A Fortress of Pebbles

Aissaba put down the book very slowly, as if any sudden movement might sever the blink-link. She kept her eyes locked on the red glow coming from beneath Joanne Johnson’s computer mouse.

(Blink: Cassandra pulled Orion down a hallway, not sure where she was going. Probably the airport would be best. Flying out of the country would be hard without passports, but maybe they could squeeze into someone’s suitcase…)

“Cassandra,” said Aissaba, trying to exude the tranquility of a zen master. “It’s going to be okay. Find a bathroom. Hide the pebbles in your shoes until you get home.”

(Blink: Cassandra yanked Orion into a bathroom but immediately had second thoughts. Having already been spotted in the kissing nook with him, perhaps it was best not to be seen in the ladies' room. She shoved him back out and whispered, “Go hide it in your shoe.”)

Tassadu’s scaly body filled up one side of Joanne’s office, frozen in the examination of a bookshelf for additional suspicious tomes. His talons held a young adult hardcover about dragons, written by Joanne Johnson herself.

“If you can get them to cooperate,” he whispered, “I might be able to access their TSO-duhs remotely.”

(Blink: Cassandra exited the bathroom, directly into the waiting arms of the Nazi algebra teacher. “You’re supposed to be in the gas chamber,” she said. Or something like that. She already held Orion in her clutches. “Let’s visit the office, shall we?”)

***

Cassandra sat with Orion outside the gates to hell. They were labeled with the name of the principal, who apparently held a Ph.D. Aissaba, where are you? she screamed in her mind.

Don’t cry, she told herself. Orion was already starting on that. Suddenly, she remembered the Fortress gates sweeping aside, seeing Aissaba in her sunglasses for the first time. And Tassadu, whom she had mistaken for the devil.

“What?” demanded Orion, horrified. “Why are you laughing?

Dementia is contagious, Cassandra realized. I don’t know, she mouthed, eyes wide.

The principal’s door swung open, and Cassandra saw the bright green flash of a baseball cap. The Parrot King made no eye contact as the principal led him out and beckoned his next victims in.

“Please have a seat,” he said. There was a fountain gurgling in one corner, but it wasn’t relaxing.

“I need to pee,” said Cassandra. Defensive maneuver.

“First,” said the principal, “I’d like the two of you to turn out your pockets. We’ve had a report that one of you might have brought some kind of…” He checked a post-it note on his desk. “...electric shock device.”

His mustache was so well trimmed that it ought to be in a museum. It retained its triangular shape even as his lips morphed into a flat line that managed to look simultaneously serious and apologetic at once.

One by one, Orion turned out his pockets. Then, Cassandra, hers.

“Now the shoes,” he said. Into a microphone on his desk, he said, “Can we sweep the Johnson’s lockers, please?”

Cassandra couldn’t move. She could feel the pebble in her left shoe, nestled between her toes and the bottom of her sneakers. Thankfully, she’d placed it inside her sock – but did it matter? Judging from how well this guy trimmed his mustache, the words “attention to detail” were probably tattooed somewhere on his weird bony body. If he even believed in tattoos.

Orion was already taking off his shoes, and – to Cassandra’s surprise – his socks. Then, he sat back in one of the chairs, put his feet in the air, and wiggled his toes. “These are my feet,” he said. “Are there any other body parts you wanted to see?”

Blood rushed to the man’s face, his mustache like a white triangle on a red flag.

Cassandra breathed a sigh of relief. Orion had found another hiding place for the pebble – perhaps his “prison pocket” (something she had made the mistake of googling yesterday).

Plus, if there was one thing Orion was good at, it was making things as awkward as possible. “While my sister is showing you her feet,” Orion went on, “could I have something to write with? I just want to document everything you asked us to do behind closed doors.”

Cassandra almost felt sorry for the principal now. His face had become the sole place in his body where there was any blood. And judging by the way he managed to keep his voice calm while he opened the door and said, “Your shoes please, Ms. Cassandra?” he was probably a nice enough guy, one with at least forty years of experience keeping his composure around kids.

But sometimes casualties were necessary – as Dad liked to say.

“I don’t really feel comfortable with this,” Cassandra allowed herself to mumble as she slipped off one shoe reluctantly. Then, the other. With any luck, she could make the guy feel awkward enough that she wouldn’t need to take off her socks.

She handed over her shoes. No eye contact. She let her bottom lip tremble. Her version of “good cop” to Orion’s bad.

The man shook them and handed them back. Then, hallelujah: “Thank you, both. Please wait outside while I get in touch with your parents.”

Back in the chairs outside the gates to hell, Cassandra sat for approximately ten thousand years of excruciating silence with Orion. Then, they both flinched as their phones vibrated in their pockets. Mom or dad? she thought, trembling as she extracted the phone.

To her surprise, it was neither of them. It was a contact from which she had never received a message before, one Dad had put into her phone years ago as “The Alarm System.” It read: House alarm activated. Do not return home.

Finally, Cassandra registered something that, due to the stress and chaos, she hadn’t noticed earlier. Aissaba and Tassadu were in Mom’s office. (Blink: Tassadu was investigating Mom’s secret bookshelf. It was just now swinging open to reveal the dark stairwell behind it.)

This, no doubt, was what had tripped the alarm.

“Aissaba,” whispered Cassandra, “if you can hear me, my parents know you’re there.”