Nevaeh grins, almost as if this is her favorite game. “Nope. It’s me. Nevaeh.”
Jo snaps her fingers. “I can never tell you two apart.”
The boy who let us in clears his throat.
“Oh, this is my nephew, Kevyn.”
“Kevyn with a y, not an i.”
“Hi, Kevyn-with-a-y. I’m Tiffany.”
“And I’m Nevaeh. It’s Heaven spelled backward, which I personally think is so dumb. I mean, why would anybody spell words backward, you know? My twin sister’s name is Heaven. Get it? Heaven and Nevaeh? Why couldn’t our parents have named us, like, Jenny and Penny or something? So lame, right?”
Kevyn’s eyes widen. “Whoa.”
“I like your name, Nevaeh. It’s pretty,” Jo says with a chuckle. “We got one of those giant bounce-house, obstacle-course-race things for the party and apparently it’s my turn to make a fool outta myself.”
“Omigosh, are you serious?” Nevaeh jumps excitedly. “I, like, love those things.”
“You wanna come outside with me and meet the rest of the family?” Jo asks warmly, looking so thrilled to have Nevaeh and me here.
Nevaeh gives me an excited look. “Can we, Tiff?”
“Of course,” I reply happily. “I’m gonna go say hi to Marcus real quick. I’ll meet you out there.”
“Upstairs, down the hall and to the left is where his room is. Tell him I said to grab your box out of the hall closet.” Jo places her arm protectively around Nevaeh’s shoulders. “Express mail accidentally delivered something here for you. Tiffany Sly Care of Anthony Stone from Juanita Sly.”
“Really? That’s my grams. Thanks, Jo. I’ll ask Marcus to get it for me.”
Jo, Nevaeh and Kevyn-with-a-y head toward the back of the house. I head upstairs.
* * *
“Knock, knock.” Marcus’s door is open. He’s sitting on the bed with a pair of headphones stretched over his hooded sweatshirt. He slides them off his head when he sees me.
“Hello,” he says in his sweet, soft manner, not seeming the least bit surprised that I’m standing at his bedroom door.
“Hey. You feeling okay?”
“Better. I tried calling you, but your phone was going to voice mail.”
“Oh, yeah. I turned it off.”
“Why?”
“GPS tracking. Long story.” I move into the room. “Your mom said a package was delivered here for me?”
“Oh, yes.” He stands. “One moment. I’ll be right back.”
He moves past me and I glance over at his desk, where small tubes of white makeup and dirty makeup sponges clutter the space. There are also books splayed out.
The Death of Ivan Illich.
War and Peace.
Anna Karenina.
Jeez. I thought I was doing big things by reading The Shadow of the Wind in Spanish. Within a moment Marcus returns with a medium-size express mailing box. He sets it on the bed.
“Hey, Marcus. What’s with all the Tolstoy?”
He sits at his desk chair and spins it around to face me. “I’m doing a comparative analysis on themes in the works of Tolstoy before and after his religious conversion for my advanced writing class.”
“I didn’t even know he had a religious conversion.” I move toward the box, recognizing my grandma’s handwriting. “You mind if I open this real quick?”
“Not at all.”
I tear off the tape that seals the cardboard box and peel the flaps back to look inside. A handwritten letter is on top of a bunch of packing peanuts. I pick up the letter.
Dear Tiffany,
Some things don’t belong in storage. I hoped they could find a place with you.
Love,
Grams
I dig through the packing peanuts and retrieve one of many items—Mom’s high school yearbook.
“What is it?” Marcus asks.
I hold it up for Marcus to see.
Jo peeks through the door. “Kevyn told all the cousins there is a beautiful black girl here and so I’ve been sent to retrieve you. And Nevaeh is running through that obstacle course like an Olympic superhero. I’m tellin’ you that girl got some serious speed.” She eyes the yearbook. “Where on earth did you find that old thing? Haven’t seen that in years. I thought I lost it when we moved.”
“Oh, no. This is my mom’s. My grams sent it to me.”
Jo steps into the room and examines the cover. “J. B. Young. Class of 1996? Stop it now. Tiffany, this is not your mom’s.”
“I swear it is.”
“Well, I’ll be.” Jo takes the book from my hand and carefully pries it open, gently flipping through the pages of the book. A moment passes. “Look.” She lays the book on the bed and Marcus and I look over her shoulder at the page.
“What are we looking at?” I ask.
She points to a photo of a nice-looking Caucasian boy with strangely familiar bright green eyes. “Steven Harrison. God rest his soul.”
I study the picture. “You knew him?”
Jo nods. “Knew him quite well.”
“And he died?” I ask.
“About a month before Marcus was born. He was only eighteen.” Jo gets a faraway look in her eyes.
“Was he a good friend of yours?”
“That’s my dad,” Marcus says.
I turn to him. He’s sitting back at his desk chair. “Your dad? But I asked you if anybody in your family had green eyes and you said no.”
“You asked if anybody in my mom’s family had green eyes.”
“Omigosh, Marcus. You’re incorrigible!”
“He is incorrigible, ain’t he?” Jo laughs.
I lean back on my hands. “Marcus, your dad and my mom went to the same school?”
“Who knows, Tiffany,” Jo adds. “They might’ve even known one another.”
“What high school did you go to, Jo?”
“A private girls’ school in the city. Closed down a few years ago.” She’s still flipping through the yearbook, giddy as a high school teen as she turns the delicate pages. “You mind if I take this downstairs to show Monique? She will get a kick out of it. I promise to be real careful.”
“Of course, Jo.”
She hugs the yearbook to her chest and exits the room.
“Small world,” Marcus says.
“No. The world’s huge. There’s, like...four hundred billion people on this planet.”
“That number seems inflated.”
“How could we both lose our parents, who incidentally went to the same high school, and end up living across the street from one another in an entirely different state from where we were conceived? It’s bananas.”
“Stranger things have occurred.”
“And you’re white!”
He shrugs. “Half-white.”
“What are the odds?” I dig into the box and pull out a stuffed ladybug. “Lucky!” I show it to Marcus. “This is Lucky.”
“You don’t see too many ladybugs around these parts.”
I place Lucky over my face. “Nice to meet you, Marcus McKinney,” I say in a high-pitched cartoon voice. “I’m a ladybug. And you a white boy!”
Marcus laughs and I toss Lucky on the bed.
“What else is in that box, Tiffany?”
I dig around. “Let’s see here. Pictures, cinnamon incense, some books. Oh...” I pull out an iPad. “This is my mom’s. Omigosh. Grams gave me Mom’s iPad.”
“Tiffany, I find it tough to believe your dad would let you come here in a car, with Nevaeh, from Malibu. They’ve never darkened our doorstep and they live across the street.”
“Yeah. People change. That man is full of surprises.”
“Tiffany?” Marcus’s bright green eyes gaze at me. He pulls the hood off his head. His white-pain
ted face and head have a subtle luminescence under the recessed lighting in his bedroom. “Your dad doesn’t know you’re here, does he?”
“Nope.”
“He’s going to come here and get you two. He’s going to be extremely angry.”
“He’s not coming here. He doesn’t know where I am.”
“Tiffany. This is a great example of doing something that doesn’t serve you well. Coming here against the orders of your dad?”
“Dad? Please. His name is Anthony. And who cares about his orders. I feel happy for the first time today. That’s serving me well just fine. I’m living. Just like Mr. Mills told me to do.”
“Mr. Mills? Tiffany. You have to call your dad. Tell him where you are. He might call the police.”
I close my eyes. “Marcus, he’s not my dad, okay? Stop calling him that.” Within a moment, my eyes begin to squeeze out more tears. Marcus quickly reaches over to his desk and hands me a box of tissues. I grab a bunch and blow my nose.
“What’s wrong, Tiffany?”
I let it all out, telling Marcus everything I know and all about my encounters with Xavior Xavion. Marcus listens intently, hanging on to my every word.
“Wow,” Marcus says when I finally finish. “This is like...”
“An episode of Maury Povich?”
“I was gonna say a soap opera.”
I lower my head into my hands. “I feel like a homeless orphan. I’m Oliver Twist.”
“Oliver Twist is a mid-nineteenth-century creation sprung from the mind of Charles Dickens. You’re not Oliver Twist.”
“Fine, Mr. Smarty Pants who knows everything about everything. I’m not Oliver Twist. I’m the sad spark of consciousness known as Tiffany Sly. The ‘god’ who apparently came here to experience utter misery.”
“That’s dramatic.” He moves from his desk chair and sits beside me. “Do you think Anthony is your father? Or do you think Xavior is your father?”
“What difference does it matter what I think?”
“Because it matters. So tell me.”
“Well... Xavior looks just like me. He plays the guitar. He reminds me of me. He’s nice like me. He wants me. Anthony...he just sucks.”
“You still haven’t answered my question. Who do you think is your father? Tell me what your gut says. How do you feel?”
“How do I feel?” I set Mom’s iPad down beside me and grab my stomach. “I feel all this tightness in my stomach and my chest is heavy. Like someone is pushing down on me with all their strength and... I dunno. You know that feeling you get when someone you like doesn’t like you back. Like heartache?”
“I know heartache.”
“I feel like that. I feel heartache. Like my boyfriend broke up with me.”
“Or your mom died?”
“Yeah.” I sigh. “And the sad part of it all...the thing I really just can’t...explain... I don’t want Xavior to be my dad. Why wouldn’t I want him to be my dad, Marcus? He’s so nice. I think he’d make a much better dad than Anthony.”
“Close your eyes, Tiffany.” Marcus takes off his gloves and stuffs them into the pocket of his hooded sweatshirt.
“Why?”
“Humor me?”
I close my eyes. He takes my hands in his. They feel warm. Extremely warm. A strong feeling of peace begins to move through me. Like a slow-moving body of water flowing up my body from the tips of my toes, reaching all the way to my chest and inching out to my arms and hands. My body is tingling with this sensation of relaxation, harmony and love. “How are you doing this?” I whisper. “You have magic hands or something?”
“You ever turned the crank on a jack-in-the-box, Tiffany?” Marcus asks rather than answer my question.
“Sure. Yeah.”
“You’re turning and turning and the song is playing and you close your eyes and turn your head because you know the thing inside the box is about to jump out and scare you. But it’s never all that scary, right? It’s a toy. It’s not like something could come out of that box and truly harm you.” He squeezes my hand. “That’s how you feel most of the time. Like you’re waiting on something to jump out and scare you.”
“I’m a real-life jack-in-the-box?”
“You’re turning the crank. Waiting on the scare of your life. A giant tsunami. A horrific plane crash. You’re waiting for everything to get all shook up again. If Xavior is your real father...things will definitely get shook up again.” He stands, still holding my hands, and pulls me up off the bed. “May I show you something?”
“Of course,” I whisper.
“But first you have to do me a favor.”
“Okay.”
“You have to promise you’ll do me this favor.”
“I promise.”
“Good. I want you to turn your phone on.”
“But, Marcus—”
“Tiffany. A promise is a promise. A deal is a deal.”
“Fine.” I reach into my back pocket and grab my phone. I press hard on the top button and the phone lights up, springing back to life. Within a moment, dozens of missed text messages come through from Anthony.
Where are you guys?
Tiffany, please call us.
Are you and Nevaeh okay?
Please come home.
Tiffany, please. I’m so sorry. We all love you. We’re all so worried.
You’re not in trouble, okay? This is my fault. I take full responsibility. Please come home.
“I want you to text your dad.”
I groan.
“Tiffany, you need to do this right now.”
I click on Anthony’s last text to reply but can only stare at the screen. “What should I say?”
“How about this. ‘I am at the McKinneys’ house. I am with Marcus. Nevaeh is here, too. She’s safe and having fun. I am sorry.’”
“No! I’m not sorry.”
“Regardless of all that’s happened, he’s most likely worried sick about you. Margaret, too. Say you’re sorry. I know deep down you really are.”
“Fine.” I compose the text and click Send. “There. I did it.”
“Perfect. Now that he knows where you are, we don’t have much time before he arrives.”
“Maybe he’ll let us stay.”
“Not a chance. So come with me, Tiffany Sly.”
19
We stop in front of a door at the end of a long hallway.
“Would you mind taking off your shoes?” he asks.
I lean against the wall, remove my shoes and place them on an area rug in front of the door. Marcus turns the knob and we both step through to the other side.
“Wow. What is this?”
It’s a large room with snow-white, plush carpet and an epically massive movie screen, stretching the entire length of one of the walls.
“This is my meditation room.”
I gaze up at the superhigh ceiling. “It’s kinda like a movie theater. But without the seats. Man, look at that screen! It’s ginormous.”
“It’s a two-hundred-and-one-inch Stewart Cinecurve film screen. We had a specialist from London fly in to install it and rig the wiring. It’s got an Atlas sound system so we get THX-certified sound.”
“Like your own IMAX theater. So rock star.”
“Would you like to see how it works?”
“Omigosh, yes.”
Marcus taps a panel on the white wall and a door pops open. He removes a remote and presses a few buttons. The lights dim. “You can have a seat if you’d like.”
The screen flickers to life. I sit and cross my legs. My long fingers dig into the soft fibers of the carpet.
“Where would you like to go, Tiffany?”
“What do you mean?”
“Pick a place. Hawaii... Alaska... Australia. I don’t have a program fo
r everywhere, but I do have quite a few locations on file. Where have you always wanted to go?”
“How about Ireland?”
“Luck of the Irish. I have a file for Ireland.”
Within a moment, the two-hundred-and-one-inch film screen displays rolling hills of green, as if we are high above the mountains, soarin’ over Ireland!
“Marcus! This is the coolest thing ever.”
Soft violin music streams from the sound system as Ireland is shown in all its Irish glory. Sea mist rolls onto the rugged coastline as we circle the skies. The brightness of multicolored kayaks and canoes breaks through the gray fog as we move over waterways and lakes. The scenery is breathtaking. A landscape photographer’s dream for sure. Waves crash in off the Atlantic, colliding in foamy bursts of water. And there’s a stunning lighthouse, its beacon hazy in the fog.
“I’m in Ireland! Marcus, I’m in Ireland!”
The mist begins to clear and the sun breaks through the fog as we continue our flight over an ancient, medieval castle surrounded by hundreds of wildflowers. I inhale, almost as if I could smell the flowers from here.
“I would never leave this room,” I whisper. “I swear I would never.”
“Do you meditate, Tiffany?”
“I’m not sure what meditation is, to be honest.”
“Meditation is a tool you can use to open up the mind. To ‘wake up,’ so to speak.”
I think of the flyer from the guy in Malibu—11:11 Awakening. “Do you think we’re all asleep? Like this is a hologram and we need to wake up?”
“To me that sounds a bit magical. It’s not magic. It’s science. Everyone has a brain. The brain is capable of all it’s capable of. To me, waking up means attempting to tap into the full potential of your brain. That’s what Jesus did. Buddha, too.”
“Is that why you’re psychic? You’ve tapped into the full potential of your brain?”
“I’m not psychic.” Marcus pulls his hood back over his head. “But it is how I learned to manipulate energy. We’re energy magnets. Energy cannot remain stagnant. And like attracts like. So, since you are energy, you are constantly drawing in more energy.”
I uncross my legs and lean back on my hands. “Wow. I never thought about it like that, but you’re right.”
Tiffany Sly Lives Here Now Page 21
