River's Dream
Chapter 3

When they got back to the hotel, they found Amber and Wendy had already returned from the airport and had made themselves comfortable in Lindsy's former room. Amber had changed out of the skirt and heels businesswoman look, and looked quite auspicious in Capri gray slacks, a black shirt, and sandals. She still wore the red glasses though. Wendy looked even more comfortable in a loose T-shirt and ean shorts. She even held Indigo in her lap, and that dog didn't like anyone but Lindsy or Justin holding her. As soon as she saw them walk in, Wendy lowered her glasses so they balanced on the edge of her nose and looked at Carrie. "So, is Joey going to have some competition?" Amber turned the page in the book she was reading and mouthed 'shut up' to Wendy. She didn't listen. "I mean, who would have thought Greg had the balls to kiss you. If Joey found out, I'd place money on him in a fight. One good kick and Greg would be in the next state. Ow!" She yelled as Amber elbowed her in the ribs. Carrie seemed like she was going to cry again, so Amber stood up to apologize.

"I'm sorry, Carrie. It was a good idea at the time, you were so unsure about it being okay to go that I had to keep an eye on you. I left the channel open between us, and I saw what happened. I had to tell someone, and Wendy was the only one I thought I could trust. I'm sorry." It wasn't Carrie who got mad. Lindsy stomped up to Amber so no one would get in her way if things had to get rough.

"Did you think to ask her first? You can't just spy into anyone's mind if they don't want you to know what they're thinking. God, you really think you're something, don't you? If it was me you were doing this to, I would..."

"Hit me." Amber finished for her. She held her arms out to the side to show Lindsy she wasn't going to fight. "Go ahead, hit me. I deserve it. Come on, I know you want to. Knock some sense into me!" Lindsy backhanded her across the face like it was a reflex. Amber rocked on her heels but didn't fall. her hair fell in front of her face, hiding whatever damage had been caused. She raised two fingers to her nose, while the other hand brushed the hair back behind her ear. Lindsy stepped back with a 'what have I done' look on her face. Amber removed her fingers and looked at them. There was blood on them and it was running out of her left nostril in a little trickle. he she gazed into Lindsy's eyes. "Feel better?" In spite of herself, Lindsy answered her.

"Yeah." Amber nodded her head.

"Me too." She turned, went into the bathroom, and shut the door. Lindsy's legs wobbled once in warning and gave out on her. She collapsed onto the floor and sat there, staring at her hand. Carrie and Wendy looked to each other and wondered if the war was finally over.

Later, after they had ordered some ice and had gotten Amber to come out of the bathroom, the girls went to their own rooms to get ready for dinner. When they entered the dinning room thirty minutes later, they wowed the guys with thier outfits. Justin gave Lindsy a kiss and commented on her black slacks and shimmery light blue cross print shirt. He whispered something else in her ear and she pretended to slap him. She would never bring herself to hit him. Carrie had gone the way of the skirt; she was wearing a knee length lavender skirt with a matching T-shirt top. Together they indroduced their newly arrived friends. Wendy came in wearing a midnight blue silk version of Amber's gray slacks and a white slik spaghetti strap top with blue butterflies all over it. Amber came in fashionably late and stunned everyone. The three girls noticed that her nose looked like it had never been hit at all; it wasn't even bruised. Cassi and Mo stared jealously at her oriental style red dress. It was embroidered with golden dragons and flowers from her neck to mid-thigh. While no one had done anything special to their hair, Amber had two gold and red dragon pins stuck through the tight bun of red hair. her friends thought that she had out done herself and told her so.

"I'm sorry if I look too fancy for you, but it is the first time we've seen each other in five years. I thought it was a special occasion." Carrie reassured her that it was.

"It's okay, Amber. Let's just go get a table." Lindsy had beaten her to the punch and was counting heads. She frowned and counted again.

"Hold up. We're missing Lance."

"Oh, no! We wanted him to meet Wendy. Now he's not even coming to dinner." Carrie had been told what happened to Lance in the jeep, and she had gotten upset when Greg had kissed her because of it.

"Last time we saw him, Lance locked himself in his room with a tub of ice cream." Chris said and laughed. Carrie glared at him and he stopped chuckling, but he started to look confused. "Did we miss something? What's wrong with him?"

"We'll tell you when we get a table." The head waiter came back to the desk and led them to their table. When everyone had been seated and had ordered their food, Lindsy got down to the story of Lance. Amber and Wendy already knew and pretended to look aghast at the news. Then the food arrived and everyone forgot about it. Talk turned toward the new girls sitting at one end of the table.

"So, what do you do?" Jc asked them. Wendy and Amber glanced at each other to decide who would answer first.

"I was a sound technician at Busch Gardens in Tampa. I made sure the music, sounds and voices in all of the section rides were timed just right and sounded natural. They only hired me because I had a degree from MIT." Wendy had them all dazzled with her high intellectual mind and it took some time for Jc to ask Amber what she did.

"Oh, I'm just a photographer. I used to work for the Portland Sun up in Maine. When you guys came up there, in April, I got some really good shots of you and your opening act, Adora." She was teasing Lindsy like it was old times again and they hadn't broken up. Lidnsy thought she wouldn't get mad after hitting her, but she was.

"Are you saying it's a bad name? Should I change it for you, Miss High and Mighty?"

"No, it's... cute and simple, like Cher. Besides it doesn't matter what I think. There's a whole mass of people who would swear on the bible that they love you." That seemed to calm Lindsy down, but one could never be sure, thankfully Justin came to her rescue.

"I'm one of those people, Honeybear." Wendy couldn't help herself; she busted out laughing, along with the rest of the table.

"He calls you, 'Honeybear'? That's so cute!" She gasped between laughs. Carrie was laughing so hard, she had to put her head down on the table. Only Lindsy, Justin and Amber weren't laughing. Lindsy and Justin were looking embarrassed because the entire room was staring at them. Amber turned in her chair to speak to Lindsy.

"I don't think nicknames are that funny, do you?"

After the dinner fiasco, Lindsy went up to see how Lance was doing. She had to knock extra hard because he had the TV turned up too loud. He answered the door holding a half eaten tup of double chocolate chip ice cream. "Lance, you poor thing."

"Hi." He said sadly. Apparently, neither the chocolate nor the chartoons had helped him.

"You missed a great dinner. Everyone had lots of fun, and they got to meet my friends." He shrugged his shoulders and turned to go back in. Lindsy tried one more time. "They're all in Joey and Carrie's room if you want to come."

"No. That's all right. I'm just going to sit here with my ice cream." Lindsy had tried so very hard to be patient with him, but he had to get over Angel.

"You know that ice cream's going to make you fat. Then no one is going to like you. Why don't you go down to the gym and work off all that pain she caused you." Lidnsy left and Lance decided to take up her advice. He changed into some gym clothes and headed down to work out. She hadn't told him that Amber and Wendy were down there too.

Lance entered the gym and the first thing he saw was a tall and slender red head walking on the balance beam. He watched as she flipped back to the end of the beam and walked on her hands. Then she did a double flip in the air, mere inches from the surface of the beam, and landed on her feet again. She cartwheeled to the end where a light brown haired girl was waiting and flipped backward off the edge. The red head landed right in front of the other girl and started in with martial arts. Lance didn't realize he had been walking toward them until the red head's fist stopped millimeters from his face. he stared at the fist and proceeded to look up the arm attached to it. She was a lot more muscular that he had first assumed. When he go to her eyes, which he thought were a most stunnin gpair of blue-gray, she lowered her arm. Then he saw recognition flash in her eyes and she lost her defensive edge.

"Oh, I am so sorry, Lance. I didn't know it was you." How did she know his name? Why did it seem like he should know her?

"You're Amber, right? Lindsy's friend?" He knew she wasn't the one from Florida; she was too pale to have lived in the sunshine state.

"Yeah. And this is Wendy." Amber pointed to Wendy but he barely looked at her.

"So, you're into martial arts. Me too." Amber smiled at him and got ready to do the biggest turn down of her life.

"So, then, Amber was like 'I don't date pop super stars' and walked away. Lance followed her to the pool and she pushed him in, saying he should cool off and stuff. She left him in the pool without getting him a towel or anything." The girls were sitting in the empty stands of Heinz Field while the ground crew finished setting up the stage for tonight's show. Wendy was telling Lindsy and Carrie about how she and Amber got Lance interested in her. Amber took over the story telling.

"Then Wendy ran up to him with a towel and helped him out of the pool and ended up falling in herself. They started laughing and helped each other out of the pool. It was a beautiful sight to see, a plan for hooking up two people actually working." Lindsy got up to stretch and every joint snapped, crackled, and popped. "Rough night, Lindsy?" Amber asked and they all laughed.

"How about some lunch?" Lindsy asked, changing the subject. The other girls stared at her as if she were crazy. Finally Carrie spoke up.

"We just had breakfast two hours ago because you decided not to come down this morning. You really are a savage."

"I know, but I always need something to snack on when we have to discuss something important." Wendy and Amber exchanged glances, they had no idea what Lindsy was talking about. They all got up, though, and moved to the end of the row.

"Like what?" They inquired together. They all headed up the stairs to find the escalator.

"Well, I want to tell the guys who we are. Carrie wants to too." Wendy and Amber stared at carrie, who shrugged her shoulders.

"What can I say, she wore me down. You'd be worn too if she asked you that question everyday. Besides, I'm tired of the guys bugging us about what we're doing." They were in one of the main lobbies of the stadium when two guys walked up to Lindsy. Out of the corner of Lindsy's eye, she saw Amber tense up in attack.

"Oh, Adora! Can we have your autograph, please?" The one guy with jet black, curly hair practically begged for her signature. Lindsy felt a little flattered that anyone, even an oddly inhuman looking guy, would ask for her autograph. She kept an eye on Amber, who seemed ready to give both men a dose of her special medicine, while she took their pictures from them.

"Okay, what are your names?"

"I'm Sam Jacobson and this is my best friend, Issac Variteni." Sam said and pointed to the bleached blonde Italian standing next to him. "We're both big fans of yours. We'll even come to 'NSync shows just to see you." Lindsy finished signing the pictures of her and handed them back.

"There you go. Have a nice day now." The two guys walked away laughing, and Amber relaxed just a touch. Lindsy turned to her to find out what was going on. "Waht was that all about? You looked like you were going to toast them." Amber finally met her stare with the most dealy serious look in her eyes.

"Those were Destroyers: Flood and Storm. I knew it was them because they've been following me since I moved to Maine." Carrie and wendy gaped at her and spoke at the same time.

"Oh. We didn't even feel anything! Those were our opposites and nothing happened!"

"They can hide their powers, just as we can. Except, we have to work on that. I found it very easy to locate you two because of your large power source. Now so have they." Lindsy out two and two together and figured out what Amber was trying to say in not so many words.

"That's why you changed. So you could hide from them until you were strong enough to fight." Amber smiled at her clever friend and nodded her head in agreement.

"Yes, but we can't fight them here. There are too many innocents in the way, and some of us have not been training." Lindsy turned around and was heading back to the escalator.

"What are you doing?" Wendy called as they ran to catch up with her. "I thought you were hungry." They all crammed onto two steps with six other crew members carrying equipment around them.

"I think I lost my appetite, so I'm going to rehearse for a bit."

In the little lounge set up somewhere in the depths of the stadium, the phone rang. Joey was the only on int he room, so he picked it up. On the other end of the line was a man's voice.

"Hello, can I talk to Carrie?" Joey didn't say anything for a moment; he was trying to figure out why this guy would call his girlfriend.

"Who is this?" The man identified himself as Greg winter, an old friend of Carrie's. Joey was just a tad bit suspicious of this character even though Carrie had talked about this Greg in great detail. "What do you want her for?"

"I just want to apologize to her for yesteday. I got a little out of hand." Joey was getting angry; this guy wasn't being straight forward, and someone was going to have to answer for it.

"What do you mean, 'a little out of hand?" Lindsy chose just his moment to walk in on the conversation gone awry. She saw Joey gearing up to tell whoever was on the phone to get lost in a not so nice way.

"Joey, who are you talking to?"

"Some jerk who's trying to get with my girlfriend!" He yelled directly into the phone and threw it at Lindsy before storming off. She caught it in one hand and held it to her ear.

"Hello?" She said sweetly. The voice on the other end sounded distraught.

"Why didn't she just tell me that she had a boyfriend?" Lindsy pushed the mute button and giggled.

"Don't you ever watch MTV? Everyone else in the wrold knows she's going out with Joey Fatone." There was silence on the other end for a long time until a stage hand came in to announce that Lindsy would be on in five. "Look Greg, I've got to go. The show's almost on."

"All right, but,... would you just tell her that I'm sorry. I didn't know what I was thinking." He really did sound sorry, she had to admit that.

"I'll tell her, don't worry."

"Thanks. But Lindsy." She hung up with a sigh of relief. She'd have to wait until after the show to tell Carrie; She had exactly three minutes to get through the maze of corridors to the stage.

Chapter 4