Code Name Cassandra (7 page)

“Don’t be ridiculous,” I said.

“Oh, yeah? Well, what are you hiding it for, then?”

“Shane.” I couldn’t believe this. “What do you want?”

Shane ignored my question, however.

“You lied,” he said, sounding indignant. “You totally lied. You
do
still have those powers.”

“Yeah, that’s right, Shane,” I said. “That’s why I’m working here at Camp Wawasee for five bucks an hour. I have psychic powers and all, and could be raking in the bucks finding missing people for the government, but I prefer to hang around here.”

Shane’s only response to my sarcasm was to blink a few times.

“Come off it,” I said sourly. “Okay? Now why are you out of bed?”

The look of dark suspicion didn’t leave Shane’s face, but he did manage to remember his fake excuse for barging in on me, undoubtedly in an effort to catch me sans apparel. He whined, “I want a drink of water.”

“So go get one,” I said, not very nicely.

“I can’t see my way to the bathroom,” he whined some more.

“You found your way here,” I pointed out to him.

“But—”

“Get out, Shane.”

He left, still whining. I fished out Taylor’s photo and Rosemary’s letter. I didn’t feel bad about lying to Shane. Not at all. I’d done it as much to protect Rosemary as myself. After my run-in last spring with the U.S. government, whose ideas about the best way to use my psychic ability had sort of differed from mine, Rosemary, a receptionist who worked at a foundation that helped find missing children, had very generously agreed to help me … um, well, privatize. And we had been working together, undiscovered, ever since.

And I wanted things to stay that way between us: undiscovered. I would not risk revealing our secret even to a whiny almost-twelve-year-old musical genius like Shane.

To be on the safe side, I put away Rosemary’s letter and picked up a copy of
Cosmo
Ruth had lent me. “10 Ways to Tell He Thinks of You as More Than Just
a
Friend.” Ooh. Good stuff. I read eagerly, wondering if I’d realize, just from reading this article, that Rob really did like me, only I had simply been too stupid to read the signs.

1. He cooks you dinner on your birthday.

Well, Rob certainly hadn’t done that. But my birthday was in April. He and I hadn’t really started … well, whatever it was we were doing … until May. So that one was no good.

2. He makes an attempt to get along with your girlfriends.

I only have one real friend, and that’s Ruth. She’s barely even met Rob. Well, not really. See, Rob’s from what you might call the wrong side of the tracks. Ruth isn’t a snob … at least, not really … but she definitely wouldn’t approve of me going out with someone who didn’t have college and a career as a professional in his sights.

So much for Number 2.

3. He listens to you when
—

I was interrupted by a thump. It was followed immediately by a wail.

Gripping my flashlight, I stalked out of my room.

“All right,” I said, shining the flashlight into one face after another—all of which were very much awake. “What gives?”

When the light from my flashlight reached Lionel’s face, it picked up the tear tracks down his cheeks.

“Why are you crying?” I demanded. But I knew. That thump I heard. Shane was in his bed, some feet away, but his face looked too sweetly innocent for him to not be guilty of something.

But all Lionel would say was, “I am not crying.”

I was sick of it. I really was. All I wanted to do was read my magazine and go to bed, so I could find Taylor Monroe. Was that so much to ask, after such a long day?

“Fine,” I said, sitting down on the floor, my flashlight shining against the ceiling.

Arthur went, “Uh, Jess? What are you doing?”

“I am going to sit here,” I said, “until you all fall asleep.”

This caused some excited giggling. Don’t ask me why.

There was silence for maybe ten seconds. Then Doo Sun went, “Jess? Do you have any brothers?”

Guardedly, I replied in the affirmative.

“I thought so,” Doo Sun said.

Instantly suspicious, I asked, “Why?”

“You’re wearing boys’ underpants,” Paul pointed out.

I looked down. I’d forgotten about Douglas’s boxers.

“So I am,” I said.

“Jess,” Shane said, in a voice so sugary, I knew he was up to no good.

“What,” I said flatly.

“Are you a lesbian?”

I closed my eyes. I counted to ten. I tried to ignore the giggling from the other beds.

I opened my eyes and said, “No, I am not a lesbian. As a matter of fact, I have a boyfriend.”

“Who?” Arthur wanted to know. “One of those guys I saw you with on the path? One of those other counselors?”

This caused a certain amount of suggestive hooting. I said, “No. My boyfriend would never do anything as geeky as be a camp counselor. My boyfriend rides a Harley and is a car mechanic.”

This caused some appreciative murmuring. Eleven-year-old boys are much more impressed by car mechanics than people like … well, my best friend, Ruth, for instance.

Then … don’t ask me why—maybe I was still thinking about Karen Sue over there in Frangipani Cottage. But suddenly, I launched into this story about Rob, and about how once this guy had brought a car into Wilkins’s Auto that turned out to have a skeleton in the trunk.

It was, of course, a complete fabrication. As I went on about Rob and this car, which turned out to be haunted, on account of the woman who’d been left to suffocate in its trunk, I borrowed liberally from Stephen King, incorporating aspects from both
Maximum Overdrive
and
Christine
. These kids were too young, of course, to have read the books, and I doubted their parents had ever let them see the movies.

And I was right. I held them enthralled all the way until the fiery cataclysm at the end, in which Rob saved our entire town by bravely pointing a grenade launcher at the renegade automobile and blowing it into a thousand pieces.

Stunned silence followed this pronouncement. I had, I could tell, greatly disturbed them. But I was not done.

“And sometimes,” I whispered, “on nights like this, when a storm somewhere far away douses the power, blanketing us in darkness, you can still see the headlights of that killer car, way off on the horizon”—I flicked off the flashlight—“way off in the distance … coming closer … and closer … and closer …”

Not a sound. They were hardly breathing.

“Good night,” I said, and went back into my room.

Where I fell asleep a few minutes later, after finishing the box of Fiddle Faddle.

And I didn’t hear another peep out of my fellow residents of Birch Tree Cottage until after reveille the next morning… .

By which time, of course, I knew precisely where Taylor Monroe was.

C H A P T E R
5

“I
was so scared, I almost wet the bed,” said John.

“Yeah? Well, I was so scared, I couldn’t get out of bed, not even to go to the bathroom.” Sam had a towel slung around his neck. His chest was so thin, it was practically concave. “I just held it,” he said. “I didn’t want to run the risk, you know, of seeing those headlights out the window.”

“I saw them,” Tony declared.

There were general noises of derision at this.

“No, really,” Tony said. “Through the window. I swear. It looked like they were floating over the lake.”

A heated discussion followed about whether or not Rob’s killer car could float, or if it had merely hovered over the lake.

Standing in line for the Polar Bear swim, I began to feel that things were not nearly so bleak as they’d seemed yesterday. For one thing, I’d had a good night’s sleep.

Really. I know that sounds surprising, considering that while I’d slept, my brain waves had apparently been bombarded with all this information about a five-year-old kid I had never met. On TV and in books and stuff, psychics always get this tortured look on their faces when they get a vision, like someone is jabbing them with a toothpick, or whatever. But that’s never happened to me. Maybe it’s because I only get my psychic visions while I sleep, but none of them have ever hurt.

The way I see it, it’s exactly like all those times you’ve been sitting there thinking to yourself, Gee, So-and-So hasn’t called in a while, and all of a sudden the phone rings, and it’s So-and-So. And you’re all, “Dude, I was just thinking about you,” and you laugh because it’s a big coincidence.

Only it’s not. It’s not a coincidence. That was the psychic part of your brain working, the part hardly any of us ever listens to, the part people call “intuition” or “gut feeling” or “instinct.” That’s the part of my brain that the lightning, when it struck me, sent all haywire. And that’s why I’m a receiver now for all sorts of information I shouldn’t have—like the fact that Taylor Monroe, who’d disappeared from a shopping center in Des Moines two years ago, was now living in Gainesville, Florida, with some people to whom he wasn’t even remotely related.

See, ordinary people—most everyone, really, even smart people, like Einstein and Madonna—use only three percent of their brain. Three percent! That’s all it takes to learn to walk and talk and make change and parallel park and decide which flavor of yogurt is your favorite.

But some people—people like me, who’ve been hit by lightning, or put into a sensory deprivation tank, or whatever—use more than their three percent. For whatever reason, we’ve tapped into the other ninety-seven percent of our brain.

And that’s the part, apparently, where all the good stuff is… .

Except that the only stuff I seem to have access to is the current address of just about every missing person in the universe.

Well, it was better than nothing, I guess.

But yeah, okay? In spite of the psychic vision thing, I’d slept great.

I don’t think the same could be said for my fellow campers—and their counselors. Ruth in particular looked bleary-eyed.

“My God,” she said. “They kept me up all night. They just kept yakking… .” Her blue eyes widened behind her glasses as she got a better look at me. I was in my bathing suit, just like my boys, with a towel slung around my own neck. “God, you’re not actually going
in
, are you?”

I shrugged. “Sure.” What else was I supposed to do? I was going to have to call Rosemary, as soon as I could get my hands on a phone. But that, I was pretty sure, wasn’t going to be for hours.

“You don’t have to,” Ruth said. “I mean, it’s just for the kids… .”

“Well, it’s not like I could take a shower this morning,” I reminded her. “Not with eight budding little sex maniacs around.”

Ruth looked from me to the bright blue water, sparkling in the morning sun. “Suit yourself,” she said. “But you’re going to smell like chlorine all day.”

“Yeah,” I said. “And who’s going to get close enough to smell me?”

We both looked over at Todd. He, too, was in a bathing suit. And looking very impressive in it, as well, I might add.

“Not him,” I said.

Ruth sighed. “No, I guess not.”

I noticed that while Todd might be ignoring us, Scott and Dave definitely weren’t. They both looked away when I glanced in their direction, but there was no question about it: they’d been scoping.

Ruth, however, only had eyes for Todd.

“And you have your tutorial today,” she was pointing out. “I thought that flute guy was pretty hot. You don’t want to smell chlorine-y for
him
, do you?”

“That flute guy” was the wind instructor, a French dude name Jean-Paul something or other. He was kind of hot, in a scruffy-looking French kind of way. But he was a little old for me. I mean, I like my men older, and all, but I think thirty might be pushing it a little. How weird would
that
look at prom?

“I don’t know,” I said as our line moved closer to the water. “He’s Do-able, I guess. But no Hottie.”

I hadn’t realized Karen Sue Hanky was eavesdropping until she spun around and, with flashing but deeply circled eyes, snarled, “I hope you aren’t speaking of Professor Le Blanc. He happens to be a musical genius, you know.”

I rolled my eyes. “Who
isn’t
a musical genius around here?” I wanted to know. “Except you, of course, Karen.”

Ruth, who’d been chewing gum, swallowed it in her effort not to laugh.

“I resent that,” Karen said, slowly turning as red as the letters on the lifeguard’s T-shirt. “I will have you know that I have been practicing for four hours a day, and that my dad’s paying thirty dollars an hour to a professor who’s been giving me private lessons over at the university.”

“Yeah?” I raised my eyebrows. “Gosh, maybe you’ll be able to keep up with the rest of us now.”

Karen narrowed her eyes at me.

But whatever she’d been going to say was drowned out when the lifeguard—who was also pretty cute: definitely Do-able—blew a whistle and yelled, “Birch Tree!”

My fellow birches and I made a run for the water and jumped in simultaneously, with much shrieking and splashing. Some of us were better swimmers than others, and there was much choking and sputtering, and at least one attempted drowning, which the lifeguard spotted. Shane was forced to sit out for twenty minutes. But, otherwise, we had a good time.

I was teaching them a new song—since Pamela had put the kibosh on “I Met a Miss”—when Scott and Dave and Ruth and Karen strolled by with their campers. All of them, I noticed, looked a little bleary around the edges.

“I don’t understand how you can be so wide awake,” Scott said. “Didn’t they keep you up all night?”

“No,” I said. “Not at all.”

“What’s your secret?” Dave wanted to know. “Mine were bouncing off the walls. I had to sleep with a pillow over my head.”

Ruth shook her head. “Their first night away from home,” she said knowingly. “It’s always the toughest. They usually settle down by the third or fourth night, out of sheer exhaustion.”

Karen Sue exhaled gustily. “Not mine, I’ll bet.” She glared at some passing Frangipanis, who giggled and tore off along the path, causing all of us to chime, in unison, “
Walk, don’t run!
”