“You’re not the pilot?” I asked, still staring at the light like an idiot. “You mean to tell me you guys have a hidden plane underground fully stocked with everything, including a pilot?”
“The plane is automated,” Stephen said from behind me like it was a totally reasonable thing.
“Yeah, because that’s so realistic,” I said, glancing over my shoulder at him. “Okay smart guy. Where is your magic plane taking us?”
“To Chicago,” he replied, sipping his drink as he flopped down in a brown leather seat. “The Sears Tower, in fact. Though I don’t think they call it that anymore.” He waved one hand at me, gesturing to the seat across from him. “Now buckle up.”
That’s when the plane lurched forward, and I found myself scrambling into the seat. I grabbed hold of the seat belt, barely fastening it as my stomach did a flip flop as the plane rocketed forward.
“The Sears Tower? In Chicago?” I said several minutes later when I’d finally regained some of my composure. My hands gripped the armrests of the airplane seat so hard that my knuckles were white. I wasn’t going to come right out and say I hated flying, especially flying in a nice chartered jet… but flying wasn’t exactly something I enjoyed. Not that I’d even flown before. This was definitely the first time I’d been more than ten feet off the ground.
In fact, the more that I thought about it, the more I realized that I didn’t know anyone who had ever flown. Only Shelly Johnson had ever claimed to have flown before, but she’d claimed to do lots of stuff since she’d arrived about a year ago, and I mostly dismissed her anyway. The things Folsom High’s queen bee made up were so far from my realm of caring that I didn’t think about it. I mean it’s not like I was allowed at the A-list table for lunch or anything anyway. Lisa and I had been firmly relegated to lunch tables of significantly less social stature.
Still, I was now flying, and that was not making me happy. Stephen seemed unperturbed in his seat across from me. He alternated between staring out the window and reading through the pile of magazines next to his seat.
“It’s a public place. No one is crazy enough to bomb a giant national landmark nowadays. It’s safer because there are so many people around. If someone starts shooting, cops, the army, hell, alien defenders will be called in to stop the destruction of Chicago’s largest building. The same sense of urgency will not be given to a hotel room in an out of the way turnpike,” he said with a shrug.
“If she’s willing to nuke cities, what’s one building, even a famous one?” I asked even if there was a certain amount of logic to his argument. The chances that a terrorist army would besiege me in the middle of one of Chicago’s biggest landmarks was definitely a lot less than say the rural plains of Missouri.
“Okay fair enough, but the way I see it.” Stephen shifted in his seat and put his magazine down beside him. Apparently, he was giving me his attention and wanted me to know it. “We might as well have a little fun while we’re running. I’m not saying we should go around shouting your name. I’m not going to make you wear a shirt saying ‘I am Abby Banks’ or anything, but a couple kids going through some famous landmarks aren’t going to get a whole lot of attention. I want to make your mother look for a needle in a bunch of needle stacks. Not a needle in a big field in the middle of nowhere.”
“That’s the dumbest thing I ever heard…” I said, glancing at him. “Have you thought this through, like at all?”
“Yes, but,” he sighed, “I have to follow my orders and they say to take you to Chicago.” He smiled at me and took one of my hands in his. He was starting to do it so often that I was beginning to think it might be more of a nervous reaction for him than it was to comfort me. Every time he had done it, bad news he hadn’t wanted to tell me had been involved. If this kept up, I was going to start having a complex about cute boys holding my hand.
“Hopefully nowhere else. Your mom should be dead within the next three or four days. All we have to do is hang out in Chicago until she kicks the proverbial bucket.”
“Well, that’s dreary,” I muttered to myself and stared out the window. “And Chicago is safer than just flying around in a plane for a few days?”
“You have no idea. I could rig up something to shoot a plane out of the sky with a cell phone and some duct tape.” Stephen flashed me a sly grin.
“Just because people on TV shows can do that, does not mean you can,” I responded, crossing my arms over my chest and huffing for effect.
He smiled and ran a hand through his hair, brushing it out of his face. “If all goes well, we should have you back to Folsom in a few days, no harm, no foul.”
“You mean your grand plan is to take me back to my fake life?” I stared at him. I hadn’t really thought about the ‘after everything happened’ things. I hadn’t exactly been given a bunch of time to make plans, hadn’t drawn out my day planner for the events to follow my mother’s tragic death of body decomposition. It hadn’t even occurred to me that I might go back to Folsom High. Might go back to sitting at the D-list table with Lisa Ann. That seemed so… unfair.
“Um… where else would you like to go? Those people are still your friends. Esmeralda Banks really does love you. You should have seen the arguments she’s had with Donovan. I only wish someone cared about me like that,” Stephen said.
I had one of those moments where you came to a fork in the road. One path was to scream at him about how my mother lied to me for sixteen years about not being my real mother. The other was to ask Stephen about his past, about why no one cared for him like that, about why it almost seemed like he wished our roles were reversed.
“She’s not my mother,” I said it firmly and flung myself out of the chair. I was about to say something more, about to run as fast as I could down the road on the left of the fork when I realized that, to my horror, I was still wearing my restaurant uniform. I was still wearing the formless red and white garment that I’d been working in. It seemed like it’d been so long since I’d been at the restaurant, but had it been? Could it have really been more than a couple hours? Max?
Even so, regardless of how long it had been, my face turned bright red. Sure, a couple kids touring Chicago might not look odd, but with me dressed like a reject from a take-out restaurant I was going to stick out in posh Chicago like a sore thumb. If I didn’t find some new clothes, and fast, I was going to be a very obvious needle in a very, very small haystack.
I glanced at Stephen, sure he was about to say something when I held up my hand to silence him. “I don’t want to argue with you about my mother right now. I have a much more pressing concern.” I tried to make my face as stern as possible as I waved my hand at my uniform. “I don’t think this will do in Chicago.”
Stephen looked at me, a very strange look of humor and confusion in his eyes. “I’m sure getting you a change of clothes can be arranged.”
“Well… good then.” I’m not quite sure what sort of an answer I had been expecting. I mean, I hadn’t really expected him to say no or anything like that. However, the whole ‘take a girl shopping’ thing never really seemed to be high on any guy’s ‘to do’ list.
“So where are we going shopping then?” I asked.
“Anywhere you like. I’m sure the local Walmart has excellent selections.”
I gulped, and I’m sure my face must have had some strange look of horror on it because Stephen suddenly started laughing. I balled up my fists, resisting the urge to punch him as hard as I could and instead took a deep breath.
“I kid, I kid,” he said with a smirk. “We have basically an unlimited budget. We can go somewhere nice. Pretend you’re the bell of the ball and go wild. That way, you’ll have fewer regrets if you die.” He had turned rather serious toward the end of that sentence, and it struck me a little morbid.
I knew that part of his cheery, self-determined attitude was a mask he wore. I could tell that deep down was something tragic and tear worthy, but it was like he was having trouble melding the two. Rather it
was starting to seem that he had two distinct personalities that randomly decided to display themselves.
Awesome. My secret agent was totally crazy. And we were going to a national landmark to hide from my deranged, dying mother’s private army.
Somehow, my chances of success didn’t seem all that good.
6
I’d never seen so much lace in my entire life. There were lace socks and lace panties, which I guess weren’t that odd, and even lace pants. It was a little disconcerting to be surrounded by so much lace, and that was just the first room. We hadn’t even ventured into the silk room or the cobalt room yet. I wasn’t even sure what a cobalt room was, but if the price tag on the lace socks was any indication, someone’s pocket book was going to take a huge hit.
We had been in the store maybe thirty seconds when a blonde girl in her mid-twenties dressed in a black lace mini skirt, red and black lace camis, and a small silver mantis pendant, sauntered over to us. One glance at her told me one thing. She did not think we belonged in Le Château de Tissu Extraordinaire. She smiled one of those polite smiles that never quite reached her eyes and glanced from me in my hamburger serving uniform to Stephen in his similar uniform.
“Welcome to Chateau de Tissu Extraordinaire. My name is Chloe, and I would be delighted to assist you. What are you in the market for today?” Even as she finished her sentence she glanced around, looking for something else to go do before turning her attention back to us.
“We were hoping you could give us both complete wardrobes. We are going to need at least a week’s worth of clothing, each, something stylish and ‘in,’ but not memorable. We will also need you to have someone do the lady’s hair and makeup, again, stylish but not memorable. Is that something you will be able to provide?” Stephen’s voice was crisp and no nonsense. It sort of reminded me of the rich kids at school except that it didn’t have their arrogant, bored edge to it.
“We do not normally do such things without appointments. All of our clothiers and beauticians are busy at the moment. I can make you an appointment if you like. I think we may have something open in the next couple weeks.” Chloe was already turning away, heading back toward the service station.
“Is that so? Mr. Franco assured me that there would be no problem with us dropping by today. Should I give him a call? I’m sure he can sort this out.” Stephen had his phone out already and looked as if he was flipping through his contacts. Chloe turned, a strange look of horror on her face, and lunged toward him, clamping her well-manicured fingers around the phone.
“Oh no, that won’t be necessary.” Her voice was clipped and hurried. “You should have said you were personal friends of Mr. Franco.”
Stephen laughed and shook her off. “I guess I should have started with that. I can give you my customer ID number if you like?”
“Oh no, that won’t be necessary. I trust you.” Chloe winked at him, and taking us each by the hand, led us into the cobalt room.
I don’t quite know what happened. I think that maybe Chloe had slowed down time because there was no way we had spent only a couple hours in the shop. I tried on close to a million outfits and had my hair and makeup redone at least fourteen times. Each time, Stephen would glance at me and shake his head. He would murmur something along the lines of, “oh no, that won’t do at all. Those colors are much too memorable.” Then it was back to the makeup mines.
He succeeded in making me, Abby Banks, never want to shop for clothing again. That was some feat since I was in one of the most posh and expensive places in all of Chicago with an unlimited budget. Now, I couldn’t wait to get out of the damn place and back into the real world where a terrorist army was trying to hunt me down and give all of my inside bits to my deranged mother.
Then again, if I had to admit it, the clothes were a little much for me. From the first tank top they handed me to the latest trendy pair of jeans, I felt really out of place. My mother, by whom I mean Esmeralda Banks and not the deranged psycho out to kill me, never really dressed up or had me dress up for that matter. It wasn’t like we were poor or anything. It was more that my closet contained an inordinate amount of big box store jeans, knock-off tennis shoes, and less than brightly colored t-shirts.
The other problem was that many of these clothes would have worked on someone a little more endowed than I was. Maybe someone with a bit more junk in the trunk perhaps, a little more full-bodied? I was not that, and though these clothes clung to me in all the right places, they just made me more self-conscious of my distinct lack of curves.
So yeah, I was pretty much done. Here these people were giving a super human effort to transform plain old Abby Banks into glamour star, and it just embarrassed me. I was right about to go tell this to Stephen and Chloe and the whole lot of them when Stephen, clad in a simple blue v-neck and stonewashed jeans, looked up from his magazine and smiled.
“Magnifique.” He thought I looked good? I stared at him, open-mouthed, for a minute. He made a little twirling motion with his slender fingers.
I tried to say something, anything, but my voice had disappeared itself. I didn’t know how it could have done so without my knowledge, but for some reason, the gift of gab had evaded me. I was wearing a black tank top under a thin black jacket that was little more than a pair of long sleeves. A red skirt with painted roses was tied around my waist with a large black belt that resembled more of a ribbon than anything else.
I looked back toward Stephen, but he was no longer sitting there. I whirled around to find him, but before I knew what was happening, Stephen was next to me, spinning me with one of those dance moves that makes it so you either move with your partner or crumple to the floor in a pile of fabric and flailing limbs. My skirt fluttered around my legs as I spun in a wide arc. He flicked his wrist and reeled me back in until we were close together.
His breath was warm against my cheek as I gazed up at him. I could feel the heat of his perfect body pressed against me. I started to close my eyes and lean toward him when a cough made the whole spell shatter. It was one of those polite little sounds meant to draw the attention to oneself without being rude.
Color rose on my cheeks as I looked around to see Chloe watching us with a bemused expression on her face. Stephen smiled even as I pushed him away and backed a few steps from him. I swallowed and tried to catch my breath while my heart pounded in my chest like a runaway locomotive. The back of my feet struck something, and the floor slipped out from under me.
I screamed, my arms flailing like miniature windmills as I toppled over backwards over a bench. Fortunately, I landed on something soft. I think that was the only reason I didn’t smash my skull into little bits on the white marble floor. I sucked in a loud breath and rolled over onto my stomach, trying to think of a way to play off my innate klutziness.
An unmoving, bloody face stared back at me. A twisted gash rent the body in front of me from shoulder to crotch, spilling fluid all over the floor. With horror, I looked down at my clothes and saw I was covered in blood. Pieces of mashed, I’m not sure what, clung to my skin, and I had to resist the urge to vomit.
The feeling swelled up from the center of my stomach, and I think the only thing that stopped me from losing my lunch all over the corpse was that it’d require me to stop screaming. I hadn’t even realized I’d started screaming.
“Abby!” Stephen yelled, and I barely heard him. I looked up blankly and felt my mouth move awkwardly. I think I was trying to point out the body to him. I also think he probably knew about it already.
He scrambled toward me, one perfect hand outstretched. He wrapped his fingers around my blood-soaked sleeve and pulled me to my feet with a grunt. He had some sort of shiny object in his other hand, though I couldn’t quite make out what it was.
Stephen pulled me behind him. That was when I realized there wasn’t just one body in this place. There were at least six more corpses littering the walkway. Most of them were workers, faces frozen in shock. There was one that looked different.
I glanced back at Stephen and saw two more men dressed similarly standing in front of him. He let go of my hand and brought both of his hands up in front of his body like one of those English boxers in the movies.
The two men looked at each other. One of them grabbed Chloe by the arm and tried to fling her toward Stephen. Yet even as he did so she sort of spun her body in an arc, her hand latching down on the man’s wrist. Before I even knew what was happening she had slammed the guy face first into the marble with a sickening thud.
As she did so, Stephen had launched himself forward, his left fist lashing out in an arc that caught the other man on the side of the head. He sort of listed sideways as Stephen turned and drove his other hand into the man’s throat.
Before the guy had even hit the floor, Chloe had grabbed me by the wrist and was tugging me down the hall.
“Careful, if those three got this far, there’s got to be a lot more of them. No one makes it this far into Le Château without an army,” Chloe said. I glanced over my shoulder and saw Stephen taking up a position behind us. I guess Chloe was on our side?
“Unfortunately, that’s just what her mother has done. I can’t believe they already found us… we just touched down a couple hours ago. She must be more desperate than we thought.” Stephen’s voice was strained as though he was trying to make sense of what had just happened.
Chloe stopped so suddenly that I ran into her back. She turned and glanced from me to Stephen and then back. “I heard you call her Abby before. Is this Abby Banks? You can’t mean to say you actually brought the Abby Banks to Chicago.”
Stephen shrugged his shoulders, and without stopping, grabbed my hand and pulled me past Chloe. “This is where Central said to hide her. I’m just following orders.”
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