The You Wills told me I’d meet with resistance while trying to leave the house, and as usual, they were right. “You don’t think you’re going somewhere tonight,” my mom remarked from her room as I appeared at the top of the stairs in a clean T-shirt. It was like, not only could she see the future, but she had radar and Spidey sense, too. Or maybe she could just sniff my shaving cream and deodorant and hear the jingling sound of my house keys going into my pocket. “You’re grounded for as long as you’re suspended.”
“I need to—”
“Should have thought of that before you got yourself suspended,” she snapped.
I stared at her, hard. Funny that she would pick now to play mother, when she never did the other 1,439 minutes of the day. “Fine. Guess I’ll just go downstairs and watch TV.”
“Fine,” she answered, and I could hear the groaning of her mattress as she settled into it to watch whatever action movie she had picked out.
That was the good thing about having a mom who was confined to her bedroom. Sneaking out was no problem. I didn’t even feel bad about it; if she wanted to keep tabs on me, she could get up and come downstairs.
Nan was watching Wheel of Fortune with her broken arm supported on an old velour pillow. “You don’t think you’re going out?” she said, but her voice was a lot gentler than my mom’s.
“I have to,” I whispered. “It’s important.”
She studied my face. “All right. I’ll cover for you. But only until ten. Even if you aren’t going to school tomorrow, it’s still a school night.”
“Right,” I said, taking care to make as little noise as possible when I opened and shut the screen door. I walked my bicycle down the driveway because I was afraid my mother would hear the sound of it kicking up gravel, but the second I was on the sidewalk I raced away. It was late; the sun was setting, and in the distance it looked like more storm clouds were bulging over the mainland. The air was humid but carried that icy chill that usually comes on early September evenings. I shuddered as I sailed up the ramp and onto the boardwalk.
Taryn was waiting for me outside the arcade, our prearranged spot. She looked even worse than before. Her face was the color of old snow, which was a huge contrast to the bloodred rims around each of her eyes. She tried to wave to me, but her hand only made it to hip level before she let it fall. She didn’t smile.
“You ready?” I asked, which was a stupid question. I realized too late I probably shouldn’t be reminding her of the task ahead. She was worried enough as it was.
She just nodded and looked down at the ground.
“You want something to eat before you go on?” I asked, remembering how she ate when she was nervous.
I started to fish through my pockets for money, but she wrinkled her nose and said, “I’m all set.” It was a good thing, since all I had in my pocket was a crumpled dollar and a Trident wrapper. I hoped she was more prepared than I was.
The You Wills had me checking the clock in the arcade, so I did. “Ten minutes. Guess I’ll get back there. I’ll see you after, okay?”
She nodded looking dazed, small, and lonely.
“Hey,” I said to her, taking her by the hand and just soaking in that feeling of peace she gave me. “It’ll be okay.”
She looked into my eyes. “I know. I believe you,” she said, and she tilted her head up and gave me a small kiss, nothing like the one we’d shared earlier that day. Her lips were cold and so weak, I could barely feel their pressure on mine. “See you.”
And she turned and walked to the tent, disappearing beneath its folds.
All I could think of was how stupid it was as I made my way over the arcade wall. That because of this family curse, she’d die tonight if she didn’t Touch someone else. There was no question in my mind—she had it worse than I did. I might not have been able to live a normal day in my life because of my curse, but I didn’t hold another person’s fate in my hands.
I lowered myself into that dark void and smelled the incense and sea as I opened the curtain a crack. It looked like Taryn was alone. She glanced in my direction and sat down in the chair, then let out a small sigh. I thought about saying something to her, something to make her relax, when a rough voice came from the corner of the tent: “You are late. Open the book.”
“Yes, Grandma,” she said. I instinctively shifted backward.
As Taryn did what she was told, her grandmother shuffled into sight. Though her back was to me, I could reach out and touch her. I could smell something like sour milk and mothballs as she moved near me, something that combined with the incense to make my eyes water. I rubbed them and swallowed. I realized this space was like a tomb, something that captured scents and never let them go. I pulled my T-shirt up in front of my mouth and crouched lower, wishing I’d brought a can of Coke with me. Wishing someone would pull back the entrance flap to the tent so that more of that cleansing sea air would come in.
Everything around me felt damp, sticky. It was darker than usual in there and I could hear thunder rumbling over the buzz and ringing of the arcade games. Suddenly the sound of a thousand hoofbeats started to pound above me. Rain. More than rain. Downpour. Taryn said something, but I couldn’t hear it amidst the pounding on the roof. The flap opened, and rain and cold air swirled in.
The client was here. A shape stood in the doorway, shaking the rain off itself like a dog. It was too dark. I couldn’t see more than a hulking black shape. “Freaking rain,” a voice rumbled. It was a man. A young one. He moved forward. Taryn’s grandmother nodded at him and he stepped under the lamp to sign the book.
I was so busy trying to figure out who it was, what kind of guy would want something like Invisible Assassin, that I almost didn’t notice Taryn, sitting there, shaking. His face came into view under the chandelier just as I realized she was yawning. But there was nothing about her face that was tired—she was sitting bolt upright, her eyes wide with fear. She yawned again—what did a yawn mean?—and I finally took in the face that was standing over the table, the face that belonged to the man who was signing his life away.
Bryce Reese.
And the yawn.
Get out.
She wanted me to leave.
Her grandmother and Bryce were busy standing over the book, so I opened the curtain a little and shrugged at her. She looked carefully at the two of them, then nonchalantly turned to me, biting her lip. Her eyes glistened in the minimal orange light from the chandelier. Then she ran her hand through her hair. “Grandma, before we start, I have to use the bathroom.”
That was another signal. She wanted me to meet her out by the crane game. I hoisted myself up and hurried over there. By that time the rain was pouring down in sheets. Taryn’s hair hung in her face in wet ropes. She didn’t wait for me to be standing next to her before she began to sob. “He’s going to use it on you,” she wailed. “The Invisible Assassin.”
I swallowed. “Wait. What? What is the Invisible Assassin?”
“It’s so horrible,” she said. I tried to grab her hands, but they were wet and trembling so much I couldn’t get hold of them. She tried to get more words out but instead another sob caught in her throat. Finally, her breathing calmed enough so she could speak again. “It allows him to target people, and he can just walk away. It will kill their family. And it will kill them. In the worst ways you can imagine.”
“You mean …,” I started. I suddenly thought of my visions, or the lack of them. “Why would he use it on me?”
“You know why. Emma was always his world. And you saw him.” She sighed, but the last bit of air came out as a cough. “And he kind of … He’s not all there. He’s crazy and he hates you.”
“It kills my family, too?” I asked. I thought of Nan and Mom.
“All of them,” she sobbed.
“But my mother never leaves the house.”
“It doesn’t matter. It will find her.”
I studied her. Oh, she was still beautiful. She’d always be. Fifty years from now, if she lived that long, she’d still turn heads. But now, she was dying. Her hair was no longer golden and platinum but frizzy and strawlike, and her pretty features were all sunken in her colorless skin. Then I looked out toward the sea. Everything beyond the boardwalk was gray, the color of nothingness. “You’d better go back in there. He’s going to wonder where you are.”
She narrowed her eyes. “I can’t. Nick. I can’t do it to you. To your family.”
I grabbed her wrist with a lot more force than I meant to. “You have to.”
“No. I’ll find someone else. I’ll—”
“Who?” I demanded, dropping her wrist. “You’ll be dead in three hours if you don’t. Go. Do it. And don’t worry about me and my family. I can take care of us.”
“But you can’t. How can you—”
I didn’t know how I did it, because my heart was beating its way out of my chest, but I managed a smile. “It’s okay. I can see the future, remember?”
She bit her lip. She started to leave but then ran toward me, pushing her lips against mine. When she pulled away, her eyes didn’t meet mine. Maybe because she was ashamed, or maybe because they were so filled with tears she couldn’t see straight. Her voice was barely a whisper when she spoke. “I love you, you know.”
Before I had a chance to tell her that I loved her, too, she was gone.
The gutters flooded and the puddles in the streets grew to rivers, so that I sloshed through ankle-deep water, the soles of my Vans squishing with every step. Though rain fell in waves, lightning lit the sky like daytime, and the thunder rumbled and boomed continuously overhead, I walked my bicycle home slowly, as if I had all the time in the world.
What could I do? People were going to die. And I had no way to fix it.
For some reason, I found myself thinking of Jocelyn. If I had just let her get the Touch she wanted, Taryn would be okay. Taryn wouldn’t need to perform the Touch tonight, and we would all be safe. Instead, I’d messed everything up. Just like my mom had. Funny how one decision can mean so much.
But the thing was, I’d envisioned us dying in Taryn’s Jeep before that. So maybe I’d always been meant to mess with Jocelyn’s Touch. It was almost as if my screwing everything up was beyond my control, destined, written in the stars.
And maybe my dying was, too. Maybe all the iterations of my life, all the people I was destined to be before this, were just preparing me for this one ending. It was only fitting that I’d find the perfect girl and the most tragic death in the same future.
The rain poured down on my face, obscuring my vision as I walked along the boardwalk ramp to Seventh Avenue. If only I could get that Touch, that Flight of Song. Then I could tell Bryce to call back the curse, and he would have to obey. But Taryn had said a person couldn’t be Touched twice.
There really was no way out of this.
A car horn blared at me as I tried to cross the street, and I jumped back in time to be hit by a wave of cold water kicked up from one of the enormous puddles in the road. I thought of Nan, and how she used to dress me in my duck outfit—galoshes and matching raincoat—when I was a kid. How she always did so much for me.
She’d do anything to make sure I was okay. And look what I gave her in return. It wasn’t fair to her. It wasn’t right.
Suddenly, something came to me. She’d do anything to make sure I was okay. Anything. I was sure of that.
All at once, I knew what had to happen. It was our only chance. I climbed on my bicycle and pedaled furiously down Seventh. I tossed my bike on the gravel in the front yard and stormed inside, bolting the door behind me. “Nan!”
She was, of course, sleeping in her recliner. Some reality-show host was talking about the voting process on television. I started to go into the living room, but my mom called to me. “Nick! Come up here!”
I didn’t want to. Her voice sounded strange. No doubt she was going to scold me for being out when I was grounded. But as I neared the foot of the staircase, I realized she wasn’t angry. She was excited about something, no doubt something she’d seen in a vision. I tried ignoring her, but she kept speaking. “I was wrong! I was wrong!” she said, over and over again. I didn’t want to know what it was, though. I could see fragments of the scene in the Jeep clearly now, almost as if the accident was due to happen soon, and that was all I needed to know.
“Ma, I’ll be up in a sec,” I said, and Nan started to stir at the sound of my voice.
She looked at me, still dazed. “What? What’s going on?”
“Nan,” I said, kneeling beside her. “Listen. We’re in trouble. I need you to do something for me.”
She kicked the recliner upright. “Of course. What?”
“Someone took out a Touch. And they’re going to use it on us. I need you to take out another Touch to stop him. We can go there tonight, and I’ll—”
She held out a hand. “Wait. Slow down.”
“I can’t,” I said, the words falling on top of one another. “They’re going to kill us.”
She stared at me. “You need to start from the beginning.”
I took a breath. “Bryce Reese. He’s the brother of the girl who died. Right now he’s at the boardwalk getting his own Touch. And his Touch is going to give him the ability to kill me and my family. Because he hates me. And so what I want you to do is—”
“He hates you? Why?”
“Long story. Basically, he wants me to get what I gave him. So what I need you to do is—”
“I am not dealing in that nonsense,” she said. “It’s all about people wanting to play God. Your mother thought she could play God, and she learned she was wrong. There’s only one God, and I know I’m not him. You need to talk it out with this Reese person.”
“No, Nan. It’s not nonsense. Bryce Reese won’t listen to reason. And we are going to die. You have to.”
She stood up. “I don’t have to do anything,” she said softly, turning her back on me and walking into the kitchen. “And I won’t.”
I just stared at her.
“And it is nonsense,” she whispered. “It ruined both of you. And I’ll have no part in it. Not ever.”
I opened my mouth to argue, but her tone was so cold, so final, I knew it would do no good. “Then we’ve got to go. We’ve got to get out of here. Hide, or something.”
She snorted and jutted her chin upward, towards my mom’s bedroom. “Good luck getting that one to go anywhere.” She picked up a tray with a half-eaten sandwich on it, then placed it on the kitchen counter. “You hungry?”
I clenched my fists to keep from latching on to something hard and throwing it at her, then walked up into the stairwell. My mom was standing on the landing, in the doorway. “What?” I asked her.
She narrowed her eyes. “What were you saying to your grandmother?”
I shook my head. After all, Nan was right. If my mom wouldn’t go anywhere for her son’s own funeral, she wouldn’t go if I told her she needed to get away, even if it meant her life. Not that running would make any difference.
“I was wrong,” she said, her tone light. “It wasn’t yours.”
I stared at her for a minute, annoyed that everything she said always had to be so cryptic. “My what?”
“Your funeral.”
I’d already started to head back downstairs, since I was so sure I didn’t want to hear what she had to say. But I stopped in midstep. “What? Whose was it, then?”
The thing was, I didn’t have to ask that. It didn’t really matter. There would be more funerals. Many more. And eventually, mine would be one of them.
I said, “I’m going to die, too. Because I don’t remember anything after—” My voice hitched when I was suddenly struck blind by two strong beams of light, streaming in through the sidelights at the front door. A car was here.
I didn’t need to be able to see the future to know that Taryn had successfully performed her first Touch. And that something terrible had begun.
As I peered out the window, the headlights flickered off. A You Will was just coming through when images began to play in my head, hot and rapid, making me dizzy.
Flashing lights and rain on glass. A horrible squealing tore through my eardrums.
I strained to see the automobile in the darkness, but the rain made patterns on the pane, distorting everything beyond. Something moved in the darkness and suddenly someone rapped on the door.
“Nick?” a voice called out. Taryn.
By then my heart was in my throat. I swallowed it and unbolted the door.
“Are you okay?” we said in unison. And then, to confirm how eerily alike we were, we both exhaled and said “I’m fine” at the same time.
I ushered her into the hallway. She had her scarf over her head like a peasant girl, but she was still drenched from head to toe. Water dripped off the end of her nose. But she was alive. Her skin was glowing again and her eyes were back to normal. I didn’t have to ask her if the Touch had worked, but I did anyway. “Did everything go all right?”
She pulled the scarf off her head and her curls sprang out, vibrant once more. “I did it. But I can’t say that anything is right. Just like I thought, Bryce used the Touch on Pedro and you the second he got it. You shouldn’t be here. You need to hide or something.”
I shook my head. “My family won’t leave. And I can’t leave them.”
Her eyes widened. “You have to make them understand that—”
At that moment, Nan stepped into the hallway. “I do understand,” she said.
Taryn looked from me to Nan, questioning.
Nan smiled like she was a hostess, greeting guests at a tea party. “Nick won’t properly introduce us, but I’m his grandmother. And you are Taryn. It is nice to finally meet you, after all I’ve heard. Come in and have something to eat.”
Normally I’d shrink away in embarrassment, but I was too busy trying to sort out the visions that were flashing in my head. Headlights. Screams. They seemed so close. Taryn reluctantly followed us to the kitchen, like it was the last thing on earth she wanted to do. She helped Nan set the table and pour the tea anyway. Ten minutes later we sat around the kitchen table, nursing steaming mugs. I guess none of us felt much like drinking. Taryn didn’t even bother to remove her tea bag. She just stared at it. “I’m sorry that your family has become such a big part of my family’s curse,” she said softly. I couldn’t tell if she was addressing me or Nan.
“It seems that our family had some responsibility for inserting ourselves into it,” Nan answered. She looked Taryn over. Now that she was drying out, her hair was shiny and her cheeks were turning rosy. She looked even hotter than I remembered. It was pretty stupid considering everything else that was going on, but I still wanted her. “Nick has told me so much about you.”
I kicked her under the table to get her to stop giving the poor girl the hairy eyeball. Then I said, “Um. So what do we do now?”
Taryn shrugged. “Well, I wanted you to run away.”
“But would that do any good? Wouldn’t it just find us?”
She nodded. “Wishful thinking. It doesn’t stop until it does.”
I took a big gulp of tea and remembered too late that it was still hot. It scalded all the way down my throat and I grimaced back the pain. “What is it anyway? This thing that’s coming for us?”
She shuddered. “It’s death. And it can take any one of a million forms.”
“So like, TB? Being chopped up in a meat grinder?” Lightning flashed in the sky. “Electrocution? Anything?”
“No. It’s the worst. It’s whatever form you fear most.”
I stared at her. “I’ve never thought about that. Do people seriously sit around and try to think of the worst way to die?”
“Well, dear,” Nan said, “that’s because you’ve always been busy thinking of so many other things. But truthfully, I think that, deep down, most people know very well which type of death they would fear the most.”
Taryn nodded. I stared at her, confused, but then I suddenly remembered what she said. “I always have this feeling I’m going to die in a horrific car crash.”
Nan continued, “When I was five, I almost drowned in the ocean. I’ve been so afraid of drowning ever since.”
“Shhh,” I muttered, scanning the corners of the ceiling for—I don’t know what. Shadows, ghosts, some guy with a sickle. “You don’t want it to hear you. Whatever it is.”
Taryn said, “You don’t have to say it out loud. It already knows. Even if you don’t think you know. It does.” She shuddered again.
“Let’s find something else to talk about,” Nan said, slitting open a box of Entenmann’s with a knife. “Crumb cake?”
We all stared at it like it was a brick of dog crap. We’d lost our appetites. And clearly Nan was off her rocker. Death was coming for us, and she wanted us to sit and enjoy crumb cake. She’d let us go through our most feared deaths instead of getting a Touch just because she hated “that nonsense” so much.
“Nan,” I said, trying to keep my voice even, “can we talk in the other room?”
She shook her head and cut herself a large piece of cake. “I don’t want my tea to get cold.”
“Nan,” I grumbled. “Fine. Don’t you understand? This is why you have to do it. You have to.”
Taryn stopped staring at her tea and looked at me. “Do what?”
I explained my idea of Nan getting the Flight of Song Touch, and Taryn’s eyes widened.
“Right! Wait.” She turned to Nan. “You don’t want to?”
Nan pushed her plate away without taking a bite and began fingering the Miraculous Medal around her neck. I knew what she thought: Leave it in the hands of God. He will make everything right. I’d heard her feelings about the Heights all too often, too: nothing good could be found in the Devil’s Playground. “That’s right. The Touch is the source of my family’s problem. It’s not the solution. It’s sinful.”
“Oh, I guess,” Taryn said softly, then gave me an “is she insane?” look. “Good thought, though.”
Nan stood up. Her expression, for once, was grave. “Lovely chatting with you both. Now I must get ready for bed.”
She started for the staircase, her shoulders slumped and her head down. Normally she would have cleared the table and loaded the dishwasher, but I could tell she was rattled. And who wouldn’t be?
“Good night,” I called after her, and then I couldn’t resist getting one last dig in there. “You might want to forgo your bath. I’d stay away from water altogether, if I were you.”
Nan didn’t respond. Taryn swallowed and grimaced like there were knives in her throat. She’d shredded the paper napkin into a pile of confetti. “Maybe she will sleep on it and change her mind?” she offered.
I shrugged. “Maybe.” I kept my voice light to hide the dread that had crept over me. There was still a long night ahead of us, and evil always seemed more possible in the darkness.
Lightning lit the sky far away, but the thunder didn’t come as an answer. As I walked Taryn outside, there was no noise at all—no crickets, no humming of the streetlights—as if the entire town was holding its breath for what was to come. The Park was between storms, so the clouds had parted like a curtain, revealing the silver-dollar moon and thousands of pinpoint stars. Now, everything seemed hushed, the way the Park liked. As I held Taryn’s hand, even the You Wills were gone, leaving a silence that was almost too silent. It was unnatural. Foreboding.
“Can we talk somewhere else?” Taryn asked.
I nodded and followed her down the gravel driveway, but when we were walking together, still holding hands, she did very little talking. It seemed like she was afraid to say something. The air was so humid you could almost taste it. We ambled slowly to the corner in the darkness, then kept right on going to the playground on the Fifth Avenue bay.
Tiny pools of water glistened on the seats of the swings. Taryn’s skirt was still damp from before, so she didn’t bother to wipe the swing dry before she sat on it. I sat down on the swing next to hers.
“I’ve known a lot of guys,” she said, digging her bare toes into the sand. “They all wanted something from me. But not you. You’re different. You’re like my angel.”
I laughed. “Are you crazy? I am not your angel. I ruined your life in a thousand ways, remember?”
“Why are you so nice to me, then?” she said.
I snorted. “I’m not nice to you.”
“You let me give Bryce that Touch. You risked your life—the lives of your family—for me. You didn’t have to do that.”
“Yes, I did,” I said. “You would have died if I didn’t.”
“I could have found someone else, maybe,” she said. “You felt guilty? Is that what it is?”
“No. Look. You’re as important to me as my family. In my life, I’ve known hundreds—thousands of girls, maybe. I’ve married them, had kids with them, grown old with them, loved them. But you are … I can’t explain it. Every time you even walk away from me, I feel like there’s a hole in my chest. I think I would die if anything happened to you. Literally. The pain would kill me.”
She didn’t say anything for a while, just sat there watching the lights of the bridge dancing on the smooth ripples of the dark bay. Finally, she said, “Wow.”
I wasn’t sure if she meant “Wow, that’s amazing” or “Wow, you freak,” but when she turned to me, there were tears in her eyes. So I inched forward in my swing and kissed her again. She exhaled sweetly, the way girls do, and I put my hand through her hair, wanting more of her, wanting to pull her closer. But it snagged on something, and when I rubbed my thumb to my fingers it was gummy and thick, like she’d used too much hair gel. I pulled my hand out.
“What the …” I looked at my hand. Sniffed. Oh, hell.
“What is that smell?” She stared at my hands. “Is that … peanut butter?”
“Ugh. Kid who sat on this swing before must have been eating peanut butter,” I said, inspecting the chains. I couldn’t tell much in the dark, but now I could smell nothing but peanut butter. It made me want to retch. “Ugh.”
“Calm down, it’s okay,” she said, laughing. She took her shawl off and gently wiped my hands.
“You don’t understand. I hate peanut butter.” I pouted like a kid, but then suddenly
Glass raining down, shadows swirling in the headlights
I straightened. She just kept swabbing at my hands, oblivious to the things rushing through my head. “There. Better?”
I nodded, shaking the thought away. “Yeah. I think we better get back. I need to check on my family.”
We walked back, and I held her hand. With the hand that wasn’t still sticky with peanut butter. Peanut butter. Crap. Why was everything good always mixed with bad? I didn’t want to think about it anymore. I was burned out, thinking of the bad all the time. And in this moment, all I wanted to concentrate on was Taryn. How right she felt. Comfortable. It was chilly, and we were both still damp from the rain, so she leaned in close to me, her hair ticking my chin. I smelled the cinnamon apples. With her hand in mine, my mind calmed and all I could think of was how, if I could pick one moment in my life and freeze it forever, it would be this one. There was all this craziness threatening, but I don’t think I’d ever been happier. I knew it wouldn’t last. It couldn’t. But for that second, everything was perfect.
It started to drizzle by the time we reached my block, and when we came to her car, she said, “There’s something else I have to tell you,” just as the skies opened up and it began to pour.
I tugged on her sleeve, trying to get her to go into my house, but she pulled me toward her Jeep. “Are you crazy? I’m not getting in there,” I said.
She laughed. “Don’t be nuts. We’re not going anywhere. I won’t even put the keys in the ignition.” She dangled them in front of me, then dropped them in my hand. “Here, take them.”
I held them in my palm, staring at them like they were diseased. Okay. We wouldn’t leave the driveway. That we could do. Besides, her Jeep was closer, and maybe the thing she had to tell me was something private, that she (and I) didn’t want my family to hear. So I went with her. We piled into the passenger-side door as the clouds threw rain down upon us. But the second I slammed the car door, I had the weirdest and most uncomfortable feeling of déjà vu, like I’d just made the biggest and gravest mistake of my life. Suddenly the back of my neck prickled with the sensation I got whenever something big was coming. The cabin was humid and dark and dark and smelled of peanut butter. Water poured on the roof like a marching army and splashed on the windshield in long clear sheets. The dream catcher dangling from her rearview mirror swayed gently from side to side.
And we were going to die.
But no no no, I thought. In my vision I’m driving. I’m at the steering wheel. I’m—
But I realized too late that the trivial things didn’t matter. That what mattered was the horrible, irreparable end result.
“Taryn,” I said. “This isn’t right. This is—”
“Shhh,” she said, grabbing my hand. “Listen. It’s okay.”
“No, you don’t get it.” I reached for the door handle. But I couldn’t find it.
“Nick, no worries,” she said, holding her arms over the steering wheel as if to say, “Look, Ma, no hands!” but I grabbed the one closest to me and held it. It was so warm and my hand was dead in contrast. I lunged for the lock. I clawed at the door handle, trying to figure out how to get it open. I pulled on the door, pushed buttons, but nothing happened. All I could feel was something tightening around my neck, my pulse thudding in my ears, the stench of peanut butter making it impossible to breathe, and the cabin closing in on itself, on me. Finally she said, “Nick. Just relax, we’re not going anywhere.”
“No. No. NO! Tar, watch ou—” I shouted, but by then it was too late. She was facing me, away from the headlights as they came on us at warp speed. It was a truck, and a big one, judging from the eardrum-bursting squeal of the air brakes. The entire cabin lit up for one brilliant second before the impact. Her face contorted into a terrified mask and her lips curved into an almost smile, yet her body was rigid, all points and right angles as it was propelled toward me. I grabbed hold of her at one of those awkward, wrong places, trying to pull her to me, to protect her, but my hands tangled in locks of her sticky wet hair. There was the shriek of shattering glass and the sting of it spraying on my skin. We began to careen into a mind-scattering tailspin where earth and sky and everything in between seemed like the pieces of a giant jigsaw puzzle thrown into the air. When everything settled, I knew only one image would be left, the same image I’d already lived a hundred times: holding her blood-soaked head in my lap and screaming, screaming, screaming as the glass rained down upon us.
I guess everything after the glass shattering around us was too much. The last thing I could remember was screaming endlessly as I held her head in my lap, feeling her hair, slick and gummy with blood.
The rest of Taryn’s death was too much to get through my brain.
She was the one destined to die in the Jeep, in the horrible accident she’d feared most. I wasn’t supposed to die then. Soon, but not then. After her death, though, I didn’t care. I wanted it.
The rest of that week was like gazing at snapshots from an old camera. Disjointed and distant. Me at the funeral. Me lying in bed. Me banging my head against the wall, delirious, wishing I would go next. I didn’t, couldn’t think about Nan or my mom, or the danger they were in. The hole in my chest opened to a chasm. It ached so bad sometimes I scratched and clawed at it, trying to get whatever poison was in there out. I green-elephanted constantly. I don’t think I ate, but maybe I did. I know I didn’t sleep. I don’t remember doing any of the things the living are supposed to do. No wonder I couldn’t see any of that in my visions. It all seemed so surreal, so vague. Like watching someone else’s life.
The next thing I remembered with perfect clarity was sitting on the lumpy sofa in front of Pat Sajak, staring at the dull brown shag carpet, feeling Nan’s heavy eyes on me. She asked me a question, probably something stupid, like whether I wanted more iced tea, but I didn’t hear her, didn’t answer, just watched the giant wheel tick to a stop on the big black Bankrupt.
“We’re all going to die,” I muttered.
She pursed her lips, then said, “Oh, honey bunny, you don’t—”
“I do!” I growled at her in an almost animal voice I didn’t know I had. “The Touch is already working. It’s going to kill my family. Everyone. It knew. Taryn was my family. In the future. I would have married her, grown old with her. It got her first. You’ll be next. Or Mom. It won’t stop until we’re all dead.”
She sat teetering on the very edge of the recliner, looking small, like she was ready to fall off. “It’s sinful. And two wrongs don’t make—”
I jumped to my feet. “Don’t talk in clichés! You know it. It’s the only way we can stop it.” I knelt beside her. By that time a picture of Taryn, looking alive and beautiful, appeared in my head and I began to sob. “Please. I don’t want you to die because of me, too.”
She took my hand. Hers was trembling. “What is it called again?”
I raised my head to look in her eyes. She’d sucked in her bottom lip, something she only did when she was thinking hard. Hope flooded me. “Flight of Song,” I said. “She’ll be there today at five. We can go together.”
She shook her head. “I think your mother is coming down with something. She’s not right. Someone has to stay with her.”
“What?”
“She was coughing blood. She didn’t want you to see, but—”
I swallowed. Oh, no. “Nan. She’s dying, don’t you see?”
She nodded. “Yes. I see. What do I have to do?”
She had her arm propped up on the velour pillow. I motioned to it. “Can you drive?”
“I will. It’s not far. Now, tell me. What is it I have to do?”
“All you have to do is go in and tell her you want it. I have extra money from lifeguarding upstairs. Give it all to her. Tell her it can’t wait. Make sure she does it right away. Bryce Reese spends most of his nights at the Sawmill. Once you get the Touch, you need to go there and tell him to withdraw the curse on my family. He’ll have to listen. Flight of Song makes people do exactly what you say.”
She nodded. “All right,” she said. “Tonight.”
I went upstairs as Nan got ready to go out. I could smell the perfume she always wore and knew she was probably changing out of her cooking-grease-stained clothes so that she could head to the boardwalk. I knew she would do it; once she said she’d go ahead with something, she never went back. I just hoped it would work. In theory, it should have worked. For them, not for me. It was too late for me. I felt as good as dead. As if death would feel better.
“Nick?” a voice called to me in the darkness of the hallway.
“Yeah, Mom,” I said, turning into her room. I’d planned on going in there anyway. I hadn’t been inside her room in a while. She was propped against the headboard, paler and smaller than her usual pale and small. I’d never known a time when she looked right, but now something was especially wrong. “You okay? Can I get you anything?”
She shook her head and placed a hand on mine. “I know what has been happening,” she said, her voice weak.
“Well, you can see the future.” I started the joke I’d told her a hundred times, wondering how much she knew. I’d kept a lot from her. “So that doesn’t make you Einstein.”
She smiled a small, sad smile. “The funeral I saw … that girl? She was your girlfriend. I’m sorry we couldn’t … do something.”
I shrugged. It was once in a long line of times that this gift or curse or whatever it was had let me down in an epic way. But it really didn’t matter. Eventually, we’d all go. And maybe it was better that way. The world would probably be a better place without the two of us.
“And I know that we are going to die,” she said.
“We all die,” I said quickly, and then realized that she was saying she knew about the Touch. She knew we were going to die soon. “Did you have a vision?”
She shook her head and picked up the water glass next to her bed. “Did you know that if you put this to the floor, you can hear everything downstairs? I was listening when you, Nan, and your girlfriend were talking about it.”
I just stood there, startled. Mom usually lived in her own little world up here. She didn’t want to know anything that was going on outside, but it always invaded her space, anyway.
“What was her name? She seemed very nice.”
My tongue lolled in my mouth, almost like it didn’t want to form the word. “Taryn. And she was.”
She sighed. “I ruined that for you. Oh, my dear, how many things have I ruined for you?” she said, burying her face in her hands. “I don’t blame you for hating me.”
“I don’t hate you,” I said.
“Yes, you do.”
I started to argue again, to say no, no I didn’t, when in fact I did, just a little, but it didn’t matter because she was still my mom, and as much as I hated her, I loved her more. But suddenly she threw her shoulders forward and began to cough so violently it seemed her whole body would break apart. It reminded me so much of Taryn that I cringed and took a step back. Then I patted her back and helped her bring the straw in her water glass to her lips. She swallowed with a loud gulp and rubbed her temples. “The cycling is bad today.”
I hadn’t noticed. Every part of me ached with a brilliant, crushing pain. Especially my chest.
“You were always better at handling the pain. What was that thing you used to say?”
“Green elephant,” I said as she began coughing again. She brought a tissue to her mouth, and the bright crimson was a shock against the doughy white of her skin and everything else around her. I motioned to my neck. “Because of that necklace you used to wear.”
She coughed more, then reached behind her neck and pulled out a white string. It had blended with her shirt so, that I’d never seen it before. As she lifted the string she freed the green elephant from underneath her shirt. The black cord was gone and the white string she put in its place was longer, allowing the necklace to hide lower on her chest, which is why I hadn’t seen it. I stared at it. It was larger than I remembered. The trunk was gone, broken off. “I thought you …,” I began. And here I’d convinced myself a mother who couldn’t bring herself to make me breakfast, go to school concerts, or take me to the beach couldn’t care about me. “The trunk is gone. That’s bad luck.”
She smiled. “Nick. I have enough good-luck charms around. Little good they do me.” She fingered the green elephant before dropping it back to her chest. “This was never a symbol of luck to me.”
I put my hands in the pockets of my shorts and studied the dresser mirror, decorated with dozens of fortune-cookie papers. I wondered if any of them had come true. When I turned back, I noticed her face had gotten darker. “What’s wrong?”
“I was just thinking. What is yours?” she asked.
“My what?”
“What death do you fear the most?” she asked.
“Mom,” I protested. She’d always loved the morbid. “I wouldn’t tell you if I knew. But I really have no idea.”
She gave me an “I’m your mom and I know better” look. “Like your grandmother said, everyone has one.”
“Oh, really?” I thought for a second. “Well, it’s whatever would be most painful, I guess. The wood chipper would kind of suck. And being drawn and quartered doesn’t sound very fun, either.” My stomach started to churn. I really hoped that by saying it I wasn’t sealing my fate with the wood chipper. “I don’t want to talk about—”
“It’s not what would hurt the most. It’s what you’re most afraid of. Those are two different things,” she said, reaching over and placing a lock of my hair back over my forehead. “And I’m your mother. Even though I’ve spent most of my time up here, I know what you are most afraid of, Nick.”
“Come on. How can you know, when I don’t even—”
“Nick,” she said softly.
I stared at her, and at that moment I knew. I thought of the crowds watching me at tryouts, of how they parted to avoid me. I thought of Sphincter, calling me Crazy Cross in front of everyone in the busy hallway at school. The way they’d stared at me, eyes narrowed, faces wrinkled in disgust, as if I was an infection, a disease, the absolute embodiment of everything they didn’t want to be. I’d convinced myself it didn’t matter, that I didn’t care. I’d convinced myself I was used to it, but can anyone get used to treatment like that? Each time, there was a chink in my armor, a dent in my wall. It was only a matter of time before everything came crumbling down.
“I don’t want to die in a way where everyone would think I was a freak,” I choked out.
She nodded, and a tear trickled down her cheek. “Another one of your quirks I’m responsible for, I’m afraid.”
I didn’t want to think what kind of death that meant I was in for. I didn’t want to know. Maybe it would be a public death. Maybe something pathetic, like a suicide. I thought of what I’d said to Nan. My life is already over. Suicide had never entered my mind before, but now, I wanted death more than anything. I wanted to be with Taryn. Now, it seemed like a definite option. In school the next day, people would whisper and raise eyebrows and some would say, “Well, what did you expect? Cross was a freak.” I would cement my status as Crazy Cross, in capital letters, until the world decided to forget about me, which wouldn’t take very long. Well, they would forget about me, but not the way I died. Years from now, at reunions, they’d say, “Remember that kid from our class who died? The freak? What was his name?” And everyone would know the sad, morbid details of the event, but nobody would recall anything else about me.
“Well,” I finally said, swallowing the lump in my throat. “What’s yours, then?”
A slow smile spread on her face. “What do you think?”
I shrugged.
She said, “Do you ever wonder about how things might have been? Without the Touch?”
I nodded. I’d thought about that often. I wondered what kind of mother she’d have been. Would she be more like Nan? I wondered what kind of person I’d be. Would I like myself? Would I be normal? Or would I find other things to obsess about? But it was useless. “What’s done is done. I know you never wanted this.”
“You were my perfect baby. Even before you were born. I wanted so many things for you.” At that moment I knew what she wanted to do. She picked a lock of hair out of my eye and swept it back. She started to say it, but I didn’t have to hear it to know.
“I know you’re sorry, Mom. And I forgive you.”
She squeezed my hand harder, and I saw everything in my head. I moved against the headboard and she didn’t say a word, just laid her head on my shoulder. We sat there for a long time, until she settled down into the covers and fell asleep. Afterward, as the minutes and hours ticked by, I sat in the vinyl chair across from her, watching her chest rise and fall. When the sea breeze picked up, I wrapped an afghan over her and thought about the irony of it all.
But I stayed. I stayed there as if glued to that uncomfortable vinyl chair. I stayed until my legs fell asleep and the sound of cars whizzing by on Central Avenue faded to the sad song of the crickets. Because I knew.
Hers was the reason she’d gotten the Touch in the first place. The scariest thing to her was losing her fiancé, or being left to raise a child on her own. That was what she’d always been most afraid of.
She didn’t want to be alone, and she didn’t want to die that way, either.
That night, I thought of death. I had visions of me being strung out in front of the world, of people laughing and screaming “freak!” as they paraded by my mutilated body. I saw children crying at the hideous sight of me. I saw people who once acted friendly to me recoiling in horror as they passed. No, they weren’t visions of the future—they couldn’t be. I knew that. But the knowledge didn’t stop me from tossing back and forth on my old, creaky mattress, as if trying to shake the thoughts out of bed with me.
Sometime in the middle of the night, I became aware I was back in my own room. It could have been night or early morning, but I felt as if days had passed. I saw the headlights on the wall. I heard the staircase creaking under her footsteps. The door opened and I felt the mattress dip. “It’s done,” my grandmother whispered, placing her hand on my forehead. It was cold. She smelled like butterscotch.
She didn’t say any more after that. She simply left and closed the door. For the first time in months, I lapsed into a deep and dreamless sleep.