Joss the Seven Read online

  Joss the Seven

  by J. Philip Horne

  Novels by Mr. Horne:

  The Lodestone (2011)

  Joss the Seven (2016)

  For news of upcoming works, please join Mr. Horne’s email list at

  http://www.jphiliphorne.com

  For Tricia

  I have so many dreams

  but live the best one

  Copyright © 2016 by J. Philip Horne

  All rights reserved. Except as permitted under current U.S. law, no part of this book may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in database or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the author.

  This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental and not intended by the author.

  http://www.jphiliphorne.com

  Contents

  Chapter 1 - One Last Day

  Chapter 2 - The Butterfly Seal

  Chapter 3 - Ghost Finger

  Chapter 4 - Meeting Mara

  Chapter 5 - The Dojo

  Chapter 6 - Seventy-Seven

  Chapter 7 - The Plan

  Chapter 8 - Battlehoop

  Chapter 9 - Bobby Ferris Must Pay

  Chapter 10 - Robin Hood

  Chapter 11 - Polypotel Industries

  Chapter 12 - Guardian Angel

  Chapter 13 - The 'Guild'

  Chapter 14 - Mission to Mars (Street)

  Chapter 15 - The Sixth Floor

  Chapter 16 - Masks

  Chapter 17 - Isabella

  Chapter 18 - Behind the Curtain

  Chapter 19 - The Morgans

  Chapter 20 - Back to the Beginning

  Chapter 21 - Three Bad Guys and a Bear

  Chapter 22 - Gary the Goon

  Chapter 23 - 300MINUTE

  Chapter 24 - Lit Up

  Chapter 25 - The Best Laid Plans

  Chapter 26 - The Eagles Are Coming

  Chapter 27 - Icarus

  Chapter 28 - Local News

  Chapter 29 - The End of the Beginning

  Two-Chapter Preview of The Lodestone

  About the Author

  Chapter 1

  ONE LAST DAY

  “WE’RE GONNA GO out with a bang,” I said. “Come on.”

  I yanked Thomas toward the bathroom door. At least, I tried to. He’d grown a ton during eighth grade. It felt like pulling on a tree.

  “Geez, Joss,” Thomas said, “do we have to go in there?”

  I pushed open the door and held it for him. “Come on.”

  The smell of chemical cleaners, mildew, and urinals used by boys who had trouble aiming washed over me. Everyone knew you avoided the bathroom closest to the cafeteria. In my book, that made it the perfect place to plot.

  Thomas rolled his eyes, but stepped past me. I slapped him on the back and took a last glance down the hall. A flash of motion caught my eye, and I jerked my head back around. The hall was empty. I frowned and let the door close behind me.

  “Did you see a cat or something out there?”

  “What are you talking about?” Thomas folded his arms across his chest. “What’d you want?”

  “Right.” I shook my head. I was sure I’d seen something small and furry dart around the corner at the end of the hall. “Look, we said eighth grade wasn’t going to be a repeat of seventh, right?”

  “Yeah. We’ve done pretty good.”

  “Here’s the deal,” I said. “We’re about to be on the bottom again. Freshmen. Losers. But we’ve been making a name for ourselves. If we go out big, they’re gonna remember us.”

  “And?” Thomas hiked up his shorts as he spoke. His mom kept trying to get ahead of his growth by buying him clothes that were way too big.

  “Mr. Sanders had us make homemade ice cream in first period, right? Who knew ice cream was science? What was the word?”

  “Colloid,” Thomas said.

  “A colloid. So there’s a bunch of ice cream in the freezer between the science classrooms. It’s still going to be a colloid when we’re done, it’s just going to include hand soap.”

  Thomas eyes got large, and then his face split in a grin. “That’s brilliant. Evil, but brilliant.”

  I stepped to the sink, swiped the small, clear bottle of liquid soap off the counter, and tucked it into my back pocket. “Let’s do this.”

  Mr. Michaels’ science room was empty except for the oppressive odor of formaldehyde. I grabbed one of the stirring spoons drying in the sink and followed Thomas into the utility room. The faint sounds of Mr. Sanders lecturing his class penetrated the door opposite us.

  The big freezer stood against the wall just to our left. Thomas eased it open and we were greeted by a wave of cold air. Nine silver cylinders sat on the three shelves. I handed the wooden spoon to Thomas and pulled the soap out of my pocket.

  “All of them?” Thomas mouthed at me.

  I nodded. “Ours, too. Avoid suspicion.”

  One by one, we lifted the canisters out and stirred in several pumps of soap. The ice cream was getting thick, so we took turns stirring and were done in a few minutes. Once the containers were back in the freezer, Thomas started giggling. It felt contagious, but there was no time to laugh. We had to get back to the hall before the bell rang.

  “Let’s move,” I whispered, and went to the door. I cracked it open. The room was still empty. I gave the spoon a quick rinse in the sink and put it with the others before we walked out like we owned the place. A moment later, the bell rang and students flooded the hall.

  “We’ve got to get back there right after school,” Thomas said. “I want to see their reactions when they eat it.”

  I held out my fist, and he bumped it.

  That feeling of victory lasted until twenty-nine minutes into seventh period. That was when Ms. Arnett’s phone intercom buzzed. She picked up the handset.

  “Yes? Well, I see... Yes, of course…. I’ll send him right over.”

  She hung up, and as she did, her gaze swung up from her desk and fell on me. Ms. Arnett was pretty cute for a teacher, but right then I felt like Frodo trying to hide from Sauron’s gaze, except my desk offered no shelter from the glare.

  “Joss,” Ms. Arnett said, “I believe you’re wanted in the office. Please report to Mr. Nichols immediately.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” I said.

  “Take your bag with you. I doubt you’ll have time to come back before seventh period ends.”

  I shambled out of the room and headed toward the office. How had they known? The ice cream wasn’t going to be eaten until after school. No one should have even opened the freezer for another half a period. I paused at the door to the office and took a look around. A flicker of motion tickled the corner of my eye, but when I looked down the hall, there was nothing.

  What the heck? Was I going crazy? Why did I keep seeing mystery animals? I took a deep breath and opened the door.

  Mrs. Diebold perched at her spotless desk behind the chest-high counter. She gave me a hard look, her pudgy face looking like it was carved from stone. Very pudgy stone, with wispy, graying hair creating a halo around it. Her smelly perfume dominated the room. Without saying a word, she pointed toward Mr. Nichols’ office on the far side of the room.

  I went in.

  “Ah, Joss,” Mr. Nichols said. “Please, have a seat.”

  Mr. Nichols sat behind his big, wooden desk. As always, the desk held his laptop and about twelve stacks of papers and notebooks. He was a long man in every way. Long body. Long face. Long nose. His thin, dark hair seemed lost on the top of his long forehead.

  I sat down in one of the two chairs facing his desk. It needed a cushion. Mr. Nichols leaned forward with his elbows on the desk and his hands ste
epled, his chin resting on his thumbs. He sat there for a moment, his eyes flickering over me. My stomach clenched.

  He sat back in his chair.

  “Heard an interesting story this afternoon from Mr. Talbot,” he said. “You probably had Mr. Talbot for math last year. You remember him, I’m sure.”

  “Sure,” I said. His eyebrows lifted. “Uh, yes, sir.”

  “It seems,” Mr. Nichols said, his eyebrows coming back down, “that Mr. Talbot learned of a certain science experiment being performed today. A study of colloids, I believe. Why, I believe you were in the class that made the colloids, yes?”

  “Colloids. Yes, sir. We made colloids in first period science.” My stomach climbed up my throat. My parents were not going to be happy with me.

  “And these, ah, colloids were placed in the freezer. They were pure examples of colloids. Untampered with. And it seems, when Mr. Talbot learned of these colloids, he took it upon himself to, uh, study them. And what better way to study such colloids than to sample them?”

  Oh. Not good.

  “Suffice to say,” Mr. Nichols continued, “that I have confirmed with Mr. Sanders that the middle of his sixth period class was disrupted when Mr. Talbot burst into the room from the utility room. You know, the room that has the freezer containing the colloids? Mr. Talbot burst in and proceeded to rinse his mouth out at the classroom sink. He rinsed it vigorously. And strangely, the ‘colloids’ he had sampled bubbled up in the sink. Soapy bubbles.”

  My shoulders sagged. It was a double whammy. I was about to be busted, and I had not gotten to witness the legendary awesomeness of my prank. I wanted something for my efforts.

  “So are you saying,” I said, “that bubbles came out of his mouth?”

  “Of course not. But there were some bubbles in the sink when he rinsed out the ice… the colloids he spit in the sink.”

  “Oh.” Disappointment after disappointment. There had been no bubbles. I had been sure there would be bubbles.

  “Mr. Talbot was quite confident that it would be beneficial to talk to you,” Mr. Nichols said. “So here you are. Please, enlighten me.”

  A sudden realization smacked me on the side of the head. They didn’t know. There had been no witnesses. Mr. Talbot was gunning for me, but he had no proof. My stomach stopped clenching, and started floating. I had to play this right.

  “Well,” I said, “I’m not sure what to say. Why do you think it was soap?”

  I made sure I didn’t glance at my backpack. The backpack that held a bottle of hand soap.

  “I had a skilled scientist on hand to make that difficult call,” Mr. Nichols said. “You’ll recall Mr. Sanders previously taught chemistry at the high school level. No? Well, he did. Mr. Sanders confirmed that the bubbles looked distinctly soapy, corroborating Mr. Talbot’s judgment that he tasted soap.”

  Holy cow. Mr. Nichols was being sarcastic. I was in uncharted territory.

  “Mr. Nichols, it sounds like someone picked my name at random, and messed up my last day of school. Today is really important to me, and I hate to take time away from my teachers.”

  It was a beautiful statement. One of my best. It was wasted.

  The door to Mr. Nichols’ office banged open. I whipped my head around. Mrs. Diebold filled the doorway, her hand to her mouth. Her perfume surged into the room and tried to gag me.

  “Mr. Nichols!” she said. “We have reports of a large dog roaming the halls!”

  Now that was interesting. Maybe I hadn’t been seeing things. I turned back to Mr. Nichols. His frown pulled his eyebrows together into a single, fuzzy line. I glanced back and forth, trying to watch both of them.

  “A large dog?” he asked, his voice pitched higher than normal.

  Mrs. Diebold nodded, her chins bouncing. “Or a wolf. But that’s ludicrous.”

  Mr. Nichols’ chair banged into the wall behind him as he surged to his feet. “A wolf?”

  “Two of the teachers who called me said wolf. One said dog,” she said. “All three teachers are in classrooms off Hallway C, back half.”

  “Two of the teachers said it was a wolf?” he asked. “Remarkable. Do you know anything about this?”

  I thought the last question was directed at me, but Mr. Nichols was staring forward over my head, his eyes intense. Well, I had nothing to do with a wolf. I kept my mouth shut. Maybe, just maybe, I could get out of here.

  Mr. Nichols jerked his head in a quick nod. “Mrs. Diebold, please buzz Officer Trent’s office. Tell him to meet me in Hallway C straight away.”

  “Dogs at school,” she said, throwing up her hands as she stepped out of sight toward her desk.

  Mr. Nichols lowered his gaze to me. “We are not through. I’ve got you for another ten minutes at least. I’ll be back shortly after I see to this foolishness.”

  With that, he strode out of the room.

  What a disaster. Not only was I busted, but I’d probably be stuck in his office way after school let out for the summer.

  Wait a second. I played back what I’d just heard. Sure, he’d said he had me for a few more minutes, but he’d never said I had to stay in his office. Maybe he’d just meant I shouldn’t leave the school until the final period ended. Good enough for me.

  I rose, grabbed my backpack, and headed out. I gave Mrs. Diebold a big smile and ignored her glare as I left the office. She was too busy fumbling with her phone to stop me. Out in the hall, I saw Mr. Nichols disappear around the corner of the cross-hall that led to Hallway C. I let out a long whistle. A giant dog-wolf roamed the halls. I really hadn’t thought the animals I’d seen had been that big.

  The large digital clock at the near-end of the hall revealed there were only eight minutes left of junior high. I headed for my locker, going the way Mr. Nichols had just gone. Then it clicked. My locker was off Hallway C, near the back of the building.

  I stopped to think. Should I follow Mr. Nichols? What would he do if he saw me at my locker? And what would I do if there was a wolf guarding it? It had to be nonsense, but the teachers had seen something. Heck, I’d seen something moving in the halls. I was sure of it. I glanced back at the clock. How had I been standing there for three minutes? I started down the hall in the direction of my locker.

  At that moment, the school security alarm started shrieking.

  Chapter 2

  THE BUTTERFLY SEAL

  I TOOK OFF at a dead run toward my locker. In moments the classes would line up and let out into the hall. If a teacher spotted me, I’d be pulled into a line of kids and marched outside. I wasn’t going to sit around in the parking lot and then be made to go back into the school to clean out my locker. Or worse, end up back in Mr. Nichols’ office.

  I ran full speed through the halls, the seconds tripping by silently in my head as I counted. I figured I had about twenty seconds. I got to my locker in eighteen. A few seconds later, students poured out of the classrooms behind me. I was hidden from view by a bend in the hallway as long as I stayed mashed up against the wall by my locker. A quick glance showed everyone had turned toward the exits at the front of the school.

  The hallway bent back about twenty lockers further on. If Mr. Nichols was here, he was somewhere past that second bend. There were no classrooms on that side, just a couple utility closets and an emergency exit. I took a few deep breaths to steady myself, and unlocked my locker. I reached in to grab my notebooks along with my stash of gum. My hand froze.

  A white envelope with a thick, red wax seal sat on top of my notebooks. At least, I thought it was a wax seal. It wasn’t like I received mail sealed with wax very often. I picked up the envelope and checked it against the small vents on the locker door. Yep, it would fit through. So someone had probably put it into my locker without picking the lock.

  The security alarm continued its crazy-loud beeping, but the noise of students dropped off as they marched away. Between the beeps, I realized I was hearing voices coming from the other end of the hall toward the emergency exit. That had to be Mr
. Nichols with Officer Trent. I grabbed the notebooks and pushed them with the envelope into my backpack. As I turned to head back down the hallway, I heard what they were saying.

  “We’re agreed, then, what…”

  That was Mr. Nichols for sure, though I lost a couple words to the alarm’s beeping.

  “Uh, yeah, I guess so.”

  That was Officer Trent. He had one of the deepest voices I’d ever heard.

  “A dog stood and pulled down the security bar, then pushed through the door?” Mr. Nichols asked.

  “Yeah, but I still say it was a wolf,” Officer Trent said.

  “A dog stood and pulled down the security bar,” Mr. Nichols said. “Look, we’re going to sound odd as it is. Can we drop the wolf bit?”

  “Yeah, alright. But just so you know, it was a wolf.”

  Wait a second. The voices were getting louder. They were coming this way. I took off running, cutting over a couple hallways, and headed toward the entrance to the school. I burst through the front doors into controlled chaos.

  The summer heat slammed into me as I took a quick glance around. Kids clustered together by class in the parking lot. Sirens wailed as fire trucks and police cars came to a stop in front of the school. Uniformed men spilled out and headed toward the school entrances. I kept my head low and hurried down the front steps to the parking lot. After a quick glance around, I headed for the closest group of kids.

  Once in with the students, I found my way to Ms. Arnett’s class and sat down on the pavement to think. Could Mr. Nichols still bust me once school was out? I thought I was in the clear, so long as he didn’t see me. And what was going on with the wolf-dog and the security alarm?

  More importantly, what was that letter I’d found in my locker? The letter with a red wax seal. Who uses wax to seal a letter? Did it have anything to do with the dog-wolf setting off the alarm?

  I thought about the questions until the cops determined there was no threat to the school and released us for the summer. I saw Thomas and Deion heading back into the school to empty their lockers among the masses of students, but Mr. Nichols was standing near them, so I didn’t dare go talk to them. It was okay. My friends all lived near my neighborhood. We’d meet up soon enough. For now, that letter consumed me. I headed out.