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argentum_lsTitle: Untitled
Characters: Scott McCall, Stiles Stilinksi, Allison Argent, Lydia Martin, Danny Mahealani, Elizabeth M'Bondo
Word Count: ~2500
Summary: Something something evil teacher at BHHS. Maybe there's meant to be an interstellar war?
Notes: I've been sitting on these story segments for years and it's become clear that there never going to be turned into a real story. So, enjoy what there is, if you want to.
“She's evil,” Stiles concluded within seconds of the new art teacher introducing herself. He'd poked Scott between the shoulder blades with the tip of his pencil first to get his attention, then leaned over and made his pronouncement in his version of a whisper, as if Scott wouldn't hear him otherwise.
Scott dropped his head in embarrassment. “Stiles,” he hissed back.
The teacher was an older woman, perhaps in her 50s, with gray streaked black hair and a no-nonsense attitude that put all the students on alert. The only unusual thing about her that Scott could recognize was her accent. She claimed to be from London on a teacher-exchange program, and every word out of her mouth only reinforced that.
“Listen to me, Scott,” Stiles continued. “Have I ever been wrong? Why, no, I don't believe so. Evil. Pure evil.”
“...We'll be taking advantage of this opportunity to broaden our world horizons,” the teacher continued, peering around at the assembled class as she spoke.
It was the first day, so the students were seated at the wide work tables with nary any actual art supplies in sight. Most of the teens squirmed in boredom or impatience; all had only signed up for the class because they'd assumed it would be an easy A, and already they were beginning to suspect that their assumption couldn't have been more wrong.
Her gaze paused on Stiles, whose scramble to straighten up clattered the bench against the floor and created more noise than his whispering. Stiles plastered a wide, innocent smile on his face, folded his hands on the table in front of him, and ended up looking so guilty that Scott couldn't believe it when the teacher kept going without any comment.
“Did you see the way she looked at me?” Stiles whispered. “She's on to us. Let the bad guys beware.”
Scott elbowed Stiles to get him to shut up. When Stiles opened his mouth to protest the mistreatment, Scott let just the barest flash of red into his eyes.
While it was possible that the new teacher was evil, Scott was not going to speculate on it in front of her. If he'd learned anything over the past few years, it was the value of the enemy not knowing that he was working against them.
Besides, the teacher had a sereneness about her that belied any suggestion of malfeasance. His lips quirked at the chance to apply that PSAT word before he turned serious again.
The teacher wrote her name on the whiteboard and pronounced it for them. “M'Bondo. It's African,” she supplied to the question that none of them were brave enough to ask.
“Teacher!” someone shouted from the back of the room. “What if we can't say that?”
Ms. M'Bondo smiled politely and regarded the student for a long moment. “You'll never learn if you don't practice. Creativity requires learning how to overcome your fears of the unknown.” She paused for a moment to let the students mull over the response, then clapped her hands once, putting an end to that line of questioning. “And there's no better time to start than now. So, let's start putting all this paper to use. Go get a piece of drawing paper.” She gestured to the cabinets which were stacked to the brim with brand new supplies.
While everyone else scrambled from their benches, Stiles made a face like he'd bitten into a peach and found an onion. “A whole year of this. If we survive,” he mumbled, this time loud enough for only Scott to hear.
Scott dropped his head into his folded arms and sighed.
At last Stiles took the hint.
*+*+*
Danny had his attention buried in a pile of printouts when Scott spotted him in the library. Plucking the book he had come for from the shelf, he wandered over to Danny's table. The two didn't talk much outside of lacrosse practice, yet Scott couldn't think of a good reason why. With Jackson gone, Danny's social rank had slipped and he often had an air of sadness around him that Scott felt partially responsible for.
“What are you reading?” Scott asked, craning his head to get a peek at the spread of papers that covered the library table.
Danny jumped, flushed, and blinked at the papers like he hadn't known until Scott's question that he was reading anything at all. “Hey,” he greeted. He waved at the empty chair next to him, and Scott sat down. “It's something I found online a couple weeks ago. I'm honestly not sure what it is. I'm thinking it's a new RPG system someone's developing. The detail is incredible, though there's a lot that I'm having trouble getting my head around.” He rifled through the papers for a moment, found what he was looking for, and shoved the page Scott's direction. “Like this. I think it's a map.”
“It looks like a star chart,” Scott said, picking it up. He seen similar charts in textbooks throughout the years of science classes, and different versions of them during the one awful week when Stiles tried to convince him that astrology was the answer to finding a cure.
“An incredibly detailed one,” Danny agreed. “Problem is, it's not ours.” He let that sink in as he shuffled through the papers again until he found a second chart, this one with a lot more white space on the page. He pointed to a section off in the corner. “This part looked familiar so I cross-referenced it. Turns out that it's our corner of the galaxy. But, near as I can tell, it's not being shown from our perspective. This star--” He pointed to the star right in the middle-- “is about 25 light years away. It's a real star.” He shook his head in silent respect. “Someone put a lot of effort into imagining how the galaxy would look from that star's perspective.”
“Wow,” Scott said. He pulled the second page over and compared it to the first. Really, it was a lot of dots and symbols he didn't recognize. The amount of time Danny had put into trying to decipher the maps awed him more than the maps' existence. “So, why are you showing these to me?” he asked.
With a shrug, Danny replied, “Figured you'd believe me. Anyone else would tell me I was overthinking. Or would just laugh.” He rubbed his hands on his jeans and rolled his neck to unkink it, as if he hadn't just made a profound observation.
“Um,” Scott started. The articulate answer he should be giving vanished from his head. “I--” He moistened his lips and tried to read Danny's face for clues. His eyes were heavy and ringed with tiredness and his t-shirt had the rumpled look of one that had been pulled from a pile on the floor, but Scott saw nothing in him that hinted at any ulterior motive to his statement.
“It's OK, McCall,” Danny assured him. Taking the star charts back, he gathered up the rest of his papers and stood, just as the bell rang for the end of the period. “There's nothing wrong with being a good listener.” He nodded once, affirming that he meant nothing more, and headed off to class.
Scott watched the library door swing shut behind his teammate, wondering, as he sometimes did, how much Danny knew. No one who dedicated so much energy to deciphering mysteries he found online could be so oblivious to the goings on around him. He closed his hands around his book and headed for the check-out desk, his thoughts heavy with the contradictions of the day.
“Is this everything?” the librarian asked as he scanned the book into the computer. He was short and balding and smelled of cinnamon gum. The smile he gave Scott was polite, but vacant, and he printed out the receipt without waiting for an answer. “It's due back in two weeks.”
“Thanks,” Scott replied. Taking the book back, he tucked it into his backpack and promptly forgot about it. With heavy steps he headed toward his next class.
The school year had just started and it was already showing signs of being another one where far too many people died because he didn't put the pieces together fast enough to keep them alive. To himself, he vowed that this year would be different. If only he could figure out where to begin.
*+*+*
Stiles dropped his tray on the table at lunchtime, plopped himself in the chair, and opened the first-day-of-school conversation with, “So, dead people.”
The cafeteria thrummed with activity and the excitement of returning to school that only existed on the first day. Everything was clean: the graffiti was painted over, the floors waxed, all the outfits and school supplies new. Even the food gave a passable imitation of being worth eating. Today was supposed to be the one day when the drudgery of the rest of the year held no power.
“Dead people?” Lydia echoed.
“I don't know,” Stiles replied with an affronted shrug. “You're the Banshee. When there's dead people who need finding, you're the one who finds them. What've'ya got for us?”
Lydia blinked slowly in response, then flipped her hair in rejection of his question. Turning to Allison, she said, “I'm thinking about buying a new car. What do you think, four seats or two?”
Allison unscrewed the lid from her water bottle and took a long drink, appearing to mull over the question. At last she answered, “I suppose that depends on whether you think you'll need the backseat.”
Lydia hummed thoughtfully. “Well, I certainly won't be needing space to haul around bodies,” she concluded.
With typical pragmatism, Scott chimed in, “Were you planning to take your car with you to college?”
“Naturally!”
“Excuse me,” Stiles interrupted. “We were talking about bodies.”
“You were talking about bodies,” Lydia corrected. “I'm talking about cars. If I'm going to be buying a new one, I would like to take some time to consider all the possibilities first. Now, I realize that parking may be difficult on campus, however, if I'm going to be spending a lot of time in the lab, it would be nice not to have to walk back to my apartment late at night.”
To Lydia, Allison asked, “Have you thought about using public transport. It's a lot better for the planet.” Without waiting for an answer, she turned to Scott, “Why does Stiles want to talk about bodies?”
Scott rolled his eyes. “He's convinced that the new art teacher is about to start killing people. I think she seems nice. She's--” He pondered the word he wanted, and finally settled on, “peaceful. There's something really peaceful about her.”
Stiles buzzed a loud raspberry with his lips. “She's from England,” he said, as if that were reason enough to doubt her goodness. “Why would she come here?”
“Just a thought,” Allison answered, “but, the weather? I've been to England. I'll take northern California any day.”
“Take that, Jackson,” Lydia snarked under her breath. Everyone turned to look at her. “What? It's not like he calls or emails or texts. I think it's only fair that he finally has to compete with actual royalty.”
“Stiles,” Allison interjected, ever the voice of reason, “Has it ever occurred to you that the reason she's here is to teach art?”
“Have you seen our faculty turnover?” Stiles argued. “Give me one good reason why any teacher in their right mind would come here?”
Throwing his hands up, Scott answered, “Because they hired her? Look, Stiles, we don't know that anything is going on. We don't have any reason to think that anything is going on. How about we all try to enjoy our senior year instead of inventing extra things to worry about?”
Crossing his arms, Stiles sunk low in his seat like a cowed child. “And you all wonder why the bad guys are so hard to stop,” he grumbled. When no one asked him to elaborate, he raised his chin and, a little louder, provided, “It's because we always give them such a big head start.” He spread his hands wide on the word “big,” then twisted them back in close to is body as if knowing that he was going too far.
“Obviously, good gas mileage is essential,” Lydia chimed in. “I mean, I'm going to be driving across the entire country, so the fewer stops I have to make at some skanky gas station, the better.” She inspected her nails, tapped them against the Formica tabletop, and inspected them again. “Maybe I should get a hybrid.”
The gambit worked, finally, and the group turned toward discussing Lydia's choices in cars. Not until lunch was over and Scott was half way to his locker did he discover that Stiles's entreaties had started wheels turning.
Allison slipped up behind him, touching his arm lightly to get his attention. “Maybe we should keep an eye on her,” she suggested. “Her being here could be a little suspicious.”
“Not you, too,” Scott groaned.
Allison smiled at him, one shoulder cocked up and her dimples deeply etched. The unspoken “do it for me?” stripped all of Scott's defenses.
He came to a stop in the middle of the hallway, the stream of classmates immediately parting around him. “What do you want me to do?”
“Well, we don't want to scare her. I mean, she could just be a regular teacher. If she is, then she might need our protection if Beacon Hills does go weird again. On the other hand...” Allison trailed off, her brown eyes going big and pleading.
Scott rolled his head, unable not to comply with her entreaty. “Fine.” A quick glance revealed the open door of an empty classroom a few feet away. Pulling Allison into it, he shut the door. It would be a lot easier to hear what his new teacher was up to without lockers slamming next to his face.
He found Ms. M'Bondo right away. Student sculptures from years past hung on display from the ceiling; their sound as they swung in the breeze from the open window like wind-chimes. Her classroom was empty this hour, and he heard the graduated hiss of her filling cups of water at her sink. A clunk, another full cup set down, the water shut off.
“I'll be right there, John,” she said.
Then she was gone.
Scott listened closer, trying to pick up the thump of her heart beat that had been in the room a second before. He heard only the whistle of the breeze against the glass, the whispering of the hanging art, and the steady tick of the clock.
Catching the confusion in his expression, Allison grabbed his hand, “What? What's going on?”
“I...don't know,” Scott replied slowly. Another second of silence-where-there-shouldn't-be-any and he took off toward the art room. Allison followed without hesitation.
Dodging through the hallway, he ignored his classmates' shouts of aggrievement as he pushed people aside or cut off slower movers.
He pushed open the door on the empty classroom and came to a stop. Allison bumped into him from behind. “She was just in here,” he said. “I heard her, and then...” He looked around, his eyes confirming what his ears had already told him.
“Could she have gone to the bathroom?”
Scott shook his head. “She didn't leave.” He glanced at the door, confirming that he'd opened it, that he hadn't passed his teacher on the way in. The door had a hydraulic system to keep it from slamming shut which gave it an identifiable hiss every time it opened or closed. He definitely hadn't heard that.
He poked around the room anyway, just in case Ms. M'Bondo had found a way to hide herself in the supply cabinet or under a table. Maybe she'd slipped out the window. But, no, the windows only opened part way and the tables had nothing under them except fossilized gum. With a scowl and an exaggerated tossing of his hands, he admitted, “OK, she did leave. But, how?”
Allison ran a secondary sweep, and also came to the conclusion that Ms. M'Bondo wasn't hiding under the tables. “I guess you must have missed something.”
“Yeah. I guess,” Scott answered. He hadn't. He knew he hadn't. But what other answer could there be? Ordinary people didn't just vanish, and if she wasn't ordinary, then...
In the back of his mind, he heard Stiles gloating, I told she's evil.
Characters: Scott McCall, Stiles Stilinksi, Allison Argent, Lydia Martin, Danny Mahealani, Elizabeth M'Bondo
Word Count: ~2500
Summary: Something something evil teacher at BHHS. Maybe there's meant to be an interstellar war?
Notes: I've been sitting on these story segments for years and it's become clear that there never going to be turned into a real story. So, enjoy what there is, if you want to.
“She's evil,” Stiles concluded within seconds of the new art teacher introducing herself. He'd poked Scott between the shoulder blades with the tip of his pencil first to get his attention, then leaned over and made his pronouncement in his version of a whisper, as if Scott wouldn't hear him otherwise.
Scott dropped his head in embarrassment. “Stiles,” he hissed back.
The teacher was an older woman, perhaps in her 50s, with gray streaked black hair and a no-nonsense attitude that put all the students on alert. The only unusual thing about her that Scott could recognize was her accent. She claimed to be from London on a teacher-exchange program, and every word out of her mouth only reinforced that.
“Listen to me, Scott,” Stiles continued. “Have I ever been wrong? Why, no, I don't believe so. Evil. Pure evil.”
“...We'll be taking advantage of this opportunity to broaden our world horizons,” the teacher continued, peering around at the assembled class as she spoke.
It was the first day, so the students were seated at the wide work tables with nary any actual art supplies in sight. Most of the teens squirmed in boredom or impatience; all had only signed up for the class because they'd assumed it would be an easy A, and already they were beginning to suspect that their assumption couldn't have been more wrong.
Her gaze paused on Stiles, whose scramble to straighten up clattered the bench against the floor and created more noise than his whispering. Stiles plastered a wide, innocent smile on his face, folded his hands on the table in front of him, and ended up looking so guilty that Scott couldn't believe it when the teacher kept going without any comment.
“Did you see the way she looked at me?” Stiles whispered. “She's on to us. Let the bad guys beware.”
Scott elbowed Stiles to get him to shut up. When Stiles opened his mouth to protest the mistreatment, Scott let just the barest flash of red into his eyes.
While it was possible that the new teacher was evil, Scott was not going to speculate on it in front of her. If he'd learned anything over the past few years, it was the value of the enemy not knowing that he was working against them.
Besides, the teacher had a sereneness about her that belied any suggestion of malfeasance. His lips quirked at the chance to apply that PSAT word before he turned serious again.
The teacher wrote her name on the whiteboard and pronounced it for them. “M'Bondo. It's African,” she supplied to the question that none of them were brave enough to ask.
“Teacher!” someone shouted from the back of the room. “What if we can't say that?”
Ms. M'Bondo smiled politely and regarded the student for a long moment. “You'll never learn if you don't practice. Creativity requires learning how to overcome your fears of the unknown.” She paused for a moment to let the students mull over the response, then clapped her hands once, putting an end to that line of questioning. “And there's no better time to start than now. So, let's start putting all this paper to use. Go get a piece of drawing paper.” She gestured to the cabinets which were stacked to the brim with brand new supplies.
While everyone else scrambled from their benches, Stiles made a face like he'd bitten into a peach and found an onion. “A whole year of this. If we survive,” he mumbled, this time loud enough for only Scott to hear.
Scott dropped his head into his folded arms and sighed.
At last Stiles took the hint.
*+*+*
Danny had his attention buried in a pile of printouts when Scott spotted him in the library. Plucking the book he had come for from the shelf, he wandered over to Danny's table. The two didn't talk much outside of lacrosse practice, yet Scott couldn't think of a good reason why. With Jackson gone, Danny's social rank had slipped and he often had an air of sadness around him that Scott felt partially responsible for.
“What are you reading?” Scott asked, craning his head to get a peek at the spread of papers that covered the library table.
Danny jumped, flushed, and blinked at the papers like he hadn't known until Scott's question that he was reading anything at all. “Hey,” he greeted. He waved at the empty chair next to him, and Scott sat down. “It's something I found online a couple weeks ago. I'm honestly not sure what it is. I'm thinking it's a new RPG system someone's developing. The detail is incredible, though there's a lot that I'm having trouble getting my head around.” He rifled through the papers for a moment, found what he was looking for, and shoved the page Scott's direction. “Like this. I think it's a map.”
“It looks like a star chart,” Scott said, picking it up. He seen similar charts in textbooks throughout the years of science classes, and different versions of them during the one awful week when Stiles tried to convince him that astrology was the answer to finding a cure.
“An incredibly detailed one,” Danny agreed. “Problem is, it's not ours.” He let that sink in as he shuffled through the papers again until he found a second chart, this one with a lot more white space on the page. He pointed to a section off in the corner. “This part looked familiar so I cross-referenced it. Turns out that it's our corner of the galaxy. But, near as I can tell, it's not being shown from our perspective. This star--” He pointed to the star right in the middle-- “is about 25 light years away. It's a real star.” He shook his head in silent respect. “Someone put a lot of effort into imagining how the galaxy would look from that star's perspective.”
“Wow,” Scott said. He pulled the second page over and compared it to the first. Really, it was a lot of dots and symbols he didn't recognize. The amount of time Danny had put into trying to decipher the maps awed him more than the maps' existence. “So, why are you showing these to me?” he asked.
With a shrug, Danny replied, “Figured you'd believe me. Anyone else would tell me I was overthinking. Or would just laugh.” He rubbed his hands on his jeans and rolled his neck to unkink it, as if he hadn't just made a profound observation.
“Um,” Scott started. The articulate answer he should be giving vanished from his head. “I--” He moistened his lips and tried to read Danny's face for clues. His eyes were heavy and ringed with tiredness and his t-shirt had the rumpled look of one that had been pulled from a pile on the floor, but Scott saw nothing in him that hinted at any ulterior motive to his statement.
“It's OK, McCall,” Danny assured him. Taking the star charts back, he gathered up the rest of his papers and stood, just as the bell rang for the end of the period. “There's nothing wrong with being a good listener.” He nodded once, affirming that he meant nothing more, and headed off to class.
Scott watched the library door swing shut behind his teammate, wondering, as he sometimes did, how much Danny knew. No one who dedicated so much energy to deciphering mysteries he found online could be so oblivious to the goings on around him. He closed his hands around his book and headed for the check-out desk, his thoughts heavy with the contradictions of the day.
“Is this everything?” the librarian asked as he scanned the book into the computer. He was short and balding and smelled of cinnamon gum. The smile he gave Scott was polite, but vacant, and he printed out the receipt without waiting for an answer. “It's due back in two weeks.”
“Thanks,” Scott replied. Taking the book back, he tucked it into his backpack and promptly forgot about it. With heavy steps he headed toward his next class.
The school year had just started and it was already showing signs of being another one where far too many people died because he didn't put the pieces together fast enough to keep them alive. To himself, he vowed that this year would be different. If only he could figure out where to begin.
*+*+*
Stiles dropped his tray on the table at lunchtime, plopped himself in the chair, and opened the first-day-of-school conversation with, “So, dead people.”
The cafeteria thrummed with activity and the excitement of returning to school that only existed on the first day. Everything was clean: the graffiti was painted over, the floors waxed, all the outfits and school supplies new. Even the food gave a passable imitation of being worth eating. Today was supposed to be the one day when the drudgery of the rest of the year held no power.
“Dead people?” Lydia echoed.
“I don't know,” Stiles replied with an affronted shrug. “You're the Banshee. When there's dead people who need finding, you're the one who finds them. What've'ya got for us?”
Lydia blinked slowly in response, then flipped her hair in rejection of his question. Turning to Allison, she said, “I'm thinking about buying a new car. What do you think, four seats or two?”
Allison unscrewed the lid from her water bottle and took a long drink, appearing to mull over the question. At last she answered, “I suppose that depends on whether you think you'll need the backseat.”
Lydia hummed thoughtfully. “Well, I certainly won't be needing space to haul around bodies,” she concluded.
With typical pragmatism, Scott chimed in, “Were you planning to take your car with you to college?”
“Naturally!”
“Excuse me,” Stiles interrupted. “We were talking about bodies.”
“You were talking about bodies,” Lydia corrected. “I'm talking about cars. If I'm going to be buying a new one, I would like to take some time to consider all the possibilities first. Now, I realize that parking may be difficult on campus, however, if I'm going to be spending a lot of time in the lab, it would be nice not to have to walk back to my apartment late at night.”
To Lydia, Allison asked, “Have you thought about using public transport. It's a lot better for the planet.” Without waiting for an answer, she turned to Scott, “Why does Stiles want to talk about bodies?”
Scott rolled his eyes. “He's convinced that the new art teacher is about to start killing people. I think she seems nice. She's--” He pondered the word he wanted, and finally settled on, “peaceful. There's something really peaceful about her.”
Stiles buzzed a loud raspberry with his lips. “She's from England,” he said, as if that were reason enough to doubt her goodness. “Why would she come here?”
“Just a thought,” Allison answered, “but, the weather? I've been to England. I'll take northern California any day.”
“Take that, Jackson,” Lydia snarked under her breath. Everyone turned to look at her. “What? It's not like he calls or emails or texts. I think it's only fair that he finally has to compete with actual royalty.”
“Stiles,” Allison interjected, ever the voice of reason, “Has it ever occurred to you that the reason she's here is to teach art?”
“Have you seen our faculty turnover?” Stiles argued. “Give me one good reason why any teacher in their right mind would come here?”
Throwing his hands up, Scott answered, “Because they hired her? Look, Stiles, we don't know that anything is going on. We don't have any reason to think that anything is going on. How about we all try to enjoy our senior year instead of inventing extra things to worry about?”
Crossing his arms, Stiles sunk low in his seat like a cowed child. “And you all wonder why the bad guys are so hard to stop,” he grumbled. When no one asked him to elaborate, he raised his chin and, a little louder, provided, “It's because we always give them such a big head start.” He spread his hands wide on the word “big,” then twisted them back in close to is body as if knowing that he was going too far.
“Obviously, good gas mileage is essential,” Lydia chimed in. “I mean, I'm going to be driving across the entire country, so the fewer stops I have to make at some skanky gas station, the better.” She inspected her nails, tapped them against the Formica tabletop, and inspected them again. “Maybe I should get a hybrid.”
The gambit worked, finally, and the group turned toward discussing Lydia's choices in cars. Not until lunch was over and Scott was half way to his locker did he discover that Stiles's entreaties had started wheels turning.
Allison slipped up behind him, touching his arm lightly to get his attention. “Maybe we should keep an eye on her,” she suggested. “Her being here could be a little suspicious.”
“Not you, too,” Scott groaned.
Allison smiled at him, one shoulder cocked up and her dimples deeply etched. The unspoken “do it for me?” stripped all of Scott's defenses.
He came to a stop in the middle of the hallway, the stream of classmates immediately parting around him. “What do you want me to do?”
“Well, we don't want to scare her. I mean, she could just be a regular teacher. If she is, then she might need our protection if Beacon Hills does go weird again. On the other hand...” Allison trailed off, her brown eyes going big and pleading.
Scott rolled his head, unable not to comply with her entreaty. “Fine.” A quick glance revealed the open door of an empty classroom a few feet away. Pulling Allison into it, he shut the door. It would be a lot easier to hear what his new teacher was up to without lockers slamming next to his face.
He found Ms. M'Bondo right away. Student sculptures from years past hung on display from the ceiling; their sound as they swung in the breeze from the open window like wind-chimes. Her classroom was empty this hour, and he heard the graduated hiss of her filling cups of water at her sink. A clunk, another full cup set down, the water shut off.
“I'll be right there, John,” she said.
Then she was gone.
Scott listened closer, trying to pick up the thump of her heart beat that had been in the room a second before. He heard only the whistle of the breeze against the glass, the whispering of the hanging art, and the steady tick of the clock.
Catching the confusion in his expression, Allison grabbed his hand, “What? What's going on?”
“I...don't know,” Scott replied slowly. Another second of silence-where-there-shouldn't-be-any and he took off toward the art room. Allison followed without hesitation.
Dodging through the hallway, he ignored his classmates' shouts of aggrievement as he pushed people aside or cut off slower movers.
He pushed open the door on the empty classroom and came to a stop. Allison bumped into him from behind. “She was just in here,” he said. “I heard her, and then...” He looked around, his eyes confirming what his ears had already told him.
“Could she have gone to the bathroom?”
Scott shook his head. “She didn't leave.” He glanced at the door, confirming that he'd opened it, that he hadn't passed his teacher on the way in. The door had a hydraulic system to keep it from slamming shut which gave it an identifiable hiss every time it opened or closed. He definitely hadn't heard that.
He poked around the room anyway, just in case Ms. M'Bondo had found a way to hide herself in the supply cabinet or under a table. Maybe she'd slipped out the window. But, no, the windows only opened part way and the tables had nothing under them except fossilized gum. With a scowl and an exaggerated tossing of his hands, he admitted, “OK, she did leave. But, how?”
Allison ran a secondary sweep, and also came to the conclusion that Ms. M'Bondo wasn't hiding under the tables. “I guess you must have missed something.”
“Yeah. I guess,” Scott answered. He hadn't. He knew he hadn't. But what other answer could there be? Ordinary people didn't just vanish, and if she wasn't ordinary, then...
In the back of his mind, he heard Stiles gloating, I told she's evil.
