by Meg Cabot
Not.
But I didn't have to make it easy on them. So, when I saw them elbow each other and split up to opposite sides of the lake, ready to catch me wherever I tried to come ashore, I did the only thing I could think of:
I climbed the volcano.
Okay, my sneakers were kind of squelchy. And okay, the volcano wasn't all that sturdy, and groaned beneath my weight. But hey, I had to do something.
And when I reached the top of the volcano, it was just in time for it to start spewing again. I stood up there—some fifteen feet in the air—and looked down at everyone, as all around me steam hissed out, and the lava, made of scarlet plastic with a bunch of little lights inside it, started to glow. The diorama's bogus sound track made a noise like the earth splitting, and then a thunderous rumble shook the so-called lake.
"Be careful!" shouted an old lady in jogging shoes, who'd watched from the velvet rope as I'd climbed.
"Don't slip in those wet shoes, dear," cried her friend.
The soldiers looked at them almost as disgustedly as I did.
From my perch, I could see down to the mall's main floor. As I watched, another six soldiers stormed by—and as soon as they passed, Sean darted out from between some racks of clothes in the Gap and headed, a streak of blue jeans and badly dyed brown hair, toward the Cineplex.
I knew a secondary diversion was necessary. So I teetered on the rim of the volcano and shouted, "Don't come any closer, or I'll jump!"
Both the old ladies gasped. The soldiers looked more disgusted than ever. In the first place, they'd clearly had no intention of coming any closer. In the second, even if I did jump, that fall wouldn't exactly be fatal: I wasn't all that high up.
Still, I suppose it looked very dramatic. There I was, this young virgin (unfortunately), poised on the edge of a volcano. Too bad my hair was so short, and I wasn't dressed in flowing white. Jeans spoiled the effect, in my opinion.
Then Colonel Jenkins strode up, pointing at me and bleating at his soldiers in a manner that more than ever put me in mind of Coach Albright.
"What's she doin' up there?" he demanded. "Get her down right now."
I glanced down at the Cineplex. I could still see Sean, cowering behind a life-size cardboard cutout of Arnold Schwarzenegger. The soldiers were milling around, trying to figure out where he'd disappeared to.
Hoping to get their attention long enough for Sean to be able to make another run for it, I shouted, "I really mean it! If anyone comes near me, I'll do it! I'll jump!"
Bingo. The soldiers looked up. Sean slithered out from behind the cardboard Arnold and made a break for the concession stand.
"All right, Miss Mastriani," Colonel Albright called out to me. "Fun's over. You come down here right now before you hurt yourself."
"No," I said.
Colonel Jenkins sighed. Then he flicked a finger, and four of his men climbed over the velvet rope and began wading toward me.
"Get back," I cried warningly. Sean, I could see, had only to duck past the ticket-taker, and he'd be in. "I mean it!"
"Miss Mastriani," Colonel Jenkins said, in a tone of voice that suggested to me that he was trying very hard to be reasonable. "Have we done something to offend you? Have you been mistreated in any way since your father left you in our care?"
"No," I said. The soldiers were coming closer.
"Isn't it true, in fact, that Dr. Shifton and Special Agent Smith and everyone else at Crane have gone out of their way to make you feel comfortable and welcome?"
"Yes," I said. Below, the ticket-taker caught Sean trying to sneak into the theater. She grabbed him by his shirt collar, and said something I couldn't hear.
"Well, then, let's be rational. You come on back to Crane, and we'll talk this out."
The ticket-taker raised her voice. The six soldiers watching me started to turn their heads, distracted by the commotion at the Cineplex.
I looked at the two old ladies. "Call the police," I shouted. "I'm about to be taken against my will back to Crane Military Base."
"Crane," the old lady in the jogging shoes said. "Oh, but that's closed."
"Goddammit," Colonel Jenkins said, apparently forgetting his audience. "Come down from there right now, or I'll pull you down myself!"
Both of the old ladies gasped. But the soldiers had spied Sean. They began jogging toward him.
And the soldiers Colonel Jenkins had sicced on me were almost at the base of my volcano.
"Oh, nuts," I said as I watched Sean get nabbed. That was it. It was over.
But there was no reason to make it easy on them.
"Let the kid go," I threatened, "or I'll jump!"
"Don't do it, honey," one of the old ladies shouted. They had been joined now by some of the high school kids, who'd come out to see what all the commotion was.
The high school kids yelled at me to jump.
I looked beneath me, down into the center of the volcano. I could see a circle of bare mall floor there, ringed by bars of metal scaffolding, which was holding the volcano up. They'd drag me out, of course. But it would take them a while.
I looked up again. Colonel Jenkins's men were still struggling to climb up the side of the volcano. They were hampered by the fact that their wet boots couldn't gain much traction on the slick plastic surface.
Down below, Sean was being dragged, kicking and screaming, from the Cineplex.
I unfolded my arms, perching on the edge of the volcano.
"No!" Colonel Jenkins cried.
But it was too late. I jumped.
C H A P T E R
17
It took them almost half an hour to get me out. The hole in the top of the volcano wasn't that wide. None of the soldiers, let alone Colonel Jenkins, could reach me through it. All my jumping into it accomplished was that it made Colonel Jenkins really mad.
It was worth it.
I sat down there, pretty much comfortably, while they tried to figure out ways to get to me. Finally, someone went over to Sears and bought a power saw, and they cut a big hole in the side of the volcano. They dragged me out, and the people who'd stuck around to watch applauded, like it had all been some big stunt for their benefit.
Special Agents Johnson and Smith were there when they finally dragged me out. They both acted like it was this big personal affront, my taking off the way I had. I did my best to defend myself.
"But I left a note," I insisted as we took off in the carefully nondescript black government vehicle (with tinted windows) that was going to drive us back to Crane, Special Agents Johnson and Smith in the front seat, Sean and I in the back.
"Yes," Special Agent Smith said, "but you took several things with you that led us to believe you weren't coming back."
I demanded to know what those things were. In reply, Special Agent Smith held up the book of photos Colonel Jenkins had left in my room, in hopes of my discovering the whereabouts of a few of its subjects. She'd fished it out of my backpack, which they'd confiscated from me as soon as they'd dug me out of the volcano.
"I was just going to show that to somebody," I said, truthfully. Somewhere in the back of my mind, I'd had this idea—way before Sean had ever called me a dolphin—of taking the book of photos to my brother Michael. I had hoped that, with all his computer skills, he might have been able to find out who the men in it were, using the Internet, or something. I wanted to make sure they were really wanted criminals and not innocent lawyers, like Will Smith in Enemy of the State, or something.
Dumb idea, maybe, but then, I'd learned a lesson or two since that morning I'd woken up knowing where Sean was.
"I was going to bring it back," I said.
"Were you?" Special Agent Smith turned to look at me. She seemed particularly disappointed. You could tell she no longer thought I'd be good Bureau material. "If you were planning on coming back, then why'd you take this with you?"
And she pulled my flute, in its wooden case, from my backpack, which she had with her in the front seat.
"When I saw this was missing," she said, illustrating some of the cognitive abilities that had earned her special agent status, "I knew you weren't planning on returning, despite your note and the fact that that bus ticket you bought was for a round-trip."
"Is that how you figured out I was in Paoli?" I asked. I was genuinely interested in learning what my mistakes had been. You know, just in case there was a next time. "The bus ticket?"
"Yes. Clerk at the bus station back by Crane recognized you." Special Agent Johnson, much to my disappointment, drove at exactly the speed limit. It was sickening. All these semis were passing us. With the exception of the band of cars behind us, carrying Colonel Jenkins and his men, ours was the slowest car on the highway. "You aren't exactly an anonymous citizen anymore, Miss Mastriani. Not when you've had your photo on the cover of Time magazine."
"Oh," I said. I nodded toward the convoy behind us. "All that firepower, just for little ol' me?"
"You were carrying highly classified data," Special Agent Johnson said, indicating the book of photos. "We just wanted to make sure we got it back."
"But now that you have it back," I said, "you're going to let me go, right?"
"That isn't up to us to decide," Special Agent Johnson said.
"Well, who's it up to?"
"Our superiors."
"The smoking man?"
The agents looked at one another. "Who?" Special Agent Johnson asked.
"Never mind," I said. "Look, can you just tell your superiors that I quit?"
Special Agent Smith looked back at me. She was wearing diamond stud earrings today.
"Jess," she said, "you can't quit."
"Why not?"
"Because you have an extraordinary gift. You have a responsibility to share it with the world." Special Agent Smith shook her head. "I just don't understand where all of this is coming from," she said. "You seemed perfectly happy yesterday, Jess. Why is it that, suddenly, you want to quit?"
I shrugged. Claire Lippman would have been jealous of my acting, I swear. "I guess I'm just homesick."
"Hmmm," Special Agent Johnson said. "I thought the whole reason you changed your mind about coming up here was that you were concerned about your family, that you felt they were being tormented by the media. I thought you felt that leaving them was the only way to give them back some of the privacy they so craved."
I swallowed. "Yeah," I said. "But that was before I got so homesick."
Special Agent Smith shook her head. "Your brother, Douglas. I think they only just released him from the hospital. Seems like, if you went back now, he might just end up there again. All those cameras, flashbulbs going off everywhere—that really shook him up."
That was a low blow. My eyes filled up with tears, and I began seriously to consider flinging myself out the car door—we were certainly going slowly enough that I wouldn't be badly hurt—and making a run for it.
The only problem was that the doors were locked, and the button to unlock them didn't work. The controls were all up in the front seat, by Special Agent Johnson.
And, anyway, I had Sean to think of.
Special Agent Smith was still going on about my responsibility to the world, now that I had this extraordinary gift.
"So I'm supposed to help evil men be brought to justice?" I asked, just to make sure I was clear on things.
"Well, yes," Special Agent Smith said. "And reunite people like Sean here with their loved ones."
Sean and I exchanged glances.
"Hello," Sean said. "Don't you guys read the papers? My dad's a jerk."
"You never really got a chance to know him, now, did you, Sean?" Special Agent Smith said in a soothing voice. "I understand your mother took you from him when you were only six."
"Yeah," Sean said. "Because he'd broken my arm when I didn't put all my toys away one night."
"Jeez," I said, looking at Sean. "Who's your dad, anyway? Darth Vader?"
Sean nodded. "Only not as nice."
"Oh, good job," I said to Special Agents Johnson and Smith. "You two must be real proud of yourselves, reuniting this little boy with a dark lord of the Sith."
"Hey," Sean said, looking appalled. "I'm not little."
"Mr. O'Hanahan," Special Agent Smith said in a tight little voice, "has been declared a fit parent and Sean's rightful guardian by the Illinois state court."
"It used to be legal to have slaves in Illinois, too," Sean said. "But that didn't make it right."
"Courts make mistakes," I said.
"Big ones," Sean said.
I was the only one in the car, I was pretty sure, who heard his voice shake. I reached out and took his hand. I held it the rest of the way, too, even though it got a little sweaty. Hey, the whole thing was my fault, right? What else was I supposed to do?
They split us up when we got to Crane. Sean had already given everyone the slip once, and I guess they wanted to make extra sure he didn't do it again, so, since his dad wasn't due to pick him up until sometime the next day, they locked him in the infirmary.
I'm not kidding.
I suppose they picked the infirmary, and not, say, the brig, where I think they locked naughty soldiers, because later, they could say he wasn't being held against his will at all … after all, they'd given him the run of the infirmary, hadn't they? They'd probably say they locked him in for his own safety.
But even though it wasn't exactly a jail cell, it might as well have been. The windows—there were four of them—were all barred from the outside, I guess to keep people from breaking in and stealing drugs, since the infirmary was on the first floor. And I happened to know, from having been in there the day before for my physical, that all the cabinets with the cool stuff in them, like stethoscopes and hypodermic needles, were locked, and the magazines and stuff were way out of date. Sean wasn't going to have much to keep his mind off his dad's impending arrival.
Me, they locked back into my old room. Seriously. I was right back where I'd started from that morning, with one difference: the door was locked from the outside, and the phone, strangely enough, no longer worked.
I don't know what they thought I was going to do—call the police or something?
"Officer, officer, I'm being held against my will at Crane Military Base!"
"Crane Military Base? What are you talking about? That place closed down years ago!"
No phone privileges for me. And no more trips to the pool, either. My door was very firmly locked.
Marco Polo is locked down for the night. Repeat. Marco Polo is locked down.
Or so they must have thought. But here's the thing:
When you take a kid—who is basically a good kid, but maybe a little quick with her fists—and you make her sit for an hour every day after school with a lot of not-so-good kids, even if she isn't allowed to talk to them during that hour, the fact is, she's going to pick up some things.
And maybe the things she's going to pick up are the kind of things you don't necessarily want a good kid to know. Like, for instance, how to start a really smoky fire in a bus station ladies' room.
Or how to pick a lock. It's pretty easy, actually, depending on the lock. The one to my room wasn't very tough. I managed to do it with the ink cartridge from a ballpoint pen.
Look, you just pick these things up, all right?
They caught me right away. Boy, was Colonel Jenkins mad. But not as mad as Special Agent Johnson. He'd been viewing me as a thorn in his side since the day I'd broken his last partner's nose. You could tell I'd really done it this time.
Which was why they threw the book at me. They'd really had it. They intended to shut me up for good this time.
Dr. Shifton did some pleading on my behalf, I overheard her insisting that I obviously have issues with authority figures, and that they were going about this all wrong. I would come around, she said, when they made it seem like it was my idea.
Colonel Jenkins didn't like the sound of tha
t. He went, "Dammit, Helen, she knows the location of every single one of those men whose photos we showed her. I can see it in her eyes. What are we supposed to do, just wait around until she's in the mood to tell us?"
"Yes," Dr. Shifton said. "That's exactly what we do."
I liked Dr. Shifton for that. And, anyway, I did not know where every single one of those men were.
Just most of them.
I happened to overhear all this because Dr. Shifton's office is right next to the infirmary, and that's where they put me after I escaped that second time: in the infirmary, with Sean. . . .
Exactly as I'd wanted them to.
Don't start thinking that I had any sort of plan or anything. I totally didn't. I just figured the kid needed me, is all.
That he didn't happen to agree is really beside the point.
"What are you doing here?" he asked, looking up from the bed he was stretched out on. His tone implied he was not pleased to see me.
"Slumming," I said.
"My dad's going to be here first thing in the morning, they said." His face was pinched and white. Well, except for the freckles. "He couldn't make it tonight because of some board meeting. But he gets a police escort tomorrow morning, as soon as he's ready to leave." He shook his head. "That's my dad. Work always comes first. And if you get in the way of that, look out."
I said, gently, "Sean, I said I was going to make it up to you, and I meant it."
Sean looked pointedly at the locked door. "And how are you going to do that?"
"I don't know," I said. "But I will. I swear it."
Sean just shook his head. "Sure," he said. "Sure you will, Jess."
The fact that he didn't believe me just made me more determined.
Hours slid by, and no one came near the infirmary—not even Dr. Shifton. We passed the time trying to figure out ways to escape, listening to talk radio, and doing old People magazine crosswords.
Finally, around six o'clock, the door opened, and Special Agent Smith came in, holding a couple of McDonald's bags. I guess my days of surf and turf were over. I didn't care, though. The smell of those fries set my stomach, which I hadn't noticed up until then was quite empty, rumbling noisily.