Sixteen (ON HOLD)

2.5 One Step Behind

Tanner spoke directly to Kate; she was the one he felt he could read the best. He remembered her most clearly as a little girl, wearing sloppy pigtails, always hanging around the station lobby waiting for her father to get off work.

“When you were eight years old, you stole something from the drug store. You were mad because your dad was working a lot of double shifts and you thought that if you did something really bad that he would have to come and arrest you. What did you steal, Kate?”

“What’s going on,” Kate asked Sadie secretly, being careful not to look at her.

“He’s testing you. He’s trying to figure out if you’re still Kate. Try to answer.”

Kate sifted through the memories in her head, looking down at the ground for the whole two seconds that it took her. “Markers, eight to a package, the scented kind. I took them off the shelf and went outside. I waited there all day to get arrested.”

Tanner let out the breath he had been holding in waiting for her answer. With a small smile he added, “You felt so guilty about taking the markers that you came to me the next day and turned yourself in. It was the shortest crime spree in Springfield’s history.” He stepped towards Kate and pulled her into a hug, relief washing over him. Kate tensed up but allowed the hug, casting a questioning look in Cole’s direction. He shrugged.

“That is something to be proud of,” Sadie interjected, trying to be helpful, “since Springfield has an abnormally low crime rate for this region already, an average of 1.5 murders per year not counting suicides or manslaughter and only 40 counts of robbery in the . . .” She stopped when she realized that the Chief had turned his attention to her, and not in a good way.

He released Kate, and stepped back. His hand instinctively moved to his weapon and rested there. “You’re just reciting information,” he said accusingly.

In an instant Cole was across the room, gripping Tanner’s neck and slamming him back against the door. Tanner couldn’t move the boy was that amazingly strong and there was no doubt that he could crush his windpipe with little effort if wanted to.

“Stop,” yelled Kate. “He wouldn’t have hurt anyone. He’s just frightened, let him go.”

Cole reluctantly released his grip and Tanner gasped for air.

Kate stared at him with vacant eyes. He could see it now, so clearly, the reason the kids seemed so odd. There was no glint in their eyes, no personality in their movements. Their bodies had returned, but just that, their bodies.

“What are you going to do now?” The girl who looked like Kate, but wasn’t, touched his arm softly. He recoiled from her hand.

“I don’t, I don’t know,” he stuttered. “need time to think.”

Kate nodded. The others nodded. And the Chief couldn’t get out of the room fast enough.

***   ***   ***   ***   ***   

Ginny spent most of her time comforting Mrs. Harrison while her son lay in a comatose state, peacefully slumbering through the uneasy commotion around him. She knew she had been called in to help with the children, but she was getting nowhere fast with any of them, or at least nowhere good. Most of them gave her a deep down icky feeling, the way they all looked at her with such flat unwavering eyes; it felt like the Village of the Damned around there. After spending hours by his hospital bed, the tired mother had finally been convinced to down to the cafeteria to get something to eat with her husband. Ginny, overly happy to keep on helping them, had offered to continue the bedside vigil.  

Troy Harrison looked more like a little boy than a hulking teen-aged linebacker when he was sleeping. His hair was tussled and his features softened by the sedative nature of his condition. He would have looked quite comfortable if not for the machines pumping air into his lungs, beeping, churning; keeping him alive. Before long the repetitive sound of the breathing machine lulled Ginny into her own dreamless sleep, slightly slouched in the blue visitors chair a few feet from the bed.