Chapter 3- Fire and Flowers
Inch by inch, step by step, Lydia slithered along the high wall of the wooden pillar. She carefully kept her chalk-white, metal skeletal braces from scraping the smooth wood. Only the rubber-padded joints of her leg and arm braces touched the pillar’s wall, and she slunk as softly as her sneakers allowed. She peeked out from around the corner and saw nothing. Nothing but rows of similar ten-foot-high, two-man-wide wooden pillars, arranged disjointedly and forming a snaking column to the room’s end, with spaces between each pillar as wide as the pillars themselves.
Lydia cursed her speed. I’ve lost Sylvia. She bent over, running her fingers along her right leg brace. It felt out of alignment, like it was twisting into her skin. And since all the braces helped cushion her bones when using her enhanced strength, that put one leg out of commission. Unless she wanted to risk breaking the bones. Not that the braces helped her bones absorb her maximum strength anyway. She still had to be cautious and use only a fraction of her power, but this hampered her. The pain served as a constant reminder to not use her leg and damage the brace anymore.
She brushed back her chestnut bangs and craned her neck out farther, searching the rows of columns. Raising her head, she caught a pair of dull hazel eyes atop the pillar she was against. The boy who they belonged to crouched low and crawled down, holding onto the flat lip of the block and glancing at her. He closed his eyes and let go, floating steadily to the floor. Lydia helped him land beside her, touching his arm for support. With feet firmly on the ground, he pointed farther ahead and to the left. Lydia nodded and waited at the corner, keeping a careful watch and selecting a pillar closer to the room’s matted walls.
Strangely, the boy stayed behind, lingering in a trance and staring at her. Move! she internally commanded, motioning urgently. He snapped out of his daze and leapt into the air. He picked her up by her armpits and carried her to the next pillar, dropping her quietly.
The boy looked up and held a silent breath. Lydia put her hand on his shoulder, checking him and raising a questioning thumbs-up. He returned a tentative one and grimaced, flying high as her fingers slipped down his arm. He seemed all too eager to reach the top, scrambling onto the surface and kicking the pillar in his haste. Lydia tensed, waiting until the blunt thuds died down. She cast him an irritable look, but he had already pulled back from the edge.
Together, they searched the column beside the wall and saw no sign of their target. When he reappeared, he shook his head and Lydia copied him. She pointed to herself and to the right, then at the boy and to the left. Nodding, he took off, leapfrogging in short flights pillar by pillar.
Moving back to the other side, Lydia checked the corner and dashed into a spot swallowed in shadow. She continued heading right and happened upon a boy standing stock-still in the open. Lydia dove from cover to cover until she was next to him. He seemed like a model, posing for the cameras, and certainly fit the bill physically as well with his bronze athletic build.
He motioned with his gaze west. She gave a small nod and stepped lively to the other side of the room. Once there, she found the one who had been flying frozen in place on the ground, too, his legs spread apart in mid-stride, and his squashed, broken nose scrunched farther into its angle in frustration.
Lydia slipped around a pillar and right into the arms of her target. The taller woman touched Lydia’s forehead and smiled. “That makes three. You can move now,” she called to the others. The flying boy glided over to them and the other jogged around until he found the right row.
“Now,” Sylvia said, brushing a loose strand of raven hair from her tanned face and retying it into her ponytail. “Where did you go wrong?”
“We should’ve all gone to the edge, one in the middle and two on the ends, and worked our way inward when we lost you,” Aidan, the floating boy, said.
“Good idea, Mr. Keyes, but your actual mistake was simpler than that.”
“We lost track of you?” Lydia tried.
“That’s right, Ms. Penner,” Sylvia said. “Don’t lose track of your target. Even if you can’t see them, know where they are and where they’ll be. Anticipate their movements.”
“Easy for you to say,” Jando, the athletic boy, said. “All you have to do is touch the wall and you can hear our footsteps.” He had a point. One touch of a surface and Sylvia heard the reverberations in the object through her fingertips. Even turning her fingertips toward a conversation was akin to cocking an ear for most people, and was much more subtle.
“And you have three people searching for one person in one room. You won’t always have such good advantages,” she said. “You won’t always have advantages, period.”
“Sylvia?” a voice asked from the intercoms near the high ceiling.
“Yes?” the woman answered, holding out her fingertips to listen.
“Arthur would like to see you when you’re available.”
“Tell him I’ll be right up.”
“Think we’ll learn how to hotwire a car soon?” Jando asked. “Or defuse bombs?”
Sylvia turned back to the three with a smirk. “Sure. Once you get the basics down. That’s enough for today.”
Lydia, Aidan, and Jando left the training area and the gray, window-lined Center behind them. The three of them dragged their feet down the asphalt path and to the off-white dormitory building separated by a parking lot and an uphill climb. “What happened back there?” Jando asked Aidan. He waved to a group of people playing football on one of the grass fields next to the dormitories. A couple of girls catcalled to him and he returned it. “You were supposed to be our eye in the sky.”
“I was watching,” Aidan shot back. “Sylvia’s a ghost in there.”
“You’ll need to step it up, Seagull,” Jando said, wagging a finger. Aidan glared darkly at him. He hated that nickname. “I know it was your first time in there, but you can’t keep spacing out on us.”
“Ease up a little, Jando,” Lydia said. “Aidan did alright.”
Aidan smiled gratefully, but she meant it. Already, he was competing with Jando and Lydia, thanks especially to their injuries, which had delayed their own progress. To help them heal quickly and return to active training, Lydia and Jando had each taken Barrett Juice, a mixture Dr. Barrett derived from a previous BEP’s blood, which could expedite the recovery of broken bones and torn muscle. Even after the Barrett Juice had healed them in a couple of weeks after all three teenagers helped save Golden Springs, however, Barrett had forbade Jando and Lydia from any strenuous activity for a week longer as a precaution. Lydia didn’t discount Aidan’s hard work though. Ever since he turned sixteen and immediately joined them in the BEP Division’s agent training at the beginning of April, he had put in a lot of effort during the past few weeks to catch up to them.
Jando had a point, too, though. Aidan had been out of sorts since Golden Springs. Lydia figured it was aftershock from the event, but after joining their training, it worsened. Sometimes he fidgeted nonstop. In a few instances, he stammered incessantly. Mostly, he lost his focus and spaced out, even outside of training while they all hung out. If anyone asked what was bothering him, he clammed up and insisted, “It’s nothing.”
Yet Lydia was happy to have another friendly face on the team and eagerly welcomed him. Jando had gone out of his way to do the same, baking a dozen cupcakes for Aidan when he joined them on his birthday a couple of weeks ago. He had given Aidan the cupcakes a day early, and the whole dozen turned out to be an April Fool’s prank. The “icing” on the cupcakes was actually toothpaste. “There is one made with real icing,” Jando had assured him. Aidan didn’t bother to find out which cupcake had the icing before throwing the whole batch away.
His other presents were more authentic. Lydia had given him a shirt with the logo of his favorite band. Her roommate, Wren, chipped in, too, and bought Aidan a board game, and Donny, their friend, sprang for a book.
Wren was napping when Lydia entered their dorm room. Her legs hung
off her bed and her torso was tangled in the sheets. Lydia bid farewell to Jando and Aidan, who hung back in the hall, staring at his shoes and running a hand through his dirty blond hair. He looked lost, unsure whether to climb the stairs to his and Jando’s room or not.
She checked her plants growing in the window sill beside her bed. During the past months in the Cave, her gardening abilities had improved, and she had learned from the first set. Since then, each of her plants had at least sprouted. Most grew well. At the moment, a pair of potted flowers had bloomed into beautiful yellow and pink tulips. The third one in the middle was still indecisive, but she had hopes for it. Tomorrow, she would give the blooming ones to Aidan and Jando.
Dad would be proud, she thought, fingering one of the petals. She imagined him beside her, praising the flowers and her skill. “Your green thumb finally came out,” he would say with a large smile. “Why don’t you get your camera and take a picture of them for your mom? Then let’s show them off to everyone.” She nodded to the voice in her mind and wiped her wet eyes.
Lydia dug out her camera from her dresser and snapped a picture. When she looked at it, her thoughts drifted to the flowers at her father’s funeral. What kind had been put on his grave since the official funeral? The picture of his gravestone that her mother, Debra, sent her a while ago, after everyone else paid their respects, had been adorned with all colors of flowers. And her mother regularly added fresh ones. Maybe Lydia could grow some flowers and send them to her mother to arrange around the gravestone, make it nice and pleasant.
Nice and pleasant. A cold, hard, dead piece of earth nice and pleasant? A place where her father shouldn’t be to begin with, if not for those scum-sucking piles of—
Lydia stopped herself and that line of thinking. Deep breath. Don’t let it get the best of you. She tried to focus on a past memory with her father, playing in a park when she was young. Then she rummaged through her dresser for fresh clothes.
While she changed out of her clothes, the telephone on her nightstand rang. She quickly answered it before it woke Wren. “Hello?”
“Arthur would like to see you as soon as possible,” a man said.
“Okay. Be there in a bit.” She checked her braces as she headed to the door. The right leg brace pinched her thigh worse now. Lydia wiggled it around, pulling her skin free, and then made a mental note to visit Brentle after she saw Arthur.
Arthur was in his office, packing a briefcase that lay open next to a couple of suitcases. He looked up when Lydia came in and smoothed his shirt down his barrel chest. “Be right with you,” he said, with a touch of an English accent.
During her time at the Cave, Arthur seemed to have aged rapidly, but being the head of the BEP Division would likely speed anyone’s aging process. There were a few more wrinkles to his coal-colored forehead than last year, making him look as haggard as his eyes, which held the color of ancient tree stumps. Although Lydia attributed most of his aged appearance to his thick hair. It was grayer than when she’d first met him, with hardly any black spots left, the same as the stubble on his chin and cheeks. She supposed he dyed his hair before and wondered why he stopped now.
Lydia thought it rude to stare, so she directed her gaze to the pile of folders on his desk. Among them was a birthday card addressed to Arthur. “It’s your birthday?” she asked.
“Tomorrow,” he said, snapping the briefcase shut.
“Oh, Happy Birthday, then.”
“Thanks.”
“Why didn’t you tell anyone?”
“After your fiftieth, you stop throwing a fanfare and hope the Grim Reaper forgets you,” he said, chuckling. “And before you ask, fifty-eight. Yes, I know I’m old.” He rooted in his desk drawers, pulling out other files and flipping through them. “Don’t deny it. You’re not the only one who keeps staring at my hair and giving me that look.”
Lydia blushed. “What look?”
“That look you give your granddad when you think he should slow down,” he said, grinning. “I just stopped dyeing it is all. No sense in it anymore. At forty, you worry about it, adding touch-ups and fighting to keep your color; at fifty, you’re covering most of your head, but losing control; and around sixty, you just accept it.”
She grinned and wiggled her right leg, adjusting it so the brace didn’t dig into her thigh. “I’ll remember that. Is that all you called me for?”
“No, no. I wanted to let you know that I’m impressed with your training. So when I get back, we’re going to have you and Jando out in the field. Possibly Aidan as well.” He sat at his desk, and she pulled up a chair as well. She slipped her leg out of the brace a little, relieving the pressure.
“To act as actual agents?” she asked hopefully.
He chuckled. “Not quite. You’ll still be under Sylvia. She’ll guide you and you’ll shadow her on an easy mission. It’s designed to give you some field experience. But we’ll discuss all that when I return.”
“Going on vacation?”
“Visiting my daughter,” he said. Lydia tried not to show too much surprise, but she failed when he pulled out a wedding ring from his desk and shoved it onto his finger. It was much too small for him. “She sent me the card.”
Lydia couldn’t help blurting out, “You’re married, too?” She half expected him to reveal another shocking fact, such as secretly being a BEP.
“I was once. We decided we work better divorced.” He twisted and pulled the ring off, shaking blood back into his finger. “Need to get this resized.”
“Why wear it?” Lydia asked.
“For my daughter. We both do it for her. Planning to surprise her at her graduation.” He stood and checked his suitcases. “And if I hope to make it, I need to leave this instant.”
“College?”
“Yeah. She’s receiving her doctorate. Tried to get her to follow me, but she wanted to be like her mother instead.”
Lydia stepped back into her brace, the pressure bearing down again. “Tell her I said ‘Congratulations.’”
“I will,” he said. “Hold down the fort while I’m gone.”
She hobbled to the elevator, rode it to the bottom floor, and sought out Brentle. The chief technician was in his office alone and on the phone, whispering low. When she entered, he frantically set down the phone and shooed her away. “Sorry, can’t be bothered right now. Buying new equipment and I have to act before it’s gone.”
“It’s my brace.” She showed him the part of the wire frame pressing into her leg.
“Should be a simple adjustment. Go see Dr. McNeal. I really have to deal with this. Sorry again.” Then he shut her out and locked his office.
Dr. McNeal was Barrett’s replacement, filling in as temporary head doctor while Barrett visited family. The kindly old man welcomed Lydia in and easily fixed the brace, fiddling with the part over her kneecap and the crisscrossing of the metal bars above it. “Looks like it fell out of place here. No biggie.” Afterward, he checked the rest of her braces, from the rubber cushions to the openings for her limbs, and then sent her off, warning her to be careful in the future. “Come back if there are any other problems.” She thanked him and headed back to her dorm.
At her door, she found Aidan, muttering to himself and scratching his head. “Leave a letter?” He rapped his forehead with his knuckles. “Come back later?” Both options appeared to frustrate him and he growled, shutting his eyes and smacking his face. “C’mon.”
“Should I schedule you an appointment with Gary, or are you too far gone?” Lydia asked, walking around him and opening the door.
“Oh, Lydia!” he stammered. “I, uh, needed to, uh…” He trailed off, “um”ing and “er”ing while looking up and down the hall.
Lydia picked up the blooming flowers from the window sill and handed the yellow tulip to him. “Here, deep breath,” she said, raising her hands to her chest and inhaling deeply. “Get that oxygen and then let it out.” He smirked and shook his head, but he did sniff the flower. “That one
’s for you. Can you give the other to Jando?” she asked, passing him the pink one.
“Sure. Thanks.” Aidan bounced the potted plants in his hands, as if testing their weight. “What’s the occasion?”
“No reason. Just felt like it.” He kept looking at the flowers, his brows furrowed in concentration. Lydia coughed. “You needed something?”
His head jerked up. “Yes, I, uh, wanted to ask you if…Iffff.” Closing his eyes, Aidan dug his feet into the ground and smelled his flower again.
“If?” she prodded.
“If you weren’t busy today, maybe we could hang out.” She stared at him, unsure what he meant. “Like watch a movie together or whatever you’d like to do.” He cleared his throat. “Just you and me.”
Her mind’s light bulb flipped on and her mouth dropped as she caught his meaning. “Oh,” was all she could muster. A date. Aidan was asking her out on a date. She watched him closely, but he couldn’t meet her gaze, fidgeting and burying his nose into his tulip.
As if to confirm, the signs played in her memory, one after the other. Over the weeks, he had made a point to hang around her more often after training, offering to study with her for tests, and coming to church with her sometimes. His accompanying her to church had surprised her, as had his presence the first few times before that, when he slipped in alone, trying to go unnoticed. When she confronted him, he had written it off. “I figured I would check it out. You did invite me, remember?” That was true. She had, months ago, but it was still strange. Although she had slight suspicions of some minor indications of affection beginning from New Year’s, she never paid much thought to them or to his other behavior, since nothing serious came of them. Until now.
Had this been what bothered him so much during the past few months and what explained his odd antics? Working up the nerve to ask her out? Then another revelation hit her. Is that why he signed up to be an agent? The news had shocked everyone when he first announced his joining. When she asked why he wanted to stay in the Cave longer, he mumbled some excuse about refusing to join his parents’ tour guide business. “Beats working there. I can either fall on mats here or fall on rocks hiking there,” he said. This response was a little odd, after he had flat-out declared how much he hated the Cave, but it made some sense, so she didn’t press the issue.
Now, she wondered if that had inspired him to sign on, as some sort of means to increase his chances with her. Lydia couldn’t tell. All she knew was that he looked expectantly at her, waiting for an answer. “I,” she started, as uncertain how to word her response as he had his question, “I don’t think that’s a good idea.”
His worried expression drooped, and she leaned down to catch his sagging arms. With the flowers safely raised, she hastily appended her decision. “It’s just that Arthur wants us to start actual field training soon.” That did little to change his mood. “And with school exams coming up, it’s not really a good time. And,” she bit her lip, afraid this would be overkill to his dashed hopes—He shouldn’t have false ones though. “And I’m not sure if I feel the same way.”
After a long silence, he bobbed his head. “I see.” His head didn’t stop moving as he turned. From the side, his angled nose seemed to withdraw into his face in shame. “I should be going. I remembered I have an exam I should be studying for.”
“Hey,” Lydia grabbed his shoulder, “it’s not anything against you.”
“Yeah, yeah. I understand.” He smiled, but it was fake and plastic.
“You okay?”
“I’m fine. Really, it was a fifty-fifty shot, right?” He tugged away from her and held up the plants. “Thanks again.”
“You’re welcome.” She stayed by the door as he walked to the staircase. “Good luck on your exam.”
“Thanks. You, too.” He climbed the stairs, every step a heavy plod. Their echoing plops came slower and slower until Lydia shut the door. She sat on her bed and rubbed her eyes, feeling suddenly drained and worn out.
* * *