The Girl Who Could Fly (17 page)

    Days turned into weeks and Conrad remained silent and still. Kids began talking in hushed whispers in the dormitory hallway by his room, and Dr. Hellion contacted Senator Harrington to apprise him of his son’s situation.
    “Fine, fine, Dr. Hellion. Thanks for the call. I’ve got to jump into a meeting right now and you don’t need to contact me again unless his situation gets worse. Is that clear?”
    Dr. Hellion understood perfectly. Conrad was her problem and the senator didn’t want to hear about it. He wanted him out of sight and out of mind and her calls were an irritation at best and a threat to his peace of mind at worst.
    Several weeks more passed and Conrad sank deeper and deeper into blackness, until a single flickering ray of light, like a tiny candle on a gusty day, broke through.
Piper had the answer and had always had it,
Conrad realized as he lay curled up under his covers. (
Why, oh why, hadn’t he paid closer attention and listened to her before?)
And if Piper knew, then as soon as she was released, he could ask her, and then he would know too. It was a slender and feeble hope at best, but Conrad clung to it and it provided him with enough incentive to get out of bed and function such that he could attend class again. Each day he found himself sitting on the edge of his seat in a state of expectant anticipation. Was today going to be the day that Piper would return? Would he discover where to look for the answers that day?
    It was a hard winter that year, and the snow got so deep that for a time the facility was blocked off from the outside world altogether. Spring came late and struggled to slough off the snow, but at long last the white cold melted away and a tentative green covered the earth.
    As was often the case, Smitty was the first to see. “It’s Piper. She’s out! She’s out!!” Smitty came screaming into the library. Conrad leapt to his feet and violently grabbed Smitty’s shoulders, shaking him.
    “Where? Where is she?” Conrad hadn’t spoken in weeks and his voice was hoarse.
    “The dining—”
    Conrad ran before Smitty could even complete the sentence. The others were hot on his heels. Myrtle was, of course, the first to arrive and discovered Piper sitting quiet and still at the dining table. A sandwich sat neatly on a plate in front of her and she was slowly chewing.
    Although Conrad was not aware of it, all of the kids had waited for Piper’s release with impatient fervor. More than anything, they wanted Piper back. Nothing was the same without her.
    After the mad dash, the kids all stopped dead, feasting their eyes on Piper.
    “Piper?” Violet trembled, afraid of what might happen next. Piper looked up from her meal and smiled. Relief spread through the waiting faces and they rushed to gather around her, excitedly reaching out to touch her.
    “Piper, we missed you!”
    “We knew you’d be back.”
    “Guess you showed old Hell a thing or two? Huh?” Smitty was overjoyed.
    Piper smiled. Conrad watched her closely. He saw that she was paler and thinner. There was also a fragile quality about her, like she could be blown away by a hard wind. All of that was understandable, though, considering what she must have gone through over the last few months.
    “So what happened?” Kimber pressed.
    “Yeah, where’ve you been hiding?” Ahmed asked.
    Piper shrugged.
     Lily moved in closer and whispered, “Can you still fly?”
    “Fly?” Piper smiled.
    “Maybe you can fly tonight after lights-out!”
    Piper shook her head. “I don’t understand.”
    “You know, Piper,” Smitty persisted, “flying. You fly.”
    Piper became more flustered. “Fly where?”
    “No, you fly.” Kimber helped.
    “You’re a flier, Piper.”
    Looking between the hopeful and expectant faces surrounding her, Piper’s confusion mounted. “What do you mean?”
    Conrad’s heart sank, his worst fear realized. “She doesn’t know what you’re talking about. Leave her alone.” Conrad turned away.
    “No, she knows.” Violet couldn’t believe otherwise. “You remember, right, Piper?”
    Piper’s eyes were blank and her smile vacant. She nodded, but there was no understanding behind it. All of the people around her looked as though they were familiar, but Piper couldn’t quite place them. They were talking so fast and nothing they said made sense. She wished that they would slow down. She was trying her utmost to follow along, but her mind couldn’t quite seem to grasp words.
    “I’m Piper.” Piper smiled at the girl closest to her. “What’s your name?”
     “
My name?
Piper, it’s
me
, Violet.” Violet took Piper’s hand and squeezed it with alarm and fear. “Just think, Piper. Think hard. You can remember if you want to. I’m your friend. Violet.”
    “I’m Smitty. Remember, Piper?”
    “Remember the escape?”
    “And Sebastian and how he sang?”
    “Yeah, we all heard it, Piper. It was so beautiful.”
    “And we’ve been waiting for you so that we can escape again. Except this time it’ll work out.”
    Piper’s confusion mounted. “Escape what?”
    “Stop it. Just stop it. She’s gone.” Conrad banged his fist on the table. “She’s not Piper anymore.”
    Silence fell over the group. Piper returned to placidly chewing on her sandwich. Just like countless others Conrad had seen over the years, Piper had been reduced to an empty shell—a blank slate for Dr. Hellion to write on.
    A bell rang in the distance, calling them to afternoon classes.
    “Better not be late.” Piper smiled. With her hands, she pushed herself away from the table and reached for two silver canes that were propped up against a chair. In all of the fuss they’d escaped everyone’s notice.
    With painful difficulty, Piper struggled her way up to a standing position, heavily reliant on metal support braces that had been wrapped around her mangled legs. Even with the canes and the braces, Piper’s movement was pure agony. Not only could Piper no longer fly, she could no longer walk. Dr. Hellion had crippled her.
    Lily gasped and tears came to Violet’s eyes.
“What have they done to her?!!?!”
    Ten children mutely watched through clouded vision as Piper hobbled pitifully away, bent and broken.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

E
VERYONE WAS late for afternoon class. Normally this would have been instant cause for Professor Mumbleby to become irate and mete out detentions. Fortunately, it had been a busy morning at I.N.S.A.N.E.
    “Class, a new student is joining us. Hiz name is Boris Yeltsinov. I expect you to all make him welcome,” Professor Mumbleby declared.
    Boris slouched at the front of the class. He was a stocky boy who looked to be about nine years old, and was shyly hanging his closely cropped head. His intense social embarrassment was serving no useful purpose—absolutely no one in the class was paying the least bit of attention to him. Lily didn’t care what his gift was. Smitty wasn’t placing any bets and, like everyone else, Kimber couldn’t take her eyes off Piper.
    “Maybe if we push her off something she’ll remember how to fly,” Nalen whispered to Conrad.
     “You’re not pushing Piper off anything.” Violet turned in her seat and confronted Nalen with blazing eyes.
    “Mr. Yeltsinov, you may sit with Mr. Mustafa and Mr. Mustafa over zhere and zhey will assist you.” Boris approached Nalen and Ahmed, who were less than hospitable hosts. Just that morning Boris had been transforming street rats into stone and then lobbing them at local gang members in a Moscow slum. His battle was suddenly halted by a flurry of frenzied activity that culminated in an introduction to Dr. Hellion and a helicopter ride.
    “Now we vill be reviewing zhe spring science projects.” Professor Mumbleby paused to allow for the customary groaning, followed by the rolling of eyes. Neither reaction materialized and the funereal atmosphere in the classroom threw him off. “Uh, vell then, let us begin. Mr. Harrington. You vill be first. Come to ze front of the room and present your science project.”
    Conrad shuffled to the front of the class like a zombie. “Mmm hmm,” Conrad cleared his throat, “my project is on . . . ” Suddenly Conrad couldn’t remember anything about his science project. It had gone completely out of his head. “Uh, my project is on, ah—it’s on—”
    Time bent around Conrad. It slowed and changed. A noise roared in his ears, like a big wave approaching.
Piper is gone. Another one lost.
Conrad saw Piper. He saw the faces of the others looking at him. He saw Boris but he was Ang Chung and then Bella Lovely and so many, many others all at the same time.
    “Mr. Harrington?” Professor Mumbleby prompted.
    “Uh, yes. My—project, my science project is about . . .”
    The roar of a wave that only Conrad could hear hit him full force. He was and wasn’t himself all at once. He was in the classroom and watching the classroom from afar all at the same time.
    “My,
my
project is—”
    And then it happened.
    
SNAP
. Like the cosmos had become a chiropractor, Conrad’s vertebrae popped into place with one swift jolt.
POP.
The wayward pieces of him got whipped together and then rearranged into a new order.
    His eyes refocused and he stood in an endless ocean of stillness and silence.
    “My science project is on time travel.” Conrad’s voice filled with quiet confidence and conviction.
    Professor Mumbleby couldn’t believe his ears. “
Nein,
Mr. Harrington,
nein
. Your science project is on magnets.”
    “No, Professor Mumbleby, no, it’s not. It’s on time travel.”
    “Mr. Harrington,” Professor Mumbleby snapped, “you vill tell us about zhe magnets right now.”
    
“NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!
Conrad yelled so loudly, and for so long, in a voice filled with so much primal rage, that it electrified every member of the classroom. Conrad hadn’t planned on doing it. Indeed, when his mouth closed, it seemed as though it had come from some strange place inside.
    Dead silence in the classroom. A shiver traveled up and down Professor Mumbleby’s spine.
    “My project is on time travel, Professor Mumbleby,” Conrad quietly repeated in the silence. “But you won’t have the privilege of hearing it because I’m leaving. Right now.”
    
What!!?!?
Conrad’s fellow students could not have been more stunned. Eyes widened and jaws visibly hung open in shock.
    Conrad spoke slowly, as though the words were coming to him just before he uttered them. “All of us need to get out. Right now.” Conrad looked into the faces of his classmates. “Right now,” he repeated.
    Professor Mumbleby remembered himself. “Mr. Harrington, you vill calm yourself right now or I vill—”
    “Or you’ll what? Is that what you’re going to do?” He pointed at Piper, who didn’t appear to understand anything that was going on behind her vacant happy expression. “So what. You’ll do it to us anyway, sooner or later. So I say, bring it on.”
     “You have taken leave of your senses, Mr. Harrington, and I vill get Dr. Hellion zhis instant to—”
    Conrad blocked Professor Mumbleby’s path to the door. “You’ll do nothing unless I say so.”
    After forty years of teaching these children, Professor Mumbleby had prepared for everything but this. Students were spontaneously rising from their seats and forming a circle around him. He sensed something in his students that he’d never sensed in the classroom before, during all of his time as a teacher at I.N.S.A.N.E.—the absence of fear.
    “Sit down now and no one vill be punished. I tell you this truly. Jasper, sit down. Violet, take your seat.” Professor Mumbleby acted angry to cover his terror. “Conrad, I varn you.”
    “Then we can consider ourselves both warned.” Conrad’s eyes didn’t flicker away.
    Professor Mumbleby pushed Conrad aside and made for the door. He only managed to take two steps before he felt strong arms holding him in an iron grip.
    “Sit,” Daisy said.
    Professor Mumbleby sat because he had no choice.
    Everything happened at once. There was no forethought, but everyone seemed to know what they had to do all the same. Myrtle got a rope, and while Daisy held Professor Mumbleby, they tied him to a chair. When Professor Mumbleby resisted, Kimber assisted in keeping him still with several thousand volts of electricity. Smitty went for the door and kept lookout. Conrad and the others gathered around the dry-erase board and quickly made a plan.
    “We’re getting out.”
    “How?”
    “We haven’t planned anything.”
    “True, but they aren’t prepared either, and we have the element of surprise working in our favor.” Conrad suddenly got an idea. “What time is it?”
    “4:55 p.m.”
    “Good. At five, the freight elevator stops at every level to collect any specimens going to the experiment laboratory on the fourth floor. If we can get to the elevator shaft, we can use that to get to the surface.” Conrad was already drawing floor schematics from memory on the dry-erase board.
    “I could short out the main power to slow the agents down,” Kimber offered.
    “I’ll take out the security cameras.” Lily was chafing at the bit to be part of the action. As were they all. The energy in the classroom was electric.
    Smitty suddenly jolted. “Conrad. Conrad, Nurse Tolle’s leaving his desk. He’s on his way to the classroom.”
     “What’s his ETA?”
    “Five minutes tops. Maybe less.”
    “Okay, so here’s the plan—”
    “Conrad?”
    “Myrtle will go first.” Conrad drew the plan as he spoke, showing them. “Kimber, you go here and short out the electricity in this grid. Lily, you take out this camera and this camera. Daisy, you’ll run interference—”
    
“Conrad!”
    “Once we get past this checkpoint, it’ll be a straight shot down this corridor and then we’ll crawl through this vent system to get to the eighth level and—”
    
“CONRAD!!”
    Startled, Conrad turned to find Violet pale and shrunken. “What about Piper?”
    Piper had managed to get to her feet and she was hobbling about aimlessly with a vacant expression on her face. Not only could she hardly walk, but she was almost completely out of touch with what was going on around her.
    “She won’t be able to do that, Conrad.” Violet nodded to his plan.
    Conrad knew immediately that Violet was right. It had taken Piper ten minutes just to walk to class, and it hadn’t even been that far. There was no way they were going to be able to get her out in her condition.
     “Nurse Tolle’s walking up the stairs, Conrad,” Smitty warned.
    “What are we going to do?” Violet persisted.
    Conrad hesitated. Logically, Piper should have been left behind. She was lost to them now anyway. But all the same, Conrad now knew that wasn’t the right answer. But what was the right answer?
    “Conrad, Nurse Tolle’s two minutes away, tops. Maybe less.”
    Conrad began to pace back and forth. Should they leave her and he could come back for her? No, that would never work. What about trying to take her with them? No, even if Daisy carried her out, Piper, so thoroughly brainwashed by Dr. Hellion, was sure to resist or, worse, scream for help. What then? What was the right answer?
    “Conrad? What do we do?” Nine pairs of eyes waited on his answer, but he didn’t have the answer. Where could he find it?
    “Nurse Tolle’s ninety seconds out and counting.”
    He had no time. Conrad looked at Piper and suddenly the decision was easy. “Here’s the plan. I’m staying behind with Piper. You guys will go without me. Lily, buy us some time with Nurse Tolle.”
    As simple as that, Conrad had finally done it. For the first time in his life he had the right answer. It wasn’t the best decision and it certainly wasn’t a logical one, but it was the right one.
    Seeing the change in Conrad had a powerful effect on all of the kids. It was like Conrad had opened a door and stepped through it, and his actions somehow invited them all to do the same. It was frightening and new and none of them moved, except Lily, who roused herself to the hall, where she telekinetically stole the file right out of Nurse Tolle’s hand and then tossed it in the air. Bits of paper were suddenly flying every which way down the corridor and Nurse Tolle was frantically waving his arms about, trying to collect them. Lily figured that they had a good ten minutes before he would be through collecting it all. She returned to the classroom to find Conrad trying to organize her stunned classmates.
    “You need to get out now. All of you. We made a plan that will work. I’ll take care of Nurse Tolle.” Conrad pushed a few kids toward the door.
    Still no one moved.
    “I mean it. Go now!”
    “N-n-no.” The trembling voice belonged to Jasper. He was even more pale than usual and he stumbled as he came forward. “P-p-piper said we all h-h-have to go t-t-together.”
    “Jasper, there’s no time to argue. You have to—” Conrad began, but his words fell away as he saw what Jasper was doing.
    Jasper was looking at his hands. Placing them together, he began to rub them up and down against each other. The contact created a light. It was dim at first, but as Jasper’s hands moved faster and faster, the light grew until it was blinding. Then Jasper leaned forward and blew into his hands, which caused the light to change from red to bright white. It became so bright that none of the kids could look at it directly without blinding themselves.
    “What’s he doing?” Lily whispered.
    “I dunno.” Kimber was too stunned to even chew her gum.
    Approaching Piper, Jasper knelt before her. He placed his glowing hands gently on Piper’s legs and the light immediately jumped into her flesh.
    “Ahhh,” Piper gasped, inhaling sharply. The light took hold of her body, traveling up and down it in waves. The force of it was so strong that it rocked Piper back and forth. Suddenly, her canes went flying and the metal braces popped off of her legs.
    At last the light began to fizzle and fade, and then it disappeared altogether. In its wake Piper stood straight and tall on two healthy legs.
    “Jasper, you have the power to heal!” Conrad couldn’t believe it. After all of this time the mystery was solved.
     “I d-d-didn’t remember but I do n-n-now.” Jasper blushed, shyly. “Piper m-m-made me want to r-r-remember. And I know what I’m g-g-gonna do when I g-get out too!”
    “What?”
    “I’m gonna heal s-sick animals ’c-c-cause they can’t t-talk too good just like m-me and I can m-make them well a-a-again.”
    Lily nodded her approval. “That’s the best dream of all.”
    Conrad turned his attention to Piper. She still hadn’t moved and her face remained blank. “Piper?” he asked cautiously.
    “Piper, can you hear me?” Violet came closer.
    “Piper, are you alright?”
THERE IS
a place deep, deep inside every person that is hidden and hard to find. If things get bad enough and life gets too hard, though, some people will go to that place and never come back from it. Certainly, all outward appearances will suggest otherwise. They will look as they always did. They may even act somewhat like their old selves, but the truth is, the
real truth
is that they are hiding in this place deep inside where no one can touch or hurt them anymore.
    After Sebastian was gone and the pain of the M.O.L.D. got to be too much, Piper discovered her secret place, locked herself inside, and hid the key. She arranged herself nicely there, happy to be away from the pain and from the struggle of it all.
    
I plum can’t fathom why I didn’t come here sooner,
Piper thought to herself.
I’ve got it made in the shade in this place.
And Piper could never think of a good enough reason to leave. Indeed, the longer she stayed the more the things of her life that she had cared so much about began to fade and disappear from her memory altogether. Soon it got so Piper couldn’t have returned even if she had wanted to. She no longer knew her way back, and even if she had, she could never quite seem to recall what there was to go back to.
    Unlike the many who had become lost in their secret places before her, a blinding white light came and found Piper. Uncovering her hiding place, it woke Piper with its sharp brightness. It wrenched her back to reality and exposed her to the fact that she was in a room full of strangers.
    “Piper,” the strangers said. “Piper, are you alright?”
    Piper was shocked to suddenly find herself in such a strange place. She was even more surprised to be surrounded by so many other people. Piper had to admit that there was something very familiar about the strangers. But where or when or how did she know them? And how had she gotten there?