And he smiled at me.

Grandma stood up to leave.

“Is it okay if I stay here a little longer?” I said. “I think I just need a minute after that one.”

“Take all the time you need,” said Grandma, and she made her way back to the house.

Jeremiah approached me, and the light followed him, as if he brought the brighter world with him, as if everywhere he stood that world bled into this one.

“You have questions for me, Lee?” he said.

“That’s you on the tape, isn’t it?” I said.

He nodded.

“But you sound so much older in them,” I said, “like you’re my age.”

“This is the form my body takes in this world, in the daylight,” he said. “I am powerless to change it.”

“I knew it had to be you on that tape. I knew it had to be your voice. Jeremiah, I need to know what’s happening here. I mean, with the town, with those people in the grocery store.”

“You enjoyed it, didn’t you?” he said. “All the attention.”

“I mean, sure I did. Who wouldn’t?”

“Those are your people,” he said. “They are the ones who believe in you.”

“Why would they believe in me?” I said. “You’re the leader. You’re incredible on the tape, the way you told them your visions, the way you made everyone in the room feel exactly the way you did. When I try to talk about my visions, everyone just gets annoyed. Even when somebody will listen, like Grandma, they don’t see what I see or hear what I hear. I can’t make it make sense to them.”

“But you’re a poet, aren’t you?” he said.

“I mean, I try to be,” I said. “How did you know that?”

“Lee,” he said, “I have much to show you.”

“Why can’t you just sit me down and explain everything to me?”

“Because it isn’t sufficient to simply hear it. To understand, you need to see it and feel it as well.”

“I don’t understand.”

Jeremiah laughed.

“You, Lee, are so much in love with words, and words are the most deceptive of all. No, you must see and feel and taste the Spirit, all that power. You must know the future as I know it, experience it as I have. Only then can you believe.”

“Believe what?”

“That you are a prophet, the same as I am. That your visions have a value and a purpose. That you were chosen by the Spirit before you were born, raised up for exactly this purpose. You must believe, and then all the others will come to believe through you.”

Could this possibly be true? But how? I was the misfit kid, the loser with no friends. My mom had barely even liked me. Why would the Spirit pick me? How could I be some kind of great leader?