But then she rescued me from him. She even stitched up my wound. Madison sort of shot me in the leg yesterday. Don’t worry! Nothing too serious, as it turns out. Mind you, it was the worst pain I’d ever felt, like my leg was crawling with fire from the inside. Having the wound cleaned and stitched was no picnic either.
Susannah is a retired nurse. So when she realized I’d been shot, she tossed a top-notch first-aid kit into her car and drove out to find me. We stopped somewhere on the road. In the back of the car, Susannah did a clean-and-repair job on my leg. The bullet had gone straight through—it was “just” a flesh wound. But my jeans were kind of disgusting, so we stopped off somewhere to buy some new ones.
I tried to phone you again—no reply. I guess I always call when you’re at Mass. I left a voice mail—just want you to know I’m okay. Well, kind of okay.
If I don’t tell you anything about where I am, Mom, it’s because I’ve even started to worry that this blog has been compromised. What if somehow the Sect has gotten into my school, broken into my locker, found the letter to you, guessed the password, and is now reading this … ?
So—no town names, okay? But I can’t stop blogging. ’Cause then you’d worry even more.
All this uncertainty. It’s getting to me. I just want the answers—now!
In a roadside restaurant today, I had the most amazing eggs— “Hawaiian style” with ham and pineapple. The strips of ham and pineapple were arranged in a pattern to make the dish look like a whole pineapple.
I’m finally getting to know this country. And still, I feel completely lost.
36
Thirty minutes out of Tlacotalpan we stop at the outskirts of a coastal town, Alvarado, where we drink glasses of fresh pineapple juice and eat the most elaborate omelettes I’ve ever seen. There’s an Internet café, so I post a quick update to my blog.
When I’m done blogging, I rejoin Ixchel and Susannah at the restaurant. I take Arcadio’s envelope out of my pocket and place it on the table in front of us. Susannah kisses her fingers and then lightly touches the envelope.
Ixchel and I watch her. We can’t hide our curiosity. Bluntly, Ixchel asks, “You loved him, didn’t you?”
“Yes, dear, I did” is Susannah’s soft-spoken reply. “Which is why it’s such an honor to be of assistance to his grandson.”
But am I? She keeps insisting that Arcadio’s my grandfather, but secretly I wonder if it’s the other way around.
My future grandson, traveling backward in time …
I open the envelope. There’s a single sheet of paper inside. The message:
Dear Josh,
By now you must suspect that your fate is intertwined with the Mayan prophecy of 2012.
As the poet once said, our destiny is not frightful by being unreal; it is frightful because it is irreversible and ironclad.
The truth you seek awaits you on the slopes of Mount Orizaba.
A terrible storm is brewing. Yet you will never find peace until you confront your truth.
Forever in your debt,
J. Arcadio Garcia
I don’t know how to react. I gaze into Ixchel’s face and then Susannah’s. They stare back at me with an expectant air.
Finally, I crack. “What the heck is he talking about?”
“Mount Orizaba?” Susannah says. “It’s there.” She jabs a finger into the air, pointing at the distant snow-capped cone of a volcano that’s just visible on the horizon.
“But what about the rest of it?” I say. “The stuff about destiny being ‘irreversible and ironclad.’ What’s that supposed to be?”
“I think it’s a warning,” says Susannah. “Arcadio sees your fate—whatever that may be—as inescapable. But this is very strange. What’s this mention of the Mayan prophecy? What fate of yours could he have known about all those years ago?”
“Maybe he consulted a brujo?” Ixchel offers.
Susannah surprises me by nodding at this, apparently serious.
I’m incredulous. “You believe in all that?”
“Of course,” she nods. “I’ve seen remarkable things in Mexico.”
“I guess,” I say, remembering my own encounter with the brujos. “But there’s another way Arcadio could know about things that are going to happen to me.”
Susannah and Ixchel bristle with instant intrigue.
“Go on …”
“It’s just an idea … ,” I say.
“Yes?”
“Time travel.” I ignore their skeptical looks, continuing, “Arcadio could be from the future. My son, or grandson, or something. And that’s how he knows what’s in my future. In my future—he knows me.”