She puts her hand on my shoulder, and I can feel her shaking. “You’re safe.”
The Celt relaxes his fists. Something changes because his eyes aren’t fierce anymore. They’re a warm, bright blue like two penny-sized chunks of sky stuck in a face as weathered as our redwood deck, and he looks like he wants to cry.
The nurses swoop over to him as he buries his face in his hands. “I don’t want to get stuck here,” he says.
And that’s when I know for sure that I’m right.
Mariko hurries me out of the room and down the hallway back to the reception desk. “Mikey, I’m so sorry. You shouldn’t have seen that.” She runs her hands across her forehead and holds the top of her head for a moment. “Oh, what a mess. What am I going to tell—” but then she stops herself, takes a deep breath, looks straight into my eyes and says, “Oh my goodness, Mikey, are you all right? That was pretty scary back there.”
It’s true, I’m shaking. With shock, I guess, but with excitement, too. I can’t believe this is happening. “Yeah,” I say. “I’m great. Just great.” And all the time I’m wondering why Mariko isn’t as totally astonished as I am.
A door creaks. I crane my neck to see. The police officer who got kicked in the face comes out of the room rubbing his cheek.
“Everything OK? Need me to take a look, Miguel?” Mariko asks.
“I’m good. Just need some ice.” He shakes his head as if to say, “just another night at the VA.” “Good job quieting him down, kid! What grade are you in?”
“Fourth,” Mariko answers. “With my son, Kyler.”
“Cool.” Miguel makes for the break room, still rubbing his jaw. I can’t believe they’re all so calm about this, so un-amazed.
“But will he be all right?” I ask.
“Who? Miguel?” Mariko pulls the elastic from her ponytail, smoothes her long black hair, and ties it back again.
“No! The warrior!” I say. “The Celt.”
“What?” Mariko looks shocked. She puts her hand over her mouth and shakes her head. It takes her a while to recover. When she speaks again she’s kind of breathless. “Wow, you’re right! He did look like a Celt, didn’t he?” she says. “You nailed it, Mikey.” She hesitates, “But, you know…I think he’ll be just fine.”
She’s so casual. “Fine?” I say. “Fine? How can he be fine? I mean, does he even know where he is, and what’s happening?”
“Oh Mikey,” Mariko says. “You’re a sweet boy.” She puts her hand on my shoulder. “We’ll help him. We’ll work it out. Don’t you worry.” She pauses as if she has to be careful about what she says next and lowers herself down so we’re on the same level. Mom does this when she thinks she’s going to say something important, so I lean in. “You see, we’ve been dealing with this for years now,” Mariko whispers.
“You have? You’ve seen more guys like him?”
“Yes, and a few come back again and again. Especially on certain nights, when there’s a natural disaster or something. That’s when we see more activity.”
“Activity? You do? But how come we don’t all know about it? I mean this is huge!”
Mariko gives me a sad smile. “That’s one way to put it, Mikey. It is huge, and you know, I wish more people did know about it. Sometimes I think they don’t want to know. It’s like this…this…big secret!”
I can hardly believe what she’s telling me. Maybe the shock shows on my face because she suddenly drops her voice and says, “Oh Mikey, I can’t tell you any more about this guy. It’s against the rules. But we’ll look after him. He’ll be OK. Really, he will. I mean, once you’ve experienced certain things they never quite go away. But people do get better. We’ll help him. Don’t let this worry you, OK?”
Wow! What does she mean, worry me? This is the best night of my life!
I look into Mariko’s face. She seems really concerned. I’m not sure what I should say or do, so in the end I just nod and agree that I’ll talk to her if I need to.
I must have said the right thing because she smiles and straightens up. “Good. Come on, let’s go find Marty.”
She acts as if our whole incredible time-traveling Celt conversation never happened. But I was there. I saw him. Awesome doesn’t get any bigger than this.
I can’t wait to tell Kyler tomorrow!
Grandpa and I hardly get any sleep. Most of the night we spend in the ER. The rest I spend at home looking at time-travel videos online. How can I sleep when I’ve just seen a real live Celt?
The more I watch, the more I play back that conversation with Mariko in my head. Was she trying to tell me that there’s a conspiracy, just like the videos say? That time travel is happening all the time, but it’s a big secret and somehow she’s involved? It gives me goose bumps just thinking about it. Can a secret that big stay a secret? I pull my military history book from the shelf by my bed. Wars are full of secrets, even our battles in Romanii: Northern Borders.
The proof is there in black and white. During the Second World War, no one knew the Allies were making the atomic bomb, especially not the “general public,” even though whole “secret” towns were built where the bombs were made. And no one knew they had broken the Enigma code years before the war ended. Not even the Allied armies knew that the intelligence people had broken the code. Throughout history there have been secrets—massive secrets. This must be another one. Kyler’s gonna love this!
I must have fallen asleep because I wake up, what seems like five minutes later, with the book still open on my bed and my alarm blaring as loudly as a fire engine. I roll over groaning and hit the snooze. It’s only on the fourth burst of ringing that the memory of the Celt blows me clean out of bed like an electric shock.
Grandpa’s already downstairs packing my lunch. He slides a bowl of cereal across the table as I sit down. Cereal without milk, just how I like it.
“How are you, Grandpa?” I ask.
“Sore. Pretty sore. But we had an adventure, Mikey Boy, didn’t we? Heh, heh, heh.”
I nod and shovel cereal into my mouth as quickly as I can.
“You’re running late this morning,” Grandpa says. “I was gonna let you sleep in. I already texted Dave to say you wouldn’t be walking with Kyler, but now that you’re up…can you hustle?”
“Sure! Maybe I can catch up with him.”
I finish my cereal in record time, and I’m just putting my lunch box in my backpack by the door when Mom comes in from her shift. She makes me even later by doing what Grandpa calls one of her “Spanish Inquisitions.” This means she goes ballistic and asks lots of questions that neither Grandpa nor I get the chance to answer before she’s on to the next. You can bet Mariko’s already
