The Amanda Project: Book 4: Unraveled (18 page)

Chapter 22

Hal looked
like he might be going into apoplectic shock. His eyes were bugging out and his skin was the color of paper. “I can’t
believe
that,” he said. “That was cutting it so close!”

Nia was looking around, walking from one end of the car to the other, peering through the windows into the cars on either side of ours. “I’m still not convinced they don’t have people on the train.”

“Are you any closer to
getting to Amanda?” Rosie said in between panting breaths. “Is there anything I can do to help?”

We explained about seeing Callie’s mom, the enhancement eraser she’d developed, and about finding the green bouquet.

“Well, you’ve got one piece of good luck,” Rosie said, digesting the new information. “This Metro line goes right out to Arlington National Cemetery.”

Nia sighed. I could see that
she was scared and tired, and also exhausted, both from the chase and from the effort she’d expended at the Vietnam Memorial—for the encounter with Amanda had used a good deal of energy. Nia sat down next to Callie and the two of them stared straight out into space. How much more could one day hold?

But Hal was not tired. He was holding onto a strap as if he had too much energy to sit down. His
mind must have been turning faster than the train wheels because suddenly he turned to Rosie, and as if he were taking up a conversation that they had just left off he said, “How did Amanda find us?” Rosie didn’t say anything, waiting I think for Hal to explain his question. “You said before she just made friends naturally, but doesn’t that seem a
little bit
coincidental?”

Rosie shrugged. “I
told you—all Amanda said to me was that there was something she recognized in you. She told me she’d come looking for guides, and I asked her how she knew when she found one. She said it was just like making friends in any new town. You kind of wandered around, going from place to place without knowing anyone until suddenly, you meet someone and you feel a connection.”

“Are you thinking she felt
the connection with us, the way we feel it with each other?” Callie said, looking up at Hal from her seat.

“You guys have really bonded, haven’t you?” said Rosie.

“No,” said Hal. He blushed. “I mean, yes, we’re bonded. But it’s more than that. We have this thing. When we get together. We can kind of see into each other’s heads.”

“We make each other stronger,” said Callie.

“Stronger how?” Rosie
asked.

So we told her. About how our strange abilities seemed to work better when we were touching. How Callie’s strength had passed to Hal. How Nia’s visions were stronger and could be shared when we were holding hands.

When we’d finished talking, Rosie just stood there, shaking her head. She was quiet a good long time and I felt kind of guilty, as if I were burdening her with too much information.
I wished I could take it all back. Amanda must have felt this way all the time.

Our train climbed out of its tunnel and began crossing a bridge over the Potomac River. For a time, you could see all of D.C. through the train’s rattling windows. I took my camera out and snapped a few shots, mostly to calm myself down. I focused in on the sunlight gleaming on the dome of the Jefferson Memorial,
the pillars of the Lincoln Memorial, straight and tall.

“Being with you guys,” Rosie said at last. “It’s like being with Amanda again. You are all so much like her. It’s like each one of you is carrying around a piece of her. Because those things you’re good at? Your abilities, or powers, or whatever you want to call them? Those are Amanda’s powers too. Zoe, Amanda could blend in just like you—people
wouldn’t even seem to see her when she didn’t want them to. She’s got Callie’s strength, Nia’s intuitive connection to the past, Hal’s ability to see what is coming—all of you, what you have, that’s part of her too.”

I put my camera down. “Wow,” I said. “That’s intense.”

“Yes,” Callie agreed. “I know exactly what you mean.”

When we got off the train just outside the gates that led into Arlington
National Cemetery, I thought again of my dad.

Every time I pass a cemetery I do. Even a military cemetery where dead presidents lie next to American soldiers.

In the distance, I saw a hearse followed by a line of cars, leaving the cemetery. A funeral. The good-bye my dad couldn’t have.

“Come on,” Hal said, and I realized everyone was ahead of me. I’d stopped at the gates as if I wasn’t actually
going to be able to enter. But I was. This was important. It was something I had to do.

I squared my shoulders and held the last existing part of my dad tightly. I followed my friends into the cemetery.

“I think this place is bigger than the entire town of Orion,” Callie said.

Nia sighed, slightly exasperated. “I sort of thought, with the Arlington National Cemetery quote, we’d get here and
we’d just be . . . well . . . here. And somehow it would be obvious what it was we needed to find.”

“I know what you mean,” said Hal. “And frankly, I don’t have a lot of brain power left to apply to another mental puzzle. My ability to concentrate is blown to pieces. I don’t even know where to start.”

“Let’s be rational about this,” said Nia. She pulled out the by now quite rumpled scavenger
hunt. “It says here we’re supposed to find the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. We might as well at least get a picture of it for credit. And maybe there’ll be something there to help us know where to go next. After all, Amanda must know we’re using the hunt—she’s been laying clues along our path all day.”

The Tomb of the Unknown Soldier wasn’t hard to find. In fact, it would have been hard to miss.
It sits at the top of a long run of steps, carved into the mountainside, about the size of the stage in our auditorium at Endeavor. Behind the platform we could see the columns surrounding the Memorial Amphitheater, which sits directly behind the tomb.

“Okay,” I said, looking at it. “Now what?”

“Now,” Nia said, elbowing me frantically in the ribs and gesturing toward the tomb. “That’s what.”

Because standing on the steps right in front of the tomb, looking out at us and across all the graves of people who had given their lives in service of their country, was Amanda. Arabella. Ariel. She smiled wide in welcome, as if she’d been waiting here for us all this time.

All through the course of the long weeks that we’d been looking for her, I’d tried to carry an image of her face in my head.
And it was there now, but so much more vivid than in my memory. Her gray-green eyes, her wide, high forehead, her mouth that even without one outrageous shade of lipstick or another was shaped like a kiss—it was all her.

Amanda—the master of disguise—for once looked only like herself. Her hair was pulled back into a low ponytail, she was wearing a black turtleneck sweater, jeans, a pea coat,
and low-top sneakers. She was looking down at all of us and for a minute, I thought of the kind of painting you see in a church, of an angel looking down from heaven.

After running through the subway, after the conversation on the train, I was tired. But now, seeing Amanda, I suddenly felt my energy return. Just seeing her alive was such a relief. I remembered how
good
I always felt when Amanda
was around. She made everything she touched seem cool. I felt like I’d just had a heavy burden taken out of my hands. My arms fell limp and relaxed at my sides. The air felt deeper and cleaner than anything I’d breathed in a long time.

Amanda took a few steps, down and around the back of the tomb. She had her hands pushed deep into her front pockets. Locking gazes with me, she raised her eyebrows
and for a second, I felt like I could hear her counting inside her head, like she was giving me the upbeat on a song I was about to come in on, that she was deciding how fast it was going to go and when it would begin.

I know this is totally insane, but from that moment on, I knew that Amanda was in control. No matter what anyone else did or said, Amanda was going to get the better of this. She
jumped down from the tomb’s platform and began walking in our direction.

After a long, deep look into her sister’s eyes, which turned into a long, deep grin, Amanda turned to us, and we all ran and collapsed into a huge group hug. “I can’t believe you’re here!” Callie cried. Nia said, “I know!” Hal just squeezed everyone really hard, and Amanda, standing in the middle, smiled warmly at each of
us, touching a shoulder, a cheek as she went.

Amanda smelled the same, felt the same. “I am so glad to see you guys,” she said, and I said, “Right back at you.”

Of course, as soon as we all were touching, I felt the same kind of electric connection come to life with a tingling explosion—it had never been this strong before. I had this plastic puzzle when I was a little kid and I remember loving
the way it felt when the pieces clicked into place. I felt that way now.

“
The joy of meeting pays the pangs of absence; else who could bear it?
” Amanda said, her voice soft and moving unexpectedly, like a barely suppressed laugh. As always, she’d found a quote that put what we were all feeling into words.

Nia’s face lit up—I could see that Amanda’s presence gave her the same energy and sense
of possibility I felt also. “Nicholas Rowe,” she said. “Totally obscure. How did you know I’d just come across it?”

Amanda raised her eyebrows again and smiled.

“Amanda,” Callie said. “Are you okay? You’re in danger.”

“We all are,” she said, her voice sounding anything but rushed and afraid. “But can you feel it?”

I nodded.

“You feel stronger when we’re all together,” she said. “Because we
are stronger together than we are apart.”

“That’s what you’ve been trying to tell us, isn’t it?”

“Exactly,” she said.

“I have so many questions,” Nia said.

“I’m sure you do,” said Amanda. “I’m sure you all do.”

“Yeah, but suddenly they don’t feel important,” said Hal.

“I feel—” Callie began. “I feel amazing right now.”

I nodded, because it was true. Colors were brighter, sound was clearer.
The smell of the freshly cut grass somewhere nearby was carried on a breeze to my nose. The feel of my fingers rubbing the fabric of my shirt was heavenly.

Amanda turned to me. “I want to talk to you. I want to be your friend. But your listening is important right now,” she said. “Pay attention. To everything that I have said and that you’ve heard today.”

To Callie, she said, “You’re learning
that strength is not just in your muscles but in your heart. You will not bend.”

To Nia: “You can see the past but you must think only of the future.”

And to Hal: “There is no such thing as destiny.”

Her last comment made me think of an entry I’d seen recently on the Amanda Project website. A girl from Nevada, Rebecca Laewima, wrote in to say that Amanda had once helped her pick out her own
totem—the horse, which usually means leader, but which Rebecca said can also mean “destined.” Did Amanda really not believe in destiny?

Amanda picked up the scavenger hunt sheet. “Was this horrible?” she said. She smiled and I could see in her eyes that she understood how hard all this had been, how in the dark we’d felt, how scared.

“It’s going to get even worse,” she said. “But I know we can
beat this. I have a plan.”

“My mom wanted me to give this to you,” Callie said, handing Amanda the enhancement eraser. “Don’t drink it now, but if you ever want to go back . . . to the person you would have been without all the changes Dr. Joy made, she thinks this will do it.”

Amanda raised her eyebrows. “If I drink this, the Official will no longer want me.”

“So drink it,” said Rosie. “What
are you waiting for?”

“I don’t just want to save myself,” Amanda said. “I want to save us all.”

“Ariel,” Rosie said, calling Amanda by her real name. “Are you sure you understand him as well as you think you do? Do you know what he wants?”

“He wants me,” she said. “He’ll take all of you too, but it’s me he really wants. And if he can’t have me, then he wants my blood. I think he wants to use
our blood to re-create us—like cloning, but less direct.” She lifted her head suddenly, like a deer who has heard something. “I have to go,” she said. She crossed her fingers, held them out to us in a little wave, as if waving and wishing good luck were the same thing. Then she disappeared behind the tomb.

Suddenly, Hal was pulling at my elbow, just as I heard the rhythm of running feet. We all
ducked behind a series of grave markers in time to see the guards who had been chasing us all afternoon take off, running after Amanda, wherever she had gone.

“I guess they’re not interested in us anymore,” Callie said watching them go.

Hal nodded. “What should we do now?” he asked.

“You should go back to the group,” Rosie said. “You’re safer there.”

“We do have a check-in soon—in less than
an hour,” Nia said. “And I want to make sure that Cisco is safe.”

“Come on, then,” said Rosie. “We can walk over the Arlington Memorial Bridge back to the Mall. We’ll have to hurry.”

Callie sighed. As we started to cross the bridge, I took some shots of the waves, just starting to get choppy in the brisk spring wind. The cherry trees lining the bank formed a cloud of pink. I captured the image
of our shadows cast forward on the sidewalk. The five of us walking side by side.