The Amanda Project: Book 4: Unraveled (13 page)

“So he was murdered,” I said. “And your dad—he’s in captivity.”

“His life isn’t in danger yet, though. My understanding is that they want to study him.” Rosie’s
pretty blue eyes had filled with tears. “Look,” she said. “There’s a lot I wish I could tell you about what my father believes is going on. But I’m worried about our time.”

“Who’s following you?” Cisco looked protective. “Want me to take care of them?”

Rosie smiled at Cisco wistfully and I saw in that smile that she really was older than him. Or maybe it wasn’t the years—it was what she had
seen. “I want you to stay as far away from them as possible,” she said. “Believe it or not, my little sister is our best protection these days.”

“Protection from whom, exactly?” Nia said. “This goes beyond Dr. Joy now, doesn’t it? Who is sending the goons after us today?”

Rosie’s lips tightened into a narrow line. “You’ve heard of the Official, right?”

“My dad said he was working with Dr. Joy
to revive the C33 program,” said Hal.

“That’s right.” Rosie sighed. “He’s in charge of the government agency where I’m interning. The agency is supposed to be monitoring the testing of experimental vaccines, but actually it’s administering a secret project with only a few top people in the know.”

“You work right under their noses?” I said. “But the photos . . . the rangers . . .” Suddenly, I
put two and two together. I put a hand up to cover my mouth.

“You can’t go back there.”

“Why not?” Rosie looked at her watch. “They’ll notice if I’m gone much longer.”

“But the pictures,” I said. “They know.” Nia drew in a breath—just those few words were enough for her to connect the dots. “Did you by any chance get a look at the rangers’ clipboards back at the World War Two monument?” I said.
Rosie shook her head, and I explained what I’d seen. I could see from the look on her face that she was starting to understand.

“They must have known for some time,” she said. “Maybe that explains—”

“Explains what?” Cisco said.

She looked away from us, as if she had forgotten our presence, and was just thinking aloud. “Explains how I can’t get anywhere near whatever it is they’re really doing.
I see Dr. Joy, but no matter how many excuses I come up with, I can’t even get into the hallway near his office.”

“Rosie,” Cisco said, concern wrinkling his forehead—I caught myself wondering for an instant if anyone would ever look at me in the way Cisco was looking at Rosie now, like all he wanted in the world was to protect her. He put a hand on her arm. “Don’t go back there. It’s just not
safe.”

But Rosie didn’t even register his warning. “I’d been hoping to at least find out who the Official is. A name, anything. With Amanda on the run . . . it’s not right. My mom is gone and my dad is who-knows-where. I should be looking out for her.”

“You are,” I said.

Rosie smiled at me, back to being an older sister.

“Have you seen him, at least?” Nia asked. “Thornhill told us he was in
charge. Do you know what he looks like?”

“I don’t,” Rosie said. “But I hear him referred to all the time. He has ties to the government, but I haven’t been able to figure out what the connections are.”

“Wow,” I said, “I thought it was bad enough that Chief Bragg was involved. But now it’s like the actual federal government.”

“Oh, no, not all of it,” Rosie said. “And you know, it’s funny. My
dad suspected Chief Bragg of being involved but that was not confirmed—now, of course, who knows what my dad thinks. There’s something strange about the way the Bragg family keeps turning up. But anyway, the Official isn’t the president or a Supreme Court justice or anything. What he’s doing is illegal, and with the right kind of evidence we could bring him down. As long as he doesn’t get whatever
it is before then—we think he will be harder to stop them.”

“What is he looking for?”

“I don’t know,” Rosie said. “I don’t think anyone knows for sure. And I guess now I’ll never find out.” The cloud of frustration reappeared on her face, and then she clearly willed it away. “Okay, let’s focus on what we do know. We know that whatever the Official is up to, it has something to do with Amanda.
Something to do with the way she is. Amanda told me that I should be watching you guys,” Rosie went on. “She said you might all be learning from her. Do you know what that means?”

Hal blushed. Callie looked up at the ceiling. Nia looked down at the floor.

“Sometimes,” I said. “We do things that we really shouldn’t be able to do.”

Cisco was nodding. “Nia’s been telling me about this,” he said.
“It’s crazy.”

“You have powers like Amanda’s?” Rosie said. “My dad said you would.”

“Mr. Bennett told us that kids of C33s sometimes have them,” I said. “Do you?”

Rosie shook her head. “No chance. I’m adopted, as you know. But even if I weren’t, it’s more likely that children of C33s have no superhuman talents.” She smiled. “Cisco here . . . he’s just naturally handsome and athletic and charming.”

“What?” Cisco said, his huge “Who me?” smile making us all relax.

“What about Heidi Bragg?” Cisco said. “She’s always struck me as having some noteworthy . . . talents.”

“Heidi Bragg’s an interesting case,” Rosie said. “My dad was trying to figure her out when he was abducted. Brittney was always a disappointment as a C33, but then Heidi emerged with her take-no-prisoners personality—but no
one’s been able to figure out what, if anything, she can really do.”

“How did Amanda know how to find
us
?” Nia asked. “Did she know what we were going to be able to do?”

“No,” Rosie said. “Amanda knew the children of a lot of former C33s were living in Orion. So she went there, started school, and made friends with the kids she wanted to make friends with. She told me she was letting the friendships
come to her, actually. And I guess yours did.”

“I guess so,” said Callie.

We were quiet a minute, letting all this new information sink in. I had to admit, I liked the idea that Amanda and I were friends not because she needed me, but because she liked me. She used her instinct for friendship as a divining rod.

“Here,” Rosie said, passing two purple envelopes in our direction. “Amanda sent
these to me. I have no idea what they are, but I think she wanted me to pass them on to you.”

Nia took the envelopes and immediately went white, grabbing her brother for support.

“What is it?” I said.

“Did you see something?” asked Hal.

“Yeah,” said Nia, rubbing her fingers over the envelopes’ sides. “Thornhill. These envelopes were in his office on the night he was attacked.”

“Can you see
who attacked him?” Hal asked.

“Not yet,” said Nia. “It might work better if I had some extra hands.”

We didn’t want to draw attention to ourselves by looking like we were forming a prayer circle, so we touched casually—I bumped shoulders with Hal, who put his hand on Callie’s back. She hooked a finger through the edge of Nia’s pocket and Nia stretched her foot toward mine so we were touching.

Maybe because we weren’t actually holding hands—I don’t know—but this time, we did not see Nia’s vision as she did. We held the linked pose a few seconds, then Nia broke away.

“Amazing,” she said.

“What?” said Rosie.

“It’s Amanda. She was with Thornhill on the night he was attacked. Amanda was holding these envelopes and then someone was coming, so he shoved them under the top of the desk and
pretty much pushed her out the window.”

“Wow,” said Callie.

“She snuck back in there?” Rosie said. “I told her not to. It wasn’t safe. But I guess she must have. And then mailed them to me. You’ll see they’re postmarked. She must have gotten them in the mail from someone originally, and brought them in to show Dad.”

The seal on both envelopes had been broken and Hal dumped out their contents—two
credit card–sized pieces of plastic, one red, one blue. “Do you think they’re gift cards?” he said.

“Gift cards?” Callie teased, because, yeah, it did seem completely crazy to think that Amanda would have gone to such lengths to get us gift cards. “Like . . . to the Gap?”

“Okay, I get it, dumb idea,” Hal said.

Nia took one of the cards in her hand. “Are you seeing any images?” I asked.

Nia
shook her head.

A ranger stepped into the monument. He was leading a school group, so I assumed he was not one of the false rangers, but still, his presence was enough to remind us that they could find us here at any time. “I have to go,” Rosie said. Her eyes were filled with regret, as if leaving us when we clearly still had a lot to talk about was a repeat of her having to separate from Amanda.

“Not back to your internship,” Cisco said.

“No,” she answered. “I’ve got other things to do.” She situated her ear buds in her ears, pulled her cap down, and looked as grim as someone as nice as she is possibly can. “Guys,” she said. She looked into each of our eyes for a strong and steady beat. I wanted to give her one last hug, something, but she’d already turned away. I squeezed my hand into
a fist. One more connection to my old life—gone. Ravenna transformed to Rosie transformed into another anonymous runner in the city.

Hal’s eyes suddenly opened wide. “We’ve got to get going too,” he said.
“Now.”

Then, whispering, “Follow me.”

“I have to check in with other groups,” Cisco said. “But I’m not going to be happy if you guys don’t make the lunchtime check-in, you hear?”

“Got it,”
Nia said.

We sped after Hal down the first flight of steps and then around to the other side of the memorial, where there was a little lawn dotted with shrubs large enough for four of us to hide behind. We couldn’t see the steps from where we were hiding, but we could hear what sounded like guards—were there three of them? I wondered. Four? The tempo of their boots on the steps matched the rushing
beat of my heart. As soon as they’d passed us, Hal stood and beckoned for us. We jogged down the stairs as quietly as we could.

Chapter 15

As soon as
the Lincoln Memorial was out of sight, we stopped to catch our breath under a cherry tree that was in full bloom.

I had a feeling in the pit of my stomach that wouldn’t go away. My body was itching to disappear, to fade away, or wait out the rest of this Amanda adventure under the cover of the nearest rock. I reminded myself: Amanda needs you.

To steady myself, I turned to the nearest map posted
on a kiosk next to our bench. According to the map’s “You Are Here,” we were on the western end of the Mall, heading north to Constitution Avenue.

“If we keep walking in this direction, we’ll reach the Vietnam War Memorial,” I said. “It’s on the scavenger hunt.”

“First we need to look at the envelopes,” Nia said, laying all of them out on the flat top of the bench like it was a table. There
were six envelopes all together.

The ones that had been returned to Callie, Hal, and Nia all looked like mine—no name, no street number, addressed in their own writing as if they’d written the envelope themselves.

There were two Rosie had given us. One was addressed to Max Beckendorf, the other to Annie.

I picked up Annie’s. “There is so much I remember about her,” I said. “She had super-curly
hair and sometimes wore it in two braids, like a little kid. She was awesome with accents,” I said. “She could do any of them. And she could tell what you were thinking. We never got away with anything when she was around.”

Nia laid the pieces of plastic on top of the Max and Annie envelopes.

“Okay,” Hal said, looking at what Nia had laid out. “This remains completely confusing.”

I didn’t say
anything because I’d stopped thinking about the cards. I was looking at our envelopes and thinking about the “You Are Here” map.

“What a minute,” I said out loud.

“What?” Hal said.

“Look at your envelope,” I said. “It’s addressed to 20th Street NW. Shouldn’t it be significant that Callie’s is addressed to 21st Street NW?”

I grabbed Nia’s note, addressed to C Street NW, and I went back to the
posted map. “C Street . . . that’s just up there, on the other side of Constitution. It intersects with both 20th and 21st Streets. And—”

Nia was getting what I meant. She grabbed the envelope addressed to me and ran over to the map. “Constitution Avenue itself.”

Callie and Hal joined us at the map. “It’s a city block,” Hal breathed. “The four streets on the envelopes outline a city block.”

Suddenly all the exhaustion we’d felt after running from the park rangers was gone.

Callie looked at her watch. “We only have an hour until we have to report back to Mr. Fowler for lunch.”

“Wait,” said Hal. “Look at the scavenger hunt list. There’s something on that block on our list.”

“Where?” said Callie, leaning over his shoulder.

“It’s extra credit,” he said. “It’s called the Natural Sciences
Institute—it’s some kind of museum, I think. Plus it’s a research facility.”

We didn’t have time to discuss it. If we wanted to make it to the block the envelopes described and then get back to the Washington Monument in time for lunch, we had to fly.

The Natural Sciences Institute took up most of the block described by C Street on the north, Constitution Avenue on the south, and 20th and 21st
Streets on the east and west. It looked like a smaller version of the Museum of Natural History in New York. There were steps in the front where people were sitting and soaking up some sun. I saw some kids from our grade—science geeks mostly—running down the steps. They’d already been inside.

Brian Bellaronda and Ally Kline stopped to ask us how many monuments we’d seen. “We’ve only got twelve
so far,” they said. “We’re so going to fail.”

We showed them our hunt list. We only had four.

“Wow,” said Brian, looking at Ally like suddenly they’d noticed we were sick and they didn’t want to catch what we had.

Once they’d left, we took a second to look up at the imposing front of the museum looming over us at the top of the long flight of steps. “Do you think that whatever we’re looking
for is inside?” Callie said. “It’s going to be pretty tricky to find anything in there. It’s huge.”

“And we don’t even know precisely what we’re looking for,” Nia added.

“I thought we were looking for Amanda,” I said. “I thought she was finally going to show herself.”

“Maybe,” said Nia, bitterly. “But more likely there’s some song lyric she wants us to find and be inspired by.” Nia sat down
on a bench, as if to catch her breath. But then she jumped up, saying “Hal, Zoe, Callie—come here. It’s this bench.”

She was holding out her hands so I took one, Callie took the other, and Hal stood in between us. An image rushed up before our eyes. A woman, sitting on the same bench that Nia was sitting on now. You could tell from the way the woman’s long legs were tucked to the side that she
was tall. She was older, too—the age of one of our teachers maybe—and beautiful, her blond hair shot through with a few streaks of silver, her eyes big, though sad. The sky was gray and low and the woman was picking off pieces of the sandwich she was eating and tossing them to the hungry pigeons.

I opened my eyes to see that Callie’s face had gone white. “That’s—” she said. “She’s—she’s here?”

“Who is here?” I said. Callie had dropped hands with us.

“This is why Amanda brought us here,” Callie said. “It’s my mom.” Callie gave us all about half a second to digest this information before she started asking Nia questions she couldn’t possibly answer. “What is she doing here? Is she looking for me? When was that image from?”

Nia shook her head. “I don’t know.”

“She was wearing an ID,
did you see that, though?” said Hal. “On a cord around her neck, like you see doctors wearing in hospitals.”

“Maybe she works around here.”

“She works?” Callie said. Mrs. Leary had left a note for Mr. Thornhill saying she had to leave because it was the only way to keep Callie safe. I could tell that Callie was doubting that statement now. How did having a regular job fifty miles away serve
that purpose?

“It’s lunchtime,” I said, looking at my watch. “Or almost. Maybe we’re supposed to wait here for your mom. We have a few minutes still until we have to check in with Mr. Fowler.”

“Yeah, maybe,” Callie said, crossing her arms in front of her chest.

“I don’t know if you could tell from the expression on your mom’s face,” I said, “but she’s sad.”

“Really?” Callie said.

“You couldn’t
see it?” I said.

“Well, she wasn’t jumping for joy. She just looked kind of blank to me.”

“Not to me,” I said. “Her mouth had this little tremble to it, like she was about to cry.”

“Really?” Callie said again.

“Her gaze was unfocused too,” I said.

“I thought she was just feeding the pigeons,” Callie said.

“She was,” I explained. “But her attention wasn’t on them. She didn’t move her head
as they moved. She was thinking about something,” I ended.

“What was she thinking about?” Callie asked.

“Why don’t you ask her yourself?” Nia said, a huge but somewhat worried smile spreading across her face. “She’s coming right now.” While Hal and I had been focused on Callie, Nia had been looking up at the museum, and we followed her gaze now to see the woman from the bench in Nia’s vision
coming down the museum steps.

“So are a pair of rangers,” Hal said. “Any minute now. They’re hot on our heels. We need to hide.”

“But my mom—” Callie began, torn at having her so close.

“Zoe,” he said. “Can you get to her without the guards seeing you?

I nodded. “Then you get Mrs. Leary,” he said. “Nia, Callie, follow me.” He started heading for a series of large bushes that were big enough
to stand behind and still not be seen. Just as the three of them ducked away out of sight, the rangers Hal had predicted rounded the corner and started looking up and down the stairs, checking clipboards, radioing in a conversation I was not close enough to hear. I flipped up the hood of my sweatshirt, and I know this time it’s going to sound crazy, but I think I managed to camouflage myself on
the gray stone steps by simply thinking the word
gray
. Or rather, singing it inside my head, imagining the low tones of the dirge-like vowel played on the sax. I felt a sleepy, sinking feeling like you do on a rainy, gray morning, when you’re staying hidden beneath your comforter.

I was lumplike enough to pass under the rangers’ radar—they were looking for four of us as usual, not one. And certainly
not a one who looked like she maybe lived on these steps, who looked so connected to the place that the idea of her being a visitor was impossible for them.

Mrs. Leary passed not three feet from where I was standing. She did not see me either. I was looking down, so all I registered were the hems of her somewhat too-short wool pants, her striped socks, rubber-soled clogs like nurses wear in hospitals.
As soon as the rangers looked away, I stood.

Breaking into a run, I caught up with her on the sidewalk. “Mrs. Leary,” I called out.

She turned on her heel, and I realized the way her eyes narrowed into slits and her throat went tight that I had scared her. “I’m a friend of Callie’s,” I said. “I’m here with her. She needs to speak to you.”

Where Mrs. Leary’s face had been a tight mask, ready
for a fight, it now went slack. “Callie?” Mrs. Leary said. “She’s here?” She looked to the left and then to the right eagerly, her breath coming quickly.

“She’s just over there,” I said. Mute, Mrs. Leary followed me back to the entrance to the museum. The rangers seemed to be gone so I brought her up the stairs and behind the bushes where the others were hiding.

As soon as Mrs. Leary saw Callie
she rushed to her, her hands out to cradle Callie’s face. She held her, looking at her, then drew Callie into a hug, then pulled back so she could look again.

The rest of us kept our distance, trying to give them their moment alone and watching out for any sign of ranger activity. How many times had I imagined just such a moment with my dad? It wouldn’t be exactly like this one, of course. I
always imagined it happening in a car wash or a hardware store, the kind of place my dad would have taken me on a Saturday afternoon. I had this scenario worked out in my head where he’d gotten a job at one of these places and he was hiding out there. He wouldn’t cry, but he’d have his own way of letting me know that he’d been missing me the whole time, that nothing had been the same without me. Maybe
he
would
cry, but a Dad cry—muted, disguised by frequent fake coughing. He’d grasp me not by the face but the shoulders. He’d hold me out at arm’s length, and then he’d lift me up and spin me around like when I was little.

Watching Callie and her mom, I felt myself smiling. I felt so good it was as if everything they were experiencing was really happening to me.

But it wasn’t. Callie’s mom had
been
missing
. My father was
dead
. I would never see him again. I would never have what Callie and her mom had right now.

I
t was 7:25. Amanda’s and my first set as the Bruella Duella at Arcadia was supposed to start at 7:30, but Amanda was nowhere to be seen.

I was waiting, trying hard to actively trust her. I wanted to. I wanted to believe that she’d walk in at the last minute, with a good reason
for being late.

I wanted to have that kind of confidence in her, but instead, I sat at a table, drinking seltzer and thinking bitterly,
She
was the one who set this whole thing up.
She
was the one who talked me into doing it
.
Just the night before, she’d come over and, with glitter and silver poster paint, we’d transformed the back of Pen’s old science project into the elegant black-and-purple
sign propped on an easel on the stage, to one side of the piano: It promised The Bruella Duella, alluding, Amanda had told me, both to jazz great Dave Brubeck, to her former last name Bruyere, and to her favorite villain of all time, Cruella de Vil.

“How can you hate a woman who is so good with a cigarette holder?” Amanda had said, as she’d put the finishing touches on the a’s at the end of Bruella
and Duella. At the time, I’d laughed along with her, but now I was thinking,
How can you like bad people? Maybe only if you yourself are partly bad.

If this sounds harsh, trust me, Amanda deserved it. Because just then Arcadia’s manager was coming over to tell me it was time to get up on stage. The manager was a guy named Bobby who had only ever dealt with Amanda, and from the way he was looking
at me, was probably just realizing now that we were under twenty-one—by a lot. Bobby looked at his watch. He pantomimed the international gesture for “What’s it gonna be?”

I slowly mounted the three shallow steps to the stage. I was holding the sax in my right hand, kind of out in front of my body so my knees wouldn’t bang into it as I walked. I tried to pretend it was just another concert at
school, but the difference here was the stage lights. Blue and pink. Every time I looked out into the audience, I had to squint. The feeling of not being able to see anything beyond the stage was disorienting.