School Spirits - By Rachel Hawkins Page 0,68

shouting and pointing at the cannon, and I heard a chorus of shrieks go up from the gym floor. I wasn’t going to make it.

But then, a basketball player darted from the first row of the bleachers, throwing all his weight onto the cannon. The sound its wheels made on the hardwood was awful, but the deafening boom that followed was much, much worse.

Thanks to the basketball player, the explosion pounded into the far wall of the gym instead of Adam—and all the kids within fifty feet of him. But it didn’t matter. Everything descended into complete pandemonium as kids screamed at and shoved each other, trying to get off the bleachers and out of the gym. I hung on to the railing, inching down the side of the bleachers. Down on the floor, one of the basketball players was holding the hedgehog’s arms behind its back as another boy reached up and tugged the mascot’s head off.

The suit was empty.

As the boy holding the head staggered back, the suit slid through the other player’s arms, pooling onto the floor.

I only thought there had been panic before. The screaming got louder, people started shoving harder, and the entire building seemed to quake.

Fear—thick, choking waves of it—rushed through the gym. More than fear, really. Terror. Horror. Dread. All of it pulsing in the air, and somewhere, I knew, Mary Evans was getting stronger.

Much stronger.

CHAPTER 29

Since the school had been evacuated, we held the emergency meeting of PMS at Romy’s house. Romy’s mom had gone overboard with the snack options, laying out three different kinds of chips on the counter, as well as two kinds of soft drinks.

Once we’d gotten our food we followed Romy up to her room.

Romy immediately clambered onto her bed, sitting cross-legged in the middle. Anderson sat next to her, while I took the desk chair and Dex folded his long body onto a bright green beanbag chair.

“Okay,” Romy said, dusting crumbs off her hands, “I think we can all agree there’s some seriously crazy stuff going on at Mary Evans High.”

“I don’t know, Rome,” Dex said, crossing his ankles. “Hedgehog violence is a lot more common than you’d think.”

“What I still don’t get,” Anderson said, grabbing a handful of chips, “is why she went from floating some chalk to this whole reign of terror thing.”

“There never was a haunting before,” I said, finally getting it. “Floating chalk, locker doors opening, all of that was BS, just stories people told.” I was too freaked out and thinking too fast to even pretend I didn’t know much about the paranormal. “This is the only haunting Mary Evans High has ever had, and it’s because someone used magic and freaking summoned a ghost.”

All three of them stared at me, but I didn’t care anymore. This had gone too far, and after what had happened in the gym today, Mary would be stronger than ever. We didn’t have any more time.

I took a deep breath. It had come to this. “And I think I know who.”

I walked over to Romy’s desk and pulled out her bracelet, dangling it on one finger as my other hand fished in my pocket for the charm I’d found in the cave. “This belongs to you, doesn’t it?” I asked her.

Very carefully, Romy put her can of soda down. “Yeah. What are you saying?”

I could feel Anderson’s and Dex’s eyes on me as I said, “You run a ghost-hunting club, but you didn’t have any ghosts to hunt. So maybe you stumbled across a spell somewhere. Hedge magic,” I said. “You just thought you’d call up a couple of local spirits. Nothing too dangerous, nothing that could hurt anyone. But hedge magic can be tricky, and something went wrong. And people are getting hurt, Romy.”

Her face was a mask as she took all of that in. Finally, she got off the bed and snatched the bracelet out of my hand. “That is my bracelet, and yes, that is my charm. But I lost it weeks ago. I certainly wasn’t hanging out in a cave, conjuring up ‘hedge magic.’ And what does that even mean?”

“It’s something—”

“Don’t say you read it on the Internet.”

“You do say that a lot,” Dex said, and for once he didn’t sound like he was joking. In fact, I could swear that was actual suspicion on his face as he watched me. “First the salt thing, now witches summoning ghosts…’”

Romy was looking at me weird, too. “What salt thing?”

Glaring at Dex, I said,