Taken By Surprise

by Jessica Frances

  Chapter Twenty-Eight – The Match

  Sunday, April 15th

  Training is tense that next morning and Stan seems especially testy with us. We’re all on edge, given our task of trying to get to the laptop, and Stan’s mood does little to set us at ease. We do our warm up around the circuit and start stretching, which is when we catch a big break. Stan announces that as long as the rain holds off outside we’re allowed to spend the afternoon out there under supervision. We’re all ecstatically pleased with that news and Stan gives us looks like we’re not all there. I know we’re all relieved; getting to the laptop will hopefully be easier than any of us thought, but I probably would be this happy either way. We can get some fresh air again and this time I won’t get hit over the head.

  Stan takes us the same way Will and I had gone and, while our door had been immediately fixed, the other two Will smashed through haven’t been.

  When we walk past the second desk, I signal the laptop to Rose who winks at me and smiles. We walk further along to an actual proper door where Stan types in a code and we’re allowed out. The part of the window Will smashed through has tarps over it, which makes loud noises as the wind beats down on it. The broken glass has been cleared away.

  Outside, Stan gives Charlie a basketball and his face lights up. He immediately bounces the ball through his legs and around himself. They have set up a portable basketball ring in the middle of the car park and while it looks sturdy enough, I doubt it will hold if someone decides to hang off it like I’ve seen on TV.

  Outside watching us are six guards, all with guns on their belts. A cold shiver runs over my body having all their eyes on us, although I try my best to ignore them.

  There are only a handful of cars parked close to the building. Looking around us, I notice cameras set up on the outside of The Windmill, but they don’t appear to move. The Windmill is a secluded place. There looks to be only one narrow road into here and it’s over a hundred yards to the fenced off gate at the end. Through that, I see part of a road that looks just like any other road in America. On either side of the gate is thick shrubbery that carries far enough into the distance that I don’t see an ending. It hides this place from any eyes and I think if you’re going fast enough along the road you’d probably easily miss the gate. There are no real signs of life around here. The air gives the feel of being too quiet. It all feels incredibly unnatural.

  All of us are taking in our surroundings, except Charlie who is slightly distracted by bouncing the ball complicatedly around himself. Stan is speaking with one of the guards sternly and I imagine we’ll be watched very carefully. I begin to feel doubts Rose will be able to get to the laptop. My eyes don’t leave Stan until he goes back into The Windmill and even though there are six other pairs of eyes on us, I feel better knowing Stan’s aren’t one of them.

  We all stand around the basketball ring and randomly take turns throwing it to attempt a basket. Rose and Charlie are the only ones that actually get any in. I’m sad to realize Will doesn’t really know how to play with a ball. His life has been so deprived and Stan just let it happen. It’s so heartless. As soon as Will went on the street, Stan should have intervened and found him proper living conditions. A kid does not belong on the street.

  Soon Rose and I grow bored of standing aimlessly throwing a ball around so we leave Will with Charlie, who begins excitedly teaching him how to play basketball. I sit over on the damp grass with Rose and look up at the sky. The day is overcast, however so far, it doesn’t look like it’ll rain.

  “Did you see the laptop?” I ask nervously, feeling like I should be whispering even though no one could possibly overhear us.

  “Yeah, I almost missed it hiding under the newspapers; good catch.”

  “Do you think you can get to it?” My nerves break through my voice and I study Rose’s face for signs of worry or doubt.

  “I think I have a good chance. I’ll ask to go to the bathroom or something. They’ll want most of the guards out here with you guys. So, I’ll only have to slip past one or two.” Rose shrugs and appears completely stress free.

  “It sounds dangerous.”

  “I’ll be fine.”

  “There are a lot of guards out here, more than I thought there would be,” I complain.

  “I know, I wonder if this is everyone or if there are still more inside?”

  “I think that Stan is trying to make a show here, scare us into thinking there is no way to escape. I mean, all the guards out here, this is overkill,” I point out. Six trained guards on us four who are untrained and, in my case, completely hopeless in a fight. Plus, they all have weapons. Definitely overkill.

  I look away from the guards and the sick feeling that comes with seeing a gun on each of their sides. My eyes find Charlie who looks like a natural as he jumps in the air and the ball just miraculously finds itself falling into the basket each time.

  “See something you like?” Rose elbows me teasingly.

  “Shut up.” I look away, yet with nothing else all that interesting around us I find myself looking back over at him. He’s now helping Will shoot. Poor Will still appears to be about as good as I am.

  “It’s so obvious he likes you.”

  “Don’t be absurd.” I roll my eyes at Rose. Charlie is a good actor and, while I don’t think he dislikes me, he knows we now have to keep up appearances.

  “Come on, the guy has to think of a reason for the blackouts and he could have said he was just feeling really homesick, that his emotions were jumbled while he tried to process what had been said at lunch. He could have jumped on his bed and pretended he was having a nightmare since he did just have some freaky things happen to him. Hell, he could have pretended to be getting freaky with himself on his bed—”

  “Rose!”

  “My point is, out of every option he had, the only one he thought of was kissing you.”

  “It isn’t like he had minutes to think of something, he only had seconds.”

  “Well, why kiss you then? I was there… I mean, I would have had to pour bleach down my throat afterwards, but the truth is, he’s only ever had eyes for you.”

  “We were in my room; it would look a bit weird for him to be kissing you in my room.”

  “Don’t try and explain this away, Zoe. I know these things, trust me. I mean, come on, you guys share a bed now?”

  “I can’t sleep on mine; not after Drew…”

  “Okay, that I understand, but why did you choose Charlie? You could have asked me?”

  I can’t really remember why I felt Charlie’s bed was the only option. At the time, that had felt right and reasonable.

  “What about the couch? Or you could have put down a bunch of your clothes along the ground and used them to make sleeping on the floor more comfortable.”

  “What’s your point?” I ask her, getting annoyed.

  “My point is that you guys like each other. Why not admit it?” Rose shrugs like admitting that wouldn’t be a big deal.

  “This is not the time or the place for that.”

  “This is actually the perfect time and place. You guys like each other and who cares where you are. If anything, at least this will make being here less hard.”

  “It’ll just make things messy. It’ll make us distracted. We need our full attention on getting out of here.”

  “And if we’re stuck here forever, what will you do then?”

  “I don’t know. We don’t get that option.” I can’t let Drew down. We have to get out of here.

  “I wish we could all just go home, that this never happened.” Rose shows her first signs of stress and it makes me feel worse. When Rose appears untouchable, I wonder if she’s human. When she’s scared, I wish she could go back to being that strong, unstoppable woman I see so often.

  “Do you have someone at home? Your own version of a Charlie?”

  Rose snorts. “No, I have a Dean. If I had a Charlie, then I would simply have twiddled my thumbs and ignored it l
ike you guys.”

  “Shut up.” I lightly shove her, but I don’t feel any anger at her words. I’m beginning to understand that Rose just likes to say it how it is, whether it’s correct or not. “So, Dean, what’s he like?”

  “I don’t know. He’s nice. I only met him a couple weeks ago. Technically, he’s investigating a theft at my bank, but we officially met out at a club.”

  “I didn’t think you were twenty-one yet?” Not that I can talk, when have Dana and I followed that rule?

  “I’m not.” Rose smirks at me.

  “So you met a cop out at a club, underage?”

  “Yeah, well, I admit it wasn’t the smartest move I’ve made. He was pretty upset when he found out. Luckily a bomb going off distracted him.” Rose doesn’t even flinch as she blurts out about a bomb.

  “No one can say your life isn’t exciting.” I roll my eyes.

  “True. If that bomb had never happened, I predict I would have managed to get him to forgive me by now and we would have had our third date.” Rose’s eyes drift away to somewhere else and a small smile graces her lips. A smile for Rose is rare and I take as much of it in as I can. Even though this one is only small, it makes her look even more beautiful. I can imagine many guys falling for that smile. She must be inundated with attention from the opposite sex, maybe even the same sex.

  “So he’s third date material?” I question, wondering what type of guy would hold Rose’s attention.

  “I think he might be many dates material. Guess now I’ll never know how many.” The smile goes away.

  “Maybe we can end this like Drew said and we’ll get to go home?”

  “We’re four people against a government run, rogue agency. We’ll be lucky to get out of here when I get to the laptop. After that, we have to disappear. Even if we manage that and decide we want to try and bring them down, that will take a lot of planning and a lot of time.”

  “Yeah, I admit bringing them down is going be a long shot. I don’t have the faintest clue where to start with that.”

  “So what about you? Was there a Charlie in your life already?” Rose watches me carefully.

  I look over at the boys wrestling each other for the ball while laughing. Will looks like a kid again and I take my time to relish his smile, too.

  “Zoe?” Rose questions again and I grudgingly let my mind drift to thoughts of Joel. Do I want to talk about him to Rose?

  “There was sort of someone. His name’s Joel. I liked him, but there was something about him that scared me. I didn’t know why. I just always had this urge to run when I was around him.”

  “Bad boys, say no more.”

  “He’s the guy that killed my best friend, tried to kill me. Drew told me that in his timeline, Joel and I had gotten married. My old future had me marrying Dana’s killer. I can’t wrap my head around that.”

  “That’s beyond bad boy. No wonder you’re so standoffish with Charlie. So he’s the one they have locked up?”

  “Yeah, I spoke to him after they arrested him. I hate him so much for what he did, for what he took. Then I hear that I married him, I loved him.”

  “That timeline doesn’t exist, though, and in it, he never killed your best friend. He wasn’t a murderer there.”

  “I know, but because a bunch of our family and friends decided to go back in time and change the past, they screwed up so much more. Will lost a friend, I lost Dana, Charlie lost a date. Three lives gone. Joel’s life is now forever changed. He’ll probably spend it behind bars. He had a chance of living a normal life and having a wife and who knows what else. Now he’s a prisoner. Everything is just so messed up.”

  “I know. I hate that this had to happen, but I guess if I think about it, I was able to save a boy because of the bomb.”

  “Really?”

  “Yeah, after the bomb went off, I needed some time away from everything. I went to this park and saw a boy being kidnapped. I helped get him back to his mom and I even got them some cash to start their lives fresh. Who knows, maybe I changed a lot by doing that. A boy lived, a mom got her son back and they get to have a life somewhere else.”

  “That was really brave of you.” I don’t feel surprised by Rose’s story. She has a strength and stubbornness about her that makes me believe she’ll do anything to help someone.

  “Or stupid. Dean seemed to think I was being stupid. Since I never made it back to him, he’ll definitely think I was stupid and now he thinks my stupidity caused my death.”

  “Death?”

  “Yeah, something Martha said to me. She told me that they’re currently under the impression that the drug dealer I crossed managed to find and kill me. They think by now my body is buried somewhere they’ll never be able to find. It’s not official because he won’t admit to killing me because obviously he didn’t. It took them two days to catch him so they have no idea where I could be. I’ll just be an unsolved case, I guess.” Rose looks away from me, but I see the hurt that knowledge causes her.

  “That’s horrible.”

  “I know, that’s why I want to call home so bad. Martha and I merely fight about it every time she wants to talk to me. I don’t see why my parents have to think I was horribly murdered. They don’t have to know where I am, just that I’m alive.”

  I let her words soak in, feeling awful for her.

  “Martha told me my Mom thinks I’ve run away. They’ve opened a missing person’s case on me, but the general consensus is that I’m a runaway. I might have wanted to run away, but I would have never left Drew behind to deal with this on his own. I hate that I can’t be there for him and I hate knowing how much me leaving will have hurt him,” I admit, feeling a stabbing pain in my chest.

  “Funny how so much can change in just a week.”

  “Well, what can we do? We’re stuck now,” I say, resigned to our fate.

  “I can tell you what you should do. Go jump Charlie’s bones.”

  “Rose!” My cheeks go red and I hope Rose keeps her mouth shut when Charlie approaches, holding the ball in his hands.

  “You ladies up for a little two-on-two?”

  “Sure you don’t want to play a little one-on-one with Zoe?” Rose sneers at Charlie.

  I elbow her hard and she smiles sweetly at me.

  “You’ve seen how horrible I am,” I dismiss Charlie’s offer, not wanting to make more of an idiot of myself than I already did earlier when I missed every shot I threw at the basket.

  “Come on, we’ve got a best out of five bet going here. You’ve got to give me a chance to win it back.”

  “Best out of five?” Rose asks us.

  “I’ve sort of beaten Charlie twice now,” I explain.

  “Beaten him at what? Or is this something I don’t want to know.”

  “Rose,” I groan. “No, it’s just the other day we made a bet that I couldn’t hit him and I obviously did.”

  “Good shot, by the way.” Rose smiles happily at me. “And the other?”

  “He thought he had me beat and he didn’t.” I feel too embarrassed to mention I won by tickling him so I hold that part back.

  “You had an unfair advantage,” Charlie complains half-heartedly.

  “You’re bigger, stronger and have had more training sessions than her, what advantage did she possibly have over you?” Rose questions.

  “When you put it that way, sure, I sound like an idiot.”

  “You are an idiot. So if Zoe beats you today, then what does she get?”

  “We didn’t really discuss what that would be.” Charlie looks over at me and shrugs.

  “The last bet, we had dibs on the quilt. Although I conveniently didn’t get to enjoy winning that at all.”

  “You were kind enough to let me have it, too.” Charlie smiles cheekily at me.

  “Boring. A bet isn’t a bet if there isn’t at least one threat of nudity.” Rose speaks as if what she says should be obvious.

  “What?” I gasp. Why is a discussion of nudity coming into
this?

  “Yeah, how about if you win, then Charlie has to streak naked during dinner in front of Martha one night?” Rose smirks at me.

  “What?” Charlie drops the basketball in shock.

  “And if Charlie wins, then he gets a proper kiss; no grandma kiss or peck, an actual kiss from you.”

  “So my punishment would involve having to be naked in front of everyone and Zoe gets to give me a kiss?” Charlie repeats back slowly.

  “I guess Zoe can be naked at the time…?” Rose shrugs nonchalantly.

  “What?” A cold sweat envelopes my entire body.

  “Rose, how about you stay out of this.” Charlie picks up the ball and throws it at her hard; and she just manages to catch it in time before it hits her.

  “Fine, if you want to be boring, then be boring.” Rose shrugs and takes the ball as well as herself over to where Will is standing by the basketball ring.

  Charlie sits down next to me and I try to calm myself down. I will not be getting naked for a bet.

  “I’m sorry I said anything in front of her. We don’t have to do a best out of five or at least not like Rose was saying.”

  “I’m two up, so it’s a bit silly for me to not want to continue.”

  “Okay, so how about we each give each other the consequence for losing,” Charlie suggests.

  “All right.” Charlie remains quiet and I assume he wants me to go first. “So if I win, you have to go a full day without having one single argument with Rose,” I say the first thing that comes to mind that sounds easy enough.

  “Tough one, the nudie run might be easier, but okay. Deal. Now my turn.” He looks away from me and I watch a small smile come over his mouth. “If I win, I get that kiss Rose mentioned from you, however you may, in fact, be fully clothed and I will give you the option of a grandma kiss. I’m not overly sure what that would be, but I assume you will have to remove your teeth first,” Charlie jokes.

  “Seriously? You want a kiss?” I feel unsure about this.

  “Yep. So do we have a deal?” Charlie holds out his hand and I look down at it.

  A kiss isn’t that big of a deal; I mean, technically, we’ve already kissed twice. However, I get the feeling this will change things. The other two were because we had to do them, regardless of what Rose thinks. This kiss will feel more thought out. It’ll feel more important. It could start something that I might not be ready for.

  “You’re leaving me hanging here, Zoe.” He smiles nervously at me and my breath catches in my throat seeing it. I’ve never seen a more perfect smile, not even Joel ever compared to this.

  “Deal.” I shake Charlie’s hand, assuming being two up are good odds for me winning this anyway. Why overthink a kiss that isn’t likely to happen?

  “Good, now our next round is going to be here and now, two-on-two.”

  “I suck at basketball.”

  “Yes, and you sucked at fighting and you’re two up. I’ll take Will who clearly also has no skills and you can have Rose, who doesn’t appear to be that bad.”

  I look over to Rose who shoots the ball into the basket that very second.

  “Who will umpire?” I ask.

  “We’ll play the honesty system. If you foul, own up to it, and we’ll all keep an eye on dribbling and traveling.”

  “Now you’re just making words up, but fine, how do we know when a team has won?”

  Charlie laughs, shaking his head and I’m not sure why.

  “How about we just try and score a shot each. The first team who has two people on their team that have scored a shot, wins. I’m not sure how long we have out here and Rose will need to work her magic soon.”

  “You expect me to throw the ball and it actually go in the hoop? This could take all week.”

  “Then I guess I’ll be winning this round.” He smiles at me cheekily and I bite my lip to stop myself responding.

  “You wish.” I walk past him and take Rose to the side to tell her what we decided.

  “So he did go with a kiss. I knew it.”

  “Shut it. So are you in?”

  “Sure,” Rose says with a shrug.

  “Ready?” Charlie calls out to us.

  “Where are the boundaries?” Rose thinks to ask, something I hadn’t even considered.

  “We’ll just go to the end of this line here.” Charlie points at one of the parking spaces several feet away. “Anything past the ring is out. The sides don’t really matter.

  “How do we decide who goes first?”

  “I think I should go first since I’m two behind.”

  Rose nods to me and I decide that means I should agree, so I do.

  “Ready?” Charlie asks me and since Rose stands over by Will, I stand in front of Charlie.

  I know I’m not ready, but I nod that I am anyway. He instantly spins away from me and after only a few steps, he jumps in the air and throws the ball, which lands directly into the basket. I can’t believe it. How can anyone make a shot like that?

  “Three pointer!” Charlie calls out and gives Will a high five. I notice Will is also looking a bit shocked that Charlie made the shot. I have no idea what a “three pointer” means, but I know it doesn’t matter. Charlie only needs Will to score now and I’ll have lost.

  Rose takes the ball and winks at me as she walks to the spot Charlie had been standing in. Charlie moves in front of her and Will stands next to me, looking lost. I move around, feeling like Rose is taking her time to move and, the next second, Charlie has managed to get the ball off of her. He bounces it around her and throws the ball over my head. I turn around, realizing too late that Will is no longer by my side and has run over next to the hoop. He doesn’t exactly catch the ball, it’s more like he stops it with his outstretched hands and then grabs it from the ground. He throws it at the basket and misses. He has two more shots before I make it over there and another two misses when he gets the ball instead of me. I jump fruitlessly, trying to block him, but eventually he shoots and scores.

  He and Charlie run a victory lap and I narrow my eyes at Rose.

  “What happened back there?”

  “I lost the ball.” She shrugs at me looking innocent—too innocent—and I see through her.

  “Why are you helping Charlie? I thought you hated him?”

  “One, I don’t hate him; two, he deserves to win since he was gutsy enough to actually asks for what he wants and three, I don’t want to go a whole day where he doesn’t fight with me. The day is boring enough without having anyone to argue with.” Rose rolls her eyes at me like that should be obvious. “Now excuse me while I go to the john.”

  I nervously watch her walk over to one of the guards to ask permission to leave. He pulls out a walkie-talkie briefly before he turns around and walks with her back into The Windmill.

  “I’m catching up.” Charlie runs circles around me, laughing until I push him lightly to get him to stop.

  “She’s gone in,” I worry and glance back over at the guards.

  “Then don’t act suspiciously.” Charlie takes my hand and pulls me so my back turns to the guards.

  “What if she gets caught?” I try to resist turning around to look back.

  “She won’t. Come on, I’ll teach you how to shoot.” Charlie drags me over to the ring and places the ball in my hands. He talks about hand position on the ball and aiming before you shoot, but I’m too distracted to follow. I miss every shot.

  My eyes widen when I notice the guards grouping together and talking. Is something wrong? Did something happen?

  “Zoe?” Charlie watches me carefully.

  Two guards break off from the group and head back towards The Windmill. They’re heading back for Rose.

  “Something’s wrong.”