A Quarrel Called: Stewards Of The Plane Book 1

by Shannon Wendtland

  She looked up from petting the cat, who had finally let her scratch behind his ear. “Yeah, probably. Don’t wake Gram and Gramps, though.”

  She didn’t have to tell me that. I didn’t want to explain to Melody’s grandparents what we were all doing hanging out in the middle of the night when it was supposed to be just me and Mel and some stupid movies.

  When I got back with the sports drink and an apple for G., he was busy looking at the scrap of paper that Sam had pulled out of the cubbyhole in the garage. I handed the items to G. in exchange for the paper. I hadn’t seen it yet either.

  Matthew had kept the page in a plastic zipper-style baggie, so at least it was clean and dry, but that didn’t help its readability much since it was a ripped page from a pretty old book. One side of the book page talked about ley lines and nodes, the other side had a poor reproduction of a photograph. Underneath, it was captioned ‘figure 3c; The Philadelphia Stone, circa 1942.’ “What’s the Philadelphia Stone?” I asked.

  “We don’t know. I think you’re the one who’s going to have to answer that.”

  “What, you mean…” I did not want to do this kind of thing in front of a stranger, in front of Lily.

  “Yeah. Let’s go in the clubhouse, where you’ll be more comfortable.”

  “I don’t know.” I snuck a glance at Sam and Lily. “I don’t know her,” I said, beseeching G. and Mel.

  “She’s a part of this now,” said Sam, impatient. “She risked her neck tonight just like the rest of us, and don’t forget that she’s in G.’s dream.”

  G. tried to shush Sam before the cat was out of the bag, but Mr. Smith cut him off with a hiss. We all turned to look at the cat, startled at his behavior. The cat was staring at Lily, his yellow eyes glowing around large, black pupils.

  “I don’t think Mr. Smith thinks I should do it in front of Lily either,” I finished. G. squeezed my hand, but he was still looking at Mr. Smith, his brow furrowed.

  “We need the answer,” said Melody finally. “And like it or not, Lily does seem to be a part of this, so I say let’s get it over with.”

  “I can leave,” Lily said suddenly, standing up with her arms crossed over her chest. “You know, if that would be best. I can tell that I’m sort of the odd duck here, and I don’t want you guys to feel uncomfortable around me like that. I mean, if I’m going to be spending more time with Sam and all.”

  She had charisma, I’d give her that. Whatever she said had a magical effect, because I felt my reluctance fading away, and even G.’s face relaxed a little. Melody shook her head.

  “No, that’s okay. You can stay.”

  64. MELODY

  The group was past the initial discomfort of having Lily around. For her part, she just sat back and listened to everyone talk about stuff that she probably thought was wild and crazy. I was beginning to hate her a little less, and she wasn’t glaring daggers at me anymore, but that didn’t mean we liked each other. And still, her reaction to G. was sort of weird.

  I watched her watch him like she was studying him. Not like she wanted to steal him for her boyfriend, but more like he was some sort of opponent. I found the whole thing weird, but then it had been a weird night, and I could have just been overtired and imagining the whole thing.

  Something about the picture on the torn page bothered me. I hadn’t seen it before, but it seemed strangely familiar. The others had already moved on from the picture, not sure what some weird rock could have to do with anything, and they were thinking that the significance of the page was the printing about ley lines and nodes on the other side. I wasn’t so sure.

  And then it clicked. I knew where I had seen this before. “Hey, I’ll be right back. I have to go get something.”

  “Bring some snacks back, will you?” Sam shouted after me, and I waved a hand to show that I’d heard him.

  I tiptoed through the house, careful not to wake my grandparents, and dug around in my room. I couldn’t remember where I’d stashed the original bundle that we got from the garage, but I was pretty sure it was either in my desk drawer, my dresser, or my nightstand. I did finally find it in my nightstand, the items still folded up in the black fabric, and the photograph stacked neatly beneath.

  Back in the clubhouse, I tossed a bag of chips to G. and another to Sam and sat down next to Tara on the love seat. I nudged her and handed over the bundle. “I know where I’ve seen that stone before, or at least something like it.”

  She took the bundle from me and opened it up, a puzzled look on her face. “Where? It’s not one of the items in here.”

  “It sort of is,” I said, taking the square of black cloth from her and holding it up in front of the light. There in a burned-out pattern was the same basic shape of the Philadelphia stone, and the main lines from the photo were also represented in the fabric. She peered over my shoulder to see better.

  “I see it now,” she said. “But what is it?”

  “I think it’s a map.”

  “But we already know where Orla is,” Sam said. “Why do we need a map?”

  G. snapped his fingers. “The audio from the last séance said something about a vortex in Orla. What if this is a map to show us how and where to find it once we get there?”

  Tara had her phone out and pulled up a map of the area that Orla was in. “I see the crossroads here. And the main highway runs south. But I can’t correlate that to the fabric scrap or to the photograph.”

  “It’s not to scale,” I said. “And what’s this at the bottom? A swastika?”

  “Oh great,” Lily said, finally making a comment. “Is this some Third Reich Nazi hidden treasure map?”

  I couldn’t help but smile a little bit. Treasure would be cool. “I doubt my brother would haunt me from beyond the grave for some treasure… No, there’s got to be something else.”

  “I’ve got it,” Tara said excitedly. “Look at this. Look at this.” She leaned over to show her phone to everyone and zoomed in on the map. “There’s this town down here, south of Orla, called Marfa. And it has two main highways that intersect like a crossroads. But what’s strange is they aren’t just a straight crisscross, they have a swerve to them.” She zoomed in a final time and traced the lines with her finger. “Like a freaking swastika.”

  “Isn’t there some weird UFO stuff that goes on down there?” G. asked. “I think I read about it in that Weird Texas book.”

  “Yeah,” Lily said. “The Marfa lights; strange lights out in the desert, and no one knows what causes them. Most people think they’re headlights from cars coming down the mountains, but my uncle says that the lights have been around longer than cars, so it can’t be that. What?” she said to Sam, who was gaping at her. “My uncle was born there. Big deal.”

  He grinned and ducked in to give her a quick kiss. I dropped my gaze. I wasn’t ready to like Lily yet, and I certainly wasn’t ready to like her kissing Sam.

  “Okay, so it’s a map,” said Tara, nodding to herself. “Do we still need me to do the ah… Akashic records thing?”

  “Maybe not right now,” I admitted, letting her off the hook.

  “What’s this photograph?” G. said, lifting it out of Tara’s lap. “How come you’re not in it?”

  “Oh, this was in the bundle in the cubbyhole. A shot from a camping trip a few years ago. I was at band camp—don’t laugh—and Gram and Gramps and Matthew went camping out to Enchanted Rock near Fredericksburg.”

  “Isn’t that the trip when your Gramps came back, and he was so sick?”

  “I don’t know,” I said, thinking back. “It was right around there, I think.” I took the photo from G. and turned it over to look at the back. A line across the top was written in Gram’s precise handwriting: Matthew, Harold, Margaret, Esmeralda. Beneath that was the date of the trip – six years ago on August first. And beneath that was the mystery date. The one set for the future. I grabbed Tara’s phone out of her hands and slid the page over until I was looking at the calendar app.

 
“Hey!” she said.

  “Weird,” I said.

  “What?” everyone else said at basically the same time.

  “The bottom date here,” I looked at Tara, “the one for the ‘future’?”

  “Yeah?” Tara said.

  “It’s next weekend. And…” I paused dramatically, “Your app says it’s a full solar eclipse.”

  65. SAM

  Lily pulled up in front of my house and let the car idle for a few minutes while I gave her a very lengthy and detailed goodbye kiss. I really wanted to bring her into the house, but Mom was home and it was already pretty late. I didn’t want to tempt fate two times in a row.

  “Your friends are weird,” she said when I let her up for some air.

  “Yeah.” What could I say? I mean, we hadn’t always been weird. As a matter of fact, at the beginning of the summer I would have said we were a bunch of totally normal teenagers. But now? Not so much.

  “I like weird,” she said.

  I smiled and ducked in for another long pull at her shiny red lips. “I like you,” I said.

  “Good. I mean, since you’re going around telling everyone that I’m your girlfriend and all.”

  “Hey, I didn’t actually say that.”

  “You almost said it.”

  I did. Twice at least. I nodded. “Yeah, but we hadn’t actually talked about it so, I chickened out.”

  She traced a finger along my collarbone and down my chest. “Well, consider it talked about.”

  My heart leapt a little bit in my chest and then it began thumping quickly. I felt a flash of euphoria course through my veins, and I dove in for another kiss, this time, sliding my hand down her side, to her waist and pulling her to me. The small of her back was the perfect size for my hand, and as I leaned in closer, she slid her arms around my neck. I felt dizzy and hot and her breath tasted like peppermint.

  When I finally snuck into the house, I closed the door softly behind me, prepared to sneak to my room. But the hall light flicked on and Mom was standing there in the doorway to the living room, leaning against the wall. She had a sort of smug smile on her face, and I knew I might be in trouble just a little bit, but it was the kind that would end with me and her sharing a bowl of ice cream and talking about stuff until we were too sleepy to stay up any longer.

  “Hey, Mom,” I said, glad to see her, even if I was embarrassed to be caught sneaking in past my curfew.

  “Hey, Romeo.”

  #

  I couldn’t stop grinning. Tyler and Colton were teasing me something fierce, but I didn’t care. Lily was my girlfriend. Officially. And she was hot and cool and liked me back. And I had enough money saved up finally to buy a car. And I didn’t get in trouble at all for busting my curfew, unless you count extra stuff around the house like painting the garage and scrubbing all the baseboards, which I strangely didn’t mind because, hey, it could have been worse.

  G. and his Dad were waiting for me in the parking lot when I got off of work. Since my dad wasn’t around and my mom had to be in the office, I figured having G.’s dad along to buy my first car might be a good idea. Someone older and wiser to help keep me from getting screwed by the salesman. I told them I’d take them out for cheeseburgers afterwards to say thanks, although I am pretty sure they would have come along for free.

  We drove down main to the far end, closest to the highway, and pulled into a used car lot. I’d had my eye on a little electric blue coupe and wanted to check it out.

  G. and his Dad walked around looking at other cars while I made a beeline for the blue coupe. It had black leather interior and a spoiler on the back, and my heart deflated when I saw the sticker. Even if I got the salesman to knock a thousand off, I still couldn’t afford it.

  “The insurance on something like that would be pretty expensive,” G’s Dad said over my shoulder. They had walked up behind me while I had been busy peering in the windows.

  I groaned. I hadn’t even thought of that. I stood up and peered around at the rest of the lot. Some mini vans, some midsized SUVs, an old station wagon, and some subcompact cars – none of them looked interesting to me. The only reason we’d stopped here was because of the blue coupe. And I could tell now that was why the guy had it parked out front. “Okay,” I said. “I guess we can go. Nothing else here.”

  G.’s dad nodded. “Sure. There’s a little lot over on Henderson that we could stop and look at. I know the guy who owns it. Maybe he could swing you a deal.”

  I brightened. “That’d be great,” I said. I climbed back into the rear seat of their car and waved at the car salesman who had just started heading out to talk to us. I felt a little bad ditching him like that, but there was no way I was going to take Lily out on a date in a minivan, not even if it had jet engines and could fly. Seriously uncool.

  The next lot was better. The guy came out to greet us right away. Of course it probably helped that G.’s Dad called him first, but even then, he had a much better selection of cars, though most were still out of my league. But then G. whistled low and I looked where he was looking, and my stomach sank, forming a pool at my feet.

  “Holy shit,” I whispered. “Is that what it looks like?”

  “Let’s check it out,” G. said.

  While the men were talking on the other end of the lot, G. and I crept closer to the car. The car. The one from our dream. I’m not sure why we were being so cautious, but I think it had to do with not really believing it was real. But there it was, forcing us to confront the fact that my dreams sometimes came true and that G.’s dream might, too.

  “It looks just like I remember,” G. said, sliding his hand over the leather upholstery.

  It had a convertible rag top, caramel-brown leather interior, and wood-grain details. It was an older vehicle, not old enough to be a classic, and a little too old to be cool, but someone had taken really good care of it.

  I looked at G. “Now what?” I asked him.

  He shrugged. “I guess you buy it, right?”

  “But what if I don’t want that particular dream to come true?”

  He looked at me, and then at the car, and then stared off into the distance. “I don’t know, man. Are you supposed to buy the car because we had the dream? Or is the dream because you buy the car? Either way… you’re driving the car off this lot. I’d bet on it.”

  I didn’t like the sound of that. It made me feel like I had no choices, like ‘free will’ didn’t exist. Like Melody was going to be swallowed up by tentacles and there was nothing I could do about it. “Fuck this,” I said through gritted teeth. I spun around on my heel and looked at the rest of the cars in the lot. At this point I needed a car, any car but the convertible.

  I wheeled to my right and saw a red four-door sedan. It didn’t completely suck. I walked over and took a look inside – the interior was shredded. I moved on down the line and looked at another sedan. This one was gray, a little older than the red one, but its inspection report said that it had been in an accident and had its frame repaired. I knew that was bad news. I didn’t need anyone to tell me that.

  “What about this one?” G. said, leaning over to look into the passenger window of a white midsized SUV with kick-ass rims.

  “That’s not bad,” I said wandering over for a closer look. It was in good shape. The sticker said it was in my price range. It was an automatic and the cloth interior was gray and didn’t look too ratty. “Good eye,” I said to G. “Hey,” I shouted, “What about this one?”

  G.’s dad and the salesman wandered over, still lost in conversation, and it took them a moment to look at the SUV before the salesman shook his head.

  “Sorry, I can’t. Unless you want to come back tomorrow? This one is on hold until closing time; a lady came in today and started the paperwork on it already. I’m just waiting for her to bring in a cashier’s check.”

  “You don’t take cash?” I said.

  “Oh, I do. But most people don’t like to carry it around. In fact, I prefer cash, because
it saves me some steps when it comes time to take care of all the bookwork on my end.”

  I sighed. I was feeling stymied.

  “What about this one, Sam?” asked G.’s dad, looking at the convertible.

  I ignored the sudden grin on G.’s face and just shook my head. “I didn’t see a sticker on it, but I’m pretty sure it’s out of my price range.”

  “There’s no sticker for it because it’s going to auction tomorrow.”

  “Why is it going to auction?” G.’s dad asked. “Is there something wrong with it?”

  “No, nothing like that. It belonged to my brother-in-law’s estate, and he died recently. But I make it a point not to sell cars from my friends or relatives here – conflict of interest, you know.”

  “So then you won’t sell it to Sam?” G. asked, avoiding my dirty look.

  “No, I’m afraid not. But if he’s really interested in it, he can go to the auction and bid on it tomorrow.”

  #

  “It’s the perfect plan,” G. said later on. “If you don’t win the auction then… you did your part to fulfill destiny and maybe we can forget about our dream. If you do win the car, it’s because you’re meant to drive it. We’re meant to take it to Orla.”

  I didn’t like that he was making sense. And it was a sweet ride. “I don’t know,” I said, pushing the fries around on my plate.

  “What are all the glum looks for?” G.’s dad asked, sliding into the booth, soda refill in hand.

  “Sam’s a little bummed about the car shopping. I’m trying to get him to go to the auction tomorrow.”

  G.’s dad took a long pull at his soda straw. “Why not? If the car’s meant for you, then you’ll win the auction. If not, then no loss, right? Nothing ventured, nothing gained.”

  “Fine,” I said, looking at G. “But you have to come with me.”

  He shrugged. “Sure, man. Why not? Spending a day helping to spend someone else’s money? How could that be a bad time?” He grinned and stuffed a ketchup-drenched fry into his mouth.

  66. TARA