FLOOD [Pokémon]

Chapter 50

^ "Mindwasher" (2-3-2021)

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DARWIN

Thursday, April 12, 2018

Ten minutes later, Helena's cell phone rang.

We'd arranged the three in lines, laying their hands at their sides and their legs straight so that they looked like they were all going in for an MRI. I was shakily tilting Helena's head to the side — ensuring she could breathe properly, according to Grandpa — when her pocket started buzzing. I got a very bad feeling when I heard it, but I couldn't quite identify the source of the horror until I pulled the screen out and saw that she had an incoming call from Daddy.

"Sh*t!" I leapt to my feet. "Grandpa! Their parents — they'll be coming to pick them up soon!"

By the withered hang of his face, he'd already thought of this. "I know. When do your meetings usually end?"

"The last one ended at four." I looked at my watch: it was 4:15 on the dot. "F*cking hell!" I spat.

He gripped my shoulder. "Easy. We can handle this, but not unless we've got a clear head."

"How?" My head swiveled, scanning the far parking lot, which was growing black as the pool. Mostly empty, save for a few sedans, two trucks, and a SUV. Which one of them were Helena's parents, waiting impatiently, wondering what was taking so long? Which were Marjorie's? Quentin's?

Grandpa's face tightened. "Berechiah will be here soon—"

"In an hour. What happens in half an hour, when the parents come in, wondering where the everyone is? And what can Berechiah do about the security cameras? And the staff still wandering around?" No matter how I looked at it, we were proper f*cked. I suddenly experienced an intense, flaming urge to simply turn and run, into the parking lot, into the trees, into the street... Wherever the hell I could to get out of this BS as fast as possible.

But I couldn't — Grandpa was still squeezing my shoulder, holding me in place. "Let's think," he said, with a strained kind of patience. He nodded down to the buzzing phone in my hand. "Let's handle this first. Can you answer?"

"Answer?" Was he insane? What was he going to suggest next, that I impersonate Helena?

"Not by voice, by text. Is that an option?"

I looked down at the phone, still nailed in a place of fury and hyper-terror. Holy crap, there was an option on the screen for that: IGNORE AND SEND TEXT it said.

I pressed it, then stiffened. "I don't know what to say."

"Ask for another half hour," Grandpa said. To my dubious look, he insisted, "Suggest that we're in the middle of a lively discussion that's too good to cut short. Would that not be something that Helena would do?"

It was, probably, but how did I sound like her in text? Just do it, stupid! I began typing:

HELENA: Hi! Can you give me 30 more minutes? Good engagement today, don't want to let up. Send.

"What about Ms. Scales?" I snapped. It couldn't have been more than ten minutes since we'd all piled out of the classroom, and she had to be wondering what was taking us.

Grandpa Jon turned to Thomas. "Can you return to the classroom and tell your teacher that the meeting has ended?"

"She's not gonna believe that." Thomas had a dark look on his face; I noticed that his eyes kept flicking between Cora, who was watching us anxiously from the pool, and Marjorie, who'd gone pale after her second collapse to the pavement. "All our sh*t is there, Gramps; how'm I gonna convince her that Marj and co suddenly decided to take a hike without their stuff?"