Kinetics - Chapter 2

CHAPTER TWO

It was the day after the “assessment meeting” that Willow and my parents had at HQ. We’d still gotten no clear answers from our parents about the “meeting.” It was even becoming blatantly clear to me that they were hiding something. My parents had been unusually quiet that night, leaving to their bedroom soon after dinner.

Then this morning they were talking and had shut up the very moment I stepped in the room. We had eaten our breakfast in virtual silence.  I was glad today was a Saturday, I don’t think I would have been able to concentrate on school otherwise.

It was just an hour after breakfast and my parents leaving to go to their day jobs and I was headed to Willow’s house on my bike. We had planned yesterday to get together with our school friends at the park and hang out.

Our school friends were, for lack of a better term, normal. They were like most everyone else and had no idea about the war with Isiro and our secret society. Of course there were others like us at the school. But most had their own circles of friends and we didn’t mingle much. With, of course, the exception of those rare times when all the Kinetic families gathered at HQ.

Of course none of our friends knew of our Kinetic heritage, it was forbidden by the Kinetic big wigs, who allowed only special exceptions past the approval process.

My mother was one of those exceptions. She had fallen in with the Kinetic war game with Isiro almost by accident and had become one of the few non-Kinetics to join the war.  She had met my father in Japan while she was there acting as an interpreter and ambassador between the American HQ and the Japanese HQ.

I stopped pedaling and let my bike glide the rest of the way towards Willow’s house. Her house and mine were a ways apart, and the only reason that we had gotten to be friends was because our parents were long time friends with each other. How they met was a whole different story altogether.

My hand eased the handle brake little by little making the bike come to a stop in front of Willow’s house. I jumped off of it, walked the rest of the way into the driveway and set the bike on the grass.

I stepped up to the door, which was open save for a screen door. “Hello?” I called into the house.

“I’m in the kitchen!” Willow’s muffled voice replied.

I pulled open the door, slipped inside, and made my way to the kitchen. I found Willow there sitting at the kitchen table writing in a pocket-sized notebook.  She looked up briefly before going back to her writing. “Yo.” She said.

“Hi, what are you writing?”

She put the pencil down and looked at notebook, “Writing down a dream I had earlier.”

“Oh? You’ve started that up again, huh?” A couple years ago Willow began writing down her dreams. She quit after a few months for some reason. She would never tell me why exactly, only saying she just didn’t feel like it anymore.

She shrugged as she closed the notebook, “Just this once, it was interesting.”

“Do I get to read it?”

“Nope.”

I chuckled, “That kind a dream, eh?”

She stuck her tongue out at me, and grinned, “Hell no! Don’t be gross.” She slid out of the chair and stuck the notebook in her back pocket.

I let out a laugh, “Well you ready to go then?”

“Yeah… I’ll just go grab my coat.”

* * *

“So did you find out anything more?” I asked her as we drove our bike down the street. We were going slowly enough that we could easily speak to each other without the wind getting the in way.  

“About the meeting? Not really. But I did talk to Nick and he says he’ll look into it.” She replied, keeping her eyes on the road and the houses we passed.
Nick was one of the few Kinetic friends we had, we had met him at one of those HQ get-togethers when he was still a teenager. He was about five years older than me, and was what many would consider a Kinetic prodigy. He was incredibly talented when it came to his powers of the mind, having mastered them when he was only 12. Right now he was working his way up the Kinetic Military Intelligence ranks in the hopes of becoming the Intelligence Director.  
And if Nick was looking into things then we would probably know what was up before the day was out.       

“I wonder what he’s going to find?”

Willow looked at me and laughed, “it’ll probably be nothing and Nick will rag us out for making him spend time on that instead of his precious ‘network.’”

I laughed, just imagining his displeased face and that funny stance he always took when he was mad was too much.
Willow giggled and tried to mimic his stance, looking like a pouting child who was forced to do chores rather then play. She nearly fell off her bike.

I shook my head and laughed again. Man, if only I could freeze this moment in time.

* * *   

Our group of friends was an odd one. And even though they were “normal” people, they weren’t your mainstream normal people. The eight of us, Willow and myself included, preferred to hang out at parks where we could talk and usually shunned the typical hang outs of those our age.

Right now we were all sitting in the shade of a big tree talking about anything that came along. Petey and Sandra were on their feet acting out a scene from some funny movie they had just seen. Everyone was laughing at their antics.

But for some reason I couldn’t really get into it. My eyes kept wandering over my friends to Willow. She seemed distant. Even on the bike ride over here and her joking around she hadn’t really been as chatty.

Instead she kept pulling that little notebook out of her pocket and would read what she had written earlier. Her eyebrows would knit together and her eyes would narrow. She was laughing along with everyone else automatically, but kept her focus on the book.   

I was itching to know what she had written. She wasn’t one to keep secrets from me for very long so I was bound to know what she had written there sooner or later. I let out an inner sigh and tried to pay more attention to Petey and Sandra.

It was late afternoon before our little merry band broke up and left for their respective homes.  
Only Willow and I were left at the bike rack now. She was again reading her notebook, as she fiddled with the lock on her bike one-handed.

I dropped my lock and chain into a bag strapped to my bike and watched Willow continue to fruitlessly fight the lock.

“Willow?” I asked just as she finally set the book on the seat of her bike and worked the lock with two hands.

“Hmm?”

“What did you write in there?”

She looked up with a smile, a fake one, “I told you… just an interesting dream.”

I nodded, but I still wasn’t satisfied. What was with that fake smile?

I heard a car roll across the park’s gravel parking lot and looked up. Two official looking men stepped out of a white suburban car and walked towards us.

“Willow Patterson?” one of them asked.    

Willow looked up, “Yes?”

“Miss Patterson, I’m afraid to inform you that your parents have been involved in a serious accident. We’re here to take you to them.”

“What? What happened?” Willow’s eyes were wide and her face had gone pale.

“If you will please come with us… the sooner you get to HQ the sooner you can have everything explained.”

“HQ…” Willow murmured, then stood up, “You’re from HQ?”

“Yes, now please, Miss…”

Willow nodded curtly then looked at me, the paleness of her face seemed to have gotten even worse. She turned and followed after them.

“Wait!” I called, “I’ll go with you!”

One of the men turned and shook his head, “No, sorry, family only.”

Willow got in the back seat of the car and it zoomed off leaving a dark gray dust cloud in its wake.
My eyebrows crinkled as the thoughts in my head began to swarm. What could have happened that HQ would send someone to get Willow? Couldn’t they have just gotten the Healers to fix up any injuries?

Mom and Dad would know for sure, my parents and Willow’s parents were always working together at HQ. They would probably be the first to know.  

Quickly I relocked Willow’s bike, I had to get home quick, I had to find out what happened. The only reason that they would have sent some people for Willow would be if her parents had died.  

Just as I was about to turn and get my bike, I heard paper flutter in the wind. I looked back at Willows bike to see her little notebook lying on the ground. I reached over, snatched it up, shoved it in my pocket and jumped on my bike.

A determination like nothing I had ever felt before coursed through my veins. I pedaled fast making my legs begin to feel like lead weights. I hopped the bike to get up onto a curb, just missing a car that was speeding towards me. The person in the car honked and yelled obscenely. I ignored him and didn’t even give my customary birdie.  

I sped up, and used the sidewalk as my personal freeway going faster then I had ever dared or could go before. The people I nearly hit yelled and cried out as I passed.  I turned onto the residential streets and careened towards home.

The second I was home I jumped off my bike that was still in motion and ran to the house. I slammed open the front door and stepped right into the kitchen where my parents were at the table playing cards… with Willow’s parents.

I stood stalk still for a moment unable the register their smiling relaxed faces. What? Wait a second…

“Eugene?” Mom looked at me her face shifting into worry, “What’s wrong?”

I looked at each one of the adults, none of them looked in the slightest like something was wrong. If nothing had happened to Willow’s parents… then who where those people that took Willow?
“Willow--” I gasped.

Willow’s father, Sam, stood up, “Did something happen?”

“Willow—where—is Willow.”

A sharp look passed between them, “She was with you.” My own dad said, confused.

“No--” I said, “They came to get her.”

“Who came to get her?” Sam asked loudly.

“People form HQ… they said you’d been in an accident.”

Suddenly all hell broke loose. Moira wailed and fell to the floor, and Sam tried to comfort her, Dad
was on the phone speaking rapidly to someone on the other line, and mom was getting her car keys.

“What?” I asked, “What’s going on?!”

I was ignored.

Moira was suddenly screaming. “No! No! NO! They’ve taken her! They’ve taken her!”

“It’s okay,” Sam tried to calm her down but there was pure fury on his face.

“Kuso!” My dad yelled in Japanese, and slammed the phone down. “Jenny, Sam let’s go! They’re mobilizing the search teams!”

Sam helped his wife to her feet and the four adults hurried out the door, leaving me still trying to catch my breath and absolutely in the dark.