The Enlightened Read Free Page A

got shot after you dropped me off at Mira’s house. You can check the hospital’s records. When I was in the hospital, someone took the gun.”
    It’s somewhat plausible, and given the circumstances, not the worst thing I could’ve come up with. Unfortunately, Caleb doesn’t even dignify my quick thinking with criticism. Instead, he walks up to me and throws the first punch, which I manage to block with my left hand. At the same time, my right elbow connects with his jaw.
    He raises an eyebrow in surprise and retaliates—how, I’m not entirely sure, as it looks like a blur of movement—and then pain explodes in my chest. Like before, I fall to the ground, and he kicks me repeatedly. The beating hurts like hell. And just like before, when I’m barely alive, he phases us out of the Quiet.
    I’m cold, and this time it’s not just from the air conditioning. The adrenaline is pushing me into a fight or flight response. I’m dreading another beating. I don’t think I can take it. But he doesn’t pull me into the Quiet. Instead, he puts the damned bag over my head again.
    “They’re going to find out exactly what happened anyway,” Caleb tells me.
    Before I can ask what the hell that means or who ‘they’ are, I feel a pinprick of what I assume is a needle, and the familiar nothingness spreads through my brain as I go under.

Chapter 3

    A slap to the face wakes me.
    It’s the least fun way to wake up, followed closely by loud alarm clocks and cold water.
    Before I am even done coming back to consciousness, I phase into the Quiet.
    In the Quiet, I become much more alert—especially when I look around.
    Caleb and I are no longer alone.
    There is an older man staring at my frozen self through the car’s side window. He looks to be in his sixties or maybe even seventies. I can’t tell because I’m terrible at gauging the age of anyone over forty. I exit the car to take a closer look.
    He looks completely out of place here, in the middle of the road, though the guy might look out of place pretty much anywhere with the white toga-like robe he’s wearing—anywhere except possibly ancient Greece. Yep, the strange outfit makes him look the way I imagine Socrates would look—minus the beard, as this guy is clean-shaven.
    Had he walked here on foot? If so, from where, given that we’re in the middle of nowhere? More importantly, why did he come here? His dress puts only weird theories into my head. Weren’t they into younger men back in ancient Greece? I nervously chuckle as I picture Caleb calling this guy on his cell and saying, “Hey Grandpa. I’m taking a nearly naked twenty-one-year-old out into the woods for you. I’ll text you the GPS coordinates. The guy is still unconscious from the drug I gave him, so come quickly. It’s molesting time.”
    I decide the only way I’m going to get answers is if I phase out and let things unfold as they may.
    I touch my frozen self on the forehead, careful not to touch Caleb’s hand, which is making its way through the air, coming back from slapping my frozen self on the cheek.
    The sounds and the sting from the slap come back. I open my eyes, but before I can say anything, everything goes silent again, and the pain is gone.
    I find myself in the backseat of Caleb’s Honda, pulled into the Quiet yet again. I note that the strange old dude is now in duplicate, the animated version removing his hand from my frozen self’s neck—meaning I’m in his Quiet, not Caleb’s, at the moment. So the guy is one of us, most likely some kind of a Reader, given Caleb’s presence. I also note that Caleb is sitting next to me in the backseat. He must’ve been pulled into this Quiet session before me. He’s ominously holding another black bag.
    “Don’t move,” the old guy says in a raspy voice. My snide remark that was about to graphically explain what Caleb and Grandpa can do to each other is interrupted when Caleb puts the cursed black bag over my head and jabs a gun into