Chapter 18 – Tomorrow’s Dream
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I swim ashore somewhere near a small town called Freeport, at a little after six o’clock in the evening. After I towel myself off and change out of my bikini into a nice running outfit, I take my bearings. I need to go that way.

I’m not sure what Marshall Miller would say if I called him. Would he believe that I’m safe now? Anyway, I doubt anyone could get me back to Austin faster than I can get there myself.

So I run.

I easily outpace most of the traffic on the highway that I’m paralleling. I leap over intersections. Cut corners and curves when I can. I even grab onto the back of a semi that’s doing over seventy-five, which is faster than I can keep up for long. Once I climb to the top, I sit down and take the opportunity to send a group text, letting people know I’m okay, and on my way home. 

After the first buzz of an incoming response, I turn off my phone. I don’t want to read those right now. Instead, I lie back and stare up at the stars. They aren’t nearly as beautiful here as they had been out on the ocean. Where I’d met the dolphins. Where I’d fought the sea monster. Where I’d gone through the door and—

“Uh, uh,” Another me is standing over me. She looks sad. And tired.

“Not yet,” she says, “You’re not ready.”

“But--”

She’s gone. I can be really annoying. I go back to watching the stars until the truck slows.

As the truck exits the highway, I drop off and continue on foot. Pushing myself to my limits, I can maintain fifty-five miles an hour. I can hit almost eighty for a short burst. I don’t get tired, I just can’t keep that speed up for long. It’s nice to know I have limits. I guess.

It takes me about three and a half hours to reach home.

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Promise isn’t surrounded by U.S. Marshals. Or the National Guard. Or anyone else, as far as I can tell on a quick circuit of the place. They have to know I’m on my way, since there’s no way they aren’t monitoring all my friends’ phones. Not that I can blame them. Last they knew, I was claiming to be a one-girl weapon of mass destruction. Who could blame them for greeting me with an army battalion?

On the other hand, I’d also warned them that trying to hurt me might set me off. That might have affected their decision.

After a little more in-depth scouting, and a little side trip, I stop sneaking and walk up to the front door.

The two men with rifles make me nervous. I don’t want anyone to get hurt. And they will get hurt if they try to fire those things here at Promise. I care about every person who belongs at Promise, and if anyone is going to get hurt, it isn’t going to be one of us.

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“How certain are you that you aren’t a threat at this point, Ms. Parker?”

Deputy Marshal Miller seems a little less friendly than in our previous meetings. He’s made a point of mentioning those, and how understanding he and the federal government have been. Several times.

“I didn’t say I’m not a threat. I just said I’m not going to blow up.”

He doesn’t bother to answer that.

“Positive,” I continue.

“How can you be so sure?”

“How did I know I was going to blow up in the first place?” I ask, “Same way.”

He makes a few notes, then glances at his phone. He’d told me he was recording our conversation, but hadn’t mentioned that somebody (or somebodies) would be listening in live. They obviously are though. I can tell from the look on his face when he glances at the phone that he’s getting messages from somebody. Messages he mostly doesn’t care for.

I really do not want to be in this room. I want to go see my friends. Apologize for running out on them. Let them know I’m okay. For now. Whatever the final thing is, it’s going to happen any time now, and I’m not sure I’ll make it back from what I have to do.

At least Harlan and Meg are there. Meg had refused to let Miller talk to me without both of them present. I can tell that she and I are going to have a long talk later, but she is in Mama Bear mode right now. And of course Harlan can’t help being in Papa Bear mode. It would take starvation and several industrial class razors to get him out of it.

“Can I go now?”

“What’s the hurry?”

“I haven’t seen my friends in a week. I miss them.”

“There will be plenty of time for that.”

“When? Tomorrow night is it, and I might not come back. I really don’t want to waste any of the time between now and then.”

“Actually, we don’t think that’s a good idea.”

“What? Spending time with my friends?”

“No. The fight. We think you should sit this one out.”

“You’re joking.”

“No. The National Guard is standing by. All your friends have to do is hold off any invaders until the Guard can get into position. You won’t be needed.”

“That sounds like a really bad idea.”

Arguing doesn’t do any good. Pleading doesn’t do any good. I am forbidden from being away from Promise, other than to attend school, for the next three days.

“Forbidden by who?” Harlan asks.

“We’ll get a judge’s order first thing in the morning,” Miller says, “She is a ward of the state, after all.”

I hadn’t expected this. Not exactly. But when I’d peeked inside and seen men with guns, I’d decided it was better to be safe than sorry. Thus the side trip. It looks like it was time for threats.

“Don’t,” Meg says, looking straight at me.

Damn it. I didn’t even open my mouth.

“But---”

“Just don’t.” She turns to Miller, “If you do any of that, all you’re going to do is ruin her life. You know good and well that no threat is going to keep her from helping her friends. And if you think you can stop her physically, you’re an idiot.”

Miller opens his mouth to respond. Meg keeps talking.

“Without enormous collateral damage, that is, and short of killing her. And do you really want to defend your actions if you kill or maim a cute sixteen year old girl, a girl who has already saved who knows how many lives, just to keep her from helping to save more?”

“It’s too risky. She could wipe out half of Texas---”

“Uh-uh,” I interrupt, “It would have only been, like, twenty percent or so.”

Meg’s look tells me that I’m not helping.

“The only reason you have to believe that is that she told you, and now she has told you it’s no longer a danger.”

“But she won’t say what happened.”

“I can’t.”

“Why can’t you?”

I try to come up with an answer. The door had opened, I had gone through, with the dolphins, then--

And there I am again, standing just out of everyone else’s line of sight. That me doesn’t say anything. She just puts her finger to her lips and shakes her head. Then she mouths “Not yet.” She looks sad as she disappears.

I shake my head.

“So,” Meg says, “What’s it going to be?”

“We just can’t allow---”

“You can’t stop her,” Harlan says, “The only question is what you’re going to do after.”

“Fine. But whatever happens, to her or others, will be on your heads.”

Meg glances at Harlan. “We can live with that.”

The goons follow Miller out of the room.

“Thank you guys so much.” I say.

“We’ll talk tomorrow. Go see your friends,” Meg says.

Once they leave, I collect the folders I’d taped to the undersides of all the chairs in the conference room. And the ones from the chairs in Harlan’s and Meg’s offices. And the counseling office. I hadn’t been sure which room we’d end up in, or which seat Miller would sit in, so I had gone a little overboard.

The folders are copies of my file from the safe in Miller’s office. The complete one, not the one he’d shown me. My plan had been to have him reach under his seat and find it. I hadn’t had an exact plan of where I’d go from there. I was going to sort of wing it. I was a little annoyed that Meg had stopped me. As if I couldn’t have taken care of it myself.

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“You did what!?”

Cindy is not impressed with my plan. From their faces, neither are the rest of the gang. We’re gathered in Kristen’s room. Cindy, Henry, and Sebastian are on the sofa that Kristen has somehow ended up with, with Kelly perched on one arm of it. Kristen is sitting on her bed. I’m sitting on her desk chair. I’d found three listening devices and squished them before I started talking.

“I just---”

“And what, exactly, were you going to threaten to do?”

I still don’t have an answer to that. I’m sure I would have thought of something. I look to the others for help. Nope. Still. It would have worked.

“Fine. Maybe it was a good thing Meg stopped me, after all.”

“You think?”

“Could you get into the office at school and change my grades?” Sebastian asks.

“They don’t store the grades in the office. They’re on servers,” Kelly observes, “If you know what you’re doing, you can change them from anywhere. . . In theory.”

And the subject changes. I’m glad to be talking about something other than me and my personal drama. Anything, really. School. Television. The inaccuracy of hacking on television and in movies. Kelly even goes into a long confusing story about the time they got control of the whole school district website for a day.

“. . . so I didn’t waste time messing with web pages. I just created a new admin account.”

“Why’d he give you the admin access in the first place?” Kristen asks.

Kelly shrugs, “He thought he knew his system better than a twelve year old?”

“You were twelve!?”

Whatever. This is normal, and I love it.

The warning bell for curfew rings too soon. I just want to hang out here forever. But people need to sleep. Normal people, anyway. I follow Cindy as she leaves.

“I’m sorry.” I say.

“For what?” Cindy replies, still walking ahead of me toward her room.

“For not telling you what was going on. Where I was going.”

“You were a little preoccupied.”

“But you’re still mad at me.”

She stops and turns. She almost smiles.

“So you picked up on that. You’re learning.”

“This is a good place for that. But you’re changing the subject.”

“I can’t slip anything past you tonight.”

I wait.

“Fine. Yeah. I’m mad at you for not telling me. But I’m mad at me for being mad at you, because I know you were going through crap. But you still could have told me. And you said you had that satellite phone, so you could have called.”

“I really am sorry. I knew I should call. I just couldn’t. I still have to call my Aunt. I have to call Valeria. Ugh.”

We hug.

“Ahem.” It’s Emily, the night counselor. Time to go to our rooms.

“Good night.”

“Good night.”

I turn on my phone to call Valeria. There are two voicemails from her, but I can’t get myself to listen to them. I just need to call her and talk to her. To hear her voice.

I sit on the edge of my bed, working up my nerve. I said the “L” word. Did she say it back on one of those voicemails? I could just listen and find out. What if she did? What if she didn’t?

I should just call her. Or listen to the voicemails. No, definitely just call.

I listen to the voicemails.

The first one is from right after I hung up on my way out of town. It’s just her asking me to call her back. To tell her where I was going, and what I meant when I said I might take everyone with me. No “L” word.

The second one is from last night. Right around the time I swam through the Door with the dolphins. She’d known something was wrong. She asks me to please call her, just to let her know I’m okay.

“Parker!” she answers before the first ring is finished, “Are you okay? Are you back? What’s going on? Why didn’t you call? Why didn’t you answer my calls? Or my texts?”

She sounds angry and relieved and happy and pissed.

“I---”

“Where are you? Are you home?”

“Yeah---”

“Be on the roof in five minutes.”

She hangs up.

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“So you really think they’re going to steal my body tomorrow night?”

We’re lying on a blanket on top of the tallest building in Austin, some condos that I don’t care enough about to remember the name of. We’re close enough to the edge to have a nice view of the rest of downtown.

Valeria had been angry. She had also been relieved. And pissed off. And Happy. She had not been shouty. It was actually a relief to see her really angry, but not shouting. I really don’t like shouting. I’ve had enough to last me a lifetime. The relief had been a nice change from the anger, but had given way pretty quickly to the pissed-offedness. There had been much apologizing on my part.

I had been really glad to move on to the happy. Happy is good. Happy involves kissing. Happy involves finding a place to land, so Valeria doesn’t have to spend any of her attention keeping us floating above the city. It was all needed elsewhere. I provided blankets. 

I’m not sure how long we laid there on the roof, tangled up with each other and the blankets. I just knew that it wasn't long enough.

She eventually asks her question.

“Yeah, I do,” I say, “It just fits. It’s a weird and crazy thing to do, but I believe it’s their plan.”

I tell her about the lines I had seen when I was supercharged. The connection back through the depths. About her power being something separate from her, but joined, and serving as an anchor for that line to elsewhere.

“How can I stop it?” she asks.

“I don’t think you can. If we could remove your power, that might stop it, but I have no idea how to do that.”

“So that’s it? This is my last night?”

Oh. That explains her urgency. I feel like I’ve taken advantage of her.

“Maybe not.”

“But you said---”

“I said I don’t think you can stop it. But I have another idea.”

She takes some convincing. She especially doesn’t like that I needed to try part of it then and there. It would be crazy not to test every part of my plan I can in advance. If I wait until it’s time, I won’t have a chance to come up with something else if it fails.

I don’t get back to my room until it’s too late to call Aunt Tabitha.

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It is very difficult to concentrate at school the next day. There’s something about a sense of impending doom that really throws a girl off her game.

At least I’d been able to use the rest of the night to catch up on my homework and studying. I’m even ready for the test in English, thanks to Kristen’s excellent notes. Trig doesn’t go quite as smoothly, but I don’t embarrass myself too much on the quiz.

I spend most of lunch on the phone with Aunt Tabitha. I bring her up to speed on my situation. I only leave out things that I wouldn’t want the government to know, like the dolphins, and my plan for helping the chosen kids.

She is worried. She trusts me, but she tries her best to talk me out of going to the fight. She sounds a little defeated right from the beginning of that argument, though. She knows it isn’t going to work.

So we pretended it isn’t happening. That tomorrow will just be another day. She and Rachel are well on their way through the certification process. She avoids my question about how they’re managing to get through it so fast, and I don’t press.

She says that they’d already been looking to move into a bigger place, and now they’ll just make sure there’s room for me. Kristen waves to me across the courtyard at that point, and it hits me. Being with Aunt Tabitha would mean leaving Promise. Leaving Austin. And leaving Valeria. But---

“Parker?”

She’d asked me a question. Something about first floor or second floor.

“I’m not picky,” I say, “whatever works.”

“Okay.”

“I should get ready for my next class.”

“Okay. I love you. Please be as careful as you can, tonight.”

“I’ll do my best. I love you, too.”

It’s almost funny. I’ve been so excited about Aunt Tabitha adopting me, like I had wanted for so long, that I haven’t thought about what else it means. How can I leave the family I’ve found here? But how can I say no to Aunt Tabitha?

Maybe I’ll get lucky and get eaten by a monster tonight.

The second half of the school day is even more of a blur than the first. I keep thinking of ways I could have it all. Aunt T and Rachel could move to Austin. They could adopt the whole crew from Table D and we could all move out there. A huge dimensional rift could relocate Palo Alto to the outskirts of Austin. Or vice-versa. All about equally probable.

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My after school talk with Meg isn’t as bad as I’d feared. She’s understanding. She doesn’t give me a hard time about not calling while I was away. She doesn’t press for more details about my miraculous recovery. She isn’t even the one who brings up my near disaster with Deputy Marshal Miller last night.

“How did you know that I was going to do something stupid?” I ask.

I had finally admitted to myself that my plan had been less a plan, and more wishful thinking and stubbornness.

“I know my kids.”

“I was just---”

“Ah!” she interrupts me, “I’ll trust your judgement when you say it was something stupid. I don’t need more details than that.”

And then she spends thirty minutes trying to talk me out of going tonight. It isn’t a half-hearted effort, either. If I weren’t confident that I’m Valeria’s only chance, it might actually have worked. But I don’t have a choice. I have to be there.

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At dinner, we don’t talk about me. I make sure of it. I ask Kristen what book she’s going to analyze for her English project. I ask Cindy about her latest designs. I ask Henry about his boyfriend in Canada (who totally exists). I ask Sebastian what he’s up to. I even ask Kelly about the latest version of Android, and whether I should upgrade my phone. That gets me some dirty looks from the rest of the group, but pretty much guarantees I won’t have to talk for the rest of dinner.

“A little obvious in there,” Cindy says.

We’re sitting outside, enjoying the chilly air.

“It worked.” I shrug.

“I wish you wouldn’t go.”

I sigh.

We sit in silence until the curfew bell.

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