The car rolled up the driveway as the eyes of many watched in excitement. I looked up to see their gleaming faces and thought to myself, “What are they going to do to me now?” They had their hands behind their backs as I slowly edged the door open...no problems yet. I told them I had to say hi to the folks first. As I came back out David tossed me a stick. “I should have known,” I said with a smirk. Theis was smiling cheek to cheek, “this reminds me of the 2nd party.” “Then this shall be the fourth,” David proclaimed with gusto in his voice. “Till all are one, David?” I whispered. “Till all are one,” David replied. Rod was the first to step forward with that maddening smile on his face, yelling out some gibberish as usual. Krysti tapped impatiently for her turn. “So you all came here to beat me up, huh?” I jested, “Rod, you’re wasting your time on me.” Rod attempted something of an orcish chant and went at me. I evaded a bit and got a hit in or two and then he walloped me. “What else is new, Rod won,” David said dryly. I looked at the gleaming crowd and figured I needed a vacation from my vacation, “Okay guys, free for all, go for it.” We all beat on each other in appropriate dosages. Krysti had an undestroyable smile on her face and I barely opened my arms before the hug hit. “I really missed all you guys, but you know what I really missed as well, right?” Theis said simply, “We know, so get in the car, we’re going to In-N-Out”
I started up the car for the first time in over four months and turned to the rest, commenting, “Are you sure you want me to drive? It’s been a while.” Krysti poked me and remarked, “You were reckless enough before, maybe you forgot how to be, so you might drive even better.” “Is that a challenge?” I said, laughing. Rod and Theis in the back were grinning like idiots, with Dave in the middle who felt it appropriate to mention, “Oh, no you don’t James, not the first day back!” We took off and for a moment I realized how small the group was that came over, so I asked, “Where is everyone else?” David stammered to respond, all the others were dead silent as well. “Come on guys, stop kidding around. Where are they?” I asked, a bit concerned. “We wanted to tell you after lunch and Dad’s...they’re gone,” David said silently. “Gone? Gone where? On vacation?” I asked casually. “No, James...when I say they are gone I mean they are gone for good,” David said in a monotonous voice. I pulled over the car into the Denny’s at the bottom of Encinitas boulevard and demanded, “Alright, tell me what’s going on.”
Krysti began to cry and whimpered, “Some of them are dead, the rest are in horrific jails. Things have changed since you’ve been gone.” I winced and asked, “How can this be happening? This is against the law!” Rod, after a duration of silence piped in, “At first we didn’t believe it too, Richard told us about this theory of his a month ago, a conspiracy. We laughed at him and said he was being paranoid as usual. They took him first.” Theis continued, “Then they took Katie, then Suzanne, then Max and Travis, the last one to go before you got here was Jordan.” I laughed hollowly, “So they’re taking nerds, huh?” David spoke, in a bit of a yell, “This isn’t a time to be joking, James. They weren’t the first...they took some of the athletes, some of the skaters.” I toyed with my chin a bit and asked, “How are ‘they’ pulling this off and who are they?” Krysti looked down at her feet and spoke, “We don’t know who they really are...they claim to be a disease control institution. They would come into our classes, watch us. Then at some time they would have a slip sent to that class asking for the student to head to the nurses’ office. That was the last we ever see of them.” “This sounds like a nightmare right out of an elementary school. Where do they take them?” David started and paused to check behind them, “There’s a van that comes back and forth from some corporate office. Jordan was the closest to making any leeway, he had us on a cell phone and followed them to the office. All he could tell us is when they got to the office, they would be carrying boxes into the building. The last thing we heard was, ‘Hey you!’ The cell phone got hung up right after that.” I turned pale, “Then they can trace us?” “Yes, we’ve been on our guard and made sure not to stand out at all in the crowd anymore,” said Rod solemnly. “So what do we do now?”
Realization of the truth...
“So the odds are against us, aren’t they?” I asked in jest. David looked over at me sternly, “James...I swear-” I interrupted him, “No, David, if we let the odds get us down, then they’ve already won.” Krysti shuddered, “It’s easy for you to say that...you haven’t witnessed them take away those around you.” I was tapping my fingers on the dashboard and stopped suddenly, “Wait...where has Sanchez been? Was he taken?” Theis spoke up, “Yeah, he’s got the flu right now, so he’s been out of commission. Otherwise he’d be the first to go we’d guess.” I started up the car again and looked at each of them, “I need to see this ‘office’ for myself, tell me which way we need to go.” David smiled, “We’re all gonna die.” I sneered at him, “Shut up Rat Trap.” Rod became uneasy in his seat and objected, “This might get us all killed...or worse. If they catch us they’ll do the same to us as they must have done to Jordan.” I mused, “Those who do not learn from their past are doomed to repeat it.” Krysti questioned, “So then what will we do?” I grinned, “David, are the sticks still in the trunk?” Rod’s face began to glow as that “Rod” expression came into his face. The group approached the site and I pulled the car over early, “Okay guys, us guys will be stick fighting out on the open area. Rod, don’t kill us, but make it look fairly real. We need to be occasionally looking over at the building, one at a time, to better understand what’s going on over there. Krysti, if anything happens, I want you to use this camera and take some pictures, but I want you to get out of here as well.” All nodded in agreement and we got out of the car.
Rod sneered, “Nya see, I’m gonna mess ya up good, see?” David and I took the opposing side as Bret took a side of his own. I whispered to David, “What is Theis doing?” David readied his stance, “You’ve been gone too long, he got really cocky the day he got the first shot in on Rod twice in a row.” We all engaged in heavy combat as a truck left the office. “Here we go,” Bret echoed. The truck tore off up in our direction at a fairly good clip. Rod lost his concentration and took a shot to the arm from David. David laughed, “keep your focus, Rod, you don’t want to give us away.” The truck pulled up right next to us and a fairly large man stepped out, yelling, “Hey you kids!” “Aww man...” David and I said in unison. The man in blue and black approached us, “Can’t you kids read the signs? This is private property!” Bret was out of sight from the man and snuck up from the back. I had to do something fast, “Gee, Mister, we were just practicing our Boken fighting, like this!” I took a swing at his side, just a few inches off from hitting him. The man jolted just enough for Theis to grab his wallet out of his back pocket. The man gave me a threatening look, “Now you listen here, I can haul you off to the authorities for reckless behavior like that. Now get out of here now, before I call the cops.”
We took off and headed to the Target parking lot. Bret was gleaming and so David fueled him, “Okay, Bret, what did you get?” We all peered into the wallet and found mostly ordinary things: $12, driver’s licence, old receipts, and an identification card from the office. David looked at it carefully, “Hmm, the company is the AIF- Adolescent Improvement Foundation.” Krysti quivered, “That doesn’t sound too assuring to me.” I was busy tapping my hands on the wheel and asked the rest, “What do the parents say? What are the parents told?” Rod grunted, “That’s the problem, the parents are told that their child has been selected for a special program due to their talents. Everything is being paid for, they say, and the parents are sent a $3,000 check each week for the inconvenience of their children being away from them for the time. They are also assured that their studies are still being continued. The school backs the company 100%.” David was looking at the card and noticed something, “...Look at this!” We all looked where he was pointed, on the card was listed “DOB-3/18/85". Bret shook his head, “This has to be a typo, that guy looked at least 30.” I turned on the car, “David, got a yearbook from last year?” “Yeah, why?” “You’ll see.”
More questions arise...
We got to David’s and grabbed one of the last yearbooks, I was frantically searching through it. David mused, “How is this the time to be Nostalgic?” I ignored him as I went through the book furiously. Bret snagged a comic book and Krysti took in the decorations around the room. “I was right,” I whispered to the rest. Rod took his usual initiative and mentioned, “Huh?” The rest looked on as I pointed down at the picture titled “Roberts, Gerald.” We compared the identification card with the yearbook picture. David shuddered, “Yeah, that’s him alright.” Krysti added in, “This is bad...real bad.” Bret smiled queerly, “It’s almost like the clone wars!” Rod grinned as well and David and I cursed under our breath. David grimaced, “It’s not clones...it’s advanced ageing...advanced growth.” I paced around the room, commenting, “This is like an Anti-Hook mission.” David responded, “It’s always about Hook, isn’t it, James?” I nodded with a smile and then returned to a stern face and commented, “This might not be the only thing this “AIF” is doing to those they take. I don’t even want to think of what else they might be doing.” Krysti spoke up, “Eventually the parents of these kids will get worried and start demanding that the school return their children.” Theis stopped reading the comic book a second, mentioning, “What if this has happened before, just somewhere else?” Rod’s fists clenched, “We have to do something! I can’t stand just sitting around here anymore.” I looked in his direction while sitting still facing towards the yearbook, “I know, Rod, we will do something, but we need to have a plan first. We need to know who or what it is we are dealing with.”
After some time in David’s house we all tired of the stress of it all and took a moment for some Dad’s and Thumb Wars. Rod paced furiously, “We’re wasting time!” Krysti stood up and spoke solemnly, “Rod, we need a break, we’re wearing thin, and we’re really out of ideas...I wish we were as smart as our enemy right now, but the fact of the matter is they are way more on top of the ball than we are.” David spoke up as well, “If we rush in, we’ll just end up like Jordan and the rest.” I downed my second Dad’s and smiled, “Don’t worry, Rod, we’ll get them for what they did.” Thumb Wars had ended and we all more or less felt better about ourselves, be it how grim the situation was. Theis toyed with his empty can, “I just hope they are alright.”
I’m a Toy’s R Us kid...
“So, what are we going to do now?” one asked. The rest sat around depressed and tired. No one felt like bringing up the topic further. “This really burns me up,” Ai rasped, “I swear if the band and yearbook are falling apart, who ever did this will pay!” Jordan scowled back, “Ai, we know you miss your dictatorship, but I think we should be worried more about our lives now.” Katie and Suzanne were busy in the corner rattling off about the splendor of dark gloomy places and how it improves one’s metabolism. Richard sat in the other dark corner silent and mostly motionless. Teresa was busy staring off at he one shroud of sunlight coming from the end of the hall. She chortled and whispered, almost to herself, “I wonder who else they are keeping here that we know.” Jordan got up from bickering with Ai, “I think Max and Travis are in here somewhere...not sure where though.” The building was it’s usual dark and gloomy setting as usual, there was no yelling or anything more than whispers for the most part. Katie came over to Teresa and sighed, “We haven’t heard anyone yell out recently, I guess everyone in here knows now that they take those that scream first.” Suzanne walked over as well and looked out at the rows of cells around them. The rest got up and went towards the bars. Ai looked down where her watch once was, “It’s about time for our one minute.” A moment later the lights in the building came on, blinding all as the moaning of the light could be heard by all. The hourly calm voice came from overhead, “Hello children, does anyone want to volunteer to leave today? Speak up and we shall send you home.” A defeated voice called out somewhere in the facility, “I do...I want out of this cell!” Katie and the rest shook their heads, “Must have been a newbie.” Richard, for the first time, spoke up, “Yeah, either that or he just couldn’t take it anymore.”