Nancy Clancy Sees the Future

by Jane O'Connor

  Dedication

  To Kendall Messler for her invaluable help

  —J.O’C.

  For Bob: my past, present, and future

  —R.P.G.

  Contents

  Dedication

  Chapter 1: Paper Fortune-Tellers

  Chapter 2: Annie’s Boudoir

  Chapter 3: Predicting Rain

  Chapter 4: Sense or Nonsense?

  Chapter 5: A Hunch at Lunch

  Chapter 6: Going Pro

  Chapter 7: The Right Ensemble

  Chapter 8: Open for Business!

  Chapter 9: Changing the Future

  Chapter 10: The Power of Positive Thinking

  Chapter 11: Unpowered

  Chapter 12: Out of Business

  Epilogue (Look Up the Definition!)

  About the Author

  About the Illustrator

  Back Ad

  Credits

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  “My turn to ask a question,” Nancy said to Bree.

  It was late afternoon. They were in their clubhouse telling fortunes. Fortune-telling was more fun to do in the dark. So they had taped together the sheets of the clubhouse. Now the only light came from a flashlight. It kept flickering on and off because the battery was almost dead.

  “Spooky,” Bree said.

  “Eerie,” Nancy agreed.

  Bree slipped her fingers into a paper fortune-teller. They had made so many that it looked like a flock of colorful birds had landed in the clubhouse.

  In a low voice Bree whispered, “I will peer into the future now. Ask whatever you wish.”

  Nancy wanted to giggle. But giggling would wreck the eerie mood. So she forced her lips to unsmile. Then she asked the same thing she’d asked a bunch of times before. “Will my mom give in and let me get pierced ears before my birthday?”

  “Pick a color.”

  “Purple,” Nancy told Bree, who began opening and closing the wings of the paper fortune-teller while she spelled out P-U-R-P-L-E.

  Besides Nancy, only five third-grade girls didn’t have pierced ears. And that was because they were scared to. Bree’s ears had been pierced when she was a baby.

  “Hey! Are you paying attention?” Bree said in her normal voice. “I said to pick a number.”

  “Seven,” Nancy said. Once Bree had opened and shut the fortune-teller seven times, Nancy got to select one of the flaps. “Mmmmm. The one with the star.”

  Bree cleared her throat. “The question is: Will you get your ears pierced before your birthday? The fortune-teller says . . .” Bree lifted up the paper flap and frowned. “It says, ‘Unfortunately, no.’”

  Nancy’s heart sank. “It’s hopeless.”

  Bree shrugged. “You know the answer doesn’t mean anything. Fortune-telling is just pretend.”

  “Yes, I guess.” Nancy reminded herself of all the times she’d gotten good answers to this very same question. Paper fortune-tellers were fun. But they weren’t reliable. You couldn’t count on them to see the future.

  After Bree went home, Nancy found her mom and little sister in the kitchen. JoJo was scribbling so hard in a coloring book that the page was about to rip. Nancy’s mother was searching through the freezer. “Guess I should have stopped at the supermarket after work.” Her mom frowned. “Well, gang, looks like it’s macaroni and cheese tonight, or—” She opened the pantry door to check there. “Or cheese and macaroni.”

  Just then they all heard a car crunch over the gravel in the driveway. JoJo jumped up. “It’s Daddy!”

  “I bet he’s bringing pizza.” Nancy didn’t know what made her say that. The words seemed to pop out of her mouth all on their own.

  Not more than a second later, the kitchen door banged open. And voilà! Her father was holding a large flat cardboard box from the King’s Crown. Nancy was surprised. In fact, she was more than surprised. She was astonished. “Dad, I just predicted you were bringing home pizza. Didn’t I, Mom?”

  “Yup. She did.”

  Then Frenchy came racing down the stairs and ran in circles around Dad. Her tongue was hanging out and she was drooling like a maniac. That was because dogs had a superb sense of smell. Room 3D was learning about the five senses. Mr. Dudeny had explained that dogs could smell about a thousand times better than human beings.

  Nancy helped her mom fix a salad. Then the Clancys all sat down in the dining room. There were candles and cloth napkins. It was one of Nancy’s rules. Well, not a rule, exactly. It just made dinnertime fancy and civilized.

  Nancy was on her second slice of pizza when the phone rang in the kitchen. “I have a feeling it’s Grandma,” Nancy said. However, she didn’t get up to answer the phone. That was one of her parents’ rules. No calls during dinner.

  After four rings, Grandma’s voice came on. “Hello, my darlings. Grandpa and I are hoping to come visit the weekend after next.”

  “Goody!” JoJo said, and slurped up a long string of pizza cheese.

  The message ended with Grandma making a loud kissing sound. SMOOCH!

  “Didn’t I predict it was Grandma calling?!”

  “Hey. Do you have special powers we don’t know about?”

  “No, Dad. Of course I don’t. . . . At least, I don’t think I do.”

  During dessert the phone rang again.

  “So who is it this time?” Nancy’s dad wanted to know.

  Nancy shut her eyes, but before there was time for the answer to float into her mind, she heard Bree’s voice.

  “My parents are going to see somebody’s new baby at the hospital. So they’re taking Freddy and me over to Annie’s house. It’s only for an hour. Want to come?”

  “Oh, please? Can I?” Nancy begged her parents. Annie was seventeen and the most superb babysitter in the world. “I’ve never seen Annie’s room, and Bree says it’s spectacular.”

  Nancy predicted exactly what her mom would say next: “Do you have homework?”

  Everybody in 3D had to write about a special smell. Nancy’s was on the little cloth bag of dead flowers that she kept in her top drawer. It was called sachet. You said it like this—“sah-shay.” It made her underwear smell heavenly.

  “I just have to put the finishing touches on my paragraph.” That sounded better than saying she wasn’t completely done.

  Her mom looked uncertain.

  “Mom, I’ll finish it at Annie’s. I promise. In fact”—Nancy raised her right hand as if she were on a witness stand—“I give you my solemn oath.”

  Ooh la la! That sealed the deal.

  Fifteen minutes later, Bree’s parents dropped off Nancy, Bree, and Bree’s little brother at Annie’s house. Freddy was already in his pj’s. While Annie put on a video game for him in the den, Bree led Nancy down the hall.

  “Ta-da!” Bree waited a beat before flinging open the door to Annie’s room.

  “Nancy, can you believe how cool it is?”

  Nancy entered and turned around slowly. She had never been in an actual teenager’s room before. Everything was built-in—the desk, the bookcases, the dresser, even the bed, which was hidden inside a wall until Bree pulled a handle. Then, voilà! The bed appeared, like magic. The bedspread had orange and purple stripes. Annie’s rug was orange and purple too. But it had polka dots, not stripes. Double ooh la la!

  “I have dibs on the window seat,” Bree said. She took out this week’s list of spelling words from her backpack and began testing herself. The spelling test wasn’t until Thursday. Not for three whole days. But Bree had superb study skills. She always did schoolwork way ahead.

  Watching Bree made Nancy remember her solemn oath. So Nancy put the finishing touches on her smell paragraph.
>
  “Mrs. DeVine taught me how to make sachet. That’s the French word for a little bag of dead flowers. You can also mix in pieces of cinnamon sticks and cloves to make the aroma even more delightful.”

  Done!

  Bree was still spelling words out loud with her eyes closed. So Nancy took a tour of Annie’s room, examining the glamorous teenage things in it. Best of all was Annie’s earring tree. Hanging from its branches were tons of earrings—pearl drops, silver hoops, and clusters of purple beads that looked like bunches of grapes. There were earrings in the shape of ladybugs, ice cream cones, lightning bolts, and peace signs. Nancy imagined how superb she’d look in each and every pair.

  At last Annie appeared.

  “I love your boudoir,” Nancy told her. “Boudoir” was French for bedroom. Nancy said it like this: “boo-dwah.”

  Then Annie, Nancy, and Bree all flopped down on the bed and looked through fashion magazines together.

  “How come some of the pages here are ripped out?” Bree asked.

  Annie pointed to her corkboard. The torn-out pages had photos of models with short hair. “Didn’t I tell you? I’m getting my hair all cut off this Saturday.”

  “NO!” Bree and Nancy both screamed in horror. Annie’s hair was perfect. It was black and shiny and so long she could sit on it. She let Nancy and Bree brush and style it any way they liked.

  “It’s for Locks of Love. They make wigs from real hair for kids getting treated for cancer. Often their hair falls out. My best friend and I are both doing it.”

  “Oh! What a thoughtful gesture!” Nancy exclaimed. Nancy’s neighbor Mrs. DeVine always said that whenever Nancy did something extra nice.

  “And look!” Annie’s purse was on the floor. She fished around for a pink box. Inside it was a pair of earrings. They looked like little chandeliers made of rhinestones. “I bought them today. They’ll look great with short hair. Now all I have to do is decide which style I like best.”

  Nancy took another look at the photos on the corkboard. Then she closed her eyes partway, which made her eyelids flutter.

  “Why are you making that goofy face?” Bree asked.

  “Shh! I need complete quiet.” Nancy pressed her hands on both sides of her forehead. After a moment she said softly, “Annie, you’ll get the hairstyle with bangs.”

  “What makes you so sure?” Bree asked.

  Nancy opened her eyes. Bree was trying on Annie’s chandelier earrings.

  “It’s a feeling I have. A strong feeling. I’ve been getting them all night.” Then Nancy told Bree and Annie about the pizza and the call from her grandma.

  Bree folded her arms across her chest. “Don’t be silly. Those were lucky guesses.”

  It was irritating the way Bree sometimes sounded like Nancy’s mother.

  “Well, my—my dad thinks I may have special powers,” Nancy stammered. That wasn’t exactly true.

  “Annie, tell her. Nobody can know stuff before it happens,” Bree said.

  Annie was sitting cross-legged on her bed. She shrugged. “I’m not sure. I’ve read about people who claim to have something called second sight. It’s like a sixth sense. You know, like when you suddenly get a feeling that a long-lost friend is going to get in touch. And then it happens.”

  “See?” Nancy said.

  Annie looked at Nancy and said slowly, “Well-l-l, I hate to bring this up. But remember when you both were soooo sure you knew exactly who I was going to fall in love with?”

  “That was a long time ago,” Nancy said, embarrassed. She and Bree had tried to fix Annie up with Nancy’s guitar teacher. It hadn’t worked out. “My powers are very new.”

  “No! You don’t have powers!” Bree shook her head so hard, it made the earrings swing back and forth. “And there are only five senses.” She ticked them off one by one on her fingers. “Taste, touch, smell, hearing, and sight. You can’t have any more than that.”

  Nancy knew there was no point arguing. They went back to looking at Annie’s fashion magazines. Nothing Nancy could say would change Bree’s mind. Bree was super stubborn. There was a word for how stubborn Bree was: “obstinate.”

  On the way home from Annie’s, Nancy and Bree didn’t talk much. They weren’t in a fight, exactly. It was more like a disagreement.

  Later that night, Nancy picked out her outfit for the next day. Striped leggings. A purple hoodie. And her favorite shoes. They were glittery gold clogs and practically brand-new. But all of a sudden she started to have a funny feeling that it was going to rain tomorrow. As she thought about it, she became surer and surer. So Nancy put away the shoes and got out an old pair of ballet flats.

  Then she placed a Magic Marker on her night table. It was a reminder for when she woke up. Every morning before school, she put a black dot on each earlobe for fake holes. It probably wasn’t fooling anyone. Still, it made her feel better.

  The next morning, Nancy and Bree walked to school together like always. Except it wasn’t exactly like always. Why couldn’t they just agree to disagree about Nancy’s powers? That was what Mr. D suggested whenever two kids each thought the other was wrong.

  At recess Bree ran off to the monkey bars. Nancy played four square with Lionel and a bunch of other kids. Then all of a sudden it began raining. At first there were just a few drops. But soon the rain started pounding down.

  Everybody raced inside. They spent the rest of recess in the gym watching a movie about humpback whales. Every time it rained they watched either this movie or one about the different holidays that children around the world celebrated. It was very multicultural.

  Lionel was sitting next to Nancy. He was snoring really loudly. When Mr. Dudeny came over and told him to cut it out, Lionel blinked and acted startled. “What? Where am I? Was I asleep?”

  Nancy was bored too. She listened to the hard drops of rain ping-pinging against the windows. Then, like a slap, it came back to her. Last night she had predicted it would rain. That was why she had worn an old pair of shoes. The sun had been shining all morning until ten minutes ago. She clapped a hand over her mouth and let out a squeak.

  Lionel heard it and turned to her. “Hey, are you going to regurgitate?” Nancy had taught him that word. It meant throw up.

  Nancy shook her head. She stared at Lionel. Lionel was her friend. He was a goofball, but he was also a talented magician. He took magic very seriously. She leaned in closer to him. “Promise you won’t laugh if I tell you something weird? And promise to keep it a secret?”

  “I promise.”

  “I think maybe I can see the future,” Nancy whispered.

  Lionel’s eyes bugged out. “For real? That is so cool!”

  On the way out of the gym, Lionel listened to all of Nancy’s predictions that had come true. He kept nodding. Right before they got to their classroom, he took out a nickel and tossed it.

  “Heads or tails?”

  “Tails,” Nancy said.

  She called the toss correctly two more times before missing. Lionel looked astonished. “Oh, you have powers, all right!”

  “I missed the last time,” Nancy pointed out.

  “That’s because you’re a beginner. Your powers will grow stronger!”

  Hearing Lionel’s words made Nancy swallow hard. So this was real! Her legs felt a little rubbery as she walked to her desk and sat down. And to think, only yesterday she had been an ordinary third grader.

  Mr. Dudeny collected everybody’s smell paragraphs.

  “Mine is about an undercover cop named Jimmy Aroma. He has a secret weapon—body odor,” Lionel said. “He has killer BO.”

  “Eager to read it, dude,” Mr. Dudeny said.

  There was a big plastic model of a giant eyeball on his desk. The different parts came out like puzzle pieces. He explained what each part did. Afterward, for fun Mr. D passed around posters with pictures that played tricks on your eyes. “They are called optical illusions,” Mr. D explained.

  In one poster, Nancy sometimes saw a duck an
d sometimes a rabbit. In another, two dogs turned out to be exactly the same size even though one looked bigger than the other.

  “Our eyes see things. They take in visual images,” Mr. Dudeny said. “But something else makes sense of the things our eyes see. Anybody want to guess what that something is?”

  Clara’s hand went up halfway before she pulled it down.

  Mr. Dudeny had spotted her. “Yes, Clara?” He smiled an encouraging smile.

  “Um . . . is it eyeglasses?”

  “Eyeglasses do help make sense of what we see. But I was thinking of something besides eyeglasses.”

  Clara looked happy that at least her answer wasn’t wrong.

  “It’s our brain!” Tamar shouted out.

  “I don’t remember calling on you, Tamar. But yes. Our brain interprets—it makes sense of—what our eyes see. And sometimes our brain gets fooled.”

  Now Bree’s hand was raised. “But our eyes can only see what’s right in front of them, nothing else.”

  “I’m not sure what you are asking, Bree.”

  “I want to know if there’s such a thing as second sight, like a sixth sense.”

  “Do you mean, can people see the future?”

  Bree nodded. Her desk was next to Nancy’s. But she avoided Nancy’s eyes.

  “Ooh! Ooh! Mr. Dudeny!” Grace was nearly bouncing out of her seat. “My aunt went to a fortune-teller. The fortune-teller said my aunt was going to get rich. The next day she found a one-hundred-dollar bill in a parking lot.”

  “Okay, cool. But did your aunt ever win the lottery? Or end up marrying a millionaire?” Robert wanted to know.

  “Um, not yet,” Grace admitted. “Still, finding a hundred dollars . . . the very next day!”

  Although several other hands were waving, it was almost lunchtime. So Mr. Dudeny had to table the discussion. That meant there was no more time to talk.