A Quarrel Called: Stewards Of The Plane Book 1 (23 page)

63. TARA

“That was close,” I said, my hands shaking a little as I
fumbled to turn the flashlight back on.

We had snuck out the back door of the garage at the last
possible moment. Melody and Sam had gotten the whiteboard loosely reattached to
the wall, but if anyone looked too closely they would see that it wasn’t
fastened down all the way.

“Did you see what happened outside?” Sam asked Lily. They
were holding hands, though neither of them looked particularly loving at the
moment—more scared than anything, but pretending not to be.
Which
is exactly how I was feeling.
Only Melody hadn’t said anything yet. I
swung the flashlight over to look at her, and that’s when I noticed that she
hadn’t stopped to rest. She was now twenty or thirty feet away.

“Mel?” I said in a mock whisper.
“Melody?”

She paused for a moment and kept going. “I don’t have a good
feeling,” she said over her shoulder. “I’m not stopping until we get back the
clubhouse.”

I looked over at Sam and Lily, and they shrugged. The fact
was
,
we were all feeling a little nerve wracked. We
followed behind in silence.

When we finally arrived at her house and crept around the
back to the clubhouse, no one was more surprised than I was to see G. sitting
there on the stoop, the stray cat from the other night keeping him company. The
lights were still on inside and the television sent its drone and mumble over
the sound of crickets and tree frogs chirping. As soon as he saw me, he leapt
from the stoop and ran over to give me a hug.

“You’re okay,” he said, breathless. “I couldn’t stay to see
what happened – one of the guy’s was chasing me and the other was on his phone.
I had to run.”

“That was you?
Dude
,”
said Sam appreciatively, clapping a hand on G.’s shoulder.

He held me close for a moment longer, and I breathed in the
scent of him, Dial soap from the shower mingled with sweat. The back of his
neck felt a little moist and my heart swelled. Suddenly I was on the verge of
tears, so glad that I had a boyfriend who cared so much for me.

He let me go.
“Yeah.
I smashed the driver’s
side window with a rock and made sure they saw me, and then I ran like hell. I
was really hoping you guys had a way out somehow.”

“We were able to dart out the back,” said Melody. “Thanks,
G.,” she said. “They’d have caught us red-handed if it weren’t for you.”

He didn’t really smile. “Actually, I wouldn’t have been
there if not for Mr. Smith.”

“What do you mean?” I asked, confused now. What did the cat
have to do with it?

“He came to my bedroom window. I wasn’t able to sleep, being
worried about you guys,” he paused to grab my hand, “and I thought maybe he was
hungry. So I grabbed some lunch meat and went out to give it to him. But he
didn’t want the meat. He wanted me to follow him. So I did. I know it sounds
weird.”

“Not that weird,” Sam said thoughtfully.

“I figured you would understand,” he said. He looked at me
and then at Melody. “He led me straight to the garage. And when I saw that
sports car slide up, I just knew I had to do something. They came up silent –
lights off, engine idling in neutral. They weren’t there just to check on the
place – it was like they
knew
you
were there.”

“Shit,” Sam said. Lily just blinked and looked from G. to
Sam as if she were trying to figure something out. Her eyes narrowed slightly
and I wondered what she was thinking.

“Hey Lily, I’m sorry, we didn’t introduce you yet. This is
my boyfriend, G.”

G. looked at her and she looked back and there was a
strange, tense moment, and then Lily smiled and held out her hand. G. took it.

“You seem familiar,” she said. “Have we met before?”

“No, but I’ve heard a lot about you from Sam.”

She nodded, tilting her head to the side. “You have great
energy.”

“What I
am is
freaking exhausted,”
he said. “I need to add more cardio to my workouts.”

“But you already run, like, four miles a day,” I said.

“Yeah, but I don’t sprint. And it feels like that was all I
did tonight.
Full tilt, baby.
And then there was the…
thing with Mr. Smith.”

Melody was squatting down near the cat, reaching a hand out
to pet him. “What’s wrong with his fur? It’s all wet –
ew
,
it’s
blood!”

“Yeah, he got attacked by the owl. But I was able to, um”—he
met my eyes for a minute, and raised his eyebrows, and then he looked at
Sam-“to deflect the owl, and he dropped the cat.
Probably why
I am so zapped right now.
I could really use
a sports drink
.”

I understood; he’d used his sword of light again. That’s why
he was so tired. Like Gram said, his electrolytes were low. “Mel, do you still
have some of those drinks in the fridge?”

She looked up from petting the cat,
who
had finally let her scratch behind his ear.
“Yeah, probably.
Don’t wake Gram and Gramps, though.”

She didn’t have to tell me that. I didn’t want to explain to
Melody’s grandparents what we were all doing hanging out in the middle of the
night when it was supposed to be just me and Mel and some stupid movies.

When I got back with the sports drink and an apple for G.,
he was busy looking at the scrap of paper that Sam had pulled out of the
cubbyhole in the garage. I handed the items to G. in exchange for the paper. I
hadn’t seen it yet either.

Matthew had kept the page in a plastic zipper-style baggie,
so at least it was clean and dry, but that didn’t help its readability much
since it was a ripped page from a pretty old book. One side of the book page
talked about ley lines and nodes, the other side had a poor reproduction of a
photograph. Underneath, it was captioned ‘
figure
3c; The Philadelphia Stone, circa 1942.
’ “What’s the Philadelphia Stone?” I
asked.

“We don’t know. I think you’re the one who’s going to have
to answer that.”

“What, you mean…” I did not want to do this kind of thing in
front of a stranger, in front of Lily.

“Yeah.
Let’s go in the clubhouse,
where you’ll be more comfortable.”

“I don’t know.” I snuck a glance at Sam and Lily. “I don’t
know her,” I said, beseeching G. and Mel.

“She’s a part of this now,” said Sam, impatient. “She risked
her neck tonight just like the rest of us, and don’t forget that she’s in G.’s
dream.”

G. tried to shush Sam before the cat was out of the bag, but
Mr. Smith cut him off with a hiss. We all turned to look at the cat, startled
at his behavior. The cat was staring at Lily, his yellow eyes glowing around
large, black pupils.

“I don’t think Mr. Smith thinks I should do it in front of
Lily either,” I finished. G. squeezed my hand, but he was still looking at Mr.
Smith, his brow furrowed.

“We need the answer,” said Melody finally. “And like it or
not, Lily does seem to be a part of this, so I say let’s get it over with.”

“I can leave,” Lily said suddenly, standing up with her arms
crossed over her chest. “You know
,
if that would be
best. I can tell that I’m sort of the odd duck here, and I don’t want you guys
to feel uncomfortable around me like that. I mean, if I’m going to be spending
more time with Sam and all.”

She had charisma, I’d give her that. Whatever she said had a
magical effect, because I felt my reluctance fading away, and even G.’s face
relaxed a little. Melody shook her head.

“No, that’s okay. You can stay.”

64. MELODY

The group was past the initial discomfort of having Lily
around. For her part, she just sat back and listened to everyone talk about
stuff that she probably thought was wild and crazy. I was beginning to hate her
a little less, and she wasn’t glaring daggers at me anymore, but that didn’t
mean we liked each other. And still, her reaction to G. was sort of weird.

I watched her watch him like she was studying him. Not like
she wanted to steal him for her boyfriend, but more like he was some sort of
opponent. I found the whole thing weird, but then it had been a weird night,
and I could have just been overtired and imagining the whole thing.

Something about the picture on the torn page bothered me. I
hadn’t seen it before, but it seemed strangely familiar. The others had already
moved on from the picture, not sure what some weird rock could have to do with
anything, and they were thinking that the significance of the page was the
printing about ley lines and nodes on the other side. I wasn’t so sure.

And then it clicked. I knew where I had seen this before.
“Hey, I’ll be right back. I have to go get something.”

“Bring some snacks back, will you?” Sam shouted after me,
and I waved a hand to show that I’d heard him.

I tiptoed through the house, careful not to wake my
grandparents, and dug around in my room. I couldn’t remember where I’d stashed
the original bundle that we got from the garage, but I was pretty sure it was
either in my desk drawer, my dresser, or my nightstand. I did finally find it
in my nightstand, the items still folded up in the black fabric, and the
photograph stacked neatly beneath.

Back in the clubhouse, I tossed a bag of chips to G. and
another to Sam and sat down next to Tara on the love seat. I nudged her and
handed over the bundle. “I know where I’ve seen that stone before, or at least
something like it.”

She took the bundle from me and opened it up, a puzzled look
on her face.
“Where?
It’s not one of the items in
here.”

“It sort of is,” I said, taking the square of black cloth
from her and holding it up in front of the light. There in a burned-out pattern
was the same basic shape of the Philadelphia stone, and the main lines from the
photo were also represented in the fabric. She peered over my shoulder to see
better
.

“I see it now,” she said. “But what is it?”

“I think it’s a map.”

“But we already know where Orla is,” Sam said. “Why do we
need a map?”

G. snapped his fingers. “The audio from the last séance said
something about a vortex in Orla. What if this is a map to show us how and
where to find it once we get there?”

Tara had her phone out and pulled up a map of the area that
Orla was in. “I see the crossroads here. And the main highway runs south. But I
can’t correlate that to the fabric scrap
or
to the photograph.”

“It’s not to scale,” I said. “And what’s this at the bottom?
A swastika?”

“Oh great,” Lily said, finally making a comment. “Is this
some Third Reich Nazi hidden treasure map?”

I couldn’t help but smile a little bit. Treasure would be
cool. “I doubt my brother would haunt me from beyond the grave for some
treasure… No, there’s got to be something else.”

“I’ve got it,” Tara said excitedly. “Look at this.
Look
at this.” She leaned over to show
her phone to everyone and zoomed in on the map. “There’s this town down here,
south of Orla, called Marfa. And it has two main highways that intersect like a
crossroads. But what’s strange is they aren’t just a straight crisscross, they
have a swerve to them.” She zoomed in a final time and traced the lines with
her finger. “Like a freaking swastika.”

“Isn’t there some weird UFO stuff that goes on down there?”
G. asked. “I think I read about it in that
Weird
Texas
book.”

“Yeah,” Lily said. “The Marfa lights; strange lights out in
the desert, and no one knows what causes them. Most people think they’re
headlights from cars coming down the mountains, but my uncle says that the
lights have been around longer than cars, so it can’t be that. What?” she said
to Sam, who was gaping at her. “My uncle was born there.
Big
deal.”

He grinned and ducked in to give her a quick kiss. I dropped
my gaze. I wasn’t ready to like Lily yet, and I certainly wasn’t ready to like
her kissing Sam.

“Okay, so it’s a map,” said Tara, nodding to
herself
. “Do we still need me to do
the ah
…
Akashic records thing?”

“Maybe not right now,” I admitted, letting her off the hook.

“What’s this photograph?” G. said, lifting it out of Tara’s
lap. “How come you’re not in it?”

“Oh, this was in the bundle in the cubbyhole.
A shot from a camping trip a few years ago.
I was at band
camp—don’t laugh—and Gram and Gramps and Matthew
went
camping out to Enchanted Rock near Fredericksburg.”

“Isn’t that the trip when your Gramps came back, and he was
so sick?”

“I don’t know,” I said, thinking back. “It was right around
there, I think.” I took the photo from G. and turned it over to look at the
back. A line across the top was written in Gram’s precise handwriting: Matthew,
Harold, Margaret, Esmeralda. Beneath that was the date of the trip – six years
ago on August first. And beneath that was the mystery date. The one set for the
future. I grabbed Tara’s phone out of her hands and slid the page over until I
was looking at the calendar app.

“Hey!” she said.

“Weird,” I said.

“What?” everyone else said at basically the same
time.

“The bottom date here,” I looked at Tara, “the one for the
‘future’?”

“Yeah?”
Tara said.

“It’s next weekend. And…” I paused dramatically, “Your app
says it’s a full solar eclipse.”

65. SAM

Lily pulled up in front of my house and let the car idle for
a few minutes while I gave her a very lengthy and detailed goodbye kiss. I
really wanted to bring her into the house, but Mom was home and it was already
pretty late. I didn’t want to tempt fate two times in a row.

“Your friends are weird,” she said when I let her up for
some air.

“Yeah.”
What could I say? I mean,
we hadn’t always been weird. As a matter of fact, at the beginning of the
summer I would have said we were a bunch of totally normal teenagers.
But now?
Not so much.

“I like weird,” she said.

I smiled and ducked in for another long pull at her shiny
red lips. “I like you,” I said.

“Good. I mean, since you’re going around telling everyone
that I’m your girlfriend and all.”

“Hey, I didn’t actually say that.”

“You almost said it.”

I did.
Twice at least.
I nodded.
“Yeah, but we hadn’t actually talked about it so, I chickened out.”

She traced a finger along my collarbone and down my chest.
“Well, consider it talked about.”

My heart leapt a little bit in my chest and then it began
thumping quickly. I felt a flash of euphoria course through my veins, and I
dove in for another kiss, this time, sliding my hand down her side, to her
waist and pulling her to me. The small of her back was the perfect size for my
hand, and as I leaned in closer, she slid her arms around my neck. I felt dizzy
and hot and her breath tasted like peppermint.

When I finally snuck into the house, I closed the door
softly behind me, prepared to sneak to my room. But the hall light flicked on
and Mom was standing there in the doorway to the living room, leaning against the
wall. She had a sort of smug smile on her face, and I knew I might be in
trouble just a little bit, but it was the kind that would end with me and her
sharing a bowl of ice cream and talking about stuff until we were too sleepy to
stay up any longer.

“Hey, Mom,” I said, glad to see her, even if I was
embarrassed to be caught sneaking in past my curfew.

“Hey, Romeo.”

#

I couldn’t stop grinning. Tyler and Colton were teasing me
something fierce, but I didn’t care. Lily was my girlfriend.
Officially.
And she was hot and cool and liked me back. And I had enough money saved up
finally to buy a car. And I didn’t get in trouble at all for busting my curfew,
unless you count extra stuff around the house like painting the garage and
scrubbing all the baseboards, which I strangely didn’t mind because, hey, it
could have been worse.

G. and his Dad were waiting for me in the parking lot when I
got off of work. Since my dad wasn’t around and my mom had to be in the office,
I figured having G.’s dad along to buy my first car might be a good idea.
Someone older and wiser to help keep me from getting screwed by the
salesman.
I told them I’d take them out for cheeseburgers afterwards to
say thanks, although I am pretty sure they would have come along for free.

We drove down main to the far end, closest to the highway,
and pulled into a used car lot. I’d had my eye on a little electric blue coupe
and wanted to check it out.

G. and his Dad walked around looking at other cars while I
made a beeline for the blue coupe. It had black leather interior and a spoiler
on the back, and my heart deflated when I saw the sticker. Even if I got the
salesman to knock a thousand off, I still couldn’t afford it.

“The insurance on something like that would be pretty
expensive,” G’s Dad said over my shoulder. They had walked up behind me while I
had been busy peering in the windows.

I groaned. I hadn’t even thought of that. I stood up and
peered around at the rest of the lot. Some mini vans, some midsized SUVs, an
old station wagon, and some subcompact cars – none of them looked interesting
to me. The only reason we’d stopped here was because of the blue coupe. And I
could tell now that was why the guy had it parked out front. “Okay,” I said. “I
guess we can go.
Nothing else here.”

G.’s dad nodded. “Sure. There’s a little lot over on
Henderson that we could stop and look at. I know the guy who owns it. Maybe he
could swing you a deal.”

I brightened. “That’d be great,” I said. I climbed back into
the rear seat of their car and waved at the car salesman who had just started
heading out to talk to us. I felt a little bad ditching him like that, but
there was no way I was going to take Lily out on a date in a minivan, not even
if it had jet engines and could fly.
Seriously uncool.

The next lot was better. The guy came out to greet us right
away. Of course it probably helped that G.’s Dad called him first, but even
then, he had a much better selection of cars, though most were still out of my
league. But then G. whistled low and I looked where he was looking, and my
stomach sank, forming a pool at my feet.

“Holy shit,” I whispered. “Is that what it looks like?”

“Let’s check it out,” G. said.

While the men were talking on the other end of the lot, G.
and I crept closer to the car.
The
car.
The one from our dream.
I’m not sure why we were being so cautious, but I think it had to do with not
really believing it was real. But there it was, forcing us to confront the fact
that my dreams sometimes came true and that G.’s dream might, too.

“It looks just like I remember,” G. said, sliding his hand
over the leather upholstery.

It had a convertible rag top, caramel-brown leather
interior,
and wood-grain details. It was an older vehicle,
not old enough to be a classic, and a little too old to be cool, but someone
had taken really good care of it.

I looked at G. “Now what?” I asked him.

He shrugged. “I guess you buy it, right?”

“But what if I don’t want that particular dream to come
true?”

He looked at me, and then at the car, and then stared off
into the distance. “I don’t know, man. Are you supposed to buy the car because
we had the dream? Or is the dream because you buy the car? Either way… you’re
driving the car off this lot. I’d bet on it.”

I didn’t like the sound of that. It made me feel like I had
no choices, like ‘free will’ didn’t exist. Like Melody was going to be
swallowed up by tentacles and there was nothing I could do about it. “Fuck
this,” I said through gritted teeth. I spun around on my heel and looked at the
rest of the cars in the lot. At this point I needed a car, any car
but
the convertible.

I wheeled to my right and saw a red four-door sedan. It
didn’t completely suck. I walked over and took a look inside – the interior was
shredded. I moved on down the line and looked at another sedan. This one was gray,
a little older than the red one, but its inspection report said that it had
been in an accident and had its frame repaired. I knew that was bad news. I
didn’t need anyone to tell me that.

“What about this one?” G. said, leaning over to look into
the passenger window of a white midsized SUV with kick-ass rims.

“That’s not bad,” I said wandering over for a closer look.
It was in good shape. The sticker said it was in my price range. It was an
automatic and the cloth interior was gray and didn’t look too ratty. “Good
eye,” I said to G. “Hey,” I shouted, “What about this one?”

G.’s dad and the salesman wandered over, still lost in
conversation, and it took them a moment to look at the SUV before the salesman
shook his head.

“Sorry, I can’t.
Unless you want to come
back tomorrow?
This one is on hold until closing time; a lady came in
today and started the paperwork on it already. I’m just waiting for her to
bring in a cashier’s check.”

“You don’t take cash?” I said.

“Oh, I do. But most people don’t like to carry it around. In
fact, I prefer cash, because it saves me some steps when it comes time to take
care of all the bookwork on my end.”

I sighed. I was feeling stymied.

“What about this one, Sam?” asked G.’s dad, looking at the
convertible.

I ignored the sudden grin on G.’s face and just shook my
head. “I didn’t see a sticker on it, but I’m pretty sure it’s out of my price
range.”

“There’s no sticker for it because it’s going to auction
tomorrow.”

“Why is it going to auction?” G.’s dad asked. “Is there something
wrong with it?”

“No, nothing like that.
It belonged
to my brother-in-law’s estate, and he died recently. But I make it a point not
to sell cars from my friends or relatives here – conflict of interest, you
know.”

“So then you won’t sell it to Sam?” G. asked, avoiding my
dirty look.

“No, I’m afraid not. But if he’s really interested in it, he
can go to the auction and bid on it tomorrow.”

#

“It’s the perfect plan,” G. said later on. “If you don’t win
the auction then… you did your part to fulfill destiny and maybe we can forget
about our dream. If you do win the car, it’s because you’re meant to drive it.
We’re meant to take it to Orla.”

I didn’t like that he was making sense. And it
was
a sweet ride. “I don’t know,” I
said, pushing the fries around on my plate.

“What are all the glum looks for?” G.’s dad asked, sliding
into the booth, soda refill in hand.

“Sam’s a little bummed about the car shopping. I’m trying to
get him to go to the auction tomorrow.”

G.’s dad took a long pull at his soda straw.
“Why not?
If the car’s meant for you, then you’ll win the
auction. If not, then no loss, right? Nothing ventured, nothing gained.”

“Fine,” I said, looking at G. “But you have to come with
me.”

He shrugged. “Sure, man. Why not? Spending a day helping to
spend someone else’s money? How could that be a bad time?” He grinned and
stuffed a ketchup-drenched fry into his mouth.