Rewind (Vanish Book Three) (7 page)

“
Mind if I join
you?”

“
Sure,” I said.

He got up from the couch and
put his shoes on. Before we left, I decided we should leave Grace a
note. I didn’t want her to think we just left, though if she looked
out the window, she would see that Dante’s car was still
there.

We walked down the street.
It was a quiet neighborhood, and no one was outside.

“
I need to talk to you about
something,” he said after we walked in silence for three
blocks.

“
Okay,” I answered, waiting
for him to speak.

“
I realized yesterday…” he
trailed off.

“
I saw what happened when
you visited Allison, I had a dream.”

“
What?”

“
Oh,” I laughed. “I forgot
you didn’t know; I dream about things. I used to think it was only
the future, but now I dream about all kinds of things. Things that
happened, things that will happen; it’s hard to
explain.”

“
So then you know that we
broke up.”

“
I know you said if you left
without her, then you were broken up….” He looked shocked; I didn’t
blame him. “I just don’t understand why, because you couldn’t
teleport her?”

“
No, well, yes, but…. I read
in that book that if you find someone who’s perfect for
you….”

“
Oh,” I said, now
understanding what he was mumbling about yesterday. The whole
sharing powers thing.

“
It said some people don’t
even have the luxury of being told they’ve found their soul mate,
but only people who are meant for each other can share their
powers.” He grabbed my hand and closed his eyes; I closed mine
too.

When I opened my eyes, we were back at
Grace’s house; he looked at me and smiled.

“
I—”

“
Last night I had a dream,
too… it was so strange. First, we were at some house way out in the
woods, and the power went out. I needed to tell you something, but
someone had broken in. Then we were at some old abandoned building.
It seemed like the dream went on forever.”

I felt a tear stream down my cheek.
“That really did happen.”

“
I’m sorry I didn’t believe
you… I just feel so bad for Allison.”

“
Don’t,” I said. “She’s
meant to be with someone I once knew, in fact, maybe you saw him in
your dream? His name is Cooper.”

“
Cooper…” he
laughed

“
Yeah, we’re going to have
to find them. Cooper and his family, I mean. We have to let them
know what happened. I think we should introduce them, if you’re
alright with that.”

“
Yeah, she deserves to be
happy.”

We went back inside. Grace
was sitting on the couch. It didn’t matter that the future no
longer existed—we still needed to go to Meadowbrook. I needed to
see for myself what was there. Then, on the way back we would go
see Elizabeth and George; I only hoped that they still lived there.
So many things had changed, and that could be one of
them.

“
Are you ready to go?” I
asked Grace.

“
Yeah, let me just pack a
few things,” she said as she walked away.

“
Dante, we should go to your
house and get some clothes. Then, can you take me to my
house?”

“
Sure,” he said as he
grabbed my hand.

Soon we were standing in Dante’s
bedroom. It wasn’t quite like I remembered, but it was still nice.
He grabbed a bag and a few changes of clothes, and then we were off
to my house.

I had to search and search
to find much of anything that wasn’t a dress or skirt. I had
forgotten how much I had changed here. Eventually, I found a few
pairs of jeans, some T-shirts and a couple of tank tops. I heard
someone moving around downstairs.

“
We need to go,” I
whispered.

He grabbed my hand, and we were back at
Grace’s before she was even done packing. She came out of her room,
and we headed out to the car. Meadowbrook was pretty far from
Greenview, but we just had to head north and go straight for the
most part, and we were good.

Once we got closer, I had to
figure out which way to turn. I remembered the way, but it seemed
as though it was in another life—and it kind of was.

We parked down the road
behind a couple of bushes. Then, we walked to the building. It
looked just as abandoned as it did the last time I was here. The
gate was open, and we went right in; the door was unlocked as well.
The desk and file cabinet remained, but other than that, it was
just as empty as before. I walked over to the filing cabinet. I
wasn’t expecting to find anything, but it was worth a shot. I
stopped before I opened the drawer. I felt stupid. I didn’t know
what I expected to find here, but was almost certain that I
wouldn’t find it.

When I opened it, there were
two files instead of one. The first one I pulled out, said
‘Scarlett Summers’—so I went to Meadowbrook anyway, but why? Before
I looked in the file, I decided to see who else went here. The
second file said ‘Rose Summers’—she sent both of us here. There was
something off about this place. I opened my file, but it was almost
exactly the same as the one from before. They gave me medicine to
stop my powers, so whoever worked here must have had powers
themselves. The only thing that was different—there was no birth
certificate. I looked through Rose’s file. It was almost identical,
but they didn’t give her any of the medicine. Something weird went
on here. I wasn’t sure what, but I knew this was no run-of-the-mill
mental hospital.

“
This is crazy,” I said
aloud. “What did I do in this life to get sent here?”

“
What does it say?” Grace
asked.

“
They locked me and my
sister here. They gave me medicine to stop my powers, but they
didn’t give any to her.”

“
Who else has been
here?”

“
As far as I can tell… no
one.”

We walked back toward the
rooms, and all but two were empty. The rest were filled with
cob-webs and mice. The two that weren’t empty, looked as though
they’d been recently cleaned up. In fact, when I stopped to look
around, pretty much everything on the way to the rooms was
spotless. Then I heard a noise. It sounded like a truck pulling up
in front of the building. I ran to the window to look, in the back
of the truck, there was a sign—
Meadowbrook
Hospital for the Mentally Insane
.

There was nothing we could
do. We couldn’t leave, they would see us. So we sat inside and
waited for them to leave. They put up the sign and pulled away, but
mere seconds later, a car pulled up. A woman in a nurse’s uniform
walked up to the door. Before I could get a good look at her, we
ran and hid.

There was a room right down
the hall with a window, so we could still look out and see what was
going on in front of the building. Twenty minutes later, a familiar
car pulled up—Ann. She got out of the car, dragging Rose behind
her.

“
Come with me,” the nurse
said, I recognized the voice—Nurse Debby. “First, I would like to
talk to you. Do you have any idea where your sister is?”

“
No, I don’t,” she said with
defiance. “Why am I here? This is ridiculous.”

“
You need help, stop denying
it to yourself.”

“
No. I don’t.”

“
I need to know where your
sister is.”

“
I told you already. I don’t
know.”

“
We have to get her out of
here,” I cried.

“
First we have to get out of
here; we’ll come back when it’s dark,” Dante said.

“
Okay, we should go
now.”

We ran to the entrance and
down the street to the car. I needed to get her out of there, but
first I needed to know why she was in there in the first place.
Why
we
were in
there before?

I needed a plan; I needed to
know what was going on, but how? Obviously, Nurse Debby and Ann
were the only ones really in on it, so how would I get any
information?

I imagined that I looked like
Ann.

“
Whoa,” Grace and Dante said
together.

“
I’ll be back in a minute.”
I walked through the doors. Nurse Debby was sitting at the desk
with her laptop.

“
Ann, what are you doing
back so soon?”

“
Did you find anything out?”
I asked, remembering her asking about where I was.

“
No, she says she doesn’t
know anything.”

“
Maybe I should just take
her home.”

“
No,” Nurse Debby yelled.
“We can’t risk her going to find Scarlett. You’ve really screwed up
this time haven’t you?”

“
What do you mean?” I said
nonchalantly.

“
We took Rose’s powers. We
made our way back here, and all for you to lose Scarlett again!”
she shouted.

“
I’m sorry. I’m having kind
of a hectic day…. We came back from the future…” I said as if it
wasn’t a question, but she could tell something was up.

“
Yes, we came back from the
future. The Alliance…” she took a deep breath. “You’re going to be
in some deep trouble if you don’t find that little
bitch.”

“
So we find her, and then…”
I trailed off, seeming as though I was deep in some other
thought.

“
Ann, you should really know
this. We take her powers. We take everyone’s powers. Everyone will
bow to us; we will be the new head of the Alliance.”

“
Why? Why does everyone need
to be powerful to be happy?”

“
Oh Ann, please don’t tell
me you’ve somehow found your heart. This was our plan all
along.”

“
And what does Scarlett have
to do with this?”

“
You’ve known from the very
moment you took her away from her mother what she has to do with
this. She’s the most powerful of our kind that’s ever lived. The
people behind the Alliance want her to lead with them… but they’re
idiots.”

“
What if she doesn’t know
that?”

“
The less she knows, the
better. The less they know the better, but we need to find her
soon.”

“
And if the Alliance finds
her before we do?”

“
Well, then, I guess we’re
screwed,” she said, glaring at me the entire time.

“
Look, I
know this is going to sound crazy, but I’ve seen her powers. They
really don’t seem like anything
that
special,” I said, waiting for an
answer or anything that would explain this in any little way. Why
was I so powerful? Yes, I had powers, but there had to be
someone
more powerful
than me.

She took a deep breath,
“Ann, I really am worried about you. Has this been too much to
handle?” I shook my head, not knowing what else to do. “Well, then,
get your act together.”

“
Alright, let’s just forget
about this little meeting, okay? I’ll get back on track. I
promise.” She nodded, and I walked out the door. Dante and Grace
were waiting by the car.

“
What happened?” Dante
demanded as I walked over to them.

I closed my eyes and changed back into
myself.

“
Ann and Nurse Debby came
back from the future, too. They plan to take my powers and kill me.
They want everyone’s powers, and I’m sure they’re planning on
killing everyone else, too.”

“
So what do we do?” Dante
asked.

“
Either we kill them, and
somehow take over the Alliance ourselves. Or we hide.”

“
Whatever you decide, I have
your back,” Grace promised.

“
Me, too,” Dante
agreed.

“
Well, until we come up with
a better plan—a flawless plan—I think we need to hide, and I know
just the place, but first we need to get Rose out.”

Chapter 7:
Rescue

We sat in the car until the
sun went down. We could see the front of Meadowbrook faintly
through the bushes in front of the car. It was obvious that Nurse
Debby was the only one there. She went out to her car and
left.

“
Perfect,” I said aloud.
“There’s one thing though… I don’t know how this will all play out.
Rose kind of thinks I’m crazy, I told her about coming back in
time, and she didn’t remember.”

“
If she puts up any kind of
fight, I’m sure I can handle her,” Dante said.

“
Alright, let’s
go.”

We walked up to the front doors; I went
over to Nurse Debby’s desk, nothing unusual. I turned on the
computer monitor; the computer was still running and Nurse Debby
had left it on her email.

To:

From:
:

Debby,

I think I might know where Scarlett is…
it’s a hunch, I don’t think she would be stupid enough to return,
but I’m going to go check it out. I’ll get back to you when I know
more.