REWRITTEN:
I woke to the sound and smell of bacon frying.
I was dressed for school and in the kitchen in under ten minutes. Since my dad went back to work and started living his life again after my mom died he's started doing stuff again around the house. Breakfast was definitely not included on that list of stuff.
"Hey dad." I said nonchalantly, sliding into a chair next to the small table. My palms were sweating a little. "Aren't you up a little early?
"Early-morning meeting got canceled." My dad said jovially. I was instantly alert. My father is never, ever jovial. "The big-wigs are planning some big security thing down at that new big Marriott resort off the bay. Everybody in my area gets a four-day weekend!"
I stared. "Oh. That's good. What's going on at the Marriott?"
"Nope." My dad said, grinning mischievously. "That's a big secret. You'll just have to find out on the news like everyone else once it's over."
I shrugged. Honestly I wasn't really that interested. A surprise four-day weekend definitely qualified as a reason to grin and make breakfast. I wasn't about to complain about free food.
Fifteen minutes of small-talk and attempted cooking later I was holding three very soggy breakfast burritos in a damp paper towel. The contents of the fourth were spread out on my lap in the car.
"Sorry." My dad said sheepishly, trying to hide a grin. I gave him a 'no sweat' tight-lipped smile and tried not to think about my chances at a successful conversation with T'shondra while smelling like egg drippings and green pepper.
We pulled into the school parking lot and I got out, wiping as much of the burrito as I could onto the ground. I said goodbye and shut the car door, already scanning the sparse crowd for Jake so I could foist a burrito off on him. If I had to suffer, so did he. Besides, I had to get rid of these somehow, and I felt bad about trashing them.
I glanced down the road, to see if maybe he was walking today. We weren't strictly supposed to use our morphing ability frivolously, but all of us had a spare change of clothes in our lockers for when the bus or our parent's cars just didn't cut it.
Jake wasn't walking to school. In fact, as I glanced in that direction thoughts of both Jake and the Burritos I was holding were driven out of my mind. I was busy staring at the box. The blue box I had touched more than a year ago, back when this nightmare I call my life had only just officially started.
Some kid was carrying the Morphing Cube.
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My first gut reaction was to get his attention. My mouth was open and I was halfway through starting to say "Yo!" when my brain caught up. I closed my mouth with a snap that rattled my teeth.
"Get a grip, Marco." I muttered. The last thing you need to do is draw attention to him or yourself.
I looked around for Jake again with more urgency, but he was still missing.
I started walking nonchalantly, pegging the kid and watching his movements. He stopped for a moment and knelt on the ground, then unzipped his black bookbag and shoved the box inside. It barely fit and made a sharp point in the fabric as he zipped it shut.
I wondered if he'd stolen it somewhere and was trying to hide the evidence. My blood ran cold with the idea that he might have figured out how to use it.
"No." I muttered to myself aloud. "Stop jumping to conclusions."
I paused and leaned down, pretending to tie my shoelace. The paper towel holding the burritos ended up between my teeth so I could use my hands. By the time I looked up he was in the building.
I was almost to the door when a hand landed on my shoulder. I whipped around to see a startled Jake with wide eyes. "Whoa, Marco, lay off the coffee."
I stepped to the side of the flow of students, pulling Jake with me. I felt torn. Should I follow the kid and find out where his first class was, or brief Jake on the situation first?
The kid, I decided. Briefing Jake would do no good if he was stupid enough to go all "show and tell" with the box to a controller like Chapman.
"Follow me." I said curtly. Jake's eyes grew dark and worried. He's been my best friend long enough to notice immediately when something's up.
By some miracle the kid hadn't disappeared by the time I fought my way through the throng of people loitering around the door. He was at the far end of the hallway in front of an open locker right on the edge of my vision. The black backpack with the box's telltale bulge was on the floor beside him.
The hallway was starting to empty of people as they headed to class. My locker wasn't in this hallway, but Jake's was. I leaned against the lockers as Jake popped the lock off of his.
"Don't look yet," I said in a low voice masked by the babble in the halls. "There's a kid with a black bookbag down at the end of the hall, right by the Band room. He has the box."
"What box?" Jake muttered back to me.
"You'll see."
I had to be calm about this. I had to stay in control and not flip out. I wished that Cassie and Rachel would be in this building before lunch.
I was pretending to flip through my english book and check my sentences against the examples. In reality I was still watching the kid, waiting for the golden moment of opportunity. If he took the box with him to class we were as good as screwed. If he put it in his locker...
A faint hope surged through me, and the beginnings of a plan formed. He unzipped his backpack.
"Now!" I hissed. "Floor. Backpack. Right side of the hall."
Jake glanced over casually, then gaped like a fish as the kid pulled the box free of his bag and tossed it into his locker. He retrieved a final book and slammed it shut, clicking the lock into place. He turned and started walking towards us.
"Jake!" I snapped. He blinked and shook himself. He was hyperventilating. I would have teased him, but so was I.
"I knew I should have stayed home today." he muttered darkly, shutting his locker.
"That's my line." I snapped, thinking hard. Jake and I needed to talk. Time to find a place for it. I grabbed his arm and hoisted him to his feet, which would have worked better if he wasn't about six inches taller and thirty pounds heavier than me. I almost fell, off-balance.
I dragged him along to the bathrooms, noticing that the halls were seriously starting to look empty. I pushed the door open and shoved him inside, then went in after him. I scanned the bottoms of the stalls and kicked in the doors one by one. No one. The room stank from the urinals.
"So." Jake said conversationally. "Unless I'm dreaming, which I am hoping to god for at this point, that guy has the morphing cube."
"Yeah, that's pretty much it." I said, feeling sick. "I might also want to mention that he was carrying it when I first saw him, so he may have already been ID'd by a controller as having it in his possession.
BRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR RRRRRRRRRRRRRIIIIII IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIINN NNNNNNNNNNNNGGGG!
"Ahhh!" I yelled, covering my ears. Jake did the same. What school official thought it would be a good idea to put the bell in the doorway of the boy's bathroom?
"We need to get out of here." Jake said once my hearing had returned. "One more Tardy and I'm stuck in a parent-teacher conference."
"Yeah." I said unenthusiastically. "See you in social studies.
I followed him out of the bathroom, then turned away from him to go through to side door to the covered walkway and the newer building where my locker was. I made it there in record time, mostly because there was almost nobody left in the hall.
I juggled the now-dripping paper towel with three sorry burritos as I walked. I had planned to scarf them, but seeing the blue box had kind of killed my appetite. I got to my locker and with no trash can in sight I balled up the paper towel and pitched it to the very back. I'd throw it away later today, when I had time.
My english book and I managed to make it back to class just seconds before the bell. This time the irony gods were merciful and the bell was a ways down the hall, cutting out some of the shrillness. My ears were still ringing, though.
"That's their master plan." I muttered under my breath. "Deafen us and then fail us all because we didn't listen to the teacher's instructions."
My head slammed into the desk. I let it. I was exhausted mentally and still trying to figure out how I was going to get that box. I dimly heard the teacher ask for papers to be passed back and felt something land on my head. I was last in the row, so I didn't move. It slid to the floor.
I felt a tap on my shoulder. I looked up to see the teacher staring at me along with a third of the class.
"Would you like to take your test, or should I just give you a zero?" My teacher asked. I groaned.
"No ma'am. I'll take the test, ma'am." She looked like she would have rathered I take the zero, but moved back towards her desk. I sighed heavily.
"Time to flunk out of English." I muttered to no one.
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Tear it apart, pl0x.
