“What the hell?” The man asked. All the impatience and intensity had left his face. Now he just stared at me with startled confusion. “What was that?”

I stared down at my hands and then the table and my father’s binder which had been flung across the kitchen floor. “I … I don’t know.”

“Have you ever …”

He was interrupted by the front door being flung open and banging into the wall behind it. Both of us faced the hallway apprehensively. A woman came running into the kitchen. She was tall, at least three or four inches taller than me, and carried a lot more muscles. She had long, straight black hair, cool tawny skin, and dark almond-shaped eyes. She wore a simple denim shirt that hung down over black leggings and spotless white tennis shoes.

She stopped when she entered the kitchen and looked around wildly at us. “Nicholas, what did you do?”

“I didn’t do anything!” the man - Nicholas apparently - said.

She followed Nicholas’s eye line to me and both of them stared for several long moments. “She did this?”

“Yep.”

“Did she …”

“No,” Nicholas interrupted. “It was something different.”

She raised a questioning eyebrow at me and then at Nicolas. “Are you sure she did it? What exactly happened?”

My blood began to boil as the two of them continued to talk about me as if I wasn’t even there. “Excuse me,” I said with all the attitude I could muster. “Who the hell are you people? And what are you doing in my home?”

The woman looked at me and then back at Nicholas. “God, Nicholas, you didn’t even introduce us?” She rolled her eyes. “Did you just try to hit her over the head with a club and drag her to the car?”

“No!’ He said defensively. “I told her she was in danger and asked her to come with us.”

I made a sharp scoffing sound. “You said you were in a hurry and told me to get in the car.”

“And we are in a hurry because you are in danger,” he said, dragging out the last word sarcastically. He flashed me a huge, cocky smile - with perfectly straight, white teeth.

No. Seriously? This couldn’t be a coincidence, could it?

“Wait, was that you last night in the park?” I asked.

His smile twisted into a sly grin and he wiggled his eyebrows at me. I felt my face flush again.

The other girl groaned. “Oh god, grow up Nicholas.” Turning to me she said, “Yes, Delilah, we were the ones that saved you last night … or rather, I saved you. Smiley here just ran around uselessly.” She ignored the disgruntled grunt from Nicholas and continued. “I’m Jazmin, by the way. This idiot is Nicholas.”

“It’s Nick, only my mom and Jazmin call me Nicholas. And Jazmin only does it because she knows it pisses me off.” Nick corrected.

“Yeah, that’s true,” Jazmin said matter of factly. “Look, We came because we think you are in danger. We think the people that attacked you last night targeted you specifically and we don’t know why. So as long as you are here you are in danger.”

“You think someone is trying to … to what? To hurt me? Take me?” Suddenly I felt like my knees got all wobbly. I wanted to sit down but the chairs had been flung all over the place. I must have looked pretty bad because Nick jumped to grab a chair and set it beside me. I fell into the chair and dropped my head into my hands.

“We don’t know for sure,” Nick said softly. “But we think it is a very real possibility.”

It was too much. It was all too much. My mind scrambled in a hundred different directions and I couldn’t grasp hold of any one thought. My eyes started to burn and a lump formed in my throat. I knew I was about to cry, but I made myself swallow it. I refused to cry in front of a couple of strangers, especially someone so …

A thought crystallized in my head. I nearly jumped out of the chair in excitement. “Does this have anything to do with my dad?” I looked back and forth between the two but the look of confusion on their faces took the wind out of my sails.

“I’m sorry?” Jazmin asked.

“What’s going on with your dad?” Nick asked.

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I started to tell them everything. I tend to do that sometimes. When I’m super excited or overly emotional I tend to just say anything and everything. Honestly, I don’t even realize what I am doing until I’ve already been doing it for far too long. But I bit my tongue. It dawned on me that I didn’t know these two people and it would be foolish to put so much trust in a couple of strangers. Strangers that had broken into my house, tried to get me into their car, had cornered me and would have done who knows what until I - I what? What exactly had I done?

I looked around at the mess I had made. Had I really done that? How was it even possible?

“Did I … what … how did this …” I couldn’t figure out how to even ask the question.

“We don’t really know that either,” Nick said.

“But we know someone that might,” Jazmin offered. “That’s where we wanted to take you in the first place. We have a friend, well more like a teacher …”

“Or warden,” Nick interjected.

“Not a warden,” Jazmin corrected. “Even if it feels that way sometimes. She’s our teacher and while she can be pretty strict and kind of cold sometimes, she is also very kind in her own way. And she is also the only person that I know of that might be able to give you some answers.”

“And if I don’t want to go?” I asked. I felt my nerves begin to buzz in anticipation of their answer. If things went bad I had no idea what would happen. Both of them were bigger and stronger than me and I didn’t like my chances of getting away from them.

Jazmin raised her hands, palms out as if to offer some assurance. “We aren’t going to force you to do anything.” She shot Nick a side glance and continued. “We never meant to force anything on you. Chip and Dale Caveman here just got a little over-excited, but even he never would have tried to make you.”

“No, of course not!” Nick agreed. “And if you come you can leave at any time. You can walk out or Jazmin and I will drive you back, whatever you want.”

It was stupid. No rational, intelligent, sane person would agree to get into a stranger’s car, especially not considering everything that had happened. But I thought about it. So many unanswered questions had been thrown in my face and something inside me screamed that they were all related.

I had decided that I was going to find my dad, and these people were a legitimate lead. Maybe this lady they spoke of would have some answers. Maybe not. I wasn’t ready to trust them, but maybe I could follow along long enough to get a little information.

“I want to get a few things together first,” I said.

“Yeah, no problem,” Nick said. He glanced at Jazmin and nodded to the table. “Help me clean this up.”

I bent down and picked up my dad’s binder real quick and tucked it under my arm. Jazmin eyed me curiously but didn’t mention it. I stepped out of the kitchen and headed toward my bedroom. As I walked down the hall I could hear Nick say, “Chip and Dale Caveman, huh? I kind of like it.”

I found my bookbag where I had left it in the bottom of my closet after the last day of school. I dumped the bag out on my bed, leaving a pile of notebooks and papers. I grabbed my dad’s note off my dresser and tucked it into his binder and shoved it into the bag.

I tried to think of what else to pack. Going off with a couple of strangers was stupid. I knew I was putting myself in a vulnerable situation and I felt like bringing some things with me would provide a sort of security blanket. The problem was I didn’t know what to prepare for or how to prepare for it.

Finally, I decided to throw a change of clothes in the bag. I figured if I ended up having to run I’d at least have some clothes and access to my dad’s bank account. I threw in my phone charger, my toiletry bag, a mostly empty notebook, and a few other random things and headed back to the kitchen.

I followed Jazmin and Nick to the car sitting by the road, locking the door behind me. Nick offered me the front passenger seat, but the idea of one of them sitting behind me made me uncomfortable so I got in the back. He just shrugged and climbed into the seat in front of me. Jazmin cocked a questioning eyebrow at me as she climbed into the driver’s seat, but didn’t say a word.

We drove in silence for a few minutes before I realized I had no idea where we were going. “Where exactly are you taking me?” I asked.

“The Night Club,” Jazmin said.

“A night club? You told me you were taking me to someone that could tell me about my dad! Besides, you know I’m only seventeen, right? I’m not even old enough to get into a club.”

“Relax,” Nick said dryly. “It’s not an actual nightclub. We just call it The Night Club. People like us tend to prefer being out at night, and The Night Club is where a bunch of us get together.”

The way he said “relax” made me want to slap the beautiful smile off his perfectly chiseled face - I hate being spoken down to - but something he had said had struck me and I keyed in on that. “People like us?”

Jazmin shot Nick a hard glance - some kind of warning. Nick just shrugged, “Yeah, maybe it would be better to let Mrs. Gleason answer that.”

“What? Why? Seems like that should be a pretty simple question. Are you in a gang or something? Some secret organization bent on taking over the world?”

Nick laughed, “We aren’t trying to take over the world.”

“Nicholas!” Jasmin hissed.

“But you are a secret organization?” I prodded.

Nick started to respond but Jazmin cut him off. “Delilah, look. We will answer your questions. I promise, But it's complicated and there is a lot to explain. It will be better if we wait for Mrs. Gleason. She can explain it better than we could, and there is some stuff she will want to show you.”

I thought about my dad’s note and what I’d heard someone say when I was face down in the grass the night before. “Does this have something to do with the Pushers?”

Nick turned sharply to look at me then slowly slid his eyes to Jazmin, “Yeah, it does,” he said.

“Nicholas!” Jazmin hissed again.

“I’m not going to lie to her Jazmin,” he shot back.

My frustration again reached a tipping point. I struggled to keep myself from doing that stupid thing I do where I cry when I’m mad and as a result, my words came out much angrier than I intended. “You have to tell me! Who are they? Who are the Pushers?”

Jazmin and Nick traded a weighted look. Nick dipped his head and made an “it’s up to you” gesture with his head. Jazmin took a deep breath and said, “We are.”