My nerves flickered, but something inside me settled at the same time. . .that little mental switch I’d had since childhood. The one that clicked on whenever life got too heavy or too loud.
My grandma called it my Scooby-Doo mode.
She wasn’t wrong either.
It sounded silly, but it always worked to help me calmly solve a problem.
Even though my mother had offered to get my grandma cable TV, which would have allowed me to watch my favorite shows on Nickelodeon, Grandma had stubbornly refused, forcing me to watch her basic local channels.
That meant Scooby-Doo reruns on summer Saturday mornings.
Her living room always smelled like cocoa butter and Pine-Sol.
The buzzing TV’s glow hit the plastic-covered sofa just right, like it belonged there with the sunlight. I’d pour way too many Frosted Flakes into one of Grandma’s plastic mixing bowls, rush into the living room, place a Capri Sun on the side, and sit cross-legged on the floor.
Once the show came on, I’d be loudly crunching the whole time until the theme song finished.
Eventually, Grandma would show up with her cup of coffee, her housecoat would swish past as her slippers tapped on tile.
She’d sit on the couch behind me, mumbling things to the TV, calling Fred, ‘that sneaky fool.’ She was convinced he had a thing for Daphne. Meanwhile, she always chuckled at Shaggy and Scooby’s crazy detours. At least three times, she would complain that there should be a black girl with the Mystery Team, and then start to point out how Velma was probably a quarter Black.
“Yeah. She got some African DNA. Look at that hair and those hips. That’s from the Motherland no matter how much her people probably tried to hide it. Velma is Black.”
The commercial breaks were just long enough for bathroom runs or sneaking more cereal into the bowl.
Those episodes were the first mysteries I ever solved, sitting cross-legged on the floor and calling out clues before the gang figured them out. It was the kind of childhood safety that stuck to the ribs, even decades later, long after life moved into harder territory.
Nobody ever bled.
Nobody stayed lost.
Nothing was unsolvable.
And when the mask finally came off, the villain always said something dumb like "I would've gotten away with it if not for. . ." and the world snapped back into balance.
The memory faded as my shoe hit marble instead of tile, and the scent shifted from Pine-Sol to sandalwood.
But the comfort stayed.
That old armor, wrapped in nostalgia and summer Saturday morning certainty, settled around my shoulders like Grandma's housecoat.
Scooby-Doo mode.
A coping mechanism that had carried me this far.
A reminder that some mysteries could still be solved.
I exhaled slowly, matching my breathing to the quiet thunder of Hiro and the twins moving next to me.
Hiro glanced down at me then, and from the side his profile was chiseled, yet elegant. “Are you ready?”
My heartbeat thudded in a strange rhythm—anxious at the edges, steady in the center. “I’m ready.”
A shiver crawled across my shoulders, thin and cold, like the flick of a serpent’s tail grazing skin. Every instinct screamed that danger was close—coiled, waiting, patiently deadly.
Hiro shifted slightly inward, and his arm brushed mine.
Instantly, the sensation faded.
