Kingdom Keepers: The Syndrome (2 page)

“You don’t know anything about Finn and me.”

“True. Do I want to?”

“You’re just asking that to keep me from arguing. You think I’m just being a girl.”

“Better than the alternative. Now that would scare me.”

“Now you’re just being rude.” I paused, and then added, “You know what happens when I get mad.”

“Of course I do, Amanda. Which is why—”

“You’d saying anything to keep me calm.”

“That’s not what I was going to say. You interrupted me.” He pinched his nose, pursed his lips and tested how far back the chair could rock.

“Okay. I’m sorry. Go ahead.”

“I’ve lost my train of thought.”

He hadn’t lost his train of thought; he’d lost patience. He appraised me, and when he spoke, his warm voice was breathy.

“Let it be.”

“Let what be?”

“No good will come of this.”

“Then you’re saying there is a ‘this’? I knew it!”

“I said no such thing. You start chasing rainbows, and all you get is exhausted. He’s a boy. Eighteen. Smart. Tired. Home for the first time in many long, grueling weeks. Give it a
rest, Amanda. Give Finn a rest.”

“Send me back there. Please.”

“It’s dangerous for you back there. Mrs. Nash…we upset her. I upset her. Who knows who she’s notified by now? Maybe there’s a reward out for you.”

“Is there?”

“I said maybe.”

“They can’t put me and Jess on milk cartons. We’re eighteen. They’re not going to put us on the FBI’s Most Wanted list. What are you so afraid they’re going
to do?”

“I don’t even know who ‘they’ are. Maybe you do,” Joe said, “and maybe you lived with them long enough to not be afraid of them, but if there was someone out
there looking for me who had once confined me to a military base, I’d avoid any chance of contact.
Any
chance.”

I had nothing to say; only memories that kept me quiet.

“You know how much Jess and I appreciate what you’ve done for us.”

“No more than I’d expect you to do for me,” Joe said. “That’s the way the world works, right? Or should work, at least.”

“Yes,” I said. “It should.”

“So we’re on the same side. I guess that’s all I’m saying. Trying to say.”

“I know that.”

“They’re going to sleep most of every day for a while, I imagine. Goof around in the parks when they get the chance. They’ve probably looking through their college acceptances
by now, and are going to have some decisions to make. Maybe their phones are off so no one can follow them, GPS them, reach them. I’m not saying Finn doesn’t want to text you or
whatever, but maybe he’s just taking a self-imposed break. Or maybe his parents—maybe all their parents—took their phones away so they can’t contact each other. I
can’t pry into their lives. Not anymore. I’ve already done stuff I shouldn’t have done.”

“You had a kingdom to save.”

“I’m a parent, Amanda. I would never let my kids take personal risks for anything other than service to their country. Do you think their parents, their guardians, care about the
kingdom? I would imagine their parents are pretty much done with all of that by now.”

I hadn’t thought about that. Worse, I knew he was probably right.

Still, I needed to know absolutely. It was Finn, after all.

By combining Jess’s and my money, I had just enough to book a last-minute deal, a red-eye flight to Orlando. I was given a temporary leave of absence from my internship
at the School of Imagineering. I didn’t want to risk losing my internship by being gone too long. With no place to stay, and barely more than bus fare and my phone in my pocket, I ended up on
Wanda Kresky’s doorstep.

The daughter of Wayne Kresky, the late Disney Legend and creative force behind the DHIs, Wanda was the insider of all insiders. She agreed to put me up, gave me a short lecture about what would
have happened if she’d been away on a trip, and lent me fifty dollars that we both knew I was unlikely to repay anytime soon.

“Why would Joe be that way?” I asked across the kitchen counter of her tiny apartment as she fixed me a sandwich.

“Maybe you’re reading more into it than was there.”

“No one answering their phones? Seriously?”

“Yeah, okay. I don’t know, but I think you’re right. It’s strange. You’ve got to believe he’s protecting them, though, Amanda. I don’t doubt that they
want some downtime, that they might even spend time in the park together, but not answering their phones is…different.”

“Right?”

“So where do you start? Can I drive you?”

“I don’t want to bother you.”

“I hope you’re kidding.”

“Finn’s house. Finn’s mom. She’s basically one of us at this point.” Finn’s mother had been put under a horrendous spell by the Overtakers, which left her
working against her own son. “If anyone’s going to be honest, it’s her.”

“Then that’s where we start.”

Mrs. Whitman looked pale and sickly. She stepped outside their one-and-half story ranch home instead of asking me to come in. Wanda waited in the car, her head turned toward
us. It was dusk, but the heat caused my skin to prickle with sweat. The palm fronds stood motionless, looking plastic. A few red flowers dared to test the heat. They weren’t winning.

We’d already said our hellos and how-are-yous by the time Mrs. Whitman decided to let me in, closing the door quietly behind her.

“I’d heard you were interning in Disneyland,” she said.

“Yes! It’s going great. Thank you! Is Finn home? Could I see him please?”

“He’s…no…I mean, he’s not here. He’s…He’s away…at college orientation at Vanderbilt. We’re so proud of him. He was accepted by four schools! Did he
tell you that? Isn’t that wonderful?”

With so much to be happy about, why had she been crying recently? Why was she several shades paler than I’d ever seen her look? Why shut the door so quietly if only Finn’s sister was
home? I knew Finn’s room was one of the windows facing the garage; we’d all heard the stories of his best friend, Dillard, or the dreaded Greg Luowski coming and going by climbing up on
the roof. I felt so tempted to just run down the length of the house and try to sneak a peak.

But I didn’t have to. A thin rim of light outlined a drawn shade in the window closest to the garage. If it was Finn’s room—and it made sense that it would be—and he was
away, why leave the light on?

She caught me looking in that direction.

“I’m sorry, Amanda. I wish you’d—” She caught herself.

“I did. Remember? I called Finn and Philby, Maybeck, Willa, and Charlene. All of them. I left messages for all of them.” I lowered my voice. “You can tell me. You know that.
I’m here to help.”

I watched her eyes fill to overflowing, but she managed to hold back the tears.

“I want to help.” I saw no reason not to push. I was only going to meet with more resistance from the other Keepers’ parents. “Mrs. Whitman, of everybody, I thought
you…I thought I could…that we knew each other. We’ve been through this together. You, me, Finn, the other Keepers. Let me, please let me help.”

“I think it’s best if you leave now, Amanda. If they call…if Finn should call, I’ll ask him to get in touch with you.”

“That would be nice,” I said. “Thank you.” Though I felt so foolish playing along with her game, I offered her my phone number. She told me she could remember it, and I
didn’t doubt she was telling the truth. Mrs. Whitman had been a rocket scientist with NASA. For real.

But when I recited my number, she showed no sign of hearing it. I’d lost her. She’d gone off someplace all her own. We had a short staring contest. I was clearly going to win, so I
looked away, back toward the lighted window.

“You might want to save yourself some money,” I said.

“How’s that?” I’d surprised her. Like shaking her awake.

“Finn left his light on. Seeing how he’s away doing his college orientation…”

“Did he? Oh, how silly of me not to notice. Thank you, Amanda. You’re right: what a waste.”

“Yeah,” I said. “What a waste.”

Maybeck—the Keeper most likely to exaggerate—had once told me about a rumor concerning Mattie Weaver, another escapee from Barracks 14, who had joined the Kingdom
Keepers on the Disney Cruse Line ship, the
Dream
, during its Panama Canal cruise. Jess and I had put her up to it, and Mattie had come through for us in a big way. Her
“ability”—as the researchers at Barracks 14 referred to what we thought of as our “weirdness”—was what Mattie called “reading.” Not the reading
taught in school, of course. At the age of twelve, she’d been petting her godmother’s dog and had sensed he was sick. She went ballistic until her godmother finally agreed to take him
to the vet. The dog was diagnosed with a benign tumor on the stomach,
exactly where Mattie had said it was
.

Over the next few months, things only got weirder. Now Mattie wore gloves, long-sleeve shirts, and long pants at all times. If someone tried to touch her, she would move out of reach. Her life
outside Barracks 14 was all about hiding from and avoiding people. Of the three of us, I considered her the most likely to voluntarily return to the facility outside Baltimore; at least there she
could walk freely down a hallway or attend a lecture. Here in “the real world,” she found herself in an exile of her own choosing. The burden that came with incidental
contact—handing a salesperson money, shaking hands, touching a waiter or waitress—was not worth it. She didn’t want to sense illness or grief, desire or addiction. She wanted no
part of a stranger’s internal thoughts. As Mattie had explained it to me: priests and psychiatrists have training. The rest of us do not.

Maybeck had told me that Mattie was in Orlando, squatting in the same old church where Jess and I had once lived in secret, a place so familiar to me I could have reached it blindfolded. Afraid
of scaring her away if I came up the stairs, I approached from the roof—one of two possible escape routes from the abandoned apartment. I knocked twice on the window, paused, and then knocked
twice more, making my face visible.

Nothing. After a moment, I opened the window and pushed past a faded curtain. The interior was clean but spare—some inverted milk crates, a bed made of couch cushions secured by a rope
around their perimeters. A stack of water-warped paperbacks teetered by the bed. A towel, still damp, was hung to dry. I shuddered, knowing what it was like taking cold showers.

Despite the signs, there was no Mattie. I left a note on the pillow, asking her to meet me at a nearby Starbucks. Nine
A
.
M
. or nine
P
.
M
. I’d be there regardless.

Later, I would wonder how I could have missed the significance of it all, but miss it I did.

One of the church walls held a dozen photos thumbtacked in the shape of an inverted pyramid. The shots were of the same three people—four, if you counted the driver. Three men and one
woman. All adults. To study them, you would think them out of place, each the kind of person who’d stand in the corner alone at a party. The quiet type.

I would eventually realize I should have paid that wall more attention. Because it turned out that they weren’t the silent type. They were the dangerous type instead.

JESS

I wasn’t always this way. Maybe I inherited it, but I don’t know because my parents aren’t around to ask. I can’t exactly say it feels normal. I remember
not having it.

It started out with little things. I never gave them a second thought. I think my mom knew something was up, but back then I didn’t realize it was anything more than my imagination.

Everything changed with the pink bunny. I saw it on the shelves of the gas station after the car broke down and I decided I needed it, that I had to have it. But when I told my mom we had to go
back and get it, she wouldn’t go. She claimed it wasn’t real, that I was making it all up.

I was so angry with her for that. Every morning I reminded her about the bunny. Every morning she’d claim she didn’t know what I was talking about. That made me even angrier. My
mother, faking confusion to avoid buying me another gift? Why?

I didn’t realize that the event at the gas station hadn’t happened…
yet
.

A few days later, we broke down on a road we’d never taken. It was all new to my mom, but from my car seat, I told her exactly what would happen next. The more it did happen, the more
freaked out she got. When we reached the gas station, she saw the pink bunny, the one I hadn’t been able to stop talking about. That was the last straw. My mom ran out of the gas
station’s mini market, pulling me along behind her. I saw fear in her eyes when she looked at me. She wanted to know how I could possibly have known three days ago what would happen today.
But she was afraid to ask.

In that brief exchange, I gained this weird sense of importance. And of guilt, for making my mom afraid. Of excitement. We rode in the tow truck in silence. I couldn’t understand how
I’d scared her; I only knew that I had. To me, my dreams just seemed to repeat themselves sometimes. I didn’t know then how familiar it would become to see fear in people’s
eyes.

My powers got stronger as I got older; the dreams became more vivid. As I neared the end of elementary school, I woke up screaming every night. It was often the same dream: my parents being
dragged off by bad guys while on a trip, me being sent to foster care. The doctors called them night terrors and told my parents they were common in kids my age.

When my parents left on a trip to South America, I begged them not to go. I told them I’d dreamed a hundred times about something awful that was going to happen. Even with my
mother’s obvious desire to believe me and stay, my father told me I’d be fine for two weeks, and off they went.

Two days after they left, the nightmare stopped abruptly. Hushed phone calls and pitying looks from my sitter followed. When child protective services showed up at the door to take me away, I
was waiting for them. I’d seen them coming. I even knew their names.

Every kid thinks they’re “different” or “special,” but this was the first time I
knew
. I had dreams like everyone else; the difference was that mine had a
tendency to come true. I didn’t tell people about them, but eventually they found out and a few years later, I was sent to a place in Baltimore.