TEN
After I’m done telling Meesha the whole story, she’s staring at me as if she’s having coffee with Sasquatch or Lord Voldemort. I wait for her to say something, but she doesn’t.
“Can’t you say something?” I finally ask.
She nods. “Yeah. You taking meds or something I should know about? Is there some loony bin out there looking for you?”
“No. I’m dead serious. It’s all true. All of it.”
“So show me.”
Just like Mario. Suddenly I feel like a circus act. I wonder if this is how celebrities feel when people ask them for their autograph. I guess it comes with the territory.
I look around and mutter, “I can’t exactly do it right here.”
“I see.” She leans back in her chair and crosses one muscular knee over the other. It takes some effort. “You ever wonder why this crazy lady always felt like she had to protect you?”
I look at her, puzzled.
“Honey,” she goes on, “with my first husband—God bless that man’s soul—we used to run a youth group at our local church. The Blossoming Flower of St. Genesis. There was this one boy. About your age. Gabriel. First time we met him, poor thing was lit as a candle and high as a kite. As drugged up as he could possibly be. We took him under our wing and tried to help with changing his life. He’d come over for dinner. We’d take him out for his birthday. We just about nearly took him off the streets. Turned his life right around, we did.
“But … like they always say … all good things come to an end. Take it from me, baybeh. All things. He met this girl. Cute little thing, too. But boy, was she hell in heels. Michelle or Melissa—oh hell, don’t matter. Might as well’ve been called Satan. She tore Gabriel’s heart right out. Stomped all over that good boy.
“So one night Gabriel found out she wasn’t, let’s just say, a one-man kinda gal. After that, he broke down. No one could stop him. Then he took a handful of who knows what. And that was it.” She closes her eyes and sighs. “Now, I’m not saying you’re some druggie, but that boy had heart. Like you. A special light. Such a waste of a beautiful life. And the minute I met you, you reminded me of him. Same hair, eyes, way you walk. I just wanted to grab you and cradle you … So I guess I’ve made it my mission to look after ya—make sure I don’t let your life go before your eyes.”
She grabs my hand. Her grip is soft, reassuring, caressing. “I told you before, sugah, that I got my eyes on you. Now, I don’t care if you tell me you came straight from outer space or you can turn water to steel with a snap of your finger. That ain’t what makes you special to me. What makes you special is this right here.” She places her palm on my chest, right against my heart. “And you just remember that.” She removes her hand and leans back. “Don’t get me wrong. I’ll have to get used to this … uh … this thing you do. But ain’t nothing more powerful than my promise, as God as my witness.”
I’m stunned. I’m not exactly sure if she believes me or thinks I’m crazy, but I don’t even care. Meesha genuinely cares about me. It makes me wonder when and how this happened. She loves me. And I love her too.
I feel the corners of my lips twitch upwards in a smile. “I don’t know why I met you either, Meesha, but I feel like one of the luckiest guys in the world.”
She lets out a breathy laugh. “Mm-hmm, you better say that. So, this trip to Paris or whatnot. When are you leaving?”
“As soon as my passport comes in.”
“And what about this boy of yours? Anybody worrying that they might hurt him no matter what they’re telling you? I mean, I wouldn’t be waiting around. Ya’ll is crazy now.”
“I promised Naima a trade. Me for Edwin. She and I both know he’s just leverage so they can get me to do what they want. He can’t do anything for them. And if anything happens to him, they’ll lose that leverage. She lets me talk to him. He sounds all right, but he’s terrified, and just knowing he’s with them is freaking me out. I know they most likely won’t hurt him, but I wouldn’t put it past them. As for Norrek, he seems to think I might be the answer to helping him replicate this army of Peace Hunters. So he wants to basically have me be his human science project. Now I know why I always hated science.”
“Oh no, he won’t!” she bursts out. “Let me tell you—if he even lays a hand on you, I’ll swim my way across the Atlantic and give him a piece of me!”
Her radio sounds off, hollering her name and some code word. “Can’t ya’ll take care of anything for yourselves?” she yells back. I cringe. She tucks the radio away and pushes her chair back again. “Okay, sweet thang, my time’s up for now. We ain’t done here, though. Let’s talk more later. You make sure you call me, text me, whatever works. But I better know you’re safe. Got it?”
I raise my hand and salute her. “Yes ma’am, Madame Meesha!”
She gets up, then comes around the table and and graces me with another kiss. “You’re a good boy, Gavin. Don’t you forget that. Now, after I go to the Lord’s house to pray, I want you to show me whatever it is you say you do.” She turns to march out of the cafe, but before she reaches the door she shouts out to the clerk, “I’ll be back again tomorrow! Same time!”
Before heading back home like I promised, I stop at the dinosaur exhibit. The fossils always blow my mind. There’s a real triceratops, called “Hatcher,” that was found in Wyoming in the early 1890s. Nearby, a forty-foot T. Rex that was found in South Dakota stares down on me and makes me wonder what it would feel like if this big guy was still alive. I mean, you’d have to know you were a goner. And then there’s a freakish winged dinosaur that hangs from the ceiling so it hovers over the other fossil in the center of the room, a long-necked, ninety-foot-long sauropod.
I start imagining Edwin and me strolling though the museum like other families and scanning information, discovering the different prehistoric eras together. But I shake the image from my head and continue reading the information signs on the displays. I didn’t realize that there had been more than one prehistoric era. The sign that grabs my attention is the one I’m most familiar with, the Cretaceous Period. At least, it’s the one my teachers went over in school most often. I just had no clue it was called this. Apparently the Cretaceous, the last phase of the Mesozoic Era, began around 145 million years ago and ended 65 million years ago, when the dinosaurs went bye-bye. This was also the period where plant life and flora flourished, mammals continued to evolve, continents were in a remodeling sort of mode, and oceans expanded.
I’m staring at a bundle of watermelon-sized dinosaur eggs thinking that you’d be able to cook up an omelet the size of a house with these babies—when another thought suddenly crosses my mind. Why I didn’t think of this before?
We have all five vials!
For a moment I’m tempted to use them and go back in time to kill off Norrek or something. But who knows what the downstream effect of that would be? However … there is one place—or time—where I know I can go to and just watch. A time where I might just find some answers that can help me stop the Peace Hunters. All I need to do is figure out how to use all five vials to get there.
I’m going prehistoric.
