“So, this is a key to somebody’s diary, huh, who’s diary?” Did I move a pen with my mind last night? “I did,” he remembered. He put the key in his palm and tried to move it. Nothing happened—maybe I dreamed it, but he knew he hadn’t. He wished the day before and up to now was a dream, a lucid dream he could somehow change, or wake up from.
It became a routine. Naz would walk a perimeter around the hospital then come back in and ask about Meri. He didn’t care if he was annoying the nurse behind the desk. Her only reprieve was he took longer walks outside, making the intervals longer between the times he would come back inside. At one point he found himself in his old neighborhood and decided to go down his old block and see if his old house was still standing. It was, barely. It was an eerie feeling, looking at the condemned structure leaning to the side, all the windows out, half-boarded up.
This was his first home in the Exclave. Now it was the home of his recurring nightmare. He walked up to where the steps used to be for a closer look. He hadn’t been there since it happened, since Bearn threw his mother through that table. He looked at the key still in his hand. It had been there all morning.
“So this was a key to somebody’s diary? Momma had a diary. Gabe said, find it under floor,” Naz laughed. Then he remembered his mother hiding her diary under a floorboard whenever Bearn would come around. “It couldn’t be,” he said, looking at the key and then up at the house. “There’s only one way to find out.” He put the key in his pocket.
There might be all manner of vermin, including squatters, in an abandoned house, but Naz knew right where to go. He would get in and out.
He climbed onto the porch. There was no door, and he only needed to maneuver around a decrepit sofa someone had stood up on its side to block the doorway. The house was well-lit from the daylight that shone in through the front doorway and the open windows.
Inside he tried with all the power he could muster to act as if he had blinders on and not look around. As he came out of the vestibule, Naz imagined the house as it once was: the way he saw it so many times before in his recurring nightmare, complete with Meri coming down the stairs and giving his mother a leaping hug, him taking off his guitar and throwing it on the sofa in the living room.
Tiny footsteps brought him back to reality, and he knew creatures were dispersing, but he kept his eyes forward while heading for the stairs directly in front of him—easy enough. His senses were assaulted; the smell was almost unbearable. The stairs that were still there were rickety at best, and Naz found himself holding on for his life to the metal banister still bolted to the wall. It was suspect and wobbled in its concrete, but without its support, Naz would have landed in the basement instead of on the second floor. He had never been in an abandoned house before but heard that people usually came and stole all the doors. He could see now that was true.
Upstairs it felt like he was outside again when he looked up and saw the overcast sky through the obliterated roof. One wrong step would send him crashing back downstairs, a fall he would likely not survive, and Meri would be alone. When he stepped into his mother’s bedroom, he took in the image of decimation. There was broken-up furniture and musty clothes everywhere, and the smell threatened to overtake him as he swallowed and steeled himself—those are momma’s clothes. He imagined it as it once was, with his mother hiding her diary then looking up at him, catching her in the act.
He shook his head back to reality, waited for a few rodents to scatter and pigeons to flutter up, and then went to his mark. He pulled up the floorboard, reached underneath, and after two years, there it was, not much bigger than his hand, dark and leathery—it’s good to have hiding places. He would examine it further when he got outside.
On his way out, he looked at the doorway to his old bedroom but had no desire to investigate—it never felt like home, no place did. Naz hurried down the stairs, which collapsed behind him in a noisy heap, startling a figure lying on the floor to his left. His heart lurched frantically at the sight of the derelict, and he looked the other way to see the smashed glass table his mother had been thrown through still there.
Naz was frozen. He could feel his throat closing. Bolting out of the house, he instinctively dove off the porch onto the unkempt front lawn, rolled forward and immediately came to his feet. He looked back at the structure that almost consumed him, continued breathing deeply, and commanded himself to not be sick.
He walked a few blocks toward the hospital, gathering himself, then finally looked at the worn volume closer. It had a little water damage but was well preserved considering where he’d found it. It looked even older than it was, and there was no writing on its cover.
“Let’s see if that ride was worth the price of admission.” He pulled the key from his pocket.
As predicted, the key found purchase in the ancient book’s lock. The pages felt more like cloth than paper. He closed the book immediately—this is my mother’s personal and private diary. It’s not right to read it. But maybe it would tell him something about himself, who he was. Then he thought of something else. Someone had given him the key for a reason—but who would have a key to my mother’s diary?
His phone buzzed in his pocket. It was Mr. Tesla. It was time to let everyone know what had happened.
Naz spent the next hour calling everyone, and they started showing up at the hospital bringing flowers to Meri’s room. Naz was grateful, but all the flowers gave him an eerie feeling, like someone had died. Flowers filled every corner of Meri’s room. He confided in Harvis he secretly thought about slowly removing them, maybe taking them down to the chapel, or out to the dumpster one-by-one. Harvis laughed.
After that first day, Naz could no longer hear Meri’s thoughts, and it worried him that she was no longer there, but he wasn’t hearing any voices anymore either and reasoned, something inside him must’ve changed again. Meri was still there.
The crisis kindled the beginning of a friendship between Harvis and Naz, one that helped Naz resolve to keep a positive attitude. It was all he had.
“She’s still there man … fighting,” Harvis assured as he and Naz walked outside the hospital. “Like Coach said, think positive. How you holdin’ up?”
“It’s just … when Meri gets better—”
“And she will get better,” Harvis interrupted.
“I don’t know what we’re gonna do. We can’t go back there, to Miss Tracey’s. I don’t know. Maybe MeeChi’s … or Dr. Gwen’s. Do you think the General could pull some strings for me … at International Academy?”
“Whatever you want, man.”
“I know I already owe you.”
“Trust me; no you don’t.”
“Why do you keep saying that?” asked Naz turning to face Harvis.
“You really don’t remember do you?”
Naz shook his head, confused.
One day turned into two and two days to four, and there was still no change in Meri’s condition. Naz told Miss Tracey he was staying with Fears until playoffs were over, but every night he was at the hospital falling asleep in Meri’s room or the waiting room, or wherever the hospital staff would allow him. D kept a string of supportive texts coming in, which helped calm him. He struggled to stay awake in his classes. At night he always came back to the hospital to be with Meri, where he would peruse the pages of his mother’s diary reluctantly. Trawling through the book he found something in its pages that surprised him, something that would surely make Meri’s day.
In the first game of the playoffs, Naz turned in a lackluster performance, but his teammates were stellar as they coasted to a 68 to 52 win over the Schultz Tsunami. In the quarterfinals, it was the Railsplitters in a convincing romp over the Millennium Falcons 71 to 49, but Naz’s mind was elsewhere, and he sat the entire second-half on the bench. In the locker room, Naz would receive a call from the hospital about Meri. She had come out of her coma, been upgraded to intensive care, and been moved to a less critical wing of the hospital. Naz took a rain check on
the team celebration, opting for a reunion with his little sister whom he missed so much.
When he walked into her room he couldn’t remember ever feeling so elated to see her staring up at him.
“Meri!”
She smiled and waved with her gauzed hand. She was clearly sedated, but cognizant.
“How do you feel?” he asked.
“Really good.”
“Do you remember what happened?”
“Umm … you were trying to move a pencil.”
Her faculties did not stretch to memory just yet.
“That’s good, Meri. That’s good. Can you believe I actually moved a pen? It was something else. I wasn’t able to do it again. I mean … I haven’t figured out how to do it again, just yet.”
She just smiled. He didn’t realize how much he missed her, but she wasn’t the same, and it made him sad.
“I wanna read something to you. It’s from momma’s diary. Ready?”
She nodded.
About Cory:
My love, I am with child again. I know that your son is your crowning glory, but I hope that this new child of ours convinces you that no one man or one child is an island. I hope that this child inside me rekindles our love and provides the incentive for us to recommit our love and our lives to each other forever.
Naz turned a few pages then continued:
About Bearn:
He can never find out that the queen that lives inside me is not his own or he will never love her and he will cease to love me. He will hate me. He will hate our marriage, and that will poison everything in our lives. The Bible says, Jealousy is the rage of a man: therefore he will not spare in the day of vengeance.
Naz looked up to see one lone tear rolling down the side of Meri’s face, something he had not seen in over two years, and he began to well up. He grabbed a tissue from the table next to her and dabbed the side of her face. He used the back of his hand to quell his own tears before they could start.
“Momma always was a zealot.” She smiled.
“Zealot?” He laughed. “Maybe she had it right.”
“My name is Meridian Andersen,” she said majestically.
The sound of her voice through her lips was like music to his ears.
He told her about the games, how he hadn’t been playing well and that he was thinking about sitting out the rest of the playoffs. This upset her, and he retracted the idea, calming her down. They didn’t talk about what had happened and what they would do when she got out of the hospital. The thought was overwhelming to him, so he didn’t want her to even think about it. He did talk to Fears, Dr. Gwen, and Mr. Tesla about his concerns. They assured him they would put their heads together and come up with the best possible solution for all concerned.
In the semifinals the Railsplitters would face the Spain Matadors: the team that had eliminated them the year before. With two minutes left in the fourth quarter and the Railsplitters down by four, Naz would summon the magic once more with two steals and a three-pointer at the buzzer to win the game by one point, setting the stage for the next day’s championship game. In the War Room after the game, during Fears’ post-game talk, Naz received an urgent message from the hospital.
“You’ve won a great battle today, gentlemen, but your destiny still awaits,” bellowed Fears as he watched Naz look at his phone.
Urgent: There’s been a setback; you need to come to the hospital now.
In a vacuum of deafening silence, Naz stood slowly with a desperate look of uncertainty and fear, not wanting to meet the eyes of his teammates. Fears quickly excused Naz with a nod, and Naz exited the War Room on trembling legs. Harvis followed and Fears did not protest. Harvis stopped him with a hand on the shoulder from behind just before Naz could make it out of the locker room.
“Naz—”
“I know,” Naz interrupted as he turned his head just enough to see Harvis’ hand on his shoulder then continued out the door.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
PRECIPICE
When Naz walked into the hospital he was fluctuating between anticipation so intense that it was very nearly pain and a menacing fear that picked at his resolve. He loved Meri more than everything else combined. He just couldn’t wrap his mind around the concept of a world without her. The doctor informed him that a normal heart could have recovered from the trauma, but Meri’s congenital heart defect precluded that possibility, and she didn’t have long.
“How long?” asked Naz, his tears spilling.
“Minutes,” said the doctor sympathetically. “You need to be with her … now, and pull yourself together before you go in there. You need to be strong for her,” the doctor finished as he handed Naz the box of tissue from the nurse’s desk.
“Is she in any pain?” he sniffled.
“No.”
“Thank you.” His voice was low and bleak.
Naz steeled himself and entered Meri’s room as if nothing were wrong.
“We won today, Firecracker. I hit the game-winning shot. Tomorrow we win it all.”
“How many points did you have?” she slurred.
“Nine.”
“That’s terrible. Tomorrow I want you to have thirty … no, forty points, even more than Ham.”
“I will,” he promised.
“Naz.”
“Yeah, Meri.” He moved closer to her.
“I’m scared. I don’t wanna die.”
He was losing his battle to be strong, and he turned his head to regain his composure.
“You’re stupid. You’re not gonna die. Y-You’re gonna go to law school. You’re gonna have a law firm … and, and win tennis in the Olympics and at Wimbledon. You, you’re gonna win a Grammy … and … you still have to beat me at chess you know, and—” He felt like if he kept talking he could delay the inevitable.
“That’s the one thing you don’t do well.”
“What’s that, Meri?”
“Lie.”
He smiled.
“It’s OK. I’m gonna see momma today … and meet my father.” She smiled.
Her words hinted at an end, and he recoiled from the thought. He nodded as a liberated tear escaped his eye. She beckoned him closer and wiped his face with her hand.
“My name is Meridian Liberty Andersen,” she said softly.
“I love you, Meri.” His voice was wistful.
She began to sing:
Night night my little soldier
I know in all your dreams
You’ll find a noble destiny
You are a part of me, you see
I have to tell you this
Just before I fall off to sleep
Naz joined in:
More to me than flesh and blood
There’s nothing I won’t do
As He once gave his life for me
I’d give my life for you, for you
I’ve got to tell you this
Just before you fall off to sleep
I pray your soul He always will keep
I’ve gotta tell you this
Just before you fall off to sleep
I pray your soul He always will keep
Her chest rose one more time, and she was gone.
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
PURGATORY
When Naz left the hospital he was all cried out. He was supposed to be good—good at everything. The one thing he had endeavored to be good at for over three years was protecting his little sister, and he had failed miserably. I’m supposed to be a genius … with a twist, Dr. Gwen said, and I couldn’t even save her. Guilt plummeted down on him like flaming hail, as he walked the streets that were steeped in darkness. He walked the streets of the Exclave without a care; there was no one to care for, nothing to care about. He was waiting for someone to end the nightmare. He would meet his sister, his mother, his father that very night—it should be easy out here. He traversed the seediest neighborhoods he could remember hearing about, no longer avoiding the people of the night.
He wou
ld cross the street to meet them now, bump into them, even taunt them, as they were a part of this nightmare that had brought him to this place. He noticed he was being followed, gave a sigh of finality, and turned about to meet his fate. It’ll be over soon—but the follower retreated in the other direction. Naz yelled out obscenities to the fleeing figure.
He meandered through the streets for hours this way. The Exclave had become his personal purgatory, a prison from which there was no escape, one he was shackled to.
He walked the many blocks to Meri’s school, Higginbotham, still hoping he would wake up, still hoping this was just a nightmare, his worst ever. The ancient school building with its graffiti and rusted metal grate-covered windows spanned the entire block. It was like a lone decommissioned ghost ship docked in an abandoned harbor. It was hard to believe that in just a few hours it would be bursting at its concrete seams with hundreds of children—I’ve never even been in there, no need to. Unlike Naz, Meri had school all figured out, never so much as a note or call home that he could ever remember—but, still. He felt guilty he had never come to Higginbotham, or any school for that matter, to check on her. Nobody had—not since momma died.
He looked across the deserted, litter-filled street at the small public library where Meri would make overzealous excursions to get the books her school didn’t have, and he marveled at her resourcefulness. She would forge letters of permission, on Miss Tracey’s behalf, allowing her to check out books that were not appropriate for children her age: books on the occult and the paranormal—books on me. On one occasion he caught her imitating Miss Tracey’s voice on the phone to what he assumed was a librarian who had, no doubt, grown suspicious—it must’ve worked.
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