Kingdom Keepers: The Syndrome Read Free

orientation…”
    “Did he? Oh, how silly of me not to notice. Thank you, Amanda. You’re right: what a waste.”
    “Yeah,” I said. “What a waste.”
    Maybeck—the Keeper most likely to exaggerate—had once told me about a rumor concerning Mattie Weaver, another escapee from Barracks 14, who had joined the Kingdom
Keepers on the Disney Cruse Line ship, the
Dream
, during its Panama Canal cruise. Jess and I had put her up to it, and Mattie had come through for us in a big way. Her
“ability”—as the researchers at Barracks 14 referred to what we thought of as our “weirdness”—was what Mattie called “reading.” Not the reading
taught in school, of course. At the age of twelve, she’d been petting her godmother’s dog and had sensed he was sick. She went ballistic until her godmother finally agreed to take him
to the vet. The dog was diagnosed with a benign tumor on the stomach,
exactly where Mattie had said it was
.
    Over the next few months, things only got weirder. Now Mattie wore gloves, long-sleeve shirts, and long pants at all times. If someone tried to touch her, she would move out of reach. Her life
outside Barracks 14 was all about hiding from and avoiding people. Of the three of us, I considered her the most likely to voluntarily return to the facility outside Baltimore; at least there she
could walk freely down a hallway or attend a lecture. Here in “the real world,” she found herself in an exile of her own choosing. The burden that came with incidental
contact—handing a salesperson money, shaking hands, touching a waiter or waitress—was not worth it. She didn’t want to sense illness or grief, desire or addiction. She wanted no
part of a stranger’s internal thoughts. As Mattie had explained it to me: priests and psychiatrists have training. The rest of us do not.
    Maybeck had told me that Mattie was in Orlando, squatting in the same old church where Jess and I had once lived in secret, a place so familiar to me I could have reached it blindfolded. Afraid
of scaring her away if I came up the stairs, I approached from the roof—one of two possible escape routes from the abandoned apartment. I knocked twice on the window, paused, and then knocked
twice more, making my face visible.
    Nothing. After a moment, I opened the window and pushed past a faded curtain. The interior was clean but spare—some inverted milk crates, a bed made of couch cushions secured by a rope
around their perimeters. A stack of water-warped paperbacks teetered by the bed. A towel, still damp, was hung to dry. I shuddered, knowing what it was like taking cold showers.
    Despite the signs, there was no Mattie. I left a note on the pillow, asking her to meet me at a nearby Starbucks. Nine A . M . or nine P . M . I’d be there regardless.
    Later, I would wonder how I could have missed the significance of it all, but miss it I did.
    One of the church walls held a dozen photos thumbtacked in the shape of an inverted pyramid. The shots were of the same three people—four, if you counted the driver. Three men and one
woman. All adults. To study them, you would think them out of place, each the kind of person who’d stand in the corner alone at a party. The quiet type.
    I would eventually realize I should have paid that wall more attention. Because it turned out that they weren’t the silent type. They were the dangerous type instead.
    JESS
    I wasn’t always this way. Maybe I inherited it, but I don’t know because my parents aren’t around to ask. I can’t exactly say it feels normal. I remember
not having it.
    It started out with little things. I never gave them a second thought. I think my mom knew something was up, but back then I didn’t realize it was anything more than my imagination.
    Everything changed with the pink bunny. I saw it on the shelves of the gas station after the car broke down and I decided I needed it, that I had to have it. But when I told my mom we had to go
back and get it,