Superhero Effects

7. LUCINDA MACK

For the rest of lunch, we hid out in Peggy's car after sneaking to the parking lot.

"I hate to call this, but I have to," Peggy said once we were both comfortable with our feet crossed on her dash with the heater on low, "Archer can't be trusted with the Weems plan."

"It's like you read my mind," I agreed. "I mean, did you see how he went all weak at the knees?" Peggy let out a laugh. "No, seriously! They wobbled when he jumped down from the table. We can't trust that wishy-washy wimp with anything now that he has the hots for that spy."

Peggy reclined in the driver's seat with pursed lips. "Do you ever remember Archer going to any kind of summer camp?"

"You're asking me? I just realized the boy played baseball a couple of days ago."

She let out another laugh. "Well, I never know with you, Tristan, sometimes you take in more stuff than I do, and I'm supposed to be the perceptive one."

"Yeah, well, summer camp is definitely not one of them. And, oh boy, did you notice the tension between those two? I could have cut it with a butter knife. I think they used to date or something at that camp that we didn't know about."

"See? More stuff than I do, but now that I think about it, you're right. If Archer wasn't such a wimp, we could use that to our advantage. But you know what's more surprising, as soon as she stepped into the room, he forgot about you completely. You'd think he'd be more loyal because of his undying love."

"Told you it was just a crush."

"Or she's an evil siren come to steal your true love away and has hypnotized him with her fabricated beauty."

"Doubt it."

I glanced out the window, looking over the vacant parking lot.

Unless you were coming at the beginning of school, leaving at the end, being signed out, or being signed in, stepping inside the parking lot while school was in session was highly forbidden. But after the Spotlight scandal, we didn't care about breaking any school rules. We figured after we busted Weems, anything we got in trouble for under his rule would get pushed to the side anyway...well, that and we didn't care.

"Too bad Teri broke up with Lewis," Peggy said. "We could use that tie right now."

Teri was Weems's daughter; it sucked for get-togethers with the parents when Lewis and Teri were dating because, ya know, Weems hated me.

I hummed an agreement.

My mind wandered back to Lucy when I caught my reflection in Peggy's rearview mirror; an identical twin sister. How was I going to find her?
***
Neither Peggy nor I knew that we had a new vice principal. It was the norm for me not to know such things, but not for Peggy, which just made it weird. He was a sharply dressed man in dark gray slacks and a black button-up with thick brown hair going gray in the upper corners, and he busted us. Right when we were sneaking back in, he got our names and told us we had detention after school for breaking a "major rule".

We were surprised when we walked into the instructed room after classes ended with careless attitudes to find Archer sitting on one of the desktops in the front room with his eyes down on his cell phone.

"Hey, did you get detention too?" I asked, thinking maybe there was hope for him after all.

Archer looked up from his phone, surprised. His eyes went from Peggy and then to me with a loud groan. "Oh, great."

I looked at Peggy, confused. "What's he groaning at us for?"

Peggy was already shaking her head at him, disgusted. "You traitor!" she cried at him. "You're the student rat they assigned to this room, aren't you?"