Meg Cabot - When Lightning Strikes

Mike said softly, "Yeah, and maybe Claire would open her blinds back up. She's been so freaked by all the cameras—"

When Ruth and I turned to stare at him, he realized what he'd said, and clamped his mouth shut.

Ruth was the only person who voiced a note of dissent.

"I don't think that's a very good idea," she said. "Your going to Crane, I mean. I don't think that's a very good idea at all."

"Ruth," I said, surprised. "Come on. They just want to do some tests—"

"Oh, great," Ruth said. "So now you're a human guinea pig? Jess, Crane is an Army base. Get it? We're talking about the military ."

"Jeez, Ruth," I said. "Be a little paranoid, won't you? It'll be all right."

Ruth stuck out her chin. I don't know what it was. Maybe she'd just seen Point of No Return one too many times. Maybe she just didn't want to have to face the halls of Ernest Pyle High School on her own.

Or maybe she suspected something that I, even with my brand-new powers, couldn't sense. Ruth is smarter than most people … about some things, anyway.

"And what," she asked quietly, "if they want you to find more kids?"

My dad said, "Well, of course they'll want her to find more kids. That's what this is all about, I'm sure."

"Does Jess want to find more kids?" Ruth asked, her eyebrows raised.

They say that intelligence quotient tests only measure a certain kind of knowledge. Those of us who don't test well—for instance, me—comfort ourselves with the fact that, yeah, okay, Ruth has an IQ of 167, but she knows nothing about boys. Or yeah, Mike's 153, but again, what kind of people skills does the guy have? Nada.

But with that single question, Ruth proved there wasn't anything wrong with her people skills—at least, not where I was concerned. She'd hit the nail straight on the head.

Because there was no way I was finding any more missing kids. Not after Sean. Not unless I could be convinced the kids I was finding really wanted to be found.

Unlike Sean.

Mike went, "It doesn't matter what she wants. She has a moral obligation to the community to share this … whatever it is."

Ruth backed down at once. How could she take a stand against her beloved?

"You're right, Michael," she said, blinking at him shyly from behind her glasses.

So much for those people skills I mentioned.

"They're not going to make Jess do anything she doesn't want to," my dad said. "We're talking about the U.S. Government, here. Jessica is a citizen of the United States. Her constitutional rights are guaranteed. Everything will be all right."

And the sad thing is, at the time I really thought he was right.

I really and truly did.

C H A P T E R

14

Crane Military Base, located about an hour's drive from my hometown, had been one of the many Army bases closed by the government during the eighties. At least, it was supposed to have closed. But, somehow, it never did—at least not all the way, in spite of all those stories in my hometown paper about all the locals who worked there as maintenance men and cooks who ended up losing their jobs. The military jets—the ones that were constantly breaking the sound barrier—never quite disappeared, and we still had uniformed officers showing up for lunch and dinner in all three of my dad's restaurants long after the base was said to have been shut down.

Douglas, when he was at his most paranoid, had insisted that Crane was like Area 51, that place where the Army swears there's no base, but over which people always see these flashing lights late at night.

But when I arrived at Crane, it certainly didn't look as if anyone was trying to keep the fact that it was still open a secret. And it didn't look as if it had been neglected, either. The place was pretty clean, the lawns neatly mowed, everything looking like it was in its place. I didn't see any giant hangars where spacecraft might have been hidden, but then again, they could have been keeping those underground, like in the movie Independence Day .

The first thing Special Agent Johnson did—after introducing me to Special Agent Smith, a lady officer with pretty pearl earrings who had apparently replaced his former partner, Special Agent Davies (out on disability … oops, my bad)—was show me and my dad the room in which I'd be staying—a nice room, actually, like a hotel room, with a TV and a phone and stuff. No soda fountain, I was relieved to see.

Then he and Special Agent Smith took us to a different building, where we met some Army guys, this one colonel who squeezed my hand too hard, and this pimply-faced lieutenant who kept looking at my jeans like they were thigh-high boots or something. Then the colonel introduced us to a bunch of doctors in a different building, who acted really excited to see me, and assured my dad I was in the best of hands. My dad, even though I knew he was itching to get back to his restaurants, wouldn't leave, in spite of the doctors' assurances. He kept saying stuff like, was Special Agent Smith going to be on call in case I needed something in the middle of the night, and who was going to make sure I got enough to eat? It was kind of embarrassing.

Finally, one of the doctors, whose nametag said Helen Shifton, told my dad they were ready for me, and that I'd call him as soon as I was back in my room. After that, it was sort of obvious that they wanted him gone, so my dad left, saying he'd be back to pick me up next week. By then, we hoped that all the hoopla with the reporters and everything would have died down, and I could come back home.

He hugged me right in front of everyone, and kissed the top of my head. I pretended not to like it, but after he left, I couldn't help feeling a little bit …

Well, scared.

I didn't tell that to Dr. Helen Shifton, though. When she asked how I was feeling, I said I was fine.

I guess she didn't believe me, though, since she and a nurse gave me this complete physical, and I mean complete, with blood drawn and stuff poked into me—the whole thing. They checked my blood pressure, my cholesterol, my heart, my throat, my ears, my eyes, the bottoms of my feet. They wanted to do a gynecological exam, so I let them, and while they were down there, I asked them about birth control and stuff … you know, because I might need some, someday, when I'm like forty.

Dr. Shifton was totally cool about it, unlike my family doctor would have been, and answered all my questions, and told me everything looked normal. She even examined my scar, the one the lightning had left, and said it looked as if it was fading, and that someday, it would probably go away altogether.

"When the scar goes, do the superpowers go, too?" I asked her, a little hopefully. Having superpowers was turning out to be more of a responsibility than I liked.

She said she didn't know.

After that, Dr. Shifton made me lie down in this big tube and keep really still while she took photographs of my brain. She told me not to think about anything, but I thought about Rob. I guess the pictures turned out okay anyway, since after that Dr. Shifton made me get dressed, and then she left and this little bald man came in and asked me a lot of really boring questions, like about my dreams and my sex life and stuff. Although my sex life had, in recent days, shown signs of improving—albeit all too briefly—I didn't really have anything to tell him, and my dreams were all pretty boring, too, mostly about forgetting how to play the flute right before my challenge with Karen Sue Hanky.

It wasn't until the little bald man started asking me a bunch of stuff about Douglas that I got annoyed. I mean, how did the U.S. Government know about Douglas's suicide attempt?

But they did, and when they asked me about it, I got defensive, and the little bald man wanted to know why.