“We have to go.” Lilly stated softly but with resolve.
“Where are we going now?” Nathan asked they began crossing the field once again.
“Well, that is up to you I suppose.” Lilly laughed. “You are carrying us. Your feet will take us where we need to go next.”
They walked for a while, not saying anything more. Vigil and Lilly set quietly taking in the views from Nathan’s shoulders. The lush green grass and abundant fruit trees painted the landscape before them. The castle, off to the right of them, still looked as large as a mountain even though they had covered some ground.
Nathan was so deep in thought about the advice he had given to his students and even his own children that he became oblivious to his surroundings and only noticed his position when he kicked a rock about the size of a watermelon. “Ouch!” He exclaimed, nearly making is passengers, who had fallen asleep, fall from his shoulder.
“What is it?” Vigil squeaked, jumping to his feet, sword in paw.
“Nothing, I kicked a rock is all.”
“Oh no.” Lilly said looking around. “Where are we?”
“You don’t know?” Nathan questioned as he also looked around.
“No, I’ve never been here before.”
Nathan looked around at the dirt and clumps of grass and then he felt as if it seemed slightly familiar. He had been here before. A large field of dried grass with withering old trees, no more than a few dozen feet ahead lay before him. He walked towards the trees and as he came closer to them, he saw it; but, it couldn’t be. He couldn’t wrap his mind around it but he pressed on. He pushed the aged tree limbs aside and there it was. He was at the rear of his school. The sounds of teens laughing and talking amongst themselves came to life around him as he came from the woods. But no one paid him any attention.
His gate was smooth but determined. Each step taken with a purpose. As he approached a group of three young ladies setting at a metal picnic table that had obviously been dipped in a green plastic like coating. He stood for a moment waiting to interject into the conversation about some young new pop star and how much they disapproved of the girl that he was dating.
When he realized that they had no intention of pausing for him, Nathan cleared his throat. Nothing, they continued to ignore him.
“Excuse me Ladies.” He blurted out trying to be polite and yet show some authority.
“I don’t think they can hear you.” Whispered Lilly.
“Then why are you whispering?” Vigil asked, peering around Nathans chin at her.
“I was just being polite.”
“OH! If you say so.” Vigil laughed.
“Well if they can’t hear me… than am I a ghost or something?”
Vigil looked horrified, “If you're a ghost, then were ghosts too.” Vigil cried patting himself down, checking his density and trying to determine if in fact he had died and not known it.
Lilly noticed that Nathan was feeling a bit unsure of his present situation also so she thought for a moment and then said, “Psst. Nathan.”
Nathan turned his head towards her, and she reached out and grabbed hold of a nose hair and pulled. He jerked his head back and covered his face in his hands. “Oww! What was that for?” He yelled.
“Nope, not ghosts.” She stated watching the young folks going about their business, completely oblivious to the howling man standing in their midst. She wrinkled her nose, “But something else.”
Nathan peered at her from the side of his face, keeping his nose out of her reach, “You don’t know what happened?”
“No.” She scratched her tiny head and looked around but there were no answers to be found, no clues, nothing. “So this is the place where you guide young people? And these are said young people?”
“Yes and Yes.” He replied. The thought made him look closer. He saw faces of students that had visited his office. He was only one of five guidance counselors in a school of over a thousand students ranging from ninth grade to twelfth grade. There were a few faces that he noticed.
Josh McKenna a good student with above average grades and a gift for painting the corners of the strike zone. He was a strong pitcher and an even better hitter, most everyone knew he would make it to the major leagues, but he said that he only played baseball to get into a good collage. His plan worked and he was awarded a full scholarship to the University of Florida, which he would use this coming fall.
Stacy Peterman, a pleasant girl with a few friends but no plans for the future. She spent most of her days going through the motions but never really pushed herself to be any more than what she was. She had no real dreams of becoming anything more than another housewife that vanished into the kitchen, never to be seen again, or at least that is what her mother had instilled in her from a very young age. She brought her mother in for a parent teacher meeting. Her mother stated so sweetly in her passive aggressive way that her daughter had no special skills, no talents, nothing to fall back on other than the fact that she got her mother’s looks.
And then there was Hunter Adams the biggest pain in the neck he had ever met. In his mind he was every girl’s fantasy, every guy’s buddy and a teacher’s pet to anyone who could tolerate him for the forty minutes he spent grooming his long, blond, oily hair in their class. He was barely getting by and although he knew he was going to be a rock star someday, he was not aware that his talent was on the same level as that of a baked potato.
Nathan knew he had met with these kids but he couldn’t remember what advice he had given to them. He felt as though it may have been some prerecorded message from a disconnected man. As he watched all the students he couldn’t help but feel that he was letting them down by not giving them the attention they desperately needed to succeed in a world that can be as hard to navigate as the night sea in a storm. And now he was painfully aware that if he couldn’t remember what he said, then he couldn’t expect them to either.
He had been a counselor at this school for as long as he was married, ten years. The pages of his life flipped in front of his face in black and white. Where was the color? Where were the embellishments? His life read more like a newspaper than a movie.
He walked up to the door that led into the science wing of the school and waited. Not sure if he could walk through the door or what he figured that he’d wait for a student to go in and he would follow. It only took a few moments before a small boy, who didn’t look old enough to be in high school raced around the corner of the building in a panic. He flung open the door and raced down the hallway. Nathan slipped in the open door and found himself in an echoing tunnel of yelling and laughter.
He carefully maneuvered through the students trying not to bump them, but beyond his control he felt the nudge of a large boy in a black and red flannel shirt as he pushed through the crowd. “Your dead freshman!” he yelled as he and two others bulldozed their way after the smaller kid who was still trying desperately to get through the crowded hallway.
When they finally caught up to the miniscule student the big guy shoved him into a locker knocking his books all over the floor, papers spread across the tiles and his backpack got kicked down the hall. Nathan raced to the boy’s aid, Vigil and Lilly hanging on for dear life, and then stepped in front of the larger boy. “That’s enough.” He yelled placing his arms out at his sides as a barricade.
Just then Mr. Reynolds came out of the classroom behind the larger boy, “What’s going on out here?” He asked surveying the situation and quickly piecing the scenario back together. He grabbed the boy by the collar. “Let’s go Hank.” He mumbled as he pushed the boy down the hallway.
Nathan went to get the backpack from the classroom that it had been slid into by some other students, maybe the smaller boy’s friends, trying to keep it from being used as a soccer ball or getting tossed on the school roof. Many a freshman’s backpack ended up there along with bag lunches and jackets.
&n
bsp; When he entered the classroom he heard some girls talking near the back of the room. Actually one was talking and the other was crying. He recognized both of them right away, the one talking was Annie Jennings and the one crying was Kelsey Monroe, they were both seniors this year and they both were extraordinary students. Annie had watched his children a few times and lived only four houses away from his. He wasn’t sure where Kelsey lived but her father owned the local hardware store. Nice guy, Nathan remembered.
As he leaned in to see if there was anything he might be able to help with, he heard words that nearly knocked him over with their weight. Kelsey said in a slow sobbing gasp, “I just want to die.”
“We have to tell someone.” Annie insisted.
“And tell them what?” Kelsey wiped he eyes. “I did this, it’s my fault, I just want to die.”
Annie wrapped her arms around her friend, “But I don’t want you to die. You're my best friend and I’ll do whatever I can.”
Nathan faced the windows and stared outside when Vigil asked, “What’s the matter with that girl?”
“I don’t know Vigil,” Nathan replied, “but she needs help. I have overlooked these kids. I have no idea what they are going through and yet I give out guidance like candy. It’s like I try to give them what they want instead of what they need. That girl, Kelsey, she’s been in my office half a dozen times in the past two or three years and I had no idea she felt like this.”
“These children are under so much pressure. They really do need guidance, real guidance.” Lilly said as the class bell rang and the room began to fill with students. They walked out of the classroom and down the hall to the main entrance. They passed Nathan’s office on their way. He looked in to see his office exactly like it was when he left. A picture on his desk of his family, his college degree hung on the wall and not much more.
One of the front doors was left open and Nathan and his somber companions walked through into the cool spring air and down the concrete sidewalk he had walked a thousand times before. They walked along Mulberry Street and turned left on Main Street. They walked passed the Walgreens, and the supermarket. Then Vigil asked Nathan, “So this is where you live?”
“Yes. This is where I live.” As they walked on Nathan pointed out a few of the local landmarks. “See that old building over there? That’s where I used to hang out with my friends when I was younger. And that,” he said pointing to a small pizza parlor, “is where I took Kathleen on our first date. We were just kids then.”
“What was she like?” Lilly asked gently.
He thought for a little while before answering. “She was…” He cleared his throat. “She was amazing. She had a way of knowing what I was going to say before I said it. She knew how to make the worst day end good and she made me feel like I was doing what I was meant to do. I was meant to love her, and I was good at it.” He smiled a bit and then continued, “She was unpredictable but as steady as a rock. She was beautiful and funny and...” he fell to his knees and buried his face in his hands, “And I miss her.”
A warm hand rested on his shoulder, “I know you do.”
The touch and the voice stunned as if he had been hit with twenty thousand volts. He jumped back against a telephone pole. His chest felt like an elephant sat on him. The street was spinning and sidewalk wouldn’t seem to stop moving. He looked up and only saw a silhouette in the glare of the bright golden sun.
“Take my hand.” The figure said.
And he did, but the pain held him down to the ground. The man put Nathan’s arm around his shoulder and helped him up. “Let’s get you back to the hospital.” Pastor Bill said as he led Nathan to his Explorer. “We’ve been looking for you all night. We thought we lost you a couple times and then late last night we actually did lose you.” He helped Nathan into the truck. “Where’d you go?” Nathan looked at Bill like he was from another planet. “Never mind, let’s just get you back in a bed to rest.”
Over the next few days Nathan didn’t say much other than the occasional request for water. Bill visited every day and asked if he wanted to talk but Nathan just replied, “Not today.” So Bill would read for a while from his bible and then pray. As he left the room each time he would ask, “Is there anything else I can do for you?”
Nathan would look out the window, “No.”
After the ten days of the same routine Bill left the room and a doctor came in to check in on him. “How are we feeling today Mr. Foster?” The doctor asked. But it wasn’t the same young upbeat and annoying doctor he normally had. Instead it was the female doctor from the emergency room when he had his so called, accident.
“My chest hurts a bit.” He said looking into her dark and pleasant eyes,
“That will happen when you get shot at point blank range. I have to say though, I’ve seen a lot of gunshot injuries in my career but I’ve never seen anything like this.”
“What do you mean?” Nathan said trying to push himself up in his bed.
The doctor helped him lean forward and placed a pillow behind him. “No one told you what happened?”
“No, at this point I don’t remember anything.”
“When you were shot, the bullet clipped your heart not really doing any permanent damage, but because the gun was so close, the blast cauterized a small tear in the lower chamber of your heart that we would have never seen. We only saw it when we went in to repair a few small punctures caused by the gunshot.”
“You mean to say getting shot, saved my life.” Nathan snickered, “That is something. So my heart was damaged. By what?”
We don’t know. But it looked an egg, you know, when you cracked it open. I guess you could say you had a broken heart.”
“Wow, that’s pretty amazing.” Nathan looked at his chest and gently felt it. Thank you Doctor… I’m sorry, I don’t remember your name.”
She pointed to the name tag on her lab coat, “Dr. Shultz.”
Nathan stared at her badge then at her face. “Lilly?”
That’s right, Lilly Shultz; it used to be Lilly Dunn.” She looked at him a little closer. “Do I know you?”
He shook his head slowly, “No, I used to know someone by that name and, well, you just reminded me of her.”
“Well I hope it was a good thing.”
“Yes, a very good thing. Have a good night Dr. Shultz. Thanks for checking in on me.”
“You're welcome. Try and get some rest.” And with that, Dr. Lilly Shultz left the room and closed the door.
Nathan lowered his head and folded his hands. “God, I don’t know what is real and what is not in my life right now, except for you. I know you are real and I know you love me. I am so sorry for doubting you, I am sorry for pushing you out of my life, please forgive me.
Please guide me in how I am to guide others, especially the students that depend on me to give sound advice. And God, please let my wife know that I love her and I’ll be there soon, but I have some work to do here first.”
Chapter 12