Jillian thumped into her back. “Ow! Lou! Why’d you stop?”
Louise rocked back so she could check the number over the doorway. Yes, it was their classroom. All the art hung on the walls had been taken down, the desks had been rearranged, and there was something odd about the windows that she couldn’t put a finger on. What’s more, no one was in the room, despite the fact that the hall was crowded.
Jillian didn’t notice the changes; she was focused on her tablet. She stepped around Louise and continued walking to where their seats used to be. “We should get something like a floor safe that’s fire proof…and…and put it in a cardboard box labeled ‘time capsule, do not open until 2050’ and put it into our closet. We could even draw a safe on the outside of the box. Or we can get something like this.”
Jillian held up her tablet to show a bullet-shaped container made by the Smithsonian that had the words ‘Time Capsule’ printed in large blue letters on it. There was a plaque to mark where tube was buried.
“What if Mom and Dad make us bury it?”
Jillian made a face as she thought about it a moment. “That might work.”
“How would you feel if your parents told you that they’d buried you in the backyard for twenty years? It would be worse than that cabbage patch story Grandma Mayer used to tell us.”
“Better than Nana.” She fell into their grandmother’s thick Jamaican accent. “We got you at Macy’s. It was a half-off sale; that’s why we got two.”
“Forget about it. No burying the babies,” Louise stated firmly. “It’s just creepy.”
Jillian blew a raspberry, reached where her desk should be and stopped in surprise. “Where’s my desk?”
“Over here.” Louise pointed to the desk beside her. The powers that were had decided that fifth graders were all now big kids and had put desks for high school students in the room at the beginning of the year. After five minutes with their feet dangling, the twins had demanded that they be given desks for fourth graders. “Or over there.”
“No. No. We sit together.” Jillian picked up the other small desk and moved it beside Louise. “Where is everyone?”
It was weird that they were the only ones in the room. Now that she thought about it, all the hallways had been crowded as they climbed the stairs. “I think they’re too scared to come into the rooms.”
“Really?”
The twins had rushed to the classroom to get away from the noisy crowd. It seemed very wrong, though, that they were more scared of the other kids than a bomb. Maybe because they realized the odds for an ugly encounter with peers was a million times more likely than a second bomb.
Claudia peered timidly into the room, saw that they rearranging the desk and hurried in. “Did you hear? There’s elves at the Waldorf Astoria!”
“Really?” the twins both shouted. “Which ones?”
Claudia winced. “I can’t say the name. They only gave the Elvish name and it was really long. It’s the female with really white hair and the blue triangle thing on her forehead.”
“Saetato-fohaili-ba-taeli?” the twins cried.
“Um, maybe,” Claudia said.
It was an elf, only not one of the twins’ favorites. The female’s English name was Sparrow, the correct translation being Lifted Sparrow by Wind. The twins had called the character based on her “Jerked” but never had a reason to mention that in any of their videos, so she remained nameless to their fans. Sparrow was the Viceroy’s Husepavua, which literally meant “loaned voice,” so the twins had her carry around a megaphone, through which she shouted any order that Windwolf gave her. The few times the twins had raided EIA records, Sparrow seemed to act as an ambassador, meeting with Director Maynard and Pittsburgh city officials in Windwolf’s place. Normally if there was video of some Elfhome diplomatic event, the cameras would stay focused on Windwolf. Which wasn’t all that surprising—he was the Viceroy, looked like a teen idol and had a rabid fan following of girls from ages nine through ninety.
If only it had been Windwolf instead of Sparrow. However, with madmen blowing up buildings, Louise was glad the Viceroy was still safe on Elfhome.
Louise squeaked in realization that it was the worst possible time for the elves to venture to New York City. “Why on Earth is she here? Now?”
Claudia blinked in surprise. “You haven’t heard? There’s this really awesome exhibit of Elvish artifacts found all over the world. It’s coming to New York in a few days. The UN decided that since humans have broken part of the treaty by logging the quarantine zone, that the elves could reclaim any part of the exhibit that is culturally important to them.”