Power to the Purple! Page 9

  “Well, something’s going down in those toilets,” Iris decided. “I wonder what . . .”

  The girls had just about reached the boys’ room when the door creaked open again. A cluster of kids, both boys and girls, stumbled into the corridor and scattered in different directions.

  “I’m completely cleaned out,” one complained. “That’s my lunch money for the whole week!”

  Another teetered toward the girls: Martin Gibbs, though they almost didn’t recognize him at first. A milky film dulled his eyes, and his mouth hung slack. He seemed to be grasping at the air in front of him, reaching for something that wasn’t there.

  “Hi, Martin,” Cheri said tentatively as he approached.

  “MMNOH!” He gave a loud moan, swiping at her as he passed.

  Scarlet immediately put up her dukes, and Iris instinct-ively raised a hand, too, ready to shoot out a burning solar ray. But the Ultra Violets held their fire as Martin just kept shuffling on.

  “What was that about?” Cheri exclaimed, watching him go.

  He smeld, Darth thought sleepily, still deep in his nap.

  A couple more kids escaped from the boys’ room, and this time Iris caught the door before it closed. Cheri and Scarlet bunched up behind her, Cheri peering over one shoulder, Scarlet peeking under the other. All three Ultra Violets dared to stare into the mysterious void that was the boys’ lavatory. And all three Ultra Violets wrinkled their noses in sync at the acrid ammonia stench of urinal cakes—topped with a faint but distinct scent note that could only be described as brussels sprout sweat socks.

  “Quoth the raven, ‘barf,’” Scarlet rasped, pinching her nostrils.

  On the tiled floor of the bathroom, a motley mix of students sat in a circle. In its center was a small pile of stuff: chocolate bars, dollar bills, loose change, earrings, a Magic Eight Ball, someone’s inhaler, three jelly pens, a ginormous rhinestone Hello Kitty ring. That kind of stuff. More kids surrounded the circle, leaning against the sinks and the stall doors. Cheri noticed Julie and Emma both checking their hair in the mirror. Scarlet narrowed her gaze at Duncan Murdoch, the horn-headed bully she’d wrangled with before. On the windowsill, backlit by late afternoon sun that gave the entire room a smoky atmosphere, sat Opaline. When she caught sight of the Ultra Violets, stacked like faces on a totem pole in the doorway, she began to slow-clap.

  “Why look,” she said, elbowing a glum BellaBritney at her side, “if it isn’t Orphan in a Tutu. Way to copy my collar, Scarlet. So unoriginal.” She gave a haughty sniff.

  Scarlet could feel her cheeks start to flame. She’d forgotten to take off the flimsy coffee-filter collar Iris had made specially for her audition. Opal’s collar today was studded with fat black pearls that gleamed above the lightning bolt on her tracksuit—totally glam in comparison. But a collar was a collar. Scarlet didn’t know what to say.

  “Spare us the sarcastic clapping, Opaline,” Iris retorted for her. “Everybody knows Little Orphan Annie wears a collar. It’s not like you invented them!”

  “The style dates back to France at the turn of the last century,” Cheri piped in. Math may have been her superpower, but she’d learned her fashion history all by herself.

  “Hey, guess what?” a boy kneeling on the floor interrupted. “No one cares!” He pushed a gray fedora back on his head to glare up at the quarreling girls. “Shut the bathroom door already!” he hissed, tugging at the knot of his thin tie to loosen it. “This is a secret poker game, duh. If you dames ain’t in”—he hitched his thumb—“get out.”

  Scarlet glanced at Iris, still embarrassed about the paper collar that she couldn’t take off now, not with everyone watching. Iris scanned the scene; then her eyes met Cheri’s with a question. Cheri cased the place before nodding in reply. The cards from the last round of the game lay face-up on the floor tiles. Her brain began to buzz as numbers and symbols flooded it: red hearts and diamonds, black clubs and spades, jacks, kings, and queens. Images of all fifty-two cards in a deck spread out like a patchwork quilt in her mind.

  “Deal me in,” Cheri said. And she sat down in the circle as Scarlet and Iris stepped inside the boys’ room, their backs against the door.

  Poke Her Face

  {*Because ’Twas Impossible to Fit a Whole Poker Game into One Chapter}

  “ACES,” FEDORA BOY SAID, TIPPING HIS HAT FORWARD again. With slick fingers, he gathered up the cards and began to shuffle the deck. “As I was saying,” he announced to the crowd, “five card draw, high hand wins, joker’s wild.”

  Hearing that, Cheri immediately added two jokers to her mental patchwork card quilt.

  Fedora Boy flicked out five cards to each player, facedown on the floor.

  Cheri picked up her hand and took a peek at it: Queen of hearts. Three of clubs. Ten of hearts. Five of diamonds. Eight of hearts.

  Iz good! Darth said, poking his head out of the tote bag to take a peek, too.

  Cheri discreetly rearranged her cards in numerical order. Her mind was racing, but she kept her expression blank so that none of the other players could read it. If I can just get two other heart cards, she thought, I could win.

  Jax n’ ninez, Darth thought back, his whiskers twitching, an u haz flush!

  Considering they were sitting on the floor of the boys’ bathroom, it took extra concentration for Cher not to make another ick-face at the mention of flushing. And just how would a little skunk know that? she asked Darth.

  Lotz ov pokr in da joint, Darth explained, recalling his days caged up with monkeys and bunnies in BeauTek’s Vi-Shush lab.

  As soon as Fedora Boy had dealt out all the hands, two players groaned and folded on the spot, throwing down their cards in disgust and quitting the game.

  Amachurz, Darth snickered.

  In professional poker games, players are never supposed to show their hands, not even after they’ve lost.

  Amateurs? Cheri repeated. I guess so, but it’s lucky for us they are! She gave Darth a tiny tap on the nose, gently nudging him back down into his bag. So no more snickering. You might make me laugh!

  She scanned the tossed hands to see if either of the cards she needed was among them. She didn’t think so. On the imaginary patchwork quilt in her mind, she struck a line through those discarded cards and through the ones she already held. As her superbrain calculated all the remaining combinations, she held her five cards like a fan. Hiding behind it, she skirted her eyes at the other players. To the left of the dealer, K-Liz riveted her reptilian glare, reviewing her own cards while Opal shifted on the windowsill behind her, rubbernecking over her shoulder. And to her right . . .

  “Mr. Grates?!” Cheri stammered, unable to keep her poker face straight at the sight of her math teacher.

  “Miss Henderson,” he greeted one of his best students, then noisily cleared his throat. “Nothing wrong with a little game of cards to let off steam after a long day of school,” he said.

  “Nothing at all,” Cheri agreed nonchalantly, although she was pretty sure there was plenty wrong with it. As the teacher studied his five cards, she noticed the tan line circling his wrist like a pale tattoo. Then she glanced at the pile of prizes between them. A gold watch lay beneath the Hello Kitty bling ring.

  “Draw,” K-Liz was saying, and the game got serious, with the remaining players discarding the cards they didn’t need and Fedora Boy dealing them new ones from the deck. Rounds passed, bets got bigger, and tension in the boys’ room grew, till the only sound to be heard was the trickle of a dripping toilet behind one of the stall doors.

  Beknownst to Darth alone, Cheri had drawn the nine of hearts she needed. To up her bets, Iris had emptied her messenger bag of lollipops. Cheri had tossed her pink polka dot umbrella onto the pile. K-Liz, to stay in the game, had wagered a bottle of sunscreen. Opal smirked at the sight of it, and Iris arched an eyebrow. Sunscreen: Was it really part of Opal’s whol
e “O+2” scheme, meant to block UV rays? Or was K-Liz just trying to treat her scaly skin condition?

  Mr. Grates broke the silence with a heavy sigh. He’d already given up his wristwatch, as well as a highly valued teacher’s edition of the class workbook—the one with all the answers in red. He had nothing left to bet. And as he looked from K-Liz’s squinty reptilian slits to Cheri’s cool green gaze, he hadn’t a clue which girl might be bluffing. “Bad enough I’m old,” he said, in his usual style of nerdy rapping. “Now I’ve got to fold.” He threw his cards down and quit the game, adding, “At least my watch isn’t solid gold.”

  Opaline rolled her eyes at the ridiculous teacher. “Let’s up the stakes,” she said to the room, unbuttoning the black pearl-encrusted collar from her neck. “Cher, I know how much you live for all that glitters,” she taunted, waving it back and forth, its polished beads glinting in the bathroom mirrors. “And Scarlet’s obvi desperate to copy my style . . .”

  Scarlet scowled across the bathroom. Maybe Cher had to keep a straight poker face. But Scarlet itched to poke Opaline in her face!

  “So I’ll throw my collar in for Karyn,” Opaline challenged, holding it up like a prizefighter’s belt for all the kids to gawk at. “If Cheri bets the skunk.”

  “You’ve got a skunk in that bag?!” Fedora Boy yelped, scooting back on his butt to cower beneath the sinks. All the other bystanders did likewise, flattening themselves against the bathroom walls.

  Cheri didn’t so much as bat a lash while she considered her cards. “Yes, I have a skunk,” she admitted in a calm, almost condescending voice. “A very sweet one, actually. I hate to break it to everybody, but it doesn’t exactly smell like a bed of roses in here as it is.”

  She looked up from her hand and locked eyes with Opaline. The sun had dropped lower since the game had begun, and in the shadows Cher could see tiny bolts of electricity spitting off Opal’s shoulders.

  “Cher,” Iris whispered from behind her. “You don’t have to do this. We don’t care about winning the collar or losing the lollipops. It’s just a stupid game.”

  Cheri didn’t care about the collar, either. Pretty as it was, she couldn’t imagine ever wearing it, knowing it had been Opaline’s. K-Liz must have had a strong hand of cards if Opal was willing to bet it. But after the way Opal had attacked Scarlet onstage, Cher couldn’t help wanting to give her a taste of her own medicine. And for once, Cher felt confident the odds were in her favor. If she drew the jack of hearts, she’d have a straight flush. The most beautiful flush that bathroom had ever seen! By her superbrain estimations, she had a one-in-seventy-two-thousand-one-hundred-ninety-three chance to do so. But any other heart card would give her a good hand, and the probability of that was much higher. Even if she didn’t draw a heart card at all, she could still try to bluff ol’ Lizardina into folding first. Yes, it was a risk. But a calculated one.

  Cheri turned her now neon-green gaze to Darth’s cute face, poking out of the tote bag once more. She’d loved him since the day she first met him, four years ago in the FLab. She’d never give him up for anything in the world. And she shuddered to think why Opaline wanted him so much all of a sudden. But how sweet would it be to best Opal after she’d tried to sabotage Scarlet’s audition? After she’d started the prune-juice rumor about Iris? After she’d uninvited them to her birthday party?!

  Well, Cheri asked Darth, what do you think?

  Darth’s little black nose quivered as he told her, U can betz on me.

  “C’mon,” the fedora-wearing dealer urged from his hiding spot under the sinks. He reached out and lifted Mr. Grates’s wristwatch from the loot pile. “We gotta wrap this game,” he said, checking the time. “The night custodian will start making the rounds soon. You still in, doll-face?”

  Cheri stared up at Opaline again and said with a calmness that was almost chilling, “Bet your bottom dollar I am.”

  Reminded of her botched audition, BellaBritney mumbled, “Gimme a wah.”

  “LOL, Cher,” Opal grumbled, tossing her collar into the circle.

  As all the onlookers recoiled into the corners of the bathroom, Darth trotted out of Cheri’s tote bag and sat on top of the booty, his purple-striped tail flapping like a flag.

  K-Liz drew another card. The forked end of her tongue flicked between her teeth. Her speckled snake eyes were impossible to read.

  Cheri removed the one card that still didn’t fit her flush and placed it facedown to the side (like a professional poker shark would). She pulled a fresh card from the deck. Her heart was pounding. What would it be?

  She made a quick wish, bowed her head to hide behind her pink-tinged hair, and dared to look.

  It wasn’t the jack of hearts.

  It wasn’t the anything of hearts.

  It had been a day of faces. Ick-face. Poker face. The face of the queen of hearts, staring back at Cheri since the very beginning of the game. But now Cheri allowed her face to smile.

  To grin, in fact.

  To grin like the goofy joker on the card she’d drawn.

  Because jokers were wild. They could be whatever card she decided. Including the jack of hearts she needed to complete a straight flush.

  “Call your bluff,” she said to K-Liz, whose scaly forehead shot up in surprise.

  “Call it!” the dealer demanded, checking the wristwatch again.

  With a sour hiss, K-Liz showed her hand. Three of a kind. Not bad. But nowhere near as good as Cheri’s. She laid out her cards.

  “A straight flush!” Fedora Boy let out a low whistle, forgetting for a moment his fear of skunks. Then Darth squeaked happily, causing everyone to cover their heads in alarm. But the skunk just skittered down the mountain of loot and helped brush it toward Cheri with his tail.

  “Oh hello, kitty,” she purred, sweeping the big bling ring and everything else into her tote bag.

  Opal jumped down from the windowsill, then swung her arm in a circle with two furious snaps. K-Liz scrambled to her feet and trailed behind BellaBritney to the bathroom door.

  “Merci beaucoup, Opal,” Cheri called over her shoulder as all the other students filed out. “Your black pearls are going to look super-pretty on Skeletony.”

  “But here,” Scarlet said, untying the bow on her own plain paper collar as Opal passed by. “Your neck must feel naked now, so why don’t you take mine?”

  “Ooh!” Opal fumed, snatching the cutout coffee filter from Scarlet’s hand and crumpling it in her fist. As she stomped out the door, a trace of brussels sprout sweat socks fading in her wake, the sound of thunder bounced around the empty boys’ room.

  Or was it empty?

  Mr. Grates was gone. Fedora Boy was gone. O+2 had left in defeat. All the onlookers had exited. But . . .

  “What’s that red fuzz sticking up above the toilet stall?” Iris wondered.

  “Why are two doors still closed?” Cheri asked, standing up.

  The Ultra Violets exchanged glances. Then, without another word, Scarlet—who had been struggling to stay still through the entire poker game—ninja-kicked them open, blam, blam!

  And there, feet balanced on the toilet seats, hands pressed against the walls of the stalls, in their black suits and sunglasses, stood Big Red and Lil’ Freckles.

  Aka the Black Swans.

  Boys and Swirls

  “’SUP, GIRLS?” BIG RED SAID WITH A SMIRK. “WHAT a coincidence, running into you three again. And your weaponized skunk. Nice skunky-skunky,” he called to Darth.

  Darth just swished his tail, indifferent.

  “Coincidence, huh?” Iris said, ignoring the “weaponized” part of Big Red’s taunts. “Gee whiz, who knew you could go bird-watching in a bathroom!”

  “Who. Said anything. About bird-watching?” Lil’ Freckles replied tersely, mucho peeved to have been caught spying for the third time. (Since the whole point of spying wa
s to not get caught.) “In case you couldn’t decipher. The pictograph on the door. This bathroom. Is supposed to be. For boys only!”

  Iris scoffed. She was an artist. Of course she could decipher a pictograph!

  “Watch them a sec,” she said to Scarlet and Cheri. The mention of the pictograph had reminded her that the custodian might come around any minute now. She went to block the exit.

  While Iris dragged the trash can across the tiles behind her, Scarlet stared at the Black Swans, dumbfounded. Had they really been hiding in the stalls for the whole poker game? Had they heard Opaline mocking her about the collar?

  The thought of it bugged Scarlet so much, she jetéed up, snatched the shades from Big Red’s face in mid-jump, backflipped over the stall wall, and grabbed the sunglasses off Lil’ Freckles on the way down.

  Both pairs of glasses splintered like dry spaghetti in her grip. This time, she didn’t even bother saying sorry.

  “Impressive jump, Miss Jones,” Lil’ Freckles stated through gritted teeth. With his sunglasses off, Scarlet could see that his eyes were navy blue. “Possibly even superhuman.”

  Cheri shot Scarlet the no-one-must-know warning look.

  “Superhuman?” Scarlet repeated with a toss of her ponytail. “What are you, some kind of comics geek? It’s called gymnastics!”

  “Little Orphan Annie was a comic strip,” he said. “Before she became a musical.”

  So he had heard! Scarlet could feel herself starting to blush again. To stop it, she smacked herself in the arm again. At the sight of her crazy behavior, Big Red lost his smirk, shrieking like an elephant frightened of a mouse.

  “Dude,” he whispered over the wall of the stall to his partner-in-spy, “the one in the tutu is trouble!”

  Trash can planted in front of the door, Iris joined Cher and Scar again, and the three Ultra Violets faced the two Black Swans standing on the toilets. Big Red had begun to jitter and jerk in place. Lil’ Freckles held steady.