Finally, it arrived. The last day of school. Emma was so excited she practically skipped down the stairs. She hummed as she made her way into the kitchen.
"Somebody's happy," her mother commented.
"Excited about starting your internship tomorrow?" her father asked.
Emma ceased her humming and plopped into her kitchen chair. "Yeah," she said, as if somebody had just popped a bal-loon she got at the zoo.
Actually, she was excited about the internship. The world of law interested her, but she realized she had never seen much of what actually happens in a courthouse. A few times last summer she'd had lunch with her dad at the courthouse, but he'd always met her in the lobby. She had never seen a real courtroom, and she wondered if they looked the same as they did on television.
"I'm excited about getting to see you in your robe," Emma told her father.
"I don't think you will," he said. "You'll probably be locked away in the library all day researching cases for me."
"And I thought I wouldn't be having fun this summer vacation."
"It will be a blast," her father assured her. "But don't stay out too late celebrating your last day of school, because you'll need to wake up early to catch the trolley with me."
Emma pictured herself squished between businessmen on a trolley packed even tighter than her school locker. And they'd all be reading those business newspapers-the ones that did-n't even have comics!
"Maybe I could learn how to sleep standing up," she said quietly.
"What's that?" said her father.
"Nothing," She finished her breakfast and then headed out to school.
It was nice that the mornings were warmer and Emma could walk to school without having to shield herself from the ice-cold wind that blew in from the bay.
But as she walked, a sudden chill came over her. It wasn't wind, but her instinct. Something bad was in the air.
Whatever it was had pretty lousy timing. The last day of school was supposed to be a breeze.
When Emma patrolled the city as the Muse, she knew when somebody was doing something wrong. Her instinct always led her right to the perpetrator and Emma would catch them in whatever bad deed they were in the middle of committing. But this new sensation was both close and distant at the same time.
She knew something bad was happening-but not when or where.
So she continued cautiously to school, on the alert for what-ever the situation might be. As she entered the schoolyard, she barely noticed Dawn waiting for her.
"I've had enough of this whole Brett and Gloria thing," said Dawn before Emma was even near her. "He doesn't call me in the evenings anymore. And if I do see him online, he takes for-ever to answer my messages. He's too busy talking to her."
"Who?" Emma caught only the end of her friend's rant.
"The super couple!" Dawn exclaimed. "They're gonna replace Chris and Norma as couple of the year."
"I guess." Emma wasn't concerned at that moment about the school popularity contest.
"Did you have a tough night Musing?" Dawn asked after a few moments of silence.
"I think I'm going to have a tough day Musing."
"Why's that?"
"Something's wrong," Emma said as she looked around the schoolyard. "Something is way wrong."
"Yeah, Brett is spending way too much time with this Gloria chick."
"Not that," Emma told her friend. "I wish it were that simple."
"Simple!" Dawn exclaimed. "How do you tell your best friend the girl he chose is wrong for him?"
Emma was surprised at Dawn's thinking. "I don't think she's that bad. I admit Brett appears a little wrapped up in her, but that's usually the way things begin. He'll come back to us soon enough."
"And we're just supposed to wait for him?"
"Well, yeah-that's what friends do."
"Humpf!" Dawn folded her arms and pouted.
"More importantly," Emma continued, "we need to brace ourselves from whatever's coming."
It didn't take long.
Only moments later, the girls heard screaming from the other end of the schoolyard. Running in the direction of the scream, they found Julia Dalton, a girl Emma knew from the gymnastics team. Her face was red and her eyes were moist with tears.
"It's horrible!" she cried, frantically pointing towards the gym.
Other students had also heard the screaming and were crowding around. Cautiously they approached the gym entrance.
Emma and Dawn were the first to enter. And there they found-Absolutely nothing.
The girls looked at each other and shrugged. They couldn't fig-ure out what might cause that reaction in such an easygoing girl.
"Julia?" Emma called out to her. "What did you see in here?"
"In-in-" Julia said, her voice cracking as she tried to hold back the tears. "In the l-locker room!"
Emma and Dawn slowly crept into the girls' locker room, with the other girls following just behind. They were so freaked out, they did not notice that a few boys had come in as well.
Slowly, Emma walked past the rows of lockers. The room seemed deserted, but it wasn't uncommon that some students would come here before homeroom to exercise-she figured that's what Julia was here to do. But since it was the last day of school, Julia was probably the only one.
Or was she?
A wall of mirrors stood at the far end of the locker room.
This always struck Emma as weird, but she figured the architect thought girls were always concerned about their appearance, and so made sure there were plenty of mirrors in there.
She wished the mirrors were the weirdest thing in there at that moment.
Something stood before the mirrors.
A statue.
"Where did that come from?" Emma asked out loud. Even if any of the other students wanted to take a guess, they were all too stunned to answer.
Something about the statue was familiar, and it took Emma a moment to put it all together.
"Missy?" Emma said softly-shivering-as she put her hand on the statue. It felt cold, and had a rough texture. There was no denying it was-Stone.
"It's…Missy Wilson." Dawn saw the resemblance the moment Emma said the name. Missy was on the track team and also one of the girls who often spent her mornings in the gym practicing. "Why would somebody carve a statue of Missy Wilson?"
"This is Missy Wilson," Emma said.
"What?"
"She's been turned to stone," said Emma.
"You're joking, right?" Though Dawn was a big science fic-tion novel and comic book fan, she could not process the possi-bility that one of her classmates had been turned into a stone statue.
"Somebody…petrified her?" one of the guys behind them exclaimed. "You're crazy!"
Emma was torn. She didn't want to send the students into hysterics, but she feared that whatever did this to Missy might still be in the building, or worse-the locker room.
"I have no idea," Emma said, trying to remain calm as she turned to her classmates. "This is some really weird stuff.
Maybe it's a last-day-of-school prank. I think somebody should get Principal Lewis."
"I'll do it," one very frightened girl said as she ran off, but the other students remained. They drew closer to their petrified classmate. Some dared to touch her.
"Dude, this is freaky!"
"Did somebody pour cement on her?"
"Look at her face!"
Up until now, Emma had not paid much attention to the details. But when she saw that stone face, she knew this was really Missy Wilson. The expression on the face was pure ter-ror: eyes wide, mouth open.
"Emma?" Dawn hoped her friend had the answers to the hundreds of questions popping up in her head.
"This is not good…" was all Emma could manage to say.
Moments later, Principal Lewis entered the locker room. He politely called for everyone to clear the way. But no matter what the girl who fetched him may have told him, nothing could prepare him for what he found.
"Oh dear…" It came out of his mouth in a tiny gasp. Dawn had worked in the office with him that school year, but she'd never seen such worry in his face.
It took him a moment to collect himself before turning to the students who now filled the locker room to capacity. "I-I think you all need to get to your homerooms. We'll inform the authorities and get everything straightened out."
Nobody moved.
"I mean now!" he bellowed.
The room emptied.
Since they were the first in, Dawn and Emma had to wait for the room to clear out before they could leave.
When the other students had all left the room, he asked them, "Did you girls see anything?"
"No," said Emma. "We came when we heard Julia Dalton screaming."
"I think it's best you girls not discuss this with anyone. I can't have a panic on my hands."
Emma agreed, but she knew that by the time first period bell rang, the entire school would know what happened.
Outside the gym, they found Brett and Gloria waiting.
"What's going on?" Brett asked them.
"Something very bad," said Emma.
"I heard something about a statue of Missy Wilson in the girl's locker room," said Brett. "What's that all about?"
"Not a statue," said Dawn. "Somebody turned her to stone."
"To stone?!" both Brett and Gloria exclaimed at the same time.
"That's ridiculous!" Gloria chuckled.
"Yeah," Brett agreed.
"We saw it ourselves," Dawn assured them.
"Now wait," Emma cautioned. "We shouldn't be jumping to any conclusions. It's probably some kind of prank."
"You didn't sound like you believed that when you were checking out Missy's petrified face!" said Dawn.
"Whatever it is," Emma said, "we need to let the authorities handle it."
"But this sounds like a job for you know who," Brett said.
"Who?" Gloria asked.
"The…FBI," Emma said finally. "That whole…unexplained phenomenon…division." She glanced at her wrist, which was bare, since she'd forgotten to wear her watch this morning.
"Look at the time, we're going to be late for homeroom!"
Emma led the crew through the building. Brett and Gloria stopped before splitting off into separate homerooms. Emma and Dawn stopped and turned to see them kiss.
"See you after homeroom," Brett told her.
"Can they bear to be apart for a whole fifteen minutes?"
said Dawn.
Emma had more important things on her mind.
Brett caught up with them and said, "So what's up with all the secrecy?"
"That's the whole point of a secret identity," Emma informed him. "We can't run around telling every girl who transfers to our school that I'm a superhero."
"You can trust her," said Brett.
"Trust is something you earn," said Emma. "I trust your instincts, Brett, I really do. But until I know all about this Gloria girl, she has to be kept in the dark."
Brett said no more, but his friends could tell he wasn't happy about it.
