Meg Cabot - When Lightning Strikes

They split us up when we got to Crane. Sean had already given everyone the slip once, and I guess they wanted to make extra sure he didn't do it again, so, since his dad wasn't due to pick him up until sometime the next day, they locked him in the infirmary.

I'm not kidding.

I suppose they picked the infirmary, and not, say, the brig, where I think they locked naughty soldiers, because later, they could say he wasn't being held against his will at all … after all, they'd given him the run of the infirmary, hadn't they? They'd probably say they locked him in for his own safety.

But even though it wasn't exactly a jail cell, it might as well have been. The windows—there were four of them—were all barred from the outside, I guess to keep people from breaking in and stealing drugs, since the infirmary was on the first floor. And I happened to know, from having been in there the day before for my physical, that all the cabinets with the cool stuff in them, like stethoscopes and hypodermic needles, were locked, and the magazines and stuff were way out of date. Sean wasn't going to have much to keep his mind off his dad's impending arrival.

Me, they locked back into my old room. Seriously. I was right back where I'd started from that morning, with one difference: the door was locked from the outside, and the phone, strangely enough, no longer worked.

I don't know what they thought I was going to do—call the police or something?

"Officer, officer, I'm being held against my will at Crane Military Base!"

"Crane Military Base? What are you talking about? That place closed down years ago!"

No phone privileges for me. And no more trips to the pool, either. My door was very firmly locked.

Marco Polo is locked down for the night. Repeat. Marco Polo is locked down.

Or so they must have thought. But here's the thing:

When you take a kid—who is basically a good kid, but maybe a little quick with her fists—and you make her sit for an hour every day after school with a lot of not-so-good kids, even if she isn't allowed to talk to them during that hour, the fact is, she's going to pick up some things.

And maybe the things she's going to pick up are the kind of things you don't necessarily want a good kid to know. Like, for instance, how to start a really smoky fire in a bus station ladies' room.

Or how to pick a lock. It's pretty easy, actually, depending on the lock. The one to my room wasn't very tough. I managed to do it with the ink cartridge from a ballpoint pen.

Look, you just pick these things up, all right?

They caught me right away. Boy, was Colonel Jenkins mad. But not as mad as Special Agent Johnson. He'd been viewing me as a thorn in his side since the day I'd broken his last partner's nose. You could tell I'd really done it this time.

Which was why they threw the book at me. They'd really had it. They intended to shut me up for good this time.

Dr. Shifton did some pleading on my behalf, I overheard her insisting that I obviously have issues with authority figures, and that they were going about this all wrong. I would come around, she said, when they made it seem like it was my idea.

Colonel Jenkins didn't like the sound of that. He went, "Dammit, Helen, she knows the location of every single one of those men whose photos we showed her. I can see it in her eyes. What are we supposed to do, just wait around until she's in the mood to tell us?"

"Yes," Dr. Shifton said. "That's exactly what we do."

I liked Dr. Shifton for that. And, anyway, I did not know where every single one of those men were.

Just most of them.

I happened to overhear all this because Dr. Shifton's office is right next to the infirmary, and that's where they put me after I escaped that second time: in the infirmary, with Sean. . . .

Exactly as I'd wanted them to.

Don't start thinking that I had any sort of plan or anything. I totally didn't. I just figured the kid needed me, is all.

That he didn't happen to agree is really beside the point.

"What are you doing here?" he asked, looking up from the bed he was stretched out on. His tone implied he was not pleased to see me.

"Slumming," I said.

"My dad's going to be here first thing in the morning, they said." His face was pinched and white. Well, except for the freckles. "He couldn't make it tonight because of some board meeting. But he gets a police escort tomorrow morning, as soon as he's ready to leave." He shook his head. "That's my dad. Work always comes first. And if you get in the way of that, look out."

I said, gently, "Sean, I said I was going to make it up to you, and I meant it."

Sean looked pointedly at the locked door. "And how are you going to do that?"

"I don't know," I said. "But I will. I swear it."

Sean just shook his head. "Sure," he said. "Sure you will, Jess."

The fact that he didn't believe me just made me more determined.

Hours slid by, and no one came near the infirmary—not even Dr. Shifton. We passed the time trying to figure out ways to escape, listening to talk radio, and doing old People magazine crosswords.

Finally, around six o'clock, the door opened, and Special Agent Smith came in, holding a couple of McDonald's bags. I guess my days of surf and turf were over. I didn't care, though. The smell of those fries set my stomach, which I hadn't noticed up until then was quite empty, rumbling noisily.

"Hi," Special Agent Smith said, with a rueful smile. "I brought you guys dinner. You guys okay?"

"Except for the fact that our constitutional rights are being violated," I said, "we're fine." Special Agent Smith's smile went from rueful to forced. She spread our dinner out on one of the beds: double cheeseburger meals. Not my favorite, but at least she'd super-sized it.

Sean practically inhaled his first burger. I admit to stuffing far more fries into my mouth than was probably good for me. As I stuffed, Special Agent Smith tried her hand at reasoning with me. I guess Dr. Shifton had been coaching her.

"You have a really special gift, Jess," she said. She was practically ignoring Sean. "And it would be a shame to waste it. We need your help so desperately. Don't you want to make this world a safer, better place for kids like yourself?"

"Sure," I said, swallowing. "But I don't want to be a dolphin, either."

Special Agent Smith knit her pretty brow. "A what?"

I told her about the dolphins, while Sean looked on, silently chewing. I'd given him one of my cheeseburgers, but even after three of them, he didn't seem satisfied. He could put away an alarming amount of food for such a small boy.

Special Agent Smith shook her head, still looking perplexed. "I never heard that one before. I know they used German shepherds for similar missions in World War I—"

"German shepherds, dolphins, whatever." I stuck out my chin. "I don't want to be used."

"Jess," Special Agent Smith said. "Your gift—"

"Don't," I said, holding up a single hand. "Seriously. Don't say it. I don't want to hear 'about it anymore. This 'gift' you keep talking about has caused me nothing but trouble. It sent my brother over the edge, when he'd been doing really well, and it put this little boy's mother in jail—"

"Hey," Sean said indignantly. I'd forgotten about his objections to my use of the word "little" as it related to him.

"Jess." Special Agent Smith balled up the empty bags from my meal. "Be reasonable. It's very sad about Sean's mother, but the fact is, she broke the law. And as for your brother, you can't drop the ball just because of one little setback. Try to keep things in perspective—"

"'Keep things in perspective'?" I leaned forward and enunciated very carefully so she would be sure to understand me. "Excuse me, Special Agent Smith, but I got struck by lightning. Now, when I go to sleep, I dream about missing people, and it just so happens that when I wake up, I know where those missing people are. Suddenly, the U.S. Government wants to use me as some sort of secret weapon against fugitives from justice, and you think I should keep things in perspective ?"