Chapter 19: Many Irons

When I arrived at the beach I found Allison, Lizzy, and Shannon playing basketball. As soon as I appeared Lizzy turned to look at me. The other two followed the motion and spotted me coming across the sand.

"There you are," Allison said. "I was beginning to think we wouldn't see you at all tonight. Where have you been?" She met me at the edge of the court and kissed me hello. Shannon and Lizzy lined up behind her.

I kissed her and Lizzy and then took Shannon aside, "Shannon, I'm sorry but you can't stay for this part, it's about..."

She put a finger to my lips. "Amber, I understand. Allison explained the whole secret thing to me. Why don't you guys go inside and talk and I'll play with the dolphins for a while. Just come and get me when you're done." She hugged me tight and gave me a kiss that made me want to put this little meeting off and do other things, then suddenly I was in the cabana with Lizzy and Allison.

I wasted no time. "I was meeting Amber's new teacher."

Allison looked surprised. "That was quick."

"I had help, and it gets better. Sit down and I'll tell you about it."

"Too weird," Lizzy said once I had brought them up to speed. "So you've been sending yourself messages?"

"I thought so before, but with everything that's been going on lately I'm not sure any more."

"How come you never told me about it?" Allison asked. "Is this how you decided that Mom would be safe with Rachel?"

I nodded. "Yeah. It's also why I told Rebecca the truth about what happened with Brad that night at the mall. I just assumed that I was reassuring myself."

"Well you know what they say about assume," Lizzy said.

"What's that?" Allison asked.

"You never heard that one? Assume makes an 'ass' out of 'u' and 'me'," She said, kind of breaking things up with her fingers as she spoke.

Allison giggled, "That's cute." She then punched me in the arm, "And it certainly fits." Then she got serious, "But if it hasn't been you doing it then what the hell is going on? Who else could possibly know what is going on, know even more about it than I do, you tell me ... almost everything." She got up and paced around, obviously thinking.

Lizzy watched her for a few seconds and then said, "You're wasting your time. It has to be him." Allison stopped pacing and Lizzy went on, "It has to be him, Allison, he hadn't told anyone else either, he hadn't said it out loud, he was still thinking about it and the note showed up."

"You're right," Allison said, flopping down next to her on the couch. "I'm being silly..." she threw herself back so she was slouched across the cushions, "but it's just so weird. It is the only explanation that really makes sense." She sat back up. "But it's important to remember that that doesn't mean it's the right one, or even the only one. Just because we can't think of a better one doesn't make this one right. I mean, I've seen Jimmy's handwriting and this certainly isn't it." She held up the note I had shown them. "And then there's the signature. Why E? Edward may be plausible but ... and again I'm not saying you're wrong, but like Lizzy said, let's not 'ass'-ume, that we're right. So when are you taking Amber to the Seven Willows Inn?"

"I'm tempted to take you," I said. "Maybe have Tanya teach you a little respect; it's the House of Seven Willows, and I'll take her when she is ready to go."

Suddenly Allison was sitting in my lap. "You really want to watch some bad girl in leather spank me, or did you want to do it yourself?"

"I'll do it!" Lizzy said enthusiastically and suddenly we were all cracking up.

"You know," I said after the giggling subsided, "I'm never really sure if you're serious when you say stuff like that."

"Neither am I," Allison said with a smirk.

"Then maybe you need to do a little exploring," Lizzy said, suddenly more serious. "I was only half joking when I said that, but so were you. Jimmy's not ready -- although I think it would be far easier for him now that he understands that it's an act of love -- but not yet. I think he's going to need a little time with Jasmine first. But if you get tired of waiting... ," a huge grin spread over her face. "I'll be happy to bend that cute little ass of yours over my knee anytime you want."

I could feel the heat as Allison's face reddened and it wasn't all from embarrassment. I decided it was time to change the subject, "Well, I'll let you two figure that out for yourselves. Meanwhile, I think we've been neglecting Shannon long enough." Without warning I popped us out to the lagoon and we were all four racing down the water slide in our bathing suits with Zeus, Hera, and the rest of the pod cheering us on from the bottom.

Even though we were on different slides I heard Lizzy's voice in my ears, "You are going to tell me the rest of the story about Vegas, right?"

"Do you really want to be that involved?"

"Hell yes, these people have to be stopped. Jimmy, I can help you sort the true bad guys from those being forced to participate better than anyone. They may be able to lie to you, most certainly will lie to you, but they can't lie to me."

I was at the bottom of the slide by now and I broke us into teams, Allison and Shannon on a raft in one tube, Lizzy and me in the other. "I'm afraid of exposing you to them, Lizzy, especially the girls. Am I wrong in thinking that you will probably want to help them when you see them?"

"Well yeah, that's usually how it works."

"That's what I thought." We splashed down seconds before the girls came bouncing out on their side.

"No fair!" Shannon shouted. "You guys outweigh us."

"Are you calling me fat?" Lizzy demanded.

Whatever response Shannon had been ready for, that wasn't it. Suddenly she was looking more embarrassed than angry. Then Lizzy started laughing and she realized she had been had, but she laughed right along with the rest of the team.

"We'll mix it up and see if we can't balance things out a little," I said, "but before we do, Lizzy has asked to help with the Vegas problem. I'm worried about what will happen if she is exposed to the girls."

"I don't understand why you think that will be a problem," Lizzy said.

"Because you can't help them," Allison said.

"What do you mean I can't help them, even I won't know that until I see them."

"What she means," Shannon said, "is that you can't help them. No matter how much you may want to, you can't do anything until we have found a way to stop the people in charge. Anything you did would likely cause behavioral changes. Those changes could get the girls hurt. The wrong changes could get them killed."

"You're kidding, right?" Lizzy said, staring at her for a moment before looking at me and Allison.

"No, she's not," Allison said.

"We could find out," I suggested.

"How?" Lizzy asked.

Allison looked at me. "Images won't work; you'd have to take her there. Lizzy, the only way to find out for sure is to take you to see one of the girls. Will it hurt you to see someone you can help, someone who really needs your healing, and not be able to do it?"

"Well, I'll be able to do it eventually, right? I've had to wait before, I have to get to know the people, sometimes stalk them a little like I did with Rusty until I find the best way to approach them."

"Eventually could be a very long time in this case," I said. "Will it hurt you to see it and know that there may be nothing that you can do for a really long time? That you may never be able to?"

"I don't know," she said honestly. "So far there has never been anyone I couldn't help. Some took longer than others to set up; I mean not all girls are into getting intimate with another chick, and it takes a little work to get them to the right place."

I saw Allison trying to catch my eye. "What?" I asked.

"Just wondering something, tell you about it later. I think it would be best if we were invisible for this trip, and since we're just going to let Easy see her I don't think we need to knock."

"We don't," I said. "She's not in her room. She's playing soccer; that should help." We transitioned to the sidelines of a crowded soccer field. Samantha was frozen about fifteen feet in front of us charging a girl bringing the ball up field. I watched closely to see what Lizzy would do. I was surprised to see her staring directly at Samantha, but then I realized it was Sam's dream so maybe she was the only one Lizzy could see. The only people I could be sure she was seeing were the ones that had come with her. I followed as Lizzy started walking slowly towards her, looking intently at her as she got closer. Suddenly she stopped and turned back to face me, breathing hard, like she couldn't catch her breath.

"Lizzy?" I moved closer, reaching out to her and I could see her eyes were closed tightly.

The instant I touched her she threw her arms around my neck, buried her face in my shoulder and whispered, "You were right. Take me away, please!"

As soon as we arrived in the cabana, I was sitting holding Lizzy in my lap, her head still on my shoulder. Shannon stepped up close behind me, reaching over my shoulder to stroke and kiss her head and hair. Allison stepped to the side and began stroking the older girl's back.

"Easy? It's okay, you can open your eyes now; we're back."

It took a few seconds for the shaking to stop, then Lizzy drew away and I let her go. Looking at her face I could see the tear tracks on her cheeks and realized my shirt was wet where she had been pressed to my shoulder. "Oh God, that was awful," she said, wiping her face with her hands. I handed her a tissue as she continued. "From the sidelines there was that haze of competitive focus everyone gets, but as soon as I started moving closer I could see past it." She hugged her arms around herself and went on, "It was like peeling an onion. Every step closer I saw a different layer. She has layers and layers of lies and illusion surrounding her." She shuddered. "Then suddenly I could see past them and..." she started to shake again and Allison wrapped her arms around her, " ... my God, it was like there was no one there. Like an empty shell where a person should be. I think there was something else but I just couldn't get any closer or look any longer. I could feel that emptiness pulling at me, calling to me. I had to get away. You were right, you were all right, I can't be anywhere near those girls. Not if I can't help them. If I had touched her..." She stood shaking her head and pulling Allison's arms tighter around her.

Shannon spoke softly into the silence, "She's probably one of the better ones."

"Oh God, please tell me you're joking."

"No, she's right," Allison said. "Sam has hope, if you'd been able to get close enough I'm sure you would have seen it. She knows we're out here somewhere working to make it better, trying to find a way to help her. Jimmy gave her a bracelet to stop her nightmares. The rest of the girls ... I don't know because she's the only one we've actually contacted so far, but unless there is someone else out there doing something we don't know about, the rest of the girls don't even have that."

Lizzy took a deep breath and pulled Allison's arms away enough to turn and kiss her. "Thanks for being here." Then she turned back to me. "I want to help. Whatever it takes I want to do my part to stop this. Will you let me help, please?"

"Hey, don't make it sound like I don't want you to. I'll take all the help I can get. The fact that you can sort out the people behind all this; help me figure out who's a player and who's getting played will help a lot. Between Jasmine and Samantha we'll have a good base to start from, we'll work our way outward from there. As we identify them I'll have Rebecca get us what information she can on them. That should help us to keep expanding until we have them all. Once we have that, we'll start looking for some way to shut them down."

That effectively killed the night as no one really felt like playing any more.

The first day of school is always an adventure, and no amount of planning can really prepare you for it. This year was no exception. Some things were different: For instance, this was the first time I had ever started school with a girlfriend. Of course since it was a secret and we wanted it to stay that way ... just another day. I was kind of anxious to see what Mr. Dennis had in mind for his little presentation.

Spanish was a real eye-opener. She started the very first class with a pop quiz. Said she wanted to see how much we'd forgotten over the summer. The vocabulary wasn't bad but the grammar was brutal. It did serve its purpose, though. I hadn't paid enough attention to the written forms in the first year. The good news is that I was spot on in my pronunciation.

Susan's class was very interesting, she handed out two books; a textbook and a spiral bound notebook that everyone was to take notes in. It counted for twenty-five percent of our grades so listening skills were going to be critical.

English Lit was ... well, classical literature had never been my style but I guess there had to be some reason they still required us to read the stuff.

I met Shannon for break and showed her all the important things around campus. Well, I started to ... she knows where the snack bar is, and we'll get to the rest later.

Bob's class was going to be fun again this year; we were going to be delving into some pretty interesting stuff. Starting with an in depth look at how we perceived the world around us. In the beginning class he introduced me and told them about our project from the year before. He then gave them the same assignment; meet three people, shake hands, introduce yourself, try to get them to evaluate you.

At lunch it seemed like we had never left, except that now we had Shannon sitting with us. Coach Jenkins was very excited about finally having her on her teams. With the progress Shannon had made she was looking forward to strong seasons in both volleyball and basketball this year, and she couldn't wait until next year when she would have Allison as well.

Geometry was, well, math. PE always started the same. You did the off season stuff so they could plan for later parts of the year, giving the coaches time to work with anyone showing promise.

I met with Mr. Dennis after school to go over what was to happen at the big presentation on Wednesday. My part was pretty simple so it didn't take long, then I took Shannon home to our place to hang out until her parents got home from LA. This turned out to be, by far, the hardest part of the day.

If I had thought of it sooner I might have tried to make plans but by then it was too late. As soon as Allison saw Shannon she gave me a questioning look. It took me a second to realize the source of her concern. One glance at Shannon was all it took and I knew she was struggling with her anxiety over her father and what the doctors may have told her parents. I don't know how Mark was doing; since it was the first day of school, neither had any homework to occupy them, but at least he was at work, with something to do to distract him.

Once we were safely inside, I put my hand on her shoulder and said, "Shannon, he's going to be fine."

Big mistake. She practically fell over as she began weeping, dropping her purse and backpack, and bringing her hands to her face. Allison gave me a scathing look as she put her arm around her girlfriend and drew her down onto the couch, kissing her head as she stroked her shoulders.

"Let it out Sha', I'm here for you baby; just let it out and then we'll beat the crap out of him together."

It sounded horrible but it did earn her a small laugh, "I'm sorry, I tried, really I did. But I'm so scared. What if..."

I cut her off, "No what-ifs, Shannon. There's no point in worrying about it. It won't help either way and it will just make you miserable. Just try to focus on all the fun things we're going to be able to do now that he's better." I thought for a second, "Think about following the ski patrol down the mountain after Mark breaks his other leg."

"Jimmy!" Allison scolded, but even she couldn't repress a chuckle and Shannon was having a hard time figuring out what was causing the next round of tears, laughter or sadness.

Unfortunately this just gave her time to think about what else was bothering her. "What about mom? What will she do if... ," but it was too late, the tears had started fresh and this time she was having a real hard time of it.

After a few seconds I sat next to her, put my hand on her shoulder, "Starlight on the dark side of the moon." She gave a sigh and slumped against Allison.

"Oh, good move!" She said, sliding back a little, "help me stretch her out."

Together we laid her out on the couch where she could rest more comfortably. Allison put a small pillow under her head and then came over to hug me. "Thanks, I don't know why I didn't think of it."