“Did you know that he actually beat out his brother for the role of Thor? And the makeup job on the Frost Giants took like five hours to put on. I still think they totally miscast the role of Jane-”
“Please no more! You and Dylan use to go on and on about movie trivia. Anytime he and Lily went to the movies, she came home complaining how you crashed their date to talk about the movie with Dylan.”
“That’s because he was the only one around actually interested in what I was talking about.”
Both of our smiles dimmed. Dylan was still a touchy subject for both of us. My feelings centered on my guilt for not seeing his death in time to prepare Lily. Andrew, though, lost a friend. They may not have been best friends, but you can’t go to school with someone five days a week for six years and work with them the other two days without feeling their absence.
Dylan had been at the core of my visions being messed up. I hadn’t seen Lily break up with him, or seen him shoot himself, and I never saw him die. What made everything worse was that not only did I not see it coming, I saw him living, happy, and with Lily. She told me something was wrong with him and I reassured her he’d be fine. In the visions I had, he was fine. In reality, he was anything but.
“Do you think he’d still do it?” Andrew rested his arms on the table and leaned forward. “I mean, if he had the chance to do it over. Knowing the way everyone felt after?”
“Yes.”
“You seem pretty sure.” He sat back, obviously not satisfied with my positive answer. I picked through my brain to find the right words.
“Dylan suffered from depressed. Yes, he needed help and maybe if he’d gone to therapy and possibly been medicated he would have made a different choice. But without it, he wouldn’t have been able to understand the devastation his family and friends went through. He still would have been sure that everyone would be better off without him. It might have even made him believe it more.”
An easy explanation didn’t exist and I couldn’t honestly say if my theory was entirely accurate, but in the end, my visions corrected themselves and I saw Dylan die. It would have happened.
Andrew took a long sip of his water silently nodding his head, accepting either my answer as fact or the impossibility of ever really knowing. Neither was a response I would have expected from him even a few months back.
I watched him finish eating and it was easy to see the young boy he’d been when I first met him in fifth grade. He’d been a scrawny little kid, with big ears and a duck lip caused by the braces he’d worn for over a year. At three inches shorter than me, he hadn’t looked anything like the hottie I’d seen him becoming.
“So? What do you want to do?” Andrew asked, tossing his napkin on his empty plate.
I focused myself and took a sneak peek into the hours ahead. I kept the visions vague enough that I didn’t spoil the end of the movie.
“Beach and then the movie.”
Andrew laughed. “You sound like you don’t have a choice. We can skip the movie if you want.”
He had no idea how right he was about my lack of choice.
“No, it’s fine. I know you want to see it.”
The waitress dropped off the bill and as Andrew counted out some bills, I pulled out a quarter. I slid it over to him.
“What’s that for?” he asked.
“To make it even.”
He glanced at the amount on the bill again and then took the quarter with a weird smile, and laid it on top of the bills.
I’d seen the bill. Twenty-five twenty-five. This way she got a nice round twenty percent tip and he didn’t waste time digging around for a quarter. And despite the look he wore, he was used to me doing things like that.
We headed for the beach and found an overlook of the ocean. I leaned against the railing, looking out at the water. A cool mist drifted across my bare arms and I shivered, wrapping my arms around myself. I’d forgotten that the beach in November wasn’t always a good idea. Then Andrew pulled me back against his chest and rubbed his hands along my arms. Warmth spread throughout me and my shivers were no longer from the cold.
“You smell good,” he said, lips skimming my ear. “I missed being with you like this.”
My eyes closed and I tipped my head to the side. His lips pressed gently against my neck. Andrew was deadly to my control and I loved it. I loved him. I could admit that to myself though I’d never say it to him or anyone else. It would only make them pity me more when he and Nadine betrayed me.
“Are you ever going to tell me why we broke up at Homecoming?”
My eyes popped open. Pulling away a bit, I tried to get some space between us. “I already told you, I panicked. Everything was moving so fast.”
“Come on, Chloe. I’ve known you long enough to know when you’re lying. I don’t need to be Phoebe to tell me that.”
I twisted around to look at him. How the hell did he know about Phoebe’s ability? “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
He snorted and let go of me, shoving his hands in his jean pockets. “You don’t think I’ve heard all about the freaky Matlin sisters? Come on. I started the thing when Lily brought my dog back to life.”
“She did not bring your dog back to life.” I ignored the reference to the freaky Matlin sisters.
“No, but I’ve seen firsthand how she can heal people. Besides, Phoebe has a bigger mouth than anyone and for the last few months she’s been going around calling people out on the littlest lies. Not to mention all the times you’ve known exactly what’s gonna happen. You even warned me my dog would be hit by a car.”
“Well, you always let the poor thing run loose. It was an accident waiting to happen.” Dang, I sounded like Dad.
“It’s more than that. If you’re gonna lie, you better learn to be better at it.”
When I was younger I never bothered to hide my ability, but I was smart enough now to realize that letting people know wasn’t the safest idea.
Neither of us said anything else about it, the conversation simply drifted away like the mist coming in on the waves. Yet, the entire time we sat in the darkened theater, my mind kept going back to his suspicions of my ability.
“Do you ever think about the future?” I asked as we walked back to the car after the movie.
“Yeah, I mean my dad won’t stop talking about making a plan and all that shit.” He ran his hands up the sides of his head, checking the spike of his faux hawk. He smiled and winked at me. “I don’t think he’d be too happy knowing my plans are different than his. What does that have to do with us?”
“What if I told you - hypothetically - that I see the future?”
He sobered up immediately. “Like crystal ball, voodoo shit?”
“No.” I rolled my eyes. “I mean like honest to God visions of the future.”
“Uh, well if this is hypothetical and all, then I guess it would be kind of cool. To be able to know what was gonna happen if you do certain things. I guess you could stop bad stuff from happening.”
“What if I couldn’t change anything? What if everything we do - all the big, life changing things we do - are already set.”
He didn’t answer right away and I was just glad he wasn’t laughing this off.
“That would suck, I guess,” he eventually answered. “So all that Freaky Matlin stuff is real? You really can see the future. And Lily can bring things back from the dead.”
“Uh, no. Dead is dead. Like you said, it’s a hypothetical question.”
“Sure, and I suppose you handing me the quarter at the restaurant without knowing the total was normal, or you telling me about my dog getting run over was normal, or how about you dumping me at Homecoming? All normal, right?”
“We should get going if you want to catch the previews.”
He stopped and turned to face me. “Nice avoidance technique on both subjects.”
I opted to address the least dangerous issue. “I thought we agreed to put Homecoming in the past and move on.�
��
“You agreed. It’s still bugging me. One minute we were dancing and the next you were stomping off and demanding to go home.”
We’d been dancing and then out of nowhere came Nadine and her date, dancing beside us. For a few seconds, I’d been inside both Nadine and Andrew’s futures and the overlap had been gut wrenching to watch.
“Well, don’t worry about it. It’s over. I was freaked and now I’m not.” I stepped close to him and wrapped my arms around his neck. Pressing up on my tiptoes, I let my lips fall across his. He relaxed and encircled me in his arms.
I was exactly where I was supposed to be. For now.
Chapter 6
“I’m thinking of joining a convent.”
Bianca’s words brought my head around to look at her and I snorted. “I’m pretty sure you need to be Catholic to become a nun.”
Bianca ran a hand through the new blue highlighted pixie cut she sported. “I didn’t say anything about being a nun. I can’t think of anywhere else my parents wouldn’t look for me if I ran away.”
“That bad?” I asked, trying not to laugh.
“My parents liked him! Seriously, Chloe, they liked him. He covered up the tattoos and took out the piercings and God, he even cut his hair.” She leaned forward and rested her head on top of the cafeteria table. “I loved his hair. Logan had so much potential. What would possess him to destroy it?”
“Did you stop to consider he thought he wouldn’t be able to date you if they didn’t like him?”
“They weren’t supposed to like him. They were supposed to try and keep us apart. We would sneak around behind their backs, until they grudgingly accepted him, though they would always secretly hate him.”
“Okay, time to bring it back to reality.” This time the laugh burst forth.
She groaned. “Reality is a drag sometimes.”
“It’s not like you guys were going to be together forever,” I said. “Don’t worry. In a couple months, you’ll be dating-” I cut my words off before I said Owen’s name. Telling her wouldn’t change anything in the long run, but she’d freak if I did and then…well, what? If it truly was the future, what did it matter if she knew?
“Shut up!” Bianca jerked her head up. “It’s super creepy when you do that fortune teller stuff.”
“It’s not fortune telling.”
In our family, fortune telling was on par with witches and Ouija boards - not acceptable. Nanna once said the difference between fortune telling and prophecy was that fortune telling was about seeking to gain by either the teller or the receiver. Prophecy was a gift from God, a glimpse of what was to come so we could prepare our minds and spirits.
“Whatever.” Bianca picked up my pen from the table and began doodling stick figures on the corner of my English assignment page. “How come you have no problem with doing it to me, but you won’t tell Nadine about it? It’s always weird when we hang out and I know that she doesn’t know what you know.”
“It’s different with her.” Different because while I would be friends with Bianca for another ten or eleven years before we completely lost touch, Nadine and I had a shelf life set to expire in two and a half weeks.
She stared at me for a long moment and then rolled her eyes. “Anyway, Phoebe thinks I should get together with Sebastian. You know, the tall Trekkie geek.”
I sat up a bit straighter at the mention of his name. “Isn’t he a bit tame for you?”
“Yeah, well, he’s odd in a way I doubt he could hide from my folks. Then again, I don’t think I could take listening to him go on about which Star Trek series is the best.”
“Is he really into that?” I enjoyed the newer movies with Chris Pine, but the older ones were a bit too much for me.
“Girl, he and Owen debated for an hour about the scientific probability of zombies versus aliens. Notice I said probability and not possibility. They had percentages and shit.”
“There’s always the hope he’s an amazing kisser.” I laughed as her eyes brightened.
“Good point. Which, of course, leads nicely to the turning point I believe you were going for. How was the date with Andrew?”
“Good.”
One of her eyebrows lifted. “Seriously? Good? You have nothing further to add?”
“What do you want me to say?”
“I want details! I want to hear that he stripped off the nasty green shirt he always wears and showed you his rippling abs. Then you slathered him with tanning oil as he lay on the beach under the hot sun. That boy has got a body to die for.”
“Did you bother going outside over the weekend? It was cold and windy. And how do you know what his abs look like?”
“Uh, hello? Don’t you remember when we went to the pool this summer and you practically drooled over him the entire day.”
“I vaguely remember.”
“So? Details! Come on! There has to be something.”
“Nothing to tell. We had fun. We ate lunch, went to the beach, and then a matinee. Then he had to go to work.”
Bianca rolled her eyes and tilted her head back. “Ugh, you’re so boring! Nadine is wearing off on you. She’s so goody-goody.”
“And you’re starting to sound like Phoebe.” I pointed my half-eaten granola bar at her.
“I know. You really should stop ditching me for Nadine and Andrew. When I’m left with limited company to communicate with I get a little tense.” She grabbed her backpack from the floor and her breakfast tray with the other hand. “I gotta get to class. Ms. Garcia totally spazzed on me last week about being late.”
“I’ll catch you at lunch.”
“Ugh. I can’t. I’m meeting Karin for my Mandarin tutoring. If I fail my final, my parents said they were going to enroll me in some online program to do on the weekends.” She waved and took off.
I dumped my granola bar wrapper in the trash and went to biology class. While bio did make my list of top five classed, I normally didn’t dread it. Not that I felt dread. No, it was more like anxious. Sebastian was in the same bio class. I’d tried hard to put the vision of his future into a little compartment I liked to call delusions, but I couldn’t. Not completely. Today I would check it out again.
The room was empty when I walked in and smiled at Mrs. Booth when she looked up from her computer screen. My seat was in the perfect spot. In the front corner closest to the door, I could simply stick out my foot and it would pass right through Sebastian’s future.
The warning bell rang and students started trickling in. I kept my eyes focused on the doorway, concentrating on keeping myself from being dragged into the puffy hazes surrounding the people walking by. Finally, Sebastian came through. I didn’t even need to stick my foot out. The haze he carried had spread and thickened. The instant he passed through the doorway, images flashed before me.
Blood everywhere, soaking into the grass. Micah on the ground, Lily crying over him. Nadine and Andrew glazed eyes. Phoebe screaming, blood running down her face. Sebastian standing a few feet away. A gun in someone’s hand.
I jerked back in my seat, pulling as far away from him as possible. My chest tightened painfully and I struggled to take a deep breath.
“Are you okay?”
I glanced at the girl next to me and tried to remember her name. I knew it. We’d been lab partners for almost four months, but I couldn’t for the life of me remember. “Yeah, I’m fine. Just not feeling well.”
She leaned to the side, away from me. “Maybe you should go to the clinic or bathroom or something.”
Behind me, Javier leaned in toward us, making a barfing sound. “She’s gonna spew chunks all over you, Alonna.”
“You’re disgusting. I’m fine,” I said.
Still, I took Alonna’s advice and headed for the restroom. I splashed cold water on my face and drew in a few slow deep breaths before spending a minute repairing my makeup. Just because I felt sick to my stomach didn’t mean everyone had to know.
When I got back to class, Alonna sat at
a new table. In her place, next to my seat, was Sebastian. I sat down and began the struggle of acting natural, a nearly impossible feat considering the effort required to not to sink into his future.
“Hey, Alonna wanted to switch seats. You okay with that?” he asked.
“Sure, whatever.” I opened my notebook and tried to catch up on the notes flashing across the Smartboard. Technology ruled until you missed a few slides then it sucked. There was no way I could see what the previous screens had shown.
Every ounce of my being was centered on blocking out Sebastian and I kept my mind focused on taking notes. A wicked tension headache was in full force by the end of class. When the bell finally rang, I practically jumped from my seat and ran out of the room. I found Nadine at her locker, waiting for me to go with her to our next class.
“You look like crap,” she said, walking alongside me.
“Thanks.”
“Sorry, but you do.”
I pulled my water bottle from the side pocket of my bag and took a sip. “I didn’t sleep well last night.”
The answer pacified her and she launched into a recap of every minute of her Thanksgiving break, starting when her mom discovered the nail polish stain on the carpet. While she was engrossed in the details of the green bean casserole and marshmallow salad, I inched closer to her. My shoulder bumped hers and even if I hadn’t been trying, her future would have pulled me in.
There were flashes of her shopping with Bianca and me, of her with Andrew at Javier’s party, her opening Christmas presents. I pressed deeper, and the images blurred. I could still see the future I’d always seen for her, but over top were new images. Shattered glass. Her car flipped over. Nadine crumpled inside.
The images faded and when my eyes refocused, Nadine had stopped walking and was staring at me as if I was crazy.
“What?” I asked, then cleared my throat and took another sip of my water.
Watch Me: Teen Paranormal Romance (A Touched Trilogy Book 3) Page 5
