by Amy McAuley
This morning, Dad drove Kalli and me home. It was so tough to leave my beach, my cottage, my dog Sandy, and Kate. As we were loading up Dad’s car, Kate came over to say good-bye, and I started crying. I couldn’t help it. I’ll really miss our jogs and late-night beach talks. She gave me a hug (not before smacking me in the arm first, of course) and reminded me that I’ll be back at the cottage for Christmas. I don’t think I’ll last that long. I foresee many weekend visits to Dad’s place in my future.
As much as I loved my time at Dad’s, I am happy to be home. When I stepped in the door, I felt like I’d been holding my breath the whole time I was away and I could finally exhale. Sure, I may be a pro at holding my breath, but two months is a long time.
Ryan is on his way over at this very minute. I don’t know how I’ll react when he gets here, and that makes me nervous. Guess I should get going.
I close my journal and set it on my nightstand. In front of the bathroom mirror, I run a brush through my hair and spritz some body spray down my shirt. They should make a full-body deodorant for sweaty, nervous people. I sure could use some right now.
I head downstairs to wait.
As I’m opening the fridge to get a snack, somebody knocks on the back door. I listen for Sandy’s woof. When it doesn’t come, I bite down on my lip, not wanting to wreck this happy moment with tears. I run into the laundry room. Ryan and I stare at each other with the screen door between us. He smiles, and that’s all it takes to relax me. He comes inside and wraps his arms around me. His tight squeeze lifts me right off the floor.
He sets me down and steps back to look at me. “Wow.”
“What’s the matter?”
“Nothing’s the matter,” he says. “You just look different.”
Different good or different bad? “I do?”
“You look like a Roman goddess.”
That makes me laugh. If I’d known jogging would make me look like a goddess, I would have taken it up years ago.
“C’mon in. Kalli’s at a friend’s place and Mom isn’t home from work yet. We can go up to my room and talk.”
Probably assuming that “talk” is a code word for something else, Ryan grabs my hand. We hurry through the kitchen and up the stairs.
I take the manila envelope of photos out of my bag. “Here are the pictures from my modeling shoot.”
The stack of photos slides out onto Ryan’s large palm. On top sits the vignette photo of Kate and me. “This is Kate?” he asks, squinting at the picture.
“Yeah,” I say. I wish I were a kid so I could bounce on the bed and not look moronic.
“She looks familiar. I can’t think of who she looks like.” He studies that picture for a while, shrugs, and goes through the rest of the photos. “Those are great,” he says, getting back to the vignette. “Can I have the one of you peeking through the monkey bars?”
“Sure.”
“Penny, are you here?” Mom calls. Before I have time to answer, she’s pounding up the stairs. She bursts through the doorway and throws her arms wide. “Get over here.”
I give her a loose hug. “Mom, you saw me two weeks ago.”
“I know, but I missed you lots in those two weeks. And how’s my Kate?”
“The same. She’s good.”
“I brought a bucket of fried chicken home for dinner,” Mom says. “Come downstairs. Ryan, you’re staying to eat with us.”
“Okay.”
“I’m so happy you’re back home.” Mom gives me another hug, putting her mouth to my ear. “No boys in your bedroom.” Loosening her grip, she says, “Let’s go eat. The chicken is getting cold.”
Ryan stands to follow her, but I grab his arm and we hang back. The sound of clattering plates and silverware in the kitchen signals that we can dive into each other’s arms for a hug without getting busted by Mom. I stand on my tiptoes and snuggle my face into the soft spot between his shoulder and his neck. We fit together perfectly. I could stay in Ryan’s hug forever. He tilts his head and gives me a kiss. I kiss him back.
At the exact second our kissing starts to pick up steam, Mom shouts, “Food’s ready!”
We separate before our hug gets hot enough to set off the smoke alarm.
Ryan clears his throat. “Guess we should go down there.”
I grab the pile of photos, return them to the envelope, and stick it back in my bag. When I stand, a colorful business card is right in front of my face, tacked to my message board. It catches my attention like a billboard sign. Mom must have put it there while I was gone. I take it down and look it over. Margie’s info is on the front. And on the back is a note. Penny, please don’t hesitate to call if you meet “you-know-who.”
“I’ll be down in a minute,” I tell Ryan. “I have to call somebody.”
He smiles at me as he leaves the room and nearly bonks into the door frame.
I stare at the card in disbelief. Margie remembers me. She even remembers the reading she gave me. The reading that turned out to be accurate after all.
When Ryan’s jogging footsteps reach the bottom of the stairs, I pick up the phone and dial the number on the card. Margie’s husky voice answers. Too afraid to open my big mouth for once, I need to remind myself that she wouldn’t have given me the card if she didn’t expect me to call.
“Um, hi, this is Penny Fitzsimmons.”
“Penny, it’s nice to hear from you. Did you meet him? Is that why you’re calling?”
“Yes, I met him,” I say. “He’s my friend Diana’s new boyfriend.”
“I see.”
Uncomfortable silence.
“Margie, did you know that Diana and Ulrich, the boy you told me about, were supposed to die in a car accident? Did you see that at my mom’s party?”
“No, I didn’t. But I did see fire around them,” she says. “I take it you discovered some interesting things about yourself this summer, Penny?”
“I know why you asked me if I’d ever tried to psychically read someone,” I stammer.
“I see. You prevented the accident?”
“Yes, my friend Kate and I did.”
“That’s wonderful. Congratulations.”
“Thanks,” I say. “I have a question, though. I’m not sure if I did everything I was supposed to do. Was stopping the car accident enough?” Can you whip out a crystal ball, look forward in time, and make sure we’re all okay? “I understand that I had to give up the guy I was destined to be with forever—”
“Hold on now, back up the cart,” Margie says, interrupting me. “I didn’t say he was the person you were destined to be with forever. I asked if you believe in destiny.”
“Oh.”
“A thousand years ago, you made a mistake, and it’s haunted you through every lifetime since,” Margie says. “You changed your friends’ fates this summer. But did you consider that fixing the mistake from your past would change your fate, too?”
Once again, somebody’s pointing out my pathetic reasoning skills. “No, not really.”
“Hon, you didn’t just help your friends. You also helped yourself.”
I lean back against the wall, slowly absorbing Margie’s words. I helped myself?
“At your mom’s party, I told you you’ve been in love with Ulrich for the last thousand years.” Margie pauses. A match ignites with a sizzling crack. Her lips withdraw from her cigarette with a soft puh, and she exhales a lazy stream of smoke into the phone. “But, honey, I never said anything about the thousand years before that.”
I close my eyes, almost able to smell mint.
“You think about that, Penny,” she says. “I’ll talk to you soon.”
“Okay, I will. Bye.”
I hang up and leave my room, bewildered. Margie just told me something important, I’m sure of it. And if my brain wasn’t such a ghost town, I’m sure I could figure it out. Where’s Kate when I need her?
When I get to the bottom of the stairs, I come to a sudden stop. The entranceway to the kitchen is framing a cl
ear shot of Ryan, who’s seated at the kitchen table, and Di and Rick, who are standing in the laundry room, like they’re in a photo together. This is the first time I’ve seen my past-life boyfriend and my real boyfriend in the same room.
Ryan turns around on his chair. “Hi, Di. What’s up, Legs?”
“Nothing much, Fly-man,” Rick says, like the Legs comment made sense to him.
“You guys know each other?” I say, coming into the kitchen.
“From our swim team.” Ryan searches through the bucket of chicken and pulls out a drumstick. “We didn’t know that we both knew Di, until she came to our last meet.”
“Isn’t it great that our boyfriends are friends?” Di says.
I force myself to smile. I think I need to sit down. I pull out the chair beside Ryan.
“Do you guys want something to eat?” I ask, even though I know I couldn’t pay Di to eat fried chicken.
They sit across the table from us, but Di says, “No, thanks. We’re eating later.”
The three of them start talking about swimming and people I don’t know. Di must have become a swim groupie while I was gone, because she’s throwing lingo around like she’s an expert. My attention slips from listening to them. I go over what Margie told me on the phone.
A thousand years ago, I made a mistake, she said. She must have been talking about the Viking dreams. There’s a start. I’ll run with that.
I study the blue-and-white checks in my placemat, running nowhere fast. Dusty tumbleweeds blow through town, but I clear them away and focus.
It’s our thousand-year reunion. That leads me to think of Kate. My finger taps down four squares in the placemat, making a checklist. Di and I were in the dreams, with Leif and Raven. But there’s someone missing. I tap through the squares one more time. The tip of my finger hovers above the fifth square.
Kate had asked, “Who’s Raven?” Maybe equally important, is the question she didn’t ask.
Who is Erik?
I frantically try to recall those dreams, to see my journal entries in my mind. The dream at the river, with the boys playing in the water, we were all in that one. And then, right before I woke up, Ryan eagerly jumped out to ask me if I wanted to watch a movie. It made me angry that he was blocking my view of Leif.
I swallow hard, as the familiar feather dusters roll down my body. That wasn’t the only time I dreamed of Ryan. My mind flashes to an image of him withdrawing into a dark forest. I see the sadness in his face. Pushing myself to remember, I attach the image to the dream I had about Raven leaving me. Di and Rick jumped. And Erik drowned.
I thought I’d never actually seen Erik in any of the dreams. He was a name, nothing more. Was he there all along?
You made a mistake. It’s haunted you through every lifetime since. I didn’t say anything about the thousand years before that.
“Hellooo?” Di waves her hand in front of my face. “Earth to Penny.”
I pull out of deep thought, but it’s difficult, like climbing out of quicksand I actually want to sink into. “What?”
“I asked you who you want to win.”
“Win what?”
Di sighs. “What we’ve been talking about for the past five minutes. The guys have a bet going, to see who can get the best time in the 200-yard butterfly.” She lays her head on Rick’s shoulder. “Personally, I think Rick’s going to blow Ryan out of the water.” Her hair works its magic, along with a smile. “No offense, Ryan.”
Ryan and I turn to look at each other at the same time. My gaze twirls through the soft curls he’s grown over the summer and brushes across the fading pinkness of his sunburned cheeks. I study the new freckles on his nose and the one slightly crooked tooth that makes his smile interesting. It’s like I’m really seeing him for the first time. How could I have been so blind?
I take hold of my boyfriend’s hand under the table. “Sorry, Di. But I’m going to have to choose Ryan.”
And it only took me a thousand years to say that.
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Contents
Title Page
Copyright Notice
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Copyright
Copyright © 2005 by Amy McAuley
A Deborah Brodie Book
Published by Roaring Brook Press
A Division of Holtzbrinck Publishing Holdings Limited Partnership
143 West Street
New Milford, Connecticut 06776
All rights reserved
eBooks may be purchased for business or promotional use. For information on bulk purchases, please contact Macmillan Corporate and Premium Sales Department by writing to [email protected].
ISBN 1-59643-017-6
First edition June 2005
eISBN 9781626724990
First eBook edition: May 2015
