Whatever Happened... to Robot Jones? Continued

Chapter 26: Pandora's Box

Aborting her plan, the masked Shannon began turning over Clara's house looking for where the snake had gone. She was being careful to look inconspicuous whenever possible. Moving random furniture, and often times simply knocking it over proved to be oddly unnoticed. And by the time she got to the snack room, she figured out why.

In the wake of the mass of partiers, every room had been transformed into a destruction site. There were broken pieces of chairs and smashed lights, enough to pile in the middle of the floor and start a bonfire-and with how rowdy the crowd had become, it didn't seem that far fetched.

She still hadn't really recovered from what had happened back in the closet. So she was caught by surprise when she saw a familiar, tall figure in the doorway of the room. The black haired, black jacketed boy asked someone near the front of the room if they'd seen a robot Frankenstein's Monster and some other short kids. When Shannon dared a look, she couldn't believe she was looking at Socks Morton. Robot hadn't been kidding back in the closet about his best friend's transformation-Socks looked ridiculous. And there was no way he picked out the new look by himself.

Shannon resented Clara for this, not just because she cared about Socks, but because Robot did. They were both such innocent, well meaning guys, it was wrong to put turbulence into their friendship, no matter what Clara was gaining from it.

She remembered something weird about Robot's speech back there, when he had said if Socked loved Clara, he couldn't possibly love Shannon-which kind of nauseated her. How had Robot gotten it into his head that Socks and herself were ever interested in each other like that? Socks was practically like a brother to her, or at least used to be. Although, recently, she wished he could acted like he'd even considered that she was a woman. Maybe she wasn't attracted to him, but Socks was a man, and it hurt to have an old friend like that unable to call her pretty. Even if it was a lie.

Shannon had slipped behind the downstairs couch, on her hands and feet-wincing, as her bandaged palm beneath the glove still stung with cuts that had barely had twenty four hours to heal. There, a thought occurred to her: If she and Socks were interested in each other as more than friends, what did Robot care?

Unless-

Something icy and cold splashed over Shannon's head, derailing her train of thought. She chocked back a yelp, straightening her back and looking right into the eyes of a giggling partier with an empty cup. Another high schooler? How many were there?

"Ooops!" the tube top wearing girl said, "I thought you were a trash can back there! Sorry, dude, but don't be weird and creep up on people like that!"

Shannon glared at her silently through the eye holes in her mask until the partier became so uncomfortable that she got up. From there, she wandered over to her friends on the other side of the room as if nothing had happened. "This one's just fruit punch, too!"

Shannon. Snake. Focus, she told herself, shaking off the ice cubes from her shoulder and back and letting them roll to the floor, like soggy dice.
When she found nothing in the snack room, she went down the hallway and began checking the other first floor rooms. She was overhearing a lot of the middle schoolers now, too, whispering about drinks that the party was allegedly supposed to have. Did Clara start a rumor that there was going to be booze at her own party? Is that what all the high schoolers are doing here? What did this have to do with what Robot was trying to tell her in the closet?

If the goal was to get rid of Clara by flooding her house with bodies to the point that it sank through the foundation and straight to China, then it was working pretty well. Shannon grunted as she slipped through the hallway, careful to make it sound masculine. Some partiers stopped and asked her to take a photo with them, or shouted a random name her way, hoping that she would turn around. Nobody was even close to guessing who she was. In fact, not only did they not suspect she was a middle schooler, but everybody seemed confident that she was a boy. The disguise was working perfectly.