* * *
Savannah snuck downstairs and turned on the TV. This grounding sentence was harsh. She didn’t know how much longer she could go without watching Fringe, Doctor Who, or reruns of The X-Files and Star Trek. She wasn’t sure what the TV schedule was for this time of night, but she bet at least one channel would have something worth watching.
As Savannah flipped through the channels, an image made her stop. A grainy still shot of a dark blurry four-legged creature running through a crowd of people was on the screen with a caption that read, “Cell phone image by anonymous tip.”
A female news reporter said, “…breaking news, a black panther runs rampant at the Stanford Shopping Center in Palo Alto. Sightings of the panther state that it appeared in the shopping center at approximately seven-thirty p.m. tonight. It ran through the shopping center unchecked until it was stopped—by an infant. Robert McTravers has news at the scene.”
The camera switched to a well-tanned man with a blindingly white smile standing by the entrance to the shopping center. “Thank you, Judy. In a strange turn of events, the black panther ran until a child being pulled to safety got separated from its mother and bumped into the panther. Though we have reports that no one is injured, what happened next is quite bizarre. We have some footage of what happened that one of our viewers captured on his i-Phone.”
Shaky video started rolling, showing the backs of people’s heads. The person shooting the video stepped to the side, and the panther came into view. He stood stiff, his head lowered and his ears flat against his skull. Only his tail moved as it thrashed back and forth. A little boy, probably no older than eighteen months, stood in front of the panther. He held out his arms and patted the panther on the head. “Good doggy.”
The mother swooped down and swept the child into her arms, screaming the child’s name. The panther suddenly started moaning and yowling, walking drunkenly and rubbing its head along the floor. The crowd panicked and ran screaming in all directions, and the video ended.
The image switched to a split screen with Judy in the news studio on the left and Robert McTravers on the right.
“That,” said Judy, shaking her head, “was baffling.”
“Wasn’t it?” said Robert, smiling.
“Let’s see that last part again.”
The video came back up, starting from where the mother swooped down to rescue her son. This time Savannah saw, as clear as day, Leslie on the left-hand side of the screen wrestling with a dark-haired kid. The kid disappeared, and Leslie threw something away from her.
“No way!” Savannah yelled at the top of her lungs. “No freaking flipping way! They didn’t! No way they didn’t!”
The news reporters kept talking—something about the panther disappearing from the scene—but Savannah wasn’t listening. Leslie and Gray had gone to Palo Alto, Gray had shifted in public, another boy had shifted in public, and someone had caught it on camera! And Savannah was stuck at home!
“Savannah!” Her father’s voice cut Savannah off. “What’s going on?”
Savannah froze. If he dad saw that video, and if he spotted Leslie, everything would be ruined. She quickly turned off the TV and kicked the remote under the couch. “Nothing,” she said.
“Nothing?” said Mr. Matheson as he walked down the stairs and into the living room. “I don’t think ‘no way, no freaking flipping way’ is nothing.”
Savannah blurted out the first thing she could think of. “They’re thinking of making a Doctor Who movie. Isn’t that crazy?”
Mr. Matheson frowned. “You were watching TV, weren’t you?”
“Only for five minutes.” Savannah flashed her most winning smile, which she figured wasn’t worth much under the circumstances.
“You’re still grounded, you know,” said Mr. Matheson sternly. “If I catch you watching television again, unless it’s school-related, I’ll have to add another day to your sentence.”
Savannah nodded. She slipped past Mr. Matheson and raced up the stairs to her bedroom. As she slammed the door shut behind her she thought, Gray and Leslie are definitely gonna get it from me when they get home.
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