The Secret (16 page)

Frustration built inside of me, looking for a way to vent. Turning my palm up, I imagined his glasses in my hand. Then they were.

Mr. Drake looked at his hand and then at mine. He reached for the glasses. “Lanie.”

Pulling my hand away, I felt myself start to shake. “After you left yesterday—I got to thinking that there has to be more, right? I mean, we know there were seven of you. We know there was this sick experiment that gave us all these powers. But we don’t know anything about why The Foundation was formed. We’ve all just been trying to stay alive. But I want to know. I want to know about my parents and about Nicholi. What’s the whole freakin’ point of it all, anyway?!”

Frowning, Mr. Drake seemed to measure my words.

A tear snuck down my cheek and I didn’t try to wipe it. I felt like I would disappear if I didn’t know the truth. “Please.”

Shifting nervously, he pulled up the sleeve of his corduroy jacket and looked at his watch. “All right. I can’t talk now, but I’ll pick you up tonight.”

I held his glasses out to him. “Where?”

As he took them and put them back into place, I saw little beads of sweat on his forehead. “I shouldn’t even be alone with you—it doesn’t look right.”

Lifting an eyebrow in challenge, I stood. “We can call a group meeting, if you prefer.”

Mr. Drake turned away from me. “I’ll pick you up at seven.”

Waiting outside of the apartment, I tried to pull my coat tighter around me. I didn’t want Rob to know where I was going. Not that he was even paying attention, still consumed with cracking the code embedded in the book. He and Stewart were in constant communication. Stewart had enlisted one of his most trusted friends to help them, so Rob was always video conferencing with them. And, while I was grateful that he was working so hard, I missed him.

Looking up, I saw a car coming down the street.

Marsha’s silver Jetta pulled up to the curb. Anger surged through me.

The passenger side window rolled down. Sam leaned forward, his hair falling

into his green eyes. “You goin’ my way?”

I lowered my head. “Don’t pretend we’re friends, Sam.”

Opening the driver’s side door, he stepped out, starting toward me. “I thought we should talk prom details.”

Backing up, I put my hand out in front of me. I hated the way his presence affected me. I knew I was blushing and it angered me. “Just pick me up before the dance. I’m wearing black—it kind of symbolizes my mood.”

He stopped, shoving his hands into his coat pocket. “So this is how it’s going to be?”

Mr. Drake’s car pulled up behind the Jetta.

Moving down the steps, I quickly got into Mr. Drake’s car, calling out the window, “Black—that’s all I’ve got to say.”

“Have a good night, Lanie.”

The heat from the vents blared into my face. “Go. Go.”

Mr. Drake put the car into gear, easing away from the apartment and onto a main street toward downtown Boulder. “Good evening to you, too, Ms. Hart. Another lover’s quarrel?”

I felt my heart constrict. Sam was the last person I wanted around tonight. Putting my hand over my chest, I leaned back into the seat. “Did my mother date both of them?”
Mr. Drake drove slowly. “You want to know? Really?”

“Yes. That is why I am here.”

Turning on his blinker, he turned onto Main Street. “Do you realize that the more you know, the more you can be corrupted? I understand that you all are involved, but let me ask you, what is the end game here? What will happen when they get their powers back? And what will happen when we find Nicholi and Luth—or they find us? What then?”

I looked at the driver’s side window, thinking about his question. “I don’t know.”

“Exactly. They’re just so determined to get their powers back. Reed can’t talk enough about what he’s going to do to Luth and Nicholi when he finds them. None of you realize that it all just starts to escalate. It just gets out of control.”

I studied his face in the street light coming in through the window. “You’re afraid—aren’t you? You still want to run from this. You want to take Sheila and Tim and run.”

His brown eyes squeezed in agony. “I want to protect them.”

I thought of my mother, lying in her bed at the Facility. “My parents tried to protect me too, Mr. Drake. And it made everything worse.” Gritting my teeth together, I leaned closer to him. “Tell me. Tell me about my mother. Tell me everything.”

He leaned away from me, staring at the road in front of us. Finally, he spoke.  “You probably know this, but she, like the both of them, was a philosopher of sorts.”

I had never thought of my mother as a philosopher type. That was always my father’s department.

“Nicholi was dangerous—even then. And I think your mother could see it. Your father and Nicholi never got in to a direct fight over your mother, but they would get in heated debates over
ideas
. And sometimes it would end in blows.”

Drake tapped the steering wheel, glancing at me. “But Nicholi backed down when your parents started to get close. I could tell he was disappointed, but he wasn’t a man to wear his feelings on his sleeve. And then, luckily, he met Jasmine. And she made him happy. And the rest of us were grateful. I think that’s why your mother didn’t go with us to India. She felt the tension. And she didn’t want to come between them. And Jasmine wasn’t there, either. When we got back from the trip and started to realize that the things we had wished for were becoming real, Nicholi called a meeting. He insisted that we’d been gifted these powers for a reason—that we were important. Back then I was sucked into his ideas. It took me a while to see the truth under his words.”

I started chewing on the inside of my lip. Rob said it was my new tic, instead of fluttering my eyes. “What changes did he want to make?”

“I can’t explain to you how charismatic Nicholi was. He got us all on board with his plans for a utopic society. A place where there would be no hunger, no disease, and The Foundation would be at the center. It would control financial institutions, governments, and the very core of freedom throughout the world.”

I shook my head. “But there were only seven of you.”

“Nicholi thought he could give powers to others. He kept trying to give powers to Jasmine—but he couldn’t. And he just got more and more obsessed. Over the next five years, as children started being born and manifesting powers, The Foundation changed into an elitist school. By then, Thomas was resisting Nicholi’s control over you kids and they started to fight more and more at the meetings. The Foundation was in full swing. Dr. Luth was brought on to work with the gifted kids; he was brought to the meetings and touted as a brilliant scientist who would catapult the next generation to greatness.”

I tried to digest all of this. “And this pulled my mother further away.”

“Yes. And it tore your father apart. I remember thinking that I could see him starting to crack. But he sided with your mother—obviously.”

A dull ache came into my chest as I thought about my mother. “Until he couldn’t resist him anymore.”

Heaving a sigh, Mr. Drake nodded. “Yes. No one could resist Nicholi.”

I looked out the car window, not really seeing the little shops that dotted Boulder’s downtown, trying to imagine it all. “So you all wanted to take over the world, and you decided to get a motto and coins and make it official?”

He scoffed. “I guess. It’s the old saying—the road to hell is paved with the best intentions. Nicholi’s view was that we had to gain the power to control the power. He thought that once we had governments in our pocket, we could do some good. We had this idea that every human being needed to be free. Nicholi touted the basic tenets of the Declaration of Independence—life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. We had a vision that freedom would abound. We were arrogant.”

Startled, I felt confused. “Why is that arrogant?”

Mr. Drake clicked his tongue. “You see, Lanie, it sounds good—doesn’t it? But what most people don’t realize is that there is a cost to freedom. It usually isn’t given without a heavy price. Look at most free societies—lots of men and women have died to give their children something better in life. But it usually takes a war to achieve freedom. That’s just how it is. And any type of organization that tries to control people, even with good intentions, will always become corrupt.”

“And the coins, the Latin phrase.” I lifted and lowered my eyebrows. “Kind of dramatic, don’t you think?”

Mr. Drake nodded. “Yes, it was meant to be dramatic. It was meant to engender a feeling of uniqueness in us. You have to understand that the coins were made with blood—our blood. It was symbolic of our link; that we were in this together.”

Running my finger behind my ear, I felt like it was all starting to make sense. “And the mark is another symbol?”

A faraway look came into Mr. Drake eyes. “Yes. After seeing it on the cover of the book, we did some research on the symbol. A long time ago, science and magic and philosophy were combined. People didn’t distinguish between what could be proved scientifically and what could not. It was called metaphysics.”

I recognized him slipping into lecture mode.

“Aristotle studied metaphysics. He coined the term ‘arche’ to describe the starting point of something indestructible, something that only the gods could have created. And The Foundation was the place where you were supposed to realize your full potential.”

A warm, tingling feeling started to go through me.
The potential to change the world.

The wrinkles on Mr. Drake’s face deepened and he put the car into gear and started backing up. “Oh no—I’ve seen that look before. See, that’s why it’s dangerous to tell you all of this. Freedom sounds good until it blows up in your face.”

My mind started whirling. Everything he was saying started to spread in front of me in a winding loop. All of his words seemed to come at me from every possible angle. And then—comprehension poured through me. My heart started thudding rapidly in my chest. “It’s the key to the block. It’s all connected?”

Mr. Drake’s face turned a putrid shade of white. “What?”

And then I knew—that he knew. He had known this whole time. Trembling started inside of me.

I slammed my hand into his dash. “That’s how come the block works—it’s the
Arche
. Somehow Nicholi’s using it to interfere with their powers. And you’ve
known
that.”

Shaking his head back and forth, his face whitened even more. “I wasn’t one hundred percent sure.”

“You kept it secret. And they could have died in that cave.”

Mr. Drake pulled over. “I didn’t know, then, how to activate the powers. It wasn’t until recently.” His voice became intense. “Lanie, we can still change all of this.”

I shook my head, furious that he’d let them all wander in the dark this whole time. “Yeah—running has worked so well for you.”

Banging his fist into the steering wheel, he turned away.

Passion sparked to life inside of me. “We can’t change things by running. No—you just explained it very well to me. Freedom comes at a cost. Real change is hard. We are at war and it’s time we go on the offensive.”

Mr. Drake turned onto my street and sucked in his breath.

Flashing red and white lights made me shield my eyes.

Mr. Drake ran his hand through his hair. “It looks like there are more pressing problems at the moment.”

Episode 18: The Dance

Officer Boyle stood on my porch. His shoulders were pulled back in that superior, ‘if you’re lying to me, you’ll pay,’ kind of cop way.

“Let me make sure I got this straight,” he said. “Your brother fell and bumped his head, leaving his blood on the ground. But you don’t know where, or really who, the other blood came from?”

I focused on keeping my eyes steady with his. This was the third time he’d questioned me since I’d come home with Mr. Drake four days ago. It was total harassment and I felt edgy and paranoid. Not to mention the fact that Jake wasn’t talking to me and Mr. Drake still couldn’t get everyone’s powers working. Plus, tonight I had to endure an evening with Sam before I could try to get into my mother’s head. I wanted to scream.

Smiling, I tried to look
demure
. That was Reed’s parting advice before I’d opened the door for Officer Boyle, to be demure and say, “That’s right, Officer. Like I said before, the guys were messing around and Rob fell. I don’t know where the other blood came from.”

The other officer, standing next to Boyle, leaned back on his heels, curtly nodding his head. “Same thing they’ve all said three times now.” He looked bored. Leaning into Boyle, he tried to whisper so I wouldn’t hear him. “We have other things that need attention.”