by Ann Aguirre
Sometimes we talked, if she felt up to it. Sometimes we watched movies. Sometimes I sat in the chair by her bedside and watched her sleep, glad that she was still with me, even if she was only sleeping.
Her funeral was open casket. Most of the other kids wouldn’t go up to her, but I don’t remember being afraid. Death hadn’t turned my friend into a bogeyman. I still couldn’t catch what she had by being near her. I remember thinking that, even though she looked the same, she wasn’t Ash anymore. Something had fundamentally changed. That a vital part of her was gone and wouldn’t be stuck in the ground to rot. That made me feel better, but only a little. I put my Batmobile in beside her, tucking it down by her hand, touched her cheek, and went home. I didn’t need to stay to hear more words from people who didn’t really know her. Not like I did.
* * *
This time, when Ash rapped on my window, I wasn’t asleep. I wasn’t even in my pajamas, but sprawled out on my bed in my jeans and a Pac-Man T-shirt. My feet made soft sounds on the carpet as I walked over to let her in. Then I sat down on the edge of the bed.
“Thanks,” she said. She crawled in and closed the window behind her. She sat next to me.
“You just do that to make me feel better, don’t you? The knocking, I mean. You could just pop into my room anytime you felt like it, right?”
Ash nodded. “I suppose, but it’s rude. I have to force people to do what I want all the time. It’s nice to give someone a choice.”
“And this”—I waved my hand at her image, this time in jeans and a KISS T-shirt—“is this also for my benefit? I mean, if you can wear whatever you want, can’t you also look like whatever you want?”
“I guess,” she said, “but this is how I’m most comfortable, and, again, it helps people not be afraid of me. I died at ten. I’m content with ten. I could look twenty-five, change my hair, whatever. Some of the other Harbingers do but most of us stay the same.” She shrugged. “I guess it’s one of the few things we have left of our earthly selves.”
“Do you visit anyone else?” I asked.
She shook her head. “No. I check in on my parents, but I can’t talk to them. Generally, it’s frowned upon. Most people don’t see me unless they’re dead, anyway.” She picked at a loose piece of thread on my comforter. “Except you.”
“Why me?”
She shrugged. “Some people are just more sensitive to other things.” She kicked my foot lightly. “And maybe it’s because you’re not really alive.”
I blinked at her. “What does that mean? I’m not dead.”
“No, but you’re not really living, either. You aren’t connected to anyone. You go to school, come home, and go to your room. You’re like a phantom.”
“It’s not that easy. People aren’t that easy.”
Ash shook her head. “What’s hard? You walk up, you shake hands, and you talk. Easy.”
“It doesn’t seem that simple,” I said. “Not for me.”
“I know, but you can’t expect other people to do all the work for you all the time. If I hadn’t approached you, would we have been friends?”
I looked down. “I’d like to think so. That us being friends was inevitable.”
Ash leaned into my shoulder.
“Can I come with you?”
“No,” she said.
“Why not? You said it yourself, I’m not really living.”
“But you’re not dead, either.”
I opened my mouth but she cut me off. “Don’t go getting any ideas in your head about killing yourself, either. Not a good idea, Matt.”
My mouth snapped shut. I hadn’t actually been considering it. Not really.
“You shouldn’t be in such a hurry to come over.”
“I know,” I said. I didn’t want to die; I just didn’t want to lose her again. It seemed a cheesy thing to say, though, so I kept my mouth shut. Ash guessed my thoughts.
“Matt, you ever wonder why I took this job?”
I shook my head. “I just assumed you were assigned it, or it was a punishment or a reward or something.” I’d never been able to figure out whether Ash’s job was a good or a bad one. Some days it looked good, some days I wasn’t sure.
“No, I chose it.” She went back to picking at the thread on my bedspread. “This way, I could wait for you.” She smiled at me wanly. “I guess you’re not the only one having trouble moving on.”
“Great,” I said, “Death is waiting for me.”
She pinched me. “Harbinger,” she said.
We sat in silence for a minute. I was always happy to be around Ash. I felt half empty whenever she was gone. And as weird as it was, it felt good to know that she’d been hanging around for me. That I could move on with my life without leaving her behind.
“Grab your parka,” I said. “I owe you some waffles.” I hesitated as I reached for my keys. “Let’s go to a different diner, okay?”
She grinned and, just for me I think, did the Bewitched nose wiggle to get her parka.
I thrust my keys into my pocket and slipped my sweatshirt over my head. “And, Ash?”
“What?”
“Thanks for never making me feel like a freak, either.”
“You’re welcome, freak,” she said. “Meet you in the car.” She winked at me and was gone. I heard my Toyota shudder to life outside. I guess now that I’d seen her work, the magical gloves were off.
I went out to join her, gently closing my bedroom door, safe in the knowledge that Death’s Harbinger would wait for me no matter what. As long as I could bribe her with waffles, anyway. It’s amazing what makes some people happy.
KRISIS
Lindsay Smith
BY LINDSAY SMITH
Dreamstrider
~ The Sekret Series ~
Sekret
Skandal
Meet Lindsay Smith
Hi, Fierce Readers! I’m Lindsay Smith, author of the paranormal Cold War thrillers Sekret and Skandal. My books follow the struggles of a Russian teenager in 1963 named Yulia who’s learned to read thoughts and memories by touching people and objects. She’s captured by the KGB, the premier spy agency and secret police in the Soviet Union, and is forced to join a team of psychic teens who use their powers to hunt traitors and spies. “Krisis” takes place about a year before Sekret, during the Cuban Missile Crisis, when the United States and Soviet Russia came incredibly close to launching a nuclear war with each other. The main character in “Krisis,” Larissa, has been with the KGB for a while, and she’s gotten accustomed to her ability of foresight being exploited by the KGB, but when she meets a new teammate, she finds herself wanting to enjoy the present as well as the future.
I studied Russian language and history in school, and I’ve always wanted to write a story set in the Soviet Union—I think it’s a woefully underexplored time period, but also an important one. The idea for the Sekret universe came to me when I was contemplating daily life in Soviet Russia and the intense amount of scrutiny people felt as they tried to go about their business. They couldn’t trust their friends and neighbors with their most private thoughts—the only safe space for dissent was inside their own head. So I thought, what if I took even that away from them? That’s how the “psychic spies” twist came to me, and the book really just wrote itself after that!
Sekret is my first published novel, though it’s not the first book I wrote. I’m a firm believer in National Novel Writing Month, or NaNoWriMo (nanowrimo.org), which taught me the value of perseverance and finishing the writing projects I’d begun, no matter how awful I felt they were by the time I got deep into the middle of them. Every book is its own learning process, but I think there’s great value to be gleaned from getting a feel for the rhythm of working on something as massive as a novel, and it makes the next one just a little bit easier to write.
The Fierce Reads program is so fantastic—I’ve gotten to meet some incredible authors, as well as wonderful readers, whose enthusiasm for books and reading are truly an inspirati
on! I have a few more books on the way from Macmillan as well, and I can’t wait to share them with you. The next one, Dreamstrider, is a young-adult high-fantasy novel about a girl whose ability to manipulate people through their dreams causes problems when nightmares start to escape into the waking world.
KRISIS
by Lindsay Smith
MOSCOW. OCTOBER, 1962.
Sometimes I pretend that, instead of being lost in these visions, I’m drifting underwater. That the scenarios I see, the strange what-ifs and could-bes, are just vague shapes darting through the depths, content to leave me be if I’ll give them the same courtesy. That down here, where it’s cool and dark, I’m a world away from whatever’s playing out above me, and all I need is to surface for a quick inhale of breath and then I can plunge back down, away, into the echoing silence and solitude.
But sometimes my masters hold me under.
“Boats or planes?” The KGB officer’s voice rumbles through the darkness. “Which will they use?”
Boats or planes, bombs or blockades, the visions spark and sputter into existence, then extinguish just as quickly, before I can examine them. My gift to see the future has its limits, and I’m slamming up against those walls. The officer’s questions help me focus on the future, spreading the options before me like the pages of tomorrow’s news. But I can only foresee likelies and possibilities and maybes, and the KGB demands certainty from me.
I can see the American president, so young, so lost, as he hunches over the photographs. His brother’s finger traces the strange objects in the jungles of Cuba, slender as pencils, but far more deadly. Missiles—our missiles—each one with a tip that can turn a city into a smudge. Two plans spread out before them. Boats to block our ships as they carry in more missiles, or planes to obliterate the ones already in place?
“Which is it, girl? Can you answer or not?”
As if they’re giving me a choice. The voice plows through my concentration with the force of an icebreaker ship. I know all about choices that dangle from a single branch like ripe fruit. Which one looks the freshest? Which one looks most likely? I pluck the brightest possibility and offer it up for inspection: This, here, is the future that you seek.
“Boats.” Snarling, now. “Or planes.”
Each option is a blur, equally likely and unlikely; until the scale starts to tip, they will remain ghosts, and only certainty can give them flesh. “I can’t see it clearly yet.”
This is not an answer they care to hear.
I try to explain. “There are too many possible futures, none looking more likely than the rest—even the Americans can’t decide.”
But still the men hover over me. I can’t breathe. This room, the chair I’m sitting in, I can see only in flashes. I lurch forward, light and noise and pale pink walls swimming around me. “I need air—”
A hand shoves me back down into the chair. “Answer us! We must know now!”
“Comrade Rostov.” Another voice wafts through the murk, though this voice, too, wields an edge. “If the future hasn’t yet been determined, then she cannot help us. Perhaps we should take a break.”
The hand on my shoulder digs harder, nails piercing the thin fibers of my sweater, then slowly relents. “One hour, Larissa. Then report back to me.”
I don’t need foresight to know I won’t enjoy it.
* * *
Winter has settled into the ramshackle mansion where the KGB keeps all the psychic children like me—every surface bites with chill, every chair promises numbness. At dinner, I stir the sour cream into my soup, watching the drops of oil spin and separate, though my teammates’ eyes are all on me like winter-starved wolves. They want answers—same as the KGB does—they want to know if we are moments from a blinding flash and then nothingness. If we are leaning into the wind at the edge of the cliff.
No one has slept much since we learned the Americans found our missiles in their backyard. But I have nothing to offer them. I am elsewhere, walking a thousand paths, bracing for blows yet to come.
“Such a pity,” Masha says, looking right at me, “that we have to be burdened by dead weight who can’t even use their gifts.”
Masha, a remote viewer, and her mind-reading twin brother, Misha, are the easiest of my fellow teammates for me to read. Their choices are always the most obvious, and always follow the same course. I could say something cutting, I could defend myself, I could leave the room. But none of those futures look satisfying, so I just stir my soup.
“Are we really ready to go to war?” Sergei asks. Like Masha, he’s a remote viewer, but his choices are less certain than hers; I’ll think he’s barreling toward a future full-speed when at the last moment, he jukes to another one. It must serve him well in his hockey games.
Masha peers down her nose at him—he’s so tall she’s really looking up, but she makes it seem like she’s peering down all the same. “We should. It would serve those imperialists right for putting their missiles in Turkey.”
“They ought to be wiped from the face of the planet,” Misha agrees. “Stalin had it right—we must bring about change in the world order, instead of waiting for the world to revolt.”
“No one deserves such a death.”
Everyone turns to the far end of the table, where Valentin, dark-faced and solemn, pushes a crumbled pirozhki around his plate. His futures are harder for me to grasp, turning to smoke as soon as I think I’ve captured them. Lately, though, there’s a sting to them, as if they’d grown thorns. I do not like dealing with Valentin much, with his caustic power to change thoughts and his piercing stare; even Misha and Masha tend to leave him be. Only Anastasia ever hovers around him like a shadow, but tonight it appears she, too, is staying away.
“Of course they deserve it,” Masha says, but she speaks softer now, gaze hurrying back to our end of the table as she reaches for the plate of pickled herring. Valentin watches her for a moment longer, eyes narrowing, before looking back at his food.
The new boy, Ivan, is fidgeting beside me. Like Sergei, he eats his meals in about two gulps, but unlike Sergei, he makes no effort to redirect the twins’ insults or, really, to take part in our conversations at all. I don’t know where he came from; I’ve never had much use for the past. All I know is his future is wide-open, undetermined, as blessedly empty of grim certainties as a cloudless summer sky.
I wonder whether that’ll change once Lieutenant Colonel Rostov, our KGB commander, finishes training him.
Something rumbles outside, far beyond our mansion walls. Everyone looks up with their breath held in their throats. Possibilities spark and dance before me—enemy planes soaring overhead and bombs clattering to the cobblestones. But it’s only the Red Army across the river, rehearsing in Red Square for the October Revolution anniversary parade. A million future Moscows spread before me—all tenuous as a spider’s web—bombs raining down instead of fireworks, bodies strewn instead of confetti throughout the streets.
“This is your big opportunity, Larissa. A real chance to serve the motherland. You should be honored.” Masha jabs her fork in my direction. “Sergei and I are doing our part, watching their air bases. Don’t let us down.”
It doesn’t feel like an honor. Lieutenant Kruzenko steps into the dining room, slumped forward, eyelids heavy. Hers was the kinder voice in the interrogation room, but I know how quickly it can sharpen. I can see the possible futures the night holds for her—shouting matches with Lieutenant Colonel Rostov, or else biting her tongue. A quick and mostly painless session trying to divine the future from me, or another sleepless night.
“Come, Larissa.” Kruzenko flexes one hand, then tightens it into a fist. “We must continue our work.”
The twins watch me as I drop my spoon into my barely touched soup and stand from the table. “Try not to get us all killed,” Misha says. The others’ stares around the table don’t look too optimistic on those chances.
Then the new boy, Ivan, looks up at me. “Not flesh, nor feathers,” he says, wi
th the slightest twist to his lips. A superstitious old way of wishing luck. When our eyes meet, a thousand moments spawn from that point, though I don’t want to consider them yet.
Some futures are better left unexamined.
I smile as I give him the traditional response. “Go to hell.”
* * *
Turns out, it’s boats.
Finally the possible futures narrow and coalesce to show me an impending naval blockade around Cuba—not that it’ll help the Americans much, since we already have more than enough missiles in place to melt their entire continent away, a possibility that hangs so tantalizingly close to my grasp. I see it lurking behind every future I consider, a thin scrim with the scenes projected onto it like a film as the Secretariat considers it. Mushroom clouds. Buildings worn down into broken little teeth that poke from land rendered as foreign, as barren, as the surface of the moon. A foot, a skull, a flash burn on a brick wall where once there was a man.
But in my visions, it’s not only American cities that suffer this fate. Soviet cities burn and crumble in retaliation. Retaliation feels like breaking your hand against someone’s face. This is what our world has become—dead man’s triggers crisscrossing the world to ensure no cruelty goes unpunished.
The next few days are a haze. I am trapped in a room with a single question looming from the fog—Will they bomb our missiles and our soldiers already in place on Cuba’s shores? Sometimes I can hear the engines roaring in my ears and feel the thick jungle air, so full of chirping and buzzing, as the American bombs begin to fall. But other times, the only sound is a voice, crackling out of a badly tuned radio set. My fellow Americans.
The wooden chair is like glass shards under my skin. Three hours, five, eight. Closed away in a classroom, guards at the door, KGB officers crowding around me like each word I utter is a prophecy. They spread maps before me; the pen cuts through the paper as I trace, retrace, scratch out, and draw anew the troop positions and flight plans that crowd inside my head. I’m their oracle, sifting through the future, barely able to hold on to right now.
