The Lake House, Page 7

  My mother said? Max shook her head, but then she surrendered. “C’mon inside, Ms. Schein. Or would you rather we do the interview in a tree? Somebody asked me to do that once. Really creative, huh? But the best was the TV personality who wanted to jump out of a plane and interview me in the air. I said okay—if he didn’t wear a parachute.”

  Max walked inside the house and let the writer follow if she wanted to. Her bedroom was painted a creamy white with a floral border under the moldings. She had a tangerine-colored iMac desktop computer with a flying goose screen saver, a canopied bed, several shelves holding books and fossilized rocks and other found treasures. The Marshalls had tried to make it nice for her. Score one for Moms and Pops.

  Max sat on the edge of her bed and watched as the woman writer perused the wall hangings. She commented politely on Max’s funky star map of Hollywood and her 40 Days and 40 Nights movie poster, but it didn’t take long for her to get to the real point of her visit. Which was . . .

  “I’m interested in child abuse. I was abused,” Linda Schein said as she settled into the chair beside the desk. Max wasn’t sure whether to believe her. She already knew that some reporters would lie about anything, even in their news stories. “After I listened to you and the other children at the custody trial, I got interested in institutional abuse, Max. I especially wanted to know more about the School. Please tell me what happened there. It’s important—for both of us. I think you know it is.”

  “That’s in the past,” Max answered softly. “The School is gone. The people who worked there are dead or in jail.”

  The writer’s eyes narrowed, focused. Max could tell she was a smart one. Wily. “I don’t think so,” said Linda Schein. “And I don’t think you do, either. They’re not all in jail. I’m not wrong, am I?”

  “What do you mean?” Max asked. She couldn’t keep an edge of concern out of her voice. She stared hard at the writer, the intruder.

  “I know things, Max. I do. I have a contact in Washington with access to sealed government documents. I did some digging myself and found a memo from a Dr. Brownhill mixed in with a sealed grand jury indictment. It was pretty terrifying. It detailed an ongoing project, an offshoot of the School. I know it exists. I know about something called the Resurrection Project. What is Resurrection, Max? Is there a place they call the Hospital? There is, isn’t there? You have to tell me.”

  “You really have to go,” Max said abruptly. “You’re way off base. This is too crazy. Why can’t you reporters just leave us alone?”

  She stood quickly and flung open the bedroom door for the reporter. Then she had an attack of conscience. She felt compelled to add something. “Don’t dig into this subject, Ms. Schein. Please believe me. If you talk about it, you could die. I’m not exaggerating. You talk, you die. You’re way off base, but you could get hurt anyway.”

  The reporter found herself being led out into the hallway. But she wouldn’t go away. Not that easily. “Max, you can’t leave it like this. I can see you’re frightened. I guess I understand that. Give me a few more minutes. Talk to me, please. What is the Resurrection Project? Where is it?”

  Max shook her head. “I don’t have anything to tell you. You’re looking in the wrong places.” But then she had to add again, “If you talk, you could die. Please remember those words, Ms. Schein. Now go back to Denver. Drive safely.”

  Panting with fear and close to tears, Max shut her door and leaned up hard against it. When she heard the writer’s car finally drive away, she collapsed onto her bed, fully dressed. Wired and coming apart, both at the same time.

  She’d done it now—talked to a writer. An investigative journalist.

  She would be found out. Then all the children would be in terrible danger.

  You talk, you die.

  Especially if you talked about Resurrection.

  29

  YOU TALK, YOU DIE; you talk, you die; talk, die; talk, die.

  It was two in the fricking, fracking morning and Max had been twisting and thrashing in bed for hours. Her head ached from the pressure of too many thoughts, and she couldn’t stand it anymore.

  She made a call on her cell phone.

  Her best friend in the world answered, and they talked for less than a minute. Just in case somebody might be listening.

  Then Max threw off her blankets and dressed for a cold night flight. She had to meet her friend. Right now.

  It didn’t matter that night flights were against the rules set down by Terry and Art Marshall. Their absurd, tight-ass rules didn’t matter to her. Not anymore. Not ever, really. Most parents made up rules to keep themselves comfortable, right?

  She had to see Ozymandias. Somebody knew about Resurrection. A reporter knew, and they weren’t exactly known for keeping their big, fat mouths shut.

  Max crept down the back stairs and through the silent house. She went straight to the mudroom.

  There, she took her silver vest down from a hook. Zipped it over her shirt and jeans.

  She knotted the laces of her sneakers together and slung them around her neck. She tucked her CD player into one pocket, a cell phone in another.

  Then she left the Marshall house quietly, carefully, through the back door.

  It was 2:20 in the morning.

  Time to rock and roll.

  You talk, you die.

  30

  THE MOON WAS HIDDEN behind thick clouds as Max ran barefoot down the entire length of the backyard. Dewy, dewy, cold, cold.

  Max thought: I wish we were all back at the Lake House. I wish it was the way it used to be. Veggie pizzas and cookouts, long, long talks with Kit and Frannie, overnight hikes and fly-aways. But then Max stopped herself. The Lake House was in the past; ancient history; it was over. This was now. You talk, you die.

  She pointed her arms forward and stretched out her beautiful wings. As the wings swung out, the joints opened automatically, and her flight feathers spread. Bernoulli’s principle in action, Jackson.

  As air flowed across the tops of her wings, Max rose as if she were being sucked right into the sky. Once aloft, she beat her wings until she was high above the treetops—and then she soared!

  God, I love to fly. I was born for this, she thought.

  Who wouldn’t love a night flight?

  Maybe George W. Bush? Nah, he’d like it a lot!

  Max headed southeast over Pine Bush, rising like a jet through the moisture-laden clouds that dispersed as she cleared the town. The clouds didn’t feel like much of anything as she passed through them—froth from the top of a latte? spiderwebs?—but they were mysterious, ethereal, and she felt her face bead with water drops. The moon was bright, and the stars were sharp white holes punched out of the fabric of a deep black sky.

  And it was so quiet up here—so unearthly quiet and peaceful. If she weren’t so nervous and worried, and scared half to death, it would have been perfect.

  Max found the North Star by following the line connecting the two pointers in the Big Dipper. Then she adjusted her flight path so that she would travel along the eastern edge of the Roosevelt National Forest—toward the town of Fort Collins, about thirty miles away.

  Oz lived near Fort Collins, and he actually liked the city a lot. God, she couldn’t wait to see him. To talk to Ozymandias. To lean on his shoulder.

  You talk, you die.

  Max had her wings fully extended, catching the updrafts off the ridges, and glided for as long as ten minutes without beating her wings a single time. Fantastic! She knew deep in her bones that this miracle of flight was worth all she’d suffered for it.

  Max tried to put aside any fears and worries and surrendered herself to the pleasure of flying. Below her were thousands of acres of rolling hills against an awesome backdrop of snowy mountain peaks that rose up and pierced the clouds. Moonlight made the tiers of spruce and pine below her look like fantastical castles with silver spires. Oh hell, the poetry in her head didn’t do it justice, not even close.

  And then she
realized what would be perfect—to be back at the Lake House again. To be with Frannie and Kit and all the other kids. But, of course, that would never happen. Never ever. So she had to learn to accept it.

  Max had been flying for about an hour when she picked out the metallic sheen of the Cache la Poudre River seven thousand feet below.

  She flicked on her CD player and sang along with Nelly Furtado as she followed the river’s course.

  The cool night air buffeted her body all the way down to her tippytoes. She could fly just fine with shoes, but bare feet gave her more rudder control. Felt better on the tootsies, too.

  The Cache la Poudre ran parallel to a big four-laner, Route 287. Max followed the twisting ribbon of highway and flew above the subdued lights of Fort Collins, and from there, about five miles east to her destination, the tiny town of Warren, Colorado.

  Ozymandias is down there. The strongest of us six children, maybe even the future leader. Absolutely my best buddy in the world. My secret hero.

  She closed her wings a few degrees and descended to about a hundred feet. Then she skimmed the tree line until she could plainly see the Warren Raptor Center.

  “Permission to land,” she whispered to nobody. Then, “Permission granted.”

  Max’s night vision was superb, the moonlight as bright to her as klieg lights would be to an ordinary person. The wildlife refuge was made up of a timbered administrative building with a little lawn in front and dirt paths leading from it.

  At the edge of the sanctuary was a cluster of small, screened-and-slatted pole barns that housed the raptors, the birds of prey.

  Max dropped and braked on the cool, wet ground.

  “Oz,” she called. “Oz, you here? Of course you are. But where? Come out, come out, wherever you are. C’mon, Oz. Oz?”

  A barn owl called, Can-you-cook-for-meeee. Max called back, “I can cook for you.”

  Then there was silence again.

  “Oz? Don’t play mind games with me. Not tonight. I’m scared. I’m really, really scared, Ozymandias. I need you, good buddy.”

  “Max, I’m in the hawk house. Come on up here, you silly goose.”

  31

  IT WAS COZY and warm and, most important, safe in the low rafters of the hawk house.

  Moonlight the color of butter slipped through the slatted roof, striping the faces of Max and Oz, who dangled their legs over the crossbeam and talked from their heart.

  “It’s really good to see you,” Max whispered, and felt a lump in her throat.

  “Good to be seen. But three in the morning? What’s the matter? This better be good. And I’m sure it is, knowing you, Max.”

  “We’ll get to that. Maybe. I see that your friends are up late, too. The hawks.”

  The two red-tailed hawks that lived in the barn were perched nearby. The male, who was nearly blind, ruffled his feathers; and his mate, who had only one wing, moved closer to him. The hawks didn’t mind their presence, and Max found their sounds and smells comforting.

  “Cheeeeee,” Oz called.

  “Cheeeeee,” the male responded.

  Max found herself smiling. Oz could be so gentle and sweet sometimes. Most of the time, actually.

  She thought he had really changed since she had seen him last. He had been small when they lived at the School. Now, although he was younger by a few months than Max, he was much bigger. And stronger. The boyish twinkle was gone, the softness of his cheeks and jaw, too. Jeez, Oz had grown into a real hunk. And she knew all about hunks, didn’t she?

  “Can I see your tattoo?” she asked.

  “Yes. But then you have to tell me what scared you back at Bush League. You don’t scare, Max.”

  “Yeah, I do,” she said. “So let me see your tat.”

  Oz pulled up his black sweatshirt so that she could see the brown and red and yellow image of an American bald eagle depicted in full flight across his chest. The eagle held a shield in one talon and lightning bolts in the other. The motto, Live Free or Die, was etched underneath. It was magnificent.

  “That is so damn cool,” said Max. “Must’ve hurt like a bastard.”

  Oz shrugged and said, “This one hurt.” He opened his palm and showed Max another tat. This one was an amateur job, clearly inked by Oz himself.

  Max bent her head and read aloud: “‘Ozymandias, King of Kings.’ A little full of thyself, sire?” she asked.

  “I mean it the way that poet Shelley meant it,” Oz said. “Vanity means nothing, right. Even mighty Ozymandias, Ramses II of ancient Egypt, died and turned to dust. You ever wonder why I was given that name?”

  “How can we understand anything they did at the fricking School?” Max said. “Those nutjobs.”

  “I still hate them so much. Can’t stop hating,” Oz snapped. “I wonder all the time what our lives would have been like if they hadn’t messed with us. Sometimes I think we have more in common with these hawks than we have with people.’”

  “You’re reading my mind,” Max said. “Now that’s scary. Brrrrr.”

  “So what happened in lovely Bush League—I mean, Pine Bush? Why did you want to see me?”

  Max picked through a myriad of troubling thoughts before answering. This was going to be a lit-tle tricky. “I took a boy on a flight,” she said. “I know, dumb. The bastard felt me up. He really hurt my feelings, Oz. He rubbed up against me, and then he told me I was flat-chested. Like I didn’t know already. Like I should care. Like I give two and a half shits. Which, obviously, I do.”

  Oz shook his head and thought a few seconds before speaking. Very grown-up of him. “I’m sorry that it happened, Max. But, honestly, I’ve been expecting something like this.”

  Max couldn’t believe what she’d heard. She searched Oz’s face for an explanation. “What are you talking about? Honestly, you’ve been expecting this?”

  “That’s what I said. Have you looked at yourself lately? You have any mirrors in that house?”

  Max blinked her eyes rapidly. “Sure,” she said. “All the time. And?”

  “You’re beautiful, Max. You’re gorgeous. You make Lara Croft and Angelina Jolie look like shit!”

  Max felt a flush across her breastbone. The warm feeling shot through her veins and her stomach felt hollow, exactly the way it did when she did a barrel roll in the sky. Something a little weird was going on here. She wasn’t ready for it. “You need an eye exam, buddy.”

  “One of us does,” said Oz. “So what’s really bothering you? Tell me true, Max.”

  “You know already. Nothing. Everything. The kids at school can be unbelievably nasty, snide, cruel. You already know that. The press is even worse. They’re clueless and they’re everywhere we go. You know that, too.”

  Oz grinned. “Fox is filming us right now, Max. Sorry, I sold us out. I needed the cash. Who Wants to Marry a Beautiful Girl with Wings.”

  Max stopped talking, and she looked around.

  “Now that hurts my feelings. You thought, just for a nanosecond, that I might invite the sleazy press here.”

  Max kissed Oz on the cheek. “No, I didn’t really. But, yes, I am paranoid. I am very, very paranoid, Oz.”

  You have no idea.

  They sat there in the hawk house, neither of them saying a word for a moment or two. Usually that was okay, but right now it felt uncomfortable. She wanted to talk about Resurrection, the danger, but suddenly she couldn’t get the words out. Maybe because she didn’t want to drag Ozymandias into this mess.

  “I have to go hunt,” Oz finally said. “It’s my nature.” He grinned.

  “Now? I need to talk some more.”

  “You can come with me. I’d like the company. But I need to hunt.”

  Max had never hunted, and she didn’t think she could. “No, I’d better get going,” she said. “It’s almost morning.”

  “Well, okay. I guess so. I wish you could stay. Safe home,” Oz said. “I’m glad you came. I miss you.”

  “Me, too,” said Max.

  �
��You’re drop-dead gorgeous, Max. Live with it!”

  “I’m a freak.”

  “Gorgeous. You’re a gorgeous freak. A beautiful creature.”

  They hugged awkwardly. Then they hugged a second time, and Oz lightly kissed Max’s cheek. Then they went their separate ways.

  Max deeply regretted she hadn’t talked about what was really bothering her, but she couldn’t tell Oz about Resurrection yet. Why was that? Because she didn’t want to put him in danger? Or was it that she didn’t totally trust Oz in that area? He might get reckless. Try to be a hero. That was his nature, wasn’t it? Oz was heroic, and heroes could get you hurt, or dead.

  She flew home through a transcendent pink and baby blue sunrise, but Max didn’t much notice the sights.

  Somebody knows about Resurrection. Somebody who really shouldn’t. A snoopy reporter. A writer.

  The horror-and-creep show is starting to warm up again, isn’t it?

  Then Max felt the need to put her mind somewhere else, somewhere nice.

  “Oz thinks I’m beautiful,” she whispered to the stars.

  Part Three

  HOUSE CALLS

  32

  The Hospital

  The place was jumping tonight. Doctors, nurses, dozens of gurneys on the move.

  Seventeen-year-old James Lee nervously counted the passing fluorescent lighting panels in the dropped ceiling as the serious-faced, blue-gowned medical attendants rushed his gurney along the corridors of the Hospital. He was scared stiff, but also excited.

  Dr. Kane had already told him that he’d been selected to be a “finalist.” “Mr. Lee, Mr. Lee,” he’d said. “You’re a special young man. That’s why we chose you. You have all the right stuff.”

  “Do you have the tape I recorded?” Lee had asked. “I need my tape for this.”

  ”We have it,” Dr. Kane assured him. “It’s waiting for you in the OR. We wouldn’t forget something like your tape. We’re very buttoned-up here.”