December

By the time I found myself at the end of term, I had decided that this whole going-as-friends-to-prom thing maybe wasn't such a bad idea after all. Odd was right. I didn't want him to date me if he was still hung up on Sam. That didn't mean that I didn't want to hunt her down and sock her in the face like I'd punched Odd (his black eyes went away, finally, and only after the entire school made guesses as to who he had gotten into a fight with) or that I hadn't hunted for hours for a killer dress to wear—one that hopefully would make Odd just a little bit weak in the knees.

There were two days left until the dance, and the entire school was abuzz with excitement. Yumi and Ulrich had decided to go together, also as friends, but we all knew that it wasn't really just "as friends". I forgave them; they were shy, and I knew how hard it was to walk up to the person that you liked and pour out your heart to them (see aforementioned Odd Fiasco). It was especially intimidating when your beloved was a tall Japanese ninja who was a grade ahead of you, but I digress.

Aelita and Jeremie hadn't even discussed the dance even though Jeremie had promised Odd and Ulrich that he'd ask Aelita to go with him. So far, nothing. Odd and I had secretly decided that if there was no progress by lunch time, we were going to lock them in a janitor's closet and refuse to let them out until they agreed to go together. ZXCVBNM

"Asked your girlfriend to the Prom yet, Belpois?" Mr. Nichols asked as we sauntered into Psychology after lunch. There was a blizzard going on outside, so instead of heading out to the soccer fields to sit and talk we Lyokians had all sat down outside Mr. Nichols' door, where the conversation ranged over a variety of topics from Prom to X.A.N.A to William Dunbar, the new guy who had transferred in a few days ago.

Jeremie turned thirteen shades of red and bent down to tie his shoe, so that when he straightened up he had an excuse for a red face. I rolled my eyes at him. Jeremie had a number of evasive maneuvers, but I knew them all. He wasn't getting away this time.

I looked at Odd, who gave just the tiniest nod of assent, before I looked back at Mr. Nichols with a wicked grin on my face.

"Actually, no, he hasn't," I said, neatly dodging Jeremie's elbow as he tried to hit me in the ribs (that was another evasive maneuver). "He promised us he'd ask Aelita like a month ago, and he hasn't done anything about it. I think it's time for a little blackmail."

"I can't blackmail students! I'm a teacher!" Mr. Nichols threw his hands up in the air and gave me a what-are-you-thinking eyeroll. "But," he said, this time holding up a finger and waggling it in Jeremie's face, "I have it on good authority that Miss Stones would like a date to the prom, and as you happen to be in the market, I'd suggest asking her, Belpois." He raised his eyebrows at Jeremie, then turned on his heel and headed for his desk, where he propped his feet up and turned on the sports channel. "Oh," he added, once he got situated, "We have a test on Friday. Better start crack-a-lackin!"

We all groaned and dutifully flipped open our textbooks so that we could "study". Odd, by this point, didn't even pretend to study, but whipped out a pad of paper and some fancy-pants art pencils and started drawing.

A few seconds later, Jeremie's laptop started beeping from his backpack. I knew the sound that a X.A.N.A. attack made when Lyoko alerted Jeremie, but this one was different. Odd looked at me, eyebrows raised, with an expression on his face that let me know that he had no idea what it meant, either. Jeremie, on the other hand, must have known exactly what it meant, because he turned about the same shade of white as a piece of computer paper.

"Belpois! What have I told you about having that infernal machine in my classroom?" Mr. Nichols barked, jumping to his feet and zooming across the room like he was on roller skates. Jeremie was quicker on the uptake and had already silenced his computer and shut it down, but he was stuffing it into his backpack with such speed that I knew something was really wrong.

"I'm sorry, sir," Jeremie said. "My grandmother is sick, and I told my parents to Skype if she got worse. I think they were trying to call me. Can I go see what it was about?" He asked. He even managed to bust out the lip quiver and a few crocodile tears.

"I'll walk him to the pay phone," Odd volunteered, bouncing up out of his seat, drawing forgotten for the moment.

"I'll go too," I volunteered, and glared at Mr. Nichols, daring him to tell me I couldn't go.

Mr. Nichols stared at the three of us like he couldn't decide whether we were being honest or not. We were all pretty honest kids and had excellent track records, which I thought had to count for something, considering we weren't the kind of people to skip class to spray-paint graffiti on the soccer fields (well, Odd might have been, but Jeremie and I weren't). I hoped the fact that Odd was with us wouldn't make us guilty by association; I liked the boy fine, but sometimes I wished he hadn't decided that it was a good idea to spray-paint Jim's face on the wall of the school. He was forever a suspect in any graffiti that showed up, even though he hadn't touched a can of spray-paint since he was in the seventh grade.

"Well, fine," Mr. Nichols conceded a minute later. "But no monkey business! And no spray-paint! If Jim's face shows up on the side of the building again I'll know who to suspect!" He called after us as we retreated down the hall, still "supporting" a "distraught" Jeremie.

"What's going on?" I asked as we rounded the corner. "That didn't sound like a normal X.A.N.A. alert."

"Well, that's because it wasn't," Jeremie said. "Go grab the others. I think we need to have a meeting right now. I'll meet you in my dorm in ten minutes."

ZXCVBNM

Aelita and Yumi turned up quickly after Odd and I texted them, but there was still no sign of Ulrich. A quick check of Odd's dorm revealed no Ulrich, but it did reveal that he (Ulrich, I mean) had left his phone plugged in to the wall when he went to class that morning. "Plan B," Odd muttered, sliding his finger down the schedule that the boys kept tacked to the door. "Fifth period. He's with Jim right now."

"Oh goody," I said. "We'll never get him out of there."

"That's not true," Yumi said. "I know just what to do. I'll be back in five minutes." She took off running down the hall, slid down the banister of the stairs, and sprinted out the door.

"Do you think she knows what to do?" Odd asked me, watching as Yumi disappeared into the trees behind the soccer fields.

"She knows what to do. The girl knocked Nurse Dorothy out with a bedpan to get me out of the infirmary. If anyone can bust Ulrich out of gym, it's Yumi."

True to her word, Yumi and Ulrich reappeared five minutes later. "Told you," she said smartly, sliding down the wall to sit with her knees up beside Jeremie's computer desk.

"What did you do?" Odd asked her, clearly beginning to think suspect that Yumi really was a ninja.

She shrugged. "It wasn't that hard. They were doing push-ups by the wall. I grabbed Ulrich and took off. I don't think Jim will even miss him."

"What's going on, Einstein?" Ulrich asked Jeremie, who was conferring with Aelita and noisily clacking away on his keyboard.

"Huh? Oh," Jeremie said, swiveling in his chair so that he could face us. "We're being watched."

ZXCVBNM

"We're being watched by who?" Yumi demanded, craning her neck to see what Jeremie was typing. It wouldn't have mattered—it was in come computer language, so only he and Aelita could read it.

"We're not sure," Aelita said. "It looks like it could be somebody from the government, but we can't really tell. Their encryption is really good."

"Can you break it?" Odd asked. "Then we'd know who the sneaky tattletale is, and we could give him—her—it—them! Give them a piece of our mind!" He thrust his fist into the air like he was going to punch the hacker in the face and growled.

"The thing is that whoever is watching us doesn't know who we are. I guess I should have said that someone is watching Lyoko. That's what made the alarm go off—there was a presence on Lyoko, just not X.A.N.A.'s presence. It's really weird."

"Do you think maybe it's those guys from the government who went after your parents?" I asked Aelita.

She nodded. "It's definitely a possibility. But I don't know why they'd want to keep an eye on Lyoko."

"Maybe it's because they think your father's returned from wherever he is hiding, and they want to make sure before they come kidnap him," Jeremie pointed out.

THAT was a sobering thought. If whoever was on the other end of that encryption thought that we were Franz Hopper, all of us stood a very great chance of meeting the same fate that Aelita's mom had met.

"If whoever it was ever found out who we were, do you think they'd come after us and kidnap us? Even though we aren't Franz Hopper?" I asked.

Jeremie shrugged. "I don't know. I don't know if they were after Hopper because of some special talent he had; the man was certainly a genius, although I can't imagine the government coming after someone simply to force them to work. I guess I don't know everything about the government, though."

"They wanted Hopper to shut down Lyoko, right?" Ulrich asked. "So if it's up and running again, they probably want whoever is running it to shut it down."

"Which means they'll probably come after us until we do shut it down, and we can't, because then both Franz Hopper and Aelita will die, right?" Yumi asked. When Jeremie nodded, she continued, "So how do we keep them from finding out who we are?"

Jeremie shook his head. "I have no idea. I don't know how to hack into their system and get their information without letting them know who I am, at least."

"Well, we can't sacrifice you because no one else knows how to run the program except Aelita, and she has to be on Lyoko. What if one of us did it?" I asked. "I'm not afraid."

"You're not afraid because you don't know what you're dealing with," Aelita shot back. There was a moment of stunned silence as we stared dumbfounded at Aelita, who, to our knowledge, had never spoken a harsh word in her life. She sighed. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean to snap at you. But if it's the government on the other end of that encryption, then it's the same people who came after my parents. And if they think that you are the one running Lyoko, they'll kill you. If they don't do worse things to you."

"Then what do we do?" Odd asked.

I ignored him and asked, "What is it about trying to hack into their encryption that will let them know who we are?"

"I hacked into the Government's website to create a birth certificate for Aelita; I'm pretty good at hacking, if I do say so myself. But this guy, whoever it is, is better than me. He's got something set up to yank my information off of my computer if I try to find out who he is." At Ulrich's puzzled frown, he explained, "Your computer is registered under your name, and the government can use the Serial number to find out who and where you are."

"Okay, well can you re-register your computer under a different name?" Odd asked.

"I don't want to get into explaining residual information to you. But no," Jeremie said. "Here's the problem. See?" He asked, and pointed at a long line of computer code that was written in gibberish and made no sense.

"No. I don't read Nerd language, but I'll take your word for it," I said. "And the solution is simple. Just hack from another computer."

"It's not that simple," Jeremie said. "I have to hack through Lyoko because that's where he—the hacker-is watching us from. And since the program that runs Lyoko, or at least allows me to access it, is unique to this computer, I'd have to transfer it to another computer. The problem is that part of that program was created on this computer so it's linked to me. Even if I do install it on another computer, my information will still follow me. But it was a good try!" He said.

"So are we just going to let him keep watching us?" Ulrich asked, as Yumi said, "What happens when we have to go to Lyoko next time? Will he be able to tell who we are?"

Jeremie shook his head. "I can't tell much about him other than that he'll get me if I try to find out who he is. I have no idea if he can see who's on Lyoko or if he's only able to tell that it's been active."

"What if it's Franz Hopper?" Odd volunteered. "He might be watching Lyoko to figure out where Aelita went."

"To the best of my knowledge, Franz Hopper is still on Lyoko, although it's possible that he's escaped. But I think it's best that we treat whoever or whatever is watching us as a malevolent presence until we figure out whether it's friendly or not," Jeremie said. "The only thing worse than one of us being kidnapped is all of us being kidnapped because we tried to make friends with the bad guys."

"Okay, so being friendly isn't an option. Can you block him from the program?" I asked. "Like blocking people on Skype, but… not," I finished lamely. "I don't really know how to explain what I mean. Do you understand?"

He nodded. "I understand. I'm working on it, but it takes time. I have to write a program that fits within the codes to Lyoko and that tells it to repel intruders. The problem is that we are intruders, so I have to create a program that repels our spy without repelling us." He pinched the bridge of his nose and leaned back in his chair. "You guys really need to learn Java so you can help me."

"No way, Einstein," Ulrich said. "That's your business. If we learn Java, then you have to come to Lyoko."

"That is not going to happen," Jeremie said, and immediately swiveled in his chair to keep working.

ZXCVBNM

By the time Prom rolled around I was more than just a trifle nervous. Lydia had informed me that she would be helping me and Aelita get ready for the dance, which I understood meant that she would really be forcibly applying makeup to our faces and curling our hair (or mine, at least; Aelita didn't have enough hair to curl). We'd invited Yumi, but she told us that she preferred to get ready alone, as she didn't enjoy spending inordinate amounts of time primping in front of the mirror. None of us girls did, really; we were all rather tomboyish, although Aelita was the girliest of the three of us. Lydia was my sister-in-law, though, and she was Aelita's aunt, so we had to do what she said.

Once we were done getting ready, my dad ushered us into Connor's ancient stick-shift Honda. My dad had been chaperoning Prom since Dan and Eric had been at Kadic; they were the troublemakers of the family, and my dad had mentioned more than once that he didn't trust them to not get into shenanigans by tricking the other chaperones into believing whatever gobbledygook they (my brothers, I mean) had come up with that night in order to sneak out with some girls and make out underneath the bleachers. Now that it was just me, Jake, and Mason going, my dad claimed Prom was too much fun to spend the night at home with his other, more interesting, children. So, he tagged along.

Yumi, Jeremie, Ulrich, and Odd were waiting for Aelita and I as we hopped out of the car from where my dad had dropped us off at the front gate of the school. Kadic was a walking campus, so none of the students had cars. There was a faculty parking lot but it was forever away, and even though it was a hike to get to the cafeteria from the front gate, it was still better than having to traverse the entire universe to get back from the faculty lot.

Jeremie had finally asked Aelita to Prom, and he had worked up the courage to not only ask her to prom, but to ask her on a date to prom. As in, an I-like-you-as-more-than-my-friend date to prom. I hadn't been there when it happened, but from what I'd heard from Odd, who'd heard from Ulrich, who'd heard from Yumi, who'd heard from Aelita, there had been a lot of blushing and stuttering and a little bit of sweating going on before Jeremie ever got around to asking Aelita.

She'd said yes, of course, and now they stood like the two awkward ones out as we walked back to the school. It was obvious that neither one really knew how to act around the other yet, with the rules and boundaries of their relationship having been so drastically changed over such a short period of time. Yumi and Ulrich were only slightly less awkward, as it was apparent to everyone (except them) that they liked each other. They kept inadvertently flirting with each other and not realizing it. It was hilarious from the outside, but I'd been in Yumi's shoes before, and I knew how disheartening it was to not know where you stood in your relationship with that special boy. Yumi wasn't really a traditionalist, though, so I figured that if she wanted to ask Ulrich out, she wouldn't be afraid to do it because she was a girl—that is, she wouldn't let the fact that she was a girl get in the way of her trying to create a relationship. The fact that it is terrifying to bring someone your heart on a platter without knowing whether they are going to give you theirs in return or simply put your heart in a blender and make a smoothie out of it, however, might have been a contributing factor in Ulrich and Yumi's datelessness.

I knew where I stood with Odd, and I was mighty glad that I did. We talked and laughed and accidentally flirted sometimes, but for now he was just my best friend, and I was happy that way.

Inside the cafeteria, the music was thumping loudly enough that I could feel the bass through the soles of my feet and pulsating in my chest. There was a throng of students in the middle of the room, jiving to whatever song William was playing (he'd lost the competition to DJ the dance to Aelita, who had then given her position to William as she had been asked on a date to Prom). We Lyokians, needing a moment to warm up to the music, grabbed several glasses of punch and settled down on a table in the corner of the room.

Jeremie and Aelita were the first ones to break away and go dance. I admired them; they strutted out to the dance floor and started having the time of their lives, never mind who was watching them make fools out of themselves. Odd and I did eventually go out, to dance to a few slow songs, which I enjoyed infinitely more than the one fast song we danced to. Odd was short but somehow we worked together; I think it would have been weird to reach up and put my arms around his neck.

I was debating the merit of leaning my head down on Odd's shoulder when the music suddenly screeched to a stop, causing all sorts of chaos on the dance floor as people ran around in pandemonium and did their fair share of screaming. It got even worse when we realized that Sissi was bent over William, who was stretched out on the floor, having been shocked into unconsciousness by the music that was playing.

Like Mason's had been the one time he'd been attacked by X.A.N.A., William's ears were bleeding. Unlike Mason, he didn't open his eyes again. Jeremie knew immediately what was going on; he went to a corner of the room to check Lyoko's status from his ever-present laptop, while the rest of us discussed the best plan of action given what we knew about the hacker on Lyoko.

Once it was clear that William wasn't going to open his eyes and immediately resume his post as DJ of the dance, one of the chaperones withdrew his cell phone from his coat pocket and said, "I'm going to call emergency services." But as soon as he put his hand out and touched the doorknob, he, too, fell over in an electricity-induced stupor, ears bleeding.

"Well, that's just great," Ulrich said. "How do we get out?"

"The windows," I said, pointing to the wall of windows that took up the cafeteria's south wall. "If we can't go through the doors, maybe we can break a window and get through it without touching anything. Do you think the electricity will take up the empty space if the window is broken?"

"Nah," Yumi said. "I really doubt it. We've been covering circuits in Ms. Hertz's class," she added when we gave her dubious looks. "Glass will conduct electricity, sort of, but the current won't flow from broken glass across empty air to more broken glass. It might spark, but it probably won't if we make the gap big enough."

"Oh. Good," I said. "Who's gonna break the glass?"

We looked around for a moment, before Ulrich seized a chair and picked it up. "This should do nicely," he said, and hurled it through the window into the night air beyond.

ZXCVBNM

"Where exactly do you think you're going?" My father shouted after me as I dove off a table through the hole in the window. The crowd had surged forward when Ulrich broke the window, but they were all being restrained by Jim and the rest of the chaperones (including my dad). Aelita was being held back by Mrs. Hertz, who was glaring daggers at the rest of us. She (Aelita, I mean) stomped down on Mrs. Hertz's foot and then elbowed her in the stomach; clearly, she'd been taking lessons from Yumi. Then she sprinted forward, vaulted off a table, launched herself through the broken window, and joined the rest of us Lyokians outside.

"You just have to trust me!" I shouted back to my dad, and then turned to run after my friends.

ZXCVBNM

"There's something I haven't told you yet," Jeremie huffed as we sprinted through the woods. He'd had the foresight (and ingenuity) to shed his jacket, vest, and cummerbund in the cafeteria and was now rushing through the woods in only a shirt and pants, unlike Odd and Ulrich, who were flinging off bits of clothing piecemeal as they ran. Yumi, Aelita, and I had our dresses hiked up to our knees, and I was thankful that we were taller than our dates because we'd all wound up wearing flats instead of heels in order to remain roughly the same height as Jeremie, Odd, and Ulrich.

"Shoot," Odd said, shedding his tie for good measure.

"Well. The guy—or girl, I guess—that's watching us on Lyoko? I think it might be possible for them to kidnap us once we're there. Kind of like what happened to Franz Hopper."

That brought proceedings to a screeching halt. "Well, jank," I said.

"Why didn't you tell us before?" Ulrich demanded as he, like Odd, flung off his tie. He went a step further and shed his dress shirt, so that he was standing before us in only his undershirt and dress pants. Suddenly I pictured Emilie drooling beside me, mentally urging Ulrich to just take off the darn pants already! Modesty would have prevailed and she'd have turned red as a tomato and closed her eyes if he'd actually done it, though.

"I just found out about it a few hours before the dance; there wasn't time!" Jeremie gasped. "And I was sort of hoping that I could keep X.A.N.A. from attacking tonight by sheer force of will."

There was a lot of grumbling and muttering about that. "You've never asked us to risk our lives before," Ulrich finally pointed out to Jeremie. "Might as well start now."

"Are you crazy? We risk our lives every time we go to Lyoko! The scanners might as well be our coffins!" said Odd.

"It's safe, and you know it," Ulrich shot back. "X.A.N.A. hasn't been able to hurt us yet."

"Yet. Operative word," Odd retorted. "How do you know that they don't have Franz Hopper somewhere, torturing him?"

"Franz Hopper is still on Lyoko!" Aelita and Jeremie said vehemently and in unison.

They broke out into bickering and squabbling, and I started to think.

"You guys!" I said finally, halting the fight and centering the attention firmly on myself. "Don't you see? It has to be me."

Their reactions ranged from outrage to dismay, but I held up my hand to stop them. "I don't want to hear your opinions. You all know I'm right." I held up one finger. "You were doing fine as a team before I came, you'll do fine as a team if I die." I held up another finger. "I'm the weakest fighter." A third finger. "You need Aelita to deactivate the tower; she can't go." A fourth finger. "You need Jeremie to run the computer; he can't go." And a fifth finger. "You three are stronger and faster than me. Maybe nothing will happen, but if it does… I'm the obvious choice for a human sacrifice."

"Don't call it that!" Jeremie said sharply. "I see your point, all five of them, and I'll let you go. But we are not sacrificing you to X.A.N.A. That's not how this is going to be remembered."

ZXCVBNM

Everyone but Odd and I stepped out of the elevator when the doors opened on the computer level. We all stared at each other for several moments, the silence so loud it was literally deafening. I don't know what they were thinking of—I was remembering the victories we'd won in this very room. "Hey, if—" Jeremie started, but I cut him off.

"No. I'm not saying goodbye," I said stubbornly. "Not to you and not to anyone else. You know what you're doing. You won't let me die. It'll be fine. I'm leaving now." And with that I punched the down button on the elevator, trying to ignore my friends' worried expressions as the door slid closed.

It had barely closed when Odd put his hands on my shoulders. "Hey! What—" I started to say, but that was as far as I got before he backed me up against the wall and kissed me behind my jaw, where my pulse was fluttering wildly. "If you die," he whispered, the feel of his breath on my skin making my pulse race faster, "I want to say I've kissed you." He slid his mouth along my cheek and kissed me once on the nose, then once more soundly on the mouth. I put one hand tentatively on his shoulder, and the doors slid open.

"Fartknockers," he whispered, leaning his head on my shoulder. He squeezed my arm once, sighed, and straightened up. "Go," he said. "I'll be here when you get back, I suppose."

I stepped into the scanner, saw the bright light, felt the blast of hot air, felt my body disintegrating. And then nothing.

ZXCVBNM

To be continued… With a time jump, Yumi's college decisions, and another DTR!

I PROMISE that I will FINISH this story by the end of the summer (sometime around mid-august). You have my permission to hunt me down and hold me prisoner if I'm not done by then. I mean it. This is literally one of the only goals I have for this summer.

That said, I'm sorry I've been AWOL for the last six months. School is crazy. Life is crazy. Whoosh.