Chapter 4:
Danny POV-
"Is it just me, or did she seem like really familiar to you?" Sam asked me over the phone as I sat in my room after dinner.
"No, you're right, she does seem familiar, and her brothers do too. I just…can't place them?" I replied quietly, not wanting Wren in the next room to hear that I was talking about her.
"It's not just her either, the two boys living with me seem familiar too," Tucker added, dropping into our conversation.
"Yeah, and Carrie…the girl living with me, seems kind of familiar too," Sam told us, "But how could we find all of these kids familiar and never have met any of them before?"
"And why would an Air Force Base in Turkey decide to do a one-way exchange with Amity Park of all places?" I wondered. Tucker and Sam said nothing, probably wondering the same thing.
"I think I'll do some research into this," Tucker announced, hanging up the phone with a click, to, no doubt, hack the military base.
Sam was quiet for a second. "Wren looks a lot like you, Danny. If I didn't know any better, I would swear she was Danielle…"
"Yeah," I laughed, "Maybe she actually is my second cousin once removed."
"I'm being serious Danny. Maybe you should keep an eye on her, she could be another one of Vlad's clones," Sam scolded.
"Yeah, and I suppose her brothers and the entire rest of town hosting these exchange kids are clones too? C'mon Sam, be reasonable?" I joked.
"I don't know Danny…this whole thing just seems…too weird, that's all," she said a little quieter.
"I know. But let's just see what Tucker can uncover before we start accusing people of being clones," I smirked to myself.
"Speaking of, any word on Danielle?" Sam asked, slightly changing the subject.
"Not since she last disappeared," I shrugged although I knew she could not see me over the phone.
There was a silence over the phone and I knew Sam was struggling to find something else to talk about.
"So, you said her name was Carrie?" I said.
"Yeah, she seems kind of cool…I guess, she's Jazz's age and a little preppy for my tastes but she has good taste in music. So what about Wren's brothers, what are they like?" Sam asked.
"Her older brother Jackson is Jazz's age, but other than that I don't know much about him, and her younger brother Eli is only six, and, so far the only thing I've been able to find out about him is that he like chocolate milk," I told her.
Sam laughed, and then paused as I heard voices on the other end of the phone.
"Hey, I've got to go, see you at school tomorrow," she told me.
"Kay, bye," I replied as her phone clicked off.
I set my cellphone down on my nightstand and left the room. The house was quiet, as everyone had gone their separate, respective ways after dinner; the only noise was the low rumble of the TV followed by my dad's snoring coming from downstairs.
The door to the Ops Center was opened, so, I decided to investigate, climbing up to the third level.
On the ledge of the roof, Wren was seated looking out across the city longingly. I cleared my throat and she whipped around to look at me.
"What are you doing up here?" I asked, not accusatory but simply wondering.
Wren shrugged, "Just homesick, I guess," she sighed, once again turning to look over the city. I wasn't sure how the view of the boring, rundown city of Amity Park could make her homesick. But I sat down next to her, swinging my legs over the side of the roof.
"You miss your parents?" I guessed, and she nodded, not meeting my eyes.
"I'm just worried about them, it's…dangerous where they are…" she told me, sounding like she was choosing her words carefully.
'Hmmm, maybe her parents are doing something top secret and she's not allowed to tell me,' I considered.
"I'm sure they're fine," I replied hopefully because I really didn't know.
Wren gave me a slight smile, but I noticed a little tear stood in her eye, and she quickly whisked it away.
"Tell me about your parents," I urged, hoping that maybe I'd be able to cheer her up, or, at the very least, find out a little more about her.
She seemed surprised, "Why?" she asked.
I shrugged, "When you live with parents like mine, it's nice to hear about normal families sometimes."
She giggled lightly, and I smirked internally as I realized I had accomplished my task of cheering her up.
Wren POV-
It seemed a little weird to me that my dad was asking about my dad but I decided to tell him…as much of the truth as possible.
"What do you want to know?" I wondered.
"I don't know, whatever you want to tell me," he grinned.
"Okay. Well, my dad's a…colonel," I lied, hoping that he wouldn't ask me any other questions about his rank or my lack of military knowledge would probably make me slip up. "So, sometimes he can be kind of strict," I continued, "but he's also funny and he always makes time for us. My mom is sometimes even stricter than my dad," I smiled to myself, not lying at all with that statement. In fact, the only time my dad is stricter than my mom is regarding ghosts, or dating, specifically me dating. "She's the kind of person that doesn't put up with crap no matter who you are. But they are both really good at helping people, and they'd both do anything to protect us," she smiled fondly.
"What about the rest of your family?" he asked me, and I gave him a suspicious look. Was he prying or did he just want to know more about me?
"Well, like I said at the Nasty Burger, my other family members are also in the military. My grandpa is retired but he still lives on the base with us. My grandma wasn't in the military but she certainly knows her way around a gun," or a bazooka, "My aunt Danielle is a Major, she's great. She's actually the first one who taught me to shoot because my parents didn't want me around firearms." That was a fun day; I took down my first ghost with the Fenton Ecto-pistol. My parents had been so proud of me, but Aunt Dani still got in major trouble with my mom and dad. "Mikey and Thomas are her sons. Her husband left when the twins were born, and I'm pretty sure they haven't seen him since. My uncle Peter is also in the military, but he's a Sergeant. He's married to my Aunt J," I decided to shorten her name. My dad can be kind of oblivious but he's not stupid and if the names started lining up, he might notice something. "And Carrie is their daughter. Aunt J is kind of the brains of our whole family, and unfortunately, Carrie inherited her know-it-all tendencies. And, then, of course, there's my brothers and me," she told me.
"Okay, tell me a little bit more about you and your brothers," he prompted.
"Okay…um well, Jackson is two years older than me but we were born a week apart; him on September 7th and me on September 14th, so our birthdays get lumped together a lot. Eli's birthday is next month on March 19th. Umm…my favorite colors are emerald green and lavender, my favorite sport is soccer and I am the captain of my team. Umm…I like to paint but I suck at math…not much else to say about me. Jackson gets good grades, but he sucks at sports. Eli likes football, but because of our dad he hates the Packers," I wrinkled my nose a little myself. I have never been quite sure why my dad hates that football team, he just does, and, it's kind of rubbed off, "And his favorite show is Veggie Tales, and you will soon get sick of it."
"So you and Jackson are pretty much opposites?" he asked.
I shrugged, "Kind of, at least in our skills. He's just more logical and stuff…and I'm…not," I rubbed the back of my neck sheepishly, "My mom says that I get my impulsiveness from my dad. But, Jackson and I actually have similar personalities. We both like the same music and TV shows and stuff," I told him.
"That's cool, I wish Jazz and I had more in common…sometimes," he grinned and I chuckled a little.
We sat in silence for a while and the stars began to come out. I almost felt a tear rise to the surface of my eye but I blinked it back. The stars were so beautiful, I had almost forgotten. It had been so long since I'd actually seen the night sky instead of the eerie ghost dome that surrounds the entire Earth in the future.
I heard a squeak behind us and Danny and I whipped around to see the hatch to the roof open.
"There you guys are," Jazz said as she came out of the opening, followed by Jackson.
"What are you doing up here?" Jackson asked, in the bossy way he usually does when I'm doing something that I'm not supposed to.
"Just looking at the stars," I answered standing up. Jackson, who hadn't noticed the stars, looked up, fascinated, almost like he was caught in a trance.
"Come on," Jazz broke the silence (and left me no longer wondering where my brother inherited his bossiness from), "We all have school tomorrow."
I sighed, casting one last look at the stars as I followed down the hole in the roof to go to Jazz's room.
