While I’m distracted with talking, the witch reaches inside and pushes the Lobby button. Medusa pulls the grate door closed, setting the elevator in motion.

I glare at her, and she gives me a one-handed goodbye wave, smirking with satisfaction as we disappear into the bowels of the building.

There’s no way I’m giving up that easily. I push the stop button. The freight machine bumps to a halt between floors. I push the third-floor button, but nothing happens. Uh oh.

Mr. Cavendish’s breath turns ragged as he asks, “It isn’t working?”

He looks pale and sweaty and is rolling a finger inside the collar of his dress-shirt as if to loosen it.

“Are you claustrophobic, Mr. Cavendish?”

“Yes. No. A little.”

***

Mr. Cavendish ends up being carried away on a stretcher forty-five minutes later, still in the throes of a claustrophobia-induced panic attack. After the elevator stopped, I had to call the building superintendent to come free us, and it took a while.

The paramedics carry Mr. Cavendish into an ambulance and perform a few basic checks. Meanwhile, I sag on a bench outside the building, tilt my face up to the sun, and close my eyes for a second.

A click to my right makes me blink and turn toward the source of the noise. The teenage daughter of the Wicked Witch of the West Office has sat down beside me and is holding a pale pink Polaroid camera in her hands.

“Hi,” I say.

“Hey,” she says back, and, jerking her chin toward the now-departing ambulance, she asks, “Did Mom do that?”

“Why? People often leave her office on a stretcher?”

The daughter flashes me a wide, wicked-but-candid grin that I could imagine mirrored on her mother’s face if the woman ever smiled.

“Only the male kind,” she says.

I shake my head and smile back. “You don’t seem as prejudiced against my gender. Tegan, is it?”

She nods, then shrugs. “I’d better go. We’re supposed to have lunch together, and I don’t want to be late or Mom will go ballistic.”

That gives me pause. “Shouldn’t you be in school?”

“Today’s a half-day. The teachers hold this meeting once a year on how to be better at their jobs.”

“That sounds like a great initiative.”

“It sucks. The great project usually adds up to two weeks full of stupid, newfangled teaching methods that don’t work and will be dropped in no time. But, hey, I got to skip Calculus, so I’m not complaining.”

“Really?” I laugh. “What was the weirdest thing they made you do?”

Tegan’s lips curl up. “Last year, Mrs. Robison decided we should all cosplay Shakespeare to get us more involved… But, like, not just in class. In real life. Bunch of teenagers walking around dressed in 15th century clothes… Didn’t last long, let me tell you.” She shrugs and stands up. “I gotta go now.”