“I see it. Hold on.” Muriel made a U-turn, earning several honks and a few fingers. She pulled into Bob’s Convenience Store’s parking lot.
“There, the blonde in the pink dress walking toward the door. We gotta stop her from going in the store.”
“Here.” Muriel pulled her wallet out of her purse and hurled it on the ground behind the woman.
I jumped out of the car. “Ma’am? Is this your wallet?”
The woman turned around, looked at Muriel’s neon green wallet, and shook her head. “No, that’s not mine.” Leave it to Muriel to have the ugliest wallet in history. The woman could tell right away it wasn’t hers.
The vision hadn’t changed.
Gunshots. Blood. The woman.
I took two steps toward her, the wallet in my outstretched hand. “Are you sure? I’m almost positive I saw it fall out of your bag.”
“I’m positive. My wallet isn’t that color,” she said, an amused look on her face.
“Oh, you wouldn’t happen to know whose it is?” I stepped in front of her when she tried to sidestep me.
“Why don’t you look inside and see if there’s any ID?”
Crap. The vision hasn’t changed, and I can’t get her to stop going into the store.
“Muriel!” I called, my voice quivering and an octave higher than normal. I didn’t have a good feeling about this vision. No matter how I played it out in my head, it didn’t change, at least not for the better. Butterflies started to swarm my stomach and my blood felt like goo oozing through my veins.
“Yeah?”
“Call the police. Now!”
“‘Kay.”
The woman stopped and looked at me with wide eyes. “What do the police have to do with the wallet?”
“Nothing. There’s a robbery in progress. I need to report it.”
“Where?” she asked, panicked. She looked around, turning in all directions.
“Here.”
That wasn’t exactly true. The robbery hadn’t taken place yet, but it was the only thing I could think of to keep the woman out of the store and keep her alive. The vision had changed, but my stomach was still tied in knots and the blood rushing through my veins was full of adrenaline. Something wasn’t right.
Blood. Glass. Bloody blue T-shirt. Stop it.
“Muriel, get down!” I screamed at the same time I tackled the woman. She fell on her hands and knees just as the bullet soared through the front window of the store.
Glass covered us. My hands were sliced and bleeding. Shards of razor-sharp glass were everywhere. The woman had a bad gash on her right cheek, but otherwise, we were both fine.
Slowly, the twisting in my stomach eased and fear slithered from my neck as the images faded. I could hear the far-off wail of sirens. They wouldn’t get here in time. The man had already run from the building.
The store clerk hurried to the door. “Are you okay?” He helped us up, picking the large pieces of glass out of our hair and off our clothes.
“We’re fine.” The woman sounded a little dazed. Her eyes were wide and she wobbled when she walked, like a little girl wearing her mother’s high heels.
I sat on Muriel’s car’s bumper and waited for the police. The sensations of the vision slowly dissipated and were replaced with the normal reaction of scared shitlessness a person would have after having a bullet soar over their heads—vision or no vision.
The police wanted a statement of what happened. After they interviewed the store clerk, they interviewed the woman. She said she hadn’t seen anything, but I’d saved her life when I pushed her to the ground.
Great. Thanks, lady.
“Miss, what happened?” a police officer asked. He had kind eyes and reminded me of my dad.
“I happened to look through the window and saw the man with the gun. I panicked and pushed the lady down.” That was mostly the truth.
“How did you see the gun?”
“Through the window,” I repeated.
“The window is covered in posters and signs.”
“Well, some of the window is uncovered or I wouldn’t have been able to see through it.” I tried not to sound annoyed.
“Did you see the man?”
“His back was to me.”
“What about when he ran out of the building?” The officer took notes in his little notepad.
“He was holding a gun. I tried not to look at him.”
“Why?”
Just drop it already!
“Why? Because I didn’t want him to start killing the witnesses!” I said, my voice rising. I tried to sound hysterical. I was sure I came pretty close since I was borderline hysterical by that point. The reality of what happened had started to sink in. One of us could have been shot. Killed, even. Yeah, hysterical seemed to sum up my emotional state. And even though I was only a few weeks away from technically becoming an adult, I wanted my mom and my grams’ purple couch. That always made me feel better.
“I’d like you to come to the station and look at some mug shots anyway, just in case something jogs your memory.”
Muriel and I drove to the station. She was quiet, and the silence made me uneasy.
“I’m sorry,” I said, smoothing out a piece of tape holding gauze on my hand.
“For what?” Muriel glanced at me.