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“Wake up, lola!” I said, shaking her. “What do you mean? What shark?”
It was useless. Lola Nora had gone into a deep sleep, and nothing I did roused her. I remembered sitting there, finishing my milk and cookies while I watched her snore. When I was done, I left the store quietly and went back to where my classmates were chatting.
“See you guys later,” I said, grabbing my school bag.
I walked home, her words echoing repeatedly in my mind. I remembered telling myself I would go back the next day and try to wrestle more details out of her.
I had no idea I would never see her again.
When my friends and I went back to the mall the following day, the store was closed, and I couldn’t find her anywhere. It was not until I was watching the evening news with my parents that I found out the woman was found dead on her bed, surrounded by old black and white photos. They said she passed away peacefully in her sleep.
She was 110 years old.
Now, exactly five years later, on my eighteenth birthday, I stood in the local cemetery poised on a small hill with a grand backdrop of the Pacific Ocean, looking down at the tombstones of Nora and Ramon Santos.
A lot of things had happened since. Mom and dad got divorced, I grew up, lost my chubbiness, and guys now kept following me around, wanting to be with me. All her predictions had come true.
All but one.
“I still miss you, lola Nora,” I said, kneeling as I placed a couple of Oreo cookies and a plastic cup half filled with milk next to her inscribed name. I had been coming here each year on my birthday, bringing cookies and milk.
I stood up, got on my bike, and pedaled home. By the time I got to the Plantation B&B it was almost sunset.
I parked my bike on the grassy lawn, but I didn’t feel like going in yet, so I sat on the curb and watch the start of the sun’s final descent. It was almost completely over the horizon when a taxi pulled up in front and a man got out. I couldn’t see his face, but he was tall, his complexion tanned, and he walked with an undeniable aura of strength about him. What got the hair at the back of my neck standing on edge was the fact that the last rays of the sun hit the man’s silhouette in such a way that he appeared to be shimmering.
And he was walking straight toward me.
