I turned in a circle, scanning through the trees and bushes, until I picked up on the direction I’d wandered in when I was in the vision and found the little hideout.
“It’s over there,” I pointed in the direction where I was ninety-nine percent sure the hideout was.
Alex gave me a funny look. “What is?”
“The hiding spot we use to go to when we were kids,” I told him, adding emphasis on the “we” to make a point that I remembered.
“You remember that?” he asked, taken aback.
I watched him as I started to explain, wondering how he was going to react to the fact that I knew about our little promise we made when we were kids. “While Nicholas was taking you to the City of Crystal, I unintentionally went into a vision here.”
He raised an eyebrow at me. “Anything important happen?”
I shook my head, trying not to think about how I had to watch my own soul get detached before I could leave the vision.
“Nothing important at all?”
Now I gave him a funny look. “What does forem mean?”
For a brief second, his bright green eyes widened in surprised, but then the look quickly disappeared and was replaced by Alex’s lying poker face, as I was going to call the straight-faced look he got whenever he was going to tell me a lie.
“I have no idea what forem means,” he said, acting all whatever.
My gaze drifted down to his hands and I looked for a very faint, very small scar.
He clenched his hands into fist and started off in the direction I had pointed toward.
I didn’t follow him. Instead, I turned around and called out to Laylen, “Do you know what forem means?”
I heard Alex mumble curse words under his breath, but I ignored him.
“What?”Laylen came to a stop in front of me, his eyebrows dipping down.
“Forem. Do you know what it means?”
He gave me a puzzled look. “Yeah, it means—”
“Found it!” Alex yelled louder than was necessary.
Laylen and I headed off in the direction his voice came from and found him standing on the side of the hill, holding back the branches of the blooming violet bush. I climbed up the hill, my bare feet sliding in the rocks and mud, and Alex gave me his hand and helped my over the bush. I dropped my feet down into the hole and onto the first step of the ladder. Then I climbed down into my old childhood hideout.
Laylen, not even bothering to use the ladder, dropped in right behind me. It was pitch black, except for the soft sunlight trickling through the hole.
“Anyone have night vision?” I asked, and Laylen let out a laugh.
Alex pushed past us and vanished into the darkness. There was a lot of banging around, and then he struck a match. The pale orange glow orbed around the room as Alex hurried and lit a candle. Then he placed the candle down on top of a table, sat down on the floor, and began digging in the dirt floor.
“It’s buried in the floor?” I asked, squatting down next to him.
He nodded, digging quicker until there was a fairly good size hole. Then he stopped and pulled out a small wooden box. On the top of the box, written in child-like handwriting was the names Gemma and Alex.
“We had a secret box?” I asked him in awe as he pried the lid open.
He shrugged, like it wasn’t a big deal, but the glow of the candles showed a twinkle in his bright green eyes. He lifted the lid off, and all three of us leaned over the box, like we had just opened a trunk of buried treasure.
I had to wonder what was going to be inside a box that was made by two kids—two very strange kids I might add. There was nothing too strange in it, though: a rock, a bracelet, a photo of me and my mom, which I immediately snatched up. In the photo, my mother and I stood out in a field dusted with violet flowers. The sun shined brightly in the background, and we were both smiling—happy.
I glanced at Laylen, remembering our silly little rollercoaster ride, and wondered if it was the same kind of happiness as what I felt when this photo was taken.
Alex removed everything from the box, and piled all of it onto the floor, except for one thing: a sapphire-blue teardrop diamond.
“Thank God,” he said, clutching the diamond in his hand.