“And he thought Dean was someone he could reshape. Boy, did he get that wrong,” Colin said. “Well, are you going to say it?”
“What?” I asked. “The way he was acting was starting to get to me too. But I … I can’t help but feel a little sorry for him. He’s probably smart enough to have been running the CS someday without … Wait. Where is Nathan?” I asked Hank and Archer.
Hank hung his head while Archer said, “Gone. By the time we could send someone to where you left him, we couldn’t find a trace of him.”
“Oh, that’s going to be good,” Colin said.
I didn’t know if we’d ever see Nathan again. Maybe he would change. Or maybe not. Or perhaps he’d try this stunt someplace else.
“Dean!”
I turned to see my dad waving his hands over his head with my mom in tow. She caught me in a tight hug and just about smothered me. Dad kept his hand on my shoulder as if he was afraid I’d vanish if he let go.
“Colin, Lisa,” Dad said, nodding to them, and then he looked toward Archer and Hank. “Dean, you want to introduce your friends?”
“Uh … they’re just some guys who’ve been helping.”
“And who need to find their own families now. Take care,” Archer said. He gave me a two-finger salute, and I shivered. That’s just what Nathan did. I hoped Archer wouldn’t pick up the habit. Hank wandered away from us like he’d never really met us.
“Can we go home?” I asked my parents with an exacerbated breath.
We dropped Lisa off at her place. Her parents ran out to see her inside. At Colin’s house, no one came out. But once Colin went inside, I heard Mrs. Blane’s voice. “Colin, darling! You’re on TV! Come see. You look wonderful!”
The crash was on all the news channels. I got to listen to it on the radio in the car and then watch it at home as well. It seemed worse on the news, with black smoke billowing and what looked like bits of McKnight’s plane spread all over the place.
Mom kept touching my hair and smoothing it, and Dad kept asking if I wanted to talk about it. Becky pulled out her box of teeth and stared ahead, reminding me I’d promised to help her finish tagging them. First, though, Mom made me clean up and eat a bowl of soup—the cure for everything.
Sitting in the living room with Becky, I tried to only tag the animal teeth. But she pushed a human one at me and asked, “Do you think you can get that one signed for me?”
“Me? Why would I be able to get a tooth signed for you?”
She huffed out a breath. “Come on, Dean. Everyone saw you just about save his life! The least he could do is autograph his tooth for you.”
I stared at the tooth in her hand. “Is that …”
“Captain McKnight. The pilot who crashed.” She held up the incisor and studied it. “I got it from Dr. Morris.”
“Our dentist? How does he know McKnight?”
“He was in Australia last summer for a big dentist conference. McKnight came to see him. Dr. Morris is an expert in tooth implants—he’s world famous! Don’t you ever listen to anything he talks about when he’s cleaning your teeth or filling a cavity?”
I stared at the tooth. Visits to the dentist meant I took everything they would give me to make me not think about drills, especially the headphones and music they offered so you didn’t have to hear that noise. The only thing I couldn’t avoid was the smell of drilling out the enamel.
Dr. Morris had worked on McKnight. In Australia. And had brought a tooth home, which he had given to Becky. Figured … Dr. Morris and Becky were both hard-core nerds.
But that totally explained it. I had touched McKnight’s tooth. I shivered at the realization, wondering if that meant I could get a vision from any body part.
I promised Becky I’d visit McKnight in the hospital and ask him to sign something for her—but not a tooth. She’d have to settle for getting the label signed.
Before that, I had another promise to keep.
CHAPTER 21
Squinting up at the steps, I shifted from one foot to the other. Colin and Lisa stood beside me outside the museum. Mom had driven us all here, and I had the feeling that if I hadn’t asked to come here, Dad would have started dropping hints to me.
The sun beat down on us, baking my head. The back of my T-shirt stuck to my skin. I could have wished us into a movie with large sodas and even larger popcorns, but we had a therapy session coming up. And we had promised Dr. Mickelsen.
“Let’s get it done,” I said.
Colin frowned like I’d asked him to tear down all his movie posters, and Lisa dragged her feet like she wasn’t one of the best runners on the track team at school. We headed inside.
Cool air hit us. Our steps echoed on the floor. The museum had just recently reopened after fixing all the damage we’d caused when we’d been trying to keep a robbery from turning into something worse. Of course, we’d then helped the monks rob the place, but it really was more like returning something that had been stolen from them. That’s what I kept telling myself.
We paid the entrance fee and got a guide for the newest exhibit, whatever that was. A couple of security guards started to trail us. Then a couple more.
Colin asked, “Is it just me, or are we being followed?”
“Followed,” Lisa said. “You even offer to touch anything, and I’m going to knock you down and sit on your hands.”
“She can do it now, too,” I said, thinking of how she’d taken down Nathan.
Colin folded his hands behind his back. “Not even thinking it.”
We strolled into the first exhibit room. I’d barely turned around when Jonathan Overton, the museum curator, rushed over to us. He stood in front of us, arms crossed and legs spread wide like he wanted to block us from the rest of the museum. A pinched look tightened his mouth like he had sucked on a lemon sour candy for too long.
“Mr. Blane, Mr. Curse, Ms. Green.” He gave us each a nod, but he didn’t say anything like “nice to see you again” or “how good you’ve come to improve your minds with a visit.”
We all nodded back to Overton.
“You aren’t staying long,” he said. He made it sound like a fact, not a bit of a question in there.
“Uh … Dr. Mickelsen said we should come by.”
“So he’s trying to get rid of you too?”
We swapped looks again. A family came into the room, and Overton smiled at them. He dropped his voice and stepped closer. “A few words of advice. The publicity for the museum is more than I could ever have asked for. We have set new records for visitors, and our donors are happy—for now.”
“Uh, we just—”
“Mr. Blane, I am speaking.” Overton narrowed his eyes. “You three are like locusts, a plague, a walking invitation to trouble.”
Lisa’s chin came up. “Locusts are grasshoppers, and a comparison implies we eat everything in sight.”
Way to go, Lisa, I thought.
Overton’s mouth pinched even tighter. The family left the exhibit room, leaving us with Overton and his security squad. “I don’t know everything about your involvement with what happened with our theft a while back, but I do know you were involved. That I don’t know to what extent, and that your mother, Mr. Curse, is someone I greatly respect are the only reasons your names were not passed along to the authorities. I forgive you, in essence, only due to the fact that our recovery is better than expected. I will not tempt fate with a second … incident. I invite you to leave. Now. This offer shall not be repeated.”
I nudged Colin and gestured to Lisa. We’d come. We’d seen the place. We could get outta here before an arrest followed.
We trailed out the way we came. Colin couldn’t make it to the entrance without some gesture. He touched one of the display cabinets. Alarms went off. Guards started running. We ran, too, and got outside and back into the hot afternoon sun before anything else happened.
I leaned against a tree to catch my breath. I saw Overton standing at the entrance just inside, his arms still
crossed. I was pretty sure my museum-visiting days had ended.
A dark head of hair with highlights caught my eye. Turning, I saw Rylee and Rodney heading to the museum. Rylee? With Rodney? They weren’t holding hands or anything, but Eric wasn’t around. Rylee was talking away to Rodney about something. I couldn’t hear what she was saying, but Rodney had this look on his face like Rylee could do anything and he’d think it was the coolest thing since ice cream was invented.
I shook my head.
I wasn’t ever going to understand Rylee. But then they’d both just gone through something horrible. Maybe they both needed someone to talk to. Maybe the fact that Rodney hardly spoke made him a good listener.
Colin shoved the exhibit guide at me. I thumbed through it and read it aloud. “Precious stones from around the world.”
“As in diamonds,” Colin explained. “Overton probably thought we were casing the place for our next robbery.”
“Oh, look, there’s Rylee. Hi, Rylee.” Lisa waved. Rylee waved back. I slunk back under the tree.
I thought about what Nathan had said—about what had happened to his father. If Nathan had had his way, we would be heroes now. We’d be interviewed. Overton would probably welcome us to his museum and give us a VIP tour or something. The world would be different. So would we.
The CS was outside of everything. We were a secret no one knew about.
Would Rylee still like me if she knew I’d had visions of deaths—and we’d stopped them? Or would she just think I was a freak?
“Do you mind?” I sat on the grass next to Colin. “I mean—us being kicked out?”
Colin pulled at a blade of grass, and Lisa shook her head.
“Nathan didn’t believe in sacrifices,” I said, and stared up at the sky. Overhead a jet flew by, leaving a white trail. “He thought CS members should be known and … worshiped.”
“Like movie stars. Yuck.” Colin tossed away the grass. “Seen that, don’t want it. Spies have to be unknown, you know.”
I could see a little bit of what Nathan wanted. It’d be a lot easier to just walk up and tell someone, “Don’t get on that plane tomorrow,” but I thought about the CS name too.
Congregatio de Sacrificio—Congregation of Sacrifice.
A congregation wasn’t just a group, but an assembly who held the same beliefs. I’d looked up the word, and it talked about that. That was important. And I could see now why Hank would be worried about someone like me coming into the CS. They tried really hard not to end up with guys like Nathan, but they still had. So, of course, they’d look at me—someone who hadn’t been vetted, hadn’t been checked out—and wonder if I was bringing them trouble or if I would share their beliefs.
“You look like you’re thinking too much,” Lisa said, staring down at me.
Pushing off the grass, I brushed off my jeans. “I was thinking we should grab an ice cream and write up our feelings so we have them all ready for therapy this week.”
Colin scrambled to his feet. “Yes to the ice cream, no to the feelings.”
Lisa pointed her finger. “That reminds me—you owe me an ice cream.”
“Do not.”
“Do too.”
“How do you figure?” Colin asked.
They took off ahead of me, Lisa arguing that Colin had promised her ice cream days ago and Colin pretending to have forgotten. I thought Lisa’s walk had a new swagger. She didn’t look as beat up about things—meaning she wasn’t beating herself up. Colin … well, Colin was always cool about everything.
I trailed after them, wondering what I would write about my feelings. Maybe something about friends. Or about how giving up one thing doesn’t mean you don’t get something else in return. Yeah, the visions meant I would miss out on some stuff. But I thought about little Maddie McKnight’s face when she’d hugged her dad after he’d gotten out of his crash. I still got warm inside from that.
Lisa called out, “You’re slowing us down! Last one to the ice cream parlor buys! And I’m beating both of you in the next game of Halo!”
“In your dreams,” Colin said.
I nodded. It was all about the dreams and visions, after all.
THE END
About the Author
Steven Whibley has lived in British Columbia, Alberta, and Japan; volunteered in Thailand, Myanmar, and Columbia; explored the ruins of Tikal, Angkor Wat, and Cappadocia; and swum with sharks in Belize. The only thing he loves more than traveling the globe and exploring new cultures is writing books (and spending time with his wife and two year old son, Isaiah, of course). Whibley is the seventh of nine children, and uncle to 30 nieces and nephews (and counting).
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The Dean Curse Chronicles
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And don’t miss the first two adventures in the Dean Curse Chronicles!
GLIMPSE
Where it all began…
“Save them, Dean. Save them all….”
Dean Curse avoids attention the way his best friend Colin avoids common sense. Which is why he isn’t happy about being Abbotsford’s latest local hero – having saved the life of a stranger, he is now front page news. Dean’s reason for avoiding the limelight? Ever since his heroic act, he’s been having terrifying visions of people dying and they’re freaking him out so badly his psychologist father just might have him committed. Dean wants nothing more than to lay low and let life get back to normal.
But when Dean’s visions start to come true, and people really start dying, he has to race against the clock – literally – to figure out what’s happening. Is this power of premonition a curse? Or is Dean gifted with the ability to save people from horrible fates? The answer will be the difference between life and death.
RELIC
The stakes have never been higher…
Fourteen-year-old Dean Curse is still having horrifying visions of the soon-to-be-dead. But after saving his sister, he sees it for the gift the mysterious society intended it to be.
So far, Dean’s ability has cost him a few broken bones and a standing appointment at group therapy. But those are small sacrifices compared to the lives he’s saved. But now, Dean—and his best friends, Colin and Lisa—are forced to make hard decisions that could get them in serious trouble with the law. They have less than twenty-four hours to decide if a few wrongs really can make a right.
Book 4 COMING SOON!
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But Wait, There’s More!
Introducing The Cambridge Files
A thrilling new YA series by Steve Whibley
DISRUPTION
At fourteen, Matt has executed so many pranks - the latest nearly destroying his school - that his parents are out of discipline options. So his father pulls a few questionable strings to get his son into Camp Friendship: A camp that promises to strengthen the moral compass of today’s youth. With a name like Camp Friendship Matt imagines three punishing weeks of daisy chains and Kumbayas.
Within minutes of arriving at the camp, however, Matt’s nearly killed—twice. It doesn’t take long for him to realize there’s more to this picture-perfect place than meets the eye. What sort of summer camp has programs in forging passports? Why do they have endless fight training, and weapons drills, and what is with the hidden rooms? Matt wonders if his parents realize they’ve enrolled him in what seems to be some kind of freakish, elite spy school.
What Matt doesn’t yet know - and is soon to find out - is that Camp Friendship’s ultimate purpose is far more sinister than he could possibly have imagined. With each dot he connects, he begins to understand that in the end he’ll be left with two choices: pull the prank of a lifetime to escape this place…or die trying.
More Ca
mbridge Files coming soon!
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