Cold Snap (Warriors: S1B3)

Chapter 5

Earth date: 10/24/11, 12:00

Max DiCaprio is a scary guy.

I used to not like him. He was Frazz's best friend and partner-in-crime, and they were the kinds of guys to run into people while playing tag or throw paper airplanes in class. Then his sister got killed. And Max changed. For the first month of sixth grade, he didn't talk. He and his friends would stand around their lockers during transition time, with Frazz or one of their dumb friends making stupid jokes, and Max would stand there with his eyes glazed over, not reacting if someone shoved his shoulder or spoke to him. And when he started talking, I wish he hadn't. Tony Greer, one of the few people who can match Frazz in being a douche, said something about Max's sister. The first thing I heard Max say that school year were swear words he screamed at Tony as he was dragged off of Tony by three teachers. Tony, by the way, looked like he'd tried to fight a tiger and lost. 

So when Max broke away from his lunch line to talk to Mr. Isotalo, I could feel the wave of discomfort that ran through my classmates.

Max said something to Mr. Isotalo, and Mr. Isotalo turned and looked at me. "Margaret, office needs you."

"Ooh!" people in the line said. Max turned and stared at the line, and the noise died in people's throats. Max rejoined his lunch line.

I left my own lunch line and walked the opposite direction of the lines. I passed Kristi, who gave me a concerned look, and turned the corner. There was a ramp which separated the elementary school classrooms from the middle school classrooms. There was a flight of stairs that led down to the second-grade classrooms, and the school office was at the end of the second grade classrooms. I told the secretary I was there to see Mr. Cole, and she told me he was in his office. 

He answered my knock. "Come in." He closed the door behind me. He fiddled with the window of his office, and I saw a flash of light like a picture was being taken.

"What did you do?" I said.

"Hologram. Unless someone opens the door, it'll look like you and I are having a conversation."

"Are we not?"

"A conversation not involving this." Mr. Cole lay a hand palm down on his desktop, and a section of the wood top faded away, revealing a gridded glass pane. "Describe what attacked you last night."

I did. The further into my description I got, the more Mr. Cole looked like he had bitten into something rotten. When I was finished, Mr. Cole turned on the screen. A cone of light beamed up from the screen and shaped into what looked like a shaggy-haired, four-armed chimpanzee with a beak. "No," Mr. Cole murmured. He waved a finger, and the image was replaced with a Vlolmeeth. "No." He kept waving a finger. I saw a Pycanthrope, a pale humanoid with tentacles instead of legs, and some kind of monkey with the head of a dog. He scrolled again, and there it was. 

"That the one?" he asked me.

"Yeah, it is."

The smelling-a-rotten-egg look came back. "Oh, dear."

"Is that bad?"

"Tell the others to be at the base after school." He looked at the hologram and grimaced a third time. "This is going to be a bad one."

Earth date: 10/24/11, 16:13

"It's called a Faukan," Mr. Cole said.