Jade didn’t see Noah for the rest of the day. She would go outside, knock on the door, and ask Mr. Moon if he was around. Each time he would say no, and after the third time, he told her he wouldn’t be back til late.
The next morning, she knocked on the door again to see if Noah was there. Mr. Moon told her he had gone out for the day again.
So Jade spent her Sunday waiting around for Noah. Jim sat at the kitchen table in the corner, researching and filing paperwork. He could see Jade waiting around for Noah, wasting the day by the door.
“Why don’t you go walk around the neighborhood?” he asked her.
“Isn’t that how people get kidnapped?”
Jim stared. “Fair enough.”
For dinner, they headed out and ate. Right before they drove off, Mr. Moon was in the yard and Jade asked the same question. “Late tonight, he’ll be back.”
“Oh . . .thank you.”
When they headed out, they picked some hole in the wall restaurant. Jade wasn’t too used to the crowds Denver had to offer. While she did grow up in a ‘city’, it was nothing compared to the Front Range.
When the waiter had took their order, he looked around his pockets. “Oh shoot, I’m sorry, I don’t know where my pen is.”
Just like yesterday, but brighter and stronger this time, a path glowed out in front of her, and at the end was a pen two tables away. “It’s over there,” Jade pointed.
“Oh, thank you,” he nervously laughed and quickly grabbed it. “Sharp eyes, how did you see that?”
Jade didn’t answer. She just put her head down, and tried to forget about it. It was something she was making up, no one else was seeing it.
They got home around eight that evening. Jade saw Noah on the front porch. “Hey! Noah!”
He gave a wide smile. “Hi Jade.”
“Where have you been all day and yesterday?”
“Had to do stuff.”
She walked up to the front porch with her dad two feet behind her. “What type of stuff?”
Before Noah could answer, Mr. Moon stepped out and greeted everyone. “Good evening everyone. Jade, how are you feeling about tomorrow?”
“Nervous,” she said, almost forgetting that she had to start school again. It’s been about a month since she was in school. She was off in the middle of December, and had moved the second week of the New Year’s.
“You’ll do fine.”
Jim squeezed her shoulder. “She’ll be amazing. Don’t worry, honey.”
They talked for a few more minutes, Mr. Moon telling Jade when to meet them and how the school was. They headed towards their apartment. Before they went around the corner, Jade could hear Mr. Moon and Noah speaking.
“Yeah, it’s all arranged,” Noah had said.
“Good . . . she’s going to need all the protection she can get.”
Jade was left confused by their statement. She wanted to stand there, and listen some more, but her father made her go inside the house and start getting ready for bed.
As she laid in bed that evening, she couldn’t close her eyes. She was nervous about tomorrow, how everything was going to turn out. In her head, she saw every possible way it could have gone wrong. Around midnight, she heard those paw prints coming through the door. She sat up, “George, how did you get in here?”
“Meow.”
“That’s no excuse,” she joked, but letting him on the bed. She put him next to her, and as she was patting him, she asked, “Can I tell you something?”
“Meow.”
“Ok, good. I’m really nervous about tomorrow. But I think I’ll be okay. George, I think something is really weird about Mr. Moon. What do you think?”
George just went on staring.
“Also, there is this weird thing. Mr. Moon and I were having tea yesterday, and he lost his cup. I found it . . . well, that doesn’t sound so weird, does it? But there was a glowing path . . . thingy. Okay, now it sounds weird. I thought I was making it up, but it happened again when our waiter lost his pen at dinner. I saw the same path glow out. . . oh no, it’s the thin air, isn’t it?”
George blinked, and almost in a strange way, shrugged his shoulders.
“Do you really drink tea?”
He nodded, and Jade decided it was time to close her eyes and sleep.
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