Amber by Dan-Dwayne Spencer (e book reader .TXT) 📕

“What about Rose? She lied about her age and said she was eighteen, but she is only seventeen. Please don’t make her leave too. This is her home.”

“I am sorry, but I cannot discuss Miss Rose’s situation with you. It would be a breach of trust. I will talk to Rose when she returns and if she sees fit to share our conversation with you, then it is up to her.” Tabitha took my hand, “You have some decisions to make. Are you going to go home with Jimmy or are your parents coming here to pick you up?”

It was a question for which I had no answer.

Chapter Twenty-seven

Consequences

After my regretful discussion with Miss Tabitha about me returning to my parents, Flower went to work on my bruises and blisters. She had started healing Jimmy’s wounds in the van on the way back to the commune. By the time we arrived, Jimmy looked like our old Jimmy. The one I had known since kindergarten.

Roger came next. He had hidden behind the big monument, so he didn’t have as many burns. It was hard to get him to put The Book of Uriel down. He had his nose buried in it all the time. He said the book didn’t burn because it was inviolable. I didn’t know what the word meant, but I guessed the pages are fireproof.

The very evening we got back, we were told the sheriff went into the police station and demanded Rose’s release. He insisted all charges against her be dropped. After they let her go, she made a phone call to the commune for Jimmy to come and pick her up. It wasn’t thirty minutes later, Sheriff Briggs collapsed with a heart attack and died on the spot.

With the Sheriff’s demon gone, no one wanted to follow up on what Briggs had told the hippies about insulating the solar collectors. The rumor in the community was that Sheriff Briggs himself had set the field on fire. The commune was not at fault.

Bad news always seemed to follow the good, and in this case, it was no different. As a result of Rose being arrested, her parents were contacted, and she was being remanded back to live with them until she turned eighteen.

I thought it sounded ridiculous because she said she was going to turn eighteen in a couple of months. It all turned out to be a lie. She was going to be eighteen in a year and two months.

Jimmy and I went to the courthouse to pick her up, but social services beat us there. They wouldn’t let any of us talk to her. They said the people at the commune might have brainwashed her into believing crazy things like…Sheriff Briggs being a demon.

Anyway, we had to leave without seeing Rose again. I expected Jimmy to go off into a temper tantrum and start breaking things, but instead, he got quiet. His whole demeanor was blue and melancholy. His sadness went deep.

For the first time in my life, I think I saw what true love was like. It had the power to change people. If this were any other girl, Jimmy would be tearing-up-jake and making a big show, but for Rose, his heart was torn in two. I didn’t know which depressed me more—seeing Jimmy so hurt or having to leave the commune.

Flower said I could call anytime and we would talk. That was some comfort. She had turned out to be my guiding star. Who knows, maybe when I’m fifty I might make it with a hundred-and-fifty-year-old hippy chick who wears a fringed halter top, a maxi-skirt, and looks to be thirty-five or forty. Meeting her solved the mystery of why puberty and I kept playing tag. It was running, and I was chasing. Eventually, I would catch up with it, but if I’m anything like Flower, I’ve got a lot of living to do—unless the end of the world interrupts my plans.

Our victory over Phoenix was one battle in a war that ultimately could mean the end of everything. Thankfully, I had some great backup to fight with me and to give me good advice.

Stressing the importance of keeping our gifts a secret, Flower said it would weird-out anyone we ever told. Keeping things to ourselves was going to be a way of life, especially the details of our adventure. Talking about seeing demons would get us locked up in the hospital for looney toons.

As for the Book of Uriel, considering that Flower was far more knowledgeable about gifts than we were, it was a unanimous decision to leave the book and the Talisman with her. She and the council of elders would keep it safe.

We got to spend celebration night at the commune. The next morning, after lingering goodbyes, we loaded up in the Mustang and headed back home. For me, it felt wrong having to go back to Western, Texas. I had found my place, my people, only to be told I had to leave it all behind. Deep down, I was thankful for this trip despite its dangers and hardships.

No doubt it would continue to change my life. I would never be the same boy again. Even though I didn’t look like a grown man, I felt I had crossed an invisible line. We all had. Whatever innocence we clung to when we left was shattered by the knowledge of demons and fallen angels.

This ended up being the topic of conversation as we sped down Route 66 on the way to Texas. Jimmy’s super strength had vanished when he left Blue Eye, and Roger didn’t utter epiphanies at every turn of the road. For me, I didn’t see one flashing light screaming the word DIE. I considered the absence of prophetic apparitions