What's Cookin' in the Kitchen?

Chapter 9 - Fear and Hiding


AN: Hi again, this chapter is a little shorter than the other but it felt like a natural stopping place for now. :)

I again own nothing except the characters that nobody knows. All others belong to Disney.


In the Nurses Office...

"Where are they?" Nurse Candle asked going into a panic. If they didn't find them she was going down for her mistake and she knew it.

"I don't know Jeanine, I lost them somewhere around the gym."

"Well no wonder, the gym is like a foreign country to you." She replied sarcastically.

"Hey, do I need to remind you, again, that we wouldn't be in this mess if not for you?" Mr. Macavoy told her. He was really starting to get annoyed with her attitude lately, acting like she ran the school. It was getting very irritating getting told what to do all the time, he was used to being the one doing the telling. He was normally a good teacher after all. The kids used to call him the Chemistry Wiz before all this mess started; he really missed those days.

"I'm sorry Fredrik, it's just if we can't find them 'He' is going to take his frustrations out on me, and by extension that will include us all."

"Well have you got anyone else looking yet?"

"No, I had no idea they would be able to pull off a vanishing act like that." She replied to the very annoyed man sitting across from her.

"Well I am going to go look one more time and see if I can figure out where they disappeared to." He offered.

"That's a good idea, I will go call everyone else and explain what happened. Maybe if we all search we can find them; they have to be here somewhere. If they had gone outside the school Skylar's men would have nabbed them by now already." Jeanine speculated.

"Ok well call me if anything changes." Fredrik offered as he got up and headed down the hall.


Jeanine called her best helper from the kitchen, Mary, and told her what happened. She then asked her to help look for the boys.

"Jeanine, I knew something bad was going to happen. Those poor boys, what will he do to them when he gets them?"

"I don't know, not really sure I want to either. I just know we don't want it to happen to us." The health care worker said anxiously.

"I guess your right, I just wish we could help them. Where do you want me to look?" The cafeteria worker asked sounding very disheartened about the whole situation.

"Well, Fred is looking around the gym area, so I guess you could look around in the vicinity of the cafeteria. That way you won't look suspicious."

"Ok, I'll let you know if I see them." Mary sadly told the nurse.


Jeanine had two more calls left to make and she was dreading them both. As much as she loved Mitchell, she really didn't want him to know just how badly she messed everything up. She really didn't think she could handle the sound of disappointment in his voice when he found out.

The other call basically terrified her to make. She had to call back Mr. Skylar and tell him that they had lost the twins, that on top of the call she made earlier was sure to get her eliminated. This was her second screw up in the last two days, and since she was the one who started the error she wouldn't let the others go down with her. Fredrik didn't mean to lose them and she couldn't expect a fifty something Chemistry teacher to be able to keep up with two seventeen year olds. She would just have to take her punishment, whatever that might be. She had heard of his hit man 'The Barracuda' and if his order were to take her out she wouldn't even know what hit her.

As she picked up the phone it felt like a cinder block in her hand, for she had decided to call Mr. Skylar first. If after she talked to him she felt that she was going to unwillingly disappear, she would call Mitchell and tell him she never wanted to see him again. She would make him exceedingly mad at her, that way when she did vanish he wouldn't miss her as much. A tear rolled down her cheek as she dialed the number.

"Hello, may I speak to Mr. Skylar please; this is Nurse Candle…


Somewhere in the vent system…

"Ok Cody, where do you figure we are?" Zack whispered as quietly as possible, for they both knew from experience just how well sound traveled thru the vent ducts.

"I'm not sure, it's hard to tell since we entered at a spot we've never been before. I'm not even sure where we were when we crawled thru the wall." The younger twin answered just as quietly before adding. "If I had known we would be up here today I would have brought the map of the school."

It felt like they had been up there for at least half a day already, when in reality it had only been about an hour. To their credits, especially Zack's, they hadn't stopped moving the whole time. Not a peep was heard the whole time from the older of the two.

As they neared another vent opening they stopped and looked down thru it, trying to figure out where they were. They noticed that the floor was made of those little one-inch tiles, that had to mean they were looking into a restroom somewhere in the school; but were they were was anybodies guess.

Cody started working his hands showing some of the same hand signals they used in the classroom. They used their secret language each time they had come to a vent grill just in case there was someone underneath that could hear them.

'We need to go down and see where we are.' He motioned to Zack.

'Ok I will go down and look around, you stay here.' Zack motioned back.

'No! I am the lightest I should go.' The younger signed.

'I am not letting you get caught, I'm going.' The oldest signed back sternly.

'Either we both go or neither goes. I don't want you to get caught and not come back either.' Cody signed frantically at him. Zack could tell that this was the end of the conversation as far as his little brother was concerned so he just shrugged his shoulders giving in, even though he wasn't at all happy about it.

Just as they started to remove the cover they heard footsteps. They froze so they could listen; all of a sudden about six girls entered the room below. They never even considered it was the girl's restroom. Zack's face broke out in the biggest grin Cody had ever seen. If they weren't trying to be quiet Cody would have busted out laughing at the expression on his face. In his mind his big brothers features had started to resemble that of a wolf on the prowl.

Thankfully they couldn't see anything that wasn't right below them, however they could hear almost everything the girls said. They had come in-between classes to freshen up. The boys found out that entailed fixing make-up, brushing hair, some even brushing teeth, washing hands, and a whole lot of gossiping.


"…Yeah, I know and Mr. Macavoy came in and practically dragged them out of class…"

"…They haven't been seen since…"

"…They didn't look like they were very happy about going with him; in fact they looked kind of scared of him…"

"…Someone heard Mr. Macavoy in the hallway yelling for them to stop…

"…I hope they're all right…"

"…Zack is kind of hot…"

"…Cody is too, and he is smart, he will be rich someday I just know it…"

"…I think they went home..."


The boys just sat there stunned and blushing a little as they listened to the conversation below. They couldn't believe that they were such a hot topic, well Zack could, but they had only been gone a little over an hour. That's hardly long enough to be the topic of all this, never being privy to the bathroom conversations of girls before they had no idea just how much talking went on. Now they were starting to figure out what took them so long in there and at least one of the reasons they went in groups.

After the girls left the room, they crawled on to find another vent to come out of as that one wasn't safe, although Zack would have loved to have crawled right in the middle of the girls when they were in there. They kept crawling til they came to another opening; the tiles were the same.

'I think this is the guys bathroom.' Cody gestured while he watched Zack gaze down thru the hole in the ceiling.

'Ok, lets try this again.' Zack motioned back.

They got the cover off and brought it inside the vent. Zack then poked his head out and looked around.

"Well there isn't anybody around, but I still can't tell where we are." He told his little brother. "Are you sure I can't convince you to stay up here, I will only be a minute?"

"Nope, whither thou goest, I will go." The younger of the two said. "You're not getting rid of me that easily."

"Ok, we better go then." The oldest said as he dropped from the vent.