by Cyn Balog
"Eden! I mean death. Skull and crossbones. Big scary dude with a sickle. He's sick."
With that, I start to cry, big, sloppy tears that run down my chin and schmutz up my Neutrogena facial.
"What do you mean, sick?"
"Cam blacked out during the Came," I tell her. "It's a tumor."
"What? Oh, my God. But he was fine a few hours ago. He did that amazing play." She sounds like she might cry, too. Finally, the reaction I was looking for.
"I know. What am I going to do? I saw it. on an episode of ER once. This awesomely talented figure skater was having blackouts and seizures, and it turned out that she had a tumor in her spine."
"How did he find out? Did he go to the doctor?"
I pick up the corner of my pink sheet and run it over my eyes. I stop short of using it to blow my nose. "He doesn't know."
"You mean…" There's this extended pause. The elevator might not always go to Eden's top floor, but she's been friends with me long enough to get the picture. She makes a clucking noise with her tongue. "Don't tell me… you didn't… What exactly did you see?"
"He had his shirt off. I was looking at his back… and it was horrible. I couldn't see exactly what it was I was looking at, but I was crying"
"You cried when they canceled The OC" she points out. "It could be heat rash. That stuff is nasty."
"But then, why did he black out today?"
"I don't know. God, Morg, you are the worst psychic ever. You're like a TV that only gets local channels."
I'd be hurt, but Eden has good reason to think that. Every time I try to look into her future, I see her in the apartment, alone, talking to her Precious Moments figurines. I'd hate to tell her that, so when she asks me to tell her future, I usually reveal something obvious, like, "You will be eating pizza for dinner tomorrow," which is a given, because her father has no culinary skills.
''Anyway, I have my own problems." She sighs. "Mike called me."
I can sense the excitement in her voice, which is so sad, considering how the only way he'd ever call her- for the reasons she's hoping would be if she sprouted testicles and chest hair overnight. "He did? For what?"
"I have no idea. I missed the call because I was doing my Whitestrips," she whines. She and I have a matching obsession for white teeth. "I can't believe it. He finally calls me, and I miss the freaking call."
"Did he leave a message?"
"No! Can you believe it?" She cries in a voice that makes me wonder if prior to my call she wasn't trying to hang herself with her bedsheets. "I think, maybe, it was, like, a social call."
I'm not betting on it, but she sounds so hopeful. "Possibly," I say. "So call him back and find out."
"No, I don't want him to think I'm the type of girl who spends hours analyzing her missed calls. That would look totally desperate, don't you think?"
"Okay, okay. So just keep your phone glued to your side for the next time he calls."
"What if he never calls?"
She goes on about how she thinks he wants to ask her out but is just too shy and how the birthmark on his upper cheek is just so wonderful and blah blah blah.
"What if he dies and leaves me alone?" I ask, finally breaking into part 3 of the dream she had about Mike last night, in which they were floating about on a polar ice cap, having a snowball fight. I am not sure what makes people think that others want to hear their dreams, but can anything possibly be more boring?
"Who?" she asks, temporarily confused. "Cam? You two are going to be together forever."
"That's what I thought." I sigh, thinking of the girls at school. Most of them are going through hell for guys-playing weird head Cames like "ignore him and he'll fall all over you" or seeing who can fit into the clothes with the biggest price tags and the smallest sizes. I've never been a part of that world, and I don't want to be. I want to be with Cam. That's the only thing about my life that makes sense.
Then I turn toward my bedside table, where there's a picture of Cam and me on the Kingda Ka roller coaster, from a day trip we took to Six Flags Great Adventure last summer: He has his arms up straight over his head in victory; I have my eyes clamped tightly shut, and I'm squeezed so close to him, they could have fit another person in the seat with me. My face is twisted in agony. Though I’d begged him not to buy it, since I look like hell, Cam did anyway, "because," he'd said, "even though you thought you'd die, you survived. And you need to remember that. Things aren't as bad as they seem."
Things aren't as bad as they seem I repeat to myself.
Meanwhile, Eden is going on. "Stop it. He's not dying."
I catch my reflection in the mirror across the room and notice my bussed-out, unfocused eyes. I'm acting like a total loser. "I'm not thinking straight. I'm probably getting all worked up over something a tube of calamine lotion can fix. I'm just tired."
"What do you mink it means?" she asks.
"I don't know…" In the mirror, I can see the tips of my fingers turning white on my cell phone, and it's only then that I realize I'm holding it in a sweaty death grip. "I guess it could be heat rash."
"I was talking about my dream. I mean, polar ice caps? Where do you think that came from? Totally odd."
"Oh. Um." I know exactly what it means, actually. That she has a snowball's chance in hell of ever heating anything up with Mike Kensington. Even her subconscious is more informed than she is. "Maybe that you're two cold, lonely souls searching for love?"
The line is silent as she contemplates that load of crap for a moment. "Yeah. That could be. Do you think you could…"
I know what she's asking. It's the way most people start conversations with me: "Do you think you could tell my future?" "Sure, one sec," I say. I put the phone down for a minute, study my nails, the picture of Cam and me on Kingda Ka, a dust bunny skimming across the floor of my room "sorry. Pizza again."
"Gah!" she screams. "I know you love me, but your gift hates me."
"Sorry. I do love you, though. And if Mike doesn't too, he's an idiot. Or… gay."
She giggles as if it's the most insane idea in the world. "Night Morgan."
I press End on the phone and flip it closed, then sink under the covers again. The light is finally out in Cam's bedroom, and somehow, I fall asleep.
Chapter Six
MY PARENTS ARE the world's youngest senior citizens. They have spent virtually every night since I was a kid watching old TV Land reruns in our family room. They dim the lights, which makes it "just like a movie theater," according to my mom, then pop some microwave Orville Redenbacher and sit on their respective matching recliners until they fall asleep. They refuse to go anywhere for dinner unless they have a coupon or know of an early-bird special, and they need to be home before dark, since they're both afraid of driving at night.
Yawn.
That's why I have absolutely no idea how I ended up a psychic. You'd expect someone with such a gilt to have parents with equally thrilling abilities, like telekinesis or the power to see through people's clothes.
But they've got nada. My dad can say the capitals of the fifty states in alphabetical order, but that's where the magic ends.
"You must be exhausted," my mom, who never gets fewer than ten hours of sleep a night, says after offering me a glass of OJ.
I can tell she's fishing for something. "Not really. And before you go asking, I did my homework in study hall."
Scissors in hand, she looks up from a stack of advertisements and several piles of coupons, which she has sorited by supermarket aisle. "I wasn't saying anything," she says defensively.
"Ri-ight."
"Any plans for the weekend?" she asks casually, even though I'm sure she's dying to know so that she can arrange the porch furniture accordingly.
"Not sure yet" I tell her. Though I'd eventually made it to sleep last night, when morning came, a new batch of worries dawned on me: If Cam is sick, I'll have to be the strong one. And who am I kidding-I rely on him to kill spiders in my room the size of my thumbnail. My hair gel is stronger than I am.
"No plans with Cameron?" she asks as I’m shaking the Cheerios box to get the last few Os into my dish.
Ugh. "Mom! I said I'm not sure."
She raises her hands in surrender. "Excuse me for caring. I want to know if I can expect you home for dinner at all. I'm making sfogliatelle for the Nelsons, and you know how they dirty up the kitchen."
Uh-oh. My mother only whips up her sfogliatelle when there's an impending death. A hundred years ago, one of her great-greatgrandfathers was on his deathbed in Italy, and it was his wife's famous sfogliatelle recipe that brought him back from the beyond. He was able to live another ten healthy years, until he fell into a well. Or something like that. So, though they haven't saved a person since, the recipe has been part of a sacred, treasured family tradition. Italians are weird like that. "Who's dying?"
My mother grasps for her heart "Oh, it's terrible. Their little daughter, Gracie." She whispers, "Leukemia. She isn't supposed to last the month."
"Oh," I say, realizing I haven't seen the little blond, pigtailed girl tricycling on the sidewalk opposite us in a while, "That's so sad."
My mother nods and continues to clip a coupon for twenty cents off fabric-softener sheets. "Are the Brownes having company? I saw a young man there."
Thank God my parents have no clue about my psychic abilities, or else they'd probably have me envisioning the futures of half the residents of Oak Court, which, considering the number of geriatrics on this street, would be enough to put me into a coma. I contemplate taking my breakfast somewhere far, far away, like Pluto, but I know we'll just end up yelling the rest of the conversation to one another from our respective planets. I reluctantly pull up the chair across from her and say, "What young man?"
"He was very handsome," she says reflectively.
"Um, are you sure it wasn't Cam?"
"It was a blond boy."
I shrug. "Maybe it was someone selling Bibles or something."
She thinks for a moment. "Well, he did have a suitcase. But I saw them in their backyard, drinking iced tea, and Ingrid had her arm around him. She seemed rather agitated."
Oooh, drama. "Is Mrs. Browne having an affair?" I say, raising my eyebrows. "With a younger guy? Sweet."
My mom shoots me a disapproving look. "Mr. Browne was there, too."
"Oh." My interest plummets. "Maybe they're adopting a Scandinavian orphan?"
She sighs. "Well, maybe you can ask Cameron when you see him next. I would invite Ingrid over for coffee if I thought it would do anything, but she's so tight-lipped."
Smart woman, I think. I like the Brownes. In a way, they're just like Cam… perfect. In all the years we've lived next door to each other, they've been model neighbors. I've never seen so much as a maxi-pad wrapper sticking out from their garbage or heard the slightest noise from an argument wafting over the picket fence separating our backyards.
I’m glad when my cell phone rings, interrupting the conversation. When I check the display and see Cam's name, my heart jumps into my throat, I flip it open and say, in my sweetest voice, "Hi, baby."
"Hey."
The gruffness of his voice startles me. Total Mr. Grouchy Pants.
''How are you? Do you feel okay today?"
"Yeah. Listen, I can't walk with you today. I've got something to take care of before school." His voice is so serious that the pile of worry I'd just buried quickly resurfaces.
I try to remain calm. "Oh, sure. What?"
"Can we talk about it later?" He sounds rushed.
"Urn, yeah. But, Cam…" Should I tell him? Should I say that I know about the tumor? Or should I just let him go? I'm not sure if I would be able to stem the tide of tears and snot before they shorted out my cell phone.
As I’m contemplating, his voice comes across, rough:
"What?"
"Are you okay?" My voice is a squeak.
"I said I was fine."
"But you are a terrible liar."
He laughs, a short, hardly-there laugh. "Can't you just let me pick up my mail-order bride at the post office in peace?"
There he goes again, using humor as a disguise. Though it helps to ease the tension a bit, I can't bring myself to laugh.
"Okay. One, two-" I begin, but the line goes dead. I pull the phone away from my ear and see Call Ended flashing, taunting me.
Chapter Seven
IF I'D HAD someone other than Tanner for geometry, maybe I could have gotten away with it. If it had been later in the year, maybe Tanner would have understood that being late is so not me. Or maybe he would have been so awed by my mathematical capabilities that he would have let me slide. But Tanner didn't get the nickname Beast for nothing, and since we're barely out of September, I haven't had enough face time to secure the place in his heart as teacher's pet. I hung my head in abject remorse and tried to explain to him that my locker was stuck, that it would never happen again, et cetera, et cetera, but he continued to scribble out the pink slip. When he ripped it from the pad and handed it to me, I tried to ask him where I needed to report, in hopes that I'd subtly get him to realize that I'd never gotten a tardy slip before, that this was all just a huge mistake and he was tarnishing the record of a possible future nuclear physicist. But I stopped midsentence, since his eyes were so demonic that I was surprised his head didn't do a 360.
Now I’m sitting in the front office, with a bald Goth girl in a Kill Your Mother T-shirt and a dude who appears to have forgotten to wear his pants today, since he's just wearing white boxers. Despite their obvious problems, the bunch of ancient women in rhinestone-studded sweatshirts who work in attendance keep inspecting me over their bifocals like I’m a tinfoil-wrapped package found in the back of their freezer. Me. I’m probably the only student in the room who doesn't do meth as an extra auricular activity, and yet I get the dirty looks.
''Morgan?" the
largest of the three grannies asks, pushing a paper over the counter toward me.
I stand up and take the paper from her.
"You can go back to class. Principal Edwards doesn't want to waste time with you, since this is your first offense. Just don't let it happen again," she growls, with more force than I’d ever have believed an Auntie Em type could muster. If this is how they treat their honors students, I expect Goth Girl and Mr. No-Pants may be thrown into a pit with rabid wolves.
I turn to leave and catch the pantsless guy checking out my legs and making a rude gesture. Which only makes me think of Cam and how if I didn't have him, I would have become a nun years ago. Startled, I drop my geometry book. As I lean over to pick it up, very demurely, so as not to give the psycho a free show, the door to the office opens, and I see a pair of Keds shuffle in, topped by horrible floods that reveal white sweat socks. There's no excuse for that fashion disaster. I scan upward, way, way upward, and see that the fashion faux pas belongs to a basketball-player frame. The disaster isn't just below the knees, though. The cords he's wearing are way too tight in, uh, certain places, and he's wearing a plaid farmer shirt.
"Yo, man, Halloween's like a month away," No-Pants hisses at him. Not like he should talk, but he does have a point. I mean, why else would anyone wear cords from the kids' department and put enough oil in his hair to power a Hummer?
I'm so taken aback by the sight that I lose my balance as I'm straightening and nearly fall headfirst into No-Pants's lap. Luckily, I manage to steady myself.
"Excuse me," I hear the geek say to Auntie Em in a prepubescent voice, "I can't seem to figure this out."
I’m happy when I hear her use the same gruff tone of voice that she used with me. "What? Your locker combination?"
His voice wavers. "Yes. And I am not sure where I am supposed to go. Is it… Mr. Tanner?"
