Teal was already eating and closing her eyes with pleasure. I was the most surprised of us all that I had an appetite after what we had just been through, but nervousness burned calories, I guess. I ate as fast as they did and enjoyed what I was eating just as much.
When we were finished, we went to the doorway because we heard a loud roaring sound. We saw a helicopter landing. Two men in suits and a uniformed policeman who looked like a general emerged, bent over to avoid the propellers, and ran toward the ruins of the house. Many more patrol cars, another ambulance,
firemen and police were moving about the grounds and around the smoldering hacienda. Off to the left, I saw Natani and his nephew surrounded by policemen, who were listening to them answer questions.
“Who's that in the helicopter, the president?” Teal wondered aloud.
“What's going to happen to us now?” Robin asked.
Both Teal and I turned and looked at her. Funny, I thought, how I had never even considered it until she had just mentioned it. What would be done with us?
“Whatever it is, it'll be a vacation compared to this,” Teal replied.
Somehow, I didn't believe a vacation was what was ahead for us.
Broken Wings 2 - Midnight Flight
Fly Away Home
A he two men in suits whom we had seen come in the helicopter joined Alex and Lieutenant Rowling when they returned to the barn barracks. Once again, Alex told us to sit on a cot. She sat on the one brought closer to us, and the three men stood around and stared down at us as if we were extraterrestrials or something that had just been found in the desert.
“We need your help to understand what exactly happened here,” Alex began in a soft, friendly tone.
None of the men smiled. I had the feeling that if she weren't there, they would beat every answer out of us.
“All three of you were sent here as part of the juvenile recovery program, correct?” she asked, thumbing through some pages in a file she carried.
“Was that what they called it?” Teal asked, looking at Robin and me as if we had kept it a secret from her.
“I never heard that term, Teal,” I said.
“I thought it was part of the garbage recycle program,” Robin muttered.
“Maybe we should conduct this interrogation someplace else,” Lieutenant Rowling growled, “like the state's maximum security prison.”
Alex held up her right hand without turning to him. She kept her eyes on us.
“Listen to me, girls. People are dead. This is an obvious case of felonious arson.”
“Murder is a better word,” Lieutenant Rowling corrected.
Alex closed and opened her eyes, again without looking up at him. “Before we can take you to more comfortable surroundings and see about your futures, we need to know as much as possible about what transpired here. How long have you girls been here?” she asked, flipping through those pages again.
We looked at each other, and then, after a moment, when no one replied, we all just laughed.
The men again looked ready to pounce and pound us.
“We're not being disrespectful, Alex,” I said. “We've all lost track of time. It seems like a very long time, but I imagine it's not.”
“When you arrived here, these other girls, Mindy and Gia, were already here, however?”
“Yes,” Robin said.
“Is Mindy dead?” I asked. I looked up quickly at Lieutenant Rowling, anticipating his saying again that they were the ones who asked the questions, not us. “We're worried about her. We don't know what to believe.”
Alex nodded. “We understand she did attempt suicide. She's at a clinic. A mental clinic, and she is in treatment.”
“She didn't die?” Teal asked, then looked at me.
“Why did she get to go to a clinic and not Gia?” I wondered aloud. “Maybe none of this would have happened then.”
“Why do you say that? Was Gia angry about Mindy?” Alex asked.
“She told us she was dead. I don't think she was lying. I think she really believed it, so, yes, she was upset about her. When we returned from our picnic in the desert, we found her to be very different. She didn't talk to us very much. She slept a lot,” I said.
“What did she actually do?” Teal asked.
Robin and I looked up in anticipation of hearing the gruesome details.
“Did she talk to you girls about doing anything?” Alex replied instead of answering directly.
“No,” I said.
“All she did was work, eat, and write in her notebook,” Robin offered. “Like us.”
“Notebook?”
“Dr. Foreman made us write in notebooks,” Teal said. “If we didn't do it, we lost privileges or were punished. After we had done so this time, we were supposed to get our mattresses, pillows, and blankets back,” she added with indignation, as if she were lodging a complaint with a hotel manager. “We handed them in and never heard a word.”
“Did Gia hand in her notebook, too?” Alex asked.
“No. It's right there, under the pillow.” I nodded at Gia's cot.
Lieutenant Rowling, probably frustrated with just standing and listening and not applying some sort of electric torture, lunged at the cot and found the note-
book. He opened it, then smirked with disappointment and handed it to Alex. I don't know what he was expecting to find between the covers. Maybe a confession.
Alex read some of it quickly, nodded, and handed it to the shorter of the two well-dressed men. He began to read it with the other man looking over his shoulder.
Alex turned back to us. “Just give me a quick understanding of what went on here.”
“Went on?” Teal asked, tilting her head as if she were talking to a complete idiot.
“You had classes you attended. You talked about good and bad behavior. You had therapy sessions with Dr. Foreman, who tried to help you understand why you were getting into more and more trouble. I imagine you had your chores every day, helped with the management of the ranch, the
