Page 126 of Meet Me on Greenwood

"Houston," I breathed, as the ORI whirred. I could hear the generators humming as the countdown began.

Houston gave me one more slow kiss on the forehead. He touched my face, as if trying to remember every detail. I closed my eyes, waiting to wake up, but when the ORI ticked to zero, I opened them realizing that I hadn’t gone anywhere. I was still in his arms.

We looked at one another in confusion. I thought through what could have gone wrong. I’d never gone into a time period that wasn’t connected to a memory. As I blinked, trying to reorient myself, I caught a glimpse of red ruby lips. My eyes widened and Houston noticed immediately, because he turned around reaching for his weapon, only to realize it was in Sarah’s hands, and she was pointing it directly at us.

"Sarah," Houston breathed, trying to shield me with his body. "Give me the gun."

She giggled, pulling away the safety. "This gun? You know, you really shouldn’t leave your toys lying around. How careless of you."

Houston held up his hands. "Whatever grievances you have, they are with me. We can step outside and—"

"Quiet," Sarah commanded.

He went silent, but I could feel the energy coursing through him. He was ready to pounce at any moment.

"I’m not even mad at you," she said, lowering the gun slightly. "You’re a man. You can’t help yourself. It is in your nature, but this one…" she said, leveling the gun at me. "She has stepped out of her place."

"No. It was me, I forced her. She didn’t want this."

Sarah tilted her head in disbelief. "I saw you two just now. You won’t be mine until she is gone. Step aside," she said.

"I am not the reason you will never be with him," I said.

Sarah’s eyes flashed towards me. Houston tried to get me to be quiet, but I wouldn’t let him. With a grunt, I pulled myself up from the floor.

"Of course you’re the reason," Sarah spat. "Since the moment you arrived, you have ruined our lives, the life I was supposed to live."

The amulet blazed with a fire against my skin and I heard my mother’s voice as clearly as if she were standing at my side.

One day, baby, you may very well need this amulet, and it will be there waiting on you to call its name.

"What is its name?" I asked.

"It will tell you, when it is ready."

I pulled the amulet from my neck, holding the stone that seemed to vibrate with power. I knew what I had do. My mother had known all those years ago, and I was ready now. I could feel it.

"You’ll never have him, Sarah, because you are going to die tonight,” I said.

Sarah’s eyes widened in shock, but it quickly dimmed into fury. Houston stood in front of me. "Sarah, no!" he cried as a shot rang out.

The amulet needed a name. Not its own, not mine. The name needed to be the one who would carry it next. I pressed it against my lips. "Houston," I breathed. "My love."

Fire spit into the air, blinding us all, and Sarah screamed as if she was being consumed by it. Houston turned back to me in disbelief. I smiled, placing the amulet over his head. "Remember me," I said, and then my whole body felt as if it was being torn apart.

I screamed into the darkness until I was awake.

47

Gema

Forced to the Wall

Ispent the next three weeks in the hospital. When I awoke, I had to inform the doctors I had a bowel perforation. They didn’t believe me, so Maise and Bri took over, demanding a CT scan. Maise threatened them with a civil rights lawsuit, while Bri promised to post about their negligence on her social platforms. Apparently, she had a very large online audience due to her art. All of this forced the hospitals hand, and once the CT scan was conducted, they found the perforation I told them would be there.

It was a simple surgery from that point with lots of healing. Luckily, I was able to keep a lot of my intestines, which meant no long-term damage. Once I came to, I asked Maise to do research on a doctor named Houston Whitaker. She was baffled and demanded to know why. I knew if anyone would believe me, it would be her. So, I told her everything, and she did her best to google him on her laptop. When she was unable to find anything, she went to the library and looked through old articles. There was no mention of his name, not even in the log of the Oak Lawn Cemetery. I feared the worst, that he’d ended up in one of the mass graves after the massacre, and that I’d never know what happened to him.

"There was a C.J. Alderman, the man who writes The Black Star." Maise tracked down every archived article she could find. There weren’t as many as we’d hoped for. From what she read aloud to me, it appeared that Greenwood had been damaged, but not all of it had burned down, and there far fewer casualties than I remembered reading about before.