Sydney
by: Danielle : - )
Disclaimer: Everyone except Madeline and her school and gymnastics friends belong to NBC. Thank you for creating such wonderful characters.
Author's Note: In Home I had said at one point that Madeline was 17 and then later 16. She is really supposed to be 16 and still is about sixteen and a half in this story. Sorry for any confusion! : - ) And I'm not sure of the driving laws in Delaware so I just decided it would be 16 and a half for a license so Madeline could drive. If anyone from Delaware would care to enlighten me, I say 'go for it!'. And thanks Jonathan Yip for all your help!
~~~~~
Early April 1997
A Friday, Blue Cove High School
"What?!" Madeline asked in disbelief. She was sitting in her Sociology and Psychology class and one of her more outspoken classmates had just said that if he saw a man and a woman (who was considerably smaller than the man) fighting, he would not step in to stop it, because "it's not my problem".
Madeline's hand had immediately shot up. The teacher noticed and called on her. "What?!" she asked. "How could you not help her?"
"It's not my problem." he said in this isn't-it-obvious tone.
Madeline shook her head, "But if you're not part of the solution, than you're part of the problem! So it is you're problem!"
"You really believe that?" One of his equally vocal friends broke in.
"Yes!" She said passionately. "I can't understand how you could live with yourself knowing you could have done something but didn't. I mean, it's not like you're small, you'd have no problem helping out." He was a big, intimidating football player at least 6'5" and 250 pounds.
"So, you're telling us you would go up and approach them?"
"Yeah!" Now it was her turn to adopt that isn't-it-obvious tone. "If I didn't, I- I couldn't live with myself." She struggled to explain how she felt, "Like... I'd always feel bad, guilty because I didn't help her."
"What if he then turned on you?"
"Well, then at least I tried." She said, "But I wouldn't expect you to understand it."
He opened his mouth to say more but the bell rang and everyone filed out to head to their next class.
~~~~~
The last bell of the day (and week) had just rung and Madeline was heading to her locker at a fairly fast pace.
"Hey Madeline." the voice of her best friend Sandy said behind her.
"Hey." Madeline replied.
"Hi guys!" their friend Amanda said. She had been going in the opposite direction but had pulled a u-turn to walk with them, "You guys busy today?"
"Yeah." Madeline answered, "I'm finally caught up on all my makeup work so I'm starting back at the gym today!" Her friends could see her excitement.
"Really? That's great!" Amanda said.
"I'm kinda nervous." Madeline admitted, "I haven't done so much as a cartwheel in over two years!"
"You don't need to be! You were always great at it! You probably would have gone to Atlanta if you hadn't stopped." Sandy told her.
"I know... but what if I've lost it?"
"You haven't!" Amanda fairly yelled in exasperation.
"Yeah, you can't lose a talent that good." Sandy added.
Madeline smiled at their attempts to reassure her. She did feel better. They parted for their lockers and a few minutes later she met up with Amanda again, who she drove to and from school. They had to sit in Madeline's white '96 Mustang for a few minutes before someone let her pull out.
After dropping Amanda off, Madeline headed to the Centre to see Miss Parker and let her know her plans.
As always, the size of the place shocked Madeline. She could not get over it; or the fact that Mr. Parker ran it. Then she sighed when she remembered how much he hated her.
~~~~~
Mr. Parker had been very upset when he found out what his daughter had done. It hadn't bothered him that she had forged the documents- he was actually proud that she had had the guts to do it. What enraged him was the fact that she had opened up both her home and her heart to a stranger.
He had refused when his daughter approached him about getting Madeline a car so she wouldn't have to drive her to and from school every day since no buses got even near the lake. When he said there was no way he was buying her a car, she had told him "Then I will." He also didn't like the fact that his daughter had seemingly given her free rein of the Centre- letting her come and go as the teenager pleased.
Madeline brought out a defiance in his daughter that he did not like. Actually, he blamed her and Jarod.
But Madeline didn't know his reasoning. All she knew was that her guardian's father hated her.
~~~~~
The Centre
"Hi." Madeline greeted Miss Parker, Sydney, and Broots. She had trusted Broots almost instantaneously and Sydney while he was going through the forgery process with Jarod, who they told her was an extremely valuable employee that the Centre wanted to get back very badly seeing how irreplaceable he was.
"I'm finally all caught up on my work!" She told them triumphantly.
Because of the unusual circumstance that caused Madeline to eventually stop doing homework altogether and fail every test; she had been allowed to make everything from the year up. Every day for the past three months she had stayed after with one teacher or another learning everything the rest of her class had learned since September. She also, entirely on her own, decided to make up every homework assignment and test. The superintendent of schools had allowed her to make up her teacher's lesson plans assignment for assignment and divide it up into the first and second quarters of the year so that ultimately her report card would look like any of her friends.
Now it was time to start gymnastics up again. She had stopped when her mother got cancer, more than two and a half years ago.
"I'm going to the gym to talk to Jackie about starting up again. Hopefully she'll still want to be my coach. And I think I'll stay and see what I can still do even a little decently."
"Okay." Miss Parker said indifferently.
Madeline had gotten used to the two Miss Parker's- the cold, uncaring in-front-of-others Miss Parker and the warm, compassionate alone-at-home Miss Parker.
"Good luck." Broots said as she left.
She passed Mr. Raines, who was going in the room she was just leaving; his cold steel ever-present companion still needing oil. She greeted him cheerfully by name with a big, pleasant smile. Madeline wasn't afraid of the sick old man and she couldn't understand why everyone else was. She saw him as just a dried up old guy very much past his zenith whom the Centre only kept around out of loyalty. She had yet to share her opinion with anyone though, or look into why he was so feared.
~~~~~
By the time she pulled up in front of the gym, her hands were clammy. She was filled with the fear that she wouldn't be able to do it.
Jackie spotted her as soon as she entered the gym. The pleasant sound of bars squeaking and floors springing met her ears. What a comforting sound all of it was! Her former coach came over and gave her a big welcome back hug.
"I want to start back up again. Do you still want to be my coach?" Madeline held her breath.
"Yes, Madeline!" Jackie answered as though she thought that was a stupid question to be asking, "I've been hoping you'd come back now that things have settled down."
Madeline could tell her enthusiasm was real. She wondered for a moment how Jackie knew that "things have settled down" until she remembered Jackie's son Jon must have brought the news home from school.
Jon was also into gymnastics and he and Madeline had been friends their whole lives- ever since their first gymnastics lesson together when they were two and a half. But Madeline was avoiding him, like all guys at school and at the Centre. She still could not bring herself to trust them. Sydney said this was all normal and she hated Steve for doing that to her.
"None of my old stuff fits me anymore." Madeline told her pleased coach.
"Okay, go find something. I'll meet you in the locker room when my class is over in about ten minutes."
Madeline nodded and went into the back room where work-out and small competition clothes were on sale for a fraction of what they cost elsewhere.
What worked and what didn't came back to Madeline as if she hadn't been away. She found a pair of black spandex shorts and a black tank top that resembled a sports bra. This wasn't her usual attire by any means but she knew it was the only thing that would be comfortable during practice. Then she grabbed a large gray sweatshirt that had "JJ's Gym" written on it in black lettering. Jackie tended to keep her gym cool; and ever since moving in with Miss Parker, she had preferred loose clothing that hid her body from attracting very much unwanted attention. Sydney said that was normal, too.
She went into the locker room to change. It had been redone since last time she was here. The half dozen shower stalls were still against the left wall, but now they were beige tile and instead of a flimsy little curtain, there was a door much like a bathroom stall. 'Good.' Madeline thought, 'More privacy.'
Jackie had added more lockers, which Madeline hoped meant Jackie was doing well. The five-foot tall beige lockers now lined the entire back wall as well as the back half of the right wall. Next were a couple of bathroom stalls and sinks. It was all beige, a color Madeline hadn't known Jackie liked so much.
She sat down on one of the new benches in front of the lockers. She didn't know what to do with her street clothes until she had a locker, so she left them on the bench and began to stretch.
~~~~~
Three hours later Madeline let herself into the cottage. She was tired as well as sore but content. She had been so busy grieving and then out-running fists that she hadn't realized how big a part of her life gymnastics really was. She still had a ways to go until she'd be ready for meets but when she and Jackie had sat down to talk about it, they had agreed that even in a few hours, Madeline had improved drastically.
Jackie said that some of the problem was that Madeline needed to get used to the changes her body had gone through in the past few years. She had grown four or five inches and her figure had filled out without the rigors of training.
Miss Parker wasn't home but Madeline knew her late hours. She greeted Bunny and sat down to do the little homework she had. Then she called Sandy to tell her how practice had gone. Her best friend had only encouraging words for her; and Amanda wasn't home.
Bunny was being noisy, which Miss Parker and Madeline took to mean he wanted attention. Bunny was a very person-friendly rabbit who loved to cuddle. So out he came and holding him she remembered that Jarod had given the soft white rabbit to Miss Parker for Christmas.
Madeline wasn't sure about the true story behind Jarod. She knew he was more than the valuable, irreplaceable employee that everyone made him out to be. She didn't know of anywhere else that would go to a one-hundredth of the trouble that the Centre to bring this "employee" back.
He was always sending Miss Parker things that either put her into a blind rage or a depression. Madeline knew that her sometimes pitiless guardian's frequent business trips were all about finding Jarod. She wondered if he was a lover that did her wrong and she was hunting him down with her father's permission; but she knew better than to ask, no matter how much she might want to know the answer.
She had just put Bunny back in his cage with the intent to go on-line and check her e-mail when the phone rang. Thinking it was Amanda returning her call, she picked it up with a cheerful "Hello!"
"Oh... I must have dialed the wrong number.... I'm sorry." A rather sexy male voice said in confusion.
"Wait!!" Madeline cried. Her answering the phone with a welcoming "Hello?" threw people who were used to a snappish "What?!". So she had gotten into the habit that if someone said they had the wrong number, Madeline asked them, "Who were you looking for?"
"A Miss Parker but I have her number in speed dial. She must have just changed it. I'm very sorry to have-"
"This is Miss Parker's. But she's not here right now. Can I give her a message?"
"So..." the pleasing-to-the-ears voice said slowly, like the person who owned it was deep in thought figuring something out, "she has a secretary at home now?" he finally asked in a serious voice.
Madeline laughed before answering, "No. I'm Madeline. She's my legal guardian."
Jarod was silent on the other end of the line for a moment as he tried to process this surprising information. "Are we talking about the same Miss Parker here? The one who lives by the lake and works at the Centre?"
"And doesn't like her first name. That's the one." Madeline added, trying extremely hard not to burst out laughing again. This was by far the best reaction she had ever gotten.
"What makes you think she doesn't like her first name?"
"No one uses it. In fact, no one seems to even know it!! And she refuses to tell me. But who are you?" Said the girl who was getting sick of talking to a complete stranger.
"My name is Jarod." he said cheerfully.
Madeline's eyes widened. 'Who better to ask about the real story than the infamous Jarod himself?'
"Okay, so who are you?" 'Why not cut to the chase?' was Madeline's motto.
"Today?" The confusion returned to his voice, as well as what Madeline thought to be wariness or suspicion.
"All the time!" She said impatiently. "Why is Park looking for you so hard?"
"Why did she say she was?"
He seemed to like answering questions with some of his own and that was a quality Madeline couldn't stand.
"Everyone says you were a wicked valuable employee and you left and she's trying to get you back."
Jarod started laughing so Madeline was sure she hadn't been told the truth. She waited until he calmed down and could explain,
"Hardly!" He said while still chuckling, "Do you really want to know the truth, Madeline?"
"Yes."
"What's your definition of an employee?"
She couldn't see where this was going but she told him "Someone who works for someone else or a company or something and gets paid to usually do a specific job, I guess."
"And is it voluntary; can they leave if they wanted to?"
"I don't know..." Madeline rolled her eyes, "I guess. Well, it depends. Like, if they're teenagers their parents might be making them, or they might not be able to get another, or one that pays so well. But mostly I think it is." 'What does this guy want to hear? He's worse than my English teacher!!'
"Good. I was not an employee by any definition. The Centre kidnapped me when I was a child. I-"
"What?!" Madeline broke in, "You're lying worse than they are!"
"Madeline, I'm not. Please, just hear me out? Please?"
"Alright." She agreed, and listened in disbelief for the next half hour.
"Do you know what happened to Parker's mother, Catherine?"
"Yeah. She killed herself. Why?" Madeline answered slowly.
"Catherine Parker did not kill herself. The Centre killed her."
"Why?" Madeline snapped. She was ready to hang up on this outrageous story she was slowly being told.
"Because they found out she was rescuing children, smuggling them out of the Centre."
"So why didn't she save you?" Madeline asked, triumphant, sure she had found a catch in his story.
"She died before she could rescue us." Jarod sadly informed her. Then he continued and didn't stop until he had told her of his escape and activities since then. The last thing he asked her was if she believed him.
"I don't know." She admitted before hanging up the phone.
~~~~~~~~~~
The Next Morning (Saturday)
Madeline went to the Centre at the same time as Miss Parker because she had an appointment with Sydney; like she did every Saturday morning.
About fifteen minutes into their session he got a phone call.
"He what?" Madeline heard him ask. "Yes. Yes. I'll be right down." His brow was knit in concern.
Sydney often had to leave the office so Madeline didn't mind too much. She liked having time to think about her newly resuscitated gymnastics career.
She was lost in thought when a noise behind her caused her to jump. She whipped around in her chair and saw a man climbing out of the air vent. The ease with which he lowered himself to the floor told Madeline that he did that sort of thing a lot.
Once landed, he looked at her and smiled. Actually, it looked more like a grimace. His face was kind of twisted up and his hair was long and unruly with bushy sideburns.
Madeline immediately got this sense that she had no need to fear him (even though she didn't know why) and softly said "Hi."
He continued to stare at her so she said, "I'm Madeline."
When he still said nothing, she signed it, thinking he might be deaf. Still nothing. She stared back at him for a few minutes before sighing.
"An-ge-lo." He said with a little difficulty.
Madeline smiled and held out her hand, "Nice to meet you Angelo." He smiled and took her slim hand in his.
"Do you live here?" Madeline asked. He nodded slightly.
"You're the strong, silent type, aren't you?" When he didn't answer, she grinned and answered her own question, "Yup!"
Hoping he'd be able to help her figure out everything Jarod and told her, she decided to attempt to get some answers out of the puzzling man Jarod had spoken so highly of on the phone.
"Do you know Jarod?" If he didn't even know Jarod Madeline would know he was lying. And she hoped he had been lying. She didn't want to believe that anyone she knew could be involved in things as horrible as those Jarod had told her.
Again, all she got was an almost imperceptible nod.
"He told me all this bad stuff that the Centre has done. How will I know if he's telling the truth?" She looked mournfully at Angelo. He moved over to the air vent and looked over his shoulder at her. He clearly meant 'Follow me.'
Madeline looked at him, then at Sydney's vacant desk, and back. Then she looked at her watch and back to Sydney's desk.
"Big problem." Angelo said.
Her gaze returned to him and she sighed in resignation, "That better mean Sydney's gonna be gone for a while." She warned him as she went over to where he stood by the vent.
He climbed in and helped her rather awkward entrance into the secret passageway of the Centre. She then followed him this way and that and before long she was clueless as to where in the enormous waste water treatment pl- ah, Centre they were. Madeline's knees were just starting to go numb when her guide stopped. Crawling up beside him, Madeline saw a depression in the silver aluminum of the vents. That depression was overflowing with what looked to Madeline to be miniature CDs.
"What are they?" She whispered because she didn't know if anyone might be nearby to hear them.
He nimbly jumped over the pile and reached for something in the shadows.
He pulled out a silver briefcase. It appeared to be heavy as he set it down next to her with a thud. Then he opened it up.
The top half of it consisted of a screen. The bottom half had lots of little slots, apparently for the small CDs.
Madeline looked to Angelo for an explanation. She guessed that he was going to show her rather than use words and it was confirmed when he reached into the pile and haphazardly pulled one out.
He stuck it in the machine and shades of black and white filled the screen.
It confused Madeline. At first she thought she was looking at a surveillance camera in a prison. The small room was furnished only with a cot, simple table, and chair.
Then in the bottom left hand corner, Madeline noticed the words "Jarod, For Centre Use Only".
"That's Jarod?" She asked in disbelief. Angelo didn't answer but his silence had stopped surprising her.
"Okay, so he lived here. That doesn't prove everything else he said was true. She explained outloud to herself.
Angelo reached back into the pile. This time he was searching for a particular one. He kept flipping them over to look at the back, for what Madeline wasn't sure.
When he found the one he wanted he slipped it in. It showed a kicking, screaming, obviously terrified Jarod being dragged into a room. Madeline's eyes widened as she watched Mr. Raines instruct people about what to do. She held her breath as he was locked in a decompression-type chamber. By the time his heart stopped, she was crying.
Angelo stopped it once they got Jarod's heart beating again. There was no more doubt in Madeline's mind as she crouched in the cool air vent, his screams still echoing in her head.
"How can Park work here?" She asked in a voice filled with horror.
"Scared... sad." Angelo said.
Madeline rolled her eyes; she had been looking for a slightly better answer than that...
"I have to go back. But I look awful!" She dried the tears from her face.
Angelo nodded, which got a laugh from Madeline. He looked at her quizzically with his head slightly tilted to the right. This just made Madeline laugh more, because her dog RoseBud had always done the exact same thing.
She headed back in the direction they had come still chuckling. She went about a dozen feet before remembering she had no idea how to get back to her psychiatrist's office. Angelo let her back to the still empty office. After seeing her safely returned to her chair, he headed off to who knows where.
Madeline grabbed her compact out of her back pocket to see just how bad she looked in good light. Her face was a little red but other than that she figured there were no clues to give away her secret. Their secret.
Madeline didn't have long to wait before the aging psychiatrist returned. He sighed heavily as he sat down.
"Everything alright?" She tried to ask nonchalantly.
He only shook his head in a silent refusal to answer the question.
~~~~~~~~~~
Late April
The Centre
"I'll be home hopefully by nine." Miss Parker said.
"'Kay." Madeline agreed and then headed down the hall towards the elevators that would lead her out of this depressing place. A little over halfway there she turned around. 'Good' she thought when she saw that the hallway was empty. She stopped in front of a door and looked both ways checking to see if the coast was still clear.
Safely in the dark utility closet, Madeline felt her way over to the air vent. She easily climbed in and within minutes she was sitting in Angelo's DSA hiding place.
While she waited for her friend to show up, she thought of the past few weeks. 'I wish Jarod would call me again!' She hadn't heard from him since their first conversation. 'I have to tell him I believe him now! Angelo's been great showing me the DSAs and where the children are and everything, but I need someone I can talk to- with! I can talk to Angelo all I want but I need someone who'll answer my questions. And I need to know how much Park knows without actually asking her!' Angelo had showed her Corridor 15; and on her won she had begun to introduce herself to and get to know the children who lived there.
She looked up expectantly when she heard him rustling towards her. Madeline smiled a greeting and couldn't tell if his next expression was returning that smile or merely one of his many seemingly uncontrollable twitches, as she had decided to call them.
When he headed down a vent at a fairly fast pace, Madeline knew to follow. She felt a chill run up her spine as she wondered where and to whom he was leading her this time.
After crawling for an eternity, Angelo finally stopped in front of a vent cover. Madeline pulled up next to him and rubbed her knees gently. They had toughened up considerably as she had gotten to know the Centre via Angelo's vents but she still hadn't yet acquired the stamina he had.
They were in a new part of the Centre. New to Madeline, anyway. They appeared to be over a boiler room. It looked deserted. Madeline couldn't see why Angelo had brought her there but before she could voice these thoughts (she still talked to him even though he rarely answered), her silent friend was removing the grid.
The heat of the room- which was much bigger than Madeline had originally thought- overpowered her and made breathing difficult. If Angelo was having the same problems, he didn't let on. He just walked through the maze of pipes and tanks. Why he was leading her to a dark, almost black wall, Madeline wasn't sure.
He moved to the right of the wall. When Madeline stopped behind him, she saw a stairway leading down. Not knowing what level they were on to begin with, Madeline saw nothing too unusual in this hidden entryway; except for the fact that it was hidden in a rather peculiar spot that didn't seem to easy or quick to get to.
On the stairwell now, Madeline stopped when she smelled smoke. Not cigarette smoke like she breathed around Miss Parker, but real fire smoke. The place looked like it had been burnt. Madeline could hear wind howling through the wreckage and the plip-plop of water in the distance.
Madeline grabbed Angelo's arm for reassurance before he could get to far ahead of her.
"Where are we?" She demanded.
"S... L 27." Angelo replied slowly.
"What?! There are only 26 sublevels in the Centre, Angelo." Madeline's voice was full of disbelieving scorn.
He just shook his head and started walking. Not wanting to be alone in so eerie a place, Madeline kept a tight grip on his arm.
Angelo was almost acting as a guide showing his guest around the secret abandoned floor.
There were a few rooms with the charred remains of furniture that could have been cells (as Madeline called the rooms where the children lived). Other rooms had tables and chairs with restraints. Madeline shivered as she thought of the torture that must have gone on down here.
Madeline's heart nearly stopped in one room. There was a biohazard suit hanging against the far wall. Angelo grabbed it by the shoulder and quickly spun it around. The abrupt movement caused the skeleton inside to shift. The sound of the glasses that were still perched on it's nose sounded like cannon fire in the eerie silence when they hit the plastic mask. Madeline could not remember ever having been so startled as she grabbed Angelo's arm.
He looked at her with his face all screwed up but let her pull him from the room.
"Can't we leave now, Angelo?" She asked with a very obvious tremor in her voice.
He didn't answer, only led her to yet another room. Madeline hesitated in the doorway, afraid of what might be in there. But Angelo was extremely insistent. First he just looked at her. When she didn't go over to him, he went to her and pulled her into the room.
A quick appraisal of her surroundings assured Madeline that there were no corpses in this room. All she saw was a steel examination table. Curiosity got the better of her and on further inspection she saw that it had leather shackles on it.
Seeing something on the floor on the other side of the table, Madeline cautiously moved around to that side. There was a pile of maybe a dozen needles laying on the ash-littered floor. Madeline shivered at the sight; she hated needles.
"Now we leave." She said in a no nonsense voice. Angelo headed out of the room and Madeline added, "You had better be heading towards the exit, Mister!" She couldn't help smiling when he turned to look at her thoroughly perplexed.
She linked arms with him and they headed to the stairs in silent camaraderie.
The End
Note: Now this series breaks off into two different versions, Version One (called "Cooking With Madeline") being my original direction for the series. Version Two ("The Empty Cottage by the Lake") deals with the idea that Miss Parker didn't survive her third season finale gunshot wound. :-)
by: Danielle : - )
Disclaimer: Everyone except Madeline and her school and gymnastics friends belong to NBC. Thank you for creating such wonderful characters.
Author's Note: In Home I had said at one point that Madeline was 17 and then later 16. She is really supposed to be 16 and still is about sixteen and a half in this story. Sorry for any confusion! : - ) And I'm not sure of the driving laws in Delaware so I just decided it would be 16 and a half for a license so Madeline could drive. If anyone from Delaware would care to enlighten me, I say 'go for it!'. And thanks Jonathan Yip for all your help!
~~~~~
Early April 1997
A Friday, Blue Cove High School
"What?!" Madeline asked in disbelief. She was sitting in her Sociology and Psychology class and one of her more outspoken classmates had just said that if he saw a man and a woman (who was considerably smaller than the man) fighting, he would not step in to stop it, because "it's not my problem".
Madeline's hand had immediately shot up. The teacher noticed and called on her. "What?!" she asked. "How could you not help her?"
"It's not my problem." he said in this isn't-it-obvious tone.
Madeline shook her head, "But if you're not part of the solution, than you're part of the problem! So it is you're problem!"
"You really believe that?" One of his equally vocal friends broke in.
"Yes!" She said passionately. "I can't understand how you could live with yourself knowing you could have done something but didn't. I mean, it's not like you're small, you'd have no problem helping out." He was a big, intimidating football player at least 6'5" and 250 pounds.
"So, you're telling us you would go up and approach them?"
"Yeah!" Now it was her turn to adopt that isn't-it-obvious tone. "If I didn't, I- I couldn't live with myself." She struggled to explain how she felt, "Like... I'd always feel bad, guilty because I didn't help her."
"What if he then turned on you?"
"Well, then at least I tried." She said, "But I wouldn't expect you to understand it."
He opened his mouth to say more but the bell rang and everyone filed out to head to their next class.
~~~~~
The last bell of the day (and week) had just rung and Madeline was heading to her locker at a fairly fast pace.
"Hey Madeline." the voice of her best friend Sandy said behind her.
"Hey." Madeline replied.
"Hi guys!" their friend Amanda said. She had been going in the opposite direction but had pulled a u-turn to walk with them, "You guys busy today?"
"Yeah." Madeline answered, "I'm finally caught up on all my makeup work so I'm starting back at the gym today!" Her friends could see her excitement.
"Really? That's great!" Amanda said.
"I'm kinda nervous." Madeline admitted, "I haven't done so much as a cartwheel in over two years!"
"You don't need to be! You were always great at it! You probably would have gone to Atlanta if you hadn't stopped." Sandy told her.
"I know... but what if I've lost it?"
"You haven't!" Amanda fairly yelled in exasperation.
"Yeah, you can't lose a talent that good." Sandy added.
Madeline smiled at their attempts to reassure her. She did feel better. They parted for their lockers and a few minutes later she met up with Amanda again, who she drove to and from school. They had to sit in Madeline's white '96 Mustang for a few minutes before someone let her pull out.
After dropping Amanda off, Madeline headed to the Centre to see Miss Parker and let her know her plans.
As always, the size of the place shocked Madeline. She could not get over it; or the fact that Mr. Parker ran it. Then she sighed when she remembered how much he hated her.
~~~~~
Mr. Parker had been very upset when he found out what his daughter had done. It hadn't bothered him that she had forged the documents- he was actually proud that she had had the guts to do it. What enraged him was the fact that she had opened up both her home and her heart to a stranger.
He had refused when his daughter approached him about getting Madeline a car so she wouldn't have to drive her to and from school every day since no buses got even near the lake. When he said there was no way he was buying her a car, she had told him "Then I will." He also didn't like the fact that his daughter had seemingly given her free rein of the Centre- letting her come and go as the teenager pleased.
Madeline brought out a defiance in his daughter that he did not like. Actually, he blamed her and Jarod.
But Madeline didn't know his reasoning. All she knew was that her guardian's father hated her.
~~~~~
The Centre
"Hi." Madeline greeted Miss Parker, Sydney, and Broots. She had trusted Broots almost instantaneously and Sydney while he was going through the forgery process with Jarod, who they told her was an extremely valuable employee that the Centre wanted to get back very badly seeing how irreplaceable he was.
"I'm finally all caught up on my work!" She told them triumphantly.
Because of the unusual circumstance that caused Madeline to eventually stop doing homework altogether and fail every test; she had been allowed to make everything from the year up. Every day for the past three months she had stayed after with one teacher or another learning everything the rest of her class had learned since September. She also, entirely on her own, decided to make up every homework assignment and test. The superintendent of schools had allowed her to make up her teacher's lesson plans assignment for assignment and divide it up into the first and second quarters of the year so that ultimately her report card would look like any of her friends.
Now it was time to start gymnastics up again. She had stopped when her mother got cancer, more than two and a half years ago.
"I'm going to the gym to talk to Jackie about starting up again. Hopefully she'll still want to be my coach. And I think I'll stay and see what I can still do even a little decently."
"Okay." Miss Parker said indifferently.
Madeline had gotten used to the two Miss Parker's- the cold, uncaring in-front-of-others Miss Parker and the warm, compassionate alone-at-home Miss Parker.
"Good luck." Broots said as she left.
She passed Mr. Raines, who was going in the room she was just leaving; his cold steel ever-present companion still needing oil. She greeted him cheerfully by name with a big, pleasant smile. Madeline wasn't afraid of the sick old man and she couldn't understand why everyone else was. She saw him as just a dried up old guy very much past his zenith whom the Centre only kept around out of loyalty. She had yet to share her opinion with anyone though, or look into why he was so feared.
~~~~~
By the time she pulled up in front of the gym, her hands were clammy. She was filled with the fear that she wouldn't be able to do it.
Jackie spotted her as soon as she entered the gym. The pleasant sound of bars squeaking and floors springing met her ears. What a comforting sound all of it was! Her former coach came over and gave her a big welcome back hug.
"I want to start back up again. Do you still want to be my coach?" Madeline held her breath.
"Yes, Madeline!" Jackie answered as though she thought that was a stupid question to be asking, "I've been hoping you'd come back now that things have settled down."
Madeline could tell her enthusiasm was real. She wondered for a moment how Jackie knew that "things have settled down" until she remembered Jackie's son Jon must have brought the news home from school.
Jon was also into gymnastics and he and Madeline had been friends their whole lives- ever since their first gymnastics lesson together when they were two and a half. But Madeline was avoiding him, like all guys at school and at the Centre. She still could not bring herself to trust them. Sydney said this was all normal and she hated Steve for doing that to her.
"None of my old stuff fits me anymore." Madeline told her pleased coach.
"Okay, go find something. I'll meet you in the locker room when my class is over in about ten minutes."
Madeline nodded and went into the back room where work-out and small competition clothes were on sale for a fraction of what they cost elsewhere.
What worked and what didn't came back to Madeline as if she hadn't been away. She found a pair of black spandex shorts and a black tank top that resembled a sports bra. This wasn't her usual attire by any means but she knew it was the only thing that would be comfortable during practice. Then she grabbed a large gray sweatshirt that had "JJ's Gym" written on it in black lettering. Jackie tended to keep her gym cool; and ever since moving in with Miss Parker, she had preferred loose clothing that hid her body from attracting very much unwanted attention. Sydney said that was normal, too.
She went into the locker room to change. It had been redone since last time she was here. The half dozen shower stalls were still against the left wall, but now they were beige tile and instead of a flimsy little curtain, there was a door much like a bathroom stall. 'Good.' Madeline thought, 'More privacy.'
Jackie had added more lockers, which Madeline hoped meant Jackie was doing well. The five-foot tall beige lockers now lined the entire back wall as well as the back half of the right wall. Next were a couple of bathroom stalls and sinks. It was all beige, a color Madeline hadn't known Jackie liked so much.
She sat down on one of the new benches in front of the lockers. She didn't know what to do with her street clothes until she had a locker, so she left them on the bench and began to stretch.
~~~~~
Three hours later Madeline let herself into the cottage. She was tired as well as sore but content. She had been so busy grieving and then out-running fists that she hadn't realized how big a part of her life gymnastics really was. She still had a ways to go until she'd be ready for meets but when she and Jackie had sat down to talk about it, they had agreed that even in a few hours, Madeline had improved drastically.
Jackie said that some of the problem was that Madeline needed to get used to the changes her body had gone through in the past few years. She had grown four or five inches and her figure had filled out without the rigors of training.
Miss Parker wasn't home but Madeline knew her late hours. She greeted Bunny and sat down to do the little homework she had. Then she called Sandy to tell her how practice had gone. Her best friend had only encouraging words for her; and Amanda wasn't home.
Bunny was being noisy, which Miss Parker and Madeline took to mean he wanted attention. Bunny was a very person-friendly rabbit who loved to cuddle. So out he came and holding him she remembered that Jarod had given the soft white rabbit to Miss Parker for Christmas.
Madeline wasn't sure about the true story behind Jarod. She knew he was more than the valuable, irreplaceable employee that everyone made him out to be. She didn't know of anywhere else that would go to a one-hundredth of the trouble that the Centre to bring this "employee" back.
He was always sending Miss Parker things that either put her into a blind rage or a depression. Madeline knew that her sometimes pitiless guardian's frequent business trips were all about finding Jarod. She wondered if he was a lover that did her wrong and she was hunting him down with her father's permission; but she knew better than to ask, no matter how much she might want to know the answer.
She had just put Bunny back in his cage with the intent to go on-line and check her e-mail when the phone rang. Thinking it was Amanda returning her call, she picked it up with a cheerful "Hello!"
"Oh... I must have dialed the wrong number.... I'm sorry." A rather sexy male voice said in confusion.
"Wait!!" Madeline cried. Her answering the phone with a welcoming "Hello?" threw people who were used to a snappish "What?!". So she had gotten into the habit that if someone said they had the wrong number, Madeline asked them, "Who were you looking for?"
"A Miss Parker but I have her number in speed dial. She must have just changed it. I'm very sorry to have-"
"This is Miss Parker's. But she's not here right now. Can I give her a message?"
"So..." the pleasing-to-the-ears voice said slowly, like the person who owned it was deep in thought figuring something out, "she has a secretary at home now?" he finally asked in a serious voice.
Madeline laughed before answering, "No. I'm Madeline. She's my legal guardian."
Jarod was silent on the other end of the line for a moment as he tried to process this surprising information. "Are we talking about the same Miss Parker here? The one who lives by the lake and works at the Centre?"
"And doesn't like her first name. That's the one." Madeline added, trying extremely hard not to burst out laughing again. This was by far the best reaction she had ever gotten.
"What makes you think she doesn't like her first name?"
"No one uses it. In fact, no one seems to even know it!! And she refuses to tell me. But who are you?" Said the girl who was getting sick of talking to a complete stranger.
"My name is Jarod." he said cheerfully.
Madeline's eyes widened. 'Who better to ask about the real story than the infamous Jarod himself?'
"Okay, so who are you?" 'Why not cut to the chase?' was Madeline's motto.
"Today?" The confusion returned to his voice, as well as what Madeline thought to be wariness or suspicion.
"All the time!" She said impatiently. "Why is Park looking for you so hard?"
"Why did she say she was?"
He seemed to like answering questions with some of his own and that was a quality Madeline couldn't stand.
"Everyone says you were a wicked valuable employee and you left and she's trying to get you back."
Jarod started laughing so Madeline was sure she hadn't been told the truth. She waited until he calmed down and could explain,
"Hardly!" He said while still chuckling, "Do you really want to know the truth, Madeline?"
"Yes."
"What's your definition of an employee?"
She couldn't see where this was going but she told him "Someone who works for someone else or a company or something and gets paid to usually do a specific job, I guess."
"And is it voluntary; can they leave if they wanted to?"
"I don't know..." Madeline rolled her eyes, "I guess. Well, it depends. Like, if they're teenagers their parents might be making them, or they might not be able to get another, or one that pays so well. But mostly I think it is." 'What does this guy want to hear? He's worse than my English teacher!!'
"Good. I was not an employee by any definition. The Centre kidnapped me when I was a child. I-"
"What?!" Madeline broke in, "You're lying worse than they are!"
"Madeline, I'm not. Please, just hear me out? Please?"
"Alright." She agreed, and listened in disbelief for the next half hour.
"Do you know what happened to Parker's mother, Catherine?"
"Yeah. She killed herself. Why?" Madeline answered slowly.
"Catherine Parker did not kill herself. The Centre killed her."
"Why?" Madeline snapped. She was ready to hang up on this outrageous story she was slowly being told.
"Because they found out she was rescuing children, smuggling them out of the Centre."
"So why didn't she save you?" Madeline asked, triumphant, sure she had found a catch in his story.
"She died before she could rescue us." Jarod sadly informed her. Then he continued and didn't stop until he had told her of his escape and activities since then. The last thing he asked her was if she believed him.
"I don't know." She admitted before hanging up the phone.
~~~~~~~~~~
The Next Morning (Saturday)
Madeline went to the Centre at the same time as Miss Parker because she had an appointment with Sydney; like she did every Saturday morning.
About fifteen minutes into their session he got a phone call.
"He what?" Madeline heard him ask. "Yes. Yes. I'll be right down." His brow was knit in concern.
Sydney often had to leave the office so Madeline didn't mind too much. She liked having time to think about her newly resuscitated gymnastics career.
She was lost in thought when a noise behind her caused her to jump. She whipped around in her chair and saw a man climbing out of the air vent. The ease with which he lowered himself to the floor told Madeline that he did that sort of thing a lot.
Once landed, he looked at her and smiled. Actually, it looked more like a grimace. His face was kind of twisted up and his hair was long and unruly with bushy sideburns.
Madeline immediately got this sense that she had no need to fear him (even though she didn't know why) and softly said "Hi."
He continued to stare at her so she said, "I'm Madeline."
When he still said nothing, she signed it, thinking he might be deaf. Still nothing. She stared back at him for a few minutes before sighing.
"An-ge-lo." He said with a little difficulty.
Madeline smiled and held out her hand, "Nice to meet you Angelo." He smiled and took her slim hand in his.
"Do you live here?" Madeline asked. He nodded slightly.
"You're the strong, silent type, aren't you?" When he didn't answer, she grinned and answered her own question, "Yup!"
Hoping he'd be able to help her figure out everything Jarod and told her, she decided to attempt to get some answers out of the puzzling man Jarod had spoken so highly of on the phone.
"Do you know Jarod?" If he didn't even know Jarod Madeline would know he was lying. And she hoped he had been lying. She didn't want to believe that anyone she knew could be involved in things as horrible as those Jarod had told her.
Again, all she got was an almost imperceptible nod.
"He told me all this bad stuff that the Centre has done. How will I know if he's telling the truth?" She looked mournfully at Angelo. He moved over to the air vent and looked over his shoulder at her. He clearly meant 'Follow me.'
Madeline looked at him, then at Sydney's vacant desk, and back. Then she looked at her watch and back to Sydney's desk.
"Big problem." Angelo said.
Her gaze returned to him and she sighed in resignation, "That better mean Sydney's gonna be gone for a while." She warned him as she went over to where he stood by the vent.
He climbed in and helped her rather awkward entrance into the secret passageway of the Centre. She then followed him this way and that and before long she was clueless as to where in the enormous waste water treatment pl- ah, Centre they were. Madeline's knees were just starting to go numb when her guide stopped. Crawling up beside him, Madeline saw a depression in the silver aluminum of the vents. That depression was overflowing with what looked to Madeline to be miniature CDs.
"What are they?" She whispered because she didn't know if anyone might be nearby to hear them.
He nimbly jumped over the pile and reached for something in the shadows.
He pulled out a silver briefcase. It appeared to be heavy as he set it down next to her with a thud. Then he opened it up.
The top half of it consisted of a screen. The bottom half had lots of little slots, apparently for the small CDs.
Madeline looked to Angelo for an explanation. She guessed that he was going to show her rather than use words and it was confirmed when he reached into the pile and haphazardly pulled one out.
He stuck it in the machine and shades of black and white filled the screen.
It confused Madeline. At first she thought she was looking at a surveillance camera in a prison. The small room was furnished only with a cot, simple table, and chair.
Then in the bottom left hand corner, Madeline noticed the words "Jarod, For Centre Use Only".
"That's Jarod?" She asked in disbelief. Angelo didn't answer but his silence had stopped surprising her.
"Okay, so he lived here. That doesn't prove everything else he said was true. She explained outloud to herself.
Angelo reached back into the pile. This time he was searching for a particular one. He kept flipping them over to look at the back, for what Madeline wasn't sure.
When he found the one he wanted he slipped it in. It showed a kicking, screaming, obviously terrified Jarod being dragged into a room. Madeline's eyes widened as she watched Mr. Raines instruct people about what to do. She held her breath as he was locked in a decompression-type chamber. By the time his heart stopped, she was crying.
Angelo stopped it once they got Jarod's heart beating again. There was no more doubt in Madeline's mind as she crouched in the cool air vent, his screams still echoing in her head.
"How can Park work here?" She asked in a voice filled with horror.
"Scared... sad." Angelo said.
Madeline rolled her eyes; she had been looking for a slightly better answer than that...
"I have to go back. But I look awful!" She dried the tears from her face.
Angelo nodded, which got a laugh from Madeline. He looked at her quizzically with his head slightly tilted to the right. This just made Madeline laugh more, because her dog RoseBud had always done the exact same thing.
She headed back in the direction they had come still chuckling. She went about a dozen feet before remembering she had no idea how to get back to her psychiatrist's office. Angelo let her back to the still empty office. After seeing her safely returned to her chair, he headed off to who knows where.
Madeline grabbed her compact out of her back pocket to see just how bad she looked in good light. Her face was a little red but other than that she figured there were no clues to give away her secret. Their secret.
Madeline didn't have long to wait before the aging psychiatrist returned. He sighed heavily as he sat down.
"Everything alright?" She tried to ask nonchalantly.
He only shook his head in a silent refusal to answer the question.
~~~~~~~~~~
Late April
The Centre
"I'll be home hopefully by nine." Miss Parker said.
"'Kay." Madeline agreed and then headed down the hall towards the elevators that would lead her out of this depressing place. A little over halfway there she turned around. 'Good' she thought when she saw that the hallway was empty. She stopped in front of a door and looked both ways checking to see if the coast was still clear.
Safely in the dark utility closet, Madeline felt her way over to the air vent. She easily climbed in and within minutes she was sitting in Angelo's DSA hiding place.
While she waited for her friend to show up, she thought of the past few weeks. 'I wish Jarod would call me again!' She hadn't heard from him since their first conversation. 'I have to tell him I believe him now! Angelo's been great showing me the DSAs and where the children are and everything, but I need someone I can talk to- with! I can talk to Angelo all I want but I need someone who'll answer my questions. And I need to know how much Park knows without actually asking her!' Angelo had showed her Corridor 15; and on her won she had begun to introduce herself to and get to know the children who lived there.
She looked up expectantly when she heard him rustling towards her. Madeline smiled a greeting and couldn't tell if his next expression was returning that smile or merely one of his many seemingly uncontrollable twitches, as she had decided to call them.
When he headed down a vent at a fairly fast pace, Madeline knew to follow. She felt a chill run up her spine as she wondered where and to whom he was leading her this time.
After crawling for an eternity, Angelo finally stopped in front of a vent cover. Madeline pulled up next to him and rubbed her knees gently. They had toughened up considerably as she had gotten to know the Centre via Angelo's vents but she still hadn't yet acquired the stamina he had.
They were in a new part of the Centre. New to Madeline, anyway. They appeared to be over a boiler room. It looked deserted. Madeline couldn't see why Angelo had brought her there but before she could voice these thoughts (she still talked to him even though he rarely answered), her silent friend was removing the grid.
The heat of the room- which was much bigger than Madeline had originally thought- overpowered her and made breathing difficult. If Angelo was having the same problems, he didn't let on. He just walked through the maze of pipes and tanks. Why he was leading her to a dark, almost black wall, Madeline wasn't sure.
He moved to the right of the wall. When Madeline stopped behind him, she saw a stairway leading down. Not knowing what level they were on to begin with, Madeline saw nothing too unusual in this hidden entryway; except for the fact that it was hidden in a rather peculiar spot that didn't seem to easy or quick to get to.
On the stairwell now, Madeline stopped when she smelled smoke. Not cigarette smoke like she breathed around Miss Parker, but real fire smoke. The place looked like it had been burnt. Madeline could hear wind howling through the wreckage and the plip-plop of water in the distance.
Madeline grabbed Angelo's arm for reassurance before he could get to far ahead of her.
"Where are we?" She demanded.
"S... L 27." Angelo replied slowly.
"What?! There are only 26 sublevels in the Centre, Angelo." Madeline's voice was full of disbelieving scorn.
He just shook his head and started walking. Not wanting to be alone in so eerie a place, Madeline kept a tight grip on his arm.
Angelo was almost acting as a guide showing his guest around the secret abandoned floor.
There were a few rooms with the charred remains of furniture that could have been cells (as Madeline called the rooms where the children lived). Other rooms had tables and chairs with restraints. Madeline shivered as she thought of the torture that must have gone on down here.
Madeline's heart nearly stopped in one room. There was a biohazard suit hanging against the far wall. Angelo grabbed it by the shoulder and quickly spun it around. The abrupt movement caused the skeleton inside to shift. The sound of the glasses that were still perched on it's nose sounded like cannon fire in the eerie silence when they hit the plastic mask. Madeline could not remember ever having been so startled as she grabbed Angelo's arm.
He looked at her with his face all screwed up but let her pull him from the room.
"Can't we leave now, Angelo?" She asked with a very obvious tremor in her voice.
He didn't answer, only led her to yet another room. Madeline hesitated in the doorway, afraid of what might be in there. But Angelo was extremely insistent. First he just looked at her. When she didn't go over to him, he went to her and pulled her into the room.
A quick appraisal of her surroundings assured Madeline that there were no corpses in this room. All she saw was a steel examination table. Curiosity got the better of her and on further inspection she saw that it had leather shackles on it.
Seeing something on the floor on the other side of the table, Madeline cautiously moved around to that side. There was a pile of maybe a dozen needles laying on the ash-littered floor. Madeline shivered at the sight; she hated needles.
"Now we leave." She said in a no nonsense voice. Angelo headed out of the room and Madeline added, "You had better be heading towards the exit, Mister!" She couldn't help smiling when he turned to look at her thoroughly perplexed.
She linked arms with him and they headed to the stairs in silent camaraderie.
The End
Note: Now this series breaks off into two different versions, Version One (called "Cooking With Madeline") being my original direction for the series. Version Two ("The Empty Cottage by the Lake") deals with the idea that Miss Parker didn't survive her third season finale gunshot wound. :-)