"I don't think I'll be coming here tomorrow," I told her before I left.
"Where are you going?"
What's with all these questions? I found myself thinking. "I'm just going to go home. I have a lot of homework I need to catch up on." Again I felt guilty for not telling her the truth. How long could I keep this up? Phoebe knows me too well.
"You could do that here. I could help you if you want."
"I know, I just think it's best for me to go home for this."
"All right."
She didn't question any more. I felt worse than ever when I left her, but I kept reminding myself about Ms. Kearst and the mystery I had to solve.
The next morning I packed a full change of clothes into a brown paper bag and stowed it in the back of the garage; I didn't want a repeat of the tarp incident. I went to all my classes, but my head was full of my plans, and my fears about getting caught, or worse.
I was only distracted from my racing thoughts once, when, during study hall, I heard whispers in the next row over and caught the name "David." I leaned over to the group of huddled gossipers and asked, "what about David?"
"He got abducted," one girl said.
"We don't know that for sure," corrected another. "He just disappeared a few days ago. His whole family, right out of their house."
"I want to know why it wasn't on the news," a third girl pointed out. "I mean, I asked a policeman about it, and he said he wasn't allowed to say anything. He wouldn't even acknowledge that it happened. I think the government might be trying to hide it."
"I heard that his dad's a spy. Maybe they had to go undercover."
"Or maybe they're runaway criminals."
"No way. I have a much better theory."
"Oh really? How do you top runaway criminals?"
The girl with the theory beckoned us closer, and lowered her voice. "Just before he disappeared, David was showing off this thing he found.
"Can you be more specific?"
I'd already guessed what "thing" she was referring to.
"He thought it might be like an old artifact, like from the Indians who used to live around here, y'know? But it looked too modern to me. More like something out of 'Star Trek.'"
"Yeah, or 'Andromeda.'"
"You know the one? It was like a little blue box thing, and it had all these symbols and stuff on it. Well, my dad's an archeologist, and he's never seen anything like it, so I don't think it's an artifact. And it's not anything from modern culture, or we'd have heard of it, right?"
There were tentative nods around the group. I suspected nobody really agreed, but wanted to hear what she had to say.
"So I thought, if it's not an artifact, and it's not from modern human culture, what else could it be?" She waited a few seconds, one eyebrow raised. "Oh, come on. Aliens! It must have come from outer space."
There were groans of disbelief. The study hall teacher shushed, and we lowered our voices.
"You can't possibly think that's true," someone said.
"Well, it could be," I said. "I mean, you can't possibly believe that in all the universe there's only one planet capable of producing blue glass paperweights, can you?"
The conspiracy theorist smiled. "So, I figure, that blue box thing might have come from a crashed alien spaceship, and when Dave found it, the government wanted to make sure to hush it up. So they came and packed the whole family off to Zone 91."
The teacher shushed us again, and this time we fell silent, soaking in this new information.
When the last bell rang, I felt like I was walking to the gallows. I waited until most of the other students had left the campus, and then sneaked back to the hiding place I'd gone to the day before. Again I took off my jacket, hid underneath it, and changed into the crow.
This time, I didn't go anywhere near Ms. Kearst's window. I just circled the school building, trying to act like a normal bird, waiting for her to come out. When she did, I watched her walk to her car and drive away, and then followed.
It was difficult to keep up with the car without looking like I was mirroring its every movement; I tried flying from tree to tree, zigzagging back and forth across the street, even letting it get ahead of me until I could barely see it before zooming back up and ahead. I was so busy with my aerial acrobatics that several times I almost forgot which car was hers.
Finally, she parked in a side street in a part of town I'd never been in. It didn't look like a very good neighborhood, and I wondered if that was where she lived. She didn't seem like the type.
She seemed to be taking a while getting out of the car, like she was waiting for someone or just thinking, and I didn't want to risk her recognizing me in the crow's body, so I landed and tried to look for a hiding place. The only possible option I could see was a garbage dumpster in an alley across the street, so I held my breath and hopped in.
The smell was awful, and when my feathers retracted and bared my tender skin, I cringed to think what sorts of trash might be in this place. I wasted no time before continuing to change directly to Mordicai, and leaping out of that dark, foul hole.
I looked to see that Ms. Kearst was still in her car, and then sat down and started washing; the cat's mind was even more averse to the filthy smell than I was. Almost immediately, Ms. Kearst got out of the car and started walking straight towards me.
I kept washing, though suddenly alert to every sound and movement she made- her shoes tapping dully on the pavement, her arms swinging self-consciously, her eyes looking all around. She eyed me for a few seconds, but then seemed to decide that I was just a harmless ally cat, and walked past. When her back was to me, I turned to watch under the pretext of washing my behind.
She stood in front of a chipped, metal door, and opened a small panel next to it. Inside was a circle of small holes, like a speaker, and she bent slightly to speak into it.
"I'm here for my two-forty appointment," she said. Two-forty? That was almost an hour ago.
But the door clicked and swung open slightly. My sensitive cat nose caught a whiff of a vile, alien smell, faint but distinct and my acute ears picked up the faraway sound of- oh my god- a scream of terror and despair. Ms. Kearst didn't seem to notice, and quickly went inside, slamming the door behind her.