She looks up from her laptop. “Dad called down to say that there’s a strange boy out front,” she says. “You should invite him in.”
More and more I’m regretting their choice of living arrangements. It’s like having two spies for the price of one, and the last thing I want to do right now is invite Griffon in to meet her. “Please, Mom,” I beg. “Not right now. I promise I’ll be careful. Kat knows him and everything.” I wave my phone at her. “I have my phone. We’re just going for a walk to the park.” I give her a kiss on the cheek. “Okay?”
She sits thinking for a few moments before she nods. “Okay. But I want to meet him next time. What kind of a boy comes to a girl’s house and doesn’t meet her parents?”
“He’s just … a friend,” I say. “No big deal. I’ll have him in for milk and cookies next time.”
Passing my backpack, I stop and grab the photo of him out of my folder and stick it in my back pocket. As long as we’re having an honest discussion, I want to hear his explanation for this, too.
It’s still a little shocking to see him standing out in front of my house. “Where to?” he asks as I join him on the sidewalk.
“This way,” I say, and begin walking quickly down the street toward the park. It’s one of the first truly warm afternoons of spring, and there are more people than usual crowding the sidewalk. Dodging tourists, homeless people, and the guy that always stands out in front of the burrito shop handing out flyers, I soon find myself several yards ahead of Griffon.
“Are you trying to ditch me?” he asks, running to catch up. “For someone so short, you sure can walk fast.”
I slow down, but my thoughts continue to race. “What did you mean when you said you’d been there too?”
Griffon swerves to the left to avoid running into a lady with one of those twin strollers that takes up the entire sidewalk. He looks around at the other people on the street. “Let’s save that for when we’re really alone.” We walk silently for a few minutes.
“I love that record store,” he says as we pass Amoeba Records. “You know, that place used to be a bowling alley.”
“Rock ‘n’ Bowl,” I say, smiling. “My parents are always talking about it. If I hear one more time about how cool the midnight bowling was, I’m going to scream.”
We cross into the park and through the tunnel that always reminds me of Alice in Wonderland—go into the tunnel from the city and you come out into the country. Well, the park, anyway. People are scattered on every green surface, lying with their faces turned to the sun, taking advantage of the warm evening.
“Down here,” I say, heading for the children’s play area. It’s changed so much since I was little that I hardly recognize it anymore—they took out all of the fun, rickety old wooden play equipment and put in safe, boring plastic stuff. Walking through the play area, I take a left and climb the steep steps that have been carved into the hill next to the long cement slide. This is my favorite part of the park, and the only part they haven’t messed with.
“We’re going on the slide?” Griffon asks, not at all out of breath after our climb.
“You can if you want,” I say. “I’m heading here.” I point to a large rock just behind the start of the slide. I sit down on top of it and pull my feet up. From here, you can see the entire play area and part of the meadow, and aside from a little kid or two, nobody is around to hear us.
“Perfect,” Griffon says, sitting down beside me as close as he can without actually touching. I can feel the heat from his body, and smell a warm, earthy, boy scent that makes my insides flutter. He’s still wearing that black cord around his neck. I can see the outline of the pendant under his shirt, and I wonder if he’s maybe some kind of a religious nut with crucifix issues. At this point, an exorcism might not be completely out of the question.
“So,” I say quickly before I lose my nerve. “What were you talking about?”
Griffon nods. “Ah, the lady is direct. I like it—no preliminaries.” He focuses on a point in the distance, and I suspect it’s to avoid looking at me. “It starts this way for all of us, I think,” he says evenly. “First some odd feelings that come out of nowhere and seem completely random.” He glances at me. “Like the déjà vu we were talking about at the Tower that day.” He pauses. “You might feel completely at home in a place you’ve never been before. Then you might start getting visions of things you’ve never actually seen, at times in history that you didn’t even know existed.”
As he speaks, a shiver runs up my spine that makes every hair on my head tingle. “You try to make up rational explanations for everything,” he continues. “Maybe you think you’re going crazy. Or that you’re just dehydrated.” He looks at me, and I remember the excuses I gave for fainting that day. “Or that you’re seeing ghosts.”
I force myself to keep breathing as he talks, closing my eyes so that I can focus on his words. “Any of this sound familiar?” he asks.
I bite my bottom lip and nod, too scared to speak. He’s describing everything I’ve seen and felt for the past several weeks. “So, what is it? If it’s not ghosts and I’m not crazy, how can you possibly explain all this away?”
“It’s the transition,” he says. “Sometimes it goes quickly, and sometimes it takes an entire lifetime. You had a vision the day we met, didn’t you?”
I can barely manage a whisper. “It was on the Green,” I say. “Everything went dark, and then, as clearly as I can see you, there was a girl, and she was being led up the scaffold … there were people, but there was no one to save her…” My voice trails off and I can’t continue as I remember the tumble of emotions that ran through me as I watched.
“And all of this happened right where the scaffolds were really located,” Griffon says.
I nod. “I keep thinking there has to be a logical explanation, right? That it’s all just some kind of crazy dream. Even crazy is more logical than…” I trail off. Than what?
“There have been other times too, haven’t there?”
“Yes,” I say slowly. “At first it was mostly just feelings. But the actual visions are coming more and more often. Today at lunch … I saw a boy who was watching his mother cook. An Indian boy. One minute I’m trying a friend’s lunch, and the next minute I’m someplace else completely. And there have been others—in a concert hall and at a ferry dock.”
Griffon stays silent, but shifts closer to me. It’s all I can do not to reach out and touch him, but I don’t. It feels like I’m on the edge of something big, and as much as I don’t want to hear it, I don’t want him to stop. I need to get through to the end.
“Think for a second,” he says. “The visions that you’re having. You didn’t really see a boy and his mother, did you? That girl being led up to the scaffold … you weren’t watching her, were you? You said it yourself.”
All of a sudden I know what he means, even though everything inside pushes against the thought. None of the visions have been like me watching a movie. It’s like being in the movie. “No,” I say, barely above a whisper.
“Where were you when all of these things were happening?” he pushes.
I squeeze my eyes shut, knowing that it makes sense, but not wanting to admit it, because if I admit it, everything changes. Everything I know about life will be different.
“Come on, Cole,” he says. “You already know.”
“The girl on the scaffold is me,” I say quickly. “They were all me. I’m watching as these things happen to me, not other people.” I open my eyes and look at Griffon. He’s looking at me with a sad smile on his face.
“That’s right,” he says, as if I’m a child who has finally learned to read. “They are all you.” He pauses before continuing. “All of the things you’re seeing happened to you. Sometimes they’re big moments in a life, sometimes they’re just small things triggered by a smell or a place.”
It feels like the truth is dangling there in front of me, just out of reach. All the pieces of the puzzle are right
there, waiting to be put together. “Why has this been happening now? I’ve gone my whole life without any of this. Why now, all of a sudden?”
A strand of hair falls in front of my face. Griffon starts to reach up and tuck it behind my ear, but stops himself the instant before he touches me. As he pauses, I realize I’ve been holding my breath, waiting for the feeling of his fingers on my cheek. “Because,” he says, folding his hands around his knee. “You’re starting to remember.”
I sit on the rock, watching the kids slide down the hill, feeling like my sanity is slipping away too. Griffon is studying me as I turn all of this new information over in my mind.
“Starting to remember what?” I finally ask, partly afraid to hear the answer.
“Other lifetimes. Your other lifetimes.”
There’s a catch in my throat as I inhale, and it feels like the wind has been knocked out of me. My other lifetimes. “Like reincarnation?” I say it softly because I can barely get the words past my lips.
“Exactly,” he says. “Reincarnation. Past lives. All of that. Remembering them is what happens when you become one of us.”
I look into his face, trying to find a sign that he’s lying. I want to see his eye twitch, or a glance away for just a split second that will tell me that it’s not true. That people don’t get reincarnated and that the visions I’m having aren’t glimpses into my past lives. But I don’t see any of that. He’s telling the truth. At least, the truth as he believes it. “What do you mean us?” I ask. “Who is ‘us’?”
“Akhet,” he says, looking me straight in the eye. “You’re becoming Akhet.”
Seven
I take the stairs two at a time, making it halfway down the hill before I even realize I’m moving. Everything Griffon said is so horrifying that there’s no way it’s the truth. There’s no way the girl on the scaffold was me. That I was the one who was executed. That I was actually there that foggy morning, climbing the wooden steps to my own death. Just the thought sends shards of fear rushing through my system.
Griffon runs to catch up. He matches my stride in that familiar way he has and we walk in silence for a minute or two. Slowing his pace, he says softly, “Look, I know it’s a lot to take in. And you probably have a million questions.”
“Now there’s an understatement,” I say, walking a little faster.
Griffon continues, even though I’ve given no sign at all that I still want to talk. “Akhet are people who can remember who they were in the lives they’ve lived before. It’s an Egyptian word that’s been used to describe us for thousands of years. We keep our memories while everyone else has to start all over again each lifetime.”
I struggle against the tide of questions that are churning through my brain. Akhet. I turn the word over in my mind. I know I’ve never heard it before, but at the same time it’s almost familiar. It feels like ideas are going by too fast for me to reach out and grab just one to examine. I stop at the edge of the playground and turn to face him. I feel almost angry, like he’s getting something out of making me believe his big joke. “You said ‘us.’ So you’re … one too?” I can’t bring myself to use the word, as if acknowledging it means that I believe what he’s saying. And I can’t believe him. It’s crazy.
“I’ve been Akhet for a long time,” he says simply.
I watch the kids on the swings at the other end of the playground. I look around at all of the people on the lawn, the stoners playing hacky sack by the pond. This is real life, not some fantasy story. I want him to laugh, to tell me that he’s only kidding, to take my hand and squeeze it tight, and let me know that all of this is going to be okay. But he doesn’t. He just stands there, waiting for me to make the next move. So I do. “Now that you’ve gotten the lie out of the way,” I say, “do I get to hear two truths?”
“I’m not kidding, Cole,” he says, his gaze steady on me. “It is the truth. I can help make things easier.”
I reach into my back pocket and pull out the photo from Piccadilly Circus. “Were you following us, then?” I ask, holding it out to him. My hand is shaking, and I know he sees it too.
Griffon smiles like he’s been caught. “No,” he says. “Not really. I was wondering if you’d see me in the picture. We just happened to be crossing the street there that day. Owen and I do that sometimes—get into the background of other people’s tourist shots. Kind of like a real life Where’s Waldo. We must be in hundreds of slide shows all over the world.” He touches my image in the photo. “You made an impression, though. Sometimes you can sense when a person nearby is Akhet. So when you showed up at the Tower, I wasn’t all that surprised.”
“That’s a pretty huge coincidence,” I say skeptically.
“Coincidence,” he repeats, then shakes his head. “I don’t think of things that way anymore. Even the word is meaningless. It’s not about coincidence. It’s about leaving yourself open to possibility. Not letting your conscious mind get in the way.”
I rub my eyes with the palms of my hands until colors shoot through the darkness. This is nuts. Akhet? Past lives? Who believes this stuff? I shake my hands out to get rid of some of the nervous energy that’s building up inside of me. “I need to get out of here,” I say, and turn back toward the path. The sun has started to set over the trees while we’ve been in the park, and most of the kids have been called away by their parents.
Even more disturbing than thinking he’s lying to me is the fact that it all makes so much sense. His explanation feels so right. Like something I’ve been searching for is suddenly right there in front of me. But I can’t let myself believe him. His closeness, the scent of him in the warm evening air, is turning my brain to mush.
“Just take it all in slowly,” he says. “It took me years to even get where you are now.”
“And where exactly is that?”
“The place where you can get some answers.”
“Answers? I can’t even figure out the right questions.” I’m not religious or anything, but let’s say for a second that he’s telling the truth. Where does that leave the whole God issue? What about heaven and angels and all that? Who’s in charge of how you come back and when? I think about that day at the Tower and the vision I had. Of the visions I’ve continued to have. “So how did you know that I’m … remembering things?” The rough wood of the platform and the smell of the damp grass linger in the shadows of my mind. For everything that’s unexplained, I still can’t imagine that I’m anyone other than who I’ve always been. It’s impossible.
“When I touched you,” he says. “After you fell, I reached out to help you up, and I could feel it.” He sighs. “When you touch another Akhet, it sends out a unique vibration. But I could tell from your reaction that you didn’t know.”
I walk, thinking about the things I’d like to know if all this were really true. How does it happen? Where are the others? Do you ever remember everything about your past? “When did you first find out about … all of this?” I finally ask, feeling ridiculous even as the words come out of my mouth. I look behind us to make sure that nobody is close enough to overhear. Maybe I can figure out what’s going on if I pretend to believe him.
Griffon blows out a loud breath and runs his hand through his hair. “It’s been a long time since I transitioned. I haven’t thought about that for a while,” he says. He goes quiet for a moment. “It happened for me pretty much like it’s happening for you—in pieces. I was living in Italy at the time,” he says. “I was an older man—back then, forty was considered ancient—and I began to understand what had been happening to me my whole life. I met a woman who knew about it, and she helped me. She was an Iawi Akhet even then.” He glances at me. “Sorry. ‘Iawi’ are Ahket who have had their memories for many lifetimes.”
“When was that?” I ask, understanding that whether or not all this is true, it’s at least true for Griffon.
He looks at me as if he’s deciding something. “The early sixteen hundreds. Hard to say exactly.”
“How old are you now?”
“Seventeen.”
“So you’ve been seventeen for over four hundred years?” Even he must realize how ridiculous that sounds.
He smiles sadly. “No. It’s not like I’m a vampire or some kind of immortal. I’ve been seventeen since February. I’ve just been seventeen many times before.” He stops and looks around. “Everyone has,” he says. “It’s just that some of us carry the knowledge with us. We remember what other people forget. Most of the time it’s a good thing.” He pauses. “Most of the time.”
“So what happened to her?”
He looks confused. “Who?”
“The woman. The one who helped you back then.”
“She died right after we met.” A shadow passes across his face, and I can tell that he’s thinking about something painful. I sense there’s more, so I don’t say anything.
“She was killed, actually,” he goes on. “For being a sorceress. Back then, you didn’t speak of these things in public.” He looks around as we emerge from the tunnel back onto the busy street. “And if you want to stay out of serious therapy, it’s better not to talk about it now either.”
We cross the intersection and start up the street, each of us lost in our own thoughts. I hear pounding as a bus rolls by us, and looking up, I see Rayne in the window, pointing to the bus stop on the corner.
Griffon sees her too. “Your friend?”
I nod. “The one I was waiting for.” We walk to the corner and wait while Rayne pushes through the standing crowd and jumps the last two steps to the sidewalk.
“Hey!” she says, giving me a big hug. “I’ve been texting you all afternoon.”
I feel the outline of my phone in my pocket. I must have forgotten to turn it back on after Veronique’s lesson. “I missed it,” I say.
“Well, I’m here. I was trying to tell you that I can meet you for the movie after all.” She looks pointedly at Griffon, who is standing a few feet away with his hands in his pockets.
“Oh, um, Rayne, this is Griffon. Griffon, this is my friend Rayne.”
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