The Freshman
Copyright 2005 by EC

Chapter 37 - Four days in the United States

Two days after the Day of the Dead Ceremonies ended, Jason and 
Cecilia boarded a plane to go to Frankfurt and then another to 
continue to Chicago. They were traveling with their U.S. 
passports, but with special Danubian diplomatic visas that gave 
them de facto rights as Danubian diplomats. Were either of them 
to run into any problems in the U.S. it was guaranteed they would 
have the full weight of the Danubian government backing them.

Before they left, Prime Minister Dukov called Dr. Burnside and 
notified her that the two students were returning to Chicago for 
a few days. He explained they were traveling to take care of some 
urgent family matters and that they needed transportation. 
Burnside quickly arranged for the Foundation to use two of its 
own drivers for the students. She calculated that they were less 
likely to run into trouble if they had employees of her institute 
responsible for transporting them to wherever they needed to go. 
Anyone wanting to harm them would have to confront both the 
Danubian government and the famous Chicago think-tank, which was 
the best that could be done for their safety.

After she hung up from calling the Foundation, Burnside then 
called Jason's grandmother and let her know that he was coming 
back to the United States. He would return to Wisconsin 
immediately upon touching down in Chicago.

"Oh thank heavens! Yes, Ruth, I need him back, because I need him 
to get his sister out of here!"

Jason's grandmother explained that Cassie's initial trauma had 
subsided due to the intensive therapy she was receiving, but that 
she still had a severe problem with post-traumatic stress, which 
seemed to be set off whenever she saw anything that reminded her 
of her parent's neighborhood. That literally meant anything that 
had been in her sight the day her parents were killed. Seemingly 
random items such as SUV's, tractor mowers, shotguns, garage 
doors, police cars, yellow police tape, popular teenage fashions, 
and various rap songs set off a spell of panic that canceled out 
days of efforts to calm her nerves. 

As a result of her problems with the flashbacks, Cassie had 
withdrawn to her room. The condo's guestroom was furnished with 
older items that she could not associate with anything that had 
happened the day her parents were killed. She couldn't watch 
television or listen to the radio because a song or commercial 
might remind her of something that had happened that day. Her 
only entertainment was listening to her grandmother's records or 
reading. Throughout the summer she refused to leave the room and 
even kept her curtains shut. Over the summer she had gone pale 
and gained weight, due to her complete lack of exercise.

Cassie's psychiatrist speculated that what she needed was to go 
to some place where nothing would remind her of her parents' 
neighborhood or anything she had experienced in high school. If 
she could avoid seeing things that triggered her flashbacks, she 
could begin living a normal life and eventually overcome the mass 
of phobias that had taken control of her soul. Unfortunately, 
there was no such place in the United States. Modern life and pop 
culture intruded everywhere, even in the most isolated rural 
area. It seemed that the only solution to resolve Cassie's 
problem, to find her a life in a completely unfamiliar setting, 
was unworkable. 

However, it turned out there might be a solution. The same night 
Jason began marching with Cecilia to celebrate the Day of the 
Dead, Mrs. Schmidt and her granddaughter looked through an album 
of pictures he had sent from Upper Danubia. Two things struck 
Mrs. Schmidt. First, from the photos it seemed that the country 
looked absolutely nothing like Cassie's neighborhood in the U.S. 
Everything was totally different. Second, it was quite clear the 
pictures did not bother Cassie. She seemed genuinely interested 
in seeing them. That was when the idea occurred to Mrs. Schmidt 
to send Cassie to live in Danube City. In the Danubian capitol 
there were no SUV's, no U.S. pop culture, no low-rider jeans or 
rapper clothing, no oversized mansions with looming garage doors, 
no Sheriff's Department patrol cars, and most importantly, no 
drugs. Danube City offered Cassie the prospect of a life without 
constant reminders of that horrible day she lost her parents and 
her boyfriend. Both her grandmother and her psychiatrist were 
convinced, if the girl could live a normal life in the unfamiliar 
setting of the Danubian capitol for a while, she might start to 
recover. 

Ruth Burnside pondered the strange coincidence, Jason's return to 
the U.S. and Mrs. Schmidt's realization that Cassie needed to get 
out of the country to recover from her trauma. It was obvious 
that was why he had come back, to fulfill his destiny to help his 
sister in her hour of need. Burnside shook her head. The 
professor was a hardened atheist, so she quickly discounted the 
thought that Jason's timing could be anything other than a very 
fortunate coincidence. Still…

As for Cecilia, Burnside knew that she needed to return to her 
former home in New Jersey and had arranged for a co-worker who 
owned a private plane to take her to Newark. The co-worker had 
business of his own to take care of in New York City anyway, so 
flying there with two passengers was not a problem for him. Once 
they touched down the driver from the Foundation would rent a car 
and take Cecilia wherever she needed to go. The driver was an ex-
Marine originally from the south side of Chicago, so driving into 
Cecilia's blighted neighborhood did not intimidate him in the 
least.

Jason and Cecilia held hands as they touched down in Chicago. 
After getting through Customs, they found Jim Halsey waiting for 
them. Halsey took the two students to his own car, and drove 
Cecilia to a regional airport where her plane was waiting. She 
kissed Jason goodbye and left with the man assigned to both drive 
her and protect her while in New Jersey.

----------

Jason traveled north with his driver in Jim Halsey's personal 
car, after dropping off the professor at his house. The car sped 
northward across the pleasant autumn landscape as Jason 
contemplated the complete upheaval that had transpired in his 
life over the past year and a half. The driver was an amiable 
man, willing to talk or not talk, according to the need of his 
passenger to either socialize or keep to himself. Jason was quiet 
throughout most of the trip, lost in his own thoughts and 
pondering the tragedy that had overtaken his parents' lives. As 
the sights, sounds, and smells of Wisconsin entered Jason's 
consciousness as reality instead of memory, what had happened to 
his family finally hit home. He realized in Upper Danubia he had 
been so separated from his life in the U.S. that he had not truly 
grasped the fact that his parents were dead and his sister 
changed beyond recognition. It had not yet struck him that now he 
was the one responsible for the future of the Schmidt family. His 
grandmother had done her part, first by encouraging him to get 
away and then by taking charge of Cassie. She had done her part, 
but now Cassie had to be Jason's responsibility, not hers.

Just four hours after leaving Cecilia at the municipal airport, 
Jason watched the familiar streets of downtown Carterville pass 
by as he approached his grandmother's condominium. Mrs. Schmidt 
and her boyfriend met up with him as he dismissed the driver to 
find himself a motel room. Jason and his grandmother spend a 
couple of hours getting caught up on each other's news, but with 
an emphasis on the events surrounding his parents' deaths and the 
effect they had on Cassie. It did not surprise Jason that 
Cassie's friends had disappeared on her as soon as the uproar 
from the shootings died down. The murders changed her personality 
beyond recognition, making her extremely withdrawn and serious. 
She no longer was a source of fun and entertainment. 
Subconsciously her friends saw her as contaminated and after an 
initial round of condolences kept their distance. Anyhow, the 
loss of the Schmidts' house meant that she no longer could remain 
enrolled at her elite high school. Instead, she faced finishing 
her studies at the much less prestigious public school in 
Carterville, not that it mattered. By the end of the summer 
Cassie had become so withdrawn that it was clear she would have 
to be home-schooled. 

Jason asked what he could and could not talk about when he saw 
his sister, thinking that perhaps she did not know about her 
father's activities against Upper Danubia or about his secret 
plans to ditch his family following the failure of the coup in 
April. Mrs. Schmidt told him that everything was fair game, 
because she had told Cassie in detail what had happened to her 
father during April and May. Following the shootings Cassie had 
been consumed with guilt, thinking that what had happened to her 
father was her fault. The girl's grandmother calculated that if 
she knew the truth about her father she would feel less guilty 
about his death. That was true, but the information left Cassie 
very suspicious and paranoid about people's intentions towards 
her. She couldn't trust her parents, which meant she couldn't 
trust anyone.

There was, however, a faint hope that Cassie already had hit 
bottom and was beginning the long process of recovery. After a 
long summer of depression and psychological inertia, her 
curiosity about life was just starting to return. She began to 
ask her psychiatrist questions about post-traumatic stress, to 
better understand herself. Yes, Cassie had changed. At age 17, 
she already was thinking about the larger issues in life. The 
life that she had led as a teenager was gone, blasted away by her 
ex-boyfriend's revolver. It was apparent that she was ready to 
move on.

Jason was shocked by his sister's appearance, even though he knew 
what to expect. Her old aggressive boisterous nature was gone, 
replaced by a personality that was rather shy and very serious. 
She had gained nearly 30 pounds, which was part of the reason she 
was ashamed to go out in public. She was wearing a sweatsuit, 
because none of the stylish clothing she had from the year before 
fit her anymore. She had absolutely refused to buy larger-sized 
clothing, so she stuck to sweatsuits. She was very pale and her 
appearance was unkempt. Her hair, although clean, was a mass of 
tangles because she never bothered to comb or brush it.

Jason skipped asking Cassie about how her summer had gone, 
because he already knew. Instead he talked at length about his 
own summer, his studies at the National University, the hassle of 
learning to speak Danubian, and his preparations to run several 
marathons in October during the Harvest Festivities. At first he 
was cautious about mentioning anything about why he had gone to 
Danube City in the first place, nor did he mention anything about 
Cecilia. He stuck to general topics, figuring that he could move 
into more personal ones once Cassie felt more comfortable around 
him.

The two teenagers realized how much they both had changed since 
they last spoke to each other. Cassie was amazed at Jason's self-
confidence and how, without a hint of arrogance, he seemed to 
dominate the room. He knew his own mind and what he wanted from 
himself. It was clear that he had a clear vision of his life and 
no longer was intimidated by his failures. Had Cassie's former 
friends seen him now, they might not have liked Jason, but there 
was no way they could have so casually dismissed him like they 
did the year before. Quite likely it would have been the other 
way around, Jason would have seen the girls for what they were, 
shallow, uncaring princesses who did not merit his time or 
consideration.

Cassie, on the other hand, was not sure about anything. When she 
spoke to Jason she did not look at him, but instead kept her gaze 
fixed on a spot on the wall. At first it was hard for Jason to 
get used to the idea that, even though she wasn't looking at him, 
she was paying attention to what he was saying. That vacant look 
in her face did not reflect what was actually going on in her 
mind, but it seemed that her inner thoughts were separated from 
what she was doing with her body. Her mind was responsive, but 
her body was not.

As for who she had been in high school: her high school slang, 
her experimenting with boyfriends and drugs, her popular clique 
and obsession with having fun, as well as her self-assured 
attitude; that all was gone. What remained of her character was 
not much more than a bunch of psychological wreckage, from which 
a much more serious person was just beginning to form. She was 
haunted, not only by the memories of what had happened in May, 
but also by her trauma and deep-seated fear of flashbacks. In 
some ways her behavior was like a person who had suffered a 
massive heart attack and barely survived. She was obsessed with 
her own fragility and the prospect that anything at any moment 
could trigger a second, and this time fatal, relapse. Above 
anything else, Cassie seemed to exude a feeling of fragility. 

Fortunately one thing in Cassie's character had not been 
destroyed over the summer, and that was her curiosity. Without 
looking away from that spot on the wall, she began asking Jason 
questions about Upper Danubia, and finally questioned him about 
the trials in May. As her brother explained more and more, Cassie 
became increasingly interested about their father's role in the 
coup and what her brother thought about it. Jason just gave the 
facts at first; what he knew about the plans of Mega-Town 
Associates and what came out in the trial that was not covered by 
the press in the United States. Suddenly, Cassie became 
impatient. Without moving her eyes from that spot on the wall she 
snapped:

"Look Jason, I don't give a shit about "Cutter", and the pigs, 
and what they did with the guns. I want to know about Dad."

Over the next hour Jason told Cassie everything he knew about 
their father's role in the coup, and finally brought up the 
comment about Cecilia that prompted him to turn the information 
he was gathering over to the Danubian government. 

Cassie surprised Jason by telling him about her own research, 
information she had dug up about their parents. Over the summer 
she became curious about her father's behavior and in 
understanding why he acted the way he did. She downloaded 
numerous articles off the Internet about the behavior of 
identified sociopaths. From studying the behavior of sociopaths, 
Cassie's research led her to explore what was known about people 
suffering from narcissistic personality disorder. She shared a 
rather startling conclusion with her brother, the possibility 
that both of their parents suffered from narcissistic personality 
disorder.

"I'm sure Dad had it. He would've had to. I mean, to do all that 
shit just to make himself happy…I mean you can't do that unless 
you're really fucked in the head. And I'm sure he was really 
fucked in the head. That's obvious."

Jason interjected with his own thoughts on the matter, relaying 
what he knew about the Danubian concept of damage to the soul. 
Rather than contradict Cassie's research, Jason's comments seemed 
to complement what she had found out. Mr. Schmidt's soul had been 
damaged by greed, which in turn was the result of an over-
developed sense of self-worth, in other words, narcissism.

----------

Over the next two days the surviving members of the Schmidt 
family talked in the condo's living room about the tragedy that 
overtook Jason's parents. Their grandmother took the two 
teenagers through a mental journey into the past as she tried to 
figure out if there was anything she might have done to 
contribute to her son's personality. As they listened to her, 
Jason and Cassie came to understand their father much better and 
also understand what had influenced them as they were growing up. 
Finally Jason was able to talk at length about the accident that 
had killed his girlfriend and the decisions that had led up to 
that incident. Cassie confided some of her experiences with her 
own clique, and finally had an apology for her brother:

"You know, when you got busted and everyone was jumping on you, 
you know, like…telling you what an idiot you were and how fucked 
in the head you were…I…I never said anything. I just kinda sat 
there listening and was real happy it was you instead of me. I'm 
sorry about not sticking up for you…because I should've and I 
didn't…I'm really sorry about that."

Cassie hugged Jason hard, as tears flowed down both their cheeks. 
The recovery of their lives, and of their relationship with each 
other, had begun.

Finally the moment had come for Jason to tell his sister what he 
had seen during the Day of the Dead march, especially that second 
night. He went into detail about the march itself, and then 
described what he had seen of the lives of their parents. Their 
grandmother gasped, because Jason had described things early in 
their marriage that he would have been too young to remember. 
Then he got to the point, his visions of Cassie and what the 
Priestess told him afterwards.

"I think the point of it all is that I'm supposed to take you to 
Danube City, and that's why I came back. To get you out of here, 
so maybe you won't be having all the flashbacks…'cause it seems 
that everyone thinks that's what's going on, you know, the 
flashbacks and everything."

Cassie looked at her grandmother, and then back at Jason. Her 
gaze refocused at that spot on the wall while she thought it 
over. She nodded. Her voice was barely audible.

"OK. I'll try it."

Jason and his grandmother looked at each other, totally stunned. 
They had been expecting a crisis, or an argument, or having to 
spend a long time trying to reason with her. It turned out none 
of that was necessary. It turned out Cassie was aware that the 
only hope she had of regaining her sanity was to leave Wisconsin. 
As for what she would do upon getting to Danube City, she took it 
for granted Jason would help her get set up.

"So…you're…like…OK with it? Going to Danube City with me?"

"I said I'd go, Jason. I already told you that."

Her eyes stayed fixed to that spot on the wall. She had nothing 
more to say, but she knew something that her brother and 
grandmother could not have known. Her departure would not be 
temporary. Once she left, she could never come back.

----------

Upon landing in Newark, Cecilia rode as a passenger into her old 
neighborhood. The area looked as bleak as ever. In fact, if 
anything it looked even worse than it had when she left. She 
noticed the bus station from where she had left now was a check-
cashing place. Ain't that just great, she thought to herself. 
Just what we need, another fuckin' check cashin' place. A few 
more row houses leading up to the tenements were abandoned, 
either burned out or converted to crack houses. The tenement 
buildings rose above the bleak landscape, as grim and forbidding 
as ever. The hopelessness of the neighborhood quickly closed in 
on the young student, a feeling that the area was reaching out to 
grab her and suck her back into the abyss.

There was one detail that struck Cecilia immediately. The 
graffiti was completely different. The area was under armed 
occupation by a rival gang, the same group of thugs who had 
murdered her brothers and were still killing off their 
associates. She looked around to see how permanent the change 
seemed to be, searching for clues such as the faces and colors 
around her old tenement building. Everything, especially the 
clothing and the symbols on the walls, was different. She did not 
recognize any of the young people floating around the complex. 
She knew that she had entered enemy territory.

Cecilia's tough driver pulled up to the entrance of her mother's 
building and let her off at the entrance. She thought about going 
straight upstairs to her mother's apartment, knowing that she 
probably was not safe if she stayed in the hallway. If anyone 
recognized her as Raul Sanchez's sister there could be trouble 
for her, even though she had been estranged from him. However, 
she couldn't go up the stairs quite yet. Something pulled her to 
go through the lower level to the back door, where a group of 
young boys of various ages were milling around in the playground 
outside. There was one boy in particular that caught her 
attention. She walked up to him, to get a better look.

All of the others stopped what they doing to stare at Cecilia, 
who was completely out of place with her clean-cut affluent 
appearance. Her clothing, her Danubian hairstyle, and the way she 
carried herself made it clear that she did not belong to the 
project.

Ignoring the stares of the boys surrounding her, she focused on 
the child who drew her attention. He was slightly less than four 
years old and still had a rather innocent look about him. She 
carefully studied his features. He looked very familiar. Could it 
be…?

"¿Pedro? ¿Eres tú?"

"Sí señorita. Yo soy Pedro."

He seemed rather scared, because of course, after two and a half 
years he did not recognize her. But as she squatted down to greet 
him, somehow he knew to come to her. Her mind flashed with the 
memory of that vision a few days before in Danube City. Sure 
enough, here he was, his arms open, as he walked across the trash 
and drug paraphernalia scattered on the ground beneath him. It 
was just as she remembered, detail for detail. Cecilia's heart 
stopped as she remembered the words from the Priestess:

"No all soul broken, Cecilia. Your brothers dead. But little boy 
no dead. He no broken. That your path in life."

She hugged him, but he still seemed a bit shy about being 
approached by a person he felt was a stranger. In Spanish she 
asked him where he lived, and sure enough, he pointed in the 
direction of her old apartment. She took his hand and they went 
upstairs. Now for the hard part.

And hard it was. Her mother opened the door, stunned to see her 
daughter after such a long time of not hearing from her. What was 
equally surprising was the young woman's appearance, which made 
it clear that she no longer belonged to the world of her 
childhood. Mrs. Sanchez looked at her daughter with neither anger 
nor happiness, but bewilderment, as though she had come back from 
the dead.

From the beginning it was clear that plenty of Mrs. Sanchez' 
hostility and bitterness remained. She stepped aside to let 
Cecilia in, partly because she had brought Pedro back up with 
her. However, there was no hug nor any kiss on the cheek to greet 
the younger woman.

Cecilia, in turn, was shocked by how old her mother looked, how 
shrunken and defeated. She then noticed candles lit in front of 
her brothers' pictures, realizing that she had just seen the 
first tangible proof that her brothers had indeed been killed. 
She glanced at Pedro, then at her mother's bewildered hostile 
expression, and finally at her brothers' pictures again. The 
candles would give her the opening she needed to start talking to 
her mother. She realized something else. Her reason for returning 
was not to reconcile, but instead to make sure Pedro could leave 
with her. Whatever her mother thought of her no longer mattered. 
What mattered was Pedro.

There was no small talk, no talk about Upper Danubia or Chicago. 
Instead Cecilia wanted to know what happened to her brothers. The 
story Mrs. Sanchez gave matched what she had envisioned; Raul and 
his companions had been double-crossed by their supplier, who had 
switched allegiances and helped set up their murders. As for 
Raul's ex-girlfriend, another member of Raul's gang executed her 
the week following the triple murder. Her killer, in turn, was 
kidnapped and executed by the girl's brother during the rival 
gang's final takeover of the housing project.

Mrs. Sanchez was aware, because she was Raul's mother, that she 
was in danger herself. She had decided to return to the Dominican 
Republic and was trying to make arrangements to leave. The 
problem she faced was that she didn't know what to do with Pedro. 
The boy's mother had disappeared more than two months before and 
no one knew where she was. The only option was to take the child 
to the Dominican Republic, but the woman was not thrilled about 
it because she had neither the desire nor the strength to raise 
her niece's boy. Cecilia had a question:

"Mom, does Pedro have a passport?"

"Yes. That's one of the things that kept me from getting out of 
here, because I couldn't take him unless he had a passport. I 
just got it a couple of days ago."

"Then why don't you let me take him? I'll get him off your hands 
and that'll let you get out of here."

Mrs. Sanchez seemed reluctant, but Cecilia pressed forward with 
her request.

"Look, Mom. It's the only thing we can do that makes any sense. 
You told me yourself that you don't think you can take care of 
him. But you got to get out of the project. So why not let me 
have him? That solves your problem. It'll fix another problem, 
because I know that you're still pissed at me about running out 
on you. This is how I can make it up. I'll take Pedro, and that 
way you can leave here knowing he'll be safe. And you know that 
I'll take care of him."

Cecilia paused, and then finished her argument.

"Mom, what other choice do you have? Both of you staying here and 
getting killed?"

The older woman sat silent for a few minutes, but finally she 
pulled Pedro's passport out of a cabinet and handed it to her 
daughter. Cecilia breathed a huge sigh of relief as she took it. 
She then stuffed Pedro's clothes and toys into two plastic 
shopping bags. Without saying anything more, Mrs. Sanchez found 
Pedro's birth certificate, Social Security card, and immunization 
records to hand over to his future guardian. Cecilia went into 
the room she had shared with her cousin. She went through her 
cousin's photographs, taking any that had her or Pedro in them. 
There were a lot of other pictures of miscellaneous friends, 
boyfriends, and gang members posing with weapons. Cecilia did not 
bother to take any of those. Most of those people were dead by 
now anyway, and no longer had any relevance to Pedro's life. She 
glanced at the collection of CD's of Rap and Salsa music. None of 
that had any relevance either. Pedro would not grow up listening 
to Salsa or Rap. He would grow up not knowing anything about 
Gangsta street culture. Cecilia would see to that.

Less than an hour later Cecilia went down the stairs of her 
tenement for the very last time in her life. She was carrying the 
two bags of Pedro's possessions, some photos, and his documents. 
Her mother walked behind holding the boy's hand. The driver was 
still waiting out in front, his face reflecting relief at seeing 
his passenger returning. The tension caused by his presence on 
the street had been mounting and he would be quite happy to get 
the car out of the neighborhood. Cecilia threw the bags in the 
trunk and opened the door for Pedro to get in.

Cecilia had hoped for closure with her mother, a gesture of 
mutual forgiveness or a promise that the two women might someday 
repair their broken relationship. However, that was not to be. 
Her mother continued to stare at her with a hostile, betrayed 
expression. Still, Cecilia had to say something:

"Mom, when I get back to Danube City, I'll write you at Grandpa's 
place."

"Great. You do that. Just like you wrote me from Chicago."

Mrs. Sanchez said nothing more and abruptly went back into the 
building.

Despair swept over Cecilia, in spite of having accomplished her 
purpose for coming. She felt a combination of resentment, hurt, 
anger, and guilt. Yes, she should have written, but then, her 
mother should have been more supportive. 

The reason she hadn't written had been because of that single 
word: "bitch". In Spanish the word was a much more serious insult 
than it was in English, and that was what her mother called her 
the day she insisted on leaving for Chicago. 

Bitch. Something inside Cecilia snapped when she heard that word 
one time too many. And yet…maybe she could have calmed her anger 
and written. She realized she had failed to keep her own emotions 
under control, and that failure had cost her any possible future 
relationship with her mother. The two women would be going their 
separate ways and probably never see each other again.

Cecilia Sanchez knew that her life in New Jersey was over for 
sure. Within a few days her mother would be out of the apartment 
and on her way to the Dominican Republic. Everyone else she had 
known growing up was long-gone: dead, in jail, or just in a 
different location. The neighborhood was broken up and now taken 
over by strangers. After having seen her housing project one last 
time, Cecilia was leaving as well, never to come back.

The young Dominican watched the dilapidated row houses pass by as 
she got on her cell phone to call the man who had flown her to 
Newark. It turned out his business was finished as well. If she 
wanted, he could fly everyone back to Chicago that night. She 
gladly accepted the offer. She wanted to get herself and Pedro as 
far away as possible, away from the drugs, crime, and despair 
that had engulfed the world of her childhood. She felt the 
neighborhood pulling at her, and worried that until she was on 
the plane headed to Chicago, there was a chance she and Pedro 
might not escape.

Pedro quietly played with one of his toys as the driver made his 
way to the airport. The child was used to amusing himself, 
because no one had paid much attention to him after Cecilia left. 
Poor kid, she thought. I really shouldn't have left him like 
that. I've got some catching up to do.

----------

Cecilia and Pedro stayed at Ruth Burnside's house for two days 
while they waited for Jason and Cassie to return from Wisconsin. 
Cecilia went shopping for Pedro while she waited, since she did 
not like his clothes and wanted him to be more presentable. The 
second day he was in Burnside's house he cried a few minutes for 
"Tia", which was how he called Mrs. Sanchez, but it seemed that 
otherwise he made the adjustment to being with Cecilia fairly 
easily. She wondered if deep down in his memory he might have 
some recollection of all that time she had spent taking care of 
him. The child spent much of his time wandering around the 
professor's back yard and staring curiously at Maynard. He had 
never seen a dog up close before and shyly reached out to touch 
him. Maynard was the perfect companion for the child's 
explorations, because he was so placid and quiet.

Burnside was busy, as usual, but she was able to make some time 
for Cecilia and talk to her about everything she had experienced 
in Upper Danubia. She was happy to have the student available for 
a few days to talk to her about the National University, some of 
the quirks of Danubian culture, and changes she would need to 
make to the exchange program before sending the first group of 
students.

Just four days after they had entered the United States, Jason 
and Cecilia, along with their two companions, were ready to 
leave. Ruth Burnside and two other officials from the Foundation 
accompanied the four young people through check-in to make sure 
they made it as far as the secure area of the terminal before 
saying good-bye. For Burnside and Cecilia the good-bye was only a 
temporary one, because over the next year the two women would be 
in constant contact with each other as the exchange program got 
under way and selected its first group of students. Burnside may 
have been an important part of Cecilia's past, but she also would 
be a very important part of her future. 

Because of Cassie's problems with the flashbacks, Jason had 
decided to get a flight out of O'Hare in the middle of the night. 
Traveling at night would keep his sister from seeing too much on 
her way to the airport and hopefully prevent any flashbacks 
before she had a chance to get on a plane. Cecilia and Pedro met 
up with Jason and Cassie at the ticket counter. Once they were 
alone in the airport, there was the usual hassle getting through 
security and waiting in line, and an argument between Cecilia and 
Pedro over how many toys he could pull out of his suitcase and 
take with him on the plane.

Cecilia struggled to conceal her shock at how much Cassie's 
appearance had deteriorated since the last time she had seen her. 
Not only was the girl very pale and overweight, but she had a 
vacant look in her eyes from having taken tranquilizers. Jason 
had her drugged up, hoping to get her to Danube City without any 
incidents. Once they arrived in the Danubian capitol, he would 
lock up his sister's medicines and force her to get some exercise 
and eat better. He would make her regain her health, which would 
be the first part of the very long journey of taking back her 
life.

However, once the plane was airborne, Cassie and Pedro promptly 
fell asleep. Jason and Cecilia, their mission to the United 
States completed, interlocked their arms and spent the next eight 
hours talking about their most recent experiences at home and 
their hopes for the future. It was significant that neither of 
them talked about "my future". The couple took it for granted 
that it was "our future". For better or for worse, the Paths of 
their Lives had drawn them together. Now there was only one Path 
in Life, the path they were destined to share. 

