A Fortress of Pebbles

Make a mental note of anything interesting, said the Master of Mind. We’ll extract it later and incorporate it into their psych profiles.

Aissaba tried the front door, but it was locked. Actually, on closer inspection, it was locked several times. Three keyholes. Plus, there was a small sticker beside the door suggesting that the place was protected by an alarm system.

“Hmmm,” said Tassadu’s shimmer in the air.

They walked the perimeter of the house, checking for loose windows or keys hidden under rocks. But no such chink in the armor of the Johnson residence revealed itself. Even the curtains were closed, so there was no peeking in.

“Should have figured this would happen,” said Aissaba. “I don’t suppose you smuggled a pebble or two to Earth?”

“Unfortunately not,” said the shimmer.

***

Cassandra tried to stay awake during algebra – but when the teacher transformed into a dragon named Tassadu, she knew she had failed. It was cool at first – his scales flickering like a chameleon, camouflaging itself against the blackboard and saying things like, “May I just say I’m looking handsome today, Cassandra! How shall we balance these equations?”

But then: a spitball. Right in the ear canal.

She woke, too shocked to be angry. At least, at first. The anger came when she located the culprits, a group of boys in the back corner of the room, each of them paying just a little too much attention to the lesson. Laughter bubbling beneath the surface.

As she fished the contaminated chunk of paper out of her ear, her skin crawled. Great. Now I have hepatitis. Before she could excuse herself to the bathroom to check for signs of infection, she caught Orion’s grim look from his seat in the front row. His face was even redder than hers – the color it tended to go right before he did something that might get them both grounded.

She shook her head.

He broke eye contact. His hand went into his pocket. Cassandra suddenly had a vision of him flinging a fireball or an arc of lightning across the room, smashing the boys into bits and pieces. Filling the room with carnage and smoke, the smell of burning flesh.

“Can I go to the bathroom?” Cassandra said suddenly.

The class exploded into laughter.

“You need to learn to raise your hand,” the teacher informed her. She was a tall, thin woman from Nazi Germany – one who believed that interruptions were felonies and that the hall pass was a blessing to be bestowed only upon the worthy. “Gas chamber,” she said.

Actually, it was “detention” – but as far as Cassandra was concerned, it was the same thing. Getting detention meant Mom was going to kill her.

***

They were sitting defeated in two patio chairs in the backyard when Tassadu tensed – his scales flickering briefly visible. “Just got a blink from Orion,” he said. “He almost used a pebble.”

Aissaba sprang to her feet as if she could do something. “What? Where?”

“Algebra class,” said Tassadu.

Aissaba tried to blink to Cassandra, but it didn’t work. In fact, it had been so long since a blink that Aissaba was starting to worry that Cassandra might be blocking it somehow. Maybe the Ebola warning had been too much.

“We have to get those pebbles,” Aissaba insisted. They’d argued this point to death over the last several hours – with Tassadu pulling his advocatus diaboli bullshit enough times that Aissaba was seriously thinking about strangling him next time he fell asleep.

“Hush,” he said. “I’m trying to blink-link with Orion.”

While the shimmer in the patio chair meditated in silence, Aissaba inspected the back door for the millionth time. It was locked, but her eyes fell upon a metal ladder lying at the edge of the patio. Next to it was a forgotten coil of Christmas lights.

Her eyes rose to the gutters and gables. There was an attic window up there – through which she fancied she could see the outline of two creepy mannequins.

***

“You have to learn to keep your cool!” said Cassandra – pulling Orion into a nook between an outdoor vending machine and the brick wall of the cafeteria. It was a cigarette graveyard back here. Gross.

“You just got detention,” Orion pointed out. “No moral high ground here.”

They were supposed to be on their way to lunch. A flock of students passed by, squawking and chattering like parrots. A rainbow cloud of toxic gas. Cassandra hated the noise they made, but found herself hating Mom and Dad for whatever had prompted the dumb decision to send them here.

Just as she was thinking she couldn’t hate anything any more than she already did, one of the parrots called out, “Oh my god! The homeschoolers are in the kissing spot!” And suddenly there wasn’t just laughter, squawking, and screeching – but also things like “Gross!” and “Incest much?”

Orion tried to surge out of the nook, but Cassandra pushed him back. “It’s just words,” she said. But she knew she was lying. Words were never just words.

***

Aissaba and Tassadu climbed through the attic window and down into Cassandra and Orion’s closet. From there, they emerged into a room with two bunk beds and toys on the floor. But they exited immediately, trying to locate Joanne Johnson’s office. Neither of them needed to say out loud what they were looking for.

When they found it, neither of them said a word.

They just stared at the book lying on the office desk, its tarnished gold title and worn edges lit by the light of the computer’s screensaver. It looked a hundred years old, or more. Like something that would fall apart if you touched it. A Fortress of Pebbles, said the lettering. It seemed to call to them, to have been placed there for them.

(Blink: Orion pushed past Cassandra, hand in his pocket, yelling, “Hey, guys! Wanna see a sick magic trick?”)

End of Chapter 2