Chapter #35Wrong Faces in Wrong Places by: Seuzz   So you'd have to wait ... what would it be? Two days longer to get your minion up and running? You can live with that. "The way I'm feeling right now, I'd fuck up every order if I covered for you today," you tell Justin.
He passes the word to Connor, then gives you a funny look as you linger at the store with him. "I need some caffeine," you explain. He whips you up a cappuccino and sends you on your way.
* * * * *
Pouring caffeine into a pit of deep exhaustion turns out not to be the best idea you've ever had. You've a feeling like popcorn exploding behind your eyeballs, and when you talk it's like your tongue, jaw and lips are trying to go in six different directions at once. During first period Mr. Walberg almost climbs onto the lectern when you answer one of his questions with noises that sound like a stroke victim trying to talk in one of those sub-Saharan languages that's full of clicks and pops.
"Are you on prescription medicine or something?" Caleb asks as you lurch toward the doorway when the bell rings.
"The fuck are you asking me that for? Aren't you—?" You were going to ask if he wasn't also exhausted, but he doesn't look it. He looks completely fresh and rested and relaxed. "Why are you looking so—so—?" You can't find a word to describe him. Crisply laundered and buffed for a new day would be one way to describe him, but your brain has unraveled into a heap of loose yarn, so you fail to come up with any good description at all.
"Why am I looking so sexy?" Caleb finishes for you.
"Not hardly." Someone jostles you in the push toward the door, almost pitching you into a wall. Normally you'd snarl something at them, but now you just lean against the cool plaster and try to recover some little strength. "Last night, didn't it wear you totally out?"
Caleb gets a slightly panicked expression. "Oh sure! But I got a good night's sleep so I'm all, you know, recharged." He hurries out the door.
He's gone before it occurs to you what must be going on. You and Justin were supposed to switch this morning, and at the same time Caleb and Connor were supposed to switch. So that must be Connor inside Caleb's mask. He must be getting some kind of extra strength from it.
But why is he pretending like he doesn't know you were all out late working last night? Well, you'll ask him at lunch.
If you don't sleep through it.
* * * * *
And maybe you do fall asleep, for being asleep on your feet is the only excuse you can have for bouncing off of Joshua Call outside your bullshit, third-period Career Planning class. One minute you're squeezing through the crowded hallways like a glob of toothpaste, and the next your face and shoulder are ricocheting off a hard torso wrapped in a t-shirt the color of ketchup. (Or dried blood.) You look up with a scowl, and feel the scowl numbly slide off your face when the owner of that t-shirt turns around.
You'd forgotten about him—both about the fact that he is supposedly enrolled at Westside High and that you spotted him (and he spotted you) at Wal-Mart last week when you and Connor were shopping for supplies for the first minion. You'd forgotten about him because, blessedly, he seemed to have forgotten seeing you.
But what is Call even doing here? What little you've heard about him, he's on his way to dropping out.
And why are you even worrying about this instead of scrambling away?
Shit. As you step backward you glimpse the answer inside the classroom: Nicholas Horner and Jeff Spencer are there. Those are two of Call's friends. Of all the days for them to show up—
You dodge around Call and through the doorway, and at first you think he's going to let things pass. But then you feel his feet on the back of your heels. You trip and almost fall into Vanessa Bailey's lap. She shrinks back from you and gives you a dirty look, and gives an even dirtier look to the guy treading on your feet.
You slide into your desk and look up at Call from under your eyebrows. He stares down stonily at you, but you can see a trace of malicious amusement in his eyes. "Hey, man, what's up?" you croak at him.
Hard muscles in his shoulders twitch. Then he shoots a glance at the front of the room. Thank God. Mr. Peters is watching with a look of interested bemusement.
Call looks back down at you, and for a moment you're convinced he's going to hock a loogie into your lap. But he backs off with a nasty smile instead. That would be bad enough, but he gives a long look to his two friends, and out of the corner of your eye you see them give you the same nasty smiles that Call has given you. All during class you feel their eyes on the back and sides of your head.
You bolt from the room when the bell rings, and make it to English without being intercepted.
* * * * *
"Are you going to try copying Kelsey today?" you ask Caleb in a low voice after you've recovered your breath. (He's in that class too.)
"Connor and Justin said they were going to do that," he replies.
"Cut the crap, Hutchison," you murmur back. "I know it's you."
He pales. "Oh. Okay. You got me." He flashes a quick, mirthless grin.
"So are you going to try that thing today?"
"No."
"You got any ideas for how to do it?"
"No."
"Jesus." You rub your eyes. "How are you managing to be so, like, awake and stuff?"
"I told you, I slept well last night. Seven hours."
"No you didn't."
He swallows. "Quality makes up for quantity?"
You stare at him hard, but Ms. Gladstone calls class to order before you can figure out what's going on.
When you do figure it out, you almost come out of your chair with a yawp, and the whole class swings around to stare at you. You bury your head under your arms, and from under them you shoot laser beams with your eyes at Caleb.
At minion-Caleb, that is.
* * * * *
"Look, I can't tell you anything," he says, and with dismaying ease pries your hand off the front of his shirt. It's lunch time and you're behind the music wing with him. It. Whatever the correct pronoun is. "That guy—" He makes a face. "Uh, Caleb. Jesus, do you know how weird it is to feel like you're the real guy when you know you're only a copy of someone else?"
"No I don't, and I'll make you feel something worse than that if you don't tell me what your fucking original is doing."
"I told you, I can't tell you. He was very specific about that." A kind of shudder ripples through him. "Just thinking about it makes me feel really weird, like I'm going to fall apart."
"I'm going to tear you apart if—" But it's no use threatening the thing. You haven't the strength to even grab onto him, let alone thrash him. "Can you tell me where he is?"
"That's kind of a gray area, I think, but I think he doesn't what me telling you guys anything."
"Why not?"
"If I told you that, I'd be telling you what he's doing, and I can't do that."
This talk is going to turn into a bad comedy routine if you keep it up, and it would just get worse if Keith Tilley—who has just appeared around a corner—joins in, so you drop it. "If you're not going to say anything, at least don't say anything to Keith," you tell the minion.
"I don't gotta do what you say."
"Shut the fuck up."
* * * * *
At least you've got a puzzle to work on, and that helps keep you awake the rest of the day. How did Caleb get into the school basement to switch the minion? When did he do that switch? And where is he now and what is he doing?
Well, ten to one he's doing whatever he was wanting to do when he tried getting you to lend him the key to the basement. He had to have made the switch early this morning, since he was with you last night at the cemetery. And as for getting into the basement—
You feel at your pockets and pull out your truck keys. The basement key is missing off the ring. Fucker must have picked your pocket last night.
You have very little time to get out to the school before your four o'clock curfew, and you don't spare the horsepower getting there. The lock is off the basement door, and you push your way in with a grim look. A girl's voice sounds as you come down the stairs. "Hey, that was fast. Get on the table and—"
You freeze on the bottom stair. Eva Garner—a naked Eva Garner—stares back at you.
You guffaw. "Dude! I shoulda guessed!"
Eva—Caleb, that is—grabs up a sleeping bag to hide her body. "God damn it, Will! If you tell the other guys—!"
But it sounds like the other guys are already here. You look up at the sound of heavy steps on the stairs above.
It's not Justin or Connor, though, and your sphincter loosens at the sight of Joshua Call. His eyes make a slow journey of it between you and the naked Eva. The silence only misses the distant bark of a dog to have the final touch of comedy to it.
Then a figure like a spider monkey leaps on his back. Call and the interloper fall headlong down the stairs, and you are barely able to leap out of the away as they come at you like an avalanche. As the echoes die, Caleb Johansson—the minion—gets shakily to his feet, but Call remains very still. After a moment of paralysis, you bend down and turn him over. He's breathing, but there's a bloody gash across his forehead.
You look up in horror at Eva. "Shit. What do we do?"
For a moment she struggles. Then with a kind of hoarse ferocity she says, "We use the new spell on him."
"It'll kill him!"
"It's him or us!"   indicates the next chapter needs to be written. |
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