I stood there, crouched in my pink dress while Dr. DuPont turned around to look at me with an expression I can only call incredulous (that was the word I had beat David Stark with in the fifth-grade spelling bee.)

Blood was caked all around the lower half of his face. Panting, he looked down at Mr. Hall’s body, then back at me.

He laughed, but it was an ugly, wet sound. “So he passed it on to you,” Dr. DuPont wheezed. Then his bloody lips curved in a nasty smirk. “Well, bless your heart,” he drawled in a not very nice (if kind of accurate) imitation of my accent.

He moved sideways, toward the stalls, the sword still pointed at me. “I really can’t think of a worse choice,” he said, still smiling, “than the bimbo who wrote a paper on the history of shoes for my class.”

Okay, that stung. I’d worked hard on that paper. And it hadn’t been on shoes. It had been about how fashion affected politics. And I may like clothes and makeup and shoes, but I am not a bimbo. Dr. DuPont could totally bite me. I almost said that, but then I changed my mind. As crazy as everything had gone, Dr. DuPont might take that as an opening to actually, you know, bite me.

“Tell me, Harper, are you going to use your new superpowers to strong-arm some boy into taking you to prom? Or maybe become head cheerleader?” Something in his expression hardened. “Not that you’re going to live that long.”

Then he lunged again, sword high, but I was ready for him. I spun around so my back was to him, then dropped so the sword passed right over my head. With my hands on the floor, I kicked out my left heel. “I already am head cheerleader,” I said through clenched teeth as my foot connected with his jaw.

Before Dr. DuPont recovered from my kick, I spun in my crouch and used that same leg to knock his legs out from under him.

He cracked his head against the sink as he went down, and I figured that was the end of it.

I stood up and looked down. There was a ragged tear from the hem of my skirt all the way up to the middle of my thigh.

“Oh, shoot,” I muttered, giving Dr. DuPont’s limp body a dark glare.

Then it occurred to me that I should definitely get out of here and find a non-homicidal teacher. Something in me still didn’t want to leave, but I shoved that down. Dr. DuPont had said superpowers, and talked about Mr. Hall “passing something on” to me. That must have been what that weird blowing in my mouth thing had been. But I could figure out exactly what had happened to me later. Right now I needed to get out of here before Dr. DuPont came to.