Seneca Rebel (The Seneca Society Book 1) (6 page)

Jennifer looked to her dad for approval to speak. This was clearly something the three of them had been through before. "I lost my mom when I was twelve. At first it was horrible. I couldn't get through one second of the day without missing her. I cried more often than not. And this is no different. It's not easy to imagine life without your mom in it, Dorothy, but it is the only way to make a better life for you and her... I will be there for you, to support you in any way I can."

I felt trapped. "No way. I'm not leaving her."

"If you turn back, you will never be given this opportunity again," Ellen said.

"Oh well." Even though I said that, I felt deep inside that I couldn't walk away from this. I couldn't. But I couldn't leave my mom either! This had been in the cards all along and Ellen had built me up to give me this information and let me crash.

Congressman Wallingsford fingered his flexer sitting on the table in front of him. "We're ready for you, Gregory."

Gregory came in with another dude, probably about seventy years old, Indian, kind old eyes. He smiled. Go figure.

Congressman Wallingsford leaned over the table towards me. "It's time for you to choose, Dorothy Campbell. Will you join the society of the future? Now that you know what can be, can you really go back to the life you were living? Of indefinitely riding that stale status quo?"

"I– I have to talk to my mom," I stuttered.

"I'm sorry, you can't."

"This can't be okay, I'm a minor, I..."
 

Ellen took my shoulder again, this time more firmly. "Doro, I know this is extremely difficult, but it's the way things have to..."

"Difficult?! It's beyond messed up. I want to talk to my mom. You have to let me call her."

Gregory chimed in. "Once you make your decision, you’ll have the chance to speak with her, but it will be monitored and you will be given a specific set of guidelines for what you can and cannot say."

"Don’t you have freedom of speech in Seneca?"

“Of course we do!" Ellen said, "But you understand that we must be extraordinarily careful about how and when we bring this information to the Aboves.”

Ellen was trying to comfort me with reason, but this time it wasn't going to work. Pleasantries and charisma couldn't calm me now. "And what if I say no?"

Gregory stepped forward and put his arm around the Indian man. "Dorothy, this is Dr. Ashvind Kulkarni. He's one of Seneca's top M.D.s. If you choose to leave this room without committing to join Seneca, he will administer a Cogniz-X dosage that will erase all memory of what you’ve seen and heard here in the past forty-eight hours. The drug will take effect in less than an hour, in which time we will transport you via PFV to Washington Dulles Airport, and from there you’ll fly back to Los Angeles. You’ll be back home with your mother by sunrise tomorrow, completely unaffected by what’s happened here. You’ll go on with your normal life, without knowing anything at all about the Seneca Society."

7

M
Y
EYES
WERE
closed to help me think. When they were open, the sensory extravaganza around me swallowed my thoughts. How was I going to tell her? I thought of my dad. Would he understand why I made this choice? That this was ultimately the best choice for everyone in my life? I thought of my mom, alone and wondering why I’d never come home after my stint at a government-backed reform school. I thought of Killer, Julie, my visits to Café Firenze before I went to school. Joining my mom on house-calls to her patients that had become like family to me.

My mom, Layla Campbell, is a no-nonsense, hardworking woman. Her paternal grandparents emigrated from Lebanon to Glendale, California. My grandfather hadn't gone to college. He’d gotten into the food import business just like his father before him, and had become fairly successful off of selling yogurt drinks. He had married a Greek-American woman from the Greek Orthodox Church and my mom was their only child. She was an overachiever from the get-go. Spent summers hiding out, reading and listening to vintage LPs in the dark while other kids played video games and caused a ruckus all over the city. She was only nineteen when she met the love of her life– my dad– Johnny Campbell.

My dad was a small-town Wisconsin boy who’d come to Los Angeles to attend UCLA on a full-ride mathematics scholarship. My mom was in the nursing program and worked part-time in the student union, where my dad would come to see her every second of every day he wasn't in class. Like me, the guy didn't need to study and he didn't need to sleep. All he knew was math and my mom.

I hadn't chosen this path for my life; it was just the way things unfolded. And I desperately needed to rescue my mom from the terrible mess I had put her in. To her, this whole "reform school" plan could be the thing to get me away from the memories at home she thought were causing me to act out. She didn’t have a clue about the big picture or the work being done below ground in Seneca. But if she did, I was sure she’d understand that they were legitimately trying to save the world. And she’d be proud that I could be a part of that.

I knew my job was to figure out a way to bring my mom to Seneca too. I just knew it. I would have to. My staying in Seneca or not wasn’t really even a decision. It was the gamble I had to make. Ultimately, while the pain that rippled through my heart was beyond anything I'd ever felt, I was compelled from deep within to make the hardest choice I'd ever had to make.

I was numb. My fingers could barely move across my flexer screen. It felt like my hands were frostbitten while my body was actually burning up. Even though they had debriefed me on what I could and couldn't say to my mom regarding my new 'school' and my decision to stay here, how I was going to keep the real information from her? If I strayed from the script, I would be putting my mom in danger.
 

The only thing to do was jump in and call. It was go time.

"Doro!" Her voice warmed my soul but singed it with agony, too. Would I ever see her face again, I wondered.

At hearing her voice I squeezed my eyes tight and fought a sob with everything I had. My chest seemed filled with sandbags, my palms sweaty.

I was alone in a dignified guest room, but I felt like I was being monitored. I didn't trust that it was safe to stray from the parameters they had provided for this conversation. A newbie in their world, I wasn't ready to test their boundaries yet.

"Hi, honey! How's your trip going? I want to hear everything!"

I was choked up but dug deep down to muster up the strength to say what I needed to say. To make my mom feel at ease no matter how far from reality my own comfort was.

"I love you." It came out without even thinking about it.

"Well, I love
you
. Killer is right here and he misses you, too. He hasn't left your bed since you've been gone. Only when I lured him out with a marrow bone from Romeo's Meat Market."

I laughed, and was glad she couldn’t see the tears streaming down my face.

"I miss you guys so much. This is a great place for me, though. They're doing such cool things, and I've decided that... I'd like to stay."

"That's great, hon. I think something like this is just what you need. And they'll be lucky to have you."

"Yeah."

"Will you be coming home to pack? When should I plan on coming to visit?"

Nothing about this felt right to me, but I knew it had to be done– for now.

"That's the thing. They don't allow visitors... in the first few months... while we go through this big mental and physical cleansing process. But I think there is a parents' weekend after that."

"Really? Well… okay… I guess we’ll plan for later, then. You let me know when, and I’ll come right away, okay?"

"I miss you mom. So much. But I can't come home to pack if I want to stay here. They send government appointed messengers to retrieve the things I'll need."

"Wow, this is really serious."

"I know. I'm sorry we didn't get to say goodbye properly– or, not
goodbye
. You know what I mean."

"Doro, it's okay. We'll be together again sooner than you think. Until then, I'll have Killer to keep me company. You just do what you need to do, and know that I'm proud of you."

This was it. I was leaving my life behind. I truly believed that, despite what I had been told, my mom and I would be reunited one day. Hearing her voice confirmed that. I would never let her go that easily. Never.

8

T
HE
SKIN
UNDER
my eyes was puffy and raw from crying all night. I know I'm like my dad and used to getting no sleep, but this was crazy. I was really feeling it now. I was dressed in blue from head to toe, descending on the gold-domed grass patch deep into Seneca, my new home.

"Campbella!" I was too tired to turn around. I didn't have to because Reba was by my side in a flash. His hair was more disheveled than the last time I'd seen him, his shirt half tucked in. He had been waiting at the entry point. "I am so crazy happy to see you today. You have no idea. It's always a crapshoot; will the newbies be back or not? You know? And you are, and that is incredible!"

"For who?" Even though I had made the choice, I was plagued with guilt.

"Two years ago, I went through exactly what you’re going through, and trust me, it gets better. Even though we're a part of something so unbelievably phenomenal, that doesn't mean the other side of the sword doesn't affect us. We're still human. But you'll see. It'll get better."

"Thanks, Reba." I really did appreciate this bubbly guy. Yet part of me wanted to resist his friendship, out of loyalty to Julie. I felt like I’d be replacing her. My inner circle was being dismantled and rebuilt.

"I have to tell you, though, what you go through next isn’t for the faint of heart. So hang on tight, and if you need a friend..." Reba held up his wrist. His flexer was in the form of a retro stopwatch. I took mine from my back pocket and we pressed them together.

"I gotta bounce now, chica, but how about lunch? I think we have it at the same time."

"Yeah, we can do lunch."

"Sweet!" And Reba was gone in the blink of an eye. I pulled up my locations map on my flexer. I pinpointed my first official session of my first real day as a citizen of Seneca: Mathematics in epidemiology. If I had to pick a least favorite session, this would be the one. I always hated discussing diseases but, hey, I get it, everyone hated it just the same and that's why they were so set on finding ways to eradicate it in this new society.

I looked up from my entry point to determine which of four golden hallways I needed to take. In my direct line of vision, about forty-five yards down, there was a perfectly shaped head with a buzz cut. My eyes darted to the floor. There they were: blue combat boots. I looked up. His face. Two mysterious, different-colored eyes with a depth to them I so badly wanted to explore. I wanted for him to see me. He didn't. I looked down the hall I needed to take, but he was headed in the opposite direction. By the time I looked back to where he’d been, he was gone.
 

The urge to follow him was magnetic. I moved without even thinking. I made it to where I’d last seen him standing. There were no doors in sight. Maybe one had opened up for him in the wall, like I had seen happen the day before. He could be anywhere. I needed to get to session, set to begin in two minutes. I definitely didn't want to start things off on the wrong foot by being late.

As I headed back in the other direction, McKayla Gordon, Jennifer Wallingsford's sour friend, appeared.

"Hi, McKayla." I figured if I was here to stay, it was probably best to play nice. No need to have enemies right off the bat in a brand new place. Neutrality was my goal.

"Not feeling suicidal today are you, Nirvana?" She smirked and eyed me as a doorway opened up in the golden wall for her.

"Not today, but thanks for your concern."

I watched her saunter past me, through the instant door and into her session. I glimpsed inside the room and was about to walk away when something caught my eye. McKayla sat in front of
him
. Blue Combat Boots was in her session. He looked up and saw me staring at him from outside the room. And just like that, the door glazed over in the mirrored gold and I was staring back at myself. Or a version of myself that was acting like a silly little girl with a silly little crush. A girl I didn't know. I snapped out of it. With one minute to get to session, I booked it back down the hall and made it to my seat with seconds to spare.

9

R
ATHER
THAN
JOINING
the other girls of the dorm for our morning ride into Seneca, Ellen picked me up in a flighter with a driver and a special guard. These two were always with her. They were in the front. She was in the back. I wasn't sure where we were headed. But I was getting used to that.

She handed me a coffee. "Do you like mochas?" It was my first real whiff of coffee since the last time I’d been inside Café Firenze four mornings before. (Had it really only been four days ago that all this had begun?) I swiped the cup from Ellen's hand, took the lid off and slurped up the still unmelted whipped cream atop the silky, chocolate-infused espresso milk. One whiff of the rich aroma made my heart ache, made me miss my mom more than I ever knew I could. It was even more painful than missing my dad, I think, because I had chosen to do it.
 

"You made the right choice, Doro."

I took a sip– it hurt so good. "That's what I hear... I hope so."

"I made the same choice three years ago, when I accepted Congressman Wallingsford's invitation to join Seneca's Youth Initiation Division."

Ellen was touching her necklace, her eyes chock full of sorrow. I felt an energy emanating from her that resonated with me. An understanding between us. She removed her necklace. It was a Yin Yang in silver and gold, with two diamonds as the dots, each encircled in the metal of the opposite side. Her hand started to shake. She opened it. It was a locket, and inside was a tiny picture of her and a little boy. He must have been around eight or nine. "It was the hardest thing I'd ever done. The hardest thing I'll ever do. Not a day goes by that I don't think about him, or a night when he isn't present in my dreams."