He nodded, but I noticed as I began to nibble at my pie that his gaze became distant and that skateboard started rolling under the table again.
Later, after I got back home, I found three new bottles of cheap vodka on the counter, and another one half empty. Ma was on the couch, droopy-eyed and slurring. She’d also been crying. When I helped her to her feet, something dropped from her lap and fluttered to the floor.
I knew what it was the second I saw the flash of green construction paper. It was the drawing I’d made in kindergarten—the one of me, Ma, and Dad with our numbers drawn over our foreheads. I bit my lip; the sting of seeing Ma with it opened up old wounds. It was well worn and tearstained, but all these years later Ma refused to throw it away. She’d traced her fingers over Dad’s numbers so many times that she’d nearly worn a hole in the paper.
After she’d snatched the paper off the floor, Ma tried to tuck it into her shirt. “I can make it up to bed myself, Maddie,” she slurred, her face turned away from me.
I swallowed hard. “Okay,” I said finally, letting go.
I watched her wobble up the stairs without saying a word. I couldn’t move against the guilt or the shame of the moment.
Before he died, my grandpa Fynn had asked me to look after Ma. Her drinking had become noticeable by then. He’d told me she was trying to cope with the loss of my dad. “Even though it wasn’t her fault, she still blames herself,” he’d said.
I understood fully what Gramps was trying to tell me, but I knew different. I’d seen the truth in her eyes every time I caught her with that stick-figure drawing.
Ma didn’t blame herself for Dad’s death. She blamed me. She drank, not because she felt guilty about surviving or being unable to prevent Dad’s murder, but because she didn’t want to be the kind of mother who blamed her kid for it.
And, truthfully, how could she not blame me? It’s my “gift.” Shouldn’t I have known all along what the numbers meant? Shouldn’t I have warned my dad?
I think that’s the real reason she wanted me to read for clients. It’s my penance. So I never say no to a reading. I look those strangers in the eye—because I have no choice but to look them in the eye—and deliver them their mortality. And after every reading, Ma hits the bottle hard because I know she understands how difficult it is for me. And yet she’s never told me I could stop. She simply continues to pretend that I’m doing a good thing, and I continue to pretend that it doesn’t bother me. The truth is, it’s killing us both.
It was a while before I headed upstairs and into my room. After closing the door, I went to my desk and pulled out my notebook of dates and opened it. I couldn’t explain why writing them down had always comforted me, but it did. Maybe it was simply the act of getting them out of my head and onto paper that helped me deal, or maybe it was the sense of structure and order it lent to the otherwise random quality of death. Whatever it was, it allowed me to cope.
Turning to a fresh page, I reached for a pen and wrote out Mrs. Tibbolt’s name, recorded her deathdate, and added her three kids. It wasn’t hard to remember them—all I had to do was close my eyes and recall her face and the photos. The numbers always came up in my mind’s eye as easily as recalling their hair color or Tevon’s lopsided grin.
Once I’d recorded the names, I stared hard at Tevon’s deathdate and thought about Mrs. Tibbolt’s harsh words to me on the phone and felt a shudder of foreboding travel up my spine. I hoped she didn’t call the police on me and Ma, and I hoped even more that she watched out for her son a week from now.
Still, it all felt so futile. I couldn’t save Tevon any more than I could bring back my dad. I couldn’t save anyone.
To take myself out of the melancholy, I flipped to a well-worn page in the middle of the notebook. Midway down was the name Aiden. No last name—I didn’t know it—but seeing his name written there with such care made me feel closer to him.
Aiden was a boy I’d first glimpsed my freshmen year as I was sitting in the stands at a football game. There’d been no good seats on our team’s side, so Stubby and I had gone over to the rival team’s bleachers and found a good spot in the front row. Aiden had walked right past me on his way to the concession stand, and I’d felt all the breath leave my body. I couldn’t believe someone so beautiful had been near enough to touch.
I’d never spoken to him, and I’d only see him a handful of times each year when his high school played against mine, but each time I felt inexplicably drawn to him. It was as if I knew him. As if I’d always known him.
I went to his page in my notebook often. It made me feel better. I liked to tell myself that someday I’d work up the courage to talk to him. “Maybe this year,” I whispered.
With a sigh I shut the notebook, tucking it away in the drawer of my nightstand before getting ready for bed. As I drifted off to sleep I made peace with myself about Mrs. Tibbolt and her son, telling myself that I’d tried my best with her. There was nothing more I could do.
A WEEK AND A HALF LATER, I was in sixth period American Lit when someone knocked on the classroom door. We all looked up just as our principal came in.
Principal Harris (4-21-2042) is a short man who walks around like he owns the place. He also has a penchant for using big words so nobody can ever figure out what he’s trying to say. “Sarah?” he said when my teacher Mrs. Wilson (6-30-2056) looked up.
“Yes, Principal Harris?”
“I will need to see Madelyn Fynn in my office posthaste.” His voice sounded grave.
Twenty-three pairs of eyes swiveled around to look at me, and my heartbeat ticked up. Stubby looked as alarmed as I felt.
From the seat in front of me, Eric Anderson (7-25-2017) said, “Yo, Murdering Maddie, what’d you do?”
I felt my mouth go dry. What had I done?
“Mr. Anderson. Another word from you, and you’ll join us,” warned Harris.