The Light Brigade - Chapter 6
His nerves were so shot he didn’t notice robotic crow gutter cleaners perched on the roof. Lily met him in the kitchen with a cookie, hot chocolate, and a hug; he gratefully accepted all three.
This is an installment of my new serialized middle grade novel - The Light Brigade. When new kid in town Will finds himself in the midst of a sea of brainwashed middle schoolers, he has to join the Light Brigade, an unlikely group of heroes, to save them. Can he trust the Man Upstairs who guides them with fortune cookie directions? Will he find his place in the Brigade? Will he be able to stop the shadowy New Moon Group from forcing his classmates to collect acorns for a cartoon squirrel until they all collapse? Subscribed? Get caught up here.
The rest of the day passed in a blur of anxiety and impatience as Will waited for the final bell to ring, which once again freed his classmates from their squirrel slavery. By the time he arrived at the Queen Anne that afternoon, his nerves were so completely shot he didn’t even notice robotic crow gutter cleaners perched on the roof. Lily met him in the kitchen with another cookie (snickerdoodle this time), a cup of hot chocolate, and a hug; he gratefully accepted all three. He was, once again, the last to arrive but had a very good reason this time. He sipped his cocoa, calming down, as he listened in as the rest of the Light Brigade told Mr. Turner about their day.
Tamara said, “Well, I’m glad that nothing too much happened to you three today. Will and I had enough excitement for all of us. Will’s friend Sydney collapsed in my Spanish class. She was just playing the game like everyone else, and the next thing we knew she was on the floor.”
“Your Spanish class?” said Austin, “What was Will doing there?”
Will said, “I went to the library to find a new book.”
“Dude, don’t you know that we’re supposed to work in stealth?”
Will shot him a defiant look, “I do now. Sorry, I’ve never been in a secret society before.” Austin just rolled his eyes. Will wondered if he ever got dizzy doing that so often.
“Anyway,” continued Tamara, “nobody else in class reacted, as you might guess. Will and I decided to carry her down to the nurse’s station. I had thought the nurse would be unresponsive, but, fortunately, she seemed fine. She ended up calling an ambulance to take Sydney to the clinic. Fortunately, she didn’t ask too many questions. She seemed strangely unconcerned about why we had carried her down to the office when a teacher really should have called for help.”
Gabriella nodded. “She’s probably in on it. I mean, the New Moon Group has to have someone on the inside. The nurse is the obvious choice because she’ll know what to look for if things start going wrong.”
Austin snorted into his cocoa. “You always think that everyone is ‘in on it.’ I think Mr. Turner has some tin foil around here if you need to make a hat.”
“You might laugh but someone has to be in on it. How else did that parasite end up in the food yesterday?”
“She’s right,” said Mr. Turner, “there must be someone pulling the strings. It’s best to stay vigilant.”
Tamara went on, “I don’t know what happened to her after that. Will said that he would follow up after school. We thought it would look the least suspicious since he goes to church with her family. I did keep a close eye on all the other kids for the rest of the day. No one else collapsed, but I did notice that some of others were looking really tired.”
Lily nodded, “I noticed that today, too. A bunch of them looked pale and their hands kept on shaking. One boy even laid his head down on his desk for a while. I tried to talk to him, but he seemed to be asleep.”
Will chimed in, “I stopped by the clinic on my way over here, that’s why I was so late. Sydney was still there. I was worried they would have taken her to the big hospital over in the city but her mom said they were just keeping her overnight for observation. The doctors have no idea what was wrong with her, but they suspected exhaustion. She was sleeping when I was there, but it sounded like she had been acting mostly normal before I got there.”
Mr. Turner had once again fished his notebook out of his shirt pocket. “Hmm, so once she left the school, the main effects wore off pretty quickly. That’s encouraging – it must be something at the school that is triggering the strange behavior.”
“Oh, I completely forgot!” said Will, pulling his iPod out of his pocket. “It occurred to me that there was something else different yesterday. There was music playing in the hallways. I know I’m new here in town and all, but I don’t think that had ever been there before. I took a recording of it. Sydney collapsed right after, so it slipped my mind until now.”
He turned on the recording and music filled the kitchen. Nothing happened to them, but they listened anyway to see if they could notice anything. It just seemed like the same music as always.
“I’ll see if I can find anything hiding in there,” said Mr. Turner, taking the iPod from Will. “Why don’t you kids go relax for a bit. I’ll send around a plane to let you know when I’m ready.” He headed out the door to the entryway, and Will could hear him climbing the stairs.
As usual, Will had no idea what he was talking about, but everyone else seemed to. Lily headed out the back door, followed by Austin with his skateboard. Gabriella and Tamara went through the door opposite the one Mr. Turner had used.
Unsure what to do, he peeked out the back window to find that the back yard was home to a half pipe, where Austin was already dropping in to practice some tricks. There was a also a ropes course through the treetops and a trampoline built into the ground, on which Lily was now expertly executing amazing flips. Will decided against exploring outside and instead followed the other girls into what turned out to be a large living room.
The room was crammed full of squashy arm chairs, sofas, and bean bags. One corner had a large Bible open beside a lit candle. The shelves surrounding the corner abounded with crosses, statues, and icons. A small ray swam in the ceiling wide fish tank over floor to ceiling bookshelves that lined most of the walls.
The girls were gathered around a lotus-shaped contraption that was shooting out bubbles that bobbed through the room. As they floated around, they shone with changing colors and played music. As Will came up to them, a song was just ending and each bubble changed to show the name of a new song. Gabriella reached out and popped one of the bubbles and the remaining ones became speakers that started playing that song throughout the room. Will couldn’t help but stare, entranced by the floating spheres of light and sound.
Gabriella curled up in a squashy armchair with her legs dangling over the arm, while Tamara perched herself cross-legged on the sofa nearby. Will tentatively came over and took a seat on the other end of the sofa. The other two seemed momentarily lost in thought, but Will just felt awkward in the silence.
Finally Tamara shook off her reverie, saying, “Why do you think the New Moon Group is doing this? I mean, what do they get out of people playing that stupid game?”
“I’ve been wondering that myself,” said Gabriella, “Maybe when we figure out how they are doing it we’ll have some clue about why.”
Will cleared his throat. “It sounds like the New Moon Group causes a lot of trouble in town. Is that right?”
“Definitely,” said Tamara, “they are usually the ones who are trying to cause problems. They only came to town last year when they bought the paper mill. You weren’t around then, were you?”
“No, we just moved here about a month and a half ago.”
“Yeah, so you haven’t been around for too much, then. It was around that time that the Man Upstairs formed the Light Brigade. It’s been really intense this past year with all the crises we’ve had to deal with. And having to keep it all on the down low. My parents keep thinking I’m getting into some kind of trouble.”
“Same,” chimed in Gabriella, “The number of ‘Talks’ my parents have had with me….” She chuckled to herself.
“Why do you do it, then?” asked Will.
“To save the town, duh,” said Gabriella with a wry smile. “The Man Upstairs used that line on all of us. But seriously, the New Moon Group has tried to do some pretty awful things to our friends and family, and I for one am happy that I’m able to help protect them.”
Will considered this. He had been in Milltown such a short time that he didn’t feel like there was much that he needed to protect. His family would probably be better protected if he didn’t try to fight the New Moon Group. Then, the image of Sydney lying pale on the floor flashed through his mind. I might be new here, but there are still people I need to keep safe, he thought.
Just then a paper airplane whizzed through the open window. Will expected it to glide to the floor but instead it flew circles around the room trailing a paper banner that read, “Meeting in the kitchen.” After a couple of laps it changed course and headed for the door which opened wide for it to fly through.
“The plane that Mr. Turner was talking about?” asked Will, wondering if there could possibly be an end to the mysteries in this place.
“Yeah,” said Tamara as they walked back to the kitchen, “Mr. Turner’s inventions are super, aren’t they? You should just be glad that you weren’t here when he tried pigeons rather than paper airplanes – there were feathers everywhere!”
Once they were all settled, Mr. Turner said, “I’ve got some good news and some bad news. The good news is that Will was right – there is definitely something hidden in the music. Great work, my boy! The bad news is that I don’t know what it is yet. Someone has done a tricky bit of encoding that is going to take me a while to untangle. Never fear, I think that I will be able to figure it out by tomorrow morning. Feel free to head home or stick around a while if you like – mi casa es su casa. Either way, we’ll meet before school again tomorrow.”
The others were going to hang there for a while – with no homework waiting for them since all their teachers had been affected, they were going to watch a movie. Will, though, had to go home to take care of his dog since his parents were working late. As he walked home, he hoped that Mr. Turner would figure out what was in that recording quickly. The sooner that he figures this out, the sooner we will all be able to get back to normal, he thought, if there is any normal left.