~~~
Once I'd met Dala again, I corresponded with her regularly, and helped her by e mail and by cell phone learn how to use her crystal-shaping gift. It thrilled me to get descriptions of the visions of Ul that she'd seen, and pictures of light-crystals that she'd made.
I couldn't hide from Emily, Kendra, and Millie that I was spending much time on line and on the phone with Dala, or Delia as I called her around them. I told them that she was my distant cousin, as she is -- she's my second-cousin once-removed; check the genealogies! We an-i, we Crystal-Shapers, were never many; all of us are related to one another within five generations. I also told my friends that Dala and I were trying to find our roots in Afghanistan.
"We're happy for your finding your roots," Emily said.
Kendra and Millie nodded. "Yes, it's very Girl Scout thing to do," Millie said.
"Someday," Kendra said, "maybe you and Delia can return to your homeland and help others like you."
Yes, irony is sometimes a byproduct of deception.
While I was corresponding with Dala, palling around with my friends, pulling down all A's in college-prep and AP courses, going to church regularly, and racking up badges in the Girl Scouts, I was also doing secret missions for the Colonel. These averaged about one every three weeks, and involved extensive briefing and reconnaissance beforehand, and extensive debriefing afterwards. Gone were spontaneous rescues and busts!
I should say, "They were supposed to be gone." One night, as I was running home through western Kentucky, somewhere between Bowling Green and the Cumberland River, I heard dogs yelping, and one dog cry out in pain and terror. Along with the dog sounds came sounds of men shouting and laughing. The sounds came from a pool of light deep in some woods.
Running at five hundred miles an hour, one tends to overshoot things. Circling, I came upon the woods from the west.
What met my eyes in them filled me with horror and outrage. In a circle of light from headlights of pick-up trucks, burly, bearded men surrounded a pair of black dogs tearing at each other's throats. A couple of men were tending a wounded dog, two dogs that I guessed were dead and later learned were lay on the ground, and more dogs huddled in cages in the trucks' beds.
All of the Colonel's training left me as I reverted to my instincts of my early sneaking-out days. Dressed and masked in Ninja black, I rushed into the clearing and began to slap hairy faces till they all lay on the ground. I broke open the cages to free the dogs; then I either overturned the trucks or pushed them down a hillside. One truck, for a reason that I didn't then grasp, burst into flame. Luckily, it rolled into a deep, water-filled pit and posed no danger of starting a forest fire. Bad Girl Scout on me if I had started one! No cookies for Belle!
My work done, I dialed 9-1-1 on a cell phone and left it on the ground. Looking at the wreckage that I'd wrought, I thought, The Colonel won't like this.
I ran on home, went to bed, and made the in retrospect foolish decision to say nothing unless he said something first. In the morning, I said to him, "Mission accomplished, Colonel."
Giving me a cold eye, he said, "We'll talk of your mission when you get home this evening."
Busted, I thought. Not for the first time, I wondered whether he read minds.
At school, I was a nervous wreck. Emily, Kendra, and Millie turned out to be as good at reading me as the Colonel was. At lunch, they gave me looks both puzzled and concerned. Emily said, "What's wrong, Belle? Are you coming down with something?"
"Yes," Millie said, "you acted in Latin class as if you were on another world."
I held in an urge to grit my teeth. "I think that the Colonel is going to ground me."
My three friends gave each other wide-eyed looks. "You, the ultimate daddy's girl?" Kendra said to me.
I racked my brains for a safe reason for the grounding. "I blew off studying for AP Psych to sneak out to watch Ice Age."
Another exchange of wide-eyed looks. "I guess that Belle is human after all," Emily said.
"Why didn't you call us, Belle?" Millie said plaintively. "We might've gone with you."
"Because, as a good friend," Kendra said, "Belle didn't want to get us grounded, too."
That was I, Belle the superhero.
When I got home, the Colonel awaited me on the front porch. In a tone of deadly calm, he said, "Let's go talk in the barn. I don't want to disturb your mother."
Nodding, and feeling my guts turn to water inside me, I followed him to the barn. When we stood inside it, I said, brightly and foolishly, "Do you want to debrief me on my mission --"
"Which mission, Belle? Your scheduled mission to retrieve and burn files, or your unscheduled mission to break up a dogfight?"
"I'm sorry, sir! I'll never do --"
"Mirabelle!" he said softly. As I hushed, he kept speaking. For the next two hours, the Colonel, without swearing, raising his voice, or repeating himself, gave me a dressing down that would've been legendary in the special forces had it become known.
Foolishly, I'd jeopardized the safety of myself, my family, and the rest of my people. Foolishly, I'd acted on emotion, not reason. Foolishly, I'd acted with no plan. Foolishly, I'd endangered future success for present satisfaction. Foolishly, I'd lost sight of the big picture over a minor detail that would keep happening despite what I did. Foolishly --
I could go on with "foolishlies" quite a while. When the Colonel was done with them, he said in a conversational tone, "Have you understood me, Belle?
"Yes, sir."
"You and I will say no more of this matter. Let's go to supper."
I went to supper and ate all that was set before me, but tasted none of it. In the Colonel's house, though, no one dared not clean her plate.
At least, I didn't get grounded. My friends were relieved for me.
Par-On smiles at me. "Someday soon, Mira, before we start the Work, you must tell us the whole list of foolishlies. It'll no doubt save us grief in the long run."
"It will. Just now, though, another of us is about to enter the story."