Page 161 of Cherish

She’s now only a few pages before the end of her current journal.

“Excuse me,” Heather says from her spot all the way across the room. “But this looks important.”

“I’ve been doing this a very long time,” the Curator says, voice rife with condescension. “I think I know what’s impor—”

She breaks off at the same time the TV Heather was pointing at flares into color. Just in time to watch a car T-bone a semi at an intersection. I gasp. No one would have survived that wreck.

The Curator murmurs something under her breath in a language I don’t understand. But she starts writing furiously.

Seconds later, the TV turns back to black and white, and she moves onto something else.

This goes on for another few minutes, and even though I’m fascinated by what I’m seeing on the screens, I’m still worried about the time we’re wasting. All the seconds and minutes and hours trickling by while Mekhi is getting sicker and sicker.

And while I know my latest idea will only add more hours onto getting him help, I think it might shorten things in the long run. Because the Curator doesn’t seem in any hurry to give up the information we need, and if we only get to talk to her an hour at a time, it may be days before she tells us everything we need to know.

And we don’t have days.

We actually don’t know how much time we have left—although I suspect my idea will solve that problem as well.

Which is why, when the Curator finally closes the journal in front of her—after filling it all the way to the bottom of the last page—and sets it aside, I take advantage of her break in concentration.

“So I’ve got a proposal for you,” I tell her as she reaches for the blank journal.

“A proposal?” she asks, looking away from the TV screens for a split second to meet my gaze before darting back to the screens again. “What makes you think I’d be interested in anything you might want to propose?”

“Because you haven’t had a vacation for a very long time,” I answer. “And I can change that.”

“You can?” she asks, sounding wary.

“You can?” Macy queries at the exact same time.

I ignore their question, remaining focused on the Curator. “It’s more of a mini vacation than an actual vacation, but I figure you’ve got to start somewhere, right?”

The Curator laughs. And laughs. And laughs. “Let me get this straight. You actually thinkyoucan do my job?”

“No way,” I tell her. “But I think thesevenof us can.”

The Curator’s eyes narrow. “How mini is mini?”

“First let me ask—” I motion to the TVs. “If our friend Mekhi’s situation were to worsen even more, would one of these TVs light up? Or could you make it?”

That gets her attention, and her pen pauses for the briefest of seconds before she continues scribbling. “I could,” is all she says.

“Then we can give you twenty-four hours,” I say. Macy starts to protest, but I hold one finger up in the universal symbol for on-one-condition, and she settles back down. “But you would have to agree to tell us thesecondyou returnedexactlyhow to find the Bittersweet Tree…and we would have to turn one of these TVs”—I swing my arm to point to a wall of screens—“permanently on Mekhi, so we could be assured he was going to be okay until you came back.”

She raises one brow. “One sick man cannot be the focus of a generation, my dear.”

“This one is,” Macy replies, and her tone says there is no debating this point.

I rush in to add, “We wouldn’t be able to focus on recording history for you if we were preoccupied with worry for our friend.”

Her desk spins several more times, the Curator furiously writing, but I can tell by the set of her chin she’s considering my offer.

Eventually, she tells me dryly, “That is definitely a mini vacation.”

She breaks off and scribbles in the new journal as a TV directly in front of her turns to color. She records the history she sees there, then more from another television. And another. And another. And another.

I’m beginning to think she’s just going to ignore my proposal when she suddenly looks away from the wall of TVs and says, “Do you really think you and your friends can do this for twenty-four hours?”

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