The Amanda Project: Book 4: Unraveled

by Amanda Valentino

  “What do you see?” I hissed. The guards were getting close enough now that I thought they might even be able to hear.

  Hal just shook his head.

  “Hold my hand,” Callie said to Hal. Without questioning her, Hal took it.

  Hal flushed. Just the act of flushing made him look healthier. He looked at Callie. “Your strength,” he said. Callie smiled. Hal smiled right back her and both of them seemed to glow.

  I saw what Callie must be doing. She must be using the connection that existed among the four of us to pass onto Hal some of her own strength. It must work in the same way it did when we were all holding hands to share Nia’s visions.

  Just to see what would happen, I put a hand on Callie’s elbow. I was suddenly flooded with a rush of something I couldn’t name, but it reminded me of being on the playground in elementary school. All I could think about was how great it would feel to run. I remembered when I was a kid, running so hard I’d kick my heels into my thighs, and I’d never get tired.

  And in this rush of energy I said, “We have to run. We have to get away from these guys.”

  But at that same moment, Nia whispered, “Here! I have another one.”

  “Too late,” I said. “This isn’t safe.”

  Nia shot me a look. “I’m so close to getting something.” And then she put her hand on Hal’s shoulder and suddenly, we could all see what she did.

  It was Amanda. In the vision, she had her back to us, a shadowy figure in a hoodie, bending down in front of the Vietnam Memorial, touching the same name that Nia was touching now, then leaving something at the base of the memorial wall.

  Nia lifted her hand off Hal’s shoulder. The guards were no more than ten feet behind us now. The groups from our school were on the opposite end of the memorial—it was about to empty out completely except for the guards and us.

  We looked down. There, at our feet, was a bouquet of dyed green carnations, wrapped in purple cellophane. Tied at the base of the bouquet was a card, and drawn on the card in purple ink was a coyote. Amanda’s totem.

  She’d been here. Maybe only minutes before we’d arrived.

  Chapter 21

  Nia picked up the bouquet and flipped the card over. We saw words:

  Bear any burden—meet any hardship—support any friend.

  “JFK’s inauguration speech,” Nia said. “The lines Cisco saw etched on his tomb at Arlington National Cemetery.”

  “I guess we know where we need to go next,” Callie said.

  “I don’t know if we’re going to be going anywhere,” Hal said.

  Something happened. The last of the other tourists and kids from our grade dispersed and the guards made their move.

  Then Rosie was suddenly there. I don’t know from what bush or tree she must have jumped out, only that she and Cisco were running toward us and she was calling our names. It took me a second to even register that she was Rosie—her jogging outfit of the morning had been replaced by a tight ribbed tank underneath a slouchy green shirt, dark jeans, combat boots, and a black pixie wig.

  “Run!” Rosie shouted. But it wasn’t necessarily that easy. I hadn’t realized until we were inside it what a perfect trap the memorial makes—the sides of the wall converge into a V—the guards had set themselves up so that they were blocking us into the point.

  I don’t know how we would have made it past them if Cisco hadn’t run interference for us, using his soccer moves to literally block the guards. They could not work their way around his fakes. No wonder he wins national titles every year. “Go!” he shouted.

  We did, following Rosie back out onto the Mall, heading north into the streets of D.C.

  When I looked back, Cisco had climbed up and over the wall itself. He was sprinting away from the guards, headed south. They weren’t following him.

  Because they were focusing all their energy on chasing us.

  We only had about five seconds of a head start on the guards, but Rosie knew the city well, and she led us down one side street after another until I was totally turned around and had lost track of where I was. We finally stopped running when we were sure we had lost them.

  “How’d you find us?” I said.

  “I was worried,” Rosie said. “I went back in to get some files out of my desk. The office is crowded enough that I thought I could sneak back in with this disguise. I was on my way out the door, when I overheard someone talking on the phone. I heard them use the word “kids” and I started to listen—it was something about bringing you guys in. They were sending a van to the Vietnam Memorial. I called Cisco’s cell and when he told me you had headed in that direction, I met up with him and we rushed over. Just in time, too, I guess.”

  “Yeah, thanks,” Hal said. “While we were there, I was seeing what they had in mind once they caught us. I saw their plan all laid out. They had an unmarked van. They were going to inject us with tranquilizers. Scary stuff.”

  I felt myself shiver. Callie hugged her arms across her chest. Nia ran her hand through her hair.

  “Turn here,” said Rosie, directing us down a narrow street, which led to a public square. We jogged across it. At the other side, Rosie dipped into what I thought was going to be a store—it was a doorway in the side of a building—but turned out to be nothing but an alcove with a huge escalator leading down underground.

  “It’s the Metro,” Rosie explained. “One of the greatest hiding places in Washington.” She passed us all fare cards. “These will get you in and out no matter what station we go to,” she explained.

  But when we were about a quarter of the way down the escalator, I looked up to the top, and pointed. There, muscling their way onto the crowded escalator, were the two guards who had been chasing us. My heart sank. Was it possible we would never get away from these guys?

  We started to push our way past people who were standing on the escalator, reading their papers and checking their phones. The guards were gaining on us. We started to run, not bothering with the fare cards as we hurled our bodies over the turnstiles.

  In front of us, another escalator led down to the train platform. We could see a train just stopping on the platform below us.

  “We’re not going to make it,” Callie warned in a low, shaking voice.

  I checked behind us and saw that, in addition to the two guards chasing us, there was a third man I recognized from the airstrip. He had the husky body of a football player or former marine, and he was lumbering down the escalator toward us. Fortunately it was crowded, and our pursuers had to duck around the other commuters in front of them and sometimes even wait, standing, impatient and furious.

  Just as a warning bell let us know that the train doors were closing, Hal hit the platform at a sprint, with Rosie and Callie right behind him, then Nia and me tearing for the doors. Hal made it to the train doors just as they closed in his face. People just getting off the train streamed toward us. We used them as cover, their bodies a human barrier between us and the beefy guard who had reached the bottom of the escalator.

  “What now?” Hal asked Rosie, but I could see that she had run out of options. I remembered seeing the same look in my mom’s eyes toward the end of the year we spent driving around in the RV.

  Hal took over. The crowd was heading back up onto the escalator, and I guess for lack of a better idea, we followed. The men spotted us and got on the escalator again too, about ten feet behind us. We couldn’t push past people on the escalator now—it was far too crowded for that.

  There was no way out. At the top of the escalator, we’d get nabbed like fish in a net. The way the security guys behind us were holding their bodies, you could tell they knew this. They were relieved, confident. You could see it in their mouths—their jaws were set in a look almost of boredom, like they were just as convinced they only had to wait a few minutes and this would all be over.

  I was just as convinced as they were that we were going to get caught. I mean, we were just kids. They were adults, trained for this sort
of work.

  I wondered where the guards would take us. That van Hal had seen? Would Dr. Joy be waiting for us in the backseat? What would he do to us? I felt my skin recoiling against the idea that he would take blood from my veins and lock it into a refrigerated tank. I clutched the pendant holding my dad’s blood like it was a talisman, like he was here to protect me in some way.

  Just then, I heard the squeaking whine of another train pulling in. I felt every cell in my body jump at the thought that there was hope. Maybe we could evade the three guards—and get onto that train! But even as I was getting my hopes up, Callie was doing the math, estimating the number of seconds the train would take to stop, to unload passengers, to let passengers on, to close its doors—and she was comparing that number to the pace at which we were traveling up and the pace at which we’d make our way down. “We can’t do it,” she said. “We won’t make this one either.” Hard to believe she could do this with mental math—that’s Callie for you.

  But Rosie took Callie’s calculation and turned it on its head. Catapulting over the side of the railing, she landed in between the up and down sides of the escalator, balancing on the polished steel slope between them, her knees bent like she was surfing a wave. Hal was right behind her, and then Callie, and me, and Nia. It was really hard to balance, especially as we were trying to get down the slope as fast as we could. We half crab-walked, half slid over to the down escalator.

  At first, the guards who were on their way up the escalator seemed frozen in place. As I passed Falls-Asleep-on-the-Job I made eye contact with him. He had piercing blue eyes and he was looking at me like there was a sheet of bulletproof glass between us, like if he tried to reach out for me, he would only hurt himself. Tattoo Face was quicker, but not quick enough. He reached out and he grabbed the tail of my shirt. But I yanked it out of his hand.

  We stepped through the train doors, just as the chime sounded to let us know they were closing. Our car was heavily graffitied—S.HE.B.LIE.VD was scrawled in spray paint across one of the windows. I looked back at where we’d come from—the guards were struggling to push their way down the up escalator. One climbed up onto the metal slide where we had gone. But he seemed unable to let himself tumble down the way we had, so he was too late. The doors had just closed with a slap of rubber when the guards reached the platform edge.

  Chapter 22

  Hal looked like he might be going into apoplectic shock. His eyes were bugging out and his skin was the color of paper. “I can’t believe that,” he said. “That was cutting it so close!”

  Nia was looking around, walking from one end of the car to the other, peering through the windows into the cars on either side of ours. “I’m still not convinced they don’t have people on the train.”

  “Are you any closer to getting to Amanda?” Rosie said in between panting breaths. “Is there anything I can do to help?”

  We explained about seeing Callie’s mom, the enhancement eraser she’d developed, and about finding the green bouquet.

  “Well, you’ve got one piece of good luck,” Rosie said, digesting the new information. “This Metro line goes right out to Arlington National Cemetery.”

  Nia sighed. I could see that she was scared and tired, and also exhausted, both from the chase and from the effort she’d expended at the Vietnam Memorial—for the encounter with Amanda had used a good deal of energy. Nia sat down next to Callie and the two of them stared straight out into space. How much more could one day hold?

  But Hal was not tired. He was holding onto a strap as if he had too much energy to sit down. His mind must have been turning faster than the train wheels because suddenly he turned to Rosie, and as if he were taking up a conversation that they had just left off he said, “How did Amanda find us?” Rosie didn’t say anything, waiting I think for Hal to explain his question. “You said before she just made friends naturally, but doesn’t that seem a little bit coincidental?”

  Rosie shrugged. “I told you—all Amanda said to me was that there was something she recognized in you. She told me she’d come looking for guides, and I asked her how she knew when she found one. She said it was just like making friends in any new town. You kind of wandered around, going from place to place without knowing anyone until suddenly, you meet someone and you feel a connection.”

  “Are you thinking she felt the connection with us, the way we feel it with each other?” Callie said, looking up at Hal from her seat.

  “You guys have really bonded, haven’t you?” said Rosie.

  “No,” said Hal. He blushed. “I mean, yes, we’re bonded. But it’s more than that. We have this thing. When we get together. We can kind of see into each other’s heads.”

  “We make each other stronger,” said Callie.

  “Stronger how?” Rosie asked.

  So we told her. About how our strange abilities seemed to work better when we were touching. How Callie’s strength had passed to Hal. How Nia’s visions were stronger and could be shared when we were holding hands.

  When we’d finished talking, Rosie just stood there, shaking her head. She was quiet a good long time and I felt kind of guilty, as if I were burdening her with too much information. I wished I could take it all back. Amanda must have felt this way all the time.

  Our train climbed out of its tunnel and began crossing a bridge over the Potomac River. For a time, you could see all of D.C. through the train’s rattling windows. I took my camera out and snapped a few shots, mostly to calm myself down. I focused in on the sunlight gleaming on the dome of the Jefferson Memorial, the pillars of the Lincoln Memorial, straight and tall.

  “Being with you guys,” Rosie said at last. “It’s like being with Amanda again. You are all so much like her. It’s like each one of you is carrying around a piece of her. Because those things you’re good at? Your abilities, or powers, or whatever you want to call them? Those are Amanda’s powers too. Zoe, Amanda could blend in just like you—people wouldn’t even seem to see her when she didn’t want them to. She’s got Callie’s strength, Nia’s intuitive connection to the past, Hal’s ability to see what is coming—all of you, what you have, that’s part of her too.”

  I put my camera down. “Wow,” I said. “That’s intense.”

  “Yes,” Callie agreed. “I know exactly what you mean.”

  When we got off the train just outside the gates that led into Arlington National Cemetery, I thought again of my dad.

  Every time I pass a cemetery I do. Even a military cemetery where dead presidents lie next to American soldiers.

  In the distance, I saw a hearse followed by a line of cars, leaving the cemetery. A funeral. The good-bye my dad couldn’t have.

  “Come on,” Hal said, and I realized everyone was ahead of me. I’d stopped at the gates as if I wasn’t actually going to be able to enter. But I was. This was important. It was something I had to do.

  I squared my shoulders and held the last existing part of my dad tightly. I followed my friends into the cemetery.

  “I think this place is bigger than the entire town of Orion,” Callie said.

  Nia sighed, slightly exasperated. “I sort of thought, with the Arlington National Cemetery quote, we’d get here and we’d just be . . . well . . . here. And somehow it would be obvious what it was we needed to find.”

  “I know what you mean,” said Hal. “And frankly, I don’t have a lot of brain power left to apply to another mental puzzle. My ability to concentrate is blown to pieces. I don’t even know where to start.”

  “Let’s be rational about this,” said Nia. She pulled out the by now quite rumpled scavenger hunt. “It says here we’re supposed to find the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. We might as well at least get a picture of it for credit. And maybe there’ll be something there to help us know where to go next. After all, Amanda must know we’re using the hunt—she’s been laying clues along our path all day.”

  The Tomb of the Unknown Soldier wasn’t hard to find. In fact, it would have been hard to miss.
It sits at the top of a long run of steps, carved into the mountainside, about the size of the stage in our auditorium at Endeavor. Behind the platform we could see the columns surrounding the Memorial Amphitheater, which sits directly behind the tomb.

  “Okay,” I said, looking at it. “Now what?”

  “Now,” Nia said, elbowing me frantically in the ribs and gesturing toward the tomb. “That’s what.”

  Because standing on the steps right in front of the tomb, looking out at us and across all the graves of people who had given their lives in service of their country, was Amanda. Arabella. Ariel. She smiled wide in welcome, as if she’d been waiting here for us all this time.

  All through the course of the long weeks that we’d been looking for her, I’d tried to carry an image of her face in my head. And it was there now, but so much more vivid than in my memory. Her gray-green eyes, her wide, high forehead, her mouth that even without one outrageous shade of lipstick or another was shaped like a kiss—it was all her.

  Amanda—the master of disguise—for once looked only like herself. Her hair was pulled back into a low ponytail, she was wearing a black turtleneck sweater, jeans, a pea coat, and low-top sneakers. She was looking down at all of us and for a minute, I thought of the kind of painting you see in a church, of an angel looking down from heaven.

  After running through the subway, after the conversation on the train, I was tired. But now, seeing Amanda, I suddenly felt my energy return. Just seeing her alive was such a relief. I remembered how good I always felt when Amanda was around. She made everything she touched seem cool. I felt like I’d just had a heavy burden taken out of my hands. My arms fell limp and relaxed at my sides. The air felt deeper and cleaner than anything I’d breathed in a long time.

  Amanda took a few steps, down and around the back of the tomb. She had her hands pushed deep into her front pockets. Locking gazes with me, she raised her eyebrows and for a second, I felt like I could hear her counting inside her head, like she was giving me the upbeat on a song I was about to come in on, that she was deciding how fast it was going to go and when it would begin.