Accordance (Significance #2)(11)

He came slowly towards me and smiled. He took my hand, kissed the back of my fingers and then touched his head to them in an odd bow.
“You’re the Visionary,” he said reverently as he looked at me like he was seeing me for the very first time.
“What? Kyle, what are you doing?”
“You have no idea, do you?” he asked. “You have no idea what you are.”
I shook my head in confusion.
“Come on, guys. Eating...time,” Caleb mumbled as he came around the corner. He too stopped and looked at me with a weird new look of admiration. He came forward, just as Kyle had done, took my hand and kissed my fingers, and then touched them to his head before looking back to me. “Oh, wow, Maggie.” Cautiously he touched the side of my neck, as if he wasn’t sure he had the right to anymore. “You’re the Visionary.”
“What does that mean? How do you know that?”
His fingers hovered over the side of my neck.
“You have a mark here, a symbol indicating who you are.”
“And what am I?” I asked softly.
“You are the Visionary,” he repeated. “The One who sees all, knows all.”
“I don’t...” I mumbled. “Caleb, please stop looking at me like that.”
“I’m sorry.” That seemed to knock him out of his trance. “What happened, Maggie?”
“I was in the library. I found your Grandpa Ray’s old record book. It had all your family‘s births and marriages in it. Then I had a vision-”
“What vision?” Bish barked in. “What are you talking about?”
We all looked at Bish in alarm. We’d been running our mouths, forgetting about our other guest.
“Nothing, it was in a book I was reading upstairs,” I half lied and grabbed Caleb’s hand to tow him. “Let’s eat.”
We ate our Chinese at the barstools at the counter. Caleb and Kyle couldn’t keep their eyes off me, like I was the queen of frigging England sitting at their table or something. It was really starting bug me. I gave them a look that said so. They both looked away bashfully. I wondered if Bish could see the mark on my neck but I guessed not. He hadn’t said anything about it and I figured since the family crest tattoos on the wrist were only seen by Aces that this probably was too. 
I was anxious to see what it looked like but didn’t want to as well. Caleb and Kyle’s behavior about it all was strange and a little scary.
We heard the doorbell again and Kyle cursed as he shot up to get it. I heard him dismissing Amber with a half-hearted apology and then he came back to finish his meal.
After supper Bish said he was tired and was going to head to bed. As soon as he was gone, I grabbed both their arms and pulled them into the den, closing and locking the bay doors and pulling the shades down. I turned to look at them.
“What? Explain.”
“Well,” Caleb said and blew a breath and sat on the ottoman across the room. “We’ve always been told a story, a bedtime story you could say, about a prophetess who would come. She will be a light in the dark to our people. She would wield the sword of justice and the shield of fortification. She would speak all tongues, know all things, see all, be all that we needed her to be. She would bring a new order.” He smiled in awe at me. “I always thought it was just a story, a fairytale.”
“Yeah,” Kyle chimed. “Nobody ever believed it. It was just fun to joke about. Like the Y2K bug or the supposed end of the world in 2008. But this- you’re real...”
“But I’m still me.”
“Yes,” Caleb assured, “you are. But you are the Visionary because you’re you.”
“What does that mean?”
“You’re special. Even more so than we thought before.” I sighed and he held his hand up. “Now wait. Just listen. God controls us, watches over us and has called you. Chosen you to be the Visionary because of who you are, inside. The kind of person you are. It’s a position of privilege and responsibility and power.”
“We’ve always been told,” Kyle stated, “the person who came would change everything. They would be the most important person we’d ever meet and we’d be lucky to see her in our lifetime.”
I nodded and pursed my lips. I was suddenly very upset...and even a little pissed. Things would never be the same now, I could see that. Caleb would look at me with that goofy grin of reverence every day and never touch me again and Kyle would bow at my feet every time I said good morning. I had enough of this whole ‘she’s special thing’ before this, and now...
It’s a great honor. You were chosen for this. Not only are you young and human and the first person to imprint in a long time...but you’re the Visionary. The one we’ve been waiting for.
I glared at him.
“You are not helping.”
It was the first time I could remember being mad at him.
“I’m sorry,” he said quickly and actually lowered his head, like in shame.
That lit the fire.
“Ok! Enough! I will not be some deity for you to worship.” They both looked stunned that I had yelled so forcefully. I closed my eyes for my admission. “I am this Visionary, ok. I feel it. The things I saw upstairs are going to change the way things are. But that doesn’t make me anything special, it makes me knowledgeable. I’m not an angel or a goddess or a prophetess or whatever else. I’m me. I’m still your soul mate. I am the same person I was before all this and if you’re going to treat me different just because I...I-” I stopped.
If I said another word I was going to cry. Burst into tears. I just wanted to be normal, to be with Caleb and now all that was over. I felt the loss of my life as I had known it. I sucked in a ragged breath and buried my face in my hands.“Maggie, you have to understand. You are special. You’re different. Things can’t just go back to us sitting, playing Halo with you in my lap everyday, ok? Things are going to change. You’re going to have to be ready for that.”
I lifted my head and saw them both looking sternly at me like I was a child throwing a temper tantrum. Caleb heard my mind, knew what I was gonna do. I saw his hand snake out to grab my arm but I pulled away forcefully and went right out the front door.
I was livid.
I ran to the Jeep and slammed the door right as I saw him step off the porch. I didn’t see the keys anywhere but I searched in a mad rush. I locked my door so he couldn’t stop me just as he reached my door and banged on the window.
“Maggie, stop. Where are you going?”
“Away,” I said as looked in the visor and still didn’t see them.
I beat my palms on the steering wheel in frustration and the Jeep roared to life. Just like that. It was like I willed it. I looked at Caleb through the window and he was just as stunned. He pulled the keys from his pocket and looked at them and then back at me in wonder.
I didn’t wait any longer. I put the Jeep in reverse, no matter how it cranked, it was drivable and that’s all I cared about. I pulled onto the highway with Caleb in my rearview mirror, his hands going in the air in a frustrated move before he ran back into the house. My heart pounded and ached. It didn’t want me to leave, not mad and not like this. We weren’t made to fight, I remembered our first fight in Kyle’s back yard, how it hurt me, but I didn’t turn around.
I had no doubt he was going to call his father. And mine. And then Caleb and Kyle would contemplate on how to bring me back and why I was acting insane. Did he really not know? He was supposed to be my equal, my love, my life. And now he was treating me as if I was someone he no longer deserved and needed to be groomed for a life of privilege. I was someone to be managed and bowed down to as if in obedience.
Maggie, don’t do this. You need to come back and face this-
I pushed him out and blocked him.
How dare he treat me like some spoiled prodigy who was on the warpath or something? I was me! I am me! Wasn’t that the whole point of everything I was shown upstairs in that vision was that their race was spoiled and unclean in their actions and past thoughts: Greed, Pride, Complacency. Those weren’t minor offenses and there they were trying to worship me. This was every girl’s dream, right? Not mine.
I hated it. I begged for God to take it all back. I didn’t want to be the Visionary, I just wanted Caleb.
I drove for a while and then pulled into an ice cream place off the main highway. I tried to breathe and calm down so Caleb wouldn’t call a cab and follow my heartbeat to me. 
I got a text from Bish.
Caleb said you left. I heard all the shouting. WTH Mags? Get your butt back here and answer me right now.
Then a call from Caleb came in. I pressed the red button to send it straight to voicemail and didn’t bother to listen. I wasn’t really angry at him. Not really. I was just angry. I just wanted my life back. My chest begged for Caleb, my fingers twitching. I pushed it away.
I pulled the visor down to look in the mirror. I saw the telling mark they had seen. It was a half sun half moon that put together made a whole with the line where they met blurry and gray, fading into each other. The sun half was white with wide slithering rays protruding. The moon half was black and smooth. It was small, about an inch and half maybe, right on the side of my neck. I ran my fingers over it. It wasn’t really a tattoo, it looked more solid than that but my skin felt smooth to the touch. It was odd.