Van Bender and the Burning Emblems (The Van Bender Archives #1) (8 page)

She shook her head. Her voice came over my headset, tinny and hollow. “When we get home, we’ll take care of it.”

“Like, I’m not kidding. A little information would be really nice here.”

“Not now. You won’t have any questions once we get home.”

“I would hate to make any more mistakes—”

“Richie!” She leaned forward, putting her face within inches of mine. “We’ve feared this day for your whole life! We’ve wondered how we could teach you about the... stuff. We’ve fretted over it—”

“You keep saying ‘we.’“

“Your father and I. We’ve done the best we could to keep you safe.”

“You should have known—”

“We did all we could, and now this. Can you imagine how I’m feeling? Do you have any clue?”

“Like you just won a prize?”

She grunted and sat back, shaking her head and staring out the window.

“Like maybe you should have told me already?”

She didn’t look at me.

“Like going out for a pizza?”

She still looked outside.

Annoyed at Mom, I waved at the fans. They had cameras out, and the flashes punctuated the night with moments of brilliance. The helipad attendants gave the thumbs up.

“Here we go,” the pilot said.

The tone of the helicopter motor increased as the blades accelerated and we lifted into the air. As my stomach began to turn, something occurred to me. I looked at Mom.

“You have a lighter in your purse,” I said.

She glanced at me, and looked away.

“You have no reason to carry a lighter.” I couldn’t help my tone from being accusatory. “You keep it to... to light that other stuff. And you have that orange lip gloss. I’ve never seen you use it, but you’ve always had it with you.”

“Richie,” she said, “it’s complicated. We’ll talk soon. You won’t have any questions. I promise. We just need to get home.”

I frowned. “Because being home is going to make this conversation oh-so-much simpler? It’ll reduce the complexity a little—like magically?”

She glared at me.

“Because, you know, all the really hard conversations work out better at home.”

“Enough, Richie.”

“Home makes it—”

“I said enough!”

I shook my head and looked outside.

The crowd and the football stadium slipped away beneath us, and the lights of the city spread out under and around us. My stomach started to do flips.

I don’t know if the cancer messed me up, or if it would have happened, anyway, but before the cancer I loved roller coasters and amusement park rides. I could spin on the Scrambler or the Rock-o-Planes for hours without getting sick. I loved high-speed coasters the most. But since the cancer I couldn’t go on more than one or two rides without getting queasy and wanting to blow my lunch all over the place.

Extended rides in vehicles do the same thing to me. My gut turns and people say I go pale. Cars aren’t so bad if I sit in the front seat and watch straight ahead, and I used a similar tactic with the helicopter flight. I focused on a light ahead, on the ground.

Fortunately, we didn’t have to go far. Just to our home in Malibu.

As we flew away from the stadium, a movement outside the window caught my eyes, and I turned to see Agent Maynerd standing upright, soaring through the air. He still wore his wide-brimmed hat. His long coat flapped out behind him like Superman’s cape as he approached the helicopter. He had one hand extended, fist closed as if he held onto something.

He wasn’t far away. Perhaps thirty feet. Surprised, I rubbed my eyes, and looked back. By then, he’d flown up next to the helicopter. I started to say something to Mom, but he tapped on the window to get her attention. She jumped in surprise.

“What the—!” She cut herself short. She always did. I’d never heard her swear even once.

“Uhhmm,” the pilot said in our headsets, “it appears there’s a flying man outside the copter.”

Agent Maynerd knocked again and mouthed something we couldn’t hear. From his lips, it looked like
pumpkin pie is the best
, but I figured that probably wasn’t really it. Mom looked ready to go into shock.

“Can we let him in?” I asked.

“You can slide the door open,” the pilot said. Just make sure you’re both buckled in, first.”

We both were, so I reached over and grabbed the handle.

“Wait!” Mom said. “I don’t know if we want to let him in.”

I raised my eyebrows. “Why not? Are you worried about stranger danger?”

“Given what I found you doing tonight,” she said, “I’m a worried about much more than that.”

Agent Maynerd knocked again, this time with more force. He frowned, held up his badge, and widened his eyes.

I yanked the handle. The door slid open. Wind rushed in and the volume of the chopper blades increased. I’d half expected to see Agent Maynerd sitting on a Pegasus or standing on some funky flying surfboard, but he didn’t. He stood in thin air.

As calmly as if he stepped onto a boat from shore, he ducked his head and came into the copter. He kept his extended hand outside for a moment, until he opened his fist.

A dazzling array of red light blossomed from his hand, accompanied by the sound of spinning fireworks. The crimson lines shot out and away, fading in an instant.

“What the heck was that?” I said.

He sat down next to me and pushed the door shut. The wind cut off, and the propeller blade volume became muffled. My stomach still churned. I reached for the barf bags we’d prepared.

Mom watched with a tight mouth. The copter pilot kept looking back, eyes wide. Agent Maynerd grabbed a headset hanging behind him and put it on. Then he lifted his badge again, showing it to Mom.

“Stop that,” she said. She smacked his hand down. “I know who you are.” Then to me, “
What,
exactly, have you been doing?”

I shrugged. “I tried to talk with you about it back at the stadium.”

“Pilot,” Agent Maynerd said. “Please remove your headset so I can talk in private with your passengers?”

“I, uh, don’t know... .”

“Do it!” Mom said. “Just do it!”

The pilot tore his headset off, but continued to glance backward every few seconds.

“It’s such a pleasure to see you again,” I said to Agent Maynerd. “Aren’t you going to brandish your badge, again?”

His hand twitched, but didn’t otherwise move. He gave me a level look and reached over to pull my headset off. I tried to object, but he moved too quickly. Before I knew it, he’d tucked my headset inside his coat. I could only hear the chopper blades cutting through the air in their rhythmic thumping.

I had to continue to focus on the ground outside as Agent Maynerd spoke to Mom, but I frequently glanced at them. His lips moved fast while the rest of his face looked like stone. At first, her eyes grew wide and she slouched deeper in her seat as if suffering an extreme moral defeat, but soon she became more animated. Angry, even. She sat up in her chair and began to motion with her hands. Several times she looked at me and ran her hand in a horizontal wiping motion, as if she were clearing condensation off a window.

I felt like I watched one of those old silent movies, except I didn’t get any captions. Every now then her eyes would flit to me, or she would shake her head with fast, short movements. I tried to lean in close to listen, and thought I heard her say something like “wipe his mind,” but Agent Maynerd put a hand on my face and pushed me away, and I could only hear the thumping of the blades and the rush of wind.

After about a minute, my motion sickness became too strong. My stomach clenched involuntarily, my mouth gaped, and I puked into the bag. As far as barf bags go, it was a pretty good one. Probably industrial strength. I tied it off, set it aside, and grabbed another.

As I raised the next bag to my mouth, Agent Maynerd gave me a concerned look. He pointed at me and said something to Mom. She shook her head and shrugged. I really wished I could read lips. I added it to the list of skills I needed to learn, next to karate and riding a unicycle. Agent Maynerd looked at me with skepticism.

Within about thirty seconds, I threw up again. I didn’t have much food in me. Mostly just bile. I hadn’t eaten much that day, due to the jitters. Surprisingly, my body didn’t feel weak after the puking. In fact, it still felt better than it had in weeks—no doubt due to the spell Nick had cast on me.

After another half a minute, and another heave or two on my part, Agent Maynerd leaned forward and tapped the pilot on the shoulder, then motioned for the pilot to put his headset back on. The pilot obeyed, and Agent Maynerd spoke to him. The pilot listened, then nodded in response. A moment later, my stomach lurched as the helicopter turned in another direction. Below, the grid of lights wheeled.

Mom tapped my knee and indicated that I should put my headset back on. Agent Maynerd handed it to me.

“What did he tell you?” I said when I had my microphone in front of my mouth.

“I told her what you’ve been up to,” he said.

“What? Learning about things I should have been told about a long time ago?”

He gave me a level stare. “Aiding a suspected criminal.”

“Nick Savage?” Mom said. Her voice sounded like venom. “Really? Nick Savage?”

“You knew about all this?” I said. “Brink? And you couldn’t tell me years ago?”

She shook her head in indignation. “Don’t blame this mess on me. I just wanted to protect you. You disobeyed me.”

“Clearly that worked out pretty well.”

She settled back into her seat and shook her head. Her eyes became unfocused, and she stared out into the night.

“I tried so hard,” she said. “But I’ve failed.”

“Why protect me from all this? It seems pretty awesome.”

Her gaze focused on me. A vague sadness filled them. “Because, Richie, it’s dangerous. Very dangerous.”

She refused to say more, and despite my persistent questions, neither of them would tell me anything about our destination, although Agent Maynerd gave our pilot frequent instructions and inquired as to my health several times. He seemed quite concerned with the puking and how I felt.

And they wouldn’t tell me anything else about Marti, Nick, brink, or how Agent Maynerd had managed to catch up to an airborne helicopter by apparently flying. So I settled down and heaved several more times into the bag.

We arrived at our destination in about ten minutes, just before midnight.

And that’s when I learned that the government had been watching me.

Chapter 15: Awkward

When dad came home from work and said he’d met Richie Van Bender, I almost fainted. I mean, seriously! I knew someone who’d seen Richie Van Bender in person! Like, oh my gosh!

-Carly Garrard, daughter of a SOaP Agent

We landed on a helipad, on top of what looked like a warehouse in an industrial zone. It wouldn’t take long for my stomach to settle, but the ride had been far worse than anticipated—mostly because of the extended length.

Half a dozen men in suits surrounded the copter. Agent Maynerd got out first, said something to the men about taking care of the pilot, and motioned for us to follow. I had to walk slowly, with Mom supporting me and me holding my stomach. I would have preferred to sit down for a few minutes, but Agent Maynerd and the escort of men led us inside, down a hallway, through a door, and into a wide room filled with monitors on desks and people talking and moving about.

On the left wall, a bank of huge screens displayed pictures of people, columns of data, and satellite images of various parts of the earth. One screen displayed an image of someone drawing a trapezoidal shape in the air with yellow brink.

When we stepped into the room, silence washed from the back of the room where we stood, to the front. People stopped talking and walking. A few papers even floated to the floor. One person leaned close to another to whisper something and gesture at me.

They’d been talking about me. I could tell from their guilty looks.

I first walked in on people talking about me at a hospital, at age nine. It’s happened many times since, but this time had to be the worst, because with another glance over the screens, I saw a picture of me standing on the stage. I had my guitar strapped on. In one hand I held up a little device with green lights. I looked at it with utter awe.

Yep. They’d been talking about me. And looking at pictures of me.

Splendid.

“Is that really him?” someone in the crowd said.

I lifted a hand and gave a little wave.

“Turn off the screens,” said a voice from the far side of the room.

A woman leaned over a desk, as if hoping I wouldn’t notice, and hit a key on a keyboard. The monitors on the far wall went black.

“Awkward,” someone deep in the room said.

The image of me standing there looking at the Cask stayed in my mind. The queasiness in my stomach surged. How quickly after I’d taken the look at the Cask onstage had these people known about it? Why did I have to let my mouth gape like I was a codfish?

“Stop staring,” Agent Maynerd said to the crowd. He started forward. “You’re all acting like you’ve never seen a rock star before. Get back to work.”

The people jerked into action, guilty looks on their faces. They began talking and working on their computers again. The big screens didn’t turn back on.

As we continued on down an aisle between desks, I realized where I was—in a SOaP office.

“It’s much dirtier here than I expected,” I said.

Both Mom and Agent Maynerd shot me dark looks, but no one else seemed to care about my little joke—which was all the funnier because it was a complete lie. The place looked like the cleaning crew passed through eight times a day. No, ten.

A series of glass walls lined the back and far side of the room, some with offices inside. They took me to one with an oblong table surrounded by a dozen leather chairs, where I got another big surprise.

Dad waited there.

He stood at the head of the table, and with a smile came forward to greet me with a hug.

After the cancer, after my parents separated and before I became a rock star and could travel at will, I only saw him a few times a year. Christmas, summer, my birthday. He’d gone back East, to D.C., while Mom stayed on the West Coast. I visited him in D.C. whenever I could. The city had become one of my favorite places in the world.