CHAPTER TWELVE
The Morning After
The next morning Chevelle was almost amazed by how routine school continued to be. Still, there was a certain buzz among the students. Talk floated from classroom to classroom speculating on what happened. The story had made the newspaper this morning, and probably last night’s news; they had forgotten to watch. But when the bell rang the kids streamed into the classroom, just like every other school day. The bell rang again and classrooms emptied, students bouncing from locker to locker, some still talking about The Mapiya Event and the tornado, while others just talked about the dance this weekend.
Chevelle stood at her locker in a daze. South Mapiya was noticed, even talked about, but it barely affected their lives. It was a curiosity. And she had someone from 2012 living at her house, sleeping in her room.
Noticing Jodie Kowall, head cheerleader, walking her way, she turned to her locker and waved her phone over the lock. Detecting that it was her, the lock’s light flipped green and the locker opened. “So, rumor has it that you have one of them at your house,” Jodie said, leaning up against the locker next to her.
“One of them?”
“You know, one of the Twenty Twelvers,” she said grinning. “One of the South Mapiyans. You have one of them in your house?”
Chevelle sighed. She would have asked what was with her attitude, but it was always like this with her kind. She pulled her tablet from her locker. “What do you want, Jodie?”
“Are you going to be there tomorrow?” she said, standing straight and dropping the smile. “Or will you be too busy making out with your new boyfriend?”
Chevy chuckled inside herself. That’s what this was about. She was moving in on Jodie’s turf by going out with the quarterback? “Maybe we will,” she said, taunting Jodie as she slammed her locker shut. “That’s a great idea. Blayze and I will just sneak off under the bleachers leaving you and your kind to set up for the dance yourself.”
Jodie just tilted her head. “Are you going to be there or not?”
“I’ll be there.” Get over yourself, she wished she could say.
“Ugh, whatever.”
Chevelle let Jodie march off in a huff. She just shook her head. Some people were so full of themselves. Chevelle brought up her phone and quickly checked her calendar to see if there was anything else she needed for her next class. It looked like she was set, but she added a reminder to tell her fourth period teacher again that she needed to be excused tomorrow to help set up for the party.
“There you are.” Chevelle nearly jumped at Blayze’s voice. “Woah, are you all right?”
“Sorry,” she said with a smile. “Just wasn’t expecting you. It’s a good surprise, though. Good to see you.”
“Yeah,” he said, looking so hot in his red and gold letter jacket and his nearly shaved head. “I’ve been looking all over for you this morning.”
“Well, I haven’t been hiding,” she said.
She contemplated for a moment just reaching up and making out with him right here, but decided it would be better to wait until Jodie was around, just to make her jealous.
“I wanted to see how you were doing,” he said. “I heard the tornado touched down on your street?”
“Yeah, it just missed my house.” She glanced back. Jodie was long gone, unfortunately. “It hit Eric’s house, though. Took it right off the foundation. And he, well, he lost his dad yesterday.”
“That’s terrible. Tell him if there’s anything I can do—”
“I will.” She tossed her backpack over her shoulders and glanced around for Eric. Now that he brought it up, she was wondering again where Eric had been all morning.
“So, you looking forward to the dance?” Blayze said, somewhat casually resting his shoulder against the lockers and leaning closer to Chevelle.
She half-giggled and nodded. “Yeah, I’m excited about it. Excited to go with you. Thanks again for asking.” She tried to hide a grimace, hoping that wasn’t too strong.
“To be honest, I’m kind of surprised you said yes,” he said.
“What are you talking about?”
“Well, I thought you’d already be going with Eric. You guys are, like, inseparable.”
She laughed. “No way! We’ve been friends since kindergarten, that’s all. Ugh, he’s like a brother,” she said, which wasn’t entirely true, but the last thing she wanted was her date, or anyone, thinking she liked Eric.
“Hey, whatever Chevy girl. I’ve seen the way he looks at you.”
Chevelle shook her head. “Just forget about it,” she said, trying to put a smile in her voice and on her face. “There’s nothing going on between us.” And she wasn’t about to tell him that Eric was staying over at her house now.
“Sure, listen, I’ve gotta go. I’ll pick you up at your place around eight?” The dance started at 7:30, but it was good to be fashionably late.
“Sounds good. See ya.”
“Bye.”
She watched him go, trying not to think about what he said, yet at the same time wondering if there was any truth to it. It’s not as if she hadn’t thought about it before, her and Eric. It just didn’t feel right. Eric was as good a friend as one could have. Why mess that up by playing around with feelings?
As if her thoughts conjured him up, she noticed Eric just then walking towards her. She checked her phone for the time; she really had to start heading towards her next class.
“Hey,” he said, keeping his head down.
“Hey,” she said. “Walk me to my next class?” He nodded, so they started walking down the corridor. “Where were you this morning? When I got up for school you were gone.”
He just shrugged. “I had to get out. Drive around for a bit.”
“Thinking about your dad?” she said, trying to walk the balance between concerned and unnecessarily bringing up sad thoughts.
“I don’t know, just about everything,” he said. “It’s my fault, you know? All of it. The tornado, the town. Heaven, and my goodness, thousands of others are homeless now.”
“You couldn’t have known. And you didn’t make them homeless, you brought them back from the dead.”
“Yes, and now because of it my dad is dead and his nurse is at the hospital.” She didn’t know what to say to that. How do you comfort someone from something like that?
“It’s all right, Chevy. You don’t have to worry. It was like this after my mom died, too, though I was a lot younger then.” He chuckled to himself, which sounded a bit grim, given the circumstances. “It’s kind of odd, you know? Getting to know yourself. One side of my mind rationally telling me how I’m going to feel tomorrow.”
“Eric.” She stopped — they were at her class now — and put a hand on his arm. “You know that, whenever you need to talk, I’m here for you.”
“Yeah, I know. Thanks,” he said. “By the way, how was Heaven? She still at your house?”
Chevy nodded. “She was sleeping in when I left. I imagine yesterday was even bigger for her than it was for us, losing not only family but a whole world to the past.” The bell rang.
“I have to be getting to my class, too,” he said as she stepped back. “Heaven and I are going out tonight, so we may be back to the house a bit late.”
With that he turned and left, and she went into her classroom. She plopped down at her desk realizing in wonderment that she felt maybe a bit of jealously about Eric and his date. She looked at the classroom door as if she would see Eric still standing there. What if there was something to what Blayze had said? Not wanting to risk losing their friendship, what if she was risking losing something else?
***
When Heaven awoke there was nobody else in the house, another reminder that she was an outsider, not that she needed another reminder. Her whole life she had been an outsider, never quite fitting in at the foster homes, even the decent ones. And no one ever came for her.
It felt strange walking through someone’s house like this, she thought. Surreal. She found herself wandering from room to room, relishing the silence and the freedom. There was a room across the hall from Chevelle’s with a desk, a computer, and some bookshelves — the father’s den.
Even so far in the future apparently books hadn’t gone away completely. The computer, though, was a mostly flat rectangle and a thin keyboard. The rectangle thing was like the television; it would project the monitor in the air above the desk. So, while some things had changed little, if at all, other things were vastly different.
Heaven lingered in the room, looking it over. She always wondered what it would have been like if someone did come for her. Maybe it was all a lie when the state told her that her parents were dead and no surviving relatives could be found. Maybe they actually had been there somewhere, in a place like this.
And this den wasn’t a den, it was her little brother’s room. He was three years younger than her, his bed pushed up against the window there, and a baseball poster on the wall right above a stuffed Yoda doll. She would protect him. She wouldn’t let any of the things that happened to her in home after home ever happen to him.
Heaven continued through the house, working up the dream in her mind. Downstairs in the living room she saw her family, laughing together and playing board games. Up the hallway was her parent’s room. Two parents, still alive.
They had spent the last 15 years trying to find her again. Maybe she had been kidnapped, like that story of the girl who discovered who she was by finding her face on a milk carton. She was kidnapped when she was two and her kidnappers were the ones who died in a car accident. It was a big tragic story, but then they found her again and they welcomed her back as part of the family. Everything would be okay.
She opened her mother’s jewelry case and picked out pieces to play with. It was a lovely dream, one that kept her going no matter what happened. But that’s all it was, wasn’t it? A dream. She had no parents and this wasn’t her house, a fact emphasized everywhere she went. The calendar in the digital display on the wall read 2099. Even if there was any chance in her dream being reality, it was gone. Even if she had parents, they were long dead by now. The uncle she hoped to find in the Black Hills: dead.
Snapping back to reality, Heaven examined the jewelry on her fingers, the necklace she wore. This didn’t belong to her mother or her family. These were strangers and she could just as easily walk away from them and never see them again. They weren’t like her. They had each other; they had money; they had a normal life. They wouldn’t miss a few diamonds and pearls.
But looking at them, how beautiful that ring sparkled with so many little diamonds, she couldn’t do it. Heaven put the jewelry away and rushed out of the room, her heart pounding. She couldn’t do it to them, not now, not after they reached out and helped her so freely. A tear came to her eye as she thought about what she almost did to them, to people who maybe didn’t care about her, but they were at least nice to her. What kind of person did that make her?
She didn’t even need the money, either, Heaven realized. The duffel bag she brought with her, stuffed underneath Chevelle’s bed upstairs, held more than enough money from the casino. Heaven smiled. That gave her an idea.
***
A loud knocking on her hotel room door woke Alina in the middle of the night. Groggily, she pushed the heavy comforter aside and slid out of bed. All the lights were on and the TV was playing the old movie Back to the Future, which she found quite odd, especially since the power was out after The Event the day before. A full moon seemed to shine just outside her window.
The knocking came again, jolting her senses. A loud Bang! Bang! Bang! She rushed over to the door, for a moment forgetting her thin night gown and frizzled hair, and swung it open. Motega stood there, hand raised about to knock again. When she opened the door he smiled and dropped his hand. Dressed in a bold black tuxedo, his long hair smooth and shining, Motega looked absolutely astonishing, which instantly made her embarrassed, especially with her hair being such a mess.
“Uh, Motega,” she said, stumbling over herself. “Why are you here?”
“I am here for you,” he said, gliding towards her. “I’ve wanted to do this for a long time.” He leaned in and she closed her eyes, waiting for him to kiss her.
A loud knocking on her hotel room door woke Alina. She sprung up in bed and her head spun for a moment until she realized she had been dreaming. She put a hand to her chest, trying to catch her breath. The knock came again.
The light near the doorway was on, so that much was true. They must have restored power to the city. She opened the door to see Motega and another man talking. Also true from the dream, she was only in her night gown and her hair was a mess. Wishing she had thought about that before opening the door, she quickly pulled it shut again.
“Alina?” Motega called.
“Sorry, not proper,” she said. “I, um, was tired. Thought this was the bathroom door.”
“Anyways,” the other man said. Motega had called him Joshua before she embarrassed herself. “There’s one for you and one for Alina.”
She waited, her ear to the door. “How do they work?”
“There’s instructions inside. I know it must seem strange to you, but it really is a phone. I’m still using a flat screen phone, see. It just has the display on glass; strong, you can’t break them, but I think I’ll be upgrading soon. The holographic models like yours just came out in the last couple years.”
“Okay, thanks Sheriff,” Motega said. “Why did you buy these for us?”
“I got approval from the state. We can’t do it for everyone, but a few of the more important people in town we wanted registered and available. You’ll find it’s also for identification.”
“All right.” Motega paused, probably looking at the phone again. Alina wondered how a holographic phone would work; it seemed like magic. “Thanks. How did you find us at the hotel, by the way?”
“I went online,” the other man, Joshua, said. It sounded like he was smiling.
“Excuse me?”
“There’s a web site that tries to trace where a dozen or so people in town were at the time of The Event. Because of your experiment, you and Alina were a couple of them. They had the hotel, so I just checked with the staff here. Nice of them to let you stay here for free.”
“Yeah, for now. Our bank accounts no longer exist, but what else is the hotel going to do? I imagine it will take some time to sort everything out. Well, thanks again.”
“Sure,” Joshua said, and after a pause spoke again. “Oh, and before I go. There’s a summer dance at Mapiya High School, well, North Mapiya High, now, I guess. A teacher and his wife left town. The tornado took out his house and he was going to take the opportunity to move closer to his parents. They haven’t left yet, but he mentioned he wasn’t going to make it to the dance. That makes us two chaperones short. Would you and Alina care to come?”
Please say yes. Please say yes. Please say yes.
“So, the Sheriff takes care of the guest list at a school party in the future?”
“Heh, no, not usually. But the principle asked if I knew any couples from South Mapiya who could come. He thought it’d be interesting.”
“Well, Alina and I aren’t really... a couple,” Motega said, and Alina wasn’t sure how to read that. Did that mean he wanted to be a couple? Or was he turned off at the idea? “I’ll have to ask Alina, but I’m sure that will be okay.” That had to be a good sign, certainly.
“Okay, great. I’ll see you later.”
“Take care,” Motega said. Alina listened to Joshua walk away.
A moment later Motega knocked on her door. “Alina, the Sheriff stopped by and gave us—”
“Yeah, phones, got it” Alina said, cracking her door open. There’s no way she’d let Motega see her like this. He slid the package through the crack. She grabbed it, pulled the door shut and twisted around, leaning back up against the door.
“When you’re ready, I’ll be at the lab,” he said.
“Okay, thanks. Bye,” she said, wanting nothing more than for him to leave. When she heard him step away and shut his door she slid to the floor and buried her head in her hands.
This is not going well, she thought to herself, wishing Cecilia was there to tell her what to do. She had to change the game, get Motega to notice her. She rolled her eyes and looked up at the ceiling. It sounded stupid, even in her head. She gets propelled 90 years into the future with half a city and her biggest concern was how a man felt about her? She scolded herself for being so childish.
Change the game, she thought again, a smile creeping across her face. The Sheriff mentioned a dance?
***
935 Pennsylvania Avenue. Dravin looked up at the building. Cecilia waited beside him. Two thick cement columns helped hold up the top couple of levels in a square section of the building offset from the rest. Above that they had added on since 2012, about ten floors of steel and glass. Though they went by IIA now, Internal Investigation Agency, they kept their headquarters in the same FBI building he knew.
The lobby was quite a bit different from what he remembered, though, a large circle of polished marble. At the center of the circle the IIA logo was etched into the marble. Near the entrance on the walls were memorials, a few touching on the America he knew, but several now praised the great NAC. That still felt so wrong to him. North American Coalition. Along the back of the lobby there were two rows of secured elevators and a number of receptionists.
“First, we try the straight forward approach,” he told Cecilia.
“What is your game in all this?” Cecilia asked in a hushed voice as she followed him towards the receptionist. “And don’t tell me it is for duty or your country or any of that crap. Your duty disappeared with your country and your orders no longer apply.”
“And what do you care? You’re just my watchdog, isn’t that right?”
“I just,” she said, hesitating. “I might help you. I just don’t want to see anyone get hurt.”
“Motega and the experiment are mine,” he said matter-of-factly. “I’m not out to get you or your friend Alina.”
The receptionist perked up when they came near, a tall brunette. “How can I help you?”
“I need to see the Director,” Dravin said. “Or whoever it is that’s in charge these days.”
Dravin kept his eyes and ears open as he talked. This approach didn’t really have a chance of working. You don’t walk in off the street and get to speak to the head of an agency like this. “I’m sorry, sir. I can’t do that,” she said.
Against the wall a couple of agents discussed one of the memorials. One of the security guards let another person, probably an agent, into the secured elevator area to the left. Two men, older, one quite portly, entered through the main doors. “Is there something else I can help you with?” the receptionist asked. “What are you here for?”
“I’m here to speak to the Director,” he insisted.
The two men that just entered began arguing, the larger one flushed, very upset.
“Why do you think you can just walk in and get to speak to the head of the IIA?” the receptionist asked, starting to get annoyed with him.
He dropped his badge on the counter. “Does this mean anything to you?”
Dravin kept his ears peeled, trying hard to hear what the two men were saying. Something about someone needing to take the blame. The tall one called the fat one ‘Deputy Director’ which, if it was anything like the FBI he was used to, was the second in command.
“Yes, sir. It means you are a collector of very old souvenirs. This is for the FBI. And even if it was an IIA badge, all badges these days are electronic, built into your phone.” That was smart, he thought. An electronic badge, if it was secure enough, couldn’t be copied and could be revoked wirelessly at any time. “I’m afraid I’m going to have to ask you to leave.”
Cecilia slammed both hands on the desk. “Stop him,” she pleaded the receptionist with wild eyes. “Please.”
“Thanks. Sorry to bother you,” he said, grabbing Cecilia’s wrist. He turned and when she didn’t move to follow he gave her a hard pull until she stumbled after him.
Dravin deliberately walked near the Deputy Director on his way out. The other man pointed a finger at him and said something about cities appearing. Then they noticed Dravin and lowered their voices. So they know about Mapiya. Realizing, finally, that they were in the public lobby, the Deputy Director walked off to the elevators in a hurry. The other man followed and continued to argue.
That was his ticket in. He glanced back. The receptionist was on the phone, still eying them as they walked away. He tugged Cecilia’s wrist again and quickened the pace.