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Can you really turn away from that for one minor detail?

That he wasn’t from this world?

I couldn’t, I wouldn’t. Especially since this life might be almost over.

While brushing my teeth the next morning, I saw Merrick come up behind me in the mirror.

“It’s time.”

They were leaving to go look for other’s, to call other Keepers.

“I’m coming,” I mumbled, trying to hurry and spit.

I made this decision last night, while lying there watching him sleep, that I would go with them today. I wasn’t sure how much of a fight I’d have to put up, but I was about to find out and I had a feeling, it wouldn’t be easily won.

“No, you’re not. Too dangerous,” he said matter-of-factly.

I rinsed quickly and turned to face him as he stood all take-charge in the doorframe.

“Merrick, you said you didn’t want me out of your sight, take me with you. I can be useful. Girls are least likely to be problematic looking. They don’t question sweet innocent faces.” I smiled a sweet smile and prayed he was considering it.

It actually looked like he was, then squashed it.

“No. I don’t feel right about bringing you when you can stay here. I won’t willingly put you in danger.”

“I want to come. I don’t want to stay here while you go and be at risk.”

“I won’t be at risk, we’ll be fine. We’re not even going into town.”

“Then it won’t be a risk for me either.” He sighed at my rebuttal and tipped his face back to look at the ceiling. “Merrick, please.”

“No, Sherry,” he said with finality as he turned to walk back to the commons, me on his heels.

“Merrick.” No answer. “Jeff, who all is going with you?” I said loudly across the room.

“Well, I thought just Merrick and I would go,” he answered, sitting in the chair tying his shoes.

“And if you get stopped? You need one of us with you,” I suggested and by us I meant not-Special humans.

“Good point,” Jeff said and Merrick shot him a sharp look. Jeff shrugged. “I said good point, I didn’t say it had to be Sherry. We’ll take Phillip.”

“Come on! You need a girl with you. Nobody ever gives me trouble. I’m too short and puny to look like a problem. Please, let me come,” I begged, looking my most sullen.

“She’s got a point, Merrick,” Jeff said, arching an eyebrow.

“No. She doesn’t. We’ll be fine,” Merrick said through his teeth, glancing between Jeff and me as if to say that was the end of it.

“Why are you so set against me going? We have to do these things. You can’t hide me away every time, I’m not a Special,” I said looking directly in his eyes, willing him to see my point of view.

“Sherry, the last time you went out...” he breathed, shaking his head, remembering the Lighter and then the flat tire and Marissa with her gun.

I was a little uncomfortable having this conversation out in front of everyone, my fault for chasing him down, so I whispered my response, walking to stand right up against him.

“Babe. That was different,” I said softly, “and you weren’t there with me then. I don’t want to be here without you. I don’t feel safe without you.”

“I want you to feel safe but...”

“Then please, let me come.”

He looked down, unblinkingly into my eyes for long seconds, then sighed.

“You’re impossible, you know that.” He rubbed my chin with his thumb and smiled that smile that made my heart jump, then turned to Jeff. “Alright, let’s get going.”

I tried not to be one of those girls who bragged with their eyes and smile when they got their way. I wasn’t entirely sure I was pulling it off, but I was trying.

As Jeff stood at the bathroom counter, I applied the liquid foundation to the symbol behind his ear with a cotton ball. It wasn’t perfect but hopefully we wouldn’t need to test it. This was just a precaution.

Jeff didn’t seem at all phased by my touch, nor my closeness as I stood between his knees. Comforting. Jeff was Jeff and that was that.

Merrick on the other hand, couldn’t sit still. His breathing accelerated and his hands squeezed my hips in frustration as I leaned over him.

When I blew on his neck to dry the foundation, he lost it. He reached up from his seated position and pulled me down, kissing me fervently, wrapping his arms around me. I spilled most of the liquid in the sink in my trance as I laughed at him.

If I were honest, I was sure I was quite a bit more flirty with my application of the makeup to Merrick that with Jeff.

“So, does this mean your not upset with me anymore?” I asked, facing him on his lap.

“I was never upset with you. I’m sorry if you thought I was, I just want you to be safe, that’s all that matters. I don’t know what I’d do if you weren’t here anymore. You’ve had enough close calls to last for a while.”

I couldn’t argue with that.

“I know. I just want to be with you. Ok. That’s where I feel the safest.”

“And I want you to feel safe and be safe but...I just don’t like the idea of us getting caught and you being with us.”

I rechecked his ear, again not perfect but not so noticeable either.

“So how old are you?” I asked trying to change the subject to something less stressful.

“Uh...why?”

“I just wanna know.”

“I don’t know exactly. Really, really old.” He chuckled sadly. “How old was Matt?”

“Twenty four.”

“Then I’m twenty four,” he said smiling.

We walked out to the commons room and it hit me that we should bring Marissa. She’d been living out there, in the open, probably knew this area better than anyone. We could take her and leave Phillip. Oh, but she was a Special. Too bad.

I saw her talking to Phillip, he had cornered her against the wall. She told him to basically get lost and pushed his hand. He did it. He walked away just like that. I wondered what she said to him. That girl has some skills that I apparently don’t.

Everyone, even Calvin, who’d been scarce lately, came to see us off. I missed his hugs. We headed up the stairs and Marissa ran over to me, touching my elbow before speaking.

“Be safe. Look beyond what you see. Things are not what they seem,” she said and I nodded almost robotically.

At the time her advice sounded just as that, strange advice from a strange girl, but it lingered in my mind and I couldn’t be rid of a nagging sense of purpose, something I was supposed to do. Like I forgot to pay a bill or turn off the coffee pot or something.

“Shotgun!” Phillip called and Merrick and Jeff both stopped.

“What? Where?” Jeff asked anxiously.

“What?” Phillip looked back at them and then smothered a laugh in his fist. “Nah, man. There’s not a real shotgun. You call ‘shotgun’ when you want to sit in the front passenger seat,” Phillip explained.

“Why?” Jeff continued to look completely puzzled. “Why not just call ‘front passenger seat’ instead?”

“Well, back in the old wagon days, they used to have a driver and then a person who held a shotgun beside him in case they were about to get robbed...” He stopped at their blank expressions. “Never mind. I call front passenger seat,” he said laughing and rolling his eyes.

I tried to stifle a giggle, unsuccessfully and Jeff glared at me. He hated it when he didn’t understand something us mere humans knew and not him. Merrick on the other hand was pretty used to it and sent me playful scowl before winking and smiling.

I drove again with Phillip up front while Merrick and Jeff sat in the back so they could concentrate, and also to be out of line of sight.

I started the van and backed up. As we got going down the road, Phillip’s job was to keep an eye out for anything strange. My job was to make sure to follow all speeding laws and keep driving. As we drove, full of coffee and Mrs. Trudy’s fried eggs, I felt something in my stomach still.

The nagging.

I looked around, almost instinctively, looking for something but having no idea what. It wasn’t the food in my stomach, it was the purpose. I pushed it down, taming it. I wasn’t sure what this was but I was going to sit with my mouth shut.

I didn’t want Merrick to regret bringing me after I pitched such a fit to come. Calm down, Sherry. Focus and drive.

We drove for a bit longer. I kept looking back at Merrick. He looked like he was sleeping almost but I saw him drumming his thumb on his pant leg. He was just peaceful.

Jeff looked that way too. He had said before how peaceful their world was, how peaceful they were with each other. It made sense that trying to communicate with other Keepers would be a peaceful thing for them as well.

Just as I reached my turn around point I saw a little hill off to the side of a bunch of billboards. This part of the state looked a bit like an open grassy plain. A prairie. Nothing like Chicago. Again my dads city girl remarks were playing in my head, but then something else.

Something not mine.

A strangeness overcame me, a foggy stress filled feeling. I was not myself and the nagging as no longer going to accept me controlling it and pushing it down and away. It was no longer just uncomfortable, it was overtaking me.

It bellowed to the surface. I felt like I was drowning in fire, the hot warmth too much to handle. It was on my skin, in my throat and nose, my stomach. My stomach worst of all. I gasped and then something else that words couldn’t describe took my body and senses over completely.

I screamed. It just came out, I didn’t will it, I couldn’t stop it. My muscles bunched and rebelled and twitched.

There was a pain in my stomach past the burning. It was a twisting and turning in my gut. I couldn’t breath. I struggled to pull the van over and press the break but there was nothing but the pain.

Phillip reached over, lifting his leg to press the brake and grabbed the wheel just in time before we ran into the ditch. I hear them mumbling, I hear them yelling. Only muffles and noise to me. My eyes were open but I could only see what my mind willed me to see.

If forced me to look, it forced me out the van, banging on the door wildly and scrambling for the handle. I felt a hand grab for my arm but I pulled away. I tripped and stumbled, scraping my palms in the dirt and dirtying my pant legs. I felt more hands on me but I yanked free. I needed to focus but I couldn’t.

I fell to my knees in the dirt and prickly dead brown and yellow grass. I laid down in a ball to make it stop, fetal position, but it willed me to roll over and sit up straight, facing away from the street.

They were around me, I could feel them but couldn’t respond to their worried touches and voices. Nothing mattered but the pain and the purpose. I tried to fight it and force it down once more with all I had but it accelerated and fed it and I doubled over screaming. My face felt the scratchy grass under me. My stomach twisted and muscles pulled painfully.

No more.

I gave in.

I’d do whatever it wanted if it would just end it!

It willed me to sit up, relax my muscles and pay attention, to focus, to give it complete control. It took over, showing me the hill, and I looked at it- No I saw it, really saw it, beyond it.

I had a weird sense of Déjà vu.

It looked and felt familiar though I had no idea why. It looked out of place, the hill, bushes grown up around it. There was greener grass growing on top of it and it was awfully round and precise to be a natural occurrence. The pain lessened, loosening it’s grip.

A willow tree by the back of the hill caught the edge of my vision.

I hadn’t seen a willow tree in years, not since my birthday. My mind involuntarily started to float to a fleeting flash of that day and then the pain jabbed me again, forcing me to scream again until I refocused.

The billboards were out of place as well. No one stacks bill boards that close together like that, and way out here, in the middle of nowhere. The grass was awfully green on top of the hill, brown and yellow everywhere else.

Look, it willed me. Commanded me. It yelled it to my brain with no words.

I saw it!

The child playing under the canopy. It was not a hill at all! It was a camouflage canopy! The child’s small hidden dark silhouette would never have been seen in the dusk light had I not stopped and stared insistently at it.

One last thing it willed of me.

I raised my shaking finger to point, a hand tried to grab it and I yanked it back in frustration. I pointed again, stabbing with more emphasis and then I could see. My own eyes could see and I could hear.

I gasped a breath of relief. My rapid breathing was the loudest thing as there is no other noise.

The pain was completely gone, not even a shadow of it. Merrick held me in his lap in the dirt and grass, his arms around me, holding me tight as if I were to flee.

They are looking where my finger was still pointing and they saw it too. Merrick looked back at me, shocked to see I was back, that my eyes were clear and it was me. Sherry.

“Sherry! What the hell happened?!”

He cursed. He cursed for me. He never curses.

He hugged me to him so tight with more protection than relief. I wished there was some way I could show them instead of tell them what had just happened. Would they even believe me?

No one saw the Lighter but me last time and now this crazy stunt but the boy was there. Still there playing, unaware of our presence.

Merrick placed a finger under my chin to make me focus on him. He looked at anxious. I steadied myself and tried to explain with as few words as possible, the least crazy that I knew how.

“I don’t know. I was fine.” I looked at the boy but Merrick pulled my face back around to look at him again. “And then I got this horrible pain in my stomach and... something ...made me look, there. I couldn’t hear or see. I couldn’t respond to anything but what it wanted me to do. The pain...I don’t know what...how to explain it,” I said hearing the tears in my voice.

I looked up to three faces. Phillip’s utter disbelief. Jeff’s anger and revelation. Merrick’s urgent concern and revelation.

“What? How is this even possible?” Jeff yelled jumping to his feet and pacing, angrily.

“What is it? What was that?” I asked, begging if they knew something to tell me.