Future Flash

by Kita Helmetag Murdock

  “Well?” I finally asked when he didn’t speak.

  “I love Carmen very much, but it’s complicated, Laney.”

  “How?”

  “It’s just—ever since your mother died when you were a baby—” Walt began.

  My stomach tightened. Walt had told me this story before, how we were a regular happy family until my mother got pneumonia and died when I was barely a year old. I didn’t know what that had to do with Carmen, but I didn’t want to hear more about my imaginary mother. I squeezed my eyes shut, trying not to think about the car seat on the stoop. I didn’t want to talk about how I knew that Walt was lying.

  “I don’t feel so good,” I said, the delicious dinner that Carmen and I made souring in my stomach. “I need to lay down.”

  I ran to my room and flopped face down onto my bed. Walt followed me in.

  “We can talk about that later if you want,” he said, sitting down next to me. “You okay?”

  I wanted to be angry at him, but he began rubbing my back and humming the song he always sang to me when I was little, the one about it being time for the angel to close her eyes and save her questions for another day. The next thing I knew, I was waking up to sunlight filtering in through my windows.

  Fortunately for me, Carmen has stuck around. Most days, I love coming home and telling her about my day, but I’m not in the talking mood this afternoon.

  I trudge up the porch steps and open the door to find her at the kitchen table reading Vogue with a pile of apple donuts and two steaming mugs in front of her.

  “Hi, Laney,” she says, looking up from the magazine when I walk in. “Sit down and tell me everything wonderful and fabulous that happened at school today.”

  I snort in response and she arches her penciled eyebrow.

  “That good?”

  I am about to tell her that I don’t want to talk about it and just want to be alone in my tree house, but the whole kitchen smells like donuts and I remember that my stomach felt like a clenched fist during lunch and I hadn’t eaten a bite.

  “We have a new kid in our class,” I tell her, biting into a donut. It’s still warm and tastes like apples and maple syrup. “And I . . .” I search for a reasonable way to explain what happened today. “I guess I . . . well, I ruined his first day.”

  I don’t expand on this and Carmen doesn’t ask; she just studies my face for a moment before leaning over to gently brush a crumb off my cheek.

  “Maybe you could work on making up for that tomorrow.”

  “It was pretty bad. I don’t think he’ll want to talk to me.”

  “Maybe he won’t talk to you, but you can talk to him. It’s not like your class is that big. What’s he going to do, run away every time he sees you?”

  I’m tempted to tell her that’s exactly what he did when I tried to talk to him this afternoon. Instead, I shrug.

  We sit in silence for a bit, sipping our hot chocolate.

  I look up when I hear mewing at the window. Frida is peering in, crying to come inside.

  “One of Tabitha’s cats,” I explain to Carmen. “I might go outside and keep her company for a bit, if that’s okay.”

  “Of course, Laney. You keep me posted on this new boy though, alright?”

  “Thanks for the donuts,” I say, ignoring her question. I don’t want to lie to Carmen and somehow I already feel that I have.

  Outside, I scoop up Frida in my left arm and use my right arm to climb up to the tree house. She makes herself at home, jumping onto my quilted pillow, walking around in two circles, and then settling in. The print of her namesake hangs above her.

  “Okay, for today the pillow is yours,” I tell her, leaning against the wooden wall. Walt built me this tree house four years ago when he got tired of me painting and drawing all over my room in our real house. He told me the walls in the tree house were mine and I could decorate them any way I wanted. I had seen it before in a future flash, but otherwise it looks like no other tree house I’ve seen—more like a mini version of our real house lifted into the sky. The sides are painted green and there are shingles on the roof. It even has glass panes on the windows so that the rain won’t come in and ruin my paintings and drawings, which is a good thing because nearly every inch of the wooden walls is covered with them. Sketchbooks and piles of heavy coffee table books on various artists—Picasso, O’Keefe, Pollock—are strewn across the floor. I run my hand over the dog-eared Dali book that Walt gave me for Christmas last year and sigh. I always feel better in my tree house.

  I pick up my sketchbook. On the off chance that knowing something will happen in the future gives me the power to prevent it, I might as well figure out my next steps. I decide to come up with a list of ideas for stopping Lyle from getting caught in a fire.

  Nothing comes to me so I begin to sketch instead. I draw Lyle in his gray periodic table T-shirt, but in my drawing his shirt is clean. Instead of something indecipherable and bloody on the ground, I draw a wagon piled high with footballs and basketballs and baseball bats. And instead of flames licking the edges of the paper, I draw my favorite Colorado wildflower, the common Indian paintbrush. Its red pedals burst forth like flames, but safe, sweet-smelling flames.

  “Much better,” I say, tacking my picture onto the wall. I lean back next to Frida on the quilted pillow and study the picture in front of me. I grab my pencil and add a few more freckles to his cheeks and then study the picture again. I have to admit that I’ve captured Lyle perfectly. He looks as if he could step off the page. For a moment, I feel as if I have changed the future. I settle back into the pillow and my eyelids feel heavy. But as soon as I close my eyes, I start thinking about what I really saw. The flames, the smoke, the blood. My heart beats faster. I open my eyes and suck in the clean air around me.

  It’s going to take more than just drawing a picture to change the future.

  Chapter Five

  ISPEND THE NEXT WEEK STEERING CLEAR OF LYLE. It’s not hard to do, as he has no interest in talking to me. And it’s not like Ms. Fontane is going to pair us together in gym again anytime soon. No one would ever guess that I spend all day thinking about what is going to happen to the boy I’m avoiding.

  On the day that Mrs. Whipple hands back our test, she pauses at my desk. While she places everyone else’s tests on their desks face down, she leaves the blank sheet of paper on my desk so that the giant red zero glares up at me. I cover the zero with my hand and close my eyes. I can’t stand to spend another afternoon in my tree house worrying about Lyle and the fire. As much as I don’t want to, I need to face things head on. And I need to start today.

  When the bell rings, I rush from our classroom and beat Lyle to his bike. He doesn’t look happy to find me waiting for him.

  “Hi,” I say. He scowls at me and once again I’m at a loss for words.

  “Leave me alone,” he says.

  I’m tempted to say, “I’d love to, but I’ve got a test with a giant red zero at the top in my backpack to remind me that I didn’t make up last week’s events. And by the way, you moving here has pretty much ruined my life.” Instead, I scrape the toe of my shoe in the dirt. He begins to unlock his bike. I have to think of a way to stop him from biking away.

  “How do you like Thornville so far?” I ask. It’s not brilliant, but it’s all I’ve got. Lyle just shakes his head and pedals away.

  Soon he’s nothing but a dot in the distance.

  “Whatever,” I say out loud. I’ll try again tomorrow.

  Then I notice Axel on his bike, his gaze fixed in Lyle’s direction. I know that look. It’s the same expression he used to get when he pulled the legs off ants.

  He wasn’t always mean like that. At the beginning of kindergarten, Axel and I played together almost every day. We were learning about outer space in class and at recess we pretended that the jungle gym was a rocket ship. No one else played on it because its rusty metal bars burned you on sunny days and froze your hands when it was cold. We crouched down next to each oth
er and counted backwards to blast off. Fascinated with the idea of living without gravity, we waved our hands above our heads and pretended to grab our free-floating food from the air. Peering out from the bars, we’d tell each other what we saw passing by.

  “Saturn!” I’d announce.

  “A shooting star,” Axel would say.

  Once, Carmen flew to Mexico to visit her sick grandmother and came back with a bag of space ice cream that she bought at the airport. I brought it to school and Axel and I laughed as the sugary substance melted on our tongues. After the space ice cream ran out, Axel came to Carmen’s bakery with me after school and Carmen helped us try to recreate the sweet, strawberry flavor. We ended up with a strawberry pudding that tasted good, but didn’t melt in our mouths the same way.

  Then that spring Axel’s mom left his dad. She told him she had fallen in love with his supervisor at the chicken factory. They moved to Wyoming and she brought Axel’s sister with them, leaving Axel behind. I overheard Walt telling Carmen that no one saw it coming. Axel’s mom was a beautiful woman, but she spoke so quietly that you had to ask her to repeat herself every time she said something. The supervisor had a skinny neck and a pale, bald head, so different from Axel’s dad with his football player build and head of thick, hay-colored hair. Walt said that Axel’s dad had reacted by hitting the bottle pretty hard. My five-year-old mind pictured him setting up a bottle on a stump in his backyard and smacking it over with his hand. Now I know that hitting the bottle means smelling like stale beer and stumbling when you walk.

  After his mom and sister left, Axel didn’t want to play rocket ship anymore. He preferred poking a stick at an ant hole, letting the ants crawl up onto his hand. Sometimes he’d slam his hand onto the ground, squishing the ants on his palm. Then he started catching just one at a time and pinching its legs off. I couldn’t stand watching those little black ant bodies wiggling in the dirt. I told him to stop and he told me to leave him alone.

  A week later, someone came and removed our metal rocket ship. They did it over the weekend so when we came back to school on Monday it was just gone.

  I started bringing a notebook to recess. I’d sit on the platform where the rocket ship used to be and color. Axel started calling me Art Freak and got some of the other kids to call me that too. I’ve stayed away from him ever since.

  Now he’s taking off on his bike, following Lyle.

  I should call out to him to distract him, to do something. I open my mouth, then clap it shut. Do I really want to turn Axel’s attention toward me?

  I lean back on the bike rack and kick it with the back of my heel. I’m not having a future flash, but I’m certain that something bad is about to happen to Lyle. Why did I have to see him in that fire? Why did I have to notice that Axel is chasing after him? There’s nothing I can do about any of it anyway. Maybe I should just forget about him and walk home. I kick the bike rack harder. Why did he have to move here and become my problem?

  The few mingling students in the schoolyard continue to chat and call out their goodbyes to each other, not noticing that one of their fellow students is in imminent danger. Not that they’d even care if they knew. If you don’t fit in here, you’re on your own.

  As much as I want to walk away, I can’t leave Lyle to deal with all of this by himself. I don’t know what I can do, but I need to do something. I push myself up from the bike rack and jog in Lyle and Axel’s direction, slowly at first and then faster. Soon I am running, my backpack slamming against my back. Since we don’t really exercise in gym class, and since I’m more likely to pick up a paintbrush than a softball bat, it only takes about two minutes for the muscles in my legs to start burning from exertion. All I can hear is the ragged bursts of my breath and the beat of my backpack. I start up a steep hill and resist the urge to stop and walk. At the top, I have to lean over to catch my breath.

  Behind me, the school looks no bigger than a concrete brick. Ahead I see the two bikers on the road in the distance. Lyle, in his gray T-shirt and blue helmet, remains in front, but Axel’s white head is catching up to him.

  “C’mon Lyle,” I say, though no one but a prairie falcon swooping down to grab a dead squirrel off the road can hear me.

  Lyle holds his lead for longer than I expected. But Axel is fast. Soon he pulls up next to him.

  “Pedal!” I shout. I will Lyle to move with every inch of my body.

  In the distance, the two bikes collide. Then Lyle’s bike tips over. Lyle flies through the air away from his bike and lands on the ground. I can tell even from the top of the hill that his body is twisted in an unnatural shape. Axel whoops as he bikes away. Lyle doesn’t move.

  I hesitate. When I get down there, it’ll be too late to turn back. Maybe my future flash was wrong after all. As terrible as it was, I have an equally horrifying thought that I’m not sure if Lyle has a future beyond this afternoon.

  I walk down the hill, hoping Lyle jumps up and bikes away before I can reach him. When I approach his bike, he still hasn’t moved. I walk over until I’m standing above him, my shadow falling across his chest. Is he dead? His helmet is slightly askew and his eyes are closed. His chin is raw and bloody.

  I’ve never seen a dead person before. A tear trickles from Lyle’s closed eye down the side of his right cheek. I saw a dead deer last year in the back of a pickup truck at the gas station. Its eyes were unblinking and tear-free. Aside from the slow-moving tear, Lyle is perfectly still.

  “Are you dead?” I ask him. He lets out a small snort but doesn’t move.

  “I wish,” he says after a minute.

  This seems almost worse than actually being dead so I don’t reply. I take off my backpack and sit down next to him. His chin looks bad, like it could use stitches. I pull off my black hoodie and throw it on his chest.

  “For your chin,” I say. He holds it up to his chin without looking in my direction.

  I lie back on the hard, cracked dirt. I rarely take off my hoodie and feel bare in my black T-shirt. For a while, neither of us speaks. A piece of dry grass itches my arm. I pull it out of the ground and hold it up, yellow against the bright blue sky.

  Lyle reaches up to unclasp his helmet, pulls it off, and tosses it aside.

  “You’re lucky you had that on,” I tell him.

  “Right. I’m feeling really lucky today.” He adjusts my now blood-soaked sweatshirt against his chin.

  A car drives by and slows as it passes us. I imagine the driver peering out the window at the red-haired boy and black haired girl lying on the ground, thinking that we’re just two friends taking a moment to enjoy the late September afternoon sun. The dust from the car tickles my nose, and Lyle sneezes twice.

  “Why do you hate me?” he asks when he finishes sneezing. He struggles to support his weight on his elbow, winces, and then falls onto his back again.

  “I don’t hate you.”

  “I can understand why Axel hates me. There are bullies like him at every school. But I don’t understand you.”

  It’s news to me that there are kids like Axel at every school. I ponder this for a moment to avoid thinking of an answer to Lyle’s question. Of course I don’t hate him. I test out a few possible explanations for my actions in my head, but none of them are real. How can you lie to a boy who’s laying on the side of the road with blood on his chin?

  “I mean gym class was bad enough. Then you draw a picture of me all bloody and on fire? It’s like you don’t just hate me. You want to make sure everyone knows that you do,” Lyle continues.

  “I didn’t mean for everyone to see that picture!” I protest.

  Lyle snorts.

  “Okay, I didn’t even mean to draw it in the first place. It’s just . . .” I take a deep breath. “Look, can you try to forget about it? Forget about the square dance and the picture and maybe we could just start over?”

  “You really want me to forget that you drew a picture of me on fire? I think that image is pretty much stuck in my head.”

 
“Yeah, it’s stuck in my head too,” I sigh. This can’t make sense to him, but he doesn’t respond.

  I study the piece of grass in my hand and imagine drawing it, capturing on paper the feathery wisps that look like long eyelashes at the top. I used to draw pleasant things like flowers and pieces of grass. Now I draw things like a boy on fire. I brush the grass back and forth over the dirt next to me, watching bits of dust rise from the ground. Out of nowhere, a flash of gray tears out of the grass and pounces on my hand. A small striped cat traps the grass under her paw.

  “Frida!” I cry and pick her up, scratching between her ears.

  “Your cat?” Lyle asks, sneezing.

  “My friend Tabitha’s. I don’t know what she’s doing over here but I should probably bring her home.”

  I reach over for my backpack and stand up. Lyle looks up at me but doesn’t move.

  “Can you get up?” I ask him.

  He pulls my sweatshirt away from his chin. The bleeding has slowed. A few drops of blood sprout on his chin, but stay in place. He hands my sweatshirt to me and I ball it up and stuff it in my backpack.

  Lyle tries to push himself up with his arms and then falls back. I put Frida down and extend a hand. When he reaches up to grab it, a jolt of fear runs through me. But this time his hand is nothing but a hand and offers up no images of the future. Once he’s standing, he lets go but doesn’t put any pressure on his right ankle.

  “We should tell someone about this, you know. You’re really hurt.”

  “I’m okay.” Lyle leans over to grab his helmet. Holding it in his hand, he limps over to his bike. He doesn’t look okay and there’s no debating the state of his bike. The front tire is flat and the wheel is bent. Lyle loops the strap of his helmet over his front handle-bar. “I’ll admit my bike doesn’t look so great.” He tries to push his bike but between his limp and his bike, it looks like slow going.

  “I’ll push your bike,” I say. “You just concentrate on walking. Hopefully you don’t live too far from here?”