There are only two friends that I ever told about the meteorite, so they are the only ones I decided to tell about that night.
Mo said, “First Allah sends you a black stone, and now he speaks to you? Do you know how many people Allah has spoken to directly? Three; in all of time, three! Ya ‘ilahi!”
Kimberly laughed and said, “Oh, Mo… you’re so dramatic. You know God is an alien, right? You can call him what you want to, but all these gods come from the heavens — you know — outer space? You think that’s a coincidence?”
Kimberly (not “Kim” — she hates “Kim”) is my agnostic friend. Her mom is an atheist, and her dad is Unitarian. They both work at the Army Research office in Research Triangle Park.
“I’ve told you before,” she said, “‘Allah’ is the same as ‘the Lord’ and ‘Hashem.’ Same God, who came from outer space. Read your Quran, Bible, Tanakh – it’s all in there.”
Mo and I laughed!
I said, “You know we do…”
Mo said, “Yes, over and over again.”
That’s one of the reasons we’re best friends. We’re all nerds, and we all study religion.
I said, “What if God sends you a rock too, Mo and Kimberly?”
Mo said, “Inshallah! That would be awesome! Then I could run fast too!”
Kimberly said, “Do you really think that muddy water gave you superpowers, JET?”
I said, “They don’t call me JET for nothing!”
We all laughed, then Mo yelled, “Ready!”
I yelled, “Set!”
And Kimberly yelled, “To the stop sign and back — aaaand… ” She started running before she said, “GO!”
Mo and I took off in hot pursuit and I tripped and fell. I rolled, sprang back up, and ran full steam toward the sign again. By the time Kimberly got to the stop sign and was heading back, laughing so hard she could barely run, I had caught up and passed Mo. I grabbed the stop sign post and swung around it. When I did, I felt it tilt toward me. I ran as fast as I could, and ended up winning just ahead of Kimberly!
She, panting, yelled, “How did you beat me!?”
Just then, I looked to see what was taking Mo so long. He was back at the stop sign, only the stop sign post was bent.
He yelled, “Look at what you did, JET!”
Kimberly and I jogged back to the stop sign to look. We could see where I grabbed it — it was warped. I held out my hands and we all looked at them. There wasn’t a scratch! Mo tried to straighten the stop sign, saying, “it must be loose,” but he couldn’t budge it. Then we all tried together and moved it a little, but it went right back to its bent position. We decided to tell an adult the sign was bent, but not how it got that way. Who would believe us? We hardly believed it ourselves.
Mo said, “You took a pretty bad fall back there. Are you okay?”
I said, “Yeah, I’m fine. Not a scratch, and my afro is still tight.”
We all laughed and Kimberly said, “You and your perfect ‘fro… came from behind and beat me!”
Mo said, “I just gave up when he passed me, but then he bent the sign and I just stopped. Allah has given you strength, power, keen sight, and a perfect afro, my friend!”
We all laughed again. It was about time for dinner, so we all went home.
JET (The Hero) 