Sixteen
Becky fled to the nearest girl's room with Rick on
her heels.
"I'm not going to hurt you!"
Becky rushed through the zigzag maze. Without
thinking, Rick followed her in.
Becky all but ran into Marla. Taken by surprise,
Marla raised an aluminum baseball bat she had found somewhere, her eyes
wide with fright.
Becky shrieked. Marla recovered her initial
surprise. She lowered the bat and shoved Becky aside in disgust. "Don't
scream in my face, you little twerp."
Becky fell against a sink. She regained her balance,
then went flying back toward only to scream into the face of Rick Kaiser
still on her tail.
Marla never saw Rick standing before her until she
all but walked into him. She stopped short with startled alarm and
brought the bat up again, then laughed. "Oh, this is so brave of you,
Rick. How long are you planning on visiting the girl's room?"
Rick followed Becky back into the corridor. Becky
had run up against Mort Braggs coming down the corridor with a fresh
cutting torch in either hand. Becky must have thought they were knives.
Her shriek of terror went up an octave. She turned away with a wild look
in her eyes and ran.
"Wow," Mort said, impressed by the intensity of
Becky's hysteria. "Talk about panic city."
Mort grinned sheepishly at Marla
emerging from the girl's room. Marla rested her
baseball bat on one shoulder and eyed the boy with distrust.
"It was an accident," Rick said in Mort's
self-defense. "I mean about the torch going off the way it did."
"No kidding!" Mort said, and half turned to show
where the torch had scorched his pants. "I got myself worse than you,
Marla." He turned beet red. "Sorry about your hair."
Marla glared at him and refused to accept the
apology.
"You two could treat Becky with a little more
respect," Rick told the two. "We're all having a rough time of it."
Marla sneered at him. "Yeah, so we're
all having something of a rough time
of it."
"You don't have to be so
cold hearted about it," Rick said,
hurt as usual by Marla's heartlessness. He had not known it went so deep.
Marla's eyes narrowed. "Yeah, so maybe you got
ulterior motives of your own wanting to be so helpful. After all, you're
the one who likes to get all lovey-dovey. Maybe you're thinking it would
be easier to get it on with Becky Marple."
Rick blushed. It was hard not to notice girls in
that way, but it wasn't what he had in mind at all. "You're batting
zero," he said in a cold tone of voice of his own.
"I know you boys," Marla said. "You're not going to
tell me anything different than what I already know about what guys
want, or how you act when you think you're on the right track."
Rick opened his mouth to protest, then closed it.
Marla was certain to get in the last word.
"Besides, if Becky Marple is the best you can do, you
got a real problem. Getting mushy with her isn't going to help solve it."
"None of that's important," Rick said, anxious to
change the subject. "Something odd is going on around here. We should
try to get along and stick together."
The comment caught Mort's attention. "What do you
mean, odd?"
"The police should have been here by now," Rick
said. "Mr. Mangrove wouldn't just up and disappear the way he did. This
might still be part of the evaluation."
"So what if it is?" Marla said. "Mort thinks it's
all a trick, a rotten stunt. What if he's right? After all, look at what
they've done to your poor Miss Marple. The girl's a basket case."
"So, then let's quit with the bickering," Rick said
quietly.
"Maybe Mort has a point about getting out of here and
making their nasty scheme backfire in their faces," Marla said. "My
parents will never stand for this. They'll have the entire staff of the
school fired and put into jail."
"What if they're just trying to help?" Rick ventured.
Mort shook his head ominously. "How do you feel
they're helping? I'll kill them for what they did to me."
"I think they've gone too far," Marla said. "You
going to tell me otherwise?"
Rick thought about it. He shook his head. They had
gone too far.
"What's the sense in babbling like this?" Mort
growled from the depths of his anger. He held up his torches. "We burn
our way out of here and let prissy Miss know-it-all here sic her loving
mom and dad on the school. I can hide out in the hood until someone gets
around to taking my name off a rap sheet. You can do whatever you want,
Kaiser. No skin off my back."
Mort grinned wickedly. "Marla's right about the
Marple girl. Maybe you could take advantage of the situation and get away
with it."
"We're not going to get away with anything," Rick
said. "They're watching our every move. It doesn't make sense that
everybody would just forget about us, and that the security systems would
fail, and the cops not bother to show up and check it out."
Marla studied him with a frown. "Mort's right about
you, Rick Kaiser. Your solution to every problem is to do nothing until
it takes care of itself. I'm tired of it."
Mort chuckled. "Way to go."
Marla turned her unkind attention to Mort. "You're
still a moron in my book, Mortimer. Run off and play with your toys and
get off my back."
Color drained from Mort's face.
"Marla," Rick said, warning her for maybe the
thousandth time in their relationship.
Marla looked at him with an expression chiseled from
steel. "You're the one who's got this pit bull convinced he's so bad.
The only thing bad about him is his breath."
Mort lunged at her. Rick had no choice but to put
himself between the two.
With torches in both hands, Mort couldn't strike out
with a fist. Instead, he shouldered Rick aside. Rick spun around and hit
the wall hard enough to knock the breath from his lungs.
Marla beat a hasty retreat. "You two turkeys got
your little act down pat!" she called out over her shoulder. "I don't buy
any of it! You're both pathetic!"
"I'm not taking any more of her lip," Mort said, not
speaking to anyone in particular. He turned away and hurried off looking
like he was about to burst into tears. Or kill someone.
Rick slid to the floor and drew his knees to his
chin. If Marla had pegged Mort as harmless, she was in for an unpleasant
surprise. She had used Rick as protection against the consequence of her
unthinking arrogance during her first semester in the public school
system. If she thought she had mastered the art of getting along with
people well enough to keep herself from getting hurt, she was wrong.
Rick looked up and down the empty corridor. Where
had his friend the janitor gone? The janitor was his only evidence that
some greater authority was in control of the situation, the only assurance
he had that someone wasn't going to get hurt.
Or had the janitor up and vanished as mysteriously as
Mr. Mangrove? Why hadn't someone intervened, if they were being watched?
Mort had come close to seriously injuring both himself and Marla when the
torch accidentally ignited.
How far were they going to let it go?
Until someone died?
