Young Sentinels (Wearing the Cape) (Volume 3) Read Free

my face, almost dancing. “Not. A. Drill!” I pulled my hands out and managed to grab the pad before he dropped it. It would have been okay in the grass, but he was enough of a spazz he’d probably have stepped on it.
    He had it set to Powernet ; not a shock — he wasn’t a supergeek, but only because they were the worst kind of geeks and he wasn’t interested in getting beat on or hazed every other school day. The pad showeda streaming video identified as news helicopter footage.
    The Sentinels and every Guardian team in Chicagoland were fighting a bunch of trees .
    Holy crap .
    The information bar scrolled team stats and facts, going on about how Riptide had obviously leveled up — he’d never shown the ability to use his water jets to cut before.
    “Dude, it’s at the municipal airport! No wonder they’ve got us out here!” Tony took the pad back, keeping it tilted so I could see, and we watched mutant trees waste a bunch of connected buildings the infobar said was the Chicago Executive Airport terminal, the place rich guys kept their jets. The capes kept working the edges, like they were trying to trim a hedge growing faster than you could cut. They blasted trees, smashed them, sliced them, and the bar kept referring back to Riptide’s new attack style. Trees are eating the airport and that’s their priority?
    “That is one bad-ass Crip,” Tony said admiringly. He had more than just my attention now, and we became the center of a crowd as half the class tried to look or asked what we were watching; nothing like this ever happened out in the burbs. I smelled lavender, turned, and had to grab Tiffany before she hit the grass.
    “Sorry!” she said as if my bumping her was her fault. She got herself straight and flashed me a smile when I let go of her arm. “What’s going on?”
    I shrugged, not sure what to do with my hands. “It’s not a drill.”
    “Oh, no!” She dropped her clipboard and spun around, looking up like she expected the capes to airdrop right into the soccer field. I bent and scooped the board up from the wet grass, reattached the emergency phone she’d clipped to it, but kept hold of it all as some of the guys laughed. She flushed. Skinny and awkward, Tiff was probably the girl who would bloom into a supermodel after graduating, but guys are dicks and right now it sucked to be her.
    “I’ve got to take that to the flagpole,” she explained, ignoring the guys. “Now that everyone’s been counted.”
    “So let’s go.” I started off and she skipped to catch up.
    “You don’t — Thanks. For back there.”
    I shrugged, still walking. “Not a problem.”
    “So, do you think they’re going to evacuate us?”
    Coming around the side of the school, we watched school buses pulling into the half-circle drive that separated the front parking and the flagpole lawn from the main doors.
    “I think that’s a strong maybe.” We crossed between two buses already in line, engines idling while they waited to move up and load, and joined the crowd of students and adults at the flagpole.
    Vice Principal Blevins stood at the center of the group, looking at his own clipboard and talking into his phone. He nodded and said something as a packed bus pulled away. The sound of the engines made it impossible for us to hear him, but after all the drills he was probably totally into finally doing it. Tiffany pulled herself up straighter and reached for the clipboard.
    “Thanks Mal, I — Wait! The phone!”
    Shit . It had come unclipped somewhere. I looked around behind us, spotted it back in the drive. One of the buses we’d passed between had moved up but the other just sat there, and of course the phone lay on the pavement in front of it.
    “I’ll get it!” I darted back across the drive.
    “No, wait!” Tiffany cried, but I crouched and grabbed it. I turned back to her, heard the engine throttle down, and the lurching bus smacked me to the ground.
    Shit . The pain of my head hitting the