Slob - Ellen Potter [37]
At 10:57 he rose suddenly and walked up to Ms. Bussle’s desk for the hall pass.
I’m not a spur-of-the-moment kind of guy, but my sister was disgusted with me, Wooly was planning to polish the gym floor with me, and it looked like the only thing Nemesis could do was pick up stupid seventies sitcoms. What did I have to lose, really? I stood up and went to Ms. Bussle’s desk.
“Hall pass.”
“Please,” she said.
“Please.”
She looked me over to see if it was once again something I had eaten. When she saw I looked fine, she handed me a hall pass.
I hadn’t counted to twenty like the note suggested, but I was pretty sure it was close enough.
The hall directly outside the classroom was empty, but I could hear footsteps echoing down the hallway that joined it at a right angle. I walked quickly, thankful that I was wearing a pair of unsqueaky sneakers. As I passed the lunch closet, I quickly glanced at the shelf where I had put the IPuffins tote bag. It was still there, rolled up in a cylinder the way I had left it. He wouldn’t have had time to rummage through it anyway. I turned down the adjoining hallway and could see Mason Ragg way up ahead. He was heading for the stairwell. I ducked behind a water fountain and peered out at him. The strange thing was that he never once turned to see if I was behind him. Maybe he didn’t have to. Maybe he just knew that I would follow him, even when I didn’t know it myself.
When I could just see the top of his head as he walked down the stairs, I started following again. I reached the staircase as he made the turn down the second flight of stairs.
That’s when I remembered what Izzy said about Mason attacking me in a dark corner.
I froze, listening hard. I could hear footsteps, faint and apparently descending the stairs at a fast clip. If they were Mason’s footsteps, he definitely wasn’t waiting for me. On the contrary, it sounded like he was running. What on earth was he up to?
I hurried down the stairs. At this rate, I might easily lose track of him. I remembered how fast his legs moved in gym class. I hurried faster, already feeling the dampness of sweat in my armpits. Soon I’d be huffing.
I cleared the second staircase and went through the doors to the first floor. I looked around quickly. There were three hallways—one to my left, one to my right, and one dead ahead. Mason was hurrying along on the left.
He turned around suddenly, and my heart stopped cold. I thought for sure he would run at me, showering me with curses at the very least, at the very worst reaching for his sock. But instead, he did the oddest thing. He actually looked terrified. Then he turned around again and began to run like mad.
He skidded to a stop in front of one of the doors up ahead, frantically turned the doorknob, and slipped inside the room.
The door slammed shut. I stood still for a moment, catching my breath, and wondering what to do next.
“Hey, dude, what’s up?” I turned and there was Izzy behind me, towering above me, a tube of rolled-up papers in his fist.
I hesitated and he narrowed his eyes at me. “You didn’t follow that Ragg kid, did you? You did! Oh man, what are you thinking?”
“Listen, it’s the weirdest thing,” I said. I told him how Mason had looked so terrified of me, and how he had run like crazy when he saw I was behind him. We were both completely flummoxed.
“Maybe he’s a werewolf, dude,” Izzy said.
“Yeah, right,” I said, but made a mental note to check if tonight was a full moon.
“And why would he leave you a note telling you to follow him if he was terrified when you actually did?” Izzy asked.
That was a good question.
“Maybe the note wasn’t meant for me,” I suggested. “Or maybe it was, but Mason wasn’t the one who wrote it. Maybe I was supposed to follow someone else.”
Behind us came