Call Spirits in Your Past **Book Two**

Chapter 55 (Tuesday)

Ripple blinked. Wha--?

"Lucille?" Addie's voice floated from below. "Are you okay?"

Ripple lost her balance and fell off the pipe. She thumped into something soft, a rubbery, squishy mat melding around her arms. She stared up at the exposed pipes in the ceiling. "What. Is. Going. On?"

Addie's face appeared above her. "Um..."

Ripple glared at her. "I'm Ripple," she said, awkwardly crawling free of the mat to the floor. What was she doing in a dim classroom? She grimaced. Why were there ten-something of them in an otherwise empty classroom? "What is going on?"

"That's," Addie hesitated, nibbling her lip, "kind of a long story?"

"Okay, what day is it?" Ripple asked.

"It's Tuesday. Very early in the morning," Addie fidgeted with her fingers. Ripple turned in a slow circle, finding most everyone still asleep. The only people awake were her, Addie, and one of the other girls who knew Cory.

"Is she crying?" Ripple pointed at the other girl, who didn't seem to notice.

"Uh...Dryda?" Addie called. "Are you okay?"

Dryda waved noncommittally at them and turned away. Ripple glanced at Addie, who shrugged. "We have been trapped here for almost a day," Addie whispered. "Maybe that's all it is."

Ripple took a step back, almost tripping on the squishy mat. "You've been in here for a day? But yesterday morning..." she bit her lip, trying to recall the last thing that happened. "We went to mission training. And we were late. And I had to wear a scarf and we took a test..."

"There was a fire in the building after that," Addie said. "Everybody evacuated to the lawn, and I overheard something about a fire-breathing student with an allergy to cat hair. I don't know how true that is though."

"But how'd we end up here?" Ripple glanced around. "Where even are we?"

"They couldn't get the fire stopped," Addie said, "so they sent us back to our dorms. But then our dorm caught on fire too, and since they," she motioned towards the seven foreign kids, "were hiding in Vizz and Treble's room they had to evacuate too, but some people noticed them and a robot lizard attacked all of us--"

"A robot lizard attacked us?"

Addie nodded. "There were two guys, and I knocked one of them out, but the other had a thing that called the robot through a portal. It was kind of scary."

Ripple rubbed her eyes. "The robot captured all of us and put us in a classroom?" she glanced at the door. "Why haven't we left yet?"

"Well, it knocked all of us out first, so we woke up in here--I don't know what building this is. And he," she pointed to a boy curled on his side beneath the whiteboard, "had an idea to stay here so that when they came and gave us food we could demand to be shown their leader."

Ripple furrowed her eyebrows. "It's...been a day though. Has somebody come yet?"

"Nope," she said brightly. "We've taken turns sneaking out to use the bathroom though. Through there," she pointed at the wall opposite the door.

Ripple frowned at it. "It's just a wall though."

"Tago blasted handholds into it, so we can climb up into all the pipes and vents and stuff," Addie's growling stomach interrupted her, and she grimaced. "We don't have any more food though. Mine and Vizz's lunches didn't last very long."

Ripple plopped to the squishy mat, chin in her hands. "This sounds like the most exciting day and I missed the entire thing," she stared down at the mat between her thighs. "Also, where did this mat come from?"