That night I had a dream. It’s not unusual for me to dream when I sleep, but it is unusual for me to sleep very much. This time I dreamt of slivers of pale blue light, breaking through a spiderweb in the darkness. Of glass raining down on me. Of me reaching for someone and grabbing handfuls of wet hair. Of pain.
I woke up with a scream caught in my throat. When I came to, I was sitting up in bed, sheets twisted around my legs. My hands were out in front of me, as if I was bracing myself for a fall. My heartbeat echoed in my ears.
It was just a dream. But it felt real. More like my future.
The worst thing was, I hadn’t been on script in days. I’d been ignoring most of the You Wills or doing the opposite of what they instructed, hoping to shake something up. But nothing had changed.
I’m not going in a car, I told myself.
Sometimes, all I needed to do to change the future was to convince myself I was going to change. When I saw the future of me at the dentist, getting all my teeth pulled because of too many butterscotch candies, I just told myself, “I will no longer eat them.” And the more I thought that, the more that memory of me at the dentist faded, became less real. So telling myself I would not drive a car should have worked. Instead, though, the memory seemed clearer. I could make out the pretty spiderweb pattern on the windshield, I could feel the zip of the seat belt on my chest, my fingers digging into the soft plastic seat.
But I am not going in a car. You got that? No car!
But there was no cycling. No new memories. Nothing to suggest that I’d changed the future. It was useless and crazy, arguing with my own mind. Like arguing with a girl. No matter what my position was, I could never win.
I changed my shorts and pulled an old surfing T-shirt over my head as I ran down the stairs. The You Wills whispered and I tried not to pay attention, but random things floated through my mind: unmentionables, lighthouse, fire-engine red. Something smelled like strawberries. When I reached the screen door, Nan was standing by the washing machine. “It’s laundry day,” she said, a tinge of defeat in her voice.
I realized why she was upset when I saw the cast on her arm and remembered her injury. Nan was one of those people who would keep chugging along even with every bone in her body broken. I rushed to her side, despite the fact that on the few occasions I’d helped with laundry in the past, I’d almost been scarred for life. Something about having to handle my mom’s and grandmother’s silky, giant underwear, knowing that Nan handled mine, hanging them up on the line outside for the whole world to see. I’d much rather believe they just dried and folded themselves and jumped into my drawer. But with one arm, Nan was pretty helpless. “Yeah, I can help.”
“Oh, perfect,” she said, to my dismay. She pointed to a big wicker basket of damp whites, all ready to go out on the line. Perfect. Her unmentionables, or at least, that’s what Nan called them.
“How is your arm feeling?” I asked, hoping she’d say it was miraculously cured and she could take off the cast. I wasn’t sure I could handle more than one week of laundry.
“Oh, fine,” she answered through gritted teeth. She waved me out the door.
I walked outside and grabbed the bucket of clothespins, then started with my socks. The easy thing. Unfortunately since I’d only gone running once this week, I only had one pair in the laundry. I moved on to my boxers, hoping that by the time I got to the more serious stuff, a rainstorm would come or the world would implode or something. I was just clipping the last pair to the line when the world did implode. Because she started coming up the pathway. Taryn. And here I was, surrounded by my underwear, all flapping happily in the breeze.
Okay, maybe a real man wouldn’t have felt weird about it. It was completely third grade to be embarrassed. But I was. Like I said, I didn’t have much real experience with girls. And it was embarrassing enough as it was, being accosted in my ugly backyard, which was all overgrown and filled with rusting, peeling patio furniture. There were faded green aliens and army men (you really couldn’t tell the difference) painted on the clamshells that surrounded the cracked walk. I’d made a bird feeder out of Popsicle sticks and that was there, too, lopsided and pathetic, by Nan’s garden. Nan saved every weird creative endeavor from my youth; they were valued trophies to her. The garbage cans were nearby, and they still reeked from the fish from a few nights before. All my surroundings reeked too much of me, of things I didn’t want Taryn knowing about.
She approached cautiously. She was wearing sunglasses and her hair was up in a bun, making her look older and even more out of my league. “Are you better now?” she asked. “I just came to check on you.”
Could she be any nicer? How many times would I have to freak out on her before she left me alone? But I was glad she was persistent. I was so happy to see her it was only then I realized one of Nan’s silky white skivvies had landed on my foot. I plucked it off and said, “Yeah, thanks. Thanks for asking.”
“Whoa, you don’t look better. What happened to your eye?”
I’d almost forgotten about the run-in with Bryce, despite the constant sting where his fist had met my temple. I thought maybe she’d been lingering to witness it, so I was glad to learn that she hadn’t. And I really didn’t want to go over it again. “Nothing. Just a minor misunderstanding with a door.”
She raised her eyebrows and I knew right away she didn’t believe me. But she gave me a pass. “So how are you doing?”
She had that look, the one doctors gave to their patients who only had three months to live. Like I was a charity case. Right. That’s probably what I was to her. She felt guilty about what her grandmother had done to us, and this was her way of making it up to me. “Why do you keep asking me that?” I said.
“I just”—she shrugged—“care.”
“That’s warped. I’ve been a total jerkwad to you. You should be running in the other direction.” I looked away, toward the clothesline, then mumbled, “Save yourself.”
“What’s that supposed to mean? You saw something. Something with me? That’s why you don’t want to see me anymore. Right?”
She was inspecting the shells on the ground. So while she wasn’t looking, I quickly flung the undies back into the wicker basket. She raised her head just in time to see them make a safe landing and raised her eyebrows again but said nothing. I played it off by nodding and saying, really nonchalantly, “Yep.”
“Bad, huh? How bad?”
I was still trying to block her view of the basket. I gave her a smirk. “Terror, pain. Death, dismemberment. All that good stuff.”
“Really?” She gulped.
I expected her to make herself scarce, like I had when I found out. Instead, she just stood there. Staring, directly, at the row of boxers behind me. “This is the part where you run away, screaming,” I prompted after a minute.
“Is it?” She seemed reluctant to move. Almost like she liked the idea of dying.
“Yeah. Why? You don’t want to?”
“Well, I was just thinking. You can change it, right? You said your future changes all the time?”
“Sometimes. Not always. Like my mom says, fix one thing, another breaks. And sometimes you can’t fix things.”
“Why?”
I shrugged. “I told you. I only see part of things. If I don’t know what’s wrong, I can’t fix it. And some things can’t be prevented.”
She frowned. “So what is it? A car accident?” I didn’t answer, but my face must have given it away. “Soon?”
“Pretty soon, I think.”
She covered her mouth with her hands. “Oh, my God. Not Beauty. I just got it, and my dad keeps getting on me because of what happened in Maine. He’ll kill me if I total my car!”
I waved her away with my hand. “So run away. Save yourself.”
But again she just stood there. I checked to see if she was growing roots under those pretty red toenails of hers. Then she just hoisted her bag over her shoulder. “I am not afraid,” she said.
I laughed. “You should be.”
“We can change it.”
I shrugged. “Not always. Not if we keep …” I stopped. Not if we keep running into each other. I didn’t want to say it. I didn’t even want to suggest it. “Look. This is not your fault. You don’t have to be nice to me. If there’s anyone you should be able to say no to, I’m it. Why don’t you start practicing?” I exaggerated the word. “No. Say it with me.”
She just stared at me.
“And then you turn and walk away.”
“You really think that I’m bothering with you just because I feel guilty?”
I nodded. “Isn’t it?”
“No. I like you, Nick. When you’re not being weird, I like spending time with you. That’s the truth.”
I shook my head. “I’m never not weird.”
“That’s not true. We had a good time on the boardwalk.” She moved closer, so her next words were almost whispered. “And listen. You know things about me. Things that you never would have been able to find out about me if you were a total jerk, through and through. If you were that person, if that was truly who you were, I would have shut you out. But for some reason, in some version of the future, I let you in. I let you get close to me. Right? That proves to me that there is good in you.”
I considered it for a moment. “Maybe in that version of the future, you were stupid. Maybe you kept trying to convince yourself there was good in me, even though there wasn’t. I’ve done really stupid things in some of my futures. I know how to freebase coke,” I said, thinking of my short life in Vegas, married to the stripper. “That’s pretty stupid.”
She shook her head. “I know you’re pushing me away just because you’re trying to protect me. That’s a noble, good thing.”
I just stood there, unable to meet her eyes. Unable to meet the eyes of the one person on this earth who knew me better than I knew myself.
“And so your vision says we are going to be in a car accident. If that can’t change, if we are doomed to this future, then how can you know me so well? Maybe because we don’t die in it. Or maybe because that future isn’t set. Maybe seeing two different versions of the future. You just need to pick the right one. The one that doesn’t end in tragedy.”
It’s obvious she’d put a lot of thought into it, and she was probably right.
“All I am saying is that you don’t have to shut me out completely.”
“That would be taking a chance.” I swallowed and looked away. “I’m sick of taking chances.”
“But I’m not,” she said, looking over her shoulder. “Look. You said that touching me made you feel normal. Right?”
I sighed. “It’s a joke. I’m not normal.”
She frowned and started to speak again, but thankfully, just then, a car horn blared. She looked behind her nervously. “I do have to go.”
“So, go,” I said, surprised at how gruff I could be. I wondered if it would be the last time I’d ever see her. If so, I wouldn’t blame her. That would be the smart thing to do.
But that would kill me. In other ways.
She turned and walked back down the path, her head lowered. I felt this weird sense of dread in the pit of my stomach, like a hole inside of me gaping open. I reached down to pick up the wicker basket and when I stood up, I saw a car speeding away from the house, a red convertible. Sphincter’s Mustang. Two blond heads, a his and a hers, poked out from the front seat. Sphincter and Taryn. Taryn and Sphincter. No, he didn’t have his arm around her and her head wasn’t nestled on his shoulder, but in my mind, as soon as the car turned the next corner, it would be.
That wasn’t the future. That was just me.
Being paranoid.
Being a sucker.
Watching the best thing I’d ever had, in any of my lifetimes, moving farther and farther away.
When I got back upstairs, the hole in the pit of my stomach had grown to a canyon. That would have happened anyway after hanging rows of silky underpants on the line, but I felt even worse because of Taryn. Sphincter was parading around with my girl, and I was hanging my mom’s and grandmother’s underclothes. Something was wrong with this picture. I started thinking there was no way that what I saw with Taryn—me kissing her, being with her—could be real. After all, she had Sphincter, who was, looking at the way hot girls hung on his every word, the highest goal one could aspire to in the game of love. She had Mount Everest. I was just irrevocably and unequivocally too lame for her. The Grand Canyon of Lame.
I guess it must have registered on my face, because Nan took the wicker basket from me and tried to knead my shoulder with her good hand. I pulled away from her. I didn’t want anyone to touch me.
“Why are you two so upset?” she asked. “Your mother didn’t eat any of her breakfast, and you’re walking around with the biggest scowl on your face, you’d think someone peed in your lemonade.”
I started to open my mouth, but then I remembered how Nan felt about me revealing the future. “Forget it. Has to do with my future.”
“Doesn’t it always? Something bad?”
“Pretty much the worst.”
Her eyes narrowed. “Car accident?”
“I think so.” Now I was surprised. “How did you know?”
“On the ride home from the hospital. You saw it, didn’t you? That’s why you were upset.”
“Yeah. I think it will kill me. Me and a girl. The girl I …”
“Oh. The one who was outside just now?”
Nan had probably been listening in on the whole thing. For someone who didn’t want to know the future, she sure was nosy. “Yeah.”
“She’s cute. Is she the one you’re in love with?”
I cringed. “No. I mean, yeah. I mean, I think I could be. But I have to stay away from her.” I pressed my lips closed.
“But?”
“Well … my life is one disaster after another. But being with her makes me almost happy. It makes me feel normal.”
Nan looked at me for a long time. Then she put a hand on my cheek. “Well, why do you need to stay away from her, then? You said it was a car accident. Stay away from cars, honey bunny.”
“I know. But what if it’s just meant to happen, and messing with it just means it will happen some other way? Why should I take chances?”
“You said it yourself. Because she makes you happy. That makes it worth it.”
I sighed. “Okay. If I just say there’s no way I’m going to get into a car with her again, it won’t happen. Right?”
Nan nodded.
Just as my spirits started to pick up, I thought about her driving away in Sphincter’s Mustang. “But she’s with Sphinc—Spitzer now. I think they might be together.”
She shook her head. “Evan Spitzer? Oh, Nicky, you’re every bit as worthy as he is.”
Sure, in her warped world, a world where bifocals were a necessity and everyone who breathed was “good,” I was. That’s what I got for discussing my love life with my grandmother. Some things were better kept to myself. “Right.” It was better just to agree with her.
“You deserve to be happy.” She reached into the pocket of her apron and pulled out a hard butterscotch candy. “Want one?”
I took two and unwrapped them, one for me and one for her.
“School’s Tuesday,” she said. “And your underwear is in a sorry state. Thought I’d go and pick up some new ones for you.”
I muttered a thanks. I didn’t want to think of underwear any more than I had today.
“Oh, and pens and notebooks.” She ruffled my hair. “You need a haircut, too. You look scruffy.”
I nodded like I’d take that into consideration, even though I knew there was no way I’d get a haircut before school. I didn’t feel like it. I liked scruffy, anyway.
“Anything else you need?” she asked.
“A million dollars.”
Nan launched into the same speech I’d heard a thousand times before, so I muttered, “I know, root of all evil, blah blah blah.” By then, I was already out the door of the kitchen, headed upstairs. The last thing I wanted to think about was school, where my life would suck even more if Sphincter and Taryn were a couple. In my head, I could see them walking down the hall together, pinkies intertwined, then stopping at her locker to have a massive PDA. It seemed pretty vivid. Could have been the future. Now, the thought of her and me together was faded out, like an inactive menu option on a computer screen. “Whatever,” I said.
As I climbed the stairs, my head ached. Things were cycling again, because I’d been ignoring the You Wills. Once it quieted, I tried to see my future. After all, if Taryn and Sphincter were a couple, there was no way we’d die in a car crash together, right? I tried to call up my graduation, but again, my mind just went blank. As soon as I got up to my room, though, I saw the image, felt the darkness and humidity in the Jeep. It would be raining. Steel folding in on us. Glass showering down.
What the … how could that be?
My stomach flopped. The walls of the house, like the steel walls of Taryn’s Jeep, seemed to press in on me. I needed air.
I ran back downstairs. “Nan, I’ll go get those things,” I said, huffing like I’d run a marathon. “You should sit. Rest your arm.”
“You okay?”
“Yeah, just need something to do.” She tried to hand me a twenty, but I waved her away. “I’ve got it.”
As I crossed the street, following the You Wills, I noticed the cars were packed against one another like sardines, up and down the block. People were everywhere. When I came to Central, I realized why. The Labor Day weekend arts and crafts show was going on at the grounds of City Hall. Right. Nothing brought the throngs of people out more than the opportunity to blow money on stupid knickknacks.
As I navigated the crowds scavenging the racks of the B&B Department Store’s annual sidewalk sale, contemplating whether I should get underwear, I had this really weird feeling. Like I was going to see Taryn again. Soon. In my mind, I could see her blond head poking out from between a display of Seaside Park lighthouse and seagull souvenir magnets at the Ocean Pharmacy. No local would be caught dead looking at them. But Taryn was no local. In my head I saw her reaching for the seagull.
I had to stop her. Stop her and save her, and in the meantime, beg for forgiveness about how wrong I was. We’d just stay away from her car and everything would be fine. My future would have to change, how could it not? I’d taken three quick steps when I realized something else.
Not twenty minutes ago, I’d seen her speeding toward Ocean Avenue with Sphincter. There was no way she could be in the pharmacy. Not unless she left him a few minutes later and went right there. No. She was probably lying on the sand with him now, in a tiny bikini, looking so … forget it.
I thumped the side of my head as if that would make it work right again. As if it ever worked right. But even before I knew it, I was running toward the store. I pulled open the door and a blast of arctic air from the AC hit me as a little bell above the door jingled, startling me. Some lady glared at me over her reading glasses. I could still feel her staring as I ran past the aisles of cold remedies and tissues, looking for the souvenir magnets.
I saw them at the end of the paper products aisle. A big display of them, right next to the rack of personalized bicycle license plates. But no Taryn.
I turned away, chewing on my lip. Staring Lady was still doing what she did best, making me forget what I’d come in there for. I pretended to be really interested in toilet paper while I tried to remember. When the bell above the door tinkled again, the lady broke her death glare on me to check out the new customer, and I relaxed enough to let it come to me. Pens. Notebooks. School stuff.
I started to book it to the stationery aisle when I looked up and saw Taryn.
“Hi,” she mumbled.
I was cleaning my throat to say something when I realized that for the first time, her voice wasn’t chipper. She actually grumbled. And for the first time, she didn’t look happy to see me. She brushed past me, as if she didn’t want anything to do with me. As she should have done all this time. Her face looked red. Like she was upset. What had Sphincter done to her?
Of course, she wandered off toward the magnets. I followed her in time to see her pick up a seagull. “Locals call them beach vermin,” I said. “Do you really want a rat on your refrigerator?”
She shifted her gaze to me for a nanosecond, and then made a “hmph” noise and put the magnet back. Then she picked up a lighthouse.
“False advertising,” I said. “There are no lighthouses in Seaside Park. That’s Barnegat Head Lighthouse, in Island Beach. Every painter in the free world has tried to reproduce it.”
She shrugged. “So?”
“Well. You would think artists would have a little more creativity, right? Isn’t that the whole point of being an artist?”
“No. The whole point of being an artist is that you can take something everyone has seen before and make them see it in an entirely new light.”
What was this? The girl was getting a backbone. Really, what had Sphincter done to her? “You’re angry,” I remarked.
“Maybe,” she said, turning and walking away.
I stopped her. “At me?”
She sighed. “You’re the one who can tell the future, right? Figure it out.” Then her face softened. “You know it’s not about you. It’s about … I don’t want to—”
“Evan? Trouble in paradise?” It just kind of slipped out. I couldn’t help myself.
A second later, I wished I could have. Her eyes narrowed. “It’s not like that. We’re not … anything.”
I doubted that. If they weren’t “anything,” why was she looking angrier than I’d ever seen her? “Uh-huh,” I said.
“It’s true. I can tell you don’t believe me, but it’s true. He was driving by when I dropped Beauty off at the gas station on Eighth for an oil change, and asked me if I wanted a ride. I told him I was going to your house to see you, to make sure you were okay, so no thanks. But he was kind of insistent. He said he’d wait in the car while I talked to you. If you didn’t notice, it’s really hot today, and I really didn’t feel like walking the three miles back home. Really. You don’t have to be jealous.”
I snorted. “Me? Jealous? Why would I be? You and I aren’t together.”
“Yet,” she said, her voice low. She had me there. If I could grieve for children I never had, miss a woman I never even met, then of course she knew I could have jealousy for a relationship that hadn’t even started yet.
“Whatever,” I said, trying to play it cool. “Okay, so you and Sphincter aren’t anything.”
She started to speak, but then stopped short and burst out laughing. “Sphincter?”
“It’s a term of endearment.” I looked over her shoulder, to where Staring Lady was watching us like someone would watch one of those caught-on-tape shows. This time she was standing up, as if readying to throw herself over the cash register in case we tried to start any, as people her age called it, “funny business.” “Can we … go?” I whispered, motioning to the woman.
Taryn turned and saw her, then said, a little amused, “Oh, so now you’re okay with being seen with me?”
“Until I get a better offer, I guess,” I answered, and she followed me out the door. Five minutes later, we sat outside on Central Avenue, watching the first of the beachgoers making the trek back home as we shared an iced tea from the Park Bakery. I liked sharing it with her because I knew her lip gloss tasted like strawberries. It reminded me of how it would be when I, or if I, got a chance to kiss her. Maybe I let my lips linger on the mouth of the bottle too long, maybe it was obvious how much it excited me, because she allowed me to drink most of it.
“I don’t even like sunbathing,” she said, watching a family of beachgoers trudging down the block. She winced and pulled a pair of dark sunglasses over her eyes. “I can never get comfortable. I try to read and I get sand in my book. The sun hurts my eyes. Parts of my body always fall asleep. I end up burning in places and being completely white in others. I never tan. Of course, you know this already.”
I looked at her legs. They were perfect. White, yeah, but sunbathing couldn’t improve them. One of my most prominent memories of Sue was her lounging in a beach chair, wearing big sunglasses, her red hair tossing in the wind. I’d never had a memory like that of Taryn. Most often when I thought of her, I thought of her indoors. “Whatever happened to it? The Mouse.”
She raised her eyebrows. “What?”
“The Mouse. Your sailboat. You told me that was what you used your red bikini for. You made it into a flag for your sailboat, since you never went to the beach.”
“I never told you that,” she said. At first I thought she was so weirded out she was going to run away, but then she said, “It got smashed in a nor’easter. When I was nine or ten. But by then I didn’t really want it anymore. I was kind of done with it, just like I was done with sunbathing.”
“And the whole sunbathing confession is because …?”
“Sphincter, like you call him. That’s all he does. He lives to tan. His life is so pathetic and empty. I can’t believe you would think I’d … Please.”
I laughed. “I bet every other girl in school would please him.”
She wrinkled her nose. “Ew.”
“Well, he totally wants you.”
She didn’t seem impressed, just played with her bracelet. “Duh, they all do.”
“Conceited much?”
“It’s not conceit. I told you. I told you that people like him are drawn to me.” She seemed really annoyed. I must have stared at her too long, confused, because she finally spelled it out for me in a whisper. “He’s Touched.”
I nearly choked on my own tongue. “Hell he is.”
“He is.”
“I’ve known Sphincter for years. We used to be best friends, back in the day.”
“He wasn’t Touched then. My grandmother did it for him last spring.” She stared at me. “If you don’t believe me, I can show you his signature in the book.”
“No, hey, I do,” I said. After all, it made total sense why he changed seemingly overnight. “What Touch did he get?”
“Physical perfection,” she answered, seeming bored. “Well, outwardly, he’s perfect. But as you know, a lot of those Touches have a catch. His has a really bad one.”
Suddenly the wind picked up, just as a thought caught in my brain. “Let me guess. He’s rotting from the inside.”
She nodded and smiled at me, but it was an empty smile. “It’s just sad. I want to warn him, but what do I say? ‘Hi, my grandmother made you perfect on the outside, but you’re also filled with a hundred tumors and won’t live to see Christmas.’ ”
“If I was him, I’d want to know. You have to tell him.”
She nodded and rubbed her temple with her free hand. “I know. I keep trying to. But it’s so terrible. Grandma tells me to stay away from the Touched, but I feel bad for him.”
Another group of tourists wandered by, and one, a girl of about thirteen or fourteen, looked at me and giggled. I realized my mouth was hanging open wide enough to probably spot my tonsils and clamped it shut. Wow. Evan Spitzer, my former-best friend. Dying. Hadn’t seen that one coming. Maybe if we still traveled in the same circles, I would have. Maybe I would have noticed something about him, something that would have hinted at the havoc being wreaked inside his flawless body. I thought of him racing down the boardwalk the other day, pumping his arms and legs, the picture of physical health. Of perfection.
Suddenly it seemed like we had a lot in common. We could have started our own Dead Before Next Year club. Except … “It was his choice,” I said.
“No. He chose something else. Not this.”
“So, you were trying to explain it to him?”
“Yeah, that and … well, you know how when I touch you, you said you feel normal? Well, I thought maybe I could touch him and heal his tumors.”
“Oh, sure you were,” I said. “So did it work?”
She shrugged. “I have no idea. I touched his cheek, like, pretending to wipe something off it, but I couldn’t feel anything. Anyway, he thought I was coming on to him. He was all over me. We didn’t even make it two blocks. I wanted to help him, not be his newest conquest. So I told him to pull over and let me out.”
“So, you do feel guilty. For things your grandmother did.”
“I guess I do. A little. Otherwise, why would I be hanging out with you?” She grinned.
“Funny.”
She motioned across the street. Some of the artists were already beginning to pack up their wares and leave. “What’s going on there?”
“Arts and crafts show.”
“Oh. Cool. Let’s go,” she said, tugging the sleeve of my T-shirt. She was already halfway across Central when I tossed the empty iced-tea bottle away and hurried to follow her. “Is this like an annual thing?”
“Yep. Every Labor Day weekend.”
“Oh, cool,” she repeated, then walked a few steps, wrinkling her nose. “You are right. People do paint that lighthouse a lot. Do you come to this thing every year?”
I shook my head. Actually, the last time I’d come, I begged Nan to get me a beanbag frog. It was the only thing there that a seven-year-old would want, the only thing that wasn’t a reproduction of that lighthouse. I loved that frog, took it everywhere with me. But a couple of weeks later there were weevils in my bed, and Nan inspected the frog and told me she had to throw it out. I begged her not to, but then she showed me a little black bug popping out of the seam. She wrapped the frog in two plastic bags and stuck it in the trash. Sometimes I wonder if that really happened, or if it was just part of a future that might have happened, but anyway, I never went to the festival again after that. It was just another reminder of how everything good in my life was always laced with bad.
Taryn said, “Oh, well, it’s cool. Anyway, I’ve got to go. I’ve got to … Listen.” She bit her lip and suddenly I knew what she was going to ask me. She was afraid to, but I would eventually pry it out of her. She wanted to ask me to meet her tonight. At the boardwalk. Yes!
Before she could answer, I found my lips spreading into “yes.”
Her surprise melted into a smile. “You mean it? You can?”
“Sure. What time?”
“Like, six?” She bit her lip again. “I can’t stop myself from shaking. I need to start now. I should have done the last one, but I bailed.”
I squinted at her. What? What had I just agreed to? “So you’re …”
“I don’t really think I’m ready, but I’ve put it off long enough. Too long. So you will?”
Wait … wait. Suddenly it all became clear, all of it. Everything I’d agreed to. And the answer was no. No thanks, never. By that time I felt too stupid to change my reply, to tell her I’d just agreed to it because she had the most amazing … the most amazing everything and it wasn’t possible for me to turn her down. “Sure.”
“Great. I’m a little nervous. Actually, really nervous.”
I nodded. I would be, too. She was going to perform her first Touch tonight. For whatever reason, she wanted me to be nearby for it. I didn’t know how I could do that. Be in the same room with someone as his life was ruined. As Taryn ruined his life. I opened my mouth to speak and a bunch of nonsensical syllables streamed out before I finally managed, “You, like, want me to wait outside?”
She nodded.
“Um. Why?”
“It’s not easy,” she whispered, and her eyes got all glassy. “Just … can you?”
I shrugged. “All right. I’ll wait in the arcade next door, and you come out when you’re—”
“Actually, I thought maybe you could hide in that place I showed you? That way you can watch it.”
“I don’t know how that will help. But okay,” I said, digging my hands into the pockets of my shorts. “But I won’t get … uh …” “Hurt” was the word I said in the You Wills, but I couldn’t push it past my lips. It made me sound like a gutless wonder.
“Oh, no way. You’ll be behind the curtain. And besides, you can’t be Touched twice.”
“Really?”
She flinched at my surprise. “Why, did you want to get another one?”
“Why would I want that? The good is always accompanied by bad.”
She shook her head. “Not always. Sometimes it’s all good. Bad things happen a lot. But sometimes it just does what people want.”
I snorted. Just my luck. “But now it makes sense why your grandmother isn’t too concerned with providing stellar customer service. No repeat customers.”
She wasn’t paying attention, though. She had wandered over to a display of little wire figurines, made to illustrate different professions. “Look,” she said, picking one up. “A fortune-teller. Looks just like my grandmother.”
I stared at the figure, hunched over the table with a deck of tarot cards in front of her. “No it doesn’t. She’s smiling.”
She turned it over, checking the price. “I think Grandma would get a kick out of this.”
I eyed it, doubtful. “She gets kicks out of things?”
She sighed and put the figurine down. “You’re right. So, um, today? At six? You’ll be there?”
I dug my hands deeper into my pockets, rubbing the grains of sand that always seemed permanently buried in the seams of all my clothing against my palms. “Yeah.”
“And you won’t blow me off again?” she asked, nudging me.
She came in so close I could smell the apples in her hair, and it made me wonder how I was ever Superman enough to find the will to blow her off the first time. “Promise,” I mumbled.
We followed the crowds of shoppers out of the green and she waved goodbye, then headed across Central Avenue, in the direction of her grandmother’s house. And as usual, the second she left, I missed her.