Excerpt from Meet Me at the Crossroads by Megan Giddings, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

The two squeezed through the door at the same time. One stopped immediately. The other went farther in, where he could not be seen.

"This is," he began, and then the only word that could be used to describe what happened is he popped. Turned into a splash of red and peach with fully intact pink fingernails. Outside, people sprinted away. Still, Antony and his mother did not move.

"You will never go through that door," she whispered.

He nodded. They were close enough that she understood he would never do that, but she was asking him, quietly, for reassurance and control. Telling him what to do gave his mother what she needed.

Then, the teenager walked out. A streak of red on his face, golden leaves stuck in the top of his thick, curly hair. In his hands, some golden rocks and three of the fingernails. Antony recognized him from school, not from church. He was older and ran track. Jumped hurdles in a way that made him look like a beautiful horse.

"Mateo," Antony called. "Mateo, you're fine."

It was the only thing he could think of saying. The boy was disoriented. He looked around and was weeping, not bothering to wipe at the flow of tears or the blood on his forehead.

"Mom."

Finally, she let Antony go. He ran to Mateo. The boy handed him the fingernails, the gold rocks. He was shaking and Antony kept patting him on the shoulders and saying "You're fine." It was a little awkward to comfort a boy older than him, but he knew it was the right thing to do in that moment. Antony's mother walked past him. She went all the way to the doorway and gazed in. A few people followed, and they stood in a concerned cluster. There was no sound coming from whatever world lay in front of them. A brief breeze that carried what smelled like a mix of lilac and rot and salt.

"Do you hear her?" a little white girl said. Antony couldn't remember if her name was Maddy or Addy.

No one knew what she was talking about.

The girl said she heard her mother's voice. "It's proof," she said, "that this is heaven. I thought I had forgotten her voice," the girl said multiple times, "but finally, I heard her again." She smiled. The girl said her mother was saying "Your hair is so long now." Her eyes were blue with flecks of brown, cheeks flushed as if she had braised herself in a too-warm bath. Antony's mother stooped down and asked, "How long has your mama been gone?"

"Three years."

Antony was listening to Mateo, who said he had seen pink figures walking the path. He was mad that none of the adults were taking care of him. Being kind and patient was hard. Some of the figures were people but very small, Mateo said. Some were stretched too tall, and a few were fluctuating between shapes. They were so pink they hurt his eyes. While Mateo kept talking and talking as if he had been there years rather than a few dramatic minutes, Antony slipped one of the stones into his pocket. He kept pretending the fingernails were also stones, because every time his brain remembered the pop, it took all his willpower not to succumb to nausea. There was hair stuck in the blood on Mateo's cheek. It felt disrespectful to drop the fingernails on the ground.

"I have to go to my mother," the girl said.

"Did you see what happened to that man?"

"But he was fine." She pointed to Mateo.

"We don't know why he's okay, baby."

Antony realized it was raining in little spits and mists. He turned, and almost everyone who had been at the service was in the barn that now functioned as the prayer center. They were smart enough to be afraid.

The girl squirmed, but everyone held on to her.

She lashed out and bit and scratched, but still everyone held. They let her hurt them. My mother, my mother, she sobbed. The girl bit Antony's mother's hand, and for the rest of her life, there was a scar on the soft part between thumb and pointer. Four teeth marks. The girl kicked everyone with her pink-and-white light-up tennis shoes. They flashed as she lashed out.

Excerpted from Meet Me at the Crossroads by Megan Giddings. Copyright © 2025 by Megan Giddings. Excerpted by permission of Amistad. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.