Take Me To Your Reader: An Otherworld Anthology by Amy A. Bartol, Tiffany King, Raine Thomas, Tammy Blackwell, Sarah M. Ross, Heather Hildenbrand, Amanda Havard, C.A. Kunz Page B

desk.
    I took a seat, and he sat next to me. "Jedi," he whispered. He reached out a fist as if to fist bump me.
    " What about the salt worries?"
    He left his fist hanging there. "I sense no excess perspiration," he said. And in his most human-sounding voice, he whispered, "Clarice's strict. The rest of us are more . . . chill."
    Chill. If they were supposed to be studying colloquialisms, he was doing a damn good job. I smiled, and fist-bumped. 
     
    It was nicer having a friend than I expected. I mean, I didn 't know if Travis was really my friend, and I still felt a little weird being in with them — never mind how weird it felt that there was in fact a them -- but it was nice. Between classes, at lunch, after school, and even at the DQ, Travis was there. I asked a million questions. He answered some of them. I kept thinking it would get annoying, but it didn't. Which means I didn't know how lonely I had been until then.
    Dana had more or less disappeared. She only showed up for Blizzards every few days, and she never spoke to Travis. She looked over her shoulder at him with a particular breed of bitchy disdain, and then she looked at me with about half as much. One night, when she came in, she managed to have an entire conversation with me while Travis hovered, and she never so much as looked his direction. When she walked out, he looked at me and said, "Does she like you or hate you?"
    " Hate," I said. "Or something."
    " I thought they were often one in the same," he said.
    I raised an eyebrow at him. "Do you . . . like girls, Travis? Normal girls? Human girls?"
    " Girls are girls, Fenton friend. I do not make a habit of analyzing DNA before checking one out."
    Touché.
    "Any particular type of girl?" I said.
    He looked out to Dana as she stuffed herself into her tiny Civic. "Ones that might have an interest in talking to me," he said.
    " No one talks to you," I countered.
    " That doesn't mean I don't wish they could, you know?" he said. I did know. "Good thing I have you."
    I nodded. "Good thing."
     
    Even though things were starting to get interesting in my world, things were getting the wrong kind of interesting with the overarching Fructoid agenda. The next week, six teachers quit at school, and within a day or two, they were replaced by Fructoids. My Aunt Bonnie was a teacher at the elementary school, and I remember how long it took them to hire her into the system, go through the district paperwork, and all that. So six Fructoid teachers in a week told me their influence — mind-meld — was growing rapidly. It also seemed like their troops were mobilizing. But for what?
    All of a sudden, kids started getting in trouble and were assigned to morning detentions. We 'd never really had morning detention before, so that was particularly odd. Then I started noticing: kids who got in trouble started getting quiet. And after a morning in detention, they'd be silent, just like the Fructoids.
    So they were starting with kids. Whatever the mission, they were going to infiltrate from the ground up. I thought of Travis, of his ability to fit in and sound so much more normal than Clarice. They were starting with their kids. They were starting with ours.
    One Wednesday, three weeks after, (after what?) Travis and I were in the lunchroom eating questionable tacos and Butterfingers when I first heard the rumor. People said Mr. Fence had gone missing. A day later, it was humanities-hun Ms. Matter, and biology-biatch, Mrs. Kell. In a week, each of the six teachers who were replaced by the Fructoids went missing.
    " Travis, what's going on?" I demanded.
    He shrugged his shoulders, almost naturally. "They do not tell everyone down the food chain all the plans," he said.
    " Why do they want to mess with the teachers? They already got them out of the schools and replaced them with—" I paused, "y'all. So why mess with the teachers who already left?"
    Travis seemed to legitimately think this over. "Why do you assume the new teachers