Local exams began on Wednesday and state Regents exams the following Monday. I wasn’t a last-minute study-er (some teachers might say I was no kind of study-er), but I paid attention in class and read most of the assigned readings, which was more than a lot of the kids did, so I wasn’t worried. There would always be a few kids like Bo who’d score higher, but that didn’t bother me. I knew I’d end up with a halfway-decent average. There was quite a bit of talk about the infamous raid of the drug field day by the mystery creatures, but as far as I could tell nobody took it all that seriously. There was a small mention of it in the Post Star, but it was largely treated as a prank, not as some kind of supernatural visitation. After school on Monday Ethan told me that Mrs. Quinby had been around to all the elementary and middle school classrooms to talk about the raid and to tell the kids that it was all right to be afraid. I could just picture her swooping around, hoping to find even a flicker of an emotional response, so she could fan that flicker into a flame.
