Amanda shrugged her shoulders and said, “You really are clueless, aren’t you? They both clearly have a thing for you.”
“A thing? What kind of thing?” he asked.
Amanda replied, “A restraining order.” The sarcasm was thick, but Matthew just looked at her. “One or both of them want you to ask them out. They’re attracted to you. Making sense yet?”
Matthew grinned. “You really think they want me to ask them out? How can you tell?”
Amanda laid the sarcasm on a bit lighter this time and said, “I have functioning eyes.”
The dynamics class was starting to let out, and Amanda could see Cameron making his way to the door. “Cameron, we’re over here,” she called.
Cameron sighed and said, “Sorry class ran a little late, but they never start those assemblies on time. We’ll make it if we hurry.”
Cameron led Amanda and Matthew to the center of the campus at Baylee College. Hundreds of students had already gathered for the traditional happening. Everyone huddled around a giant statue of a cardinal that had been on campus for most of the college’s existence. It was tradition to place the team’s helmet on the head of the cardinal at the start of the week leading up to the big football game. Matthew remembered reading about it before they left 2185.
Cameron led the way to the front of the crowd. Just about everyone there knew him and allowed him to squeeze through to the front, where a ten-foot-tall bronze statue of the Baylee Cardinal stood. Gaze into the statue’s eyes, and they would pierce the toughest heart. The bronze bird sat on a pedestal, its wings pulled in to its side as if waiting for a signal to take off.
The head of the student council stood at a podium situated to the side of the statue. He had already led the crowd in a few cheers for Baylee. He introduced a couple of old-time legends of the football program that held the red-and-black Baylee College helmet. He introduced the players and then explained the tradition.
“Students, faculty, and fans of the Baylee College Cardinals, I would like to welcome you to the start of yet another spirit week here on campus. I would also like to welcome everyone to the most sacred of all traditions here at Baylee, the Cardinal Tag!”
The crowd erupted in cheers and started to sing the Baylee College fight song. Matthew and Amanda just hummed along at first, but then Matthew tagged a bystander with a carrier stone, and for those few minutes, he knew the song by heart.
The head of the student council continued. “Per tradition, it is the responsibility of one of our own students to place the helmet onto the head of the cardinal. Who’s it gonna be this week?”
He scanned the entire crowd, and hundreds of hands popped in the air wanting to be the one to tag the cardinal. His eyes were drawn to where Cameron was waving his arms and yelling, “Dude, I totally hooked you up last week! Over here!” The student council leader remembered that Cameron had hooked him up. His laptop had never run so well.
“I see a young man down here that would be perfect. Come on up here, Cam!”
Cameron threw his hands in the air and started hooting and hollering as the rest of the crowd egged him on. He jumped up on the small platform just to the right of the bronze cardinal’s head. It was the perfect position to place the special helmet on the college’s crown jewel.
The student council leader handed Cameron the helmet along with a special scepter called the Cardinal’s Claw. It had the shape of a bird’s claw etched onto the end of its two-foot-long shaft. It was made of the same bronze material as the statue. Tradition deemed that whoever placed the helmet had to be holding the scepter while they positioned it.
Cameron motioned for Amanda to join him up on the stand. He hadn’t placed the helmet on the statue yet, and he wanted her up there with him when he did. Amanda didn’t want to go and told Matthew to go instead.
“He wants you up there, not me.”
Amanda replied, “You need to have moments here, too. Go on.”
Matthew wasn’t sure what she meant by that, but he didn’t argue with her and headed to the podium. Cameron was a little disappointed that it was Matthew and not his best girl, but he wasn’t going to let it dampen his mood.
Matthew reached the podium and Cameron said, “All right, man, grab the cardinal’s claw with me and let’s put this helmet on the bird.”
Matthew put his hand on the scepter and moved it closer to the statue’s head. Cameron started to position the helmet, and the crowd erupted with approval. As Matthew looked out over the masses, he suddenly started to feel faint. His head was spinning, and the muscles in his body weakened to a point he had never felt before. Cameron looked at his friend and could tell that something was wrong.
“Matthew, are you ok, buddy? Matthew?”
Matthew tried to step from the podium, but instead tumbled off the side. He landed on his back and lay there looking up to the sky, trying to regain his senses.
Amanda rushed from the crowd to Matthew’s side, and Cameron followed.
Matthew could see the outline of Amanda’s face as the surrounding light dimmed.
Amanda cradled his head and yelled, “Get some help! Matthew, what’s wrong? Matthew, wake up!”
Matthew feared this would be the last time he’d ever see that gorgeous face, and his final thought was that she would never know how he really felt. Then the lights went out.
Chapter 11
FLASHBACK
“Matthew, can you hear me, son? I think he’s starting to come to.”
Matthew’s eyelids fluttered as he drifted in and out of consciousness. It took a few seconds for the fuzzy images that stood around him to come into focus. He saw Bryan standing at his side and realized he was strapped down to an EMS bed.
Amanda stood at his other side with Cameron. “I called Dad after you passed out,” she said.
“Yeah, son, are you ok?”
The two EMTs that had responded to the call unplugged the wires they had connected to Matthew’s chest and arms. One of them commented, “Well, I know the kid passed out, but his vital signs are perfect. Blood pressure, heart rate, oxygen level, and color—all perfect.”
Amanda asked, “So, you have no idea what caused him to pass out?”
The EMT responded, “No, but my guess is he got a little nervous up there in front of all those people and fainted.” He continued packing his equipment into the ambulance. “Mr. Chance, you may want to take your son on to the hospital and have him checked out or maybe take him to your family doctor, but we don’t see anything wrong with him, so we won’t be taking him ourselves.”
Matthew brought himself upright on the EMS bed and found that he felt fine. He looked around at everyone, feeling no dizziness or weakness.
Bryan Chance thanked the EMT and told him that he would take Matthew home from there. The EMT said he was happy to help and wished him well, but before he left, he did ask Matthew a question.
“I was just wondering where you got that funky pendant. I noticed it when we put the probes on your chest and figured my daughter might want one.”
Matthew told the EMT that it was a one of a kind. The EMT smiled at Matthew and went on to his next call.
Cameron put his arm around Matthew and said, “Damn, dude, you just have to get all the attention, don’t you. I was a little worried there for a minute.”
The crowd of students that had surrounded the ambulance dispersed once they saw that Matthew was going to be ok.
“How long was I out?” Matthew asked.
Cameron replied, “It was a good twenty minutes.”
“It was at least twenty minutes,” Amanda added. “Luckily Dad was close by when I called him.” She still had to make herself call Bryan “Dad,” but it was getting easier.
Bryan explained that he’d been on his way to work and only five minutes from campus when Amanda called him. Cameron asked if anyone had called Mrs. Chance, and Amanda told him that she wasn’t answering her cell phone. “She never has it on.”
Matthew assured th
e entire group that he was fine now and that he didn’t need to go to the hospital. “I think the EMT was right. I think I got nervous up on the podium and I just passed out, like a big wuss.”
Cameron laughed and said, “Yeah, you are kinda a wuss, but I still think you should get checked out.”
Mr. Chance agreed and told Matthew that he was going to take him to their family doctor. “Amanda, you keep your car here and finish up your classes this afternoon. I’ll take Matthew and get him checked out.”
Amanda wasn’t thrilled with that plan. “I wanna go, too. I want to make sure he’s ok.”
“No, you go on to class,” Mr. Chance insisted. “I can take it from here. Try to make it home at a reasonable hour tonight, if you can.”
With that, Bryan Chance put his arm around Matthew, and they walked to his car. Matthew looked back at Amanda and could see the concern on her face. He shouted back to her, “I’ll be fine! Take good notes in English for me!”
Cameron waved to his friend as they pulled out of the campus parking lot and then turned his attention to Amanda. “I know you’re upset, but I think he’s gonna be fine. He looked like he could go ten rounds when he left.”
Amanda agreed but also told him that she wouldn’t be available to study with him that night. “I wanna head home early and check on Matthew.”
Cameron took Amanda’s hand, and together they walked to Amanda’s next class.
Cameron said, “It’s probably better you can’t go out tonight. I need to head over to one of the frat houses and set up their new wireless system. The good news is that we’re invited to their big midweek blowout Wednesday night. You wanna go?”
Amanda was never one to turn down a party invite, and this would be another good opportunity to spend time with Cameron. They had been together a lot over the last month, but she didn’t feel any closer to finding the charm than she had when they first met.
“Absolutely, I would love to go to a frat party with you.”
Cameron was excited and told her that Matthew could come too if he was feeling better.
“The theme is ‘Remember the Eighties,’ so you need to do some research on how people dressed in the eighties and come up with a cool outfit.”
Amanda smiled and told Cameron that she would come up with something. She asked him what he was going to wear, but he wanted it to be a surprise and wouldn’t tell her.
They were just a few yards from the building that housed Amanda’s English class when Cameron’s phone started to buzz. He took a quick look and told Amanda that he needed to run but that he would call her later. A quick peck on her check, and he was headed back to the science building.
Amanda looked around at the beautiful campus and thought about how nice it would be if it were all real. She was worried about Matthew and had no desire to sit through an English class, but she knew that she needed to keep up the illusion. She was just a normal college freshman, or so she wished.
Bryan and Matthew were a few miles down the road before Bryan asked the obvious question. “What the hell was that? Did your Hathmec fall off? Were you faking it for some reason?”
Matthew replied, “I honestly have no idea. I’ve never felt like that before, even before I had a Hathmec.”
“What were you doing when you started feeling like you were gonna pass out?” Bryan asked.
Matthew told his fake father everything that had led up to the emergency call, and nothing seemed odd or out of place.
“All Cameron and I were doing was putting that helmet on top of the statue’s head, and that’s when I started feeling weird. Before I knew it, I was lying on the ground. The next thing I remember is looking up and seeing you and Amanda standing beside me.”
Bryan took a sip of his coffee and returned it to the car’s cup holder next to him. His gruff voice lightened for just a moment after taking a sip but deepened again soon after. “I’m completely addicted to these designer coffees. I just can’t resist them.”
Matthew rolled his eyes. “So, what are we gonna do?”
Bryan replied, “Well, we certainly aren’t going to take you to a doctor. Maybe it’s exactly what the EMT said—you got nervous in front of all those people and passed out.”
Matthew shook his head. “I wasn’t nervous at all. The health charm should have kept me upright, even if I was a little nervous. Something else is going on.”
Bryan took another swig of coffee and patted Matthew on the shoulder. He wasn’t Matthew’s real father, and for the most part, he struggled even pretending to be his father, but he did his best to put Matthew’s mind at ease. “I know it’s strange, but I don’t want you worrying about it. We’ll keep an eye on you tonight and make sure this doesn’t happen again. I just need you to keep your head in the game. No distractions.”
Matthew just wanted to know why it had happened. It was obvious that Bryan didn’t see it as a priority.
They pulled into the driveway of their large, plush home in the suburbs of Alexandria. Matthew was still in awe of the size of the house that Walter had arranged for the new Chance family.
The two-storied, white-sided home had four bedrooms, three bathrooms, a media room, and the biggest dining room any of them had ever seen. It would be a perfect location for the dinner that Addie had planned for the Landrum family.
Addie was in the dining room with Steven when they arrived. The story was that she homeschooled Steven during this time of day, but in reality they spent the majority of the time looking up information on the Internet. Steven was quite good at surfing the web and was endlessly entertained by finding video games online. He picked things up even faster than Matthew or Amanda. He was a smart young boy.
Addie was surprised when she saw Bryan and Matthew come in the door from the garage. “What are you two doing here? Where’s Amanda?”
Matthew explained what had happened during the quad assembly, and Bryan described the scene with the EMT ambulance and everyone gathering around them. “It was quite the scene.”
Meanwhile Matthew approached Steven and told him that he almost got to ride in an ambulance. Steven was impressed. Addie motioned for Matthew to join her in the kitchen.
“Do you know why this happened? Were you separated from your Hathmec?”
Matthew grabbed a bottle of water out of the refrigerator and said, “I have no idea why it happened. I’m no expert on the Hathmec, but maybe something reacted with it. I feel fine now.” He stopped and took a big swig of water. “You guys have been around Walter and his Hathmec a lot longer than I have. Have you ever seen anything like this happen to him?”
Addie told him she had never seen anyone wearing a health charm encounter any ailment resembling what Matthew had experienced. “The health charm’s purpose is to keep you in perfect health and to heal the wearer quickly. Something else has to be going on.”
While Matthew still wanted to know what had caused his episode, he knew there were more important things to work on. “Look, I feel fine now, and I will let everyone know if anything like this happens again. But for now, I think we need to focus on the trans-x charm.”
Even though Matthew wasn’t the leader of the mission, he still felt responsible for keeping everyone on target. He knew things would be different this time around because Addie had control. Last time, Matthew’s mother had shared the mission descriptions and instructions with himself and Connor. But Addie kept all of Walter’s directions and instructions close to her vest, dealing out the information as she felt it needed to be communicated. She took the typical military position, with herself at the top of the chain of command.
The only items not controlled by Addie were the watch that Walter had returned to Matthew and that gray bag of Steven’s. Amanda kept it in her room and never mentioned what was in it. And Matthew never asked.
Compared to the trip to 1984, this mission so far had been calm. Its success revolved around relationship building—there were no angry jocks to fight off and no Keith Kellington to battle. There
were, however, plenty of new obstacles to reaching their ultimate goal.
“Have you had any luck with Ms. Landrum yet?” Matthew asked. “Has she mentioned anything about the charm?”
Addie replied, “I think we have all done a great job getting in with the Landrum family. She trusts me as much as she trusts her own sister, and we’ve only known each other for a couple of months. She lets me pick up her son from ball practice.”
The Landrum family lived only three miles from the Chance family, which made it that much easier for them all to interact.
Bryan added, “I wish I could be more help getting in with the family, but since Sandra’s husband passed away a few years ago, I don’t really have an in. I do seem to make Cameron pretty nervous, though. That must have something to do with the fact that he’s dating my daughter.”
Matthew chuckled. “Yeah, he’s always asking me if I think you like him or not. I usually just tell him that you don’t like anyone trying to make out with his daughter.”
Addie continued, “This dinner we have planned with Sandra and the boys is critical. We will have all of them together, and all of us can work to get information on the trans-x charm. Look at this.” Addie pointed to a painting that hung on the wall of the dining room.
“What is that?” Matthew asked. “I don’t remember it being there.”
Addie explained that she had just purchased it. The painting depicted a ship at ease along the jagged edge of a river bank.
“Ok, it’s a boat,” Matthew said. “What does that have to do with the Landrums and the charm?”
“Take a close look at the marking on the boat toward the front of the deck.”
Matthew and Bryan both stared at the picture until finally it became clear to them. Bryan turned to Addie and extended his hand. “You’re brilliant. It’s a drawing of the trans-x charm, right there on the side of the boat.”
Matthew now understood her ploy. “It’s a conversation starter. You’ll be able to show her and Cameron the picture and see how they respond. That’s really smart.”
Addie replied, “Well, Steven isn’t the only one around here with a good idea or two.”
Last Chance Volume 2 - The Legend of the Hathmec: Planting the Seed Page 16