An Apple for the Creature

“She claimed to have tons of power,” Barka added, “but she couldn’t do anything with it, except some minor telekinesis.”

“Let me guess, people made fun of her?” I asked.

“She brought a lot of it on herself,” Brook told me. “Not everybody here has super-awesome magic.”

“Like Sam.” Barka shrugged. “If you give him a clear piece of glass, he can etch it with his magic so it looks frosted. It’s cool the first time you see it, but it’s pretty useless and he can’t control it very well either. He doesn’t make a big deal out of it.”

“It’s in Lisa’s head that she is super-special,” Brook said. “She feels entitled, like we’re all peons here and she is a higher being. Nobody likes being treated that way.”

“Does she get picked on?” I asked.

Barka shrugged again. “Nothing too bad. She doesn’t get invited to hang out. Nobody wants to sit with her at lunch. But that’s just pure self-defense, because she doesn’t listen to whatever you have to say. She just waits to tell you about her special parents. I guess she finally got her powers.”

“Did she get them about the time Ashlyn disappeared?”

“Yeah.” Barka grimaced. “Then she started sensing Ashlyn’s presence everywhere. Who knows, maybe Ashlyn is really dead.”

“Location spell says she is alive. Besides, there is no such thing as ghosts,” I told them.

“And you’re an authority on ghosts?” Brook asked.

“Trust me on this.”

Ghosts might be better. I had this sick little feeling in my stomach that said this was something bad. Something really bad.

I could call Kate and ask her what would cause the magic of two different colors to show up. The colors weren’t blended or flowing into one another the way Kate’s colors did. They were distinct. Separate. Together but not mixing.

Ehhh. There was some sort of answer at the end of that thought, but I couldn’t figure it out.

Calling Kate wouldn’t be happening. This was my little mission and I would get it done on my own.

I tried to think like Kate. She always said that people were the key to any mystery. Someone somehow did something that caused Ashlyn to hide and Lisa really didn’t want me to keep looking for her. “Did Ashlyn have a best friend?”

Brook paused. “She and Sheila hung out sometimes, but mostly she kept to herself.”

“Can we go talk to Sheila?”

Brook heaved a long-suffering sigh. “Sure.”

“You’re leaving? In that case, Brook, hold this for me for a second.” Barka stuck the pen he’d been rolling between his fingers at Brook. She took it. Bright light sparked and Brook dropped the pen and shook her hand.

Barka guffawed.

“Moron!” Brook’s eyes shone with a dangerous glint behind her glasses. She marched out of the class. I followed her.

We went down the hallway toward the staircase.

“He likes you,” I said.

“Yeah, sure,” Brook growled.

Sheila turned out to be the exact opposite of Ashlyn. Where Ashlyn’s picture showed a petite cutesy girly-girl, Sheila was muscular. Not manly, but really cut. We caught her in the locker room, just as she was going out to play volleyball. It’s not often you see a girl with a six-pack.

She sat on a wooden bench by the small wooden room inside the locker room that said sauna on it. I wondered what the heck sauna meant. It was a first-class locker room; the floor was tile, three showers, two bathrooms, “sauna,” large lockers. The clean tile smelled faintly of pine. Special locker room for special snowflakes.

“I don’t know why Ashlyn pulled this stunt.” Sheila pulled on her left sock.

“Was she worried about anything?”

“She did seem kind of jumpy.”

“Did she have a problem with Lisa?”

Sheila paused with the shoe on one foot. “Lisa the Dud?”

Okay, so I didn’t like Lisa. But if they called me that, I’d get pissed off really quick, too. “Lisa who senses Ashlyn’s ‘presence.’”

“Not really.” Sheila shook her head. “One time someone left a paw print on Ashlyn’s desk. She got really upset.”

“What kind of paw print?”

“Wolf,” Brook said. “I remember that. She scrubbed her desk for ten minutes.”

“How big was the print and when did this happen?”

“Big,” Sheila said. “Like bowl-sized. It was about a week ago or so.”

Prints that large could indicate a shapeshifter, a werewolf, possibly a werejackal or a werecoyote.

“If anybody had a problem with her, it would be Yu Fong,” Sheila said.

“He is the only eighteen-year-old sophomore we have,” Brook said. “He’s this odd Chinese guy.”

“Odd how?”

“He’s an orphan,” Sheila said. “His parents were murdered.”

“I thought they died in a car accident,” Brook said.

“Well, whatever happened, happened,” Sheila told me. “For some reason he didn’t go to school. I heard he was in prison, but whatever. Anyway, he showed up one day, talked to Master Gendun, and got himself admitted as a student. He tested out of enough credits to start as a sophomore. He’s dangerous.”

“Very powerful,” Brook said.

“Uber-magic,” Sheila said. “You can feel it coming off of him sometimes. Makes my skin itch.”