C. Omololu: Transcendence

“Upper Haight. Just at the panhandle before Golden Gate Park.”

“Is there still a Ben & Jerry’s there?”

I smile. “Right around the corner from our house.”

Griffon holds my gaze for a split second, then looks around at all of the other people in the café. “Are you enjoying your trip so far?”

I search for something interesting to say. Pretty soon he’s going to notice that I’ve got the conversational skills of a first-semester foreign exchange student. “It’s been great.”

“What else have you done?”

I open my mouth to tell him about the master class I took with the London Symphony Orchestra and how I got to sit backstage at the concert earlier in the week, about meeting some of the cellists I’d been worshiping for years and having the chance to play privately with them. But Griffon doesn’t know me as the cello prodigy. He only knows the awkward girl who talks about ghosts and falls into total strangers, and suddenly I wanted to keep it that way. “You know, the usual stuff,” I finally say. “Buckingham Palace, the Tate Gallery, museums.”

“How about the Eye?” He nods his head across the river toward the towering Ferris wheel.

Right. The only way I’d get into a small glass box suspended hundreds of feet in the air for half an hour is at gunpoint. And maybe not even then. “Um, no. Not yet.”

“I usually hate tourist things like that, but it has the best view in the city.”

“Maybe tomorrow,” I say, knowing it’ll never happen. “It feels like we don’t have enough time to do it all, but it’s been great so far. I’ve always been fascinated by this city. By all of England.”

“Tell me you didn’t get up in the middle of the night to watch the royal wedding.”

“I didn’t,” I answer honestly. Kat had recorded it. “It’s just that I love history, and I really wanted to see the places I’ve read about.” I’m tempted to tell him about the vision, about the girl on the scaffold. Something about the way he looks at me makes me feel safe and grounded. Like I can say anything and he’ll believe me. “In some ways, London feels like home. It’s almost like everything is familiar. Except it’s not.”

Griffon’s eyes scan my face intently. “Like déjà vu?”

“Exactly,” I say. “It’s weird. I’ll be walking by a house and all of a sudden I’ll feel homesick. Or I’ll know exactly what the next street looks like even though I’ve never been on it.”

He nods, listening to me intently. “It’s weird feeling that you’ve been someplace before, or seen something before.” Griffon looks thoughtful. “But that doesn’t seem to cover it most of the time.”

“It doesn’t,” I agree. “It’s more than that. It’s not like I’ve just seen it already. It’s like I’ve…” I suddenly realize that I’m sitting here spilling my guts to a total stranger. A total stranger who feels really familiar.

“Like you’ve lived it before?” Griffon finishes for me.

“Right,” I say. I’m surprisingly calm. “Like I’m seeing things that already happened through the eyes of the people they happened to. Things that happened a long time ago. I don’t know if it’s spirits, or some kind of supernatural energy.” I pause, and it’s as if the thread that momentarily connected us has snapped. “Or if I’m going crazy.”

Griffon smiles. “You’re not crazy,” he says. “Far from it.”

“So if I’m not slowly going insane, what is it, then?”

He hesitates, and I can see indecision play across his face. “I guess people sometimes try to bury the things that they most need to see.”

“And for some reason I need to see these glimpses of other people’s lives? That makes no sense.”

“Maybe it will someday,” he says cryptically.

I look at our hands on the wooden table. Our fingers are only inches apart, and I have a sudden urge to reach out and touch him. I want the feel of his skin on mine, a physical connection, even if it’s only for a second. As if he can read my mind, Griffon pulls his hands from the table and sits back in his chair. I feel as embarrassed as if I had actually reached for him.

Griffon looks out toward the Green, where the other tourists are wandering around. “So what do you think of the new marker for the scaffold site?” he asks, nodding toward the Chapel.

I follow his gaze, thrown by the rapid change in topic. “That glass thing? It’s interesting.”

Griffon’s face clouds over a little. His emotions seem to be just under the surface, and I can already see the dislike in his expression. “I think it’s awful. Like a big glass coffee table right in the middle of the square.”

I smile. “I kind of thought the same thing.”

“The worst part is that they didn’t even put it in the right spot,” he says.

“They didn’t? I thought that’s where all the executions happened. That’s what the guidebook says.”

“No,” he says. “Don’t believe everything you read. Years ago some Warder just pointed to that spot when Queen Victoria came for a visit and asked where the beheadings took place. Poor old guy didn’t have a clue. The Yeoman Warders just go along with it so the tourists don’t get confused. It’s tradition.”

“So where did they really happen?” I ask, glad that we seemed to be having a normal conversation again. Living right on top of it all, he must know all the dirty little secrets.

“Well, the scaffolds were put up and taken down for every execution, so they weren’t always in the same spot. Actually,” he says, “most of the beheadings happened on the north side of the White Tower.”

“Which side is that?” I ask.

“Near where they keep the Crown Jewels now,” he says. “In fact, they say that the most famous executions happened near the Green.” Griffon leans forward and studies me. “Right on the spot where you fainted.”

Spring break feels a million miles away as Ms. Lipke’s marker squeaks across the whiteboard at the front of the room. Rayne slides into her seat, glancing up first to see if she’s going to get busted for being late to class again. “So what’s he like?” she whispers.

“Who?” I ask quietly, knowing exactly who she means. It’s pretty impossible to keep anything from her. I’d purposely left Griffon out of my updates while we were gone, but I should have known that Kat would go telling everyone. I’ve spent enough time analyzing my entire conversation with him, and I don’t want to have to go over it with Rayne too. Griffon is a part of the trip that I want to keep to myself. At least for now.

“Kat told Sienna that you two met some amazing guys in London. I can’t believe you’ve been back two whole days and didn’t say anything.”

The minute Griffon told me about the executions, I felt sick all over again. As soon as Kat showed up I made excuses about jet lag and practically ran out of there. He didn’t even ask for my number, and it’s not like I was going to shove it in his hand. And now we’re back home and in school as if everything is the same. Even though everything feels completely different.

“Come on,” Rayne urges, facing forward so we won’t get caught talking. “I can’t believe you didn’t tell me about something so important. Spill.”

“Nothing to spill,” I say. “I met a guy. He was cute. He didn’t get my info, so I’ll never see him again. End of story.”

“That’s not what Kat says. She says you, like, totally fainted right in the middle of some tower and that this guy rescued you.”

Just thinking about it makes my stomach hurt. Sometimes, when I’m doing the most random thing, a scene from that vision will flash through my mind, and all of the same emotions get churned up all over again. At least nothing like that has happened since we’ve been back. Hopefully that was the worst—and the last—of whatever it was, and the visions stayed in England where they belong. “It was just a cup of tea,” I say. “Hardly qualifies as ‘ rescuing .’” Ms. Lipke gives us both a look, saving me from having to explain any more for the moment.