Chapter 7
7
A FTER MY MOM SAVAGELY CHEWED out the administration, we shared a strained car ride, punctuated by cloying silence, to the urgent care center. A physician assistant concluded that I did not have a concussion but told me to catalog any new or lingering symptoms. When my mom stepped out to take a phone call from work, I took my chances.
“Could hitting my head on the lockers have caused a hallucination?”
The PA frowned and looked at the information from the school nurse. “Are you confirming that you experienced an extrasensory phenomenon? Because if so, I should refer you to—”
“Nope!” I said as my mom stepped back in. “I’m not confirming that.”
He sighed, stamped a form, and sent me home with instructions to rest and stay home from school for at least the following day.
We went home, and I endured an uncomfortable dinner with both parents, dodged all questions about the “incident,” and claimed I’d seen nothing when the topic of psychic visions was brought up in a very roundabout and reluctant way. My parents, especially my mom, grumbled all through dinner about assumptions the nurse had made based on “conjectures” from “students,” and how she’d be speaking to that woman’s supervisor the next day. And then any and all talk of visions and clairvoyants ended with a final stab of my mom’s fork to the pot roast, much to my relief.
Once excused from the table, I went upstairs with a plan to text Al or search the internet or even mull over the syllabi I’d collected that day, but instead I collapsed into bed and fell asleep immediately.
After a few hours of absolute dead sleep, the nightmares filtered into my subconscious. My dreams were horrible, filled with a barrage of screams and blood and rain and the sight of my fingers wrapped around a knife. I woke up with a wet gasp that was more sob than air. After a trip to the bathroom and a glass of water, I attempted to sleep again. But the images burned behind my eyelids every time I closed them, no matter how hard I tried to block them out.
At four a.m., I gave up and threw off my sweat-soaked covers. I padded across the room to my desk, flipped on my reading lamp, and pulled out my sketchbook and graphite pencil.
I drew the girl.
I wasn’t the greatest at figure drawing, but by dawn I had the scene in black and white in front of me, with all the details I could remember. The edges of my sight had been blurred in the vision, and with the lack of light and the clouds, nuance and small elements had been distorted. But I drew the best I could, adding color once I had the basics completed. I hoped I hadn’t forgotten anything, but also I would have gladly forgotten the blood and the fear in her voice, if I’d had a choice in these things. However, those aspects seemed to have stuck fast.
On the back I wrote down my other sense memories—the breeze on my skin, the smells, the sounds. All of it. After a moment of consideration, I added the date in the corner.
I wasn’t convinced it was a vision of the future—I still couldn’t wrap my brain around that—but it had been something , and as much as that scared me, I needed to document all the specifics.
I don’t know how long I stared at the sketch, but I was certain it was an unhealthy amount of time to ruminate over watching someone die in a hallucination or a glimpse or whatever it was, so finally, with shaking hands, I closed the sketchbook and tucked it away in my backpack.
I slept on and off for the rest of the day, my head aching, my body sore from the impact with the lockers and then the floor, and my brain filled with the same image over and over. I felt feverish and bone-tired and not up for social interaction beyond scrolling through my personal social media feeds.
The next day I was mildly better but by no means ready to return to school. My parents gave me side-eye but didn’t push, which I was grateful for.
When I finally did emerge from my blanket cocoon, there was a raven on my windowsill. Backlit by the late morning sun, Lenore’s feathers shone purple black as she lightly tapped her beak against the glass. She was subdued, not at all like the tantrum-throwing fowl she had been on the first day of school.
“Lenore?” I whispered.
I crossed the room and opened my window. Lenore stuck out her spindly leg. My fingers trembled as I took out the missive.
Meet me after school. Our place at the old pool park. No texts. No response.
That was probably the most terror-inducing letter I’d ever received from Al. My whole body went cold. Crumpling the paper in my fist, I thanked Lenore with a small pat to the head, and she flew off.
No texts. No response. No paper trail.
What had Al found?
I was jittery the rest of the day. I tried to read the chapters for lit class, but I found my thoughts wandering so much that I ended up starting over three times just to figure out what the characters were doing. I glanced at the math syllabus and started on the practice problems we had for homework that night, but without instruction from the teacher, I quickly gave up.
I couldn’t sleep. I didn’t eat lunch. I couldn’t even watch TV without my brain replaying that scene over and over, shrouding the stupid reality show competition on the screen with blood and desperate pleas and gore. I scrolled through ClickClack, the latest must-have social media app, and half-heartedly watched videos of people living their daily lives—a vampire’s list of best treatments for sunburn, a werewolf playing with their new puppy, a sprite child using a leafy vine as a jump rope, a witch showing off the best way to care for a travel broom. It was entertaining, but it didn’t quell my anxiety at all. When it was finally time to go meet Al, I had bitten the nails on my left hand down to the quick, smearing blood across my ravaged cuticles.
I pulled on my shoes, grabbed my keys and wallet, and left the house.
My parents worked in the city about thirty minutes away. My mom always drove, but my dad rode the train in, claiming it was better than battling the New Amsterdam traffic. We lived in the suburbs, in a house with a fenced-in postage stamp for a lawn, where we could easily look into our neighbors’ windows if we wanted. We had a small driveway, but most folks parked their cars on the street. The sidewalks were cracked by the roots of the trees planted along the curb strip. At least they were shady, and they offered a reprieve from the sun as I biked to the nearby park.
The park had once been a complex with an outdoor pool and a playground. The playground remained, but the pool had been filled in once a newer one had been built a few blocks over with more amenities and an indoor section. Now there was a field next to the playground that the little kids played soccer on in the spring and fall. A buffer of tall trees separated the park from a busy road on the other side. The complex’s outbuildings remained, and they were a great place for Al and me to hang out when we didn’t want to be at either of our houses but didn’t have money to go anywhere else. Normally there would be a few other kids around as well during the summer, but since school had started, the playground and the surrounding area were empty.
I hopped off my bike and leaned it against the wall of the old clubhouse. Then I sat in a spot of shade, the wild clover tickling my ankles, and waited for Al.
I was lightly dozing when they finally arrived, striding across the field with a purpose. The sunlight illuminated their curly hair like a halo, and their thick-heeled boots left deep impressions, flattening the uncut blades of grass. Al appeared uncharacteristically serious, and my body thrummed with unpleasant anxiety.
“Hey,” they said, casting a glance over their shoulder. “You okay?”
“Yes,” I lied.
They settled next to me in the clover. Their gaze dropped to my hands, and they raised an eyebrow. “Liar.”
“Well, my best friend sent me a really cryptic message by raven this morning, so I’ve been a little keyed up.”
They pulled up a lump of grass with their hand. “Yeah. I just… I didn’t want texts on my phone about this. My moms could see, and they might accuse me of keeping you a secret from them.”
I furrowed my brow. “I don’t understand that at all.”
“Yeah. Figured you wouldn’t.” They took a breath and pulled at more grass. “Are you okay? Physically? Did you go to a doctor?”
“Yeah. I did. I’m fine.”
“No concussion?”
I shook my head. “No.”
They worried the leaves and stalks of the grass with the tips of their fingers. “I just wanted to rule out anything medical, you know? Like head trauma.”
I didn’t like the sound of that. I cleared my throat. “I’m really fine, Al. I have a bump and I’m bruised, but nothing that would’ve caused… that. ”
They nodded. “Okay. Here’s the deal. I looked through some of my moms’ scrolls, and well, visions aren’t rare.”
I blinked. “They’re not?”
They shook their head. “No. People supposedly have them all the time.”
Relief flooded my body. The stress and anxiety from the last two days melted away from my bones, and my joints went lax. My head thumped against the wall of the building; the painted wooden slats scratched against my T-shirt. The exhaustion crept in around my eyes, and I could totally take a nap right then. “That’s amazing. So it’s not out of the ordinary?”
Al bit their lip. “No. It’s surprisingly normal for people to have visions, especially in dreams. That’s where the whole déjà vu phenomenon comes from.”
“Okay. That’s so great.” I smiled shakily, feeling a little loopy. “So why the weirdness? Were you just being mysteriously witchy today?”
“Because you didn’t just have a vision, Cam. You had a psychic interlude, otherwise known as a glimpse.”
I stiffened. “What?”
“I asked Danny what happened.”
My body twitched. “You talked to Danny?”
“Yeah. Be proud of me. It was a whole moment .”
I was impressed. Danny was the most laid-back of the three brothers, but that didn’t mean he was easy to approach. They all possessed an untouchable aura of importance, which was a combination of their high school social standing, paranormal status, and the fact that all three of them were unfairly gorgeous. “What did he say?”
Al took a breath. “He said you were slammed into the lockers during the fight, and when you hit the floor, your eyes were open, and you were muttering. The fight stopped immediately once people realized you were hurt or were… something, but you wouldn’t respond to anyone. Danny and a few other people tried to wake you out of it, but you were in a full clairvoyant state. And then you went limp and passed out. That’s when he took you to the nurse.”
I buried my face in my hands. My skin was hot against my palms as I flushed in both embarrassment and despair. All my fears about the incident flooded back in; my shoulders tensed, and my muscles bunched. “Oh my gods.”
“Cam, while psychics have the ability to do a lot of amazing things, like read auras and sense things beyond the physical, not many of them can go into a clairvoyant trance like you did. That’s an extraordinary skill.”
I gulped. “It is?”
“Yeah. The ability to see a glimpse of the future is really uncommon. And what Danny described to me is exactly how the scrolls described it too.”
“Did he know…” I trailed off.
Al winced. “Oh yeah. He literally asked me if I wanted to know about the fight or your glimpse when I walked up to him. And that’s not all.”
I groaned. Pulling my knees to my chest, I rested my forehead on the ripped fabric of my jeans. What could be worse? Everyone had seen me in some weird psychic state. Not to mention that I had witnessed a girl gruesomely dying.
“Cam,” they said, tugging on my sleeve. “Are you listening?”
“I don’t want to know.”
“Yes, you do. Seers are extremely rare. Divination is one of the hardest and most difficult talents in the witch community. And according to the Psychic Guild website, most psychics aren’t clairvoyant.”
“Kind of like how all pineapples are fruit, but not all fruit is pineapple.”
They snapped their fingers. “Exactly. All clairvoyants are psychics, but not all psychics are clairvoyant. Divination as a discipline takes years of study and work. And most people use an instrument to offer insight into a possible future, like tarot cards or palms or even tea leaves. Then they counsel the people who seek them out. It’s an important function in their respective communities. The Psychic Guild has a whole class specifically designed for non-psychics to understand the intricacies of foresight.”
“That’s nice of them, I guess.”
“Part of their educational outreach. Anyway, people who have actual psychic interludes, like the one you had, are one in several million. The last verified seer in this area died a century ago.”
“Verified?”
“Someone who has accurate glimpses.”
“Wait. They can be inaccurate? They can be wrong?”
Al sighed. “Yes.”
I shot up from my slump. “What? So there’s a chance the glimpse I had was incorrect.”
Al shrugged. “I mean, there’s a greater chance it’s false than true. That’s what the scrolls said.”
That was great. If what I saw wasn’t accurate, then… that’d be awesome. The best outcome, even.
“There’s also, like, so much more,” Al continued. “Like what triggered your glimpse, and how can you control it, and how to know if what you saw will come true.”
I shuddered and covered it by running a hand through my hair, gingerly touching the knot on the back of my head. It was still swollen and tender. “I hope it’s not via head injury,” I said. “That would suck.”
Al gave me a wry glance. “I read that it could be through touch, though.” At my confused look, they sighed. “You flinched away from me after school.”
“So?”
“So maybe that’s what triggered it, and your body reacted via sense memory. Did someone touch you in that fight?”
“Yeah, about a dozen people. The people who hit me, the people who tripped over me, the person who helped me up the first time… I couldn’t see any of them, though. Everything was a blur.”
And the girl in the vision… I didn’t recognize her at all. Was she a classmate? Holy shit, had she been part of the fight yesterday? Had she touched my hand, leading me to see her horrible end? Bile gurgled into my throat.
Al nudged my shoe with the toe of their boot. “Cam, what did you see?”
I swallowed. And with my eyes squeezed shut, I told Al everything. Exactly what I’d witnessed. All of it. How it felt. How it smelled. What I’d heard. Every little detail.
I didn’t realize I was crying until I stopped and took a stuttering breath, a sob caught in my throat. I opened my eyes and wiped away the stream of tears that had slid down my cheeks.
Al stared at me in silent shock. They reached out to touch my hand but paused before their skin touched mine. They clenched their jaw, placed a comforting hand on my clothed shoulder instead, and squeezed.
“I’m sorry. That sounds so disturbing.”
I chuckled humorlessly. “Yeah,” I said, my voice flat. “It was. So what do I do now?”
Al gave one last squeeze to my arm and released me. “Well, it depends. What do you want to do?”
Run. Ignore it. Crack a joke. Go back in time and not flee from a tough conversation in the lunchroom and get lost and end up in that hallway and subsequently get swept up into a fight. But I couldn’t go back in time. And I couldn’t ignore it. That was someone’s possible future, and… and… I had to know if it was inaccurate or, gods forbid, true .
“I don’t want this ,” I said, waving my hands, indicating the possibility of being clairvoyant. “But I can’t ignore what I saw.”
“I agree.”
I bit my lip. “Maybe we figure out who the girl is and warn her? And tell her not to go wandering around at night near a forest. Just until we can figure out what’s going on with me.”
“Okay. We can do that.” Al tapped their chin, lost in thought. “The school library probably has old yearbooks from the other high schools. We can look through them and see if we can find her. If she’s from the area, she’ll be in there.”
“That’s not a bad idea.”
“Well, I only have good ones.”
I rolled my eyes. “Okay. Do you think the library is open now?”
Al shook their head. “Oh, no, friend. You look like hell. You’re going home to rest. We’ll go tomorrow after school.”
“But what if it happens tonight?” I threw up my hands. “What if—”
“You said the breeze was cold, right?”
I paused. “Yeah.”
Al spread their arms, palms up, and tipped their head back, their face upturned to the sun. “Does it feel cold to you right now?”
No. It was hot. And the air was muggy and dead. Not a ruffle of a breeze in sight.
“Good point.” But just in case, I checked the weather on my phone. The next few days were supposed to be hot and stale, with very little chance of rain. Not at all like the weather in my vision. That was a welcome relief. “Okay,” I said.
“Get some rest.” They gave me a reassuring smile. “It’ll be okay, Cam. We’ll talk more tomorrow.”
Okay. We had a plan. That was better than what I’d had that morning. And even though I still felt awful and guilt sat heavily in my gut, at least I could look forward to a brand-new day and a fresh start at school.