suit jacket and tie, and put on one of his sweater vests, then he came in and helped her get everything on the table. Her mom stopped cleaning in the entryway and hallway when dinner was ready, and they all sat down to eat.
After everyone was full, her dad said, “So, Alex. You said someone had two ideas for handling Danielle Atron. What are they?”
So she told them Sam’s two ideas. Her mom actually cringed. That wasn’t a good sign.
Her dad finally said, “I really don’t like Idea One, but I’ll get started right away on Idea Two as soon as I get in the lab tomorrow. Ooch! Wait, I have a meeting at 8:30. But after I get out of the meeting, I’ll start on it.”
Her mom just said, “Honey, I just don’t think that first one’s a very safe plan.”
She sighed. “Maybe it isn’t. But what if Danielle doesn’t give us a lot of choice?”
Her mom frowned. “Well … maybe we could save it as a last-ditch option.”
Her dad said, “If Danielle comes after us again, it may be our best chance. But that doesn’t mean I think it’s a good idea.”
Her mom cut off all the talk by jumping right to something else. Boy, it wasn’t subtle when Alex did it, and it was totally the opposite of subtle when her mom did it.
Which reminded her. More studying for SATs, too. Ugh.
Her mom said, “So … George. Did you get those films for Alex?”
“Oh! Right. The films.” Her dad was even worse at subtle than her mom. “I think what I came up with will be perfect. They’re as thin as a real coat of makeup, only a solid film of a mylar derivative.”
He led them into the garage, where the mold of her head was now wearing what looked like a shiny black eyecrayon and a deep red lipstick, drawn just the way Alex wanted. He turned to Alex and said, “Go ahead and try it. Just peel it off and stick it on your face. It’ll adhere.”
She tried it. It was a little weird getting the films on her eyelids, but they fit just right and moved with her eyelids. Then the ‘lipstick’ worked just as well. She rushed into the downstairs bathroom to get a look. The lipstick even looked freshly applied and shiny. “Dad! This is perfect!” She gave him a hug and said, “You rock!”
Her mom gave her a smile and then said, “Yes, George, you do indeed ‘rock’.”
He grinned back and said, “I guess sometimes I do still rock.”
Alex fished her costume bag out of her car and flew upstairs to her room. She stuck the bits of film in the bag and dropped it on the floor. She went silvery, puddled into the bag, dropped off her regular clothes, grabbed everything else, and puddled back out. Then she rose up and went normal.
She glanced at the clock on her nightstand. Fifteen seconds. That was awesome. She checked herself in the mirror. Terawatt was wearing her black mask, and black over her eyelids, and red lipstick. There was no way someone could change into that costume in under ten or fifteen minutes. She couldn’t help grinning at the mirror, even if the ‘lipstick’ film felt a little funny when she stretched it with a big smile.