Chapter Twenty One

Delphi

Dinah and I stood there staring at each other not unlike the way we had the day before. This was interesting to me. I'd already said what I wanted to say, and I waited for something else to come up, something else for us to rip apart and analyze away. Nothing came up. I couldn't seem to make my exit. Partially because I was right in the fact that I couldn't seem to walk away form Dinah, and partially because she was my ride and it would be a long walk home. I wanted to escape, get out of this uncomfortable situation, but what would running have done? If I went down to the Delphi computers, I would be interrupting whatever talk Helena and Ms. Gordon were having, and I couldn't do that. Not when they needed to talk like they did. Suddenly Dinah asked, "So... You said that your parents called?" Okay, change of subject. I can play that game. I nodded. "Where were they?"

"Las Vegas," When my friend's eyebrows shot up, I smiled. "That's what I said." I looked at the alarm clock. It said it was nearing one in the afternoon.

"Why didn't you tell me?"

"I don't know. You were at my porch looking almost the same as you had when your mother came back and my abilities started to show. I forgot," I lied. I didn't forget, but where in a 'break up' scene do you casually mention that your parents are missing?

"So you were there in the middle of all that madness, your uncle was babbling about pixies, your parents were gone, someone thought you were Madonna, and the one who claimed to be your best friend walks away from you. You must have felt so alone." I did, but it was over, and I told her as much.

"Well, sure, but things got better when we patched things up yesterday and Uncle Leonard got to my house." Still, I knew she felt bad for not being there when she felt I needed her the most. I shrugged. "Either way, nothing can be done about it now. Just- don't do it again, I guess." That earned me a small chuckle, and I smiled in return. There was a knock on Dinah's bedroom door, and after Dinah hollered for the person on the other side, no doubt Ms. Gordon, to enter, then door opened.

"May I borrow Gabby for a few minutes?" Dinah nodded, and I followed my teacher out of Dinah's room. Ms. Gordon told my friend that it would have only taken about fifteen minutes tops. We went down the ramp together in silence until we got to the Delphi computers where I watched the activities on each monitors. I felt I could watch them all day and understood why Barbara seemed to be glued to them all the time. I would have been, too if I were her, especially after what had happened. Ms. Gordon motioned for me to sit down in a lonely computer chair that seemed to only be used when Dinah or Helena were looking up something, which was a rare occurrence, as Ms. Gordon didn't want them, especially Dinah, who didn't know the ins and outs of the Delphi yet, near it. The poor chair was cast way off to the far edge of the system. I sat down and stared at the monitor nearest to the chair, which had snowfall and the entrance to a whole in the wall type of shop called No Man's Land Collectables. If I remember right, it was a shop owned by a friend of Helena's from high school, but there was something special about the shop, something I had forgotten. "Are you alright?" I was pulled from my thoughts by this question. I nodded slowly, looking from the monitor to her.

"Yeah. Dinah said I'd over excreted myself by using my abilities past their limits." Ms. Gordon nodded, bit I knew she wasn't just asking about that. Did she sense something from me? Could she see how shaken up the kiss had left me? She watched me for a second, and I eventually looked away from her green eyes back to the monitor. We were quiet for a moment, and I felt from Barbara that she was trying to figure out how to say something, but as usual, her mind was racing so fast, I couldn't grasp onto a single thought long enough to understand what that thought was. It was like they flashed about in bits and pieces at a lightning rate, only to be put together later if you were to understand the sequence.

"Remember when you were saying that you thought Dinah was the reason for some of the changes in you powers?" I nodded. "I've been thinking about it allot since yesterday and I think you're right. Dinah's not the best at keeping her powers under control when her emotions are high. So of course when she ran to you, she was feeling the hurt and betrayal of her mother."

" 'Abandoned' was one of the first words I heard from her," I said., and Ms. Gordon nodded this time.

"I'd assume the part of your mind that had locked your powers away must have recognized what the static was, and it must have been stimulated enough by it to allow you to hear voices and feel emotions."

"Just like that?" I asked.

"Not everything in life- in 'the life' is complicated. As humans- and metahumans, we have a tendency to make it so. Dinah's powers radiated outside of her body awakened your power, 'just like that'. Of course, other things could have easily factored in, but that seems to be what it all boils down to."

"That makes sense. And the fact that we are both telepaths, I would assume that played a part in why it was so easy to hear things from Dinah, or it was easier to hear some things from Dinah at first than anyone else."

"Could be." I looked around, not hearing anything else. I didn't feel Helena's thoughts or grief. I felt Dinah's regret and confusion, and more than that, hunger, but I tried my best to block that out. I felt Barbara's slight concern, the pain of the last few days, and something else that didn't quite belong within her considering the moment- curiosity.

"Hey, where is Helena?" I asked.

"She didn't want to talk. She wasn't ready," Barbara said in a small voice if I ever did hear one.

"She wasn't ready to forgive herself," I countered, and I watched as Ms. looked away, lost in thought. This time, I didn't try to keep up. If I wanted to, I could just close my door. As it was, it was open slightly, so I heard the thoughts still, but like the humming if I wanted to, I could tune them out. "I'll bet it's hard. I can't imagine what it's like for her right now," I murmured, looking at the clock face, covered in black plastic covering.

"I can't either. It's going to take some time." She looked at me square in the eye, and she watched me for a second before adding 'for all of us." It was another one of those statements that had a hidden, deeper meaning if the look in her eyes has anything to do with it. Did that include me? I thought. Of course it does, my mind countered. Why else would she have looked at me like that if it didn't. Finally, she asked, "Will you be okay?"

"I'm still here," I said, thinking more about Dinah than the fact that I was still in one piece and in fact okay.

"Yes, you are. Thank you," I felt that she too was thinking of Dinah. She was talking about the things she'd said that week Dinah wasn't in school after her mother died. She was right, too. Things definitely got worse before they even thought about getting any better, but hopefully I w as there for her when she needed someone the most. Hopefully I will continue to be there for her no matter how complicated our friendship got. "You'll let me know if that changes?" Ms. Gordon surprised me by asking.

"It won't," I didn't mean for my tone to be clipped. I didn't mean to show that I had taken any offence to that sincere question, but I actually had. It felt as if she thought I was just going to leave when things got hard, but things were already hard. As if I had passed some sort of test, Ms. Gordon smiled at me, though it didn't reach her eyes. I understood then what Dinah had meant about her eyes 'making jewelry jealous'. I remembered earlier in the semester when she would smile at the students, myself included. This smile was so much dimmer than those, and I wondered, as Dinah must have, if anyone would ever see that smile again from her.

"Good," she said, almost absently. We were in silence after that when a couple of minutes later there was a slow low toned beeping noise at the Delphi, which sounded almost like a dying battery. Ms. Gordon wheeled over to one of the monitors. She didn't seem worried, but I was a little bit nervous that it might have been some of the people who'd gone mad enough to kill someone possibly causing more problems now that they knew everything.

"Is everything okay?" I asked. She didn't answer me at first as she typed in commands in that looked like HTML, but at my angle of where she was, I couldn't quite read it even if I did know the code. Then she turned to look at me. She studied me again, then smiled before waving me over. I stood up and slowly approached, not sure why I felt something big was about to happen.

"Yes, everything is fine now. I've been downloading security programs from the computers of the New Gorham PD. The last time I had done this, I almost got caught, but they couldn't tell where the hack had come from until after I was done and disconnected from their system. Now, I am undetected. Anyway, this program has been updated, so if anything bats an eye around here or in Bludhavem I'll know about it."

"That is so cool in a creepy stalker sort of way," I told her, and she laughed.

"Yes, well... This creepy stalker keeps the city safe, or at least I used to..."

"You still do, and when this water under the bridge settles, you will," I assured her, but she shook her head. I looked away when she didn't say anything, but felt her eyes on me. I wanted to scream at her 'WHAT? Do I have a zit that I don't know about?', but I respected Ms. Gordon too much to actually say that to her. I just wish I wasn't under her microscope. I looked from my shoes to the computer. "So... what does this program do? Are there, like, cameras and motion sensors that are hooked into the main computers at the police station- and the Delphi, that would set off an alarm or something? 'Cause that would be so cool."

"You're almost dead on, only it's not just security cameras and motion detector. It's walkie talkies, any sort of radio wave some computer systems in large businesses, what have you." My eyebrows rose in surprise.

"Anyone who acts up now is going down." I said. Ms. Gordon seemed glad to seem y enthusiasm. "No one can use the other night as an excuse to get off on a temporary insanity plea, can they?" I asked her, trying to read anything on the computer monitor, but only saw numbers and symbols meshed together in a way that would never make sense to me.

"I doubt it. Anyone who confesses to what they've done will get jail time, I'm sure, but because of how many there are, I doubt they'd stay there for long. It's get crowded quickly. This program will have a watchful eye on them, and can decipher if they acted normally before and after the crime." I nodded, trying to follow her.

"So, you can't do anything about that night, huh?"

"Nothing more than to watch the surveillance cameras that we have of their whereabouts. If we have that feed, that would be the only thing that would prove their case, but other than that, nothing can really be done about that right now." I nodded.

"That's good, I guess. Who knows what would hit the fan if they could just say, 'oops, I was insane, must have been in the water'..." Barbara smiled at my sarcastic impersonation of a criminal. Dinah slowly walked to the ramp and looked down at us.

"You ready to go, or..." She looked from me to Ms. Gordon to me again with a question in her eyes. Though my door was open, I couldn't read what she was thinking. I felt the hesitation and nervousness, though. She was wondering if we were done talking. Something told me we weren't, that Ms. Gordon had more to discuss with me, but she waved me off.

"Yeah," I said, "I'm ready." I looked back at Ms. Gordon. "Good luck with your program," I said, and she smiled at that.

"Thanks, but I'm not sure I'll need it."

"Just in case... See ya'," I said.

"Bye Gabby." I followed Dinah to the elevators, stealing another glance at my teacher, who was glued to the screen.

"So what did you talk about?" Dinah asked nervously, her hands fidgeting with the frayed strings on her sweater.

"You. Apparently out of curiosity, Ms. Gordon went looking for your records when you first got here to New Gorham and found some records and some elementary school pictures, which she shared with me." Dinah's eyes went wide as she pushed the button for the basement level.

"She didn't!" Dinah said in almost a gasp, and I couldn't help the laughter that escaped me.

"No, she didn't-" I got a swat on the arm as my shoulders shook with my laughter.

"You brat!" I continued to laugh, as Dinah crossed her arms and waited for me to calm down.

"Seriously," I said after a moment, "it was sort of confusing. Half of the time, I wasn't sure what we were talking about. Sometimes it would be about one subject, or so I thought, but then she'd say something that makes me think she was talking about everything."

"That's Barbara for you."

"Yeah. Other than that, she was showing me a little bit of the program thing she'd be downloading, which I think it way cool," I said. We reached the Hummer, and as Dinah turned the radio down from when it was blasted before on the way over, I looked at the clock on it. It was about half past one.

"I'm sure you did. Don't get too lost in the enigma that is Barbara. A lot of her facade is pretending she knows everything, and though she knows a lot more than most people, nobody knows everything." I didn't say anything, but nodded in my agreement. "So... that movie theater by the mall is due to re-open next week... You want to see something? With me?" The way she asked was nervous, almost as if- 'No, I can't get my hopes up. She's already said no, and after that kiss... well, it is obvious that her answer is still no,' I thought.

"Sure," I said, keeping my voice neutral. "I'm sure by then things will be cool at home, too." Why was I speaking to her as if I was speaking about the weather? It was snowing a little harder, by the way, so Dinah took me straight home before we got stuck somewhere, though I doubted the Hummer could get stuck anywhere.

"I'll call you," Dinah said before I got out of the Hummer. I nodded.

"I look forward to it." As Dinah drove off, I heard the door open, and saw Uncle Leonard, who immediately started to resemble a mother hen as he waved his arm, gesturing for me to get in the house as if he was afraid of snow.

"You're going to freeze to death. Get inside. Your parents just called from the airport in Vegas. They're on their way home. I just hope the snow can hold off long enough to let them land." I nodded again, feeling as if my neck would snap and my head would roll to the side with all the nodding I have done in the last hour alone. I walked into the house after stamping my boots against the outer wall of the house.