There was a soft knock on my door.
“Yeah.” I turned my head over to look at whoever opened the door.
Kenny leaned against the door frame with his arms crossed, "Hey, was that you that got up and took a shower?”
“It was.” I sat up.
“Are you sick?” He looked worried, "I was watching TV and you walked by like a zombie and ignored me.”
“I guess you could call it that.” I smiled. "I didn’t mean to ignore you.”
“Don’t worry about it; most people are zombies this time of night. You want to talk about what’s on your mind?”
“I wouldn’t know what to talk about if I wanted to.” I sighed.
“Come on, you used to talk to me all the time. You know that I won’t say anything to anybody.” he was right. There weren’t many secrets among the four of us, but if there was ever something, Kenny was my go to guy.
“What about Sandy, you two don’t keep secrets.” I picked at him.
“We don’t keep secrets from each other that pertain to the two of us but this is your thing and that doesn’t count.” he remained perfectly cool.
“I don’t think that I have told anyone about what happened to me before I came to Hillside, partly because I didn’t remember most of my past.” I laid back down onto my side.
“Nope, I figured it was a touchy subject.”
“Well, I had blocked most of it out. What I could remember back then was pretty rough.” I took a deep breath. "I was having problems with my abilities and Doctor Z thought that it was linked to a mental block. He gave me a drug that he created to get rid of blocks, but it got rid of them all. I just relived a memory that I wish I never had. I should have listened to Sam.”
“What happened?” he listened closely.
“At this old orphanage that I used to live at there was a male caretaker. His name was George. He tried to kill me.” I forced the tears away.
“Why?”
I contemplated telling him everything that I had remembered but decided against it. "I don’t know why. I went to therapy for a while before moving to Hillside. George was let go, or terminated was the word they used, and I never saw him again. Didn’t bother me.”
“Wow, no wonder you got sick.” he sat down on the floor next to my bed and leaned back.
“Yeah.” I chuckled, "I think that other than a therapist, you are the only person that I have told any of this to.”
“You want to know something?”
“What’s that?” I let my hand fall off the side. He took it and held it like I imagined a brother would.
“I had abilities before we were abducted.”
“What do you mean?” I knew exactly what he meant.
“From as far back as I can remember I have been able to heal things.”
“Like how?”
He let go of my hand and reached into his pocket. He took out a pocket knife and opened the blade.
“Whoa, wait, what are you doing?” I grabbed his hand.
“Just watch.” He placed the blade to the skin of his arm. He gently applied pressure and slid the blade slowly down his flesh. Blood began to slide out from the split skin. He cleaned the blade and closed it swiftly returning the knife to his pocket while his arm bled.
“For God’s sake!” I got up to go for the light but he grabbed my pants, stopping me.
With his other hand, he ran his index finger over the wound. As the blood pooled under his finger the cut vanished leaving no sign of a scar at all.
“Don’t ever do that again.”
“No one else knows that I can do that.” He cleaned up the remaining blood with his shirt.
“Your secret is safe with me.” I got back into my bed.
“I’m here with an ear.” he stood from his spot on the floor, "Feel better?”
I thought for a moment and realized that I did feel better, "Yeah, I’m going to try and sleep the rest of the night.” I smiled.
“Alright, well let me know anytime you want to talk.” He left the room closing the door.
It felt good to let things out. I knew telling him about the other ability that I may or may not have was a bad idea, but knowing that he had a second ability made me think that our ending up at that orphanage was not a coincidence.
I wondered if any of the others had abilities as I began to get drowsy and fall asleep.
Chapter 17: Sear
The next morning Sam took us to his office; one of the buildings that I had thought was abandoned. They hadn’t gotten around to doing any maintenance.
“What is on the agenda for today?” I looked like hell from my rough night.
“Today we are going to figure out your government approved education level.” Sam stood at the front of the room, while the rest of us sat behind a long table spaced evenly apart.
“And how are we going to do that?” Ronnie leaned back in his chair and crossed his arm. He looked bored.
“With the ELAT.” Sam smiled.
“What is the ELAT?” I asked.
“The E.L.A.T. Education Level Assessment Test.” He paced a few steps in either direction.
We all groaned in unison at the prospect of a test. School was something that we were all ready to leave in the past.
“I know. I know. Its two hundred and fifty questions and you have three hours to finish. We will go over the results together when everyone is finished.” He passed out the tests to everyone. Each packet had a different designation on the front page making it clear that each one was very different.
Once everyone had a test, pencil, and a calculator he sat down behind a desk at the edge of the room, "Get started.” He pressed the start button on a timer.
The test was simple, but it did get harder as I went deeper into the pages. All of the questions were based on information that we had seen dozens of times.
I breezed through the material in about two hours. I closed the booklet and set back in my chair. I started to draw some lines on the corner of a scrap sheet of paper.
Sam came over and took my packet without saying a word. He returned to his desk to grade my work.
Everyone finished well before time was up, and we all sat quietly while Sam graded the tests. After he finished he passed them back out.
“Here is how this works.” He clapped his hands together and looked around the room, "The grade that you have determines your average education level. If you score high enough, we, and the government, will consider you a graduate and issue you a diploma. We have no way to pinpoint where you need to start without the test. Let’s just say that Aurora did not think your education was a priority.”
“Alrighty then, I like the sound of that.” Kenny blurted out.
“Two hundred and ten points plus tells us that you are of high school graduate level education, 250 is a perfect score.” Sam pointed to the tests.
I opened my packet and turned to the front page. In thick black numbers two-two-nine was scrawled across the page. I breathed a sigh of relief.
We all scored high enough to be done with school. Rachel had been the closest; she had been held for so long. When we asked how she could have known all the information she said that they were teaching her, but she left it at that, and didn’t want to elaborate.
Ryder met me outside of Sam’s office. He seemed excited about talking to me. We walked along in quiet for a few minutes past the house and just kept walking.
“I had a word with Sam.” he broke the silence finally.
“Really, was it just one, or was there an entire conversation?” I laughed at my own joke then felt stupid for being so self centered. He was kind of acting awkward, but happy.
“Yeah, we think that it would be great if you wanted to work up in the observatory. Fade tried to teach a few people to care for it, but no one was as interested in it as she was.” He kept his eyes averted.