“Do you have time?” TL had Chapling working on something that he couldn’t tell me about.
He shrugged. “I got time.”
“Okay.” I’d take any help I could get. Rolling out my chair, I got to my feet.
Chapling took my spot. Climbing up, he studied my screen. Seconds later, he put his chubby fingers on my keys, and they took on a life of their own.
I moved in closer and watched over his shoulder as he wove through my code, quickly making adjustments. He deleted a pograph formula and added an emblematic cryptogram. He tweaked a cunei theorem and rearranged a subsequence rubric.
Huh, I hadn’t thought to do that.
Chapling stopped typing and sat staring at the screen. I waited, my gaze fixed to the monitor, wondering what he’d do next.
He cleared his throat. “You’re still here. TL says you have to take at least thirty minutes.”
It took a second to realize he was talking to me. “Oh . . . sorry.” With a sigh, I turned and set out from the lab, through the underground hallways, and up the elevator to the dining hall.
The place sat empty. A lingering scent of bleach told me everyone had come and gone and the tables had been wiped down. I glanced at my watch, noting it was an hour past the usual lunchtime. On a table to the left sat a few snacks for those who might be hungry in between meals. I grabbed a banana and a granola bar.
As I peeled the skin from the banana, I realized I’d barely seen Parrot in the week since we’d found out about the mission. And most of the times I had seen him, he’d been quiet and had kept to himself.
Taking a bite out of my banana, I left the cafeteria, made my way down the hall to the guys’ bedroom, and knocked on the door.
“Yeah?” Wirenut answered. “Come in.”
The boys’ room looked like a masculine version of the girls’ room and always smelled like Mystic’s incense. Like ours, their roomy living quarters held enough space for ten more guys. Crème walls and carpet instead of peach-colored. Three twin-size beds with brown comforters in lieu of beige, and a four-drawer, dark wood dresser for each of them replaced the white. A long closet stretched along the left wall where ours spanned the back. A bathroom sat in the back corner with three sinks, showers, and toilets. Posters of skimpily-dressed girls hung from their walls.
Typical.
Wirenut lay sprawled across the carpet writing in a notebook. Green Day played softly in the background. Or at least I assumed it was Green Day because they were Wirenut’s favorite.
I never knew the names of bands. Other people knew names of bands. I knew names of . . . well, code.
I sat down on his bed. “What are you doing?”
“Calculus.” He cursed and erased something he’d written.
This was the focused, don’t-bother-me Wirenut. “I know you’re busy, but have you seen Parrot?”
Not looking up, Wirenut shook his head.
Mystic came from the bathroom, wiping his hands on his jeans. “Oh, hey, GiGi. Good thing I wasn’t naked.”
I smiled. “Good thing.”
He pointed to Wirenut. “Unless you want your head bitten off, I highly recommend you go nowhere near him.” Mystic went to his dresser and pulled out a pair of socks. “I gave him a citrine crystal, but he refuses to use it.”
“A citrine crystal?”
Mystic sat down on his bed and put on his socks. “It unites personal power. Endurance. Helps you mentally focus and control your emotions.”
“That sounds handy.” I glanced down at Wirenut. “Why won’t you use it?”
Wirenut rolled onto his back. “Because its mumbo jumbo.” He scrubbed his hands over his face. “Listen, if you’re going to be in here, then I’m leaving. Otherwise, you all need to get out of here. I’ve got hours of homework ahead of me.”
“Come on.” Mystic grabbed his wallet and headed from the room. “Leave the grouch to his books.”
I followed Mystic into the hall. “Where ya going?”
He shoved his wallet down his back pocket. “Please. It’s Sunday. Our one and only free day. Where have I gone every Sunday for the past six months?”
I rolled my eyes. “To the Boardwalk to watch the girls Roller-Blade.”
Mystic crossed the hall to David’s room and knocked. Adam, David’s teammate and roommate, opened the door. At six feet five, with blond hair and blue eyes, he and I could easily pass for brother and sister.
“Ready?” asked Mystic.
Adam switched please-tell-me-you’re-not-going eyes to me.
I held up my hands. “Boys only.”
Bruiser came out of our room and bounded up beside me. “You two going girl watching? Won’t be near as much fun today. Have you been outside? It’s drizzling. I bet there won’t be any bikinis. They’ll all be in rain gear.”
Adam leaned down nose to nose with Bruiser’s five-foot height. She had to love that. She liked him. Big-time.
He waggled his brows. “You’d be surprised what girls wear when they’re out and about on a Sunday afternoon in front of a couple hot, eligible men.”
Bruiser busted out laughing. “Hot, eligible men? Oh, that’s funny.”
Smiling, Adam picked her up and set her aside. “Let’s go, Mystic.”
They made it to the end of the hall. “Hey,” I called over Bruiser’s gasps for air. “Have either of you seen Parrot?”
Adam and Mystic shook their heads.
“Didn’t even sleep in the room last night,” Mystic said.
Waving them off, I looked down at Bruiser. “How about you?”
She sniffed and wiped her eyes. “Nope.”
I made my way down the hall to TL’s office. I peeked inside his open door. “Excuse me. Is Parrot in his language room?”
At his computer, TL didn’t stop clicking keys. “No.”
“Do you know where he is?”
“Yes.”
I waited, but TL didn’t expound on his answer. “Can you tell me where?”
TL continued typing. “He’s in the barn.”
“Okay, thanks.”
“GiGi?” TL stopped typing and looked up as I turned around. “This is a hard time for Parrot.”
“I know, sir. That’s why I’m trying to find him.”
I left the ranch house, crossed the wet, grassy yard to the barn, and entered the wide-open doors. The front half served as our physical training area, complete with weights, mats, hanging bags, and other various gymlike stuff.
The back half of the barn served as a . . . well, a barn. Complete with stalls, horses, hay, and gear.
The place always sat deserted on Sundays with everyone enjoying their day off.
A muffled sneeze filtered through the air. Parrot had the worst hay allergies. It always made me smile at the fact that he loved horses yet was allergic to hay.
I strode through the musty training area back to the stalls and peeked over each door. Parrot stood in the second to the last, leaning against the wood wall, idly petting a horse’s nose.
“Hey.” I propped my arms along the top of the half door.
Parrot glanced over, looking so emotionally and physically tired that I just wanted to rock him to sleep.
He brushed his fingers across the horse’s muzzle. “I brought Carrot with me when I came to the Specialists.”
By Carrot, I assumed he meant the horse. Sad to say, I didn’t know any of the animal’s names. “Let me guess, you named him Carrot because he likes carrots.”
“No, I named him Carrot because he was orange when I found him.”
“Orange?”
He gave the horse a sugar cube. “Some kids had spray painted him as a joke.”
“That’s not funny.”
“No, it wasn’t.” Parrot stroked the length of Carrot’s head. “He’s been my best friend for ten years.”
How sad.
But then I never even had a best friend, animal or human, until I joined the Specialists.
I picked a piece of hay from th
e feed bin. “I know you’re not looking forward to the trip. Want to talk about it?”
“No, not really.” Parrot paused, stroking the horse’s ear. “But I want to warn you about somebody.”
“Okay.”
“There’s a chief who’ll be there. His name’s Talon. He’s not a nice man, especially to women.” Parrot stopped petting the horse and looked me dead in the eyes. “Be careful. Don’t go anywhere near him. I mean it, GiGi.”
Parrot’s serious tone brought goose bumps to my arms. “What does he look like?”
“Mohawk, stripes tattooed down his chin.”
Another chill zinged my skin. “I noticed him out of all the others when we saw the photos of each chief. He looked menacing.”
“He’s more than menacing. Talon is evil. His soul is dark.”
I thought about all the bad guys I’d run into since joining the Specialists. I thought about the different degrees of “darkness” to their personalities and wondered aloud, “What do you think makes a person go bad? Are they born that way? Do they voluntarily become bad? Is it the way they’re raised?”
Parrot shrugged. “Talon had a great father. I remember him interacting with us kids on the reservation, playing games or just talking with us. He was a very warm man. Powerful, too. He never made me feel any less for being half Native American. I’ll never forget him.”
“What happened to him?”
“He died from old age, natural causes. And our customs say that the oldest son steps up and takes over.”
“And that was Talon?”
Parrot shook his head. “No, Talon had an older brother. I remember him well. He was just as wonderful as his father. He would have made a great chief.”
“Would have?”
“After their father died, Talon and his brother went up into the cliffs for prayer.” Parrot looked at me. “Talon was the only one who returned.”
My eyes widened. “Did Talon kill his brother so he could become chief?”
“That’s what everyone on my reservation speculated, but it could never be proven. Talon said his brother slipped and fell off one of the cliffs.”
“Oh my God.”
“I remember my grandmother told me once that, even as a boy, something was off in Talon. That he always had an evil spirit.” Parrot rubbed his horse’s ear. “Just listen to me and don’t go near him.”
“Okay.”
Questions spiraled through my brain about Talon and Parrot and their history together. Was Talon the reason Parrot got recruited by the Specialists? What had happened to Parrot’s family? Had he been abandoned, orphaned? Was he a runaway?
I studied the side of Parrot’s face, wanting to ask him all those questions, but something about his expression told me he wouldn’t answer them. Not yet, at least. “Do all those languages stay in your head?” I asked instead.
Parrot grabbed a brush hanging from a nail on the wall, clearly more at ease with the direction of our conversation. “Yeah, sort of. They all hang out in the back of my head waiting for me to call them up.”
“Don’t you ever get confused? I can barely keep English straight.”
“No.” He shrugged. “I don’t know how to explain it. It’s just natural for me, always has been.”
“Do you ever forget a language?”
“Sometimes.” Parrot stroked the brush down the horse’s side. “But all I have to do is hear someone speak it, and I’m good.”
“Huh.” I twirled the hay I held between my fingers. This language thing fascinated me. “And the new languages? How do you learn them so quickly?”
It took me a whole week to learn five words in Ushbanian. Talk about slow.
He mulled my question around for a few seconds. “I listen for the rhythm, the clicks, the guttural thumps.” He chuckled. “That doesn’t make any sense to you, does it?”
I laughed with him, pleased to hear his lightened mood. “You’re right, it doesn’t.”
A quiet minute passed as I watched him brush the horse and listened to its heavy breaths.
“Dreams?” I asked. “What language do you dream in?”
“They’re silent and black and white, like an old movie.”
“That’s your brain’s way of telling you it needs quiet for a while.” I put the hay in my mouth and chewed on the end.
“Think about it. You’ve got a whole world living in your head. It has to wear out your poor brain.”
Parrot smiled. “That’s a good way to put it.”
“Excuse me, GiGi?”
I glanced over my shoulder. David, my boyfriend, stood across the barn in the doorway backlit by a ray of sun that filtered through the cloudy sky. My stomach fluttered. With my preoccupation with my translation program, I’d barely seen him in the past week. And I certainly hadn’t gotten any more of his yummy kisses.
“Be right back,” I said to Parrot, who smiled and nodded. I jogged across the barn to my boyfriend David.
His dark eyes crinkled. “Hey, gorgeous. Long time no see.”
“Hey.”
David took my hand. “TL’s sending me to Egypt to help Piper and Curtis with a few things.”
My joy at seeing him drained away. “What?”
“I’m leaving tomorrow morning. I don’t know how long I’ll be gone. Do you want to go for a walk or something? Just the two of us?”
But I’d be leaving for South America in a few weeks. What if David didn’t get back before I left? It’d be forever before we saw each other again. “What are you helping them with?”
He squeezed my hand. “I’m not allowed to say. I’m sorry.”
Nodding, I looked down at our joined hands. “It sucks having secrets.”
David moved closer. “Yes, it does. But one day we’ll both have the clearance to talk freely with each other about our work.”
He had more clearance than any of us.
A breeze flowed in, messing my hair. He smoothed the stray strands from my cheek. “So what do you say? Want to go for a walk?”
I glanced back through the barn to the stalls. I didn’t want Parrot to be alone. He needed somebody other than his horse, and I wanted him to know he could count on me as a friend.
With a soft smile, I turned to David. “I would love to spend time with you. Believe me. But Parrot’s back there all alone, and I think he needs a friend right now. I’m sorry. Please understand.”
Making the right decision, picking Parrot over David, a friend over my boyfriend, brought me peace and a sense of maturity I’d never experienced before.
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