A sunbeam teased Sasha’s eyes open. Her face felt crusty from the tears which had dried while she slept and a tender spot on her cheek matched the pattern on the framed photograph lying forgotten on her pillow. When her stomach complained of the lengthy gap between meals, yesterday’s encounter with the telepathic cat came flooding back. Stripping off her wrinkled clothes, she headed for the shower. Today, facing the tortures of her classmates beat anything her furry friend had to offer.
Back in her room, she dressed and grabbed her backpack, belatedly realizing that she’d never done her homework. Refusing to dwell on what couldn’t be fixed, she focused on the problem at hand. Could she get her breakfast and lunch and sneak out of the house before the cat noticed? She tiptoed down the stairs, listening for sounds that would indicate her unwelcome visitor was still there.
She released the breath she hadn’t known she held when she reached the kitchen unmolested. Dropping a couple of Eggos in the toaster, she made a sandwich and tossed it in a sack with an orange and a bag of chips. When the waffles popped up, she spread one with butter and jam and slapped the other on top to eat while she walked to school.
Tossing her lunch in her backpack, she slung it over her shoulder, picked up the waffles and ran out the door. She didn’t slow down until she was walking past the General Store where a Greyhound bus was just pulling in. She looked up from the sidewalk just long enough to maneuver around the people disembarking from the bus. She heard more than saw the voices of the two old men who played their usual desultory game of checkers in front of the store.
“Go home, girl. High time you and yer folks go back where ye came from. Yer not welcome here.”
Sasha winced at the familiar message echoing in her head, though this time, she didn’t dismiss the voices she felt rather than heard. If she could hear Tess’s mental voice, either her delusion was expanding, or it was no delusion.
The man on the left wore his usual red plaid shirt over worn jeans, short-sleeved now with the promise of another triple-digit day. The fringe framing his bald pate already gleamed with a sheen of sweat. The paunch spilling over the waistband of his jeans gave proof to long hours spent with his chair tipped back against the wall in front of the store. His partner, hand frozen over the checkerboard, was long and lean with a head of thick, white curls. His face spoke of hours spent working in the sun, the skin leathery and creased like a map of every back country road in the area. His open-necked shirt and jeans were faded nearly colorless.
Shaking her head to clear the slimy residue the man’s voice left inside her mind, Sasha picked up her pace again, hoping to reach school in time to slip into her seat without attracting notice.
* * *
Mariel made her way slowly to the front of the bus, her duffle slung over one shoulder while she gazed at the map on her phone’s screen. If the map was right, she just had to walk a few blocks down the street she was on to reach Sasha’s house. Her dad’s last voice mail still rang in her ears, his words no less confusing than the first time she heard them:
“Take the bus ticket I left next to the toaster and go to Sasha’s house. Someone will meet you there and take you both somewhere safe. I love you. I’ll see you as soon as I can.”
She had a million questions, but neither her mom nor her dad were answering their phones.
“Where are my parents? Why did they leave a bus ticket and tell me to go to Sasha’s instead of taking me themselves? Most of all, why would me and Sasha need someone to take us somewhere safe? Safe from what? What the heck is going on?”
Without realizing it, she’d stepped off the bus and followed the other passengers into an old-fashioned General Store. A barrel of pickles filled the doorway with the scent of garlic and vinegar. Three rows of wooden baskets sat in front of the window, each filled with individually wrapped pieces of candy. She recognized Tootsie Rolls and peppermints, but some of the bins held candy she’d only ever heard about; wax coke bottles filled with colored liquid, taffy in a rainbow of colors wrapped in waxy paper, miniature barrels and sticks in flavors she’d never even heard of. What the heck was ‘horehound’?
“What is this place?” An odd look from one of her fellow passengers told her she’d spoken aloud.
She grabbed a bottle of water from an ice-filled bucket next to the counter and stood in the short line to pay at the single register. As she waited for her change, she gawked at the strange, old-fashioned cash register that probably arrived on a covered wagon back in the gold rush days. A shiver ran down her spine. This town seemed like it was frozen in time, but it was more than the old-fashioned store. Something just felt wrong.
Mariel hurried out of the store nearly bumping into an old man in a ladder back chair who sat outside the store staring at a checkerboard sitting on top of an old wooden barrel. She felt rather than heard his snarled response to the disturbance and pulled away quickly, feeling like she’d been slapped.
“This town gives me the creeps. How does Sasha stand it?” she muttered to herself. She glanced at her phone one more time before turning and walking quickly towards the point on the map where Sasha’s house was supposed to be.
Her feeling of unease grew stronger as her steps took her onto a sidewalk of crumbling asphalt. Looking up, she found she’d reached the end of the buildings. Glancing at her phone to see if she’d accidentally missed the place, the cheery red dot matching the address she’d entered still blinked somewhere in front of her.
Ten minutes later, she spotted the yellow and white house sitting alone at the edge of the desert. She wanted to break into a run. The feeling of being watched grew stronger with every step. She gripped her duffle more tightly and forced herself to keep walking, as running would only draw more attention to a lone figure walking down the deserted street
Reaching the house, she unlatched the gate in the white picket fence and ran up the porch steps as soon as she stepped into the yard. Somehow, just being at the house made her feel calmer and less exposed. She opened the front door and walked in without a second thought. Years of running in and out of each other’s houses made knocking seem pointless.
“Sasha! Are you here?” She dropped her duffle next to the stairs and walked through the living room and into the kitchen. There were crumbs on the counter and a knife in the sink, but no sign of her friend.
She returned to the living room, picked up her duffle and climbed the stairs, finding Sasha’s room on the first try. She grinned when she saw the pile of clothes next to the unmade bed, then shivered when it occurred to her that Sasha’s parents were MIA too. Collapsing onto the rumpled bed, she spied the twin of a picture she had sitting on her dresser. Running her thumb across the smiling faces brought a flood of memories, making her hug the picture to her chest.
Still clutching the picture, she stood up and wandered around the small room, touching items as familiar as those in her own bedroom.
“Sasha, where are you?” she whispered, dropping to the floor with a loud thump.
Sitting on the floor, she pictured Sasha’s face in her mind and poured out her worries to her absent friend.
“Will you please lower your voice? You’re breaking my delicate eardrums?”
Mariel jumped to her feet, searching frantically for whoever had interrupted her self-pitying wail. She closed the bedroom door, then let her increasing hysteria flow into her thoughts. Mariel had always been the babbler when she was scared. Sasha would keep it all inside and just stare into Mariel’s eyes until she calmed down.
“I said, be quiet!” Tess’s words were soft, but the crashing of the bedroom door hitting the wall and the expression on her face had brought terror to those far braver than Mariel.
Mariel was shaking like a terrified puppy who’d just peed on the rug. Her eyes were the size of dinner plates and glimmered with unshed tears.
“I wasn’t t-t-talking. Y-y-you shouldn’t b-be either. You’re j-j-just a c-c-cat.”
Tess took a moment to release the anger she’d brought with her from Sebastian’s office. No point scaring the girl to death right now. She’d be facing worse things before this was done.
“I’m sorry, Mariel. I didn’t mean to scare you.”
It took Mariel a moment to realize she wasn’t hearing Tess speak in the traditional sense. The words seemed to form inside her head.
“I communicate telepathically most of the time. Whether you realize it or not, so do you. Rather loudly, I might add. You need to learn to modulate your mental voice. If it wasn’t for the shields on this house, you would have been heard hundreds of miles from here.”
Mariel sat on the bed still as stone, her face devoid of expression. Tess touched her hand and waited for a hint of recognition. Finally, Mariel showed signs of recovering from the shock. She rubbed her eyes and looked at Tess, then away, then back again.
“Just a large cat standing upright. Nothing wrong with that. She certainly didn’t talk to me in my head. I must have fallen asleep and dreamed it.” Her voice was toneless as if still in a dream. “Nice kitty.”
Tess swatted Mariel’s outstretched hand away causing her to jump back.
“Mariel, I am anything but nice. We have work to do and you’re going to have to accept the fact that I’m telepathic and so are you. In fact, pretty much everyone you’ve known all your life has the gift of telepathy, among other things. Let me assure you, your life is going to get much weirder before it begins to make sense to you again.”
“Where’s Sasha?” Mariel demanded, sticking her chin out.
“I suspect she went to school.” Tess was happy to see a return of Mariel’s natural stubbornness. That trait would come in handy when she was forced to assimilate years’ worth of information in just a couple of months, and maybe less.
“Are you saying that Sasha has been here all alone for almost two weeks?” Mariel’s eyes widened. After listening to Tess’s abbreviated explanation of Sasha’s circumstances and her parents’ disappearance, having a conversation with a cat seemed less odd, as did the fact that one side of the conversation was occurring inside of her head instead of through her ears. Concern for her friend overrode her confusion over this highly unorthodox conversation and made her overlook the obvious question. What was happening to Sasha? How long had she been living her alone?
“How has she been managing? What is she doing about food? Who is helping her with her homework or taking her to the dentist or making her dinner?” Thoughts of the network of people she had at her disposal on the off chance her own parents couldn’t get to her quickly enough reminded her of how safe and protected she always felt. Knowing Sasha was used to the same type of community, Mariel became even more distressed despite the fact that Sasha would be insulted anyone found her incapable of seeing to most of her needs herself. All Mariel could see was Sasha had no one to turn to here. Tess didn’t have the heart to tell Mariel that Sasha was left to her own devices more often than not since the move, but from the emotions clearly written across her face, it was clear Mariel’s imagination was filling in the blanks fairly accurately.
“Her mother made sure the cabinets and refrigerator kept themselves stocked with whatever Sasha might need...” Tess began before realizing how peculiar this might sound.
Mariel thought her friend had found herself in a real-life episode of the Twilight Zone. Cats who talk inside your head. Parents who disappear but leave behind self-filling refrigerators. Not to mention a town that seemed to be stuck in time.
Watching the changing expressions crossing Mariel’s face, Tess huffed in disgust. Clearly Mariel’s parents had been no better about ensuring their daughter understood the responsibilities she’d be inheriting. She was as oblivious to her life’s purpose as Sasha. Under ordinary circumstances, it would probably not be an issue, but ‘ordinary’ had never been a part of the Star Guides’ destiny. If this lack of knowledge wasn’t rectified soon, more than just the lives of the girls and their parents would be at stake. Even worse, if the daughters of two couples known to buck authority were this oblivious, it was unlikely any of the children were aware of their heritage and responsibility. The training which should have begun at puberty was long overdue. As one uncomfortable thought led to another, Tess looked at Mariel, stopping the flow of questions rampaging through the girl’s mind with one of her own.
“When did you last speak to your parents? Do they know you’re here?”
Feeling frightened by the urgency in the words, Mariel thought for a minute before replying. “I saw them the day before yesterday. They left for work kinda early. Dad left me a voicemail and a bus ticket but...” looking at her cell phone “... I haven’t called them and they haven’t tried to call me. Do you think something is wrong?”
Not wanting to frighten Mariel any more than she already was, and needing more information before making a decision, Tess began barking orders as well as any seasoned drill sergeant: “You wait here for Sasha to get home. When she does, grab as much as you can from the kitchen. There are ice chests in the garage, just off the kitchen. Pack clothes for both of you. Plan for cold weather, so blankets and heavy jackets. Take everything down to the basement and stay there until I get back. Make sure you lock the front door.”
Never doubting Mariel would follow her instructions, Tess ran out the front door, disappearing before she reached the gate. It was time to get those Guardians Sebastian suggested. She and two girls with no discernible skills could hardly handle whatever or whoever was responsible for their parents’ disappearance, much less the reasons behind it, by themselves.