A Place Worth Living

by B D Grant

  Mom shakes her head and looks at me but continues to talk to Mr. Thomas, “We took every precaution. We’re going to grab our things. You going to be long, Tom?” She goes to the back door and motions for me to follow.

  “I’m not going with you. I have to warn the others. They’re supposed to be in Dry Creek locating a kid.”

  “What? We need you. What if they’re coming after us? We need your cover. For heaven’s sake, they have my husband and the Angelos. Our lives are in danger.”

  Mr. Thomas grabs his keys and stops to look at my mom, “If they knew about either of you then they would have been waiting at your house too. From the looks of it, they only knew about Charles and Beth. Darrell and Jake just walked into the middle of it. You have time to get out of here before they get anything out of Darrel; unless the others talk first.”

  Mom’s face gets noticeably whiter.

  “If, or should I say, when they learn that Darrel has a daughter,” he points to me, “then you’ll be in trouble. You need to high-tail it, fast.” He tosses her a prepaid phone. “If I hear anything I’ll call you, but dispose of it within twenty-four hours even if I don’t contact you.”

  “This isn’t my first rodeo,” She stuffs it in her pocket. “Hurry up, Taylor,” she says as she takes off running out the back door. I follow, but at a slower speed.

  Once in the house, Mom pulls our bags out of the closet we have put together for emergencies. I was told the bags were to be used in case of a hurricane or state of emergency. Now that I stare at the bags, this is exactly what they are for. How likely is it that we wouldn’t have enough of a warning to pack for a hurricane evacuation? It hurts a little when Mom leaves Dad’s bag in the closet.

  We get in the truck. It is still parked where Dad had it. We drive straight to the interstate. I try to ask questions but she stops me each time, telling me she needs time to think. I take the knife out of my pocket that Dad gave me years ago despite Mom’s protests. I sharpen it every time Dad sharpens his even though I only use it mostly to clean my nails. I flip it around in my hand opening and closing it, replaying what I saw in Jake’s yard. My hand starts throbbing, distracting me.

  Mom gets off the interstate after an hour of almost complete silence, “I know there’s a lot I have to explain but I need you to follow my directions. Once we are in a safer location I’ll answer your questions. Okay, sweetheart?” We pull into a small storage facility in what looks like the middle of nowhere.

  “Can you at least tell me if Dad is okay?”

  “I can’t tell you for sure sweetheart, but he should be.”

  Well, that’s great; I just witnessed half my family get taken away by strangers while our surprisingly strong, elderly neighbor over powered me before I could help them. Now, there is no telling what they are doing to my dad, or the rest of them for that matter. At least I know Mom isn’t lying. She really thinks he’s okay… for now; that in itself gives me a tiny bit of relief. We slow to a stop, Mom gets out, and I, like a lost puppy, follow her.

  Mom opens a storage unit and inside is a Jeep covered in dust. Mom grabs the keys hidden under the jeep and starts it. She looks relieved to see it starts on its own, “Want to drive for a little while?”

  “With one good hand?” I hold my cut hand up to her.

  “Oh, that’s right. Well, you can check the brake lights and blinkers to make sure they’re working. I’ll get our things.” She grabs the bags out of the truck and moves them to the jeep. She opens the glove box in the jeep and takes out a large first aid kit. “Give me your hand.” She sets the kit on the hood of the jeep where I’m standing and takes out what looks like super glue and antiseptic spray.

  “You’re not planning on super gluing my hand, huh?”

  “It’s not super glue but it works very similar to it. Now, hold still.”

  She cleans the cut, and I watch as she puts glue on the outer edge of my cut and proceeds to pinch it closed.

  “So is this the car I was going to get for my birthday?”

  Jake got his dad’s old truck. I have always been more responsible then Jake and now that I’m seventeen a car should be a reasonable expectation.

  “Do you think we would store a vehicle for you hours away from home?”

  “Well when you say it out loud…”

  She hands me some more butterfly bandages to finish the job. “This is the emergency car I kept in case we were found. Dad has one at another location in case this scenario was reversed and I was the one captured.” She returns the first aid kit to the glove box leaving the passenger door open. She looks out the storage unit at our car. “We probably would have given one of them to you, eventually; if this wouldn’t have happened.” She turns her attention to the ground in front of her feet. “Go ahead and get in. I’ll drive.”

  I climb in the passenger seat and watch as Mom gets to work. She opens the storage unit across from the one I’m in. It’s empty. She drives the truck in it. She grabs all the guns we had in the back seat from hunting and carefully juggles them while locking the storage unit up.

  “Are we going to war?” I ask her when she gets in.

  She looks over at me then the guns, “Better safe, than sorry.” She leans over the center console to the back seat. She pulls at a hidden panel, and a portion of the floorboard completely detaches, revealing a medium sized compartment. She places the guns in the hidden compartment and sets the floorboard panel beside it. She puts the Jeep in gear and we are off again.

  “What’s happening, Mom? Are we in a police protective program or something? Did the mafia find us?” I ask cautiously, in hopes she might actually tell me what the heck is going on.

  She takes a deep breath, “We have kept a lot from you about our pasts. Chuck and Beth had started to tell Jake about us, but I don’t know how much,” She pauses like she doesn’t know where to begin, “Do you remember the first town we lived in?”

  “Yeah, the house with a pool. I had just learned how to swim in the deep end when we moved.”

  “Why do you think we left?”

  “Something happened at Dad and Uncle Chuck’s work offering a transfer for more money. For a while, Jake’s parents had to work somewhere else, but eventually they moved in the house a block over from ours.”

  “That’s not really why we had to move so suddenly. Jake had come home telling his mom about a new school nurse that had called him into her office for a lice check. He was so happy he didn’t have lice and told Beth how nice she was to him,” she looks over at me like that explained everything.

  “I’ve been up since before dawn, Mom. I have no idea what Jake not having lice has to do with this.”

  “That’s how we believe these people operate now, the people from today. They send someone out to locate the kids; going through the school systems is the easiest way. We didn’t know for sure if she was one of them, but we couldn’t take that chance. We all went into hiding for the same reason, to keep you kids safe.”

  “So why can’t we go to the police? They could get them back.” I’m tired and this is getting hard to follow.

  “The witness protection program isn’t for people like us.”

  I give her a blank stare.

  “Ummm, okay, so you know we aren’t just your run of the mill averages-Joes, Taylor. We are Seraphim. You’re ability to know when someone is lying is only a part of it. You are a Veritatis. Dynamar have superhuman-like strength that typically comes with a short temper. Tempero are able to control other’s emotions. Cacheleries are invisible that can hide their Seraphim traits from Seraphim. We all have some level of sense that can “feel” a Seraphim from someone without our abilities.

  We are taught these gifts we have are blessings, given centuries ago to our ancestors, to be used to protect and better a world that is in constant struggle. Some don’t believe our abilities were bestowed upon us but are the work of evolution. They have argued that we are superior and have these abilities to control. They wanted us to unite and m
ake ourselves known using the Seraphim who are in various high positions in the government. This thinking has always been met with a large opposition when it was brought up in council meetings. We can do our jobs, using our abilities under the radar and still make an impact.”

  She looks over at me. I say nothing, trying to understand. “Anyways, it wasn’t until shortly after I graduated from The Southern Academy that our people started disappearing. Maybe even before that. We heard a secret group had formed trying to take over the Seraphim community following the radical beliefs of superiority. We gave the group the name, Rogues.

  They wanted us to stop protecting humanity and start controlling it. The people that were going missing were the ones that had vocally opposed them. The ones warning everyone that the Rogues were mobilizing would vanish. It escalated when bodies started being found, exposing what was happening to the missing people.

  We have council members who make the major decisions for the community, and when they started being targeted by the Rogues, chaos broke out. You see, most of us all live in these closed communities, like Aurora, where I lived with other Sera.

  That’s what we call ourselves, Sera. The name from the Bible, Seraphim.”

  “Wait, so these Rogues are hunting people down because they don’t agree with them wanting to control the world?”

  “It was kind of like that at first but not anymore. At first, these people wanted us to all work together and take our place as a new government structure. When they realized it wouldn’t be that simple they took an easier route. They started recruiting impressionable kids and teenagers to increase their numbers. I couldn’t even guess how long they were doing it under the community’s nose. It was probably so simple for them with us not knowing what was going on outside our bubble. Some Seraphim are born outside the communities by regular parents.

  I know it’s hard for you being different, Taylor, but you have always had our support. Imagine kids who have had to hide it their entire lives or have been made to feel like freaks because of it. Then someone shows up and encourages you to be everything you’ve kept from the world. Being a part of something like a revolution sounds exciting when you’re impressionable, and makes it that much more appealing.”

  “So they were after kids like Jake and I to get us to join them?”

  “I think so.”

  “But Jake can’t do anything.”

  “His ability is not as noticeable as yours. He can sense others like us. It’s a common trait we all have to some extent and when he came home so excited about that nurse I had a feeling we were finding out his ability.

  There are Sera who only get the ability of Sense. They’re called Sensaa and are able to develop it in greater depths than the rest of us. I was close to someone like Jake when I was growing up. They feel a connection with other Sera like a long lost ...” She stops talking.

  It’s dark outside and there aren’t any passing cars for me to make out Mom’s expression in the light. A minute later she whips her cheek. When she talks again its sounds like she’s trying to keep it together, “We’re going to stop at this motel up here so we can get some rest. In the morning we can figure out what to do next.”

  I don’t argue. My eyelids weigh a hundred pounds.

  “I, we are Seraphim,” It sounds weird when I say it out loud.

  “Yes, we are.” We get inside our room and I go straight for the bed. I don’t even worry about changing out of the clothes I’ve had on all day.

  I wake up to the sound of Mom’s voice. The sun is beaming around the edges of the curtain on the window letting me know it’s morning now. Mom is sitting on the other side of the bed with a torn apart box of the prepaid cell phone she’s talking on in front of her. She smiles at me when she sees me looking at her. She covers the speaker with her hand. “I put you some clean clothes in the bathroom.”

  A shower sounds fantastic. My cut looks better already but I still don’t want to jinx it so I wrap it back up after showering. When I come out Mom is still on the phone.

  “Okay, I can meet him there then. Cassidy, please there are kids involved. Yeah, I can be reached at this number. Thank you, Cass,” She slids the phone in her pocket. “You ready to go?” she asks me.

  “Go where?”

  “To meet someone we can trust.”

  2

  Kelly

  The cold is the only thing I welcome in hospitals. At home, Gran refuses to turn the thermostat below 75 degrees, saying her arthritis can’t handle it lower. She also says it wouldn’t matter because I’m hot natured like my mom, and that I wouldn’t be happy with it on 60. She’s probably right, but it would be nice to actually test her theory out.

  The doctor knocks, and walks in the room.

  Gran was sitting on the back porch swing when I walked out to tell her I was leaving for class. Her response didn’t sound like words. I walked around the swing to face her when the seizure happened. The closest hospital is thirty minutes away, in the next town over but it took me less than fifteen to get there.

  When we got to the hospital they started the tests but I knew it was a stroke. She had one less than a year ago while I was suspended from school. Her doctor had warned us it could happen again. By the time I got to see her after the tests she already couldn’t move her right side. The doctor proceeds to tell me this stroke was much worse, like I couldn’t see that already. He talks to me like I’m an idiot and if I wasn’t working on controlling my temper I would have decked him already.

  Fighting had gotten me suspended. When I put a teammate in the hospital they also kicked me off of the football team. The guy was a jerk and had it coming at that party where the fight happened, if you could call it that. No one cared that all the witnesses saw him start it. Luckily, the footage of me punching him went missing so it didn’t go any further. After the fight, I promised Gran the fighting was behind me.

  “Do you have any family you can call, Son?” The doctor asks.

  “You’re looking at the only family she has.”

  “Sooo…. your parents are…”

  “They’re dead.”

  “Oh, I’m so sorry,” He says as he looks at the floor.

  There we go, now this jerk pities me, “It’s not a big deal. I never really knew them. Gran raised me since I was little.”

  She kept me in line better then any mom or dad could.

  “Well, like I was saying her situation is grim. You need to have a place to stay other than this hospital room. Maybe a neighbor or friend’s house.”

  “I have a home. I’m old enough to take care of myself,” I stand up as I’m talking so he sees that he’s not dealing with a little kid.

  He takes a step back, “Okay, I just know this is a hard thing to go through and you’re only seventeen. I’ll let the nurse know you may need a cot if you plan on staying the night.”

  He leaves without waiting for me to respond. I’m underage so automatically I’m incapable? What a schmuck. I need to go home and get Gran her hospital bag. I can cool off once I’m out of this place.

  I hear my name when I walk past the nurses’ station. The nurse’s back is to me so I walk past and stop at the corner, still in hearing distance.

  “Kelly Edwards that’s right. He won’t turn eighteen for another four months. No, the doctor confirmed his grandmother is the only living relative he has.”

  Who is she talking to?

  “That’s just it, she may not even make it through the night. This poor kid needs someone…Ok, that sounds great. See you then.”

  What can they really do to me because I’m not eighteen? Make me talk to a therapist because I might lose the only family I have? They can suck it.

  I get in Gran’s car and head to the house. I’m mad, even the cross dangling from the rear view mirror is annoying me. I would rip it off its string but the old lady loves it. It was a birthday present I got for her seventy-fifth birthday.

  She’s a stubborn old woman. She had to be dealing with me.
She won’t let something like this get the best of her, she’s too strong-willed. I park the car in the drive way and go inside. It smells like her perfume. It hits me like a punch in the gut. I grab the nearest chair for support.

  “That stupid doctor,” I mutter out loud trying to get myself mad again. It’s too late.

  I walk to her room for her bag and start crying like a little girl.

  “If you die, Gran I swear I’ll play nothing but rock music at your funeral,” I say as if she was in the room with me. “And I’ll play it loud.”

  I need to pull it together, she’s not dead yet. I put her bag next to the door and walk to my room.

  I have a bed, small dresser, and in the middle of my room is a punching bag. I begin using the punching bag to take out my anger when I hear a knock. I walk out my room and I hear another knock, but it’s coming from the door next to the driveway, not the front door. We don’t live in that great of a neighborhood so we keep a gun hidden next to each door just in case. Nothing big but it would do the trick. We don’t play around in this family.

  When my mom came home pregnant with me she rambled to Gran about people being after her. She insisted Gran know how to use a gun. My mom had been gone over ten years and Gran didn’t want her to leave again so, she obliged.

  I open the door to find a policeman a little taller than me on the other side of the door. It’s a small town so I know he is fairly new to Dry Creek. The first time I saw him he was being shown the lay out of my high school. There was always a cop patrolling the school and parking lot. When I went back to school after my suspension he was there.

  He looks at a piece of paper in his hand, “Micheal Edwards?”

  “Its Kelly, who wants to know?”

  He looks me up and down, sizing me up. “I’m here to find a boy whose guardian is unable to care for him and bring him to a temporary home until the guardian is better,” He says it like he’s reading that off a paper too.