Текст книги "Touched"

Автор книги: Cyn Balog

Соавторы: Cyn Balog
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“Suspended on the first day of school,” Nan said under her breath as we pulled up the driveway. We were both sitting in the back of Bill Runyon’s Land Rover, being chauffeured like celebrities. She’d had to call around to get someone to drive her, and Bill was the lucky winner. I could tell the second she came to pick me up that she was pissed, because she didn’t bother to say hello to the ladies in the principal’s office and her face looked like she’d sucked on lemons. Bill was cordial when I’d first gotten into the car, but eventually he fell under Nan’s spell and just drove, though I caught him inspecting me a few times in the rearview mirror. After fifteen minutes of icy silence, I was kind of relieved when words finally erupted from her mouth.

I didn’t answer. I was busy staring at my knuckles. They were red and ached. Maybe my hand was broken.

“For an entire week, no less,” she said when Bill threw the car into park in front of the house. She pulled open the door and thanked Bill.

As I got out of the car, Bill whispered to me, “You know, kid. Take it easy. You’re going to be the death of her.”

“Thanks, Dad,” I mumbled, slamming the door with unnatural force. I rolled my eyes and they caught on the sky. The clouds were perfectly round and white in the shockingly blue sky, like stepping stones to heaven. I pulled open the front door and trudged into the house. The floorboard at the doorway to my mom’s room creaked. I knew she was standing there, waiting to give me crap. I climbed the stairs quickly, but she’d already begun her assault: “Suspension? Nick! You will mess up your life!”

“You already took care of that,” I muttered, slamming the door behind me. It was about a thousand degrees in my room. I opened a window and stripped off my T-shirt and jeans, then lay in bed in my boxers, clenching and unclenching my fist, massaging my knuckles. Okay, maybe my hand wasn’t broken. But that still didn’t stop the rest of me from feeling like crap.

About ten minutes later, someone knocked on the door. “Go away,” I muttered, figuring it was Nan bringing me crackers or a cool washcloth or whatever it was she felt I needed at this time. I tried to convince myself I didn’t need anything from anyone, that all I wanted was to be left alone. But the thought of being alone felt like stumbling down a long dark hole with no idea what was at the bottom.

The door opened a crack. Leave it to Nan to never listen to my pleas for privacy. I looked up, about to yell at her, and instead of Nan’s wizened face, I saw platinum blond curls. “Can I come in?” Taryn asked softly.

“What? No.” I stumbled over my words, then realized I was practically naked and did a visual check for my jeans. All the way on the other side of the room. Great. Luckily my T-shirt was within arm’s distance, mingling with some dirty socks and underwear on the floor. I grabbed the shirt and threw it over my head. “Why—why are you here? You should be in school.”

She opened the door wider. Her hair looked as if she’d ridden all the way here in Sphincter’s convertible, and who knew? Considering his weakness, maybe she had. But her eyes looked heavy and her skin had a sickly green tinge to it. She cleared her throat and it looked like she was swallowing marbles. “I cut out. I need to explain.”

“You don’t have to explain to me. You and I are … nothing,” I said, almost choking on the word. “You should be in school.”

“No, this is important.”

“School is important. I shouldn’t be.”

“No,” she said, closing the door tightly behind her. “You seem to know I have trouble saying no. But I do know how to say no when it matters. So I’m not going anywhere.”

“Suit yourself,” I said, shrugging in an “it’s a free country” kind of way. But it wasn’t possible to ignore her when we were the only two people in a nine-by-nine-foot room. I knew I should kick her out, but I couldn’t. It wasn’t possible.

“What did you get?”

“Suspension. One week.”

She nodded. “Brutal. But not entirely unjustified. You nearly killed him! Considering how sick he is. Where did you get those Ali moves?”

Great. First she gets cozy with Nose Ring Dude, and then she pours sympathy on Sphincter. Not what I wanted to hear right now. “I did him a favor,” I muttered. “Now he’ll go to the doctor and find out what’s wrong with him. Maybe it won’t be too late.”

“It’s already too late. The tumors are spreading. They won’t be able to stop it,” she said softly. She dropped her bag and sat down on the edge of my bed. She must have noticed the dump trucks and airplanes on the sheets because she smiled a little but didn’t say anything. Then she looked around, probably trying to find out what other things I had in my room that the normal four-year-old would go crazy over.

“I have glow-in-the-dark planet stickers on the ceiling,” I offered. “But you can’t see them since it’s daytime.”

“I have them, too!” she said brightly, then started to cough. It was a horrible, wracking cough, like that of someone with TB, and it went on long enough that I wondered if I should get her some water or smack her on the back. Then she wrapped her arms around herself and said, her voice weak, “Well, I had them at my old house, in Maine.”

She stared up at the ceiling for a long time, and finally I said, “You were about to explain something? Something about why you were getting with that guy in the hallway? What was his name?”

She blushed. “His name’s Kent. Kent Something. And we were not with each other!” she said, slapping me on the shoulder.

“Okay. Well, Kent Something looks charming. I can totally tell why you’d get with him.”

“Stop being so smug. You know he’s far from charming. And if you say I was getting with him one more time, I will smack you. It’s all perfectly innocent.”

I stared at her. “Don’t tell me he’s your brother. That excuse has been pretty much done to death.”

“No. He is not my brother,” she whispered. “And he’s gross. Seriously.”

“You were the one getting with him,” I said, emphasizing the words she didn’t want to hear. Just because.

“Clearly, you’re an idiot,” she mumbled, smacking me again on the shoulder, which was starting to hurt. “I needed skin-to-skin contact to see what was going on with him.”

I narrowed my eyes. “You mean, he’s … Touched?”

“No, but he wants to be. He’d been following me around ever since yesterday. He really has a need. It’s so strong. And I was trying to figure out what it is, if maybe I have the Touch he’d want.”

“Do you?”

She shrugged. “I didn’t have a chance to process it. It happened so fast. I saw you and I felt so terrible.” She sighed, but then ended up coughing the last bit of air. “I am really sorry if I made you feel bad in front of Bryce and his friend. Is that why you ran away?”

I shrugged. “It’s not that. It’s … you’re right. I want to protect you. The vision—the bad one.”

Her eyes widened. “It’s still there? But we changed—”

“I know. I don’t get it. Maybe it’s going haywire because that’s what my Touch does around you. Maybe I’m seeing things in my head that aren’t real. I have no idea. But to be safe, I think we have to stay away from each other.”

She threw up her hands, exasperated. “What? Why? Really, Nick, you’re so infuriating. Every time we talk about this you keep saying you need to stay away from me. But you never do. I mean, what’s the deal? Do you want to stay away from me?”

I shook my head immediately. “No way.”

“But that’s what you make me think. I don’t want to stay away from you, either,” she said, her voice barely a whisper. “I like you. You make me happy. When you aren’t avoiding me or thinking I’m trying to get with other guys.”

I rolled my eyes. “I don’t do a really good job of that.”

She nodded. “Yeah. You pretty much suck at that.” Then she surprised me by leaning forward. She lifted up a small chain around her neck. “See what I got for my birthday?”

She was so close. I tried to concentrate on the piece of jewelry, a silver butterfly or a dragonfly or something, but the only thing registering in my head was that she smelled so good, apples again, and that she wouldn’t be this close if she didn’t want me as much as I wanted her. So I kissed her. “I meant to tell you … happy birthday,” I whispered into her hair.

She looked a little dazed, probably as dazed as I felt, when she finally pulled away. She smiled.

“Better than Kent Something?” I asked.

“I never …,” she began, and then she sort of fainted. She leaned backward, closed her eyes, and then straightened up and shook her head. “Whoa. I feel sick.”

I fanned her face. “Want some water or something?”

She shook her head, a small, embarrassed smile on her face. “No, I’m good.”

“I have that kind of effect on women,” I joked. But then I realized something. “The Touch. You haven’t performed it yet?”

The corners of her mouth turned down. “No. Tonight. Hopefully. Grandma has the person all lined up. But it’s … I’m so nervous.”

I nodded. I got it.

“I mean, what if the person doesn’t show up? What if they change their mind? That was why I was … with Kent … I thought maybe he could be my backup.”

“Calm down,” I said. “Don’t worry. They’ll show up. Do you know who it is?”

“No. But it’s not just that,” she said. “Grandma says this person wants a whole different Touch. So I had to learn a new spell. And it’s a hard one. I didn’t have a lot of time and I’m not really sure I know it. And I feel so weak. And—” She stopped and buried her face in her hands. “Nick. It’s terrible. This whole thing is so terrible.”

I took her in my arms and that’s when she started to cry on my shoulder. So of course it went without saying that I would be there tonight. I had no doubt about that. “I’ll be there for you, okay? I promise. Even if my family bars my doors because of the suspension. And I won’t get in the way this time.”

She sniffled. “Okay.”

“And if this person doesn’t show up, I’ll kidnap some poor loser off the street and you can perform the Touch on them. Okay?”

She laughed. “But nobody should have this Touch,” she said into my T-shirt. “It’s the really bad one. Invisible Assassin. The one that scares me the most.”

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.