Chapter 15—Others Like You
Lydia woke to the sound of singing. At first she thought she was dreaming, but the off-key notes broke through that sleepy barrier. She saw where she was and sat up. This wasn’t her bedroom. Whose house was this? Where was she?
Oh. The Cave. Right. Lydia glanced at the clock. Eight in the morning. She flopped back onto the bed, hoping she could squeeze in some more sleep before having to confront whatever new batch of misery the day had in store.
The singing grew louder and she glared at the bathroom door. Her roommate’s bed was empty, so Lydia assumed that the cringe-worthy voice belonged to that person. She was about to march into the bathroom and tell her roommate off when the door was flung open. Out walked a girl, already dressed for the day, toweling her auburn-red hair.
“Oh! You’re awake!” she said, dropping the towel and rushing over to Lydia. “I was wondering when you’d get up! You’re such a heavy sleeper, did you know? Were you really tired? I bet you were. They brought you in late last night. I was blown away when I got up this morning and someone new was in the bed.”
The girl never paused for breath. Lydia was already worn out with listening to her talk. It was like the girl was an inexhaustible machine that drew energy from those around her. She continued to ramble on about the last person that slept in Lydia’s bed, before finally introducing herself.
“I’m Wren, by the way,” she said, thumbing her chest. “Wren with a W. Some people mistake it for Ren with an R. But it’s cool. Wren or Ren, either one is fine by me. What’s your name?”
She actually stopped talking for a moment. Lydia saw it took all of Wren’s willpower to stay silent for her to answer.
“Lydia.”
“Nice name!” Wren said, zipping along to the other side of the room. “Give me a bit and let me get some things from my dresser and you can have the bathroom.” She rummaged through the drawers, picking out various toiletries and ran back to the bathroom.
Wren resumed singing and Lydia knew she wouldn’t get any more sleep. So she crawled out of bed and decided to put her clothes away in her own dresser, which matched Wren’s, up against the foot of her bed.
Lydia unzipped one of the suitcases. Many of her new clothes and her large older ones were packed neatly inside. She lifted out an old shirt. When she held it close, she detected the scent of peaches. It was the detergent her mother always used. Her father had often joked that the smell always made him and his employees hungry when he came to work in the morning. “George says it drives him crazy,” her father had once said. “He says that any time he smells my clothes, that night he’ll end up dreaming about rubbing peaches all over him.”
The memory made Lydia grin and she turned the shirt over in her hands. But one look at her new room stole away any happiness she felt, and she was sent spiraling into a worse mood. She held the shirt to her nose, inhaling the scent as much as she could and squeezing her eyes shut. Lydia clung to the memory, imagining she was home.
“You alright?” Wren asked. She emerged from the bathroom dressed in a shirt and shorts, with a pair of water bottles attached to her hips. “Yeah,” she said with a mutter. The cold hand of reality tagging along behind Wren slapped Lydia back down. She grabbed the shirt, some jeans, and her toiletries and then headed for the bathroom. Inside, a girl with large floppy ears that hung to her shoulder was brushing her long hair.
“Sorry, I was just getting some curls out! I’ll get out of your way!” she said all in one breath. She never looked up at Lydia and kept her head down. Lydia gaped at her ears. They flounced around, not all that different from a beagle’s ears. The girl rushed out the opposite door of the bathroom and closed it.
About half an hour later, after Lydia experienced excruciating pain while fighting to slip her broken arm into her shirt, Wren gave her a guided tour. Their backpacks, already provided with school books and supplies, were strapped to their shoulders. In between explanations, Wren asked Lydia basic questions, like where she was from, how old she was, when she’d arrived, and many more. Lydia’s answers were short and brief: Colorado, fifteen, late last night. Wren also informed her about the person in the bathroom.
“That’s Janice. Kind of quiet and shy, but she’s nice. She’s in the room next to ours. I like saying that. ‘Ours.’ Finally, I have a roommate again instead of being in there by myself,” Wren said, prattling on.
Lydia expected Wren to ask about her arms, legs, or even what her ability was, but it didn’t come up. Like Barrett and Kirk, there was no shock in Wren’s eyes when she’d seen Lydia, even though Lydia had made the mistake of forgetting to choose a longer shirt to hide her arms. Did Wren know about Lydia’s strength? Does she notice at all? Lydia wondered. Was Wren jaded to everyone else here? Were they supposed to avoid the subject like one would a physical ailment? Wren’s not broaching the elephant in the room put Lydia on edge.
“You can use the basketball courts and soccer fields, and all, anytime you want,” Wren said as they walked past the well-lit outdoor sports’ spaces. It was strange seeing the fake grass, which contrasted sharply with the rocky floor around it. “We hold unofficial tournaments, too. You like to play sports?”
“Kind of,” Lydia said. She had played Little League baseball for a couple of summers, but that was the extent of her sports experience.
“I love to play soccer and basketball! We’ve won a tournament in each! Anyway, you know about the dorms. Of course you do. It’s where you were sleeping! Curfew is at ten, but you can push it to eleven,” Wren said. She picked up her pace as they neared the Center. “We better hurry! We’re already late for school!”
Lydia couldn’t care less about attending school, but she was curious about how it was set up. “Is it only one teacher or several?”
“It depends,” Wren said, waving at the receptionist as they entered the Center. “For the elementary and middle school kids, usually one per grade. For us and the college people, we get a few different ones.”
“College?”
“Yeah. There’re also older adults. They’re not common, but they do come now and again.”
It made sense to Lydia. Of course, acquiring odd abilities wouldn’t be relegated to people her age. Such a thing could happen to anyone.
They took the same path as Arthur had, but Lydia only knew that because they passed the same rooms. The halls didn’t appear any more recognizable and the lit rooms hardly muted the blue. The entire place was not any brighter for it being daytime. She mentally slapped herself. It’s a cave, remember?
In one of the training areas, Lydia saw an older man winding up his arm to throw a punch. He spun it around, stretching it to an incredible length. It was as if his arm was a sling and his hand a rock, ready to be thrown. Yet he lost control of the arm. It pulled away from him and he flew backward.
“Everyone’s learning to control their abilities and to use them,” Wren said, explaining the obvious. “Some of them have serious problems.”
Another boy was running around a track in a different room. He was fast and as Lydia watched, he sped up more and more. Off to the side, a man was waving and shouting at the boy. He paid the coach no mind and continued to run faster. Soon Lydia couldn’t even follow the boy’s movements. He was clearing the track in seconds.
Without warning, the boy leapt into the air, as if he’d stepped on something painful. He fell to the ground and held his feet close to his face, blowing on them. His shoes had eaten-away holes on the bottom. The soles of his feet were cherry red and the rest of him looked like he had sunburn. He rocked back and forth as the man helped the boy onto a bench.
“So what about you? What’s your ability?” Wren asked. “Wait! Wait! Don’t tell me!” She held a finger to her temple and rotated it, as if trying to dig it into her skull. She narrowed her dark sapphire eyes and studied Lydia intensely. After a pause, her face brightened. “Strength, right?”
“Gee, your power of clairvoyance is astounding,” Lydia said
sarcastically. But the earlier tension of the subject’s not coming up disappeared. “What gave it away? My freakish arms?”
“Yes!” Wren said, pumping her fist. “Yeah, that gave it away. But that’s so cool! Here, it’s usually guys that have that for some reason. Although, I think you’re the only one here with it at the moment.”
That didn’t make Lydia feel any better. She was bewildered by Wren’s behavior and her discussion of the subject so casually, as if she was talking about their jobs. How could anyone be so comfortable with it? Lydia would rather forget all about it and focus on a cure. She put that at the forefront of her mind. She refused to let slip the chance to talk to Barrett about it. Last night she’d forgotten and felt too sleepy to ask.
However, Lydia had to admit she was curious about what Wren could do. Her guide appeared to be normal, without any physical deformities. Maybe it was something like what Kirk could do? “So what about you?” Lydia asked.
“Me?” Wren said. She grinned, as if relishing the chance to show her ability. “Watch!” She cupped her hands and clapped them together. Lydia saw Wren’s palms ice over with frost, and little snow-white crystals materialized from nowhere. Wren rolled her hands back and forth, molding an item in between them. Before Lydia’s disbelieving eyes, she’d created a ball of ice, which sat in her palm.
“Cool, huh?” Wren said, tossing it up and down. “No pun intended.” She lobbed it to Lydia, who caught it and turned it over in her hands. It was freezing. It was real.
“Wow,” was all Lydia could say. She handed it back to Wren.
“Yeah.” Wren smacked her lips and opened one of her water bottles. She shook it, but there was no sound of sloshing water. The other one was bone dry too. She swiveled around. “Now, I’m thirsty. Come on. There’s a water fountain down this way.” She popped the ice ball into her mouth, sucking on it.
Lydia walked with her to a nearby water fountain, As Wren drank, Lydia noticed a pattern: her own strength that was too much for her bones; Kirk unable to withstand his generated fire without the suit; the boy apparently burning his feet and possibly skin from running too fast; and Wren becoming parched after her display.
“Do you always have to drink after doing that?” Lydia said.
“Yeah,” Wren said in between slurps. “Creating the ice dehydrates me.”
“Always?” Lydia watched her greedily gulp down the water.
“Always.” Wren lifted her head, a satisfied look on her face. She filled up her water bottles. “Dr. Barrett says doing it uses up the water in my body. Can’t do it for too long or else I’ll end up drying myself out. On the upside, I never have to worry about water weight.”
“Is everyone here like that?” Lydia asked, watching the man tend to the runner with a first aid kit, ice, water, and some towels. “Do they all—”
“Have a drawback? Most do,” Wren said, nodding approvingly at Lydia’s catching on. “Some, like Melissa—she’s around somewhere—don’t. But their powers aren’t too, too. .. what’s the word I’m thinking of?”
“Strenuous?” Lydia offered.
“That’s it! Strenuous! Like Melissa, Janice’s roommate. Did you meet her? No? She can erase things with her hands. It doesn’t take anything out of her.”
“She erases things?” Lydia asked disbelievingly.
“Yeah, like things written on paper or other stuff,” Wren said, beginning to walk down the hall again. “But yeah, there are some here who can do smaller things with no side effects.”
“What about Janice?”
“She can talk to dogs,” Wren said. “Or, rather, she can understand them. I’m not sure if she can talk to them. However, she does say they can understand her, like a trained dog can.”
Lydia found herself intrigued to see more. These people, all with varying problems, but in the same trapped situation she was. It was as Arthur had told her: there were others with similar talents and oddities like hers. It was surreal, to say the least. Here Lydia was witness to strange feats, which not even the best roadside carnival could claim to have, and she’d only seen a fraction so far. Dar would love this.
Her building excitement faded as the memories of home rose again to the surface in her mind. No matter how friendly people like Wren or Arthur were or how the facts were dressed up, the Cave was a prison. One whose rules Lydia would begrudgingly have to abide by and whose members she’d have to befriend, if she could even hope to leave.
They walked by the pool Lydia had seen last night. A girl in a bikini sat on the bottom of the tank. Her yellowish-green hair floated upward like dozens of wires. Small flaps on her neck opened and closed, as if she was using them to breathe. Lydia watched the girl, her eyes cold and unnerving from the water’s dull glow.
The other person was a boy in swimming trunks darting gracefully through the water. He splashed over the girl and stopped when he saw Lydia and Wren. He held up an arm and waved to them. Yet where a hand should’ve been, there was a flesh-colored flipper. His feet were also flippers. Lydia gaped at him.
“The twins,” Wren said as they left the strange duo behind. “Nina and Cooper. They’re always together. Cooper is the friendlier one. They’re from Vermont, but I wish they were from Minnesota. That would be funnier, get it? Minnesota Twins? They’ve been here the longest. Maybe six years at least. So they’ve seen it all and gotten to meet people from everywhere. More than me, definitely. But I’ve been here six months and I’ve seen some pretty weird people. Like one guy—”
“What was with those two?” Lydia asked, unable to stop thinking about the flippers and Nina’s neck.
“Nina can breathe underwater. You saw her gills here, right?” Wren pointed at her own neck. “Cooper doesn’t have gills, but with his flippers, he can swim wicked fast. He’s pretty laid-back. Says that together, him and Nina have all the makings of someone who could survive underwater.”
“But how’d they end up like that?”
Wren scratched behind her ear and fell silent. She bit her lip and bounced her head from side to side. “Cooper told me a while ago, but I don’t think I should tell you,” she said. “Not that he’d mind, but Nina might. She doesn’t like many people besides her brother. Some people around here don’t like talking about how they came to have their abilities.”
“Oh,” Lydia said.
“Best thing to do is ask the person yourself. It’s a privacy thing and all.”
“I understand,” Lydia said. She really did. She wouldn’t appreciate people talking about her accident when it was none of their business. On the other hand, Wren didn’t seem to be the type who would mind being asked. “How did you get yours?”
“Hypothermia,” Wren said. She laughed at Lydia’s shocked face. When she calmed down, she explained as they took a detour to Barrett’s office.
Ignoring the veering tangents of stories within stories about her friends, neighbors, family, and Wren’s life in Oregon that accompanied her tale, Lydia learned that Wren had acquired her ability when she was younger. One day, while ice skating with her friends and brother, she’d fallen through a patch of thin ice. Her heavy clothes made her sink like a rock toward the bottom. She was unable to breathe, and freezing water filled her lungs. Her family later told her that she’d been underwater for at least twenty minutes, but she said it had felt much longer.
Daniel, Wren’s brother and the fastest of the group, hoofed it nonstop two miles away to the closest house. In the meantime, her other friends had tried lowering branches down to Wren for her to grab. But by then she’d passed out.
Her brother reached the nearby house just in time for her to be rescued by the couple living there. They rushed over and the husband dove in to save her. They’d raced Wren to the hospital, where the doctors said it was touch and go for several days. In the end, she awoke with no permanent damage.
“I was loaded with a lot of warm fluids and some experimental drugs to keep up my blood heat because I was on the verge of dying. When I woke up, I was
able to do this!” Wren blew a short puff of air on a window, covering a small spot in frost. “They said the combination of drugs and fluids concentrated the water in my body. It was a long, complicated reason just how it happened. But anyway, now I can make frost, snow, and anything with ice.”
The detour wound back to Barrett’s office, but Lydia saw more of the Center than she had last night. There were several classrooms; a limited-access library with computers and printers; an area housing various religious sanctuaries; a game room with ’80s music playing in the background; an armory with two armed guards posted in front of it; and a small mail room.
“You can send letters to your family,” Wren said. “There’s paper and envelopes in your nightstand.”
“Really?” Lydia would love to hear from her family and friends. Another thought crossed her mind. She could use the mail to find out just where the Cave was, with the address her parents had for her mail. Maybe by then she could form some sort of escape.
“Yeah. They send it to a special place in California. Then they mail it from there to whoever you sent it to.”
So much for that escape route. Lydia noted the mail room’s location, deciding she’d come back later with some letters.
Down one particular hall, they walked past two other people in training rooms. The first one was a bronze boy, standing proud and tall in loose clothing. He flashed a charming smile at the girls and waved. Facing him down was a man armed with a staff and dressed similarly to the boy. The man held the staff in a ready position and swung down at the boy’s head.
The boy, whom Wren identified as Jando, held his hands high in the air and apart. The man’s staff halted, held back by some unseen force. Then Jando stepped back and thrust forward his closed hands. Lydia thought he might be holding some sort of weapon of his own, but she saw nothing. He was grasping air. The man backed away, using his own staff to swing at Jando and block any attacks. The man continued to fail to connect any strike.
Lydia felt Wren’s gaze. “Is he forming some sort of barrier?” Lydia asked her.
“Nope,” Wren said, grinning in a knowing manner. “Watch.”
The combatants ceased fighting. Jando bowed slightly, watching the man closely, and they moved to opposite ends of the room. A staff similar to the man’s appeared in Jando’s hands out of thin air. He gave a thumbs-up to his audience and Wren returned it. “Anything he touches, he can make disappear. Except himself,” Wren said.
“What are they doing?” Lydia asked as the staff disappeared. He appeared defenseless once more.
“Testing to see if he can keep things invisible, and learning self-defense,” Wren said. “He’s pretty cool. He’s been here for a little over three months. He’s from Arizona, but moved there from Brazil. You ever been there? I’ve only visited Chile once. We didn’t get a chance to go to Brazil.”
Jando faced Lydia and made his shirt disappear, showing off his athletic build. He flexed in front of her, and she couldn’t help admiring his toned body. “I think you have a suitor,” Wren said, teasing her. Lydia rolled her eyes and dragged Wren along as the fringes of Jando’s pants began to disappear. “Careful. He’s a big flirt to all the girls here.”
The second boy was farther down the hall, standing on what appeared to be a tall diving board. He was shifting ever so carefully to the edge, shutting his eyes tight whenever he gazed down. Below was extra padding on the floor. A woman stood nearby. She seemed to be encouraging him.
“Aidan. He can fly, but. ..” Wren trailed off and watched. Lydia did, too, and saw the boy crouch and jump off the board. He hovered in the air, eyes tightly closed, trying to swim clumsily through the empty space. The woman was cheering him on, but he shook his head furiously. He dropped, sporadically stopping at intervals, zooming up and around, and then plummeted farther down again. He flailed his arms uselessly as he fell onto the plush padding. Aidan rolled onto his back and hit the padding with the back of his head.
“He’s scared to?” Lydia finished for Wren.
She nodded. “Yup. Been trying to conquer his fear of heights for over a year now. He’s from North Dakota—or was it South? I always forget,” she said, scrunching up her face. “He was originally from Canada. He doesn’t like people much. He can be pretty mean sometimes. I don’t know why, since most of the people here are nice.”
Aidan jumped off the padding and looked down a little to meet Lydia’s eyes. He smoothed his dirty blond hair and left the room. Wren led Lydia on down the hall, discussing anyone else they saw and providing a complete synopsis about that person, where they were from, their hobbies, their ability and limits, favorite color, and anything else she knew.
After a few turns, they arrived at Barrett’s door. It opened and a pudgy boy shuffled out, holding a metal cast in one hand. It was filled with water and the inside had the ridges and contour of a nose. “Hey, Donny,” Wren greeted him.
“Hey, Wre. .. Wr. .. Wrachoo!” Wren yanked Lydia out of the way as intense baby-blue lasers with blinding white centers shot from the boy’s nose. He groaned and pushed against his nostrils with his forefingers. “Sorry,” he mumbled.
“Are you okay?” Lydia asked.
“Yeah. It burns something awful though,” he said. He attached the metal cast to his nose and walked away, sniffing and holding his head high.
“Nice guy. He’s from Georgia and has been here for a little longer than me. Be careful around his sneezing,” Wren said, holding the door open.
“I got that much,” Lydia said, walking in.
The door to the patient room was wide open, and Barrett called the girls in from the waiting room. They entered and found the doctor standing in the doorway. Only a sliver of the room beyond was visible, but it appeared to be a study, with countless books, a darkly decorated carpet, and a finely polished wooden desk. Various plaques hung on the walls, and Lydia thought she saw a few awards on a mantle.
Barrett didn’t look at them, but pointed a finger in Wren’s general direction. “Go to class, Wren.” Wren waved to Lydia and slipped out. “Have a seat,” Barrett said to Lydia. “I’ll be right with you.” Her body was half hidden in the doorway and she was mumbling to herself. She held a manila folder in one hand, perusing it and adjusting her glasses.
Lydia took a seat on the bed and waited. Glancing around, she was reminded of the cure that Arthur had promised. She was about to ask Barrett about it, but the doctor spoke first. “Okay,” she said, tossing the folder onto a chair. She took off her glasses and shut the door. “Let’s have a look at you.”
It was the same routine as last night, but today the doctor took her time. She examined Lydia’s arm and head, concluding that the concussion was mild and that she’d be fine. Barrett walked over to one of the cupboards and gathered together a syringe, some cotton swabs, a bandage, and a milky liquid in a bottle.
“Normally, your arm would take months to heal.” Lydia didn’t want to hear that. She wanted to be out of here as soon as possible. “But,” Barrett said, holding up the bottle, “this should help.”
Lydia perked up at these words. The less time she had to stay in the Cave, the better. She held her arm out, ready for the shot as Barrett closed the cupboard. “This is a mixture derived from a past visitor’s blood,” she said, filling the syringe carefully. “Most people have taken to calling it Barrett Juice though. Anyway, her DNA allowed her to heal faster than other people. She once had a broken arm like yours, and she was using it again in ten days.”
“So she could bounce back from anything?” Lydia asked.
“No, no,” Barrett said, tapping the syringe. “Broken bones and torn muscle are no problem for her, but she gets sick like the rest of us. Colds, diseases, and many other things pose as much danger to her as they do to you or me. So this isn’t a catchall for every ailment.”
“How long will it take me with this medicine?” She shivered as Barrett wiped off her good arm with a cold disinfectant wipe.
“Roughly a month,” Barret
t said.
“Do I need to get any more? Could taking more speed up the cure?”
“No. We have to ration this as it is because it takes a while to make,” Barrett said, injecting her. She applied the cotton swab over the puncture. “Hold that, please.” Lydia pressed two fingers to the swab. “Besides, we can only get the mixture to work so fast.” She lifted Lydia’s fingers from the cotton and firmly placed a bandage over it. Barrett threw away the syringe and returned the supplies to the cupboard.
When Barrett had shut the cupboard and sat at her desk, Lydia decided to inquire about a cure. “So is it true that I can be cured?”
Barrett slowly turned. Her eyes spoke volumes of frustration and sympathy, as if she was dealing with a child who didn’t understand an issue. “Arthur,” she muttered, clicking her tongue. She picked up a pen and tapped it on the wooden surface.
“Honestly, there is a slim chance,” Barrett said, already dashing Lydia’s hopes. But it was clear to Lydia that she had much more to say. “It’s not outside the realm of possibility, but it’s on the edge. I should know. I double as head of our laboratory research.”
“Sounds taxing,” Lydia said, struggling to keep the same demeanor she had upon entering. But her optimism was fading and she hung her head, busying herself with the cotton swab in her hand. She pretended to check for blood.
“It is,” Barrett said. She wheeled the chair closer. “Technically Arthur isn’t lying. We have cured people in the past.”
“How many?” Lydia’s voice was quiet, her focus still on the swab.
“Three,” Barrett said. “Two of the patients constantly need to take medication to suppress their conditions.”
“So I’m stuck like this?” Lydia looked at the doctor and lifted up her arm. She hated it. It was disgusting, deformed, and she wanted to rip it off.
“Yes.” Barrett crossed her arms. “I advise you not to give up hope, because there is always the possibility we’ll come across something. But you shouldn’t put all your hope in that alone. There is an experimental skeletal design that we tested for someone else in your situation, but it was crude and basic. Over the years we’ve improved it, and we can build one for you—basic pieces at first, starting with the arms, legs, and then the rest. Perhaps we’ll need to start from scratch and improve it. We’ll have to wait until your cast comes off to test it on you, of course, but it should reduce the stress on your bones significantly.”
“I see.”
Barrett massaged the bridge of her nose. “I hate to say it, but most likely, you may simply have to learn to control your strength, function as a normal member of society, and get used to these changes.”