Sapience (32 page)

“Knock, knock.” She said.

I was afraid my voice might fail me so I settled for a nod.

Her hair was wet and curly, swaying down the back of her white tank top. Her jeans were white in the front where somebody had purposely faded them.

She walked up, slowly, excitedly. I pulled myself higher up onto the bed.

We first touched as my hand met her waist, my other hand slid to her side. I thought I would never get to be with her like this again. Her touch made me feel ecstatic, like there was a fire bursting to life in side of me.

“I was so scared.” She began.

I couldn’t resist, I pulled her in. Her lips were soft and luscious, yet strong as she pressed against me. Somewhere, deep in the back of my mind, I could feel pain from my wounds. Here, with her, tangled up together, lips exploring one another, even the pain felt good.

When our lips finally parted I was surprised to discover that she had somehow ended up in my lap. She shifted and her elbow went into my rib.

“Damn it Brianna!” I said, gritting through the pain.

She moved her elbow and shifted so the majority of her weight was on the bed. “Is that better?”

“Slightly.”

She didn’t make any effort to get off and if we didn’t move too much, the pain wasn’t that bad. I decided to keep her right where she was, beautiful and warm, snuggled up against me. There could be no better way to spend the morning.

She was making invisible markings on my bare chest. I couldn’t tell what they were but they tingled and felt good at the same time.

“How is Josh holding up?” I asked.

She looked up. “The bullet nicked his appendix. It got infected, Adrian and Lillie had to take it out. He has been on bed rest ever since.”

Ouch, that had to have been painful. To be honest, I was just happy to discover that he was still alive. Though I would have rather taken what he got over what happened to me. Not that I was trying to compare.

“What else did I miss?” I asked, sweeping a strand of hair out of her face.

“Well” She said “not any school. We all decided to lay low for now and not go.” She paused to think “Oh yea, Lillie and Adrian have been working like crazy. The government doesn’t know that the armory has been destroyed and they are working hard to keep it that way.”

“If anyone can pull that off it would be those two.” I said.

“I also explained the physical user to them. They went over the details amongst themselves for a while. They were quite surprised when I told them she didn’t recognize us. In the end they decided that it was her eyes that were the biggest clue. They said the government must have been using a mind control formula on her. Apparently they knew that the government had been working on one.”

“They were.” I said. “When we were debating whether or not to escape, news of the mind control project pushed us over the edge. Are they doing a good job keeping our little fire fight out of the Kingdom’s eye?”

“Yea, Lillie is already almost done with a computer program that will simulate as if the building was still up and running. I’m not sure how, probably sending field reports and doing paper work I imagine. The whole town was persuaded to believe the armory was just weapons testing, after all the Kingdom puts them through, they hardly even questioned it.” She looked up at me thoughtfully. “Sometimes I think mental users can do anything.” She paused to kiss me on the cheek. “Even after they have lost their powers.”

She added a cool twist into the kiss. It was a sensation I would never get tired of. I took a deep breath, letting her scent consume my senses.

If I had to spend the rest of my life in bed, it wouldn’t be so bad if it was like this.

Chapter 21

            
 
“I don’t know about this guys. I think I might be having second thoughts.” I said from twenty feet up in a tree, a long, brown, rope arching out from my hands. It wasn’t that I was scared, I just didn’t want to break any more bones. There was no way I was going to let myself fall victim to weeks of bed rest again.

“Just jump you chicken!” Brianna yelled up.

“Yea, it’s not that big of a deal.” Spencer added.

I glanced down at the lake only ten feet away from the bottom of the tree. The goal today wasn’t to jump in, nobody wanted to get wet on the first day of April, it was still too cold for that. No, today we were just trying out the rope. The plan was to swing out over the lake, not actually fall in.

“Are you just going to sit up there all day?” Brianna asked.

I ignored her, letting my feet slip off the branch. I was falling for only a second before the rope caught and I swung outward, the wind whipping past. At my highest I think I was more than thirty feet over the water. My heart was pounding in my chest as I swung back. Only we would make a rope swing designed to start off from so high up.

Spencer ran up when I came to a stop. “I told you that was crazy.”

“You weren’t lying.” I said “So now can we go? We are going to be late.”

“Yea Spencer,” Brianna said. “School is about to be let out for the day.”

“Okay, but William is driving.”

With that, we started for the house.

I had been recovering for over four months now and was finally starting to be able to do things like I could before. Brianna and Lillie had battled for a while over who could be my dominant care taker. They made sure every single aspect of my days were taken care of. Once I could walk again, I had to remind them that I could look after myself and didn’t need to be smothered… they still did.

“Shot gun!” Brianna yelled when we reached my newly remodeled Aston Martin.

Adrian and Jack had retrieved the car from the dead lands, it had just gotten back from the body shop the day before, it looked brand new. Lillie insisted the car be in peak condition and would spare no expense. I didn’t mind.

“Did you text Neal yet?” Brianna asked me when we were pulling down the driveway.

“Not yet, I’m planning on surprising him.”

So far Neal had texted me every day since we had run away from the school. Adrian had asked me not to talk to anybody until they had completely finished working on the armory’s outside image. I felt bad leaving Neal hanging like that, he probably thought I was dead.

I glanced into the rearview mirror, a blue suburban pulled out behind us. It looked like Josh and Rachel were going to tag along. We had been working on a plan to keep Blake from ever bothering us again, they probably wanted to watch.

“It’s going to feel good to be able to talk to my friends again. No offense but these past few months have been way too boring.” Spencer said.

Brianna nudged my side “I wasn’t bored.”

“Me either.” I said.

It took Brianna, Spencer and I four months to finally put our foot down and demand to be able to go back to school and see our friends again. Last night we finally did and to our surprise Adrian and Lillie didn’t even begin to argue. They acted like they had been expecting it, which they probably had of course.

“You can go back under one condition.” Adrian had said. “Blake believes you are gone and therefore he has not left town. Make sure he never crosses us again.”

We had spent the next few days devising a plan that would keep him off our backs. I insisted that making him move would be an abuse of power and after a long night of compromise I finally convinced everyone else. In the end we had decided to scare him, but not run him out of town.

That was the part that Spencer seemed most excited for. When we pulled into the school parking lot he pointed to Blake, getting into his hummer.

“There he is.”

“Not now.” I said, driving past without him even noticing.

Spencer sagged back, disappointed. “Then when?”

“Tonight.”

When we were farther into the parking lot Brianna yelled “Stop!”

We were blocking a small white car from backing out. The passenger door flew open and Neal leapt out. Nikki came from the driver’s side a few seconds later.

“You guys are alive!” He said, running up and tackling me in a bear hug. His eyes were as big as saucers and he was laughing. “I thought you were dead, man.”

“For a while I did too.” I glanced over at Nikki who was bawling historically on Brianna.

I never knew they were such good friends, then again people cry for strangers all the time. If you think someone is dead and it turns out not to be true. I could see why people cry, it’s simply a really good thing, though I also suspected that Nikki was the type of girl to over exaggerate just a little.

Brianna, patting her back, looked at me pleading. I stifled a laugh, she really hadn’t been raised to be sympathetic. She was struggling not to push the girl away and looked very uncomfortable.

“Dude, what the heck happened to you?” Neal asked.

“Well,” I started, remembering the lie we had all decided was best to tell. “The soldiers took us in and questioned us. Once they had decided we were innocent they let us go.”

“They had you this whole time?”

“You know the government, they won’t let you go unless they are absolutely sure. That is of course, if they let you go at all.”

“Did they hit you?” he asked.

“Yea, they beat the crap out of me.” I said, lifting my shirt to reveal the scars and bruising still left over from the beating.

“It looks like they tried to kill you!”

“They almost did.”

He continued to stare until I lowered my shirt, he looked mortified. “I’m glad you’re back, Blake has been really bad ever since you left. He’s taking revenge on anybody who ever took you’re side. Nikki and I have been getting it really bad.”

I watched Brianna politely peel Nikki off her and head for our side of the car. “I don’t think you are going to have to worry about that after today.” I said.

“What are you going to do?”

“Hey Neal, did you miss me?” Brianna asked.

“Yea, I’m glad you guys are ok.” Neal said, he was sincere, I think it was the first time he had ever said a word to her that didn’t sound nervous.

I glanced over to find Blake’s Hummer, he was pulling out of the parking lot, completely oblivious to our presence.

“Brianna?” A girl said in disbelief as she was walking by and stopped. She grabbed the arm of a kid passing her and pointed him in our direction. I noticed a few other heads turn to see what she was pointing at.

We weren’t there for much longer before droves of students started to realize we were there. I could see people whispering, some pointing. We were soon surrounded in a crowd. Some came up and gave us hugs, others tried to get closer so they could ask what had happened.

Brianna and I huddled up against each other as much as possible. It was like being an animal in a zoo. I could tell by the look on her face that she didn’t like being surrounded any more than I did.

It was mostly people that knew Brianna. They all seemed blown away that we were still alive. The life expectancy of someone hauled off by the government was almost zero, in their eyes we changed that.

Somebody turned their car stereo on full blast and a giant party seemed to break out right in the parking lot. I was glad we had decided to come here when school was getting out rather than just getting started, people were livelier in the afternoon. A few teachers came out to shake my hand or hug Brianna. It was almost as if they had never had anything to celebrate before.

We were the center of attention, forced to explain over and over how we were questioned and eventually let go. No one let on that they knew we were lying. Still, they pried us for as many details as they could get. Brianna glanced at me every time we were forced to make up something new. We both knew that the bigger our lie got, the harder it would be to keep it straight in the future. I think we did a pretty good job of keeping things simple and boring sounding. Some people even looked disappointed in our story… if they only knew.

After a while people started breaking off into their own little groups, constantly glancing in our direction.

Much to my disapproval, I watched as Spencer hopped up onto the hood of my car.

“Excuse me,” He called “As much as we love seeing all of you, I am afraid there is some business we have to take care of.” He hopped down and walked over so only Brianna and I could hear him. “Are we going to do this or what? It’s getting dark.”

I nodded. “Ok, let’s go.”

“Hey, can we come with you?” Neal asked when we were getting into my car.

“No.” Spencer said.

“I will see you first thing in the morning. For now we have a little family matter to take care of.” I slapped him on the shoulder then hopped in and shut my door.

Neal and Nikki held hands as they walked to the center of the lane to watch us drive away.

“That place got crowded.” Spencer said as I pulled out of the lot. “I can’t believe how excited they were to see us.”

I glanced into my mirror, Josh and Rachel were following us again. I wasn’t surprised when they didn’t come join the crowd. They weren’t as accustomed to outsiders as we were. They had no intentions of making any friends today.