Nancy Lake and the Case of the First Date

by Jennifer Harlow

  “Beatrice,” he says as I pass, “do you honestly believe it’s that easy? To go back to the way things were?”

  I stop at the door. “What do you mean?”

  “You said it yourself—something has broken inside of you. To be frank, I’m fairly sure it has. I’ve seen it before. The part of yourself you’ve worked your entire life to contain is out of your control now. What happened with your brother tonight, I’m afraid, may become a daily occurrence unless you learn to harness your power. I fear that you will be unable to resume your position at the school. What if a child or parent brings about your anger? You could kill them.”

  He might as well have punched me in the stomach. His words knock what little breath I have out of me. Because he’s right. Lord knows the kids do tend to infuriate me on an hourly basis. Some days it takes all my strength not to scream at them for talking back or disrupting class or just behaving like a bunch of unruly nine year olds. Not to mention the parents! One time during a particularly intense parent/teacher conference, I noticed the bookcase in the back of the room floating a foot in the air. I counted to ten and it dropped. Next time I could lose it and brain an irritating parent with a desk. Or worse.

  No. I feel like slumping to the floor in a heap. I love teaching. I’ve always wanted to be a teacher. The smiles on the kids’ faces when they’re working on an art project, the pride when they master a new math or reading skill, the thrill of reaching them, of shaping them into productive, good, decent human beings. I don’t want to give that up. It’s all I have left. After this horrific day and the last grueling confession, I don’t even have tears left.

  “I’m sorry, Beatrice,” he says. “Perhaps after you complete your training you can return without fear of harm coming to the children.” I hear him taking a step toward me. “I’m sorry. I am. But I want to help you.”

  I spin around. “For a price.”

  “Everything has a price. We’re talking about millions in taxpayers’ money to train you. They should get something in return, no?”

  “They should get my life?” I ask incredulously.

  “You’ll be instructed in weapons, combat, and—most importantly—your gift. You’ll be working with some of the strongest creatures on the planet. They will protect you, and you them. We haven’t lost a member in over two years.”

  “But you have lost some.”

  “Unfortunately, yes,” he says in a low voice.

  “Then forget it. I’m a fan of breathing, so I’ll just keep my life, thanks.” I turn around again but this time I make it to the door.

  As I’m about to step into the hallway, Dr. Black speaks. “What life, Beatrice?” he asks in the same low tone. “You can’t go back to work. Your family’s terrified of you, with good cause. You almost killed your brother. Who could be next? Your friends? Your grandmother? What’s left for you?” He walks and stops only a few inches from me. I can feel the warmth from his body on my back. “I know you’re frightened. I know you’ve been frightened all your life by what you’re able to do. And I know how lonely you’ve been. Feeling different, being different, having no one to talk to about what you can do. Having to hide it. It doesn’t have to be that way anymore. I am giving you a chance to belong,” he whispers. “A chance to be yourself for the first time in your life. A chance to help

  people with your God-given talent. Will you let me do that?”

  I stand at the door looking into the hallway. My exit. The eternal dilemma: should I stay or should I go? All that waits for me down that hallway is a lonely life locked in my apartment, afraid to go outside in case someone makes me mad and I accidentally drop a dumpster on them. Behind me, a chance at a semi-normal life, that is if I survive. Damned if I do, damned if I don’t. Just … damned. Story of my life.

  I slowly turn back to Dr. Black. “Can I leave anytime if I want to?”

  “Yes,” he says, “but trust me, you won’t want to.”

  “And you’ll help me control this thing?”

  “Yes.”

  I open my mouth to give my answer but the words are stuck. I gulp them down and sigh. Here goes. “Okay, you’ve got yourself a deal.” I hold out my hand and he gives it a firm shake.

  “You’ve made the right choice.”

  What choice?

  TWO

  the government secret

  Two Months Later

  The plane to Wichita, Kansas, landed an hour late, delayed in Washington, DC, due to a severe thunderstorm. The storm came out of nowhere, as they often do there. In the eight weeks I was in DC, the weather ran the gamut from snow one day to clear skies with warm winds the next. Luckily, I was indoors most of the time so I only had to experience it through my window in “The Building.”

  “The Building,” with capitals, just the way they said it, had been my home for the past eight weeks, located in the industrial district of Manassas, Virginia. The only way I knew where the heck I was, was that we passed the town sign. Once I was in The Building, I was only let out on training exercises to run around the woods and work on my marksmanship. The two-story dull white building looked like any other warehouse from the outside, except for the keypad needed to open the door. Inside was something out of a spy movie. There was a lab where they drew enough blood on my first day to fill another person and a gun range where my limited skills improved by all of three percent. Next to that was a gym where I got my behind kicked daily by a Marine twice my size. Upstairs were my living quarters, which looked like a thrift store expo complete with cigarette burns and water damage. The last room across from my apartment was the place I hated most: the gift room.

  I still have a hard time calling it that, my gift. As if the ability to hurt people with your mind is something akin to a Barnes & Noble gift card. We began with the easy items like pencils and cups. These proved harder than I thought they would be. Besides the car and the other incident, I’d never consciously tried to use my gift. It actually took a frustrating week to get the hang of directing my psychokinesis, but all it really took was a lot of concentration. I’d just think pencil, pencil, pencil and visualize the item. Within seconds, it was up in the air. When my mind wandered, it dropped. After two weeks of this, I could just look at the thing and up it would fly. The objects they gave me got heavier and heavier, but we had to stop at a thousand pounds because I kept passing out.

  Then at the end of the day, instead of curling up with a silly book or watching TCM—I missed The World of Henry Orient!—came Monsters 101. I read volumes and volumes of case files and books, everything from the Bible to Anne Rice. There are over a million different varieties of demons, monsters, demigods, psychics, and everything in between walking this earth right now. For the most part, they live under the radar, keeping to themselves. Living lives, going bowling, the usual. When they surface for either good deeds or (more often) bad, they pop up in the chronicles. I had to read about every one of their exploits and see the accompanying pictures. There wasn’t a night I didn’t have bad dreams.

  So … for the past eight weeks I’ve been poked by needles, beat up, and embarrassed to no end. I learned about the scariest things on earth and turned into the Terminator. Then without even a day to collect myself and prepare for the next leg of my adventure, I was pushed onto a plane to Wichita, of all places. And here I thought the life of a government secret agent would be glamorous. Kansas is about as glamorous as a pair of clogs. I miss San Diego already.

  Nobody in my family knows where I am or what I’ve been doing. After my conversation with George (as Dr. Black instructed me to call him now that I’m “part of the family”), I drove to my apartment, packed up everything I could, and met him at the airport. I didn’t even have time to go back to Nana’s and clean up my aspirin-riddled vomit. Everything else—canceling my lease, resigning from my job, selling my car—the all-powerful “they” would take care of. I did leave a note so none of my famil
y or friends would call the cops and start combing the ocean for my rotting corpse. The note was short but sweet: I was sorry for what I had done, that I had to go and get my head together, and not to worry. I knew they would anyway, if they still cared about me at all. I’ve never been the impulsive type. Heck, I plan trips to the grocery store days in advance.

  Every few days I was allowed to call home but had to lie through my teeth about what I was doing. My made-up self sure did have a lot of fun these past eight weeks. I’ve been to the Grand Canyon, Las Vegas, New Orleans, Orlando, New York City, and everywhere in between. Nana loved the post cards I’ve been sending, and so did my friend April. We always talked about driving cross-country together, but she got pregnant at nineteen and hasn’t been able to take a vacation that didn’t involve Mickey Mouse since. She says she’s living vicariously through me now. If she only knew.

  George clears his throat and closes the final file. He’s been reading files marked “CLASSIFIED” since we landed and got into the car, oblivious to the fact that I’m about to leap out of my skin. My foot hasn’t stopped twitching since Virginia and my lip is sore from my nibbling it. George does look at me and pats my hand reassuringly. “It’s normal to be nervous,” he says, “but you really shouldn’t worry. Everyone can’t wait to meet you.”

  “Really?” I ask in a tiny voice.

  “Of course. You’re the first new recruit we’ve had in close to three years.”

  This bit of information does nothing to calm the butterflies in my stomach. Instead, my hands start quivering. I’m the new kid again. Swell. Alliances and camaraderie have already been established, and if my nomadic lifestyle as a child taught me anything, it’s that people loathe letting in an outsider. It upsets the balance. It always took at least a month before anyone would even let me eat lunch with them. And here I come to shake things up with a group of people who fought together and relied on each other to stay alive for years. Honestly, this scares me more than any ogre that might jump out of the bushes.

  The car turns off the empty highway and onto an even more desolate gray gravel road. I understand why Dorothy was so eager to leave. So far, I am not impressed with Kansas. I can sum up the state in three words: flat, brown, and empty. Wichita was a common enough city, complete with skyscrapers and traffic, but when we got about fifteen miles outside of the city center, all the suburbs and mini-malls disappeared, replaced with stretches and stretches of wheat fields and cow pastures. I’m surrounded by those amber waves of grain I’d heard about but never had any desire to see. We’ve been driving over an hour and I’ve counted a total of twelve cars besides us. There have been even fewer houses. Every ten minutes, we pass a farmhouse, followed by nine minutes of cows. The smell not only makes me gag but feels filmy and clings to my skin even after we pass. The city girl in me is petrified. I pout, thinking about how I won’t see the dark blue ocean, the sand, the Coronado Bridge, the gas lamp district anymore, but I quickly regain my composure. Monster-hunting faux FBI agents do not pout.

  “You really have no need to worry,” George says, breaking my train of thought. “They are the best group of people I have ever worked with.”

  “I’m not worried,” I lie. George raises a gray eyebrow. “Okay, I’m nervous,” I admit. “I’m in the middle of nowhere, about to meet people who’ve been together for years. Either of those things is enough to make a girl apprehensive. I mean, where are all the people? If it were any more isolated we’d be on the friggin’ moon!”

  George chuckles. “Yes, it’s isolated, but that’s the exact reason we chose it. There isn’t a neighbor for ten miles in any direction, which allows for a certain degree of privacy required by some of our members.”

  My heart rate jumps a notch. “Is there anything around? A movie theater? Grocery store? Hair salon?”

  “Beatrice, calm down! I understand this is a bit daunting for you, but there is really no need to worry. There is a town ten miles away, equipped with all the luxuries. A movie theater, yes, and a grocery store. And if there is anything you need, we can get it for you.”

  “So I’m allowed to leave the house?”

  “Of course, but if you’re needed, you are required to report right away. You’re not a prisoner, Beatrice.”

  “Just a government secret.”

  George nods and turns toward the window. I do the same. Almost immediately, I see something strange, something I haven’t seen since we landed. Green. Trees and grass in and around the brown, like an oasis in the desert. It starts slowly, with just a few oak trees on the side of the road. Quickly all the brown disappears and all that remains is green grass and trees, lots of trees. Maybe we aren’t in Kansas anymore, Toto.

  “The designer of the compound was originally from New En­gland,” George explains. “He found the flatness of the area disconcerting. The trees give it a more … homey feeling, no?”

  “I guess,” I say.

  Out of nowhere, an eardrum-bursting sound of a jet engine booms above us. My jangled nerves can’t take it anymore. I screech and jump like an idiot. As I look out my window, a small jet cuts across the sky above the trees and disappears behind them.

  “Oh good, they’re here,” George says. “I was worried they wouldn’t make it back for your arrival.”

  “They’re on the jet?”

  “Of course. You didn’t think we’d drive an hour to the airport every time we needed to go somewhere? That’s the whole point of having our base in Kansas—a quick deployment. It takes approximately two and a half hours to fly anywhere in America from here, except Hawaii or Alaska. We own the airstrip and hangar two miles away.”

  “You have your own airplane?” I ask, my eyes bugging out of my head. I was eighteen before I got to fly anywhere (one of the joys of being poor) and these people have their own airplane?! Maybe it’s like the one Britney Spears has. I wonder if we have our own private flight attendants. Heck, what I really wonder is if I can borrow it sometime.

  “The government is very generous.”

  “I’ll say.”

  We drive for another minute down the wooded gravel path before I can see what appears to be a wrought iron fence complete with pivoting security cameras, red signs warning off trespassers, and a slight buzzing coming from the fence. It must be electric. Not exactly subtle. The driver punches the code into the black box and the gate opens.

  “The locals give you a lot of trouble?” I ask.

  “No.”

  “This is a secret government facility, right?”

  George smiles. “Of course.”

  “Well, this is exactly what I’d expect a secret government facility to look like. The people in town don’t suspect anything?”

  “They suspect, but nothing more. To them this is a private institute where troubled individuals come to receive treatment. If anyone asks—and they won’t—you suffer from depression and have come to get better.”

  Not too far from the truth.

  The car slowly creeps up the gravel driveway. Within seconds I see what upon first glance reminds me of one of those estates Jane Austen’s heroines always live in. It’s a flipping estate. An estate! The gray stone building in the Georgian fashion, a perfect rectangle three stories tall with a row of windows spread out in a straight line across each floor. As we move along the circular driveway—which includes a bubbling three-tiered gray fountain in the middle, by the way—I notice wide stone steps leading up to a set of brown double doors. I half expect Mr. Darcy to throw open the doors—dressed in that wet white shirt of his, natch—and offer us tea. As we curve along the drive, I see that behind the mansion lies a wide patch of grass that dead-ends at a forest. Nice.

  “Welcome to your new home.”

  The driver parks the car right in front of the stone steps. I hop out of the car and just stare up at the enormous building with my mouth open. It’s even bigger than I thought. Looking up
at it, it’s twice as tall as I had guessed.

  “How big is this place?” I ask with more than a little awe in my voice.

  “Five stories, with two floors underground. On the first floor, there is a library, sitting room with television, video games, and every electronic marvel designed to pass time. Behind the stairs to the left is the billiard room, and beyond that is the movie theater. Back to the right of the stairs is the kitchen. Three times a week, when not on an operation, a chef comes and prepares dinner. The top floors are the bedrooms. There are eleven in total, each with its own private bath. Subbasement One houses our laboratory, meeting room, and an additional bedroom. Subbasement Two is used for training, and you’ll find it resembles your last residence a great deal. Firing range, workout space, and of course, ability training.”

  I pry my eyes from the house and over to George. He’s grinning from ear to ear, just like an artist when he looks at a piece he’s extremely proud of. I can’t help but smile too. Maybe this won’t be all that bad. Private jet, mansion to live in, and my own chef. Maybe I haven’t made an epic mistake, as I’ve convinced myself I have over the last two months. Maybe everything will actually be all right.

  Yeah. Right.

  Excerpt from What’s a Witch To Do?

  SAturday To Do:

  Hem Sophie’s skirt

  Go to work

  Resupply herbs

  Confirm hall and playhouse for meetings

  Call Jocasta about wedding flowers

  Help Cora with her collage

  Go grocery shopping