by Jen Nadol
“Where’s your car?”
“Right there.” I pointed to my mountain bike lying in the shadows beside her house.
“You biked here?” She shook her head. “Oh God, Riley. I’m such an idiot. I’m sorry. I didn’t even stop to think—”
“Sarah,” I stopped her. She looked so upset that I felt bad. “It’s no big deal. Really. It’s what? Two miles? This is Vermont; we’re outdoorsy here.”
Sarah smiled gratefully, then closed us into the small, warm living room. I took in the white walls hung with old posters and tie-dyed tapestries, the mismatched sofas and blankets, and scattered everywhere—plants. Lots of them, their greenness surprising after weeks of seeing only the browns of dead grass and mud. The walls between the plants were lined with books, and boxes of more books were piled haphazardly beside half-filled shelves, like Sarah’s parents were still unpacking.
“You guys going somewhere?” I asked.
“Oy,” she said, exasperated. “The boxes. Always the boxes.”
“Your house is really nice,” I told her.
“You’ve never been here?” I shook my head. “Well, thanks,” Sarah said. “It’s not fancy, but it’s home.”
“It feels like one,” I said. “That’s a compliment. It’s really comfortable and . . . nice.”
She gave me a half smile. “That’s very sweet.” Sarah took my coat and hung it on a hook by the door, her slippers scuffing across the wood floor as she walked.
I wandered over to a table where a sculpture of a windmill sat. It was made out of what looked like old bicycle parts and an erector set. There was a single bare lightbulb beside it.
“What’s this?” I asked.
Sarah came over and fitted something onto the arms of the sculpture, and it started to spin. After a few seconds the bulb began glowing with a soft red light.
“Whoa!” I studied the thing, realizing they were magnets she’d put on and that there were wires snaking from the center of the sculpture to the bulb, making it a mini-generator. “That’s really cool. Where’d you get it?”
“My mom made it,” Sarah said.
“Really?”
Sarah smiled. “Her hobby. Tinkering, she calls it.”
She motioned me toward the sofa. I gave the machine another glance, then sat, trying to look at ease, though I felt anything but relaxed. It was quiet in the house, like it really was just me and Sarah.
“So, um, where are your parents?” I asked.
“My dad’s down in his office in the basement,” she said. “And my mom’s with the jerk she ran off with, somewhere in Florida.”
“Oh . . . uh . . .” I racked my brains, trying to think if I’d known that. How could I not have? I smiled sheepishly. “Open mouth, insert foot. Sorry.”
She smiled back, mostly clearing the cloud that’d passed over her face. “No worries, Ri.”
She sat and leaned forward, getting right down to business. “Why didn’t you tell us the truth?”
I wasn’t surprised—Sarah was a pretty direct girl, and she’d told me she wanted to talk about the binoculars. But I wasn’t quite ready. “How did you know?” I stalled.
“I can usually tell when you’re hiding something.” She smiled. “Don’t take this the wrong way, Riley, but you’re not a very good liar.” She added, “That’s a compliment.”
It didn’t feel like one. My face burned. I wondered how much else she’d figured out. She was still waiting, delicate hands dangling between the worn parts of her jeans.
“Partly it was Tannis,” I said. “She was really twisted about what she saw, thinking the kids meant she’d never race.”
Sarah nodded. “She lost it with me one day too.” She paused, then added, “That hit close to home for you, didn’t it? The things Tannis was upset about . . . being stuck here?”
I raised an eyebrow. “I didn’t realize we’d be psychoanalyzing me tonight.”
“Sorry.” She smiled. “My dad’s a shrink. Can you tell?”
“Well, it explains your deliberate pauses and penetrating stares,” I said. “Anyway, when Trip didn’t see anything, Tannis was so . . .”
“Relieved?”
I nodded. “And if I’d told her I did see something . . .”
“She’d keep believing that what she saw was her future,” Sarah finished.
“I didn’t see any benefit to that.”
“That was really thoughtful of you,” she observed. “I didn’t know you had such a soft spot for Tannis.”
“I don’t. But seeing her cry was like . . . snow in July or a plague of locusts—”
“Signs of the apocalypse?”
“Right. I didn’t really want to deal with that.”
Sarah nodded. “But you did see something?”
“Yes.”
“What?”
Which of course was the real reason I hadn’t said anything. “I can’t tell you.” Seeing her disappointment, I added, “It’s not you, Sarah. It’s just that it involves other people.” It was my mom’s and Trip’s dad’s secret. And Trip’s, even though he didn’t know it. “I’m sorry.”
She was trying to figure it out—I could tell in how she studied me. But there was no way she’d guess this one. “Any of us?” she probed.
“Not really.”
“Is it something bad?”
I thought about that scene, my mom with Trip’s dad, her droopy eye and what I knew that meant about her sickness. But she’d still been in our house, which looked nicer than it ever had before. “Good and bad,” I answered.
“Do you think it’s the future?” she asked quietly.
“I have no idea,” I said. “I mean, how could that even be possible?”
She didn’t answer, didn’t ask me about the stuff Mr. Ruskovich had said. Instead she rubbed her forehead, anxious. “I need to look into the binoculars, Riley,” she said finally.
“What?” I hadn’t expected that. “Why?”
“The same reason you did. So I’ll know if it’s real that you really saw things.”
There it was again. “You,” not “we.”
“I just told you I did,” I said, wondering what she’d seen and why she needed to hide it.
“Would you have believed Trip if he’d looked and seen something? Would that have been enough for you?”
“I’m not sure. I think so,” I lied.
“You didn’t believe him when he said there was nothing,” she pointed out.
“Yeah, but—”
“I think there are just some things you have to see for yourself,” she said. “Right?”
“Maybe.” She was right, of course. But I didn’t want her to look again. I wasn’t sure why. Mr. Ruskovich’s warning, maybe.
“Where are they?” she asked softly.
“In my bag.” She looked at me expectantly. I unzipped it but didn’t take them out.
“Sarah,” I said. “I have to tell you something.”
She looked at me warily, and I took a deep breath. “I know you looked before. I saw you. Outside the cave that first night.”
Her eyes widened. “Why didn’t you say anything?”
“It seemed like you wanted to keep it secret.” I watched her carefully. Was it wrong for me to hope that her vision had been like mine? About her and me? Because that was what I was hoping. But I couldn’t tell anything; her eyes gave nothing away. “I guess I wanted to respect that,” I finished.
She didn’t say anything right away, so I asked what I really wanted to know. “What did you see?”
CHAPTER 20
FOR A WHILE SARAH SAID nothing. I tried to read her body language like she seemed able to read mine. She stood, walked a few steps, hands shoved into jeans pockets, which made her shoulders hunch together. She looked tiny, like a little wisp. If you sa
w her quickly, you might mistake her for a child, ten or twelve. Until you saw her face.
“I’m with someone,” she finally said, “a guy.” She looked back at me just long enough for me to see something in her eyes, like she was afraid to say it.
“Me?” I asked softly.
“You?” She raised her eyebrows. Her voice was amused and sad together when she said, “No, it isn’t you, Riley.”
I felt like a total idiot. “I just thought . . . the way you were saying it . . .” Oh God, could the floor swallow me up, please?
Mercifully, she continued. “I’ve never seen him before. We’re in a park, walking. There’s a dog with us. We’re holding hands. I don’t know the park or the dog, either. The guy is older.” She paused. “Maybe I am too.”
How much older? I wanted to ask. Before or after my vision, when we’re in bed together? Suddenly I didn’t want to hear any more.
“Even weirder . . . ,” she said, looking toward the window wistfully, “I’m in love with him. I don’t know how I know that, but I do.”
Something hot and sharp was in my chest. Jesus, I’m jealous. Of a guy Sarah doesn’t know, who might not even exist.
“I feel like he’s my . . . soul mate?” she said, mostly to herself. “It’s the strangest feeling.” She gave me that half-sad smile again. “The connection I feel to this guy. And now I keep wondering, what if I never meet him?”
I tried to think of something funny to say to break the mood, but I didn’t feel funny. This felt wrong and bad and not at all the way I wanted it to.
She looked down at her hands. “The worst part—” She stopped.
“What?” I prompted.
She shook her head.
“Whatever it is, Sarah, it’s between us.”
She glanced up with just her eyes, head still bowed, then sighed and looked back at her hands. “The worst part is what it’s done to how I feel about Trip. I used to think I loved him. Now I know I don’t.”
And—shitty, awful, back-stabbing friend that I am—I felt happy. She doesn’t love him.
“So I want to look again,” she said more firmly. “I need to know. If I don’t see anything, maybe I can just forget about what I saw, you know? Maybe I can believe that the binoculars are nothing. I can believe that they didn’t predict what would happen to Nat’s dad. Or you. Or me.”
“And what if you see something?” I said. “Wouldn’t you rather just not know?”
“No,” she said immediately. “Just like you wouldn’t.”
I couldn’t argue with that.
Sarah came back to the sofa, where I still held the box. She reached over and took it from me, her skin softly brushing mine. She unlatched the case, took out the binoculars, and hesitated only a second before bringing them firmly, surely to her eyes. I watched it all, powerless. Her body suddenly got still, shoulders stiff, knuckles turning white.
I knew she was seeing something, and my nerves thrummed with anxiety.
“Sarah,” I called gently. She didn’t answer at first, but then slowly she brought the binoculars away. I was scared by how she looked. Probably how I’d looked after the things I’d seen. Like she knew something much bigger than anyone should.
“Well, now I know,” she said dully.
“Did you see something? The same thing?” I pressed when she nodded, “That . . . guy?” It burned to say it.
“No. I was older,” Sarah said. “Much older. I don’t know how I know that . . .” She trailed off.
I waited. “And?” I prompted. “What did you see?”
“Houses. Cars. All of them different. Newer than anything around today,” she said thinly. “I’m looking out a window at them, at life out there, passing by. And I’m thinking.” She paused, swallowed, searched out my eyes. “I’m thinking something good. Happy. But also sad.”
“Bittersweet?”
“Yeah,” she said. “And I feel tired.”
I saw tears welling in her eyes.
“Sarah?” I reached over, gently touched her arm. “What?”
She shook her head. “Nothing. Oh my God. Just . . .” She put her hands to her face, blotting the tears, and breathed in deeply. Swallowing like she could push away the stuff she was feeling. “I could see my hands,” she said finally. “I guess that’s how I know I’m old. They’re all veiny and frail.” She looked at her smooth, delicate hands, turning them wonderingly. “I’m old in it, Riley. Really old. And I feel . . .” She hitched a breath, struggling for control. “Lonely.”
I reached for her, folded her into my arms, and she let me. I felt the shiver of her slight body, hesitated for a second, then put my hand on the back of her head. The coarseness of her hair was just like I remembered it from the binoculars.
We stayed like that for a minute. There were so many things running through me with her this close—excitement, tenderness, and worry. I was intensely conscious of where every part of her touched me, her legs pressing against my thigh, her head on my chest, breast inches from my arm. Maybe Sarah felt it, because she pulled back a little, looking up at me. Her face was serious.
I thought she was going to tell me more about what she’d seen, but instead she said, “You like me, don’t you, Riley?”
“Sure,” I said. I tried to drag my eyes away, my heart racing. “Of course.”
“No,” Sarah persisted. “Not like ‘we’re buddies.’” She held my gaze, the sound of her voice, low and raspy, raising goose bumps on my arms. “Like a boy likes a girl.”
Holy crap. I could barely think, my eyes drawn to her full lips, parted and moist. I shivered, knowing she already knew the answer. “Yes,” I answered thickly.
“For a long time?” she whispered.
I nodded, barely, and then—I couldn’t help it—I kissed her. I don’t even remember leaning in, but I must have, because our lips brushed against each other softly, the feel and taste of her making me dizzy. I pressed harder, felt her teeth, her tongue. My hand was in her hair, tangling about those thick coarse strands. Her breath came short and fast, her hands on my chest. And then she pushed away, eyes wide, gasping,
“My dad.”
Dimly I heard the clomp of footsteps, my sluggish brain processing what she’d said. And what I’d done. “Oh, shit.” I was breathing hard, drunk with how it had felt to touch her. “I’m sorry.” I moved to the far side of the couch, not trusting myself to be any closer, trying to smooth out my clothes and compose myself.
She looked down. “Don’t be,” she mumbled, straightening her shirt, brushing at her face. “It’s not your fault.”
Her father pushed through the door then, looking as flustered to see us as we were him.
“Oh!” His gaze shifted from Sarah to me and then back. “I didn’t know you had a friend over.”
“This is Riley,” she said, gesturing to me. “From my physics class. Riley, this is my dad, Dr. McKenzie.”
I stood, holding the binoculars case—the first thing I could grab—in front of me as I crossed to shake hands with him. “Nice to meet you, sir,” I said, wondering if anyone in the history of man had ever been as embarrassed as I was right then.
His hand was dry and papery, especially compared to my hot, sweaty one. “Jim. You can call me Jim,” he said, oblivious to my flaming embarrassment.
“Uh, okay. Thanks. Jim.”
Sarah looked ready to burst out laughing, not oblivious at all. Which, despite my mortification, was a nice change from how she’d looked after the binoculars. “You done working for the night, Dad?”
He nodded absently, and I noticed his rumpled shirt and messy hair. Maybe he’d been making out with someone too. Ugh, why does my brain think stuff like that? “What are you two doing?” he asked. “Studying?”
“Yup,” she said breezily while I nodded along.
“Good, good,” he said.
“Okay, well I’m off to bed. Don’t stay up too late,” he told Sarah, glancing at me. “School night and all.”
“I was just going,” I said, starting to collect my things as he climbed the stairs. “Nice to meet you.”
“You too,” he said, waving without turning around.
I could feel Sarah watching me from the couch, but I didn’t dare look at her as I stuffed the binoculars and case into the backpack. Finally, when I couldn’t avoid it, I met her eyes. “Well,” I said.
“Well,” she said back, smiling.
“This is awkward.”
She nodded. “We shouldn’t have done that.”
“Right.” I tried to read her face to figure out what she was feeling, but I was no good at that. So I asked, “What do we do now?”
Her eyes sharpened like a hundred thoughts were running through her head. “I think we pretend nothing happened,” she said finally. “I don’t think we want to tell anyone about the binoculars. Like you said, how could that help?”
I nodded.
“And I definitely don’t think we want to tell them about . . . you know . . . the other.” She blushed, which was unbelievably cute.
“Right.”
“So . . . we just forget about it.”
“Okay,” I said, knowing there was no way in hell I could forget it. I was already replaying it and would probably keep it on repeat all week. And the way she’d kissed me back, her breathing shallow, I doubt she’d forget it either. Which made me feel like a bit of a studmuffin, as Trip liked to call himself.
I pedaled home, not thinking about the future. Not feeling the cold or the burn in my muscles or even the crushing guilt that should have come with making out with my best friend’s girl.
CHAPTER 21
THE GUILT CAME THE NEXT morning. When Trip picked me up.
“I tried calling you last night,” he said. “Where were you?”
“What’re you, my mother?” I said, but my heart was beating triple time. Did he know? I hadn’t even checked my phone. I pulled it out now. Four messages from Trip. Jesus, what was wrong with me? “Sorry, man,” I fumbled. “Is everything okay?”
