Soul Screamers, Volume 1

Again, I felt nothing.

Did that mean I wasn’t dying, after all? Or that my gruesome gift didn’t work on myself? Or merely that my death wasn’t yet imminent? Aaagggghhh! This was pointless!

My computer chimed to tell me it was up and running, and I dropped into my desk chair. I pulled up my internet browser and typed “leading cause of death among teenagers” into the search engine, my chest tight and aching with morbid anticipation.

The first hit contained a list of the top ten causes of death in individuals fifteen through nineteen years of age. Unintentional injury, homicide, and suicide were the top three entries. But I had no plans to end my own life, and accidents couldn’t be predicted. Neither could murder, unless my aunt and uncle were planning to take me out themselves.

Lower on the list were several equally scary entries, like heart disease, respiratory infection, and diabetes, among others. However, those all included symptoms I couldn’t possibly have overlooked.

That left only the fourth leading cause of death for people my age: malignant neoplasms.

I had to look that one up.

The description from a separate, respected medical site was dense and nearly impossible to comprehend. But the layman’s definition under that was too clear for comfort. “Malignant neoplasm” was doctor-talk for cancer.

Cancer.

And suddenly every hope I’d ever harbored, every dream I’d ever entertained, seemed too fragile a possibility to survive.

I had a tumor. What else could it be? And it had to be brain cancer to affect the things I felt and knew, didn’t it? Or the things I thought I knew.

Did that mean the premonitions weren’t real? Were brain tumors giving me delusions? Some sort of sensory hallucinations? Had I imagined predicting Heidi’s and Meredith’s deaths, after the fact?

No. It couldn’t be. I refused to believe that any mere illness—short of Alzheimer’s—could rewrite my memories.

Hovering on the sharp, hot edge of panic now, I returned to the search engine and typed “symptoms of brain cancer.” The first hit was an oncology website that listed seven kinds of brain cancer along with the leading symptoms of each. But I had none of them. No nausea, seizures, or hearing loss. I had no impaired speech or motor function, and no spatial disorders. I wasn’t dizzy, had no headaches, and no muscle weakness. I wasn’t incontinent—thank goodness—nor did I have any unexplained bleeding or swelling, nor any impaired judgment.

Okay, some might say sneaking into a nightclub was a sign of impaired judgment, but I was pretty sure my decision-making skills were right on target for someone my age, and miles above the judgment of others. Such as certain spoiled, vomit-prone cousins, who shall remain nameless.

I was tempted to rule out brain cancer based on the symptoms alone, until I noticed the section on tumors in the temporal lobe. According to the website, while temporal-lobe “neoplasms” sometimes impaired speech and caused seizures, they were just as often asymptomatic.

As was I.

That was it. I had a tumor in my temporal lobe. But if so, how did Aunt Val and Uncle Brendon know? More important, how long had they known? And how long did I have?

My fingers shook on the keys, and a nonsense word appeared in the address bar. I pushed my chair away from the desk and closed my laptop without bothering to shut it down. I had to talk to someone. Now.

I shoved my chair aside and crawled onto my bed on my hands and knees, snatching my phone from the comforter on the way to my headboard. At the top of the bed, I leaned back and pulled my knees up to my chest. My eyes watered as I scrolled through my contacts for Nash’s number. I was wiping tears from my face with my sleeves by the time he answered.

“Hello?” He sounded distracted, and in the background, I heard canned fight sounds, then several guys groaned in unison.

“Hey, it’s me.” I sniffed to keep my nose from running.

“Kaylee?” Couch springs creaked as he sat up—I had his attention now. “What’s wrong?” He switched to an urgent whisper. “Did it happen again?”

“No, um… Are you still at Scott’s?”

“Yeah. Hang on.” Something brushed against the phone, and dimly I heard Nash say, “Here, man, take over for me.” Then footsteps clomped, and the background noise gradually softened until a door creaked closed, and the racket stopped altogether. “What’s up?”