Author's note before we begin: This story fits into the Mind Over Matter Series, but this one isn't told by Veronica. It's told by Erin. The reason for this? Well, Erin is a bit easier to write, n' Veronica was boring me. Sorry, Ronnie. :-)Plus there's only so much you can say from her Point of View. This one's long enough to be two parts, that's why it's more than one. It may be more than two, i dunno yet. Anyway, read:
To think, just a few months ago my life actually seemed boring! That is the life of a high school student. Or a high school student on summer break awaiting their escape to college. But no longer am I bored!
My name's Erin, by the way, and I lead the world’s most interesting life. Okay, maybe not the most interesting. But still pretty cool.
Confused yet? Let me start near the beginning of my latest adventure. I was going to my friends' dorm one afternoon. They live across campus from me. I'd finished my classes for the day, and it was about three in the afternoon, so I was heading over to visit Geri and Kyla.
There were a bunch of construction workers hanging around at the dorm when I got there. A few weeks ago, this dorm almost got burned down while my friends were in it! Thankfully they got out.
Geri and Kyla weren't in their room yet, but I knew they'd be back soon, so I sat in the lounge at the end of the hall and waited. I'd know when they got back, so I settled down and lost myself in a cheesy romance novel. I was trying to forget about the English homework I probably should have been doing.
Pounding feet on the stairs alerted me suddenly and I broke away from the world of Travis and Ashley and looked up. Veronica (another of my friends) was pounding up the stairs.
"Ronnie?" I asked. She ignored me as she speed walked past me down the hall towards Geri and Kyla's room. "They're not in," I told her.
Veronica turned towards me and gave me a Look. I picked up my books and followed her down the hall. She motioned for silence, and looked around. There was no one in the hall.
"Make sure no one's coming," she ordered, so I ran down to make sure no one was coming up the stairs. Then I looked back towards her to see what she was doing.
Veronica put both hands on the door and appeared to be concentrating. The doorknob jiggled a few moments and then Ronnie turned the knob with her hands and opened the door the rest of the way.
I felt deliciously evil as I stepped into the room and shut the door behind me. I set my things on Kyla's bed (the nearest to the door) and looked around.
The room was eerily neat. Geri can be neat on occasion, but Kyla is a slob. This room was too neat to be theirs. In the fire, some of their things were damaged, and others had to be sent back home. So it was emptier than usual.
Ronnie didn't seem to notice the eerie lack of junk. She tossed her book bag on the bed next to mine and began to pace back and forth. I sat on the bed and watched her for a second.
"What's the matter?" I finally asked. "You look like you've had a gallon of coffee!" I was starting to panic. Ronnie and coffee are not a good mix.
"At least," Ronnie replied with a sense of doom. I gulped. There must be something really wrong.
Ronnie kept pacing and I just sat, imagining worst-case scenarios. I don't know how long we were there before Geri and Kyla finally arrived. But they did.
Eventually I did hear their key in the lock as both entered the room. Ronnie stopped pacing, and I stood up, realizing then how we'd broken into their room.
"What are you guys doing here?" Kyla asked, coming in first.
"How'd you get in?" Geri asked, stepping around her stunned roommate.
"Well, I..." I began, but Veronica cut me off.
"I did it," she explained, and Geri was temporarily silenced. That explained how. Just why?
"I have some... news I wanted to tell you all," Veronica continued. She didn't sound to happy about it.
"What's the matter?" Kyla asked. She shut the door behind her and walked across the room to sit down on her bed next to me.
Geri sat down on her own bed, and Veronica fished her book bag out of the pile of junk on Kyla's bed. No one said a word. We all knew it must be pretty serious if Ronnie had broken into the room deliver the news.
Finally, the long awkward silence was broken as Ronnie pulled a piece of paper from the bag. "This is what I drank about 10 cups of coffee for," she informed us.
"Ten?" Kyla repeated, and I saw her and Geri stare in shock. Veronica drinking one cup of coffee was bad enough, but ten?
Veronica nodded, not seeming to notice the shocked looks. She handed the piece of paper to Geri, who read it with shocked, wide eyes. She passed it to Kyla, who had a similar expression. Then they passed it me.
It seemed innocent at first. Just an online printout of a story in the local paper. The headline was printed in big bold letters. It read:
GENETIC EXPERIMENTS OF THE PAST MAY BE THE WAVE OF THE FUTURE
The title didn't seem to be too menacing, so I read on. The article started out pretty easy, talking about how genetics was the wave of the future and we were making progress today with genetic experiments.
Then they dropped the bombshell when they started talking about government experiments of the past. Including the "abandoned" Project Super.
I looked up from the article then and realized why Kyla, Geri and Ronnie were so worried. Project Super was the project that created Ronnie. Without it, she'd be just an aborted fetus decomposing...wherever dead fetuses decompose. I shuddered.
"Whoa," I mumbled as I handed it back to Ronnie. She nodded.
"They know about the Project," Ronnie stated aloud for all to hear. "It probably won't be long till they find out about me."
Ronnie didn't have to say what the government would do if they knew about her. And if they found her. I could imagine. She'd be a guinea pig for the rest of her life. Forced to be a spy in the FBI or the CIA. Poked at and prodded at. Living a life not much better than a discarded fetus would live.
I shuddered again. To think that her whole existence was an accident. Heavy.
"Wait a sec,” Geri broke in. “How can you be sure that they’ll find out about you?”
“Well, they found out about the project,” Ronnie replied sensibly.
“Yeah, but that doesn’t mean they found out everything,” Geri pointed out.
“No, not yet, but they probably will.”
“Well, we just have to make sure that there is nothing for them to find out.”
“How?”
“Dude, just break into the offices.”
“What offices?”
“Well, where did they find out about the project?”
I scanned the article. “It doesn’t say,” I reported. “It just says they were old government files.”
“Well they had to be located somewhere, didn’t they?”
“Probably archived in a federal building somewhere,” Kyla theorized. “In a basement filing cabinet at the FBI or something.”
“You watch too much TV,” Geri informed her. Kyla shrugged.
“It doesn’t matter where they are,” Ronnie pointed out. “We can’t get to it. And if we were to destroy it, which I wouldn’t be too thrilled about anyway, we’d have to probably break into a building.”
Kyla, Geri, and I stared at her wordlessly. “You did break into this room,” Kyla reminded her.
“Yes, but this is a dorm room. With minimal security. Without a bunch of armed FBI agents,” Ronnie replied.
Geri shook her head and sighed. “Ronnie, they’re no problem for you,” she said in a cajoling voice.
Ronnie shook her head. Geri might be willing to get into trouble with the federal government in order to destroy a few papers, but she really wasn’t looking forward to spending the rest of her life in jail.
I looked at Kyla, who was still sitting on her bed. She appeared to be thinking deeply about the plan. I wasn’t too keen on the idea of breaking into a federal building, either, but we couldn’t let them find out about Veronica. Especially not after all she’d done for us.
Veronica had already saved Geri and Kyla’s lives during the fire, something for which quite a few people were grateful. And she had saved my roommate’s life when Marla showed up. That insane girl had almost killed Lindsay, and would have if not for Veronica’s quick thinking.
I shuddered when I thought about Marla. She’d been the closest thing a non-celebrity could have to an obsessed fan. And she’d been obsessed over me! It still freaked me out now, two weeks later.
After all Ronnie had done for us, she deserved something back, I thought. She’d helped me, so I’d help her. There had to be someway I could repay her.
But how? Kyla and Geri and I wouldn’t be able to break into a federal building, even if we knew which one it was. That would require someone with skills, or abilities like Ronnie’s.
“I guess we’ll just wait and see what happens, then,” Geri was saying. Her voice sounded defeated. I had been so lost in my own thoughts that I hadn’t noticed the discussion. I assumed from Geri’s tone of voice that her idea had been turned down.
“Right,” Ronnie looked defeated as she headed for the door, carrying her bag over her shoulder.
“Call if anything happens,” Kyla told her. Ronnie nodded grimly and left the room.
There was a silence for a few moments. Geri locked the door after Ronnie and sat down on the bed next to Kyla.
“I wish there was something we could do,” Geri said, echoing my thoughts. “But I just don’t know what.”
I had been thinking long and hard about Ronnie’s problem. Very long and very hard. I was hardly able to concentrate on my homework, not that I ever was.
I strolled into the cafeteria a few days later and spotted Geri and Kyla during lunch. They were sitting by themselves, talking together. At first I saw them and started heading over. Then I noticed they were talking pretty softly and looked around every so often to make sure no one was listening. I thought about finding someone else to sit with.
But then Kyla spotted me. She pointed me out to Geri, who stood up and waved me over.
“What took you so long?” Geri asked. “We’ve been waiting for you!”
“Waiting?” I asked blankly as I set my tray down. “For me? What for?”
“Geri has a plan to help out Veronica,” Kyla explained.
“Ooh,” I squealed. I sat in my chair and bounced up and down. “Tell, tell, tell!”
“It’s not really a BIG plan,” Geri amended. “Just an idea that could develop into a plan.”
“Well, I don’t care! It’s better than nothing! Tell me!” I demanded. I picked up an undercooked French fry and waved it around for emphasis. “Tell!”
Kyla and Geri looked at the French fry warily. I realized I was making them nervous. So I laughed and then ate it. They both laughed, too.
“The plan?” I asked when the laughter had died down.
“I’m going to D.C. next weekend,” Geri informed me. “I’m going to visit a friend.”
“Ooh!” I squealed again. “The FBI building is in DC!”
“Right,” Geri replied. “We don’t know if that’s where they found the files on Veronica, but maybe we can at least do some research while we’re there.”
“Sounds like a plan,” I replied. “I’ve never even been to DC! Well, maybe once. Ok, that might have been Boston. Or maybe it was New York. I don’t know. Oh well. It’s still a cool place to go.”
Kyla nodded. “I haven’t been since I was a baby,” she agreed. “But we’re not there to do the tourist thing. We’re going to do some research. Be journalists.”
“We don’t want them to know we’re journalists, though,” Geri pointed out. So we should at least act tourist even if we’re not really tourists.”
“When are we going?”
“Next weekend,” Geri replied. “I have only one class on Friday, and she gets out at eleven, so we’ll leave right after that and get lunch on the road. Do you have a later class?”
“Nope,” I replied, bouncing in my seat. “I get out at ten.” I made a face. Morning classes sucked, but they were an advantage, too.
“Great.”
“Whatever you do, don’t tell Veronica,” Kyla emphasized. “I don’t think she’d really go for the idea.” She was looking across the cafeteria, and, after looking that way, I realized Veronica was coming.
“I don’t think so either,” I agreed.
“And it will be a great surprised for her,” Geri added. She waved towards Veronica, who was getting a drink. I glanced down at my half-raw hamburger and fries and realized that in all the excitement I hadn’t gotten myself a drink.
“Don’t worry, I’ll keep the secret,” I told them. Then I stood up and headed for the soda machine. On the way I passed Ronnie.
“Hey Ronnie,” I said. She just nodded at me.
“Hi,” she mumbled, and trudged on towards the table. I watched her go.
‘Man, Ronnie’s really depressed about this whole thing,’ I thought as I stuck my plastic cup under the dispenser. I watched her. She was sitting down at Kyla and Geri’s table. She was definitely depressed. Every bone in her body rang with defeat. She slumped into a chair across from Geri and heaved a sigh. It was so much of a sigh that I could see it from across the cafeteria.
I felt something cool and wet on my hand and heard someone’s laughter in my ears. I turned towards my left hand and gasped. My cup had overflowed with 7-up and now the soda was spilling over the top. I laughed so hard at myself I nearly spilled all the soda out. Then I composed myself.
I tipped the excess soda out and shifted the cup to my right hand. I held my left hand away from my body and tried not to get my clothes covered with the sticky gunk.
“In la-la land today, Er?” I heard someone say and I laughed.
“Something like that, yeah,” I answered. I was blushing bright red and laughing at the same time, so it was hard to understand what I was saying. I hurried back to my table as fast as I could to get the soda off, hoping that Geri, Kyla, and Veronica wouldn’t laugh at me too much.
Twelve o’ clock Friday came faster than I’d thought it would. I wasn’t sure what to bring. We were going to spend the weekend with Geri’s friend, so at least we wouldn’t have to pay for a hotel. It would still be a long trip, though.
I brought some homework just in case I got bored enough to actually do some of it. And I brought a few cheesy romance novels to read. Of course I brought clothes. And I brought a small pocket spiral notebook like the ones reporters use on TV. Kyla had come up with the bright idea to pretend we were students and were writing a paper on DC.
We stopped on the road about twelve thirty and munched on McDonald’s in the car. Geri was the only one driving, but she’d had a big dinner and wasn’t hungry. A half hour later, Kyla and I had to use the bathroom, so we stopped, and Geri got herself some food. Then we got on the road again.
When we got there the sun was starting to go down, and we were all getting tired, especially Geri. I would have, too, if I’d been driving all day. Thankfully, she knew her way around DC well enough so that we didn’t get lost finding her friend’s house.
Geri’s friend was actually a friend of her older sister’s, and she had an apartment to herself. Her name was Pauline, and she was really nice. We all went out for Chinese food and then collapsed into bed by nine o’clock. Kyla and I wanted to get up early to play tourist, and Geri and Pauline had their own plans.
The next morning we were up by nine again and ready to go. Kyla and I packed small purses with cameras and a bit of money and our notepads. Then we got directions to the J. Edgar Hoover building and prepared to do the tourist thing. We then agreed to meet at noon at a café a block away from the FBI building.
(Later)
“Find anything interesting?” Geri asked us as we sat down at the café.
“Not really,” Kyla replied. She sighed and sat down in her chair. “I’m not sure we’re doing much good.”
“What happened?” she asked.
“Where’s Pauline?” I interrupted.
“She had a meeting or something to do,” Geri replied. “Don’t worry, she won’t find out.”
“It was a total disaster,” Kyla replied. “They didn’t seem to know much of anything.”
“If they did know anything, they wouldn’t tell us,” I clarified. “The only way we could go inside was to do a tour.”
“So we did the tour,” Kyla continued. “But it sucked.”
“We didn’t learn a thing.”
Geri frowned. “This isn’t good.”
“No, it’s not,” I agreed. The waiter arrived and gave us our drinks. I sipped my 7-up thoughtfully.
“Any ideas?” Geri asked.
I shook my head. “Clueless,” I replied.
Kyla nodded. “I don’t know,” she replied with a frown. “I just don’t know what to do now.”
Don’t get me wrong. The trip to DC wasn’t a total loss. I mean, Kyla and I got to see the FBI building and the White House and a bunch of other cool national landmark type places. But we didn’t really find out any information. So by the time we got back to school late Sunday night, we were as depressed as Veronica had been.
“Man, I thought you’d never get back, Erin!” my roommate, Lindsay said to me when I finally dragged myself in. “Do you know what time it is?”
“No, what time is it?”
“It’s almost ten o’clock, girl! You got a nine-o’clock class in the morning! I hope you get your but out of bed and go!”
I groaned. Normally I don’t mind Lindsay dragging me out of bed in the mornings. I have trouble doing it myself. But I’d completely forgotten about my class in the morning. Even though I’d brought homework with me, I hadn’t done any of it.
“Oh, man,” I groaned, flopping on to my bed.
“What took you all so long, anyway?” Lindsay asked.
“Traffic,” I replied. “Traffic, traffic, traffic. There was a big accident somewhere in Maryland I think. Or was it Georgia?”
“Georgia? That’s nowhere near DC!” Lindsay laughed.
“Oh. I dunno, I wasn’t driving,” I replied. Lindsay said something after that, but I didn’t hear it. I was already half asleep.
