The Amanda Project: Book 4: Unraveled by Amanda Valentino, Cathleen Davitt Bell Page A
Authors: Amanda Valentino, Cathleen Davitt Bell
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saving our children’s lives.
Until you hear otherwise, change your name every time you are required to write it down. Never use names of people or places on the phone. If you’ve been one place a week, it’s time to go. If you thinksomeone’s following you, hit the road. Do this for a year, and if you feel you are safe, make a new email account at a public terminal and send the words “missing you” to [email protected]. Travel two hundred miles, switching directions before you check for a reply. You’ll get instructions from there.
All I can do is hope and pray you’ll never see this note, that you will never need to read this,that the stuff I’m worried will happen is too terrible to be real. And please know that if there is any way for me to watch over you all from beyond, I will be with you.
Always,
George
The day after I found and read this letter, the coffee can was gone. I must have folded the letter funny or made some other kind of slip-up that let my mom know I’d read it. Still, she said nothing to me. Twomonths later, when we were living in Orion, I found the coffee can again—it was hidden inside a canister marked FLOUR (no one uses flour in our house), but the letter was gone.
Callie hiccupped. Or at least I thought she hiccupped. When I looked up from the research files I saw her standing by a shelf of puzzles, holding one in her hands as if it were a bomb that might explode any second. Hereyes were wide, and a tear had slipped out of one of them.
“What is it?” Nia asked.
“This puzzle,” Callie whispered. “It’s got five thousand pieces and none of them are the same shape. There’s only one company in Germany that makes puzzles this way.”
“How do you know that?” asked Hal.
“Because my mom special-ordered this exact one. Two Christmases ago. She said it reminded her of one of herfavorite things she had as a kid.”
“Oh, man,” Hal said.
She drew a deep breath as if she could inhale her feelings. “I can’t think about this now. Not now. The guards.”
“She’s absolutely right,” said Nia sharply, giving Hal a warning glance.
“What do you think is through there?” said Hal, as if to distract Callie. He pointed to a set of double doors also equipped with a buzzer entry panel—wasthis some kind of suite?
This door was unlocked too. Hal opened it and we all stepped into a room that looked like a hospital. Or a doctor’s office. Or something in between. There were examination bays separated from one another by curtains. There were exam tables, a few hospital beds, old metal cabinets with doors hanging off their hinges, ancient machines with leather seats and small screensthat looked like they came from the dawn of the computer age.
In one corner, I saw about a dozen lights on stands, like you’d have in an operating room. Most of the glass on the lamps was cracked and they were super dusty, but they probably had been pretty powerful. “It’s a set-up for surgery? Were they doing operations in here?” Hal wondered aloud.
“I wonder if this is where they went whenthey had to visit the nurse?” Callie said.
“Did they do electroshock therapy here too?” Nia asked, pointing to a bed with electrodes hanging off the side, an ancient-looking machine next to it with a big scary dial.
“Or was it straight-up torture,” Hal said. “I mean, you look at this stuff, I can see why it would be worth it to take an IQ test over and over in the freezing cold to avoid havingto come here.”
Nia rested her hand on an exam table. “Wait,” she said. “I’m getting something here but it’s faint. Maybe I’d have a better sense of it if we held hands?” It only took me a second to realize she was talking about the charge that seemed to flow among us when we held hands. I guess she thought this might make us stronger.
Callie and Hal understood this right away too, and we allgrabbed for each other’s hands.
I immediately felt the charge. “Is this helping
Until you hear otherwise, change your name every time you are required to write it down. Never use names of people or places on the phone. If you’ve been one place a week, it’s time to go. If you thinksomeone’s following you, hit the road. Do this for a year, and if you feel you are safe, make a new email account at a public terminal and send the words “missing you” to [email protected]. Travel two hundred miles, switching directions before you check for a reply. You’ll get instructions from there.
All I can do is hope and pray you’ll never see this note, that you will never need to read this,that the stuff I’m worried will happen is too terrible to be real. And please know that if there is any way for me to watch over you all from beyond, I will be with you.
Always,
George
The day after I found and read this letter, the coffee can was gone. I must have folded the letter funny or made some other kind of slip-up that let my mom know I’d read it. Still, she said nothing to me. Twomonths later, when we were living in Orion, I found the coffee can again—it was hidden inside a canister marked FLOUR (no one uses flour in our house), but the letter was gone.
Callie hiccupped. Or at least I thought she hiccupped. When I looked up from the research files I saw her standing by a shelf of puzzles, holding one in her hands as if it were a bomb that might explode any second. Hereyes were wide, and a tear had slipped out of one of them.
“What is it?” Nia asked.
“This puzzle,” Callie whispered. “It’s got five thousand pieces and none of them are the same shape. There’s only one company in Germany that makes puzzles this way.”
“How do you know that?” asked Hal.
“Because my mom special-ordered this exact one. Two Christmases ago. She said it reminded her of one of herfavorite things she had as a kid.”
“Oh, man,” Hal said.
She drew a deep breath as if she could inhale her feelings. “I can’t think about this now. Not now. The guards.”
“She’s absolutely right,” said Nia sharply, giving Hal a warning glance.
“What do you think is through there?” said Hal, as if to distract Callie. He pointed to a set of double doors also equipped with a buzzer entry panel—wasthis some kind of suite?
This door was unlocked too. Hal opened it and we all stepped into a room that looked like a hospital. Or a doctor’s office. Or something in between. There were examination bays separated from one another by curtains. There were exam tables, a few hospital beds, old metal cabinets with doors hanging off their hinges, ancient machines with leather seats and small screensthat looked like they came from the dawn of the computer age.
In one corner, I saw about a dozen lights on stands, like you’d have in an operating room. Most of the glass on the lamps was cracked and they were super dusty, but they probably had been pretty powerful. “It’s a set-up for surgery? Were they doing operations in here?” Hal wondered aloud.
“I wonder if this is where they went whenthey had to visit the nurse?” Callie said.
“Did they do electroshock therapy here too?” Nia asked, pointing to a bed with electrodes hanging off the side, an ancient-looking machine next to it with a big scary dial.
“Or was it straight-up torture,” Hal said. “I mean, you look at this stuff, I can see why it would be worth it to take an IQ test over and over in the freezing cold to avoid havingto come here.”
Nia rested her hand on an exam table. “Wait,” she said. “I’m getting something here but it’s faint. Maybe I’d have a better sense of it if we held hands?” It only took me a second to realize she was talking about the charge that seemed to flow among us when we held hands. I guess she thought this might make us stronger.
Callie and Hal understood this right away too, and we allgrabbed for each other’s hands.
I immediately felt the charge. “Is this helping
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