Edgewood Series: Books 1 - 3 (37 page)

Dr. Anton shrugged. “There’ve been any number of theories. The most likely, in my opinion, is that there’s something specific to that age that causes individuals to have insomnia and gives them the urge to visit the site. It might be hormones or something else in the growth cycle. It’s hard to quantify without study.”

“And why us?” Mallory asked. “There are lots of kids in Edgewood within that age range. Why the four of us?”

“Because you’re special,” Mrs. Whitehouse said. “The chosen ones.” Her tone was the kind used with small children. I’d heard that her teenage supernatural power was being able to heat things up with a touch. Kind of a sad sort of superpower. Good for warming up a cup of soup maybe, but not much else.

Dr. Anton spoke up. “We never know who is going to be chosen. When the time comes, we watch and observe to see which teenagers show signs of exposure. It’s an inexact approach, but it’s the best we can do.”

“Which brings me to the next topic,” Mr. Specter said, pushing his glasses up with one long finger. “The generation between yours and ours consisted of five young people, one of whom was David Hofstetter. All of you met his grandfather, Mr. Gordon Hofstetter, who just passed away recently.”

“He didn’t just
pass away
,” Russ said, his face grim. “He was killed. Electrocuted.”

“Yes.” Mrs. Whitehouse said, nodding. “Murdered by the Associates.”

Mr. Specter and Dr. Anton exchanged a look that made me think they weren’t all that crazy about Mrs. Whitehouse either. I felt a rush of sympathy for her, wondering if she was the equivalent of the nerdy kid you find in nearly every circle of friends. The one you can’t quite shake. I hadn’t been to an actual school in more than four years, but I still remembered how the social scene worked. I just didn’t know it carried over into adulthood.

Mr. Specter said, “That’s a fair assumption. All five of them—they’d now be in their early thirties—are missing or presumed dead, including David Hofstetter. David’s grandfather, Gordon Hofstetter, was convinced his grandson did not die in a car accident as was commonly believed. For the last sixteen years, he’s been determined to find out what really happened. We believe he got too close to the truth.”

“Why would they electrocute the old guy?” Jameson asked. This time he sounded more curious than snarky. “If the Associates are so powerful, why not make it look like a heart attack or an accident? Something less likely to attract attention?”

Mr. Specter exhaled loudly. “Good question. Maybe to serve as a cautionary tale for others?” Rosie got up to hand him a glass of lemonade, but he shook his head. “And it
should
serve as a cautionary tale for all of us. These are serious people. You don’t want to publicly cross them. That was Mr. Hofstetter’s downfall. He was making phone calls to the FBI and writing letters to his congressman and I’m not sure what else. All of us tried to warn him, but he wouldn’t hear it.”

“May he rest in peace,” Rosie said, taking a sip of her lemonade.

“Amen to that,” said Mrs. Whitehouse.

“Which brings us to the reason I asked you all here tonight,” Mr. Specter said. “We have reason to suspect that Mr. Hofstetter was on to something, that maybe his grandson is indeed alive after all. And we think that the answer lies in Peru.”

Nadia

“Peru?” Mallory asked. I was pleased to see the look of surprise on her face because it meant Russ hadn’t confided in her the way he did with me. “Peru like in South America?”

“What other Peru is there?” Jameson said, folding his arms.

Mrs. Whitehouse chimed in. “Actually, there are a lot of places called Peru. There’s a city in Indiana and one in Ohio—”

“To clarify,” Mr. Specter said, interrupting, “I’m talking about the country in South America. We believe the answer to what happened to David Hofstetter lies in Peru. Either he’s still alive or there’s other information we need to know. I’ve conferred with others in the Praetorian Guard and they’ve agreed to fund a trip to Peru, under the guise of a high school group class trip. I’d like to have all four of you come along, and at least two adults, preferably three.” He scanned the room to get our reaction. Judging from the expressions on everyone’s faces it seemed that Russ and I were the only ones not hearing this for the first time.

“What exactly would we do there?” Rosie asked.

Mr. Specter pulled a wad of paper out of his pocket and unfolded it, then held it up. “This is a hand drawn map with the latitude and longitude coordinates for three different locations, all of them in Peru. Gordon Hofstetter was convinced that this piece of paper had evidence of his grandson’s existence. I think we owe it to him to find out.”

Dr. Anton took the sheet of paper from him, and examined it, then handed it to Mrs. Whitehouse, who glanced at it and passed it on. As it made its way around the couch, I wondered why Mr. Specter didn’t mention that he’d gotten the map from Russ. He also neglected to tell the group that Russ’s sister Carly had been going out with David Hofstetter at the time of the car accident. Carly and David were in love, Russ had told me. These things seemed significant, but I wasn’t going to be the one to tell. I looked at Russ; his face gave nothing away, but we were sitting so close we nearly touched and I was feeling the waves of excitement that rolled off his body. He was looking forward to this trip to Peru.

Mr. Specter clasped his hands together. “For the younger generation, you should know that you’ll be traveling under the guise of an all-expense-paid class trip to somewhere in the United States. Your parents will receive notification that you’ve been chosen out of thousands of high school students, and that this is an honor that will look good on college applications. We’ll leave a week after school lets out.”

Jameson held up a finger. “If we go does it mean we’re obligated to join the Praetorian Guard?”

“Absolutely not. You can consider this a trial run and decide afterward how you feel about the Guard. No one is pressuring you to join,” Mr. Specter assured him.

Jameson sat back, satisfied. “How are you going to reconcile the fact that Nadia and I are homeschooled? My parents are going to wonder how you came across our information.”

“You were nominated by the homeschooling association. We were impressed by your test scores.”

Jameson nodded. “Okay. If you can make it happen, count me in.” He said it in an offhand way, like he was agreeing to share an order of fries.

“I’ll go,” Mallory said. “For sure.”

“I can make it.” Russ spoke quietly, but firmly.

“Nadia?” Mr. Specter directed this to me, and I squirmed knowing that even though my hood blocked my view of most everyone in the room, they could all see me.

“My mother would never agree to it,” I said, swallowing a bitter lump.

Mr. Specter said, “Maybe if we explain what an honor—”

“It doesn’t matter. She would never agree. I can’t go.” Russ reached over and rubbed my shoulder to make me feel better, but it made things a thousand times worse. I tried to blink back tears, but they came anyway, welling up in my eyes and flowing down my cheeks. I tried to unobtrusively wipe them away, but there was no escaping it. Everyone could see that I’d dissolved into a crying mess.

“My mom was strict too,” Rosie said, clucking sympathetically. “Her eyes were always on me. When I was your age, I wasn’t allowed to go much of anywhere.” She thought she understood, but she had no idea.

“I wouldn’t be so quick to rule the trip out, Nadia,” Kevin Adams said. “The Praetorian Guard has experience with convincing people to do things they might not be open to otherwise,”

“The Praetorian Guard has never spoken to my mother,” I said. Russ kept his hand on my shoulder, holding me steady. They had no idea how neurotic one woman could be. My mother wouldn’t even open the door to Girl Scouts if they weren’t wearing their uniforms. Phone callers didn’t get far before she hung up. She shredded junk mail if it looked suspicious.

“We’ll think of something,” Mr. Specter said, but I sensed he was saying it to placate me. “How about the rest of you? Who’s interested in going?”

“You can count me in,” said Mrs. Whitehouse. “I wouldn’t miss it for the world.”

“Not me.” Rosie shook her head. “I’m afraid I’d have no one to run the diner in my absence, so I’ll have to take a pass.” She spoke like a mother of triplets asked to babysit a few more kids. Not going to happen.

“That applies to me as well,” Dr. Anton said. “I can’t be away from the office that long.”

“No way! You two are unbelievable,” Kevin Adams said. “You’d miss out on a chance to go to South America because of work? Please. Just do what I’m going to do, put a sign on the door that says ‘on vacation’ and close up shop. No one is that indispensable.”

“My patients might care to differ,” Dr. Anton said. “I have a few particularly difficult cases right now. Believe me when I say I can’t afford to go anywhere right now. Lives depend on it.”

Kevin raised his eyebrows. “Alrighty then, I stand corrected. Or maybe I should say I
sit
corrected.” He laughed at his own joke, but no one else joined in.

On my end of the couch, the mood was pretty serious. I managed to choke back my tears, but I was still seriously depressed. I’d known what this meeting was all about before I even got here. I walked through the door knowing full well that I wouldn’t be able to go to Peru, and I thought I was okay with it. But I wasn’t. If I were Rosie or Dr. Anton, I would have figured out a way to go. If all that stood between me and this trip were a few patients on the edge, I would have assigned them to another doctor for two weeks. If I owned the diner, it would go dark. The customers would figure it out and get their coffee, eggs, and hash browns somewhere else. These were small obstacles. Given those circumstances, I’d make it work somehow because this was, I sensed, going to be the trip of a lifetime.

The trip of a lifetime for everyone else, but not for me.

Nadia

Mr. Specter promised to have more details about the trip at the next meeting. All of us lingered for a few minutes, finishing off our lemonade, the women gathering up their purses. Russ still had his hand on my shoulder, but he was looking at Mallory. Because we were touching, I could feel the emotion he was sending her way. Yearning pulsed out of him as he waited for a chance to talk to her. He couldn’t help himself.

I wiggled out from underneath his grasp and he turned as if suddenly remembering I was there. “Are you going to be okay?” His tone was kind.

“Yeah, I’ll be fine. I have to get going.” I stood up and made a pretense of straightening out my sweatshirt, buying myself time, time that I hoped he’d use to offer to go with me. But he didn’t.

“Okay, then. See you later, Nadia.” He got up and went over to where Mallory stood talking to Mr. Specter, no doubt hashing out details of the trip.

I walked out of the room and bounded up the stairs, willing myself not to cry. I hated being such a pathetic, walking disaster. I heard Rosie say, “Good-night, Nadia,” but I didn’t answer. For once I just wanted to be home, in my own bed.

I was halfway down the block, when I heard a guy’s voice call out, “Hey Nadia, wait up!”

I knew it wasn’t Russ, so I wasn’t disappointed when I turned to find Jameson rushing up from behind me. His long legs covered the space between us in a matter of seconds. “Let me walk you home.” His knit cap was pulled down over his ears even though it was a warm night.

“You don’t have to, really. I’ll be fine.”

“I know you’ll be fine. I just thought we could talk.”

I shrugged. “Okay.” This was a new one. Jameson was either quiet or spouting off information like an annoying know-it-all. It seemed important to him that people knew he was the smartest one in the room. Since I liked to keep a low profile, letting him have the spotlight was fine with me. I started walking toward home, keeping an eye out for headlights in the distance. If any cars approached, I was ready to dodge out of sight. “What do you want to talk about?”

“I want to get your take on this evening. Did you pick up anything?”

“Like what?” I stepped over a crack in the sidewalk.

“Anything unusual about the people at the meeting?”

I considered the question and said, “Nothing too unusual.”

“So you didn’t notice anything?”

“No.” Now I was getting annoyed. “What is it I was supposed to be looking for?”

“It’s just...” Jameson paused as if trying to find the right words. “I was hoping you were using your powers to check them out. Frankly, I don’t trust them.”

He seemed to want a reaction, but I didn’t have one to give. All I knew was I was being left out of the Peru adventure. Besides, I was tired and I had to go to the bathroom. “Okay.”

“So you think they’re trustworthy?” He asked.

“I guess so.”

“Well, I don’t trust them at all,” he said firmly. “And for the record, I think Mallory and Russ are idiots. Their science teacher says ‘we’re the Praetorian Guard, we’re the good guys. We need you to help us go against the bad guys,’ and the two of them are like,
okay, where do we sign up
?” He said this last part in a goofy-sounding voice. “Nothing is that simple. How do we know that what they’re telling us is true? They could say anything, right?”

“Right.” Having to walk with Jameson forced me to go faster than I usually would. His legs were so long, I had to quicken my pace.

“Out of the four of us, you and I are the smartest. Agree?”

I glanced up at him. He had an all-knowing look on his face, but there was something else. He desperately wanted me on his side. “Sure.” I shrugged. Why not? I wasn’t the prettiest or tallest or coolest. I might as well lay claim to being the smartest.

“So you’re with me on this? You’ll investigate the Praetorian Guard?”

I stopped walking. “Investigate what, exactly? And how? I’m not going on the trip, I can tell you that right now. While the rest of you are meandering around South America, I’ll be solving equations and writing papers.”