I shook my head, turning blindly as I went to the kitchen, unable to look into eyes that were a mirror image of my own. Something crunched under my feet and I glanced down to see the broken angel. I hurriedly stepped over it, ignoring the mess I’d made as I went to the refrigerator, needing something to distract me.
“You know how I’m going to die.”
My hand spasmed around the bottle of water I held and it slipped from my grip, hitting the floor and rolling. Neither of us bothered to pick it up as I stared at her in shock.
“No,” I replied, honesty making the word more forceful than I intended. Her nose crinkled as she studied me, her gaze skimming over my shorts and slouchy v-neck, the collar of the shirt raised to cover the hickey on my neck, but my arms were bare.
“Oh, I thought…” She didn’t finish, sinking into one of the old chairs, not seeming to notice when it wobbled under her weight.
“Thought what?” I asked, despising myself for encouraging her, but unable to stop.
She waved her hand, her gaze lost in thought as she murmured, “It doesn’t matter. I’m wrong.”
“Glad you figured that out,” I bit out. “Now why did you think I’d know how you die?”
She eyed me and I scooped the bottle of water off the floor and held it out to her. She took it gingerly, careful not to touch me even with the gloves on her hands. “You said you saw death when you looked at me.”
“Yeah, but what’s that got to do with how you die?” I opened the fridge, staring inside of it blankly as the countdown to our mutual expiration steadily grew more pronounced in my head.
“You’ll think I’m crazy,” she muttered and I reached for a beer, cracking it and taking a large gulp, wincing at the bitter flavor.
I shoved the fridge door shut but there was no satisfaction in it. “Trust me, crazy is the last thing I’d call you,” I answered, shuffling to the table and taking the chair furthest from her. “Wrong, maybe, but not crazy.”
She licked her lips, playing with the water bottle in her hands, and I knew whatever she was about to tell me would change our lives.
“I know how you die,” she said haltingly. “One touch and I know.”
“You see it?” I asked, my voice barely a whisper. She shook her head fiercely.
“No,” a raw chuckle escaped her, “I wish.”
“Then how do you know?”
“I feel it,” she answered, so much pain in her voice I shuddered. “A single touch and I live a person’s death.” Her face was haunted, her eyes sightless and I truly understood the phrase ‘die a thousand deaths,’ as I stared at her. “I can’t do anything. I can’t escape. I can’t tell them.” Her gaze flickered to mine. “You don’t look surprised.” Her voice changed, becoming a challenge. “You look relieved.”
Because I was suddenly grateful my only ability involved knowing when someone was going to die and not actually living it, and that for the first time, I wasn’t alone. “I don’t feel someone’s death,” I started to say and watched her face fall. She stared down at her hands, her shoulders tense, and I tapped the table next to her fingers, careful to not actually touch her. She glanced up at me, her expression turning defensive. “I see when they die. When you die.” I touched my forehead. “The exact moment of death. It’s a countdown running in my head.” I could see when it dawned on her what I meant as she sucked in a sharp breath, the question hovering right there on her lips. “3 weeks, 5 days, 11 hours, and 15 seconds.”
She swallowed, head bobbing as she flattened her hands against the table. “I think I die from a gunshot wound to the chest,” she whispered, her eyes meeting mine. “For as long as I remember, I’ve felt the heat sear through my chest, the pain as the blood bubbles out.” She looked down at her hands. “I guess now I know.”
“You don’t understand,” I replied, my tone alerting her there was more. “That’s when – we die.”
“We?”
I nod slowly. “When I saw you, its why I couldn’t stop staring. Our countdown is the same. We die at the exact same second.”
“You don’t think that’s weird?” Her voice broke on the end, coming out high and I shrugged, not wanting to admit how shaken up I was by the realization. “Were you adopted?” I could tell she struggled with the question and while I was quick to shake my head, denying the idea, I couldn’t stop a trickle of doubt. “Maybe we’re cousins or something.” I understood her need to create a connection, to explain who we were to one another, what we were and what we could do. Even I couldn’t live in the land of denial, claiming it was simple coincidence.
“I don’t have any aunts or uncles,” I admitted. “Or cousins. Any family other than my dad really.”
“Your mom,” I heard the hesitant question in her voice and shook my head, hating the fact that her death continued to haunt me.
“She died when I was thirteen.”
Joy didn’t bother with condolences and it made me like her more. Death’s inevitability was something we both understood. “If I die of a gunshot wound at the exact same time you die, then what do you die from?”
I shook my head, not really wanting to know. “Just because we die at the same time doesn’t mean we die in the same place,” I answered absently, chugging the rest of the beer in my hand and not looking at her. I didn’t want to think about us sharing anything more than an expiration date, because I wasn’t sure my brain could handle it. So when her warm hand wrapped around my forearm, the beer can fell from my hand in shock. Her face was contorted in pain, her other, still gloved, hand clutching her chest as she panted shallowly. I tried to twist my arm out of her grip but she held on and when her expression finally eased, I didn’t need her to tell me. Her eyes said it all.
“I die from a bullet to the chest,” I stated, ignoring her nod as I wrenched my hand from her. “Next time, ask before you do that.”
Her eyes narrowed. “I had to know.”
“I didn’t,” I retorted sharply, rubbing my wrist as if it would erase the memory of her touch. “It’s bad enough knowing when, I sure as hell didn’t need the how to go with it.”
“Yeah, but knowledge is opportunity,” she cried, thumping the table with the glove half pulled over her hand.
“Opportunity?” I scoffed, “Opportunity for what?”
“To change it,” she answered as if it were obvious.
I stilled. “We can’t change it,” I replied automatically, but something in my expression tipped her off.
“I don’t believe you,” she argued, shaking a now covered finger at me. “You don’t believe what you just said.”
I licked my lips nervously. “Dates don’t change,” I answered, the words barely audible as I considered the fact that was no longer strictly true. “You can’t change when someone is going to die.”
“Then why did you have Houston pull that fire alarm?”
My head jerked up in time to see her lips curl in satisfaction. “How?”
“I’m smarter than people give me credit for,” she retorted. “I can put two and two together.” Her fingers drummed on the table, her dark brown hair turning copper under the overhead light. “If you can see when people are going to die and then suddenly evacuate a building, it makes me think you were trying to change something.” She leaned forward, her expression impatient. “Did it work though?”
I nodded faintly. “I think it did.”
“Then there is a chance,” she crowed, clapping her hands. “We can change our fate.”
I scrubbed my hands over my face, not sure that was true, but also not eager to die from a gunshot wound. “Why are our deaths so similar?” The question burst from me, something about the whole thing nagging at me.
“Maybe we’re gunned down in a hail of bullets?”
It was plausible.
“Could be a school shooting,” she continued and I shook my head.
“We don’t go to the same school,” I reminded her and she shrugged.
“Not right now.�
�
“You’re not autistic,” I declared and this time she glanced down, her hair falling to shield her face. “Why do they believe that?”
“Because it was the only way they could explain me,” she answered, shaking her hair back as she met my gaze. “When I was younger, I didn’t really understand what was happening to me. I just knew someone touching me was bad, that bad things happened to me. Pain and terror. I didn’t speak for a long time and when I did, I tried to explain what I felt and it sounded –”
“Crazy,” I concluded and she nodded.
“It took a long time for me to figure out clothes acted as a barrier, but the desire not to be touched didn’t go away.” She glanced back down. “It was easier to play along. Avoiding touch isn’t exactly normal.”
I shook my head, “No, I guess it isn’t.”
“How do you hide what you can do?”
“I ignore it,” I said bluntly, my expression halting any other questions she might have. “I’m guessing your family doesn’t know about your ability?”
“No, I’ve never been able to work up the courage to tell them,” she paused, “Not since I was a child at least.” There was sorrow in her voice and hesitation, both of which I could understand. She didn’t want to be rejected by the only family she’d ever known. Not again.
I weighed my next question carefully but finally couldn’t deny my curiosity any longer. “Did you feel Houston’s death?”
She looked surprised but finally nodded. “He’s one of the lucky ones. Dies peacefully in his sleep.” My breath shuddered from me at the realization that her ability worked on Houston, but mine didn’t. “Why?” She drawled the question out and I shook my head, not wanting to answer, but giving in when she didn’t let it go.
“I can’t see his expiration date,” I explained and her forehead wrinkled. “Like at all. There’s nothing.” I sighed in frustration.
“I’m guessing this has never happened before?”
I shook my head. “No, everyone has an expiration date.”
“Except my brother.”
“Except your brother.”
“That is strange.”
“It’s driving me insane,” I retorted, suddenly feeling the weight of everything we’d discovered today. “And yeah, the whole fire alarm thing was to save lives.” My gaze darted to her and then away. “Seven people were supposed to die at that pep rally.”
“And they didn’t because of what you did?”
I nodded, blowing out my breath. “They didn’t, but your dad mentioned something this morning that makes me wonder if we really changed it or just delayed it.”
“What do you mean?”
“I don’t actually know why they were going to die or even how, so who’s to say it won’t happen again? That they don’t try again.”
“But did the people’s expiration date,” I felt her hesitation over the term but she pushed on when I nodded, “Change? As in go back to what it was?”
“Some of them did,” I answered truthfully. “But I haven’t been able to see all seven of them.”
“Then you have to find them all and make sure,” she answered and I glanced up at her.
“And if they haven’t changed back?”
“Then we figure out how to save them,” she said staunchly. “Consider it a trial run for how we’re going to save ourselves.”
Chapter Eleven
I dropped the folder on the counter in defeat, my shoulders slumped. It wasn’t there. It wasn’t anywhere and I was starting to wonder if Joy had been right. My fingers traced the words written on the folder in my mother’s familiar script. Very Important Papers. It held my immunization records, school awards, and some really bad arts and crafts from my elementary years, but it didn’t hold my birth certificate.
I stared at the papers scattered over the table, the fire proof box where I’d found my parent’s marriage certificate, an old passport of my mom’s and her death certificate, but again, no birth certificate. I clung to the fact that I also hadn’t found any record of adoption either. In fact, I hadn’t found anything pertaining to my birth, which seemed strange to me.
I was starting to wonder if a stork really had dropped me off like Dad had always teased. The sound of a car in the driveway had me hustling to put everything back in the box. I heard Dad call out, “Thanks for the ride, Jim,” as I stuffed the last folder back in the box.
He shuffled in the kitchen, eyeing the box fuzzily. “Whatcha doing?”
I took a deep breath as I debated if I should just ask him, but one look at the heavyset wrinkles at the corners of his mouth – the ones that had formed after Mom’s death – and I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t ask him if I’d been adopted, and risk causing him more pain. I shook my head, shrugging. “I was feeling nostalgic,” I replied, patting myself on the back for using my own SAT word. He nodded, blinking as he caught sight of Mom’s neat handwriting, his fingers twitching as he held back from doing the same thing I had and tracing the familiar handwriting.
He went to the fridge and I saw him reach for a beer, when he hesitated. He took a bottle of water instead and I let out a breath I didn’t realize I’d been holding. “I haven’t eaten anything. You want some breakfast for dinner?” He asked and I nodded slowly, moving the box off the table and to the floor. “Help your old man make a stack of flapjacks?”
“Of course,” I answered, hiding my surprise. He’d been at the bar most of the day and I realized suddenly that he’d come home earlier than usual. It almost felt like he was trying, but I was hesitant to believe it was anything more than temporary situation.
“I also thought we might go to church in the morning,” he added, gazing at me hopefully and I nodded mutely, not knowing how else to respond to this unexpected request. “How did it go meeting the boyfriend’s parents?”
“He’s not my boyfriend,” I replied automatically, getting the electric skillet out and the box of pancake mix. “And it was fine. They were nice.” Dad nodded, passing me the milk and a measuring cup, so I mentioned, “I met his adopted sister too. She was nice.” I watched him carefully but his expression didn’t change when I said adopted and some of my tension eased. Maybe I was overreacting, letting myself think there was something to the whole we look alike thing, when really it was just chance.
“Do you know where my birth certificate is?” I asked casually. “We have a project coming up at school about life skills and they mentioned birth certificates.”
“Should be in the safe deposit box at the bank,” Dad replied, pouring the first pancakes on the griddle, his hand a little shaky, but steadier than I would have thought after a day at the bar. “We can stop by one day and get it if you think you need it.”
“No rush,” I answered, breathing easier as I stared at his salt and pepper hair, more salt than pepper these days, but I could still see the black color it had once been. My gaze strayed to the last picture of us together before Mom died, her head completely bald and I found myself struggling to remember what color her hair had been. “Dad, what color was Mom’s hair?”
“Black as squid’s ink,” he answered, and a fond smile curved my lips at the words he used to describe her. “My raven haired beauty. She’d have given Snow White a run for her money.”
I glanced down at my arm, the olive tone a perfect match to Joy. I twisted a strand of hair around my finger, the auburn color catching the light. “I miss her,” I whispered and he set the spatula down, coming over to me. He rested his forehead against mine.
“I do too, Hope. I do too.”
***
I sat on the front porch steps, keys dangling from my fingers as I stared at my decrepit, but working for the moment, car. “This is stupid,” I said, pushing to my feet. “You are not the girl that sits around waiting for a guy,” I admonished myself, ignoring the fact that I was essentially talking to myself. “You literally don’t have time to moon over some guy. You have 3 weeks to live. Do something constructive.” I hitched my ba
ckpack higher on my shoulders, nodding in satisfaction at my little pep talk.
Joy had opened my eyes to new possibilities even if her revelations still made me shudder. I had never thought my death would be peaceful per say, most seventeen year olds didn’t die in their sleep after all, but discovering my life would be intentionally taken had transformed me. Now, I had a goal, a purpose, and it was to save my own life.
I yanked on the car handle but the door didn’t open and I stared at it for a second before it dawned on me the door was locked. I shook my head at my idiocy as I slipped the key in the lock and turned it. It hadn’t been that long since I’d driven, but it felt like years. I’d gotten used to just hopping in Houston’s truck, my only role being navigator.
“Leaving without me?”
I twisted at his voice, wondering if I’d somehow conjured him there since I hadn’t heard his truck. He stood there, one hand shoved in a pocket, backpack slung over his shoulder as his gaze drifted over me lazily.
“Where’s your truck?” I asked, ignoring his question and the way his black t-shirt clung to his chest.
“Grounded,” he replied, stepping closer and every nerve ending in my body flared to life. It was like static electricity on steroids and I surreptitiously rubbed my arms. He smirked, catching me, and I lowered my hands, not bothering to hide my frown.
“For how long?”
“One week.” He shrugged. “They felt like I needed to have some consequence for pulling the alarm.”
“I’m sorry,” I whispered, the words feeling inadequate as guilt rushed through me.
“Not a big deal. Thought we might walk to school together.” He ducked his head, hiding a grin. “Maybe even hold hands while we walk.”
“Only if you carry my book bag,” I flirted, the sensation foreign but fun, and I could see why Amber enjoyed it so much.
“Gladly,” he said, lifting his arm gallantly so I could pass my backpack to him.
I pointed to my car. “Or I could drive us.”
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