by Seren Goode
“Better, actually. The tape and the ice pack really helped.” I sat up.
Before the tour group caught up with us, he took back his jacket and handed me the remaining two painkillers from the package in his pocket and what was left in our bottle of water to chug them down. Switching off the light, we moved to the front of the storage room and positioned ourselves behind a wall. As the tour group passed, we switched our light back on and joined them.
As we followed the group, I found myself smiling. I couldn’t help it. I tried to wipe it off my face, but it persisted. After all, I was the stupid one that came up the whole “it doesn’t mean anything.” I drank more water and concentrated on listening to the tour guide’s narration. Nope, still there. My lips seemed permanently curled up at the edges. As I felt Shim’s arm around my back, pulling me close, I looked over at him. He was grinning too. That just made my smile bigger.
Chapter 25
Bus to Vegas
Shim was stressed. The minute we arrived at the bus station, he started pacing back and forth across the dirt-brown tiles, eyes inspecting everyone that came close while searching for the familiar face of Jaxon. He had the necklace and kept checking in to see if they were trying to contact us. I tried to get him to stop moving. His nervous energy was starting to attract the type of attention we didn’t want. But, he couldn’t stay still.
The bus station was red brick, not the historic style that adds value to a building, but the industrial kind they use to make post offices and police stations. Conveniently located next to the train station, it was the convergence of people in flux between where they were coming from and where they were going, between old lives and new ones, people with baggage just waiting. Like us.
Shim started another loop. I could tell he was on his last nerve when Jaxon, Breeze, and Skylar finally arrived. There was no time for explanation. They had announced our bus’s last call, and the end of the line was boarding when we rushed to the door. There was an anxious moment as Shim showed our tickets, his fake ID, and the parental permission papers he had forged for Jaxon and the twins. Then they let us on. Few seats were left. Shim found two together in the middle of the vehicle. Jaxon looked surprised when Shim ushered me into one of them and put his bag on the other. He grumbled but found a seat across from us. Skylar and Breeze had to split up into consecutive window seats, Breeze directly behind me.
It was still light out as the bus pulled away from the terminal. I was struggling to get my jacket off; Shim took his seat and turned to help me.
Once settled, Breeze handed sandwiches and sodas forward through the crack between the seats. I was starving. While we inhaled the food, Jaxon leaned across the aisle and filled us in on what had happened after we split, with Breeze injecting details he omitted.
Caught up in the other tour group, the twins and Jaxon had left the underground tunnels. Once on the street, they bumped into the suits again. They had spent the better part of an hour racing through back alleys, up fire escapes, over fences, and finally hid hanging off the side of a bridge incline.
“Sources, Jax.” Shim groaned at how close they had come to getting caught. He reached for his brother like he needed some connection, a pat on the arm something to confirm Jaxon was okay. The concern was shoved right back at him, and the pushing ended with an unpleasant word from Jaxon’s seatmate.
I reached my good arm between the seats, back to Breeze and squeezed her hand. When Breeze asked what we had done, I blushed and hemmed, and Shim choked on his sandwich. “Uh, ducked off the tour while we were underground, and, uh… we stayed there for a while. Grace needed to rest her arm, so she, uh…took a nap.”
“I can’t believe we are going to be on the bus for twenty-five hours.” Breeze groaned. “I already have to pee.”
“There are twenty-six stops and two transfers. You’ll have plenty of breaks,” Jaxon assured her with a roll of his eyes, “and there is a bathroom in the back.” She wrinkled her nose at the idea.
Even though it was early evening, the rhythmic thud, thud, thud of the wheels on the freeway and the steady side-to-side rocking lulled me into a fretful sleep. Time passed in unknown chunks, and I barely registered the frequent stops with a half-conscious head nod and then flopped back into sleep again.
Once I woke, and I was leaning against the window with Shim’s jacket under my head. I had a fuzzy memory of the woman next to Breeze leaving and Skylar moving up. I woke up another time to arguing. Jaxon was getting testy with his seatmate, and I was leaning against Shim, the armrest gone and his arm around my shoulders.
When I finally fully regained consciousness, Shim was gone.
Panic. Did they leave me?
I sat up fast. The pain immediately returned to my shoulder, but the throbbing had lessened. I looked around me. The bus had stopped, and most of the seats were empty. I glanced behind me and relief washed over me when I saw the twins. Breeze was curled up in the seat with her head in Skylar’s lap. He was reading something on the phone. Passengers started loading, and I glanced back to the front of the bus in time to see Jaxon and Shim jumping on with bags in hand. A minute later, the bus took off again. Plucking packets of chips and cans of sodas from his bag, Shim handed them off to Skylar. He passed a magazine over to Jaxon, then pulled out a box of icepacks, took one out of the box and popping the pack to activate it; the cold was seeping through the pack when he handed it to me.
“Aw, you shouldn’t have. What, no flowers? Chocolates?”
“Nah, not my style.”
I smiled and slid the pack inside my shirt against my shoulder, sighing with relief at the coolness. Looking up, I caught a glimpse of my reflection in the window and cringed. I looked like an owl, my eyes blinking with sleep, hair all tufted up. Horrified, I tried to smooth it down with my good hand. One side of Shim’s mouth rocked up, and he slid his hands down either side of my head, pretending to smooth out my hair for me, but just messing it up more. He laughed and pulled more painkillers and a bottle of water out of the bag. “Here are your chocolates.”
As he opened the bottle, he teased, “Love what you’ve done with your hair.” I bit back a laugh. With his curly hair and buttery-colored eyes, he was just the right combo of tough badass and sensitive, caring guy. I was afraid I was hooked.
“It took hours to get my bus do. Don’t hate,” I teased him back. We laughed and kept whispering back and forth in the intimate space between the two bus seats. I was an idiot for saying I didn’t want to define this, to keep it simple. Something was opening up between us that was more than just friends, not defined, but fragile and beautiful in its infancy. And as much as it made my heart race, it also scared me to death.
I tried to ignore the measured look Jaxon was giving us. His eyes narrowed to slits, and his lips pursed. He punched his elbow back into his seat, pissing off his seatmate again, and they started another nasty argument. Shim told him to knock it off or we were going to get kicked off the bus, to which Jaxon demanded Shim switch seats with him. Shim refused with a glare of his eyes.
“I’ll do it,” Skylar volunteered with a sigh. Groggy and half-asleep, Breeze had lifted her head at all the noise, and Skylar slipped out of his seat and switched with Jaxon. Holding herself up on one arm, Breeze stared as he slid into the seat next to her, her face confused, lids blinking like fast-action windshield wipers. Jaxon rolled his eyes, then put his jacket in his lap and told her to lie back down. She complied instantly, her head knocking with a thud on his knee. The impact must not have hurt because she closed her eyes immediately.
Out of courtesy to Breeze, Jaxon used his “indoor whisper” to demand Sky swap the phone for his magazine, declaring it made the most sense for him to research Gypsum since he knew the Las Vegas area. Skylar made the swap. Relieved it was all settled, I leaned into the window and let the painkillers and ice pack do their stuff.
Later, when I woke, the bus was bouncing around
in the dark. Occasionally, yellow beams of light strobed through the windows from passing headlights. Everyone was asleep, even Shim, who had his head back on the seat, his lips parted. I felt suspended in the rhythmic sound of wheels on the road, enveloped in the darkness. The glow from the LED lights running along the floor illuminated Shim’s profile. I reached out to touch his full lower lip, just managing to stop myself, my hand hovering close to his face. As if sensing me, his lids half opened, and one brow cocked inquiring. Silently, I shook my head and, as best as I could while sitting up, snuggled in next to him. As my hand slid across his stomach, I felt warm skin where his shirt had ridden up. His arm went over my shoulders, pulling me in tight.
∞
The sun was cracking the horizon when the bus pulled into the Sacramento station. With the vehicle stopping every hour, none of us had a restful night. We were happy to get out and stretch, shaking limbs to wake up during the bus transfer. There was a fast-food stand open near the station, and while we waited for our to-go breakfast, Breeze and I went to use the bathrooms. When we returned, Jaxon was having a stare down with Shim. They looked like they had been arguing.
We ate while waiting in line for the next bus. Our early positioning was rewarded with first pick of seats, and we grouped together in the back of the bus for better privacy and less jostling as people got on and off.
The very back row had three seats across, and I went in first, then Shim. I expected Jaxon to sit next to Shim after all the fuss from the night before, but he snubbed his brother and sat in the seat in front of us, causing Breeze and Skylar to have to split up. Breeze settled in next to Jaxon and proceeded to tease him into a better mood.
Breeze had that ability with everyone, but it was a little awe-inspiring to watch her use that magic on Jaxon. His face was relaxed, and he even had the hint of a smile curling the corners as he listened to her talk with her exaggerated hand gestures.
“Harumph,” Shim grumbled and shook his head at Jaxon. He reached into his bag and pulled out the two journals we had “borrowed” from Stringham. He handed the paperback journal we had found in the library to Skylar, and he opened the red leather journal from the secret room. I listened while they started making a date-by-date comparison of the entries in Carl Stringham’s parallel journals. They had been at it for at least an hour and several stops, and my attention had drifted as I tried to puzzle out in my head our next steps once we arrived in Vegas, when Shim bolted up.
“There, that’s it.” He pulled on Skylar’s arm. “Go back and read that again.”
June 13, 1995 – Referral appointment to review meteor from Clark Warren. Stone turned out to be an unimportant jasper specimen.
“What’s so important about that?” Jaxon and Breeze had flipped around in their seats and were hanging over the backs.
“Now listen to this.” Shim started to read from the red journal.
June 13, 1995 – Today, I have made the most important discovery of my life. The stone was brought in by five students, children really, a referral to me from Clark Warren. He thought they had a meteor. This is no object fallen from the sky; this specimen is a transformative catalyst in our understanding of planetary geology. With not a single marker to indicate it breached the atmosphere, as a meteor would have to do, it has all the elements of alien origins.
Much more research is needed. However, the students will not sell me the specimen. They appear to be without means, so I have invited them to stay at my home while we continue with this research. It is a small concession to have access to this boundary-shattering discovery. This could be the missing link, so to speak, that ties the work of geologists to that of astronomers.
“Over the next week, we will be doing the customary chemical testing and photomicrograph but also using mass spectrometry, and I’m even going to attempt to book time for an ultrasound.
“Wow,” I said, my hand on my neck, touching the stone on my mother’s necklace.
“Keep reading,” Breeze encouraged.
“The next entry in the phony journal is…” Skylar flipped the page and started to read.
June 13, 1995 – I have hired one of my students, a young man named Sid Cambridge, to assist with my research. While only a graduate student, he has been resourceful and found an anonymous donor to fund my work. I look forward to working with such an eager assistant.
“At least we know Cambridge was around then,” Breeze said.
Shim turned the page of the red journal. “This one has a lot more between those two dates, pages and pages. It’s mostly technical jargon and chemical data from the research. I wish we had a geologist we could trust to explain this. Let me see what I can pick out…” He flipped through a few pages, back and forth. “Okay, it says here the silver veins are ‘high energy conductors.’” I pulled off the necklace and examined it. Skylar had pulled up his sleeve and was looking at the stone on his dad’s cuff, which, at some point, he had gotten back from Jaxon. “Something about the potential for conducting unlimited energy…that’s pretty amazing…” He flipped a few more pages. “They didn’t seem to know what triggers it. Apparently, while it has all the properties to conduct, when they tested it, nothing happened. So, they think there is an activator missing.”
“What’s an activator?” Jaxon asked.
“It’s a catalyst. Something that turns it on,” Shim replied.
“So what turns it on?” Jaxon asked.
“Don’t know,” Shim said, nose still buried in the journal.
“Activate to do what?” Jaxon persisted.
“Don’t know,” Shim drew the words out.
“Well, what do you know?” Jaxon challenged.
“I know I’m going to lock you in the bus bathroom if you don’t shut it,” Shim returned without looking up from the book.
“We must be activators,” Breeze postulated. “How else could we talk to each other through the stones?” She had a good point. We hadn’t talked through the stones often, but we were all able to do it.
“Ew,” Jaxon said. “That kind of freaks me out. What if using it does something bad, like Bilbo’s ring?”
“It’s not like Bilbo’s ring,” Shim insisted, nose still in the book.
“How do you know?” Jaxon challenged.
Shim looked up. “Because, unfortunately, you have not disappeared.” He smirked at Jaxon’s scowl. The look turned speculative. “But it’s true we haven’t spent much time testing the stones.”
“I feel like I’ve stared at them forever,” Breeze complained.
“Yeah, we’ve looked at them,” Shim replied, “but in all this time, we’ve never tested their range, or if you could connect more than two people at the same time, or if the stones are more than just communicators.”
“More?” I said. It was stunning to imagine what else they could do.
“Oh, here is something interesting.” Jaxon had been reading upside down. I didn’t know he could do that. “Turn it around.” He grabbed at the journal and summarized, “Stringham talked our parents into letting Cambridge cut up the stone. That is why each of our parents have a piece. And it mentions Cambridge betraying them and cutting an extra slice for himself.”
“Really?” Shim exclaimed. Pulling the journal back, he read aloud:
I’ve had this image in the back of my mind I was unable to place. I felt like I had seen something similar to this stone before, but not in the context of a meteor. Late last night, I realized where it was from. I had to hunt around but finally found the old issue of the African Archaeological Review Journal. It had museum photos displaying a unique stone originally found on an archeological dig at Wadi Halfa in Sudan in 1907. The excavation had discovered several unremarkable ceramic bowls and wooden implements at the site, dating them to 4000 B.C., then made the find of a lifetime, discovering beads and two metal disks. There is a great deal of controversy over these necklaces
because the quality of the finds and the material used is not consistent with the stratigraphy of the layer being excavated.
The description of the necklace was brief: bronze beaded necklace and a central disk with cabochon set stone in the lower half of the disk. They cited several iconographic references that refer to the necklace as a ‘keystone,’ but I’ve not seen any support for this. The other necklace was a plain gold disk with raised markings and a hole in the top. The material it was hung on had long since disintegrated. There was a photograph of the two pieces. The stone has a remarkable resemblance to the one I am studying.
I will have to pursue the private owners of these pieces and obtain permission to study them. If this rock is the same as the one in the ‘keystone’ necklace, the scientific implications could be staggering.
Wide-eyed, Jaxon had pulled the bronze beaded necklace out of his back pocket. “Whoa, whoa, whoa, hold it there. Is he saying my ass has been sitting on a 4000-year-old thing since Portland?” He held it out, away from his body, like he was scared it would bite him.
“No.” Shim placed the journal in my lap and gently cupped the dangling necklace in his hands. “More like 6000-year-old thing.” He studied the bronze disk. “Keystone—that’s what Waters heard our parents say.”
“Yeah, about that. Just what is a keystone?” Jaxon asked.
“In architecture, it’s a center stone that locks all the other pieces together,” Shim replied.
“So what does our keystone have to do with that?” Jaxon asked.
“Don’t know,” Shim said.
“Well, what do you…?” Jaxon started to challenge again but broke off when Shim glared at him, then eyed the bus bathroom door and raised an eyebrow.
Breeze gently took the ancient necklace from Shim’s hand. “Do you think this stone works like ours?”