Ridley Pearson - Power Play

“This is yours,” the Cast Member said. “I hope you enjoyed your mission and will join us another time.”

Charlene accepted the photo, though unhappily. “Can’t you wait?” she asked Finn. “I don’t think we should split up just now.”

Sticking together was his rule. “Yeah, okay. I’ll text the others. We’ll meet at the ice cream place by the fountain. There are rest rooms near there.”

“Why meet? Why not just go home?” Charlene asked.

“The mission is over, so we’ve been given all the pieces,” Finn said. “We need to figure out what it means while it’s still fresh in our heads.”

“But those guys are out there buzzing around looking for us,” she said.

Finn already had his phone out and was sending a group text.

“Ice cream,” he said.

Maybeck was the last to reach the ice cream parlor. The other kids stood at the counter. The fireworks show continued, so they owned the place. Even so, they kept their voices low between greedy bites of mint chip, cookie dough, and royal fudge. If there was one thing the Keepers could agree on, it was eating vast amounts of ice cream.

Finn wasn’t sure the others noticed Jess sketching on a napkin as the discussion began with Maybeck’s heroic description of eluding the crash-test dummies.

“We need to figure out the Kim Possible mission,” Charlene said, still edgy.

Finn looked at her differently now. He’d been to the bathroom, and he’d dragged Philby with him. There he’d taken out the two photos and, for the first time, taken a good look at both.

“That’s Sally Ringwald,” Finn said, naming a girl who went to Winter Park. “And that’s-”

“Luowski,” said Philby, who knew about the bully.

“Talking to the Evil Queen.”

“I don’t recognize the second girl-maybe Maybeck or Charlene knows her. What’s the other photo?” Philby asked, for Finn had kept it tucked below the first.

“Who knows if we can trust these pictures?” Finn said.

“Are you going to show it to me or not?”

“I just think we have to keep open minds.”

“Come on! You know me.”

Finn peeled away the first photo revealing the second.

The photo was actually two images divided by a black line. Both black-and-white, they appeared to be freeze-frame photographs taken from a Security video. On the left, it showed Charlene entering a rest room-time and date stamped as the night before while they’d been in DisneyQuest; to the right, was the Evil Queen entering the same doorway.

“Twenty seconds later,” Philby said. “Charlene was still in there.”

“We don’t know that,” Finn said.

“Of course she was! Who can pee and wash her hands in less than twenty seconds? She obviously met with the Evil Queen, just like these other kids.” Philby looked back and forth between the various shots. “The question is not whether she saw the Queen; the question is why haven’t we been told about it?”

“We can’t jump to conclusions.”

“Who’s jumping?” Philby said. “Number one: she’s been acting weird. Do you deny that?”

“No,” Finn said, unhappily.

“Number two: she’s been asking a ton of questions, just like a spy would.”

“I know.”

“Number three. She volunteered to do the Kim Possible thing with you. Now, I’m not saying she doesn’t volunteer to do stuff with us, but when she does it’s always-I mean always -something physical. Something gymnastic or athletic. That’s her talent. It’s not to solve a mystery. That’s Willa’s turf.”

“Yeah,” Finn said.

“She was in the bathroom with the Evil Queen.”

“Yeah,” Finn agreed, reluctantly.

“Why?” Philby said.

“It was after that that she got weird.”

“Yes, it was,” Philby said. “You’re right. So another way to look at this is that the Queen met with her, not the other way around.”

“Meaning?”

“She cast a spell on Charlene.”

“To spy on us.”

“Maybe on the other four, too. Luowski and everyone.”

“Maybe.” Finn wasn’t easily convinced that Greg Luowski could be a victim.

“So Charlene starts asking all these questions and acting weird.”

“It makes sense,” Finn said.

“So we’ve got to break the spell,” Philby said. “Ten times out of ten, when it comes to breaking a spell put onto a girl, you break it by kissing her.”

“Not me!” Finn said. “If I kiss Charlene…I am not doing that!”

“Amanda.”

“Yes.”

“Yeah, well I don’t exactly want Willa to see me do it.”

“You and Willa?”

“This is news to you?” said Philby.

Finn shrugged.

“That just confirms what Willa says: that boys don’t get any of this stuff.”

“What stuff?”

“You see?” Philby said. His eyes shifted left and right.

“Maybeck!” they both said at once.

Back in the ice cream parlor, Finn saw Philby pull Maybeck aside and whisper to him. Maybeck’s face crunched like a crushed paper bag.

“First,” Finn said to the girls, in part to keep them from noticing Philby’s whispering, “was the waiter.”

Jess read from her notes: “‘We all need a waiter now and then. Some can get a waiter’s attention faster than others. This can have disappointing results.’”

“Then the garden gnome,” Finn said.

“The gnome turned around,” Jess said, “then turned around again to face us.”

At this point, Maybeck and Philby joined the group again. Maybeck flashed Finn a look impossible to interpret. Was he going to kiss Charlene or not? Finn couldn’t tell.

“Then the flag,” Amanda said.

“A red, triangular flag,” Jess added.

“And then the photograph,” Charlene said. “But what’s any of it mean?”

The girls all looked to Philby.

“As to the first,” Philby said. “There aren’t any waiters at the Norway bakery. It’s a cafeteria with outside seating.”

“We didn’t look inside,” Charlene admitted. “Maybe we should have.”

“Waiters deliver menus, food, and drinks,” Professor Philby said, breaking the clue into smaller pieces. Philby was more like a college student than a freshman in high school. “What else? They take stuff away after we’re through.”

“The bakery sells all sorts of stuff,” Maybeck said. “Meals, desserts, drinks.”

“Just deserts,” Willa said. A brainiac like Philby, Willa understood language the way he understood anything technical. “What if it’s a play on words? Wayne does that kind of thing. ‘Just deserts’ is with one s. It means ‘giving people what they deserve.’ Maybe the clue has something to do with giving the Overtakers what they deserve.”

“That’s way too random, even for Wayne,” said Maybeck.

Heads nodded in agreement.

“But a play on words isn’t,” Philby said, sticking up for Willa. “When I was washing my hands just now-you know those signs telling employees to wash their hands?-well, some wise guy had crossed out ‘Cast Members,’ and had written, ‘Servers.’ It’s not ‘waiter,’ but ‘server,’ ” Philby said. “We all need a server now and then. It’s server, not waiter. ‘We all need a server now and then. Some can get a server’s attention faster than others.’ It’s a computer server.”

“That works!” said Willa.

“Wayne knows I’ve messed with the DHI server before,” Philby said.

Amanda said, “So the full translation would be: we all need a DHI server now and then.”

“Yes,” said Philby.

“You guys and who else?” Amanda asked.

“The OTs,” Maybeck said. He looked cruelly at Charlene. Finn thought he was the only one to pick up on it.