Текст книги "Touched"

Автор книги: Cyn Balog

Соавторы: Cyn Balog
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When I returned from getting reamed out by Old Scary Lady, I thought I’d just go and hang out at the Tenth Avenue beach, away from the Seventh Avenue regulars who would undoubtedly stare me up and down after what happened yesterday. Work on evening out my tan, since the lifeguard uniform’s tank top had left me a lot paler on my chest and stomach. Sort out some of those messed-up visions I’d been having. Try to find what would prompt Nan to fall and somehow remove the problem.

Instead, the cycling just made for the kind of headache a cartload of Excedrin couldn’t fix. That was the problem with going off script: once I went off, a thousand jumbled next-steps in my life began to compete for attention. I tried to concentrate on the waves, the sand, the sea, which had always calmed me before. Now, every crashing wave whispered Emma’s name, and when seagulls cried overhead, it sounded like they were proclaiming my guilt. I couldn’t focus for a second on the mystery surrounding Nan’s death. The only sane thought I could make out was a picture of Taryn. Touched, she’d called me. What was that supposed to mean?

You will be annoyed by the greenhead flies. You will stand up, fold up your towel, and put on your T-shirt.

It was a west wind, too, so the greenhead flies were biting. West winds sucked; they meant cold water and flies so vicious and determined, most tourists ran away crying. But I was a local. I could handle it. Rrrrrvvvvv, went the gears in my mind. Meanwhile, an insect feasted on my skin and drew blood on my forearm. Pressing one finger into my temple, I swatted the fly away with my other hand. The nasty thing came back to my foot. Once a fly found its target, the only thing that could tear it away was death. I swatted it again, watching an old lady down the hill applying Skin So Soft, and remembering how Nan used to slather me in that stuff when I was a kid. It smelled like old lady, but it kept the flies away. When the persistent little bugger landed on my knee, I smacked it, and its crushed body tumbled to the sand. The victory was short-lived; when I flicked its little corpse away, two more flies appeared in its place.

You will start getting bored, so you will stand up, fold up your towel, and put on your T-shirt.

Actually, I told myself, I’m not really that bored. I could hang a few more minutes. I need to think.

Rrrrrvvvvv, went my mind.

You will be annoyed by the children playing tag nearby, kicking sand on your legs. You will stand up, fold up your towel, and put on your T-shirt.

No, I can handle those kids. I’ll just hang out here a little while longer … and think.…

Rrrrrvvvvv …

You will think about standing up and leaving but you will not. A Frisbee will hit you in the head.

What? I scrambled to my feet and tried to get over the cycling that had my mind whirring and my head pounding. More nonsensical images flashed through my brain, which might or might not have become part of my future: pine needles, goopy black tar, a pink smiley face, brown craft paper.

Then, clunk. The Frisbee bounced off my shins. I screamed, unfortunately like a girl, in front of two hot chicks in bikinis. They laughed at me mildly, like I was a bad entertainer planted there for their amusement, and rolled over onto their stomachs.

That was it. Thinking was barely possible on script. How could I expect to analyze the situation with all those possible options whirring in my head like chain saws? Yes, there were bad things in my future, things I somehow couldn’t change or prevent, but maybe I just wasn’t meant to. After all, that was what the future was like for most people.

But Nan …

Finally I trudged through the sand toward the street, noticing the girl in the yellow bathing suit with the pink smiley face on her round tummy. She was probably Emma’s age.

Crap. Step one: I needed to get away from the beach. From everything that reminded me of that little girl.

Nan used to have a boyfriend who would take me fishing off the pier at Fifth Avenue. That would always calm my mind, kind of like the ocean once had. I needed calm. I didn’t want to go home and listen to my mom’s moans of pain from the cycling. My head ached like there were a thousand needles in my scalp, and I knew she was feeling just as bad. Probably worse.

Almost without thinking about it, I found myself at the bait shop, getting minnows. I must have stopped by the garage to pick up the net, bucket, and poles, but I couldn’t remember doing it. I held them in my hands, so tight I knew I’d probably get blisters, and they smelled like brine and old seaweed. The guy at the register gave me a careful smile as he handed over the roll of bait wrapped in brown craft paper: a smile because he’d known Nan for fifty years; careful because every local on the island had heard the Crazy Cross stories.

I was so deep in the thought that I didn’t realize how quiet my mind had become until I heard a sweet voice whisper, “What did you get?”

I turned and saw Taryn. Not two hours after her grandmother gave me the tongue-lashing of my life, not two hours after I promised myself I’d never see her again. She was smiling as if that conversation never happened, as if she hadn’t called me one of the despicable “them.”

I should have been able to say something tough, something to show her that she’d made a huge mistake telling me to leave her alone. Instead, all I could mutter was “Huh?”

She pointed at the board over the counter. “I was going to get a number eleven. The Italian. But number six looks good. And then there’s number twenty.”

I looked up at the board above the head of the guy at the register. It might as well have been in Chinese. I never bought subs here. “Uh—”

“You’re the local.” She pointed at the paper-wrapped roll in my hands. “So I’ll let you make the decision for me.” She turned to the guy behind the counter. “Give me whatever you got him.”

I grinned slowly. Revenge.

At the guy’s confused look, I said, “You heard her.”

He got busy packaging up her “sandwich,” as Taryn gave me a shy glance that made me a little remorseful for what I was doing. Just a little. I’d shaken it off, when suddenly my nose began to sting. Out of nowhere, I thought of pine trees.

She asked, “What’s in it?”

I pressed my lips together. “It’s a surprise.”

“No anchovies, I hope.”

I shook my head.

She quickly peered over the counter at the worker. “Oh, and make mine without onions.”

He looked at me, even more confused.

I shook my head at him. “Doesn’t come with onions.”

“Oh, good.” She looked down at her toes, the nails of which were now painted bloodred, a striking contrast against the paleness of her skin. I had the momentary vision of those pale toes against a backdrop of black-green water. “I’m allergic.”

“Um,” I began, focusing on a rack of chips and pretzels behind her head, a display of car air fresheners shaped like pine trees dangling near the register, not sure where I was headed. “Fancy meeting you here.”

The shy look returned. “I heard this place had the best subs in town.”

I shrugged. As if I had any idea.

“Really,” she said, as if she had just been caught in a lie. Then she smiled. “Actually, no, I followed you in here.”

Too good to lie. God, I was liking her more and more. And she was not what I needed right now. What I needed was to find out what was going to happen to Nan, and try my best to prevent it. Alarms were blaring in my head, but instead of helping me, they were crowding out the You Wills, allowing my hormones to take control. All I could do was raise my eyebrows and savor this new thrill surging through me. It was the first time a girl was admitting to following me instead of running in the other direction.

“I wanted to apologize,” she began.

“Order up,” the man behind the counter said. He pushed the package over to her.

I took it before she could put her hand on it. “Allow me,” I said.

She grinned. “Seriously? Thanks.”

It was the least I could do. “It’s nothing.”

As I paid for the two packages, she inspected the net, poles, and bucket at my feet. When I collected my change, she said, “Look, do you have time?”

I stared at her. Time? Did she want the time? I pointed to a clock on the wall.

She shook her head. “No, do you have time for a talk? I want to explain things.”

“Things? You mean the”—I stretched out my hands and wiggled my fingers—“touch?”

She nodded.

“Fine,” I said, but then I realized that if I had to be present when she opened that wrapped package, it wouldn’t be pretty. Didn’t need a vision of the future to know that. She might sic her scary grandmother on me. “After lunch? I’ll be at the pier.”

“Great,” she said, chewing on her lip. “Again, I’m sorry for acting a little crazy, but you don’t know … well, I’ll explain it. After lunch.”

She started to shuffle down the stony path in her flip-flops, cradling the fish in the crook of her arm, and then turned. “You really have no idea why you’re the way you are,” she mused. “That’s fascinating.”

“What way am I?” I asked, amused by her attempt to understand me. Most people wouldn’t bother. There were so many easy ways to fill in that blank. Neurotic. Looney. Obsessed. Pathetic.

She narrowed her eyes. “Duh. Able to see your future.”

I was too stunned to follow her. I just stood there, surrounded by my fishing gear, mouth hanging open.

I spent the rest of the time walking back and forth on the boardwalk, feeling like crap. This was useless. First of all, when I got out there, I realized the reason my nose had begun to sting in the sub shop. It would be fried by the time I got home, but I didn’t have enough money with me to buy sunblock. And every time I set out to cast a line, I saw the outcome of my expedition. No fish. It wasn’t that they weren’t biting. It was that my hands would be shaking too much to steadily reel in the line.

And Taryn somehow knew I could see the future.

All my life, I’d been hiding it from people, doing whatever I could to throw them off. I’d always wanted to have someone understand what was going on with me, but I knew that if I told, they’d never believe it. Or if I showed them what I could do, they’d be so freaked they’d run far away or summon men in white coats to take me to a laboratory for a lifetime of painful tests. But she believed it. She sought me out. And not only that, she acted like it made total sense.

Of course I always wondered why my mom and I were like this. There are pictures in the house of my mom when she was in high school. She was a cheerleader and on the debate team, and you could just tell that back then she was normal. She didn’t have the dark circles. She didn’t have the worry creases on her forehead. Nan said she “got it” around the same time I was born, whatever “it” was. I assumed it was me. Something about being pregnant with me. My mother would always say it had something to do with my dad, but she’d shut up whenever I tried to pry more out of her. I didn’t know who he was, but maybe he had something in his blood. Maybe he poisoned us.

But that was a long time ago. I’d never met my dad, never wanted to. And yeah, there was always something tugging at me, some hole begging to be filled. But he clearly couldn’t fill it. By the time I realized that he existed I was old enough to know that if he didn’t want to be in the picture, I didn’t want him there. I figured he probably saw me like everyone saw me. A freak.

That was my own father. So how could this girl I barely knew not see me that way?

“What is it like?” a voice said gently as I sat there, legs dangling over the side of the pier, staring at the ripples in the brown bay.

I knew she would be coming back, even after she found the fish in her “lunch.” I knew she would sit down next to me and her red toenails would glisten in the sun, against the backdrop of dark water. I knew her hair would smell like apples. “How was lunch?”

She wrinkled her nose. God, she was cute. “Great. Thanks.”

I didn’t apologize. The last time I did that, she told me to go away. I just sat there, feeling my nose baking and wondering if it was already stoplight-red. “Are you going to tell me how you knew?”

“Don’t you already know that? I mean, if you can see—”

I snorted. “You’d think.”

“So, like, do you know what’s going to happen right now?”

I shook my head. “No. Well, yeah. I knew you were going to ask that. But the further you go into the future, the more fuzzy things get. Because little things in the future change—you know, the butterfly effect. So I can see pieces of everything that could have happened, all the outcomes based on where I am at a certain moment. And at first, they all fight against each other, so I can’t tell which is real and which isn’t. After I stay on script for a while, it becomes clearer. I can figure out what’s real and what’s not. But it’s really hard to stay on script.”

She gasped. “On script? How do you—”

“You can remember best the things you just did, right? I can remember best things that are right about to happen. They’re more real to me. I call it my script. My You Wills. You know, you will start running. You will fall and smack your face against the pavement.…”

“Script? So wait. You actually see the phrase ‘You Will’ in your head, like in a real script?”

I shake my head. “No, I see myself doing those things in my head. If I stay on that script, my mind doesn’t get clogged up with lots of possibilities. It just stays on one future. But if I go off script, even a little—”

“So that day when we met, you were—”

“According to the script, I was supposed to save that girl. Emma. I saw myself saving her. Instead I met you. And my mind went haywire with all the new outcomes.”

She stared at me, uncomprehending at first. I saw the moment it made sense to her, because her breath hitched. “Oh, my God. Really?”

“Yeah. And now something’s going to happen, and I have to fix … Oh, forget it.” I’d never explained this to anyone, and it felt so foreign coming out of my mouth. Unbelievable, even to me. “Did you make the team?” I asked, trying to change the subject.

She nodded. “You?”

“Nah. Probably better if I’m not on it. I’d know when we were going to lose and just drag down team morale.” I meant it as a joke, but it came out bitter and sad.

She stared into the water for a minute. “Well, why did you even bother trying out? You must have known you were not going to make the team, right?”

I shook my head. “You would think. But it’s like this: think of the last movie you saw.”

“Okay.”

“Are you thinking of it?”

“Yeah.”

She said it so quickly and dismissively I thought there was no way she could be thinking of it. Without even realizing I was doing it, I said, “Wow, The Little Mermaid? Seriously?”

Her eyes grew wide for a second, then she glared at me. “I babysit a lot. How did you know that?”

“I can do it sometimes. If I have something concrete to focus on, I can just go forward into our future to where I find out what I need to know.”

Her jaw dropped. “You can do that?”

“Yeah. Sometimes. I mean, I can’t go too far into the future. A couple of minutes at most. Anyway, back to The Little Mermaid. Do you remember all the lines, everything that happened?”

“Yes.” When I raised my eyebrows, she smiled. “Like I said, I babysit a lot. I’ve seen the movie four hundred times.” Then she began to sing, “ ‘Look at this stuff, isn’t it neat. Wouldn’t you think my collection’s—’ ”

“All right. But with movies you’re not secretly obsessed with—”

“I’m not obsessed!” There was a small smile playing on her lips as she punched my arm. “Right. I only remember the really big things that happen.”

“Right. Or the dialogue or action or whatever that really hit home or meant something to you. Or just random things, pieces of the whole. But if you hadn’t seen the entire movie, and you just saw that random thing out of context, you’d be a little confused, right? That’s what I see. So no, I had a strong feeling, but I didn’t know for sure I wasn’t going to make the team. I guess it didn’t matter to me so much. I remember the things that matter more.”

She nodded. “Oh.”

I took a breath and suddenly I saw red velvet, like from a tent. A gypsy tent, like the ones on the boardwalk in the Heights. Taryn was standing there, beckoning me into the tent. Then, Old Scary Lady at a table, surrounded by red velvet. “Your grandmother is a fortune-teller on the boardwalk? Seriously?”

She gave me a severe look, like it was nothing to laugh about, and it was only then I realized I was kind of laughing. Because the fortune-tellers on the boardwalk were all old crackpots who were so senile they didn’t remember their own names. Only idiot tourists went to them. Of course Old Scary Lady was a fortune-teller. It totally fit.

“Well, why not?” Taryn said. “Hey, you shouldn’t knock it. She makes a good living. You could probably make a killing doing it.”

I shook my head. “I can only see my own future. And I don’t even see that very well. Like I said.”

“Oh.” She bit her lip, another one of the cutest little mannerisms I’d ever seen on a girl. “She’s not a fortune-teller, anyway. She’s a bibliomancer.”

“A what?”

“She can tell a person’s future by passages in certain books.”

“Passages in books? Sounds shady.”

“It’s an ancient practice,” Taryn said. “Dates back to medieval times, or so my grandmother says.”

I raised my eyebrows. “So, like, what does she do? Open up a book and just tell a person’s future from it? How does that work?”

“Well, it’s a little more scientific than that. Most bibliomancers use the Bible, but my grandmother has people bring in their own books. Whatever book they like best.”

I laughed. “I’m partial to Dr. Seuss. Can she do it with Green Eggs and Ham?”

It was like I was floating above my body, unable to stop myself. I didn’t even have to touch her to be at ease; just being near her made my mind calmer. Yeah, the script was still there, but muted, not so insistent. I was in danger of getting entirely too comfortable with her. Never had the one-liners come so easily to me, never had I felt so witty. Somehow, I was getting cocky again. She had that effect on me, I guess. But bad things had a way of happening whenever I got cocky. The script suggested politely to me to be quiet, and I agreed, stifling the laughter remaining in my throat.

She gave me a look that said she wasn’t happy with me taking it so lightly. Like she actually believed in that kind of crap. Then she picked through her beach bag. “Look, I’ll show you how it’s done. Pick a number between, say, um, one and fifty.”

“Look, I really don’t need any more help seeing my future, thanks.”

“It’s just a demonstration,” she said, producing a worn paperback.

I couldn’t see the title, but I could see a man and woman locked in an embrace, bare skin everywhere, on the cover. “Wait, you’re going to tell my future using”—I reached for the book and stared at its cover—“Sins of Tomorrow by Rebecca Stanhope? Epic.”

She turned a flattering shade of red. “I said, it’s just a demonstration. And it’s a very good book, despite the cheesy cover. Don’t make fun until you’ve read it.”

“Okay. Can I borrow it from you?” I said, studying the back cover. Something about a young woman who loses the love of her life in the war and then, after marrying another dude, discovers her first love is alive! He has amnesia and has no idea who she is, but “can her undying love rekindle the flame of their passion?” That’s what it said on the back cover. Definitely epic.

“When I’m done.” She stood and said, more insistent this time, “Pick a number.”

“Okay. Twelve.”

She closed her eyes and threw the book into the air. It landed on the boards on its back cover. “Wait.” She ran to it, picked it up, and did it again, with the same result. Then she did it again. It landed on its front cover this time. She sighed. “It’s easier with a hardcover. It’s supposed to land on an open page. Oh, well, let’s just pretend it landed on page … um …”

“Two-ninety-three?” I offered.

“Yes. Great.” She flipped the book open. “And starting with line twelve, it says, ‘ “Oh, Holden,” she murmured, as her kisses trailed down to …’ ” Taryn stopped and looked up, her face redder than ever.

“So what does that mean?” I asked, trying to keep a straight face. “Am I going to get it on with some guy named Holden?”

She stomped her feet on the boardwalk, but because she was so tiny and wearing rubber-soled flip-flops, it didn’t have any effect. “It. Is. Just. A. Demonstration!” She threw the book down again and this time it skittered toward the edge of the pier. I lunged to the side as it was happening and it landed in my waiting hands. “Saw that, did you?” she began, astonished by my foresight, and for a second, I felt proud of myself. Maybe even a little cocky. But it only lasted a second. The next thing I knew, I saw what was going to happen, clear as day.

You will lose your balance and fall backward into the water.

Damn. I couldn’t steady myself in time. I tried to save her book as I splashed into the bay, but it was no good. The water was over my head.

The water was slimy and gross, and fingers of seaweed entwined themselves around my toes. I surfaced, hair over my eyes, spitting out a mouthful of salty green water, then stroked as quickly as I could toward the rickety wooden ladder. Crabs that had been feasting on my bait were probably now looking at my ankles. “Are you okay?” I heard Taryn ask. When I wiped the veil of hair away, she was bending over the side of the pier, looking worried, either for my safety or for her reputation, being seen with such a spaz.

Did I say I felt cocky? Suddenly I felt like a spider must, trying to scurry up the side of the toilet bowl before it’s finally flushed.

When I climbed up, she laughed. “So, you didn’t see that one coming?”

“Um, sort of,” I said, water dripping off the end of my nose. “Too late, though.”

“Anyway, that passage might mean you’re going to have a whirlwind romance. Or something,” she said, blushing, as she waved the book in the air to dry it. The damage had been done, though. The pages were already starting to ripple. “Thanks for rescuing my book.”

“No problem,” I said, thinking how ironic it was. I might not be any good at saving toddlers, but dime-store paperbacks, I could handle. As I looked at the cover, with those two entwined semi-naked bodies, I was hit with a feeling that nearly knocked me back into the bay.

Her favorite color is red. She likes to make construction paper snowflakes. She lost her favorite aunt in a car accident. Her first pet, a goldfish, was named Harry. She has a bright-red birthmark on her upper thigh. The list went on and on. I’d known there was something about her, something that crushed my chest every time she turned to walk away, and here it was. I knew her well. Better than Sue, my former wife. Better than anyone. The weight of all that knowledge that a day ago hadn’t been there pushed me down to the rotten planks. She looked at me, lying on the boards like a dead fish, and I opened my mouth to speak, but I couldn’t find the words. What could I say? Nice birthmark? The script had me fumbling around, tripping over my words again. And if I went off script, if I messed anything up, she could just become a stranger to me again.

But I had to go off script, as much as possible. I had to save Nan.

So we sat there for a moment, not saying much, while my mind was working overtime. Follow the script? Veer off a little and hope she still liked me? It wasn’t hard to follow the script; it just had me sitting there, next to her, quiet, afraid to say anything and mess things up. When I was almost dry, the script had me packing up to go home. I started to pull in my lines.

“Why don’t you just come with me?” she said, tugging on the sleeve of my T-shirt. “I want to show you something.”

There probably was nothing I wanted more than to follow her. But the thought of my grandmother kept intruding. That and the nagging suspicion that this undeniably cute girl couldn’t be so into me after all the stupid things she’d seen me do. There had to be something behind it. Maybe I’d wanted to know her so badly that I just made it all up in my head.

That was it. She was the one talking about how people always wanted things from her. Maybe she was thinking she could use me. Maybe she thought I could provide her with the winning Pick-6 numbers or tell her who was going to ask her to the homecoming dance. “Why?” I asked.

She shrugged. “Because. I might be able to help you.”

“You? Help me? Don’t you mean the other way around?”

“No. I mean, you can’t help me. No one can—”

“And the idea of picking winning lottery numbers never entered your mind?” I asked, crossing my arms.

She swallowed, looked away. She could have said something. She could have denied it. Instead, she said nothing. Her silence told me everything. The sun was so hot I was already almost dry, but because of the salt, my skin felt tight and itchy. Of course she wouldn’t be interested in me. How could I even think that? Stupid, stupid, stupid.

Something stuck in my throat, making my words come out clipped and distorted. “Your grandmother used her”—I wiggled my fingers again—“powers to learn that I can see my future. Great. The secret’s out. I can fulfill my lifelong dream of appearing on national television as America’s Biggest Freak.”

She stared at me, confused.

“Don’t you get it? I can’t help you become a millionaire. And I can’t help you find true love or whatever. It doesn’t work that way. It sucks.” My muscles were so tense and my body so hot that I had the momentary compulsion to bolt out of there, leaving her, the fishing equipment, everything far behind. But then I took a breath, counted to ten. Exhaled. Felt better. My voice was calmer when I spoke next. “Look. I’d rather people not know. I just want to be normal.”

The confusion wasn’t leaving her face. And that’s when she said it. Well, she didn’t say it, because she didn’t have to. I heard her next words, clear as day in my head, before she even thought them. My grandmother did this. They were crazy. Absolutely insane. I interrupted her as she opened her mouth to speak. “That’s not possible.”

She stopped, her jaw slowly falling.

“How can your grandmother have anything to do with this?” I muttered, getting more and more disgusted by the minute. What the hell did she think this was? Some nifty little parlor trick? Our seeing the future was more than a living nightmare. It was constant, unstoppable, and wholly devastating. Something so terrible could only be explained as an act of God. It couldn’t be something that one being, one human created. That would make it seem so trivial, so silly, so small. And it was big. Big enough to ruin my life a thousand times over.

Taryn swallowed. She didn’t have to say it, but I let her words come out anyway, because maybe if they were outside of my head, that would make them more believable. And so she said it, exactly as I had imagined. But when the words were out there, hanging in the humid summer air, it didn’t help.

“Say that again,” I murmured.

Her face was serious. There was a hint of remorse in her eyes. “Nick. It’s true. My grandmother made you this way.”