The Marked (16 page)

“Hey, Cam.” I leaned on the door frame and checked the hall for teachers. It was study hours, and girls weren’t allowed in the boys’ hall.

Cam leaned over and turned down the music. “What are you doing out of bed?”

I tried to gauge his reaction to seeing me, but it was impossible. His deep brown eyes were cool and distant.

“Any chance we could have a minute alone?” I asked.

Trevor glanced at Cam and then back at me. From his lack of surprise, I guessed that Cam had filled him in on the day’s events. He grabbed a pencil and some paper and closed the book. “No problem. I’ll go down to David’s room.”

After Trevor left, Cam pointed to his desk chair. “You should sit down before you pass out.”

I noticed he didn’t sound particularly concerned about that prospect. I cleared my throat. “I’m sorry, Cam. About what I said. You were right—I wasn’t myself.”

He shook his head, sending thick chestnut hair into his eyes. “Are you sure of that?”

I closed the door behind me, and even though it was completely against the rules, sat down next to him. He made no move to touch me. “I’m still trying to figure this all out, Cam. Esther’s upset, there was the whole thing with the Irin, and now this fight. You understand how frustrating it all is, don’t you? Didn’t you feel this way your first year in the Program?”

He stood up and walked toward the window. “My first year was different. I didn’t have your power; the Irin weren’t this active—heck, I didn’t even know they existed. You can’t expect us to treat you like everyone else.”

I inched forward, curling my fingers around the rough fabric of his comforter, the weight of my fears returning at the mention of the Irin. “If I’m going to help you fight them, I need to understand what everyone expects of me. Sometimes I think there’s this master plan that nobody will tell me about. Like I’m running through this maze blindfolded, while you guys know where all the exits are.”

Cam tapped his fingers on the windowsill. “You don’t trust me, do you?”

“No, that’s not it,” I said. “It isn’t about you. It’s about them, Mr. Judan, my teachers, the Watchers. You’re the only one I
do
trust.”

I trusted Cam’s heart. That I knew for sure.

I walked over and put my hand on his shoulder. The muscles were tight under his T-shirt, and I let my fingers slide up to his neck. “Please,” I said. “Don’t let me ruin this. I can’t do it without you.”

He turned and caught me around the waist. The kiss that followed seemed made of equal parts forgiveness and frustration to start, but slowly changed into something so deep and passionate I was left reeling. When a knock came at the door, I pulled away, my chest heaving with the effort to breathe.

Trevor poked his head inside, his hand over his eyes. “Just a warning. They’re doing room checks. Better open the door.”

“Thanks,” Cam said. I noticed he was breathing hard, too.

“I’d better go back to my room,” I said. I rested my head against his chest again for one last minute, clinging to him fiercely. His heart thumped steadily, and his arms turned steely, pulling me tightly against him.

His voice rumbled. “You should go.” He unpeeled me and gently pushed me away. “I’ll see you in the morning.”

I studied his face, hoping to see something in his eyes that would tell me that everything was okay. But it wasn’t. And I didn’t know if it ever would be again.

MY PROGRAM
classes were different after that. We went into the forest every day, and I practiced levitating trees, moving rocks, and bouncing Barrett up and down like a giant yo-yo. It was hard work. The heavier the object, the more energy I had to expend to move it. Still, they wanted me to do more than just knock things down and pick them up. They wanted me to learn to control an object’s movement down to the inch, and to be able to hold one thing in place while I moved another.

As if this weren’t hard enough, I was also forced to practice moving things from side to side.

In case there is any doubt, this is
not
easy.

See, there’s a gravitational pull dragging things down into the earth’s core, and there’s also the pull of the moon, dragging things up into space. But there are other forces, too. Every object exerts its own pull on every other, and with a lot of work, I was able to use these forces to move things wherever I wanted them. But it all took more energy than I could have imagined.

Things with Cam picked up where they had left off, but there was a new distance between us. We pretended it wasn’t there. Sometimes we’d go for a run together or hold hands in the hall, and things would feel like they used to. But then he’d start to tell me something and catch himself, and I could see the wall going up.

Several times, I stared at the name Ethan Hannigan in my phone and considered deleting it. But then I would find my finger hovering over the call button, and I knew I wasn’t ready to let go.

Esther got more depressed as the weeks passed. Cam told me that what she was going through was normal. Most candidates felt isolated and unhappy before they were initiated. It was this very sense of discontent that allowed them to access their talents at a higher level, and would ultimately inspire them to commit to the Program and all the pressure it entailed. Quite simply, if they were comfortable and happy in the normal world, they’d never have put up with the stress of being in the Program.

This put a new spin on my own miserable existence. It hadn’t occurred to me that they might have
wanted
me to be unhappy as a kid, so that I’d be a better candidate for the Program.

I also started to worry about Hennie. Other than her concern for Esther, Hennie was perfectly happy. Things were great with Yashir, she loved her classes, and she was experiencing her first taste of freedom at Delcroix. If she needed to be unhappy to embrace the Program, when would the bad things start happening to her?

Soccer season ended with a whimper, the week before spring break. I was relieved it was done. Because of my training, I’d missed a lot of games and practices, and I’d had to come up with more and more lies to explain my frequent absences. At first, I’d invented colds and headaches. When it became clear I needed a better strategy, I told Allie and a few others that I was recovering from mono. My story became pretty elaborate. I invented doctor’s visits and researched symptoms on the Internet to make sure it all sounded legitimate.

Cam shook his head and laughed when I told him about it. He said being in the Program meant you had to get good at secrecy and disguise. It was part of the bargain.

All that training and lying left me exhausted. So, while Hennie and some of the other girls complained about spring break and being away from everyone for two weeks, I found myself looking forward to it. Cam was going to D.C. with Mr. Judan, on some official Governing Council business. He couldn’t tell me exactly what they were doing, and for once I didn’t want to know. Knowing, it seemed, only led to more heartache.

Cam and I took a longer walk than usual the night before break began.

“Will you miss me?” I asked as we slipped out of sight of the Main Hall.

“You have no idea,” he said, looping his arm around my waist and letting his fingers brush against my hip.

The air was cool and damp against my skin, and the evergreens shushed as a breeze tickled their branches. “Good. You’d better.”

We shared a moment of peaceful silence. At times like this, I could forget about our fight and convince myself we were the perfect couple.

“You’ll e-mail me?” I asked. “I can check my account from the library. I want to hear about your trip.”

“I’ll tell you all about it,” he promised. “Maybe someday we’ll be doing trips like this together.”

The path narrowed, and Cam went in front of me, reaching behind to take my hand. “When do they start sending you out on missions?” I asked. “When you’re a junior?”

“It varies. They don’t send everyone out,” he said. “Lots of people in the Program don’t want to become Watchers. Like Barrett and his friends. They’re seniors, but they’re not involved in Governing Council business.”

“But all of you are,” I said. I didn’t want to say Anna’s and Trevor’s names. Though neither of them had bothered me since Valentine’s Day, I still didn’t feel comfortable talking about them with Cam. I think it was my guilt that made things so hard. How could I complain about Anna or Trevor treating me with suspicion when I’d called Jack right after our fight with the Irin?

Cam nodded. “We are.”

As we got deeper in the woods, the trees blocked the dim sunlight, and the rich, earthy smell surrounded us. I tried to picture myself on a mission with Cam. First I pictured him knocking down doors and holding an assault rifle. Then I imagined myself beside him, chasing Thaddeus, or levitating him as he tried to run away. I liked that idea. But then Thaddeus’s face turned into Jack’s, and I got a sick feeling and had to think about something else.

“Will they let you do any sightseeing while you’re in D.C., or is it all work?”

“I don’t know. Depends on how quickly we get our job done.” He pressed his mouth closed as if he regretted what he’d said, and then continued in a lighter tone, “What are you doing over break? Taking Grandma to the doctor?”

“Probably. She doesn’t like to drive on the highway anymore, so she scheduled a bunch of appointments for me to take her to while I’m home.”

“I can’t believe she lets you drive.”

I pulled the edges of my jacket around me. “Hey, I’m fifteen. It’s almost legal.”

He snorted. “I’m sure your grandma could talk a cop out of giving you a ticket.”

“They’d be scared to try,” I said.

“You know, I think I need to hang out with Grandma more,” Cam said. “I have a feeling she’s tougher than both of us put together.”

We crested the hill, and the lights of the Res came into view. We stopped for a minute and held each other in the dark.

“Be careful,” I told him.

He touched my cheek with the back of his hand. “I will,” he said. “I promise.”

ESTHER, HENNIE
, and I wove through the Delcroix parking lot on Friday with our bags of laundry slung over our shoulders and suitcases trailing behind us, searching for familiar cars amid the chaos. It wasn’t the most tender of farewells. Esther was grumpy and had been since morning. Her hair was pulled back in a severe ponytail. She looked very thin and beautiful, her eyes deep and sad. She disappeared into the crowd before we could say good-bye.

Hennie watched her go, her brows knitted together in a worried frown. “I don’t know what she’s planning, Dancia, but I’ve got a bad feeling about it. We’re going to have to keep a close eye on her when we get back from break.”

“What about you?” I elbowed her as we dragged our suitcases over the bumpy gravel. “What are you planning to do?”

I was clearly talking about Yashir, who was headed in our direction. He wore his only pair of pants without holes, presumably to meet Hennie’s parents.

Hennie closed her eyes and winced. “I don’t know.”

“Did you tell him?”

“Tell him that I haven’t talked to my parents about him? Of course not!”

“Don’t you think it might be obvious when they get here and start talking about all the boys they’ve arranged for you to date while you’re home?”

Hennie made a strangled sound. “They aren’t dates, exactly.”

I shifted my laundry bag from one shoulder to the other. “They want to arrange your marriage, Hennie. What else would you call them?”

“Dinner with friends?” she said hopefully. When I raised my eyebrows, she sighed. “Any chance I can just run and pretend like I haven’t seen him?”

I eyed her suitcase. “You’re not much of a runner, and that’s a pretty big bag. I’m thinking it’s doubtful.”

A moment later, she groaned aloud as she caught sight of her father, grinning and waving from across the parking lot, her mother at his side, tiny and beautiful like her daughter. “Dancia, they’re so excited to see me. What am I supposed to say to them?” A second later, she wrinkled her nose. “Oh, no. They’re thinking about our neighbor’s son, Rashid, I just know it. I bet we’re having dinner with him tonight!”

“You need to tell them the truth,” I said. Hennie’s gift for reading people had been getting stronger lately. Several times in the past week she’d read someone across the room without thinking. She always brushed it off afterward as a “good guess.”

She gave me a hug. “I can’t. Tell Yashir I’m sorry. Please?” With that she sprinted across the lot. Or rather, given that this was Hennie, she half ran, half tripped through the crowd, dragging her wheeled suitcase behind her.

When I turned around, Yashir was beside me, watching her go.

“She was worried they’d be mad if she didn’t come right away,” I said lamely. “She asked me to say good-bye.”

“She’s not going to tell them, is she?” he said. “They’re going to make her go out with some guy while she’s home, and that will be it for us.” The barbell in his eyebrow drooped sadly.

I patted his shoulder awkwardly. “They’re old-fashioned. She didn’t know what to say. That doesn’t mean she’s about to break up with you.”

A tall woman with a ring in her nose and hair down to her waist called to Yashir. “Is that your mom?” I asked.

He nodded, defeated. “I guess that’s it, then.”

I shook my head. “Don’t give up. Call her tonight.”

He hoisted his backpack onto his shoulder. “Have a great break, Dancia.”

“You too, Yashir.”

I had two major reports due after spring break: one on Renaissance architecture for World Civ, and one on Nathaniel Hawthorne for my English class. This meant that watching TV and vegging out for two weeks was not an option.

I could have gone to Delcroix and used the library there, but I wanted as much distance from the school as I could get. So on Monday morning, Grandma drove me to the Danville library. They didn’t have many books, but you could get interlibrary loans in a few days, and they had a couple of computers so I could do research on the Web.

Grandma dropped me off and headed for the grocery store. I requested a few books, printed out a couple of articles from the Internet, and then checked my e-mail. There was a long, pitiful letter from Hennie telling me how guilty she felt for ditching Yashir. Nothing from Esther or Cam.

I stared at the screen for a moment, and then, on impulse, typed
Ethan Hannigan
into the search engine.

Thousands of pages came up. Apparently, Ethan Hannigan wasn’t an unusual name. I tried again, this time typing
Ethan Hannigan
and
Delcroix Academy
.

Jackpot. The first page of search results was a series of newspaper articles from the
Danville Chronicle
and the
Seattle Times
. I saw headlines that read,
Teenage Suicide Devastates Neighborhood
and
Family Grieves for Lost Child
, but when I clicked on the links, the articles were “no longer available.”

I tried again and again, searching for various combinations of Ethan, suicide, and Delcroix. None of the articles I wanted could be read. Even without access to the articles, it became clear that ten years ago, a boy named Ethan Hannigan, who had attended Delcroix Academy, had committed suicide. I was too nervous to ask the librarian for help finding more information. It was possible that the articles had just expired because they were old, but it seemed just as likely that someone hadn’t wanted the information out there. And if they didn’t want the information on the Internet, they probably didn’t want me looking for it, either. I deleted the search history from the Web browser and restarted the computer.

A week passed. Grandma and I got back into our old routines and I caught up on my sleep. Pretty soon, it was hard even to believe that there was a Delcroix, or people with talents, or an Irin.

On Friday night, as I was finishing the dishes from dinner, Grandma suddenly turned up the sound on the TV. I set down the frying pan I’d been cleaning and went into the living room to see what had her so excited.

The words
Breaking News
scrolled across the bottom of the screen, and a reporter began speaking excitedly into a microphone. “I’m Katie Campbell, reporting live from Washington, D.C., where we’ve just received word that police have uncovered the early stages of some kind of plot against the president.”

The camera cut away to reporters clustered outside a huge building. The entrance was busy with police cars and people running in every direction. “The details are just beginning to emerge,” the reporter continued. “What we know right now is that about four hours ago, police discovered, in this warehouse less than five miles from the Capitol building”—she gestured behind her—“three dead bodies, a cache of guns and ammunition, and detailed maps of the White House.”

I sank down on the sofa while the reporter continued chattering. They didn’t know much. The police had begun searching the area when nearby residents reported that they had heard what they thought was a series of explosions. No actual damage had been discovered, and the location of the explosions was unknown. Then police were given an anonymous tip to check the warehouse. They found the bodies in there, along with a stack of documents that detailed the conspiracy.

The speculation around the person or group that had foiled the crime and killed the president’s would-be attackers was fierce. Was it a Good Samaritan? A disgruntled associate? No one knew, and the police said it was far too early to speculate.

I sat there dumbstruck.

I knew who was responsible. I just wondered if the finger on the trigger had been Cam’s.

Every day for the next week, the evening news brought a fresh round of stories about the murdered men and the strange events in the D.C. warehouse. The dead were all in their twenties, unemployed, and college-educated. One had been a math major at Georgetown. Another went to Harvard. The third, Charlie Scholz, had graduated from University of Washington in Seattle. They had been living together in D.C. for a couple of years.

Reporters found people who knew the men and interviewed them endlessly. A neighbor said they were quiet boys who mowed her grass when she was out of town. She couldn’t believe they’d done anything wrong. Charlie Scholz’s uncle said he’d never trusted his nephew. He told the reporters that when Charlie was little he was always hiding in the basement of his house, doing something secretive.

Most of the weapons had been stolen. Based on the location of the bodies, the police had concluded that the men had been surprised, and that there hadn’t been much of a fight. The police didn’t find much else, and they never did figure out where the noise had come from. There was an office in the warehouse, but no documents other than the ones covering the White House. I wasn’t surprised. The Governing Council would have kept any documents of value.

I tried not to fixate on Cam’s role in the whole thing. After all, he wasn’t a real Watcher. They would have used Cam to track the bad guys, not kill them.

I checked my e-mail every day but didn’t get any messages from him. I figured he was busy. After all, they’d just prevented some huge national disaster. But I still wanted to talk to him and hear what had really happened. The police suspected that more people had been involved, based on the number of guns, the cars they’d recovered around the warehouse, and the multitude of fingerprints around the area. I wished I knew exactly what the men had been planning, and how they had died.

On Sunday night, I threw my clean clothes into my laundry bag and packed up my things for school. Grandma had just settled in for some hour-long news show when my phone rang.

The caller ID said
Ethan Hannigan
. I stared in horror at the screen.

Grandma gestured irritably at me from her easy chair. “Answer it, won’t you? I’m trying to hear the television.”

Indecision locked my hands at my sides. The phone rang again.

“If you don’t answer it, I will,” Grandma warned.

I jerked it up to my ear and pushed the button. “Hello?” I whispered.

“It’s about time you picked up.”

“Hey, Esther,” I said, for Grandma’s benefit. “What’s up?”

Grandma turned back to the television. I started for my bedroom, then turned and went toward the bathroom. As soon as I closed the door behind me I hissed, “Jack, you shouldn’t be calling me.”

He laughed. “You called me the last time. Why can’t I call you?”

I straightened the faded blue-and-white hand towels, lining them up by their embroidery. “That was a mistake. This is dangerous for both of us. Especially right now.”

Jack’s voice turned grim. “They murdered three people this week, Danny. Three guys who had done nothing more than refuse to be controlled by their Governing Council.”

“They were trying to kill the president!”

Jack made a sound of disgust. “You don’t believe that, do you?”

I perched on the edge of the bathtub. “They found papers. Maps. Drawings. What else could they be for?”

“It was a setup. Someone planted those papers, to distract everyone from the fact that your Watchers
murdered our men
. Going after the president is just plain stupid. We’d attract hundreds of police and probably get a bunch of our people killed, and it wouldn’t do a thing toward our ultimate goal. Think about it. Why would we do that?”

Even though I knew he was one of them now, a chill descended on me at Jack’s casual use of the phrase
our men
. “Well, then,” I said, “what were all the guns for?”

“We have to have guns. To defend ourselves.”

“That’s crazy. Who do you think you’re defending yourselves from?”

“Your boyfriend, for one.”

I sat straight up in shock. Had Jack seen Cam? Was Jack in D.C.? “You leave them alone, and they’ll leave you alone,” I said, trying to sound calm. “Start hoarding automatic weapons and they’re going to pay attention. And what do you mean about Cam, anyway? He’s still in school. He isn’t a real Watcher.”

“He is now.”

I closed my eyes, running my fingers through my hair, feeling the ringlets pop apart. “This conversation needs to end. You can’t imagine the kind of trouble I’d be in if people thought I was talking to you.”

“Did you ask them about Ethan?”

“No. He committed suicide. There’s nothing more to say.” I paced the two steps from the door of the bathroom to the sink and back.

“You know that’s not true. When are you going to admit that they’re dangerous?”

“When are you going to admit that you’re on the wrong side?” I pulled hard on a curl and yanked out a snarl of hair.

Was Jack telling the truth? Had Cam known the documents were fake?

“Your ‘right side’ is awfully comfortable with killing people.”

“We’re trying to make things safer,” I said, thinking of all the things I’d heard Mr. Judan say. “You didn’t stay long enough to learn what the Program’s actually about. It isn’t just about the Watchers. It’s other things too—doctors, scientists, and diplomats. It’s all to make things better.”

“If that’s the goal, you aren’t doing a very good job,” Jack replied. “The Watchers just killed people with friends in high places—and they aren’t happy. From here on out, things will only get worse.”