After I found a memo pad with the motel’s address printed on it, Eileen and I continued talking for at least another hour, despite the fact that my eyelids felt as though they had five-pound weights attached to them. I imagine we must have said goodbye at some point, but I don’t remember how the conversation ended – I don’t even remember falling asleep. And once I did, it was a deep and dreamless sleep; so deep, that when I woke up later that day, I assumed that only a short time had passed. I reached for my phone, which was on the pillow next to me, but it was dead. Pushing myself onto my elbows with a groan, I propped myself up to look at the clock beside the bed.
Six o’clock. I glanced at the blinds, confused. The sky to the east looked dark.
I briefly considered trying to sleep some more, but my stomach was growling loudly, so I begrudgingly climbed out of bed and got dressed – my usual black leggings and a blue button-up blouse – then quickly brushed my teeth and hair. Other than a mild headache and some residual vertigo when I stood up or moved too quickly, I felt fine. Better than I should have, at least, after so little sleep. As I headed outside into the cool, damp air, I shrugged on my leather jacket and closed the door quietly behind me. For a brief moment, I was confused when I saw the parking lot and its big blue dumpster just outside the motel room door – why was I on the ground floor? And wasn’t there a courtyard just outside the room?
This isn’t Tulsa, I reminded myself. You’re in Missouri.
I took a deep breath; the air smelled different. In April, Colorado mornings smelled like pine trees, damp grass, and crisp mountain air. Sacramento smelled vaguely like sewage, oddly enough, and lilac trees. Tulsa… pretty much hay and manure, at least in the farm country outside the city. The air in Lebanon, Missouri, however, had a fresh scent – perhaps from the laundry room just on the other side of my motel room – but it was also damp and heavy. Granted, it was much easier to breathe there than in the mountains back home, where the air was thin and crisp from the altitude. Just thinking about it made me miss my little cabin in the woods, which surprised me. After spending the last few years feeling more or less confined to one town, stuck alone in a strange little cottage with no electricity – frequently imagining all the places in the world I’d rather be – I never thought I’d experience something like homesickness.
Four states in one week, I marveled to myself as I softly knocked on Aiden and Robert’s door. A month ago, I’d never have believed that could ever be possible.
I waited a moment, then knocked again. No answer. Sleeping is the sane thing to be doing right now, I reminded myself as I jogged past the dumpster and across the parking lot. But my hollow stomach had no interest in staying in bed. It was tirelessly demanding a hot breakfast of everything. My brain was in agreement.
In the lot adjacent to the motel was a restaurant with a bright pink neon light that simply said “Diner”. There was an odd number of cars in the parking lot, I noted, given the early hour of the morning. When I walked into the brightly-lit, 1950’s-style diner, the bell jingling cheerfully behind me, it was bustling with people. I stood in the entryway for a solid minute, baffled by the crowd, trying to think back to what day it was. Sunday, right? I remembered, just as an older waitress in a poodle skirt hurried past me with a tray of steaming mugs. I frowned. Gina’s restaurant didn’t usually get busy until nine o’clock on a Sunday morning, but perhaps folks in Missouri had earlier church schedules…
Out of nowhere, a voice pulled me from my reverie. “Aspen!”
I spun in the direction of the voice to see a group of people crowded around a large, round table in the far corner of the restaurant. I stared at their faces for a long moment, utterly confused.
“Aspen!” The woman’s voice shouted again. I dug my fingernail into the fleshy part of my thumb to make sure I wasn’t still dreaming. Ouch. A moment later, Evelyn was rushing up to me, throwing her arms around me tightly.
“Oh good, you found our note!” she exclaimed into my jacket. I stared at the top of her head in bewilderment.
“Ev—Grandma? What… How did you…?”
“I came as soon as I heard,” she said, still squeezing me tightly. “When Robert told me about…” she lowered her voice, looking around, “you know, the prison break,” she whispered, “I nearly had a heart attack.” She looked me square in the eye, her small hands firmly gripping my arms. “That was a stupid thing to do. I’m proud of you.”
She took a step back to survey me. “You are as pale as a ghost! We need to get some food in you right now. Come, your friends are all here,” she said, leading me to the table, where Aiden, Robert, Ori, Eileen, and a slender, dark-skinned young woman I’d never seen before were smiling at me.
Eileen jumped up from the table and threw her arms around me as soon as I approached. She was wearing her signature green converse sneakers and a faded denim jacket.
“There you are! Aiden was just about to try and wake you again – we’ve been waiting for you to wake up all afternoon!”
I stared at her dumbly. The bright lights in the restaurant felt as though they were spinning wildly around my head.
Ori walked over and playfully ruffled my hair. “Ma nishma, little lightning bolt! You have no idea how glad I was to hear that you weren’t kidnapped by this guy!” He pointed his thumb over his shoulder at Aiden, who was shaking his head in exasperation.
“I don’t understand…” I started to say as Ori pulled out a chair for me, then sat down beside me. I thought I saw the briefest glimpse of annoyance cross Aiden’s face as he did.
“It’s six in the evening, Aspen,” Robert remarked perceptively as he rose to pull out a chair for Evelyn to sit just across from me. “You’ve been sleeping all day.”
What? “I have?” I asked, stunned.
Eileen plopped down in the vacant seat to my left, “We – well, Ori, Sophia and I – got here a few hours ago. Your grandma – who I absolutely adore, by the way,” she grinned at Evelyn, who gave her an affectionate wink in return, “– arrived shortly after.”
I gave Evelyn a puzzled look.
“Robert’s sister and I took a Greyhound here together, then she drove back to Kansas in her truck,” Evelyn explained. “The ride was comfortable enough, but it was very awkward having to use a toilet on a moving bus,” she shuddered. “Carol sends her regards, by the way.”
“You took a bus all the way here?” I said, astonished. Evelyn nodded.
“We’ve all been filling each other in on all the various bombshells and dramas of the last several days,” Eileen chimed in. “It’s been a fascinating afternoon! Oh, by the way, this is my girlfriend, Sophia. Sophia, this is Aspen, the Pentamancer who doesn’t know how FaceTime works.” Eileen flashed a wicked grin that made me blush, but Sophia was thankfully genteel.
“It’s very nice to meet you, Aspen,” she said, reaching across the table from beside Eileen to clasp my hand. “I’ve been hearing remarkable things about you.”
She was somewhere in her mid-to-late twenties, and wore a peach-colored, short-sleeved dress; I could see the blue and purple Elemental symbol tattooed on the inside of her arm, with a black “III” tattooed underneath.
My eyes widened slightly. A Level-Three Hydromancer and an Auromancer?
“I… It’s nice to meet you too,” I told her, draping my jacket on the back of my chair.
“I heard that kalba branded you like a steer,” Ori grumbled, tapping the colorful star on the inside of my bare arm. “We have different rules about tattoos in the Middle Eastern chapters – for example, upon initiation you can opt to get it on a more concealed location, like your shoulder, since tattoos aren’t widely accepted in our part of the world. As for me,” he shrugged, “I didn’t really care. I thought it looked cool. But to tattoo a person against their will? That’s a serious violation on at least ten different levels.” He looked thoughtful for a moment. “You have to admit, though… it looks awesome.”
I folded my arms awkwardly; I didn’t know what to say. Ori, unfazed by most things, didn’t seem to notice my discomfort.
“By the way,” he added, “I’m not going to believe any Pentamancy stories until I see the proof! Which reminds me – I heard about some guy in the New Delhi chapter who got a fake Pentamancer’s tattoo once. Things didn’t go well for him after that. I think someone stabbed him. Here, let’s see some Pyromancy – toast my bread for me,” he said, taking a roll from the bread basket in the center of the table.
Flustered, I glanced across the table at Aiden, who was eyeing Ori with obvious annoyance. Evelyn sat beside him, patting his arm affectionately. Everyone else was looking at me expectantly. I realized I was staring back at them, likely with a dumb expression frozen on my face.
“I’m sorry – it’s just… I can’t believe you’re all here,” I said finally.
“Eileen called me at five o’clock this morning,” Ori said, his mouth full of bread.
“I’m pretty sure it was even earlier than that,” Eileen said.
“Yeah – so she unfortunately got quite the earful.”
“It was all in Hebrew, but I was able to gather the intended meaning,” Eileen grinned. “Something about how I’m his very favorite person in the whole world… roughly.”
Ori gave me a playful wink. “But as soon as she told me you needed our help, I only asked where and when. Unfortunately, the answer was ‘Lebanon’ and ‘right now’.” He rolled his eyes. “Which gave me a mild heart attack since I can’t exactly go to the country of Lebanon with an Israeli passport.”
“Ugh – I’ve already apologized for that a dozen times!” Eileen groaned.
“Who names a town in the middle of Missouri after a country halfway around the world?” Ori asked, waving his butter knife dramatically.
“Have you ever heard of Italy, Texas – or Russia, Ohio?” Robert offered.
“Americans…” Ori muttered into his generously-buttered bread roll.
I glanced at Aiden again, who still hadn’t said a word. He was watching me intently, giving me a small smile when our eyes met.
“It’s been wonderful getting to know your friends, Aspen,” Evelyn smiled at me from across the table. “I must admit, I was a little taken aback that you even had friends, let alone such… talented ones.” I balked slightly. “But they’re such a special group of people! Like your grandfather! Ori has been telling me all about Lightning and Electricity. He even helped Carol jump the dead battery in her truck before she left – without using a jumper! Can you imagine that!”
I gave her a bleak smile, remembering the prison roster in Tulsa. Any discussion of Elementalism with a non-Elementalist was, at least according to the Asterians, an imprisonable offense. But no one at the table seemed fazed by Evelyn’s knowledge of Elemental trade secrets, so to speak. In fact, they all seemed completely at ease with her presence.
Just then the waiter – a gruff-looking man with 1950’s-styled, slicked-back red hair – came with a big tray of food, which included an extra plate of spaghetti and meatballs that Aiden was going to box up and bring to my room after dinner. I gave him a grateful look as I ravenously poised my utensils above my heaping dinner portion. It smelled better than anything I’d smelled in a long time. My stomach whined impatiently.
“Can I get you anything to drink?” the waiter asked me, once all the plates had been served.
“A vanilla milkshake,” I answered, my mouth full of spaghetti. “As large as you can make it,” I added, wiping sauce from my chin. He raised a dubious eyebrow.
“You know, when you were a little girl,” Evelyn smiled at me from across the table, “I remember your favorite milkshake was a strawberry-chocolate milkshake, and you were very specific about its preparation: two-thirds strawberry, one-third chocolate – that way, you’d explain, the chocolate wouldn’t overwhelm the strawberry flavor.”
“I’ll have that, please,” I quickly amended my order before taking another huge bite. The waiter gave me a somewhat pejorative nod before heading back to the kitchen.
“So,” Ori started, just before taking an appreciative bite of his massive cheeseburger. “Oh God – this is so good. Do you know how hard it is to find a cheeseburger in Tel Aviv? …What was I saying?” He stopped chewing for a moment. “Oh, right. So, it appears we’re all headed to Washington D.C. to initiate a jailbreak?”
I stared at him, caught off-guard by his nonchalance. But as I quickly glanced around the table, everyone else’s expression appeared just as serene. Even Evelyn’s.
“You’re… You all know?”
Nods.
“And everyone’s on-board with this?” I asked, directing my question primarily at Evelyn.
She shrugged, primly dabbing her mouth with a napkin. “I realize there’s no way to talk you out of it, and even if I tried to, you’d just do it anyway. Better to have a group of friends and a solid plan than to force you into doing something desperate, all by yourself.” I watched Robert give her hand a supportive squeeze.
I turned to look at Eileen and Sophia, who I’d only just met. “What I’m proposing is extremely risky,” I cautioned, “and we’ll almost certainly get caught.”
Eileen snorted indelicately. “Yes, Robert and Aiden have done their best to warn us of every possible outcome. Almost like that sped up voice at the end of a pharmaceutical commercial—” She ticked the list off her fingers drily. “Consequences may include: excommunication, imprisonment, slander, decapitation, loss of limbs, uncontrollable vomiting, hives, sudden death…”
Sophia was giggling into her turkey sandwich.
“The point is – we get it,” Eileen smiled.
I stared at my plate of half-eaten spaghetti, suddenly not hungry anymore.
“Aspen,” Aiden said my name quietly. My eyes quickly rose to meet his. “Everyone knows the risks and everyone here knows that they are absolutely free to opt out at any time.”
“But…” I protested, looking from Eileen to Sophia to Ori. “Why would you knowingly put yourselves into that kind of danger?”
“I have rather strong views on the subject of wrongful imprisonment,” Ori said, his ever-jovial demeanor momentarily serious, “as many of my family members were put in concentration camps just a couple generations back. That topic, by the way, is a contentious one within our Community. Could the Asterians have put a stop to human atrocities such as the Holocaust, and many other large-scale acts of violence that have occurred before and since then? Most likely – but their official stance appears to be to let humans exterminate themselves.”
“Hear, hear,” muttered Robert, glancing at Aiden.
“So, I’ve never supported certain Asterian policies to begin with,” Ori continued, “but the questions you’ve raised about the Containment Centers bother me in particular, partially because of my family’s history, but also because of the heated debate about barricades in my own backyard. Suffice it to say, I’m an advocate for liberty and justice… like the American school children recite in that creepy school chant.”
“Liberty and justice… not to mention due process,” Aiden added, “Which the Asterians don’t seem to bother with when they lock these people away without a judge, lawyer, or jury.”
The table fell quiet for a long moment.
Sophia cleared her throat softly. “I was adopted when I was a baby, but was disowned by my adoptive family when I told them I was gay,” she said, her voice soft. “I was sixteen. The kids in my school bullied me. My church excommunicated me. Had any of them known I could manipulate Elements as well, they’d probably have locked me up in a basement somewhere, Medieval torture-style” she added with a rueful smile. “I was completely alone until I met Eileen a few years ago, and she introduced me to the Asterian Order.”
“I recognized Sophia’s talents right away,” Eileen said, squeezing Sophia’s hand, “Taught her all about Elementalism, introduced her to the Asterians. I wanted her to experience that inclusivity, since it was a Community I’d always felt privileged to be a part of,” she explained. “For years, Sophia and I felt safe there – sheltered, even. We were led to believe the Asterians celebrated diversity and transparency. But now we’ve discovered that they’re locking away Elementalists for speaking their minds, for disclosing their gifts to others, for openly disagreeing with practices that deserve to be questioned in the first place… Not to mention the fact that they tried to physically harm the two of you!” she added, glancing from Aiden to me.
“The more we’ve talked with Robert and Aiden,” Sophia added, “the more we’re realizing that we’re unwitting members of a Cult, not a Community. Given everything we’ve heard – some of which we’ve also witnessed with our own eyes – these practices are not something we can willfully stand by and watch… or worse, be a part of.”
“We’ve all been lied to,” Aiden murmured, staring at his untouched food.
“Here’s your milkshake,” the waiter said, startling me by his sudden appearance.
“Th-thanks,” I replied, taking a much-needed gulp for my parched throat. He nodded curtly and walked away. “Oh wow,” I said, looking at Evelyn. “That is good.”
She smiled at me, reaching across the table to take my hand. “What you did last night, sweets – freeing all those people? I couldn’t be prouder of you.” Her eyes were shining brightly. “While the thought of you getting hurt scares me more than anything… I want you to know that I support you. Your grandfather would be so proud of you. And your father, wherever he is – he would have done the same thing as you. He would have fought for justice. And he wouldn’t have rested until your mother was safe.”
“You’re damn right,” a voice said from behind us. I whipped around in surprise.
“Ted?” I gasped.