The Chaos Curse (Kiranmala and the Kingdom Beyond #3) - Sayantani DasGupta Page 0,33
to the already-soggy auditorium floor.
Mademoiselle Morrow, the French teacher and fencing coach, held off some kids trying to barrel over Kendrick’s fallen form, and helped him up. “S’il vous plaît! Keep your eyes on the prize, team!”
But the shrieking and yelling just got louder, and the pandemonium more pandemonious. I turned around just in time to see Shady Sadie the Science Lady being rushed offstage, her intense eyes shining behind her glasses like beacons in the chaotic, sprinkler-induced storm.
“Calmly, students! This is probably nothing, just an unfortunate accident,” Dr. Dixon called from the door, where he was trying to organize kids into a single-file line.
“Who did this? I want names, ranks, and serial numbers!” P. Chenny was shrieking again from the front of the room. Her face was all twisted, and even though she was otherwise soaked, her hair now stood out straight from her head. Wow, that must be one really fancy perm. “Suspension and expulsion are too good for the criminals who did this! You’re going straight to juvie! You hear me? Straight to reform school! Do not pass go! Do not collect your diploma!”
“Come on, Kiran!” Jovi was holding out her hand as my row filed out, pushing and shoving, toward the door.
“I’ll be right there!” I called as she was swept away by the tide of panicky students.
In the confusion, no one saw me bend down to pick up the gecko that scuttled back toward me from under the rows of chairs. “Thanks, little dude. Good job pulling that fire alarm.”
The lizard flickered its tongue at me in what I can only assume was a you’re welcome.
All right. Now that the auditorium was on its way to becoming empty, for the next part of my plan. I wasn’t about to follow my classmates out of the auditorium. Four months ago, I would have convinced myself this was all coincidence and that if I just kept my head down, and acted in ways that were unnoticeable, everything would spontaneously fix itself and all would be fine. Now I knew better. I wasn’t the kind of person anymore who waited for bad situations to get better, hoping someone else would take charge. I was the kind of person who stepped up, fixed things, and made them right. Which is why I’d had Tiktiki One pull the alarm. There was clearly something strange going on here, and I had to get to the bottom of it. I needed to talk to Shady Sadie one-on-one and get her to explain to me this stuff about the multiverse, chaos, and demons. I knew it had something to do with everything that was going on. I just didn’t get how yet.
“Come on, students, everyone out of there!” I heard Mademoiselle Morrow call. I ducked down beneath the rows and started crawling so that she couldn’t see me. The sprinklers were raining on my head and the lights were kind of blinking too, but I crawled along the wet floor without stopping. I was on a mission.
“Be smart. Take care of each other, folks!” I heard Dr. Dixon’s booming voice in the hallway outside the auditorium. “Walk, don’t run, students. Get outside to your meet-up places to join your homerooms!”
The sprinklers were still going and alarms still blaring, but I was pretty sure from the quieting down of the auditorium that it was finally empty. Now was my chance to find Shady Sadie before she left the school grounds. But when I grabbed my backpack and straightened up, I was shocked to find myself nose-to-nose with Not-by-the-Hair-of-My-Cheni-Chen-Chen.
The principal’s clothes were wet and her pink glasses so water-streaked I couldn’t see her eyes, but her hair was even more twisty-curly and standing out from her head than before. She swiveled her neck, like she wasn’t looking at me but somehow around me, hissing, “Illegal!”
I took some serious offense, sputtering through the sprinkler water, “Illegal? I’m a human being! No human being is illegal!”
“Illegal! Trespasser! Dimensional interloper!” Principal Chen shrieked to make herself heard over the alarm. Her teeth were kind of bared now in a creepy way. I mean, I knew she was strict, but this was ridiculous.
“Dimensional interloper? What do you mean?” I blinked through the water streaming over my face, trying to stall for time. Now I hoped Dr. Dixon or one of the other teachers was still hanging around and would see us. I was starting to think there was something really not right with old P. Chenny.