Quantum (5 page)

H
e was cute. Especially beaming like that–he looked really happy to see me. I almost let my guard down and my lips twitched wanting to smile right back at him. But I didn’t.
Poppet
? He was clearly demented.

“Poppet?” he said again and got off the bike.

“Come near me and I’ll pound your brains in,” I growled and picked up a large pebble from the walkway–that would have to do. I brought it up over my shoulders getting ready to throw it at him.

“Geez, Arizona! Calm down!” he muttered, taking a step back and glaring at me. His nice smile had turned into a frown.

“Who are you? And what do you want with me?”

He continued to glare at me, shaking his head.

“Look, tell me who you are and what you want. And how do you know my name?”

“Arizona, what’s the matter? It’s me, David. But you know that! Why are you acting so odd? And what happened to your hair?”

My hair? Right, enough! I threw the pebble at him with the greatest force I could muster.

“Ouch! Stop that!” he cried, as he bounded toward me, grabbing hold of my hands.

I struggled to get free of him, kicking his shins and spitting on him–it landed on the tip of his nose.

“Gross!” he yelled and let go of me, wiping his nose with his sleeve.

I bolted. I ran down the street as fast as I could. I could hear him following me on his bike. I turned right onto another road, and kept on running. I noticed a car slowing down and curious glances from the passengers. No other cars drove by; this road appeared pretty isolated. I wasn’t just running; I was sprinting. I kept glancing back, hoping that a cop car would come by. Then I tripped. Stupid rock. I fell knees-first onto the hard concrete, but managed to steady myself, preventing my face from hitting the pavement.

“You, okay, Poppet?” David–I gathered that was his name–asked as he tried to pull me up.

“Ouch! Don’t!” I yelled and hit him. “It hurts!”

“Let me get you to the ER. It’s not far.”

My eyes were welling up from the intense pain in my knees. What if I had fractured them?
 
What if I couldn’t play hockey? Tears started streaming down my face.

“Arizona, I promise I’m not going to hurt you, okay? The hospital isn’t far. Let me take care of you.”

What choice did I have? There were no signs of anyone else stopping. No signs of any cop cars. What if David abducted me, maybe he worked for Raj. How did he know my name? I knew that if I tried to ask him any questions right now, they would just come out in big sobs. And I was in no position to fight him. So I nodded.

He placed his helmet on my head and secured it. Then he gently lifted me up and placed me on the bike. I flinched with pain. Although he looked concerned, he stayed silent and brought the bike to life. I hung onto him as he maneuvered the bike through the roads to the emergency bay at the hospital. We stopped right outside and he carried me in as we were greeted by the hospital staff. I was put in a wheelchair and pushed along the corridor while David explained what happened. I only had to correct him once. He called me Arizona
Darley
or something.

“No, it’s Stevens,” I interrupted.

David shrugged and we walked into an elevator. There was a nice, peaceful silence as we ascended up to the second floor where I was once again wheeled through never-ending corridors. We finally came to a halt in front of a set of double doors.

One of the nurses turned and spoke to David. “Mr. Skoog, you can’t come any further. Wait here, we’ll be about an hour. If you give me your cell number, I’ll call you with an update. There’s a cafeteria on the ground floor.”

David nodded. “Arizona, I’m going to look in on my dad. I’ll come back to see you when I get the call,” he said, handing the nurse a bit of paper with his cell number. “Okay?”

I nodded. I guess it was okay. I’d get the nurses to try my dad. But if I couldn’t get in touch with him perhaps this do-gooder could. Not before he told me how he knew my name, though. Before I could ask him, I was pushed through the double doors into the exam suite.

~

As David made his way to the elevator, he was overcome with a sense of unease. Something felt very wrong, in addition to the obvious. What was Arizona doing back here?
 
She’d been transported back to her family. He’d just seen her at the Halloween dance! Yet, here she was. He needed to talk to his mother. As he exited the elevator, he hurried down the corridor to his dad’s room. The cops guarding the door let him pass. His mother was sitting on a chair beside his dad’s bed, unobtrusively reading on her lighted Kindle. His dad was fast asleep, breathing deeply, his chest heavily bandaged, heaving with every breath. His mother’s eyes widened in surprise when David entered the room. She stood up and beckoned him to walk with her outside.
 

“David, I am surprised to see you. I thought you were going back to the house to get some rest. There’s nothing you can do here for the moment. Your dad’s heavily sedated; he’ll be out for a while. I’ll call you when he wakes,” Inez said.

“Mom, as I was heading back, I ran into Arizona, just outside Dad’s house.”

“Arizona?” Inez repeated, furrowing her brows.

David summarized the events to his mother. “I’ve no idea what she’s doing here. She doesn’t seem to recognize me. It’s bizarre,” he concluded, shrugging his shoulders.

Inez looked grim. It was odd to see her look like this. She was usually a picture of calm and serenity. “I don’t know what to think! I just saw her, safe with her family. How did she get back here?”

“I don’t know, Mom. The last I saw her was at the Halloween party. She seemed fine. I told her about Erica and she was upset for Simla, but didn’t want to get involved. I saw her leave the lake with Kellan. She seemed a bit sad after our talk, not surprisingly. I can’t imagine how she got back here. The portal is inactive, right?”

“Yes. I’m fairly sure of that. It was going to take a year for it to become active again. She must have come through some other way,” Inez mused.

“How, Mom? None of the Wanderers would transport her without Constance’s permission. And Constance would let you know, even though you passed the leader role onto her. So how?”

“David, did she say anything at all to you? You said that you think that she didn’t recognize you. That’s impossible unless she has been drugged or had her memory messed with in some way. Did she look confused?”

“She looked scared and a little disoriented. She did look different. Her hair was light brown rather than platinum blonde. I almost didn’t recognize her at first. She was hovering around outside Dad’s house, which was the only reason I stopped and spoke to her. I didn’t recognize her from a distance. She looked pretty disheveled, like she hadn’t washed in a few days–very unlike Arizona.”

“Where is she now?” Inez inquired.

“Well, she tripped when I was trying to catch up with her. She was sprinting away from me and crashed down pretty hard on her knees. Anyway, I helped her get to the hospital; she’s in the ER at the moment. Someone is going to call me once she’s done.”

Inez ran her fingers through her hair. “David, I need to think. And I need to contact Constance.”

David nodded. “Mom, go. I’ll stay here with Dad until Arizona needs me. I’ll contact you as soon as I find out what’s going on. Go back and find out how Arizona disappeared from there. I can transport her back as soon as you get permission from Constance and the rest of the Elders.”

Inez gave her son a hug and looked in on Kevin before she left David looking over his father.

David sat down and picked up the Kindle that his mom had left behind. He scrolled through the
NY Times
while listening to his dad’s labored breathing. His silenced cell phone vibrated in his pocket causing him to flinch. “Hello?”

“Mr. Skoog, I’m calling from the ER. Are you still at the hospital?”

“Yes.”

“We are done with Arizona Stevens. You can come and pick her up. We tried calling her dad, but he didn’t answer.”

“Okay, I’ll be right down,” he said. David got up to leave, glancing down and touching his dad’s hand briefly before exiting the room. How would he handle Arizona? He needed answers; hopefully she had calmed down enough to be able to talk to him now. He wasn’t feeling confident, though.

~

I hate hospitals, I always have. The smells, the sounds, the people–yuck. If you’re not ill when you enter, you almost certainly will be by the time you get out. Even if you manage to escape the zillions of disgusting bugs saturating the air, some drunk will probably puke all over you. I asked the nurse to wheel me into a corner away from the other patients. We’d been unable to get hold of Dad. He wasn’t answering his phone, as usual. I had found out that I was in California… thousands of miles away from home! So, I couldn’t really call Monica or Christian to take me home. No, I needed to get on a flight. But how? I didn’t have any money. So here I sat and waited for the boy who brought me in here. I should be grateful, but it was his fault I was here in the first place–so I wasn’t–the least bit grateful, that is. Who was he anyway? Maybe he could lend me some money for a ticket back home. If not, I’d have to call the cops or something for help. Just then, David walked though the door and looked around trying to find me. I waved.

“How are you doing, Arizona?” he asked, as he drew up a chair and sat down opposite me.

“Nothing’s broken. I’ll be fine. I’m just bruised pretty bad. I need to keep the weight off my legs for a bit,” I said, nodding toward the crutches I had been given. “This wouldn’t have happened if you hadn’t chased me!” I snapped, unable to stop myself. “This is
your
fault. So, you’ll have to help me get home!”

He nodded. “Arizona, I was only chasing you because I wanted to talk to you. You know I wouldn’t harm you, and, of course, I’ll help you get home. That’s no problem. Your mom and dad must be so worried.”

Mom. Why hadn’t I thought of her? The least she could do was help me get back to Dad. She was in California, after all! “We’re in Mountain View, California, right?” I asked, looking at David who looked perplexed.

“Yes.”

“Well, Mom lives here. I don’t have her number on me, but she should be easy to track down. She works at Ames, I think. Let’s call her. Do you have a cell I can use?”

David shrugged as he handed her the cell. “Arizona, you may not be able to reach her.”

“I will, too. Watch this,” I said, and got put through to Ames.
 
I felt defeated as I listened to the lady on the other end insisting that she had not heard of an Olivia Stevens. Maybe she worked somewhere else. How was I going to find her? Even her home phone was not listed, that’s if she even had one. Maybe she only had her cell. I didn’t know what her cell number was, I had it programmed into my cell, but of course didn’t have that on me… so frustrating. I looked back up at David, trying not to well up with tears. He was sitting back, looking at me intently. I shrugged.

“Do you want me to get you home?” he asked gently.

I nodded. Duh, of course, I wanted that.

“Okay, I’m going to take you back home to my dad’s house. We can wait there until the arrangements to take you back have been made.”

I nodded. I guess it would take a while to get a flight booked. I was in no position to argue, and this seemed like a plan. Or did it? I mean it was a plan all right, but it could be a plan to lock me up again. I was having none of that! I shook my head vehemently.