That’s when I noticed the smoke curling up from the newspaper. Flinch, of course, was way ahead of me. He smacked the paper out of Torchie’s hand and stomped on it. At the same time, Torchie leaped up, screamed, “Yeooowwwcch,” and blew on his fingers.
“Guess I was excited to see you,” he said.
“Here, put some ice on it.” Martin looked in the bucket. “Shoot. We’re out.”
“I’ll get it!” Torchie shouted. “I love ice machines. They have one where I’m staying, but it doesn’t work. And it sort of smells.” He grabbed the ice bucket and headed for the door, then turned back. “You guys aren’t gonna ditch me, are you?”
“What?” I asked.
“You know. Slip out while I’m away.”
“Drat! You figured out our secret plan,” Martin said. “I was going to steal your accordion, go back to your motel, and impersonate you. I’ve been plotting this my whole life. The hardest part was learning to sweat on demand.”
Torchie grinned at Martin. “I forgot what a kidder you are.”
“Here. Take this.” I handed him the key card. Torchie put it in his pocket and walked out.
A half minute later, there was a knock on the door. “That was fast,” Martin said. “I guess he had trouble with the lock.” He turned the knob and opened the door.
Maybe if it had been Flinch who’d gone to the door, we would have had a chance. But Flinch was busy channel-surfing and Martin never saw it coming. As soon as the door opened, someone tossed a small cylinder through the opening. Before I could react, the cylinder exploded in a cloud of gas.
I tried to open the window, but everything went gray. I could feel myself falling toward the floor. I seemed to be falling forever.
while trash learns that
life is a gas, torchie
gets some ice …
“THIS IS AWESOME.” Torchie couldn’t believe he was together with his friends again. Sure, they had some problems. People were trying to kidnap Trash. Lucky and Cheater were in the hospital. But there was a bright side to everything. Trash had escaped. Cheater was healing. And Lucky was in a place where he could get help. That was a Grieg family motto: It could be worse. Of course, that came true a lot, too. Things got worse. But even then, the motto applied.
Torchie followed the signs, turned several corners, and finally found the ice machine at the far end of a hall. It took him a while to figure out how it worked, but he managed to fill the bucket. And this machine didn’t smell. The hotel seemed a lot nicer than the one where he was staying. There weren’t any holes in the carpet, and you could see through the windows. He held a piece of ice against his finger for a minute, until it stopped hurting, then headed back.
As he turned the final corner, he looked down the hall and saw a couple guys coming out of Trash’s room. Torchie got lost all the time, especially in buildings he’d never been to before. But when Flinch had brought him to the room, he’d noticed the number on the door. It was 427—which was easy to remember because that was exactly what his Uncle Duley weighed last year after Thanksgiving dinner. So the room was right. But something was wrong. The men coming out were pushing a laundry cart. They didn’t look like maids.
Pretending he was going to another room, Torchie walked right past 427. He waited until the two men had gone into the elevator, then he went back and unlocked the door. There was nobody there.
“Oh boy,” he muttered. “This is not good.”
cell mates
WHATEVER THEY USED to knock us out, I came awake faster than before. No gorillas. No singing crumbs or smiling shoes. But I had a killer headache, and my eyes didn’t want to focus. My left arm ached, too. I lifted my sleeve and saw I had a bandage wrapped around my arm, just above my elbow. I guess I’d gotten hurt when they’d captured us. I didn’t remember putting up a fight.
I was on a concrete floor. This wasn’t the lab house. It looked like a large basement—except part of the space, maybe ten or twelve feet long, had been walled off with iron bars, forming a cell in one corner. There were no windows in the walls. Even without the bars, it would have been a dark, depressing place.
“My head hurts,” Martin said.
I looked over to where he was sprawled. “Sorry. This is my fault. I got you into it.” I couldn’t believe I was a captive again, so soon after escaping.
Flinch was slumped in the corner. His eyes were closed, his mouth hung open, but he was breathing.
“We’ll be okay,” Martin said.
“And you know that with your psychic powers, Martin?” I shouted.