Chapter 8
8
W HY IS EVERYONE STARING AT me?” I whispered to al as we walked to our first class. At first I thought I was imagining the low murmur that followed us, but when the first freshman we passed whipped her head around so fast that her braided pigtails became projectile weapons, I knew something was up.
I’d done my best to get some rest. And by that I meant I’d laid in bed all night and stared at the ceiling and counted the little glow-in-the-dark plastic stars I’d stuck up there as a kid that had lost all their glow several years ago. There were thirty-seven of them, and there was no rhyme or reason to the pattern—no constellations or galaxies, no order except the whim of an eight-year-old—though my actively anxious brain tried to conjure one the entire night so that I wouldn’t focus on the horror of the glimpse.
Since the whole “resting” thing had not gone as planned, I’d watched a few video tutorials on how to hide under-eye circles with makeup. I may have been humiliated the first day of school and absent the second and third, but this fourth day was my do-over, and I wasn’t going to look like walking death. Even though I felt like it.
“Hate to break this to you, bestie,” Al said out the side of their mouth, “but you’re the tornado spinning the rumor mill.”
“Oh my gods.”
“That fight will basically be the talk of the school until it’s replaced by something bigger, so just be your normal, nonchalant self.”
“Just the fight?”
Al’s jaw clenched. “There’ve been murmurs about the other stuff. I mean, psychic interludes don’t happen in school hallways often.”
Right. I should’ve known the account of my glimpse would be just as interesting as the fight, if not more. Especially among the paranormal kids, if what Al had said about the rarity of interludes was true.
“But it’ll fade, Cam. Just don’t freak out, and no one will make it a big deal.”
Okay. I could do that. RBF engaged. Hopefully something juicier would come along shortly, and I’d be knocked off the list of the top five people talked about in hushed whispers by the lockers and water fountains. I needed some power couple to break up or someone to cheat on a test. Oh, please let a student make a morally dubious decision before lunch so I can eat my square pizza in peace.
Unfortunately, none of that had happened by the time I walked into my second block. I ducked my head and slid into my seat, tucking my backpack beneath my desk. I hooked my feet in the basket beneath the chair in front of me and pulled out my notebook and a pen. I was early—keeping my head down and engaging in a celebrity-in-an-airport walk through the hall had allowed me to arrive before everyone else. Al’s don’t-bother-us glare had been impressive and scared anyone from approaching us in first-block lit class, but they weren’t with me now.
As a few other students entered, I curled around my book and hoped I exuded enough of a standoffish vibe to ward off questions and classmates. That hope lasted five seconds.
Someone tapped my shoulder from behind.
I closed my eyes and pinched the bridge of my nose. I could ignore it, but that might seem weirder than just finding out what the person wanted. I mentally shook off my nervousness and put my cool exterior in place. Slowly I turned and met the wide-eyed gaze of Kaci, Mateo’s touch-happy girlfriend. Great. Was she going to ask me about the conversation I’d had with him three days ago? The one I had neglected even telling Al about? I’d hoarded the moments of that endearingly graceless interaction we’d had and kept it close to my chest as the rest of that day became public knowledge.
She regarded me with a blank expression, her green eyes flicking to the side every so often like she was distracted. I glanced that way as well and only caught the last of our classmates filing into the room. When she didn’t speak for a moment, I raised an eyebrow.
“Yes?”
“Let me know if you need help,” she said simply. She brushed her long strawberry-blond hair over her shoulder and tapped her pencil against her book.
“Oh. Thanks.” That was surprisingly friendly and not at all what I thought she’d say. “I wouldn’t mind your notes from yesterday if you can share.”
“Oh,” she said in return. Her voice had a quiet, dreamy quality to it—ethereal in an unfocused way. She lightly touched her throat with her fingertips. She had long, manicured nails; I unconsciously clenched my fists and tucked them into my lap to hide my own nails, which I had bitten jagged. A faraway smile stole across her face, her freckled cheeks bunching into pink apples. “That’s not what I meant.”
I gulped. “What did you mean?”
“You’re spirited. Like me.”
I wrinkled my nose. “Spirited? Like a cheerleader?” She slowly tilted her head in confusion. I added, “?‘Rah-rah, go Saints!’ school spirit–like stuff?”
She laughed. “No, silly. ‘Spirited’ as in ‘psychic.’ I can help you with your psychic abilities.”
I blanched. I could literally feel all the color leaching from my face as my mouth flapped open. “What?” I asked weakly.
“I’m a psychic too.” She leaned in closer as if imparting a secret. “Among us psychics, we use the term ‘spirited’ because we believe souls are the source of our powers.”
“Whose souls?” I asked, parroting her conspiratorial tone.
“Ours. And sometimes others’ .”
I floundered. My thoughts flopped around like a dying fish on land. What? She was a psychic? Um… “spirited”? Not a werewolf? Could she be both? Was that possible? I snapped my mouth shut and tried to gather myself. So much for remaining cool. I took a steadying breath. “Look, I don’t know what you heard. But I’m not—”
“I’m a medium,” she said, cutting me off with a delicate wave of her hand. “I see ghosts.”
“You see ghosts.” I said the sentence slowly, punctuating each word with wild incredulity. Because this string bean of a girl with a cute smile and shy demeanor saw ghosts.
“Yes. I see ghosts. Spirits. Souls.” Her focus flittered away again, then settled back on me after only a moment. “There’s one right over there in the corner,” she whispered, her hand cupped around her mouth.
My whole body went cold and rigid. I craned my neck, but of course I didn’t see anything other than a poster about polynomials.
“You should think about joining the Psychic Guild,” she continued, as if she hadn’t just tilted my worldview. “We’re a great network, though we haven’t had a clairvoyant in our ranks in quite a while. Clairvoyants are rare, you know.”
I gripped the back of my seat. Kaci saw ghosts. There was one in the room with us. She was a member of the Psychic Guild. She was “spirited,” whatever that meant. That was totally fine and normal.
“I’d really just like the notes,” I said.
She shrugged. “Sure.” She pulled out her phone and snapped pictures of her pages of notes from the previous day. “Can I text them to you?”
“Uh… okay.”
Her smile sharpened. “I need your number.”
“Right.”
There was no harm in giving Kaci my number. Right? Maybe?
“I’m Cam, by the way,” I said as I wrote my number on the top of her notebook.
“I know who you are.” Her smile grew, and then she winked. “I’m Kaci.”
My throat was dry. “I know.”
“Your best friend is a witch. And everyone thought you were a regular human. So if you do need help with your psychic powers, my offer stands. Even if it’s only to point you in the right direction for information.”
“Um… I’ll keep that in mind.”
“Oh, he’s coming over.”
“The teacher?” I asked, looking around.
Kaci shook her head, smiling wide. “No, silly. The ghost.” Her voice dropped into a whisper. “He’s sitting in Mr. Smith’s chair.”
And okay! This interaction had dipped into certifiably strange territory. When my phone pinged with the notes, that was my cue to end the conversation.
“Thanks,” I said, before flinging my body back around in my seat.
Her tinkling voice came a moment later. “You’re welcome!”
The bell rang, and our teacher entered the room, throwing his bag onto his desk and plopping into the chair.
I shuddered.
The good news was that I was able to dodge any other interaction with the student body until the bell rang, signaling it was time for lunch. The bad news was that there had been no other incident to incite raging gossip, so by the time I’d made it through the lunch line and secured my square pizza, the whispers that had followed me all day reached a crescendo.
I slid into the seat at the table I shared with Al. They sat across from me.
“So,” they said, drawing out the vowel before plucking a chicken nugget from their teetering stack. “How’s your day going?”
I shot them a glare. “Kaci sees ghosts, and my algebra teacher sat on one during class. How’s your day?”
Al’s mouth dropped open. “Are you serious?”
“As a heart attack.”
“Who is Kaci?”
“The girl who hangs out with Mateo. She sits behind me in class.”
“Wow.” Al shook their head. “Just, wow.”
“Right?” I sipped my soda, the edge of the aluminum can cool against my lips. “She’s a psychic medium, and she called us both ‘spirited,’ which is a psychic thing. I don’t know. What about you?” I asked while tearing off a hunk of pizza. A cube of pepperoni rolled onto my tray, leaving a trail of grease in its wake. I picked it up and popped it into my mouth, much to Al’s disgust.
“Well,” they said, ticking off their fingers, “I’ve learned that you only swooned during the fight to get Danny’s attention because he is objectively the hottest guy in school.”
I rolled my eyes. “No, he’s not.”
“He is.”
“Debatable.”
“Yes, we know you only have eyes for the youngest Lopez brother. But that does not negate the fact that two-thirds of the student population would gladly die to have Danny scoop them into his muscular arms.”
“Not so loud,” I hissed, leaning over. “There are ears everywhere. And some of them hear way better than others. Or so the internet tells me.”
They huffed. “Fine. Anyway. I also learned that you’re not clairvoyant and it’s all a ploy. That you are clairvoyant and have been hiding it your whole life. That you are completely inaccurate. That you have one-hundred-percent accuracy. That you predicted the end of the world, et cetera. And so on and so forth.”
Huh. Those rumors weren’t so bad. And technically they weren’t wrong since I didn’t know anything myself. And the more outrageous ones would only be believed by a handful of people. And Al was right. As long as I didn’t give credence to anything, they would eventually fade away.
“Hey.”
I startled so badly, I almost slid off my seat. Engrossed in my conversation with Al and subsequently my own thoughts, I did not clock the person who had sidled up. I recognized him as the potential friend Al had pointed out a couple of days before. When not hunched over his phone, the guy towered over the pair of us as he stood next to our table. I craned my neck to look upward; the fluorescent lights above cast a halo around his head. He had shaggy brown hair with bangs that flopped across his freckled forehead, wide shoulders, and an athletic build, and he wore a T-shirt with a professional sports team emblazoned across the chest.
He didn’t give either of us a chance to respond in greeting before he continued.
“You the psychic?”
He didn’t say it loudly, but all the air was sucked out of the lunchroom. It went so quiet that I swore I could hear the pen scratches of people still in class down the hallway. And I suddenly felt like the lead in a school play, where the heat and brightness of the spotlight were shining down on me, highlighting me only, while all eyes were glued to my every move.
So this was fine, in a room-on-fire-meme way. “Uh… I don’t see ghosts,” I said quickly.
He rolled his eyes. “But you’re clairvoyant, right? You can see the future?”
“Um…”
He didn’t give me a chance to gather my thoughts before he continued. “I have a basketball game tonight, and I need to know if we win.”
I exchanged a glance with Al. I know we had talked about embracing our futures and ourselves, but this was too main character for me. I frowned at them. They shook their head. I kicked them under the table. They shrugged. Which was no help at all.
“Is it basketball season?” I finally asked, my voice cracking. “I thought football was the fall sport.”
“It’s AAU. Not school.”
“Oh.”
“It’s an important game against the best team in the league, and”—he licked his lips, hesitating a beat before continuing—“there’s a lot of pressure to perform well.”
Ah, and wasn’t that the universal constant of being a teenager? The pressure to achieve. I wonder if he recognized the irony in saying that and then asking me to basically go into a clairvoyant state on command in front of dozens of people. If I could even do that. Could I do that? I had no clue. Despite my best judgment, I had done a brief internet search the previous night, but all it had done was confirm a few aspects of what Al had relayed, which then proceeded to freak me out.
I stood from my seat to at least be eye level with the guy’s chest, because crap, he was tall. “I hear you,” I said. I knotted my fingers. “But I’m not what you think I am. Seriously, it was a fluke. Okay?”
He clenched his jaw. A red flush crept into his pale cheeks. “That’s not what the rumors say. You had a psychic interlude in the hall the other day.”
I glanced helplessly at Al. They grimaced.
I cleared my throat. “Look, friend—”
“Dennis,” he interrupted, introducing himself and offering his hand.
Without thinking, I took it to shake.
His grip was a little sweaty but firm, which was great because in an instant, it was the only thing holding me up.
The lunchroom went dark. The lights cut out, as if that play I was the lead in had gone into intermission, and everyone and everything around me diminished into the background, muted until there was only me standing in the blue gloom. When the lights flickered back on, I wasn’t in the cafeteria at all.
I stood on a basketball court.
The crowd roared in my ears. Sweat dripped down my body. My uniform stuck to my back, and my chest heaved with breaths. Excitement and adrenaline coursed through me. The ball was a comforting and familiar weight in my hands. My teammates’ shoes squeaked on the glossy parquet floor as they darted and moved in an intricate pattern that must have been some kind of strategy. I glanced above at the clock winding down. Thirty seconds left in the game. I didn’t know how to play basketball, other than what I’d learned in middle school gym class. But I dribbled down the court, around an opposing team member who had a hand in my face. Well, I didn’t. Dennis did.
Dennis passed it to a shorter guy, who had put distance between him and his defender. The small guard stood just inside the three-point line. The clock ticked down. He faked a pass, stepped back on a dribble, and took the shot.
The ball arced in the air. It rattled around on the rim, then fell into the hoop.
The crowd erupted. The bleachers shook. The numbers on the scoreboard increased for our team. We’d won by one point! Pure elation swept over me. But wait—the referee had gone over to the scoring table, beckoning the other ref over. An anticipatory buzz swept over the gym as they conferred with the scorekeepers. I jogged over to the bench and stood with the team and the coach, confusion and dread swirling within my tired body. The referee blew a whistle; I glanced up at the display, and the score changed. The buzzer sounded for the end of the half. It was tied. Overtime. Exhausted and distraught, I collapsed into a chair on the sidelines.
And I woke up on the floor.
I blinked to find Dennis and Al hovering over me. At least I was upright: my knees bent in crisscross applesauce, my elbows resting on them, sitting in the thin crevice between two of the long tables. My head hung forward, my view more of Al’s boots and Dennis’s expensive sneakers than their actual faces, and I could tell from the pain spiking up from my tailbone that I’d fallen on the floor.
“Hey,” I said, my voice a rusty creak, squinting against the humming lights above as I lifted my gaze to the room at large.
Al muttered a relieved curse.
Dennis’s hands clenched at his side. “Do we win?”
Al cast him an incredulous look. “Really?” they shouted, gesturing toward where I limply sat. “That’s your only concern? You can’t even ask if he’s okay?”
Dennis’s thick brown eyebrows drew together. “Are you okay?” he asked me.
I nodded despite my pounding head. Nausea churned in my stomach, but I didn’t think the few bites of pizza I’d had were going to reappear.
He pointed at Al. “See, he’s fine. Do we win?”
Al rolled their eyes. They reached out to help me stand but paused and waited before touching my skin. Oh gods. I couldn’t do another one of whatever that was, so I waved them away, not wanting their touch to accidentally trigger another glimpse. I heaved myself to my feet, using the stools and table for leverage. I wobbled, but it wasn’t as bad as the other day. And as I stood, my headache eased from a painful throb to a dull ache.
“So do we win?”
I squinted. “I don’t know.”
Dennis threw up his hands. The crowd murmured. I startled, my body jerking. In my dazed state, I’d forgotten we were in the lunchroom, and I was surrounded by nosy observers. Someone had their phone out, filming. Great. My palms were clammy, and my head spun, and I wanted to ease back to the floor and take a nap with the abandoned floor fries and the gum stuck under the new tables.
Dennis fumed. “All those theatrics for nothing? What a waste!”
“Theatrics?” I asked, squinting at Al.
They wrinkled their nose. “Muttering.” They gestured at their eyes. “You went a little glazed too. And you did fall over.”
Well, yeah—I’d gathered the falling piece. I’d probably have a bruise. I wished I’d brought a hoodie to hide under, because I was unexpectedly freezing. I wrapped my arms around my body and shivered, goosebumps blooming all over.
“Sorry,” I said, despite not really knowing why I was apologizing.
Dennis ran an agitated hand through his hair. “Whatever. Should’ve known you were a fake.” He turned and walked away.
I wasn’t known for bouts of anger. I wasn’t known for overt emotions at all. But his dismissal pissed me off. How dare he? He’d bothered me during the one break we got during the day. And I didn’t understand all this myself, but I for damn sure wasn’t fucking faking.
“Hey, asshole!” I yelled, stalking forward, albeit with wobbly knees. “You approached me. I would’ve liked not to have a whatever-that-was in the middle of my lunch. And now my pizza is cold, so you’re going to hear what I have to say.”
Dennis stiffened, then slowly turned to face me. His eyebrows were raised. I walked right up to him, toe to toe, and wow, he was muscular and broad. This was a bad idea. Oh well. Too late now.
“And what’s that?”
“Overtime,” I spat. “It’s tied at sixty-seven at the end of the fourth quarter.”
Dennis stiffened. “What?”
“You heard me. That’s what I saw. Take it or leave it. I don’t care.”
“You didn’t see the end of the game?”
“No.”
He rubbed his chin. “Huh,” he said. Then he tried to grab my arm.
I skittered away, shoes slipping along the floor, until I knocked into the edge of the table. “What the hell?”
Al was in front of me in an instant, blocking Dennis’s path.
“Okay, that’s enough, Dennis,” Javi Lopez said loudly from the other side of the large room. He strolled across the distance purposefully, but he was smiling, like he didn’t have a care in the world. He tossed an arm around Dennis’s shoulders. Javi was shorter than Dennis, but he possessed an aura of confidence and charisma that made him seem like the largest and most important person in the room. His presence dwarfed everyone else’s, and he instantly defused the situation with a quip and a grin.
Javi gave Dennis a friendly but rough shake, and then turned to the cafeteria at large. “Let’s all leave Cam alone. Go back to your lunches, kids. Nothing left to see here.”
Javi winked at me. My cheeks went hot.
“I thought he was suspended,” I said to Al.
Al shrugged. “For one day. Everyone said he tried to stop the fight. So the administration thought it was only fair to give him one day instead of three.”
I hummed. That wasn’t quite how I remembered it, but Javi was coming to my rescue now, so I couldn’t complain.
Miraculously, the entire student body listened to him. They went back to their lunches, and the general hum of conversation returned to normal.
I sat back in front of my pizza. It was cold and floppy, the grease having soaked into the crust completely. Oh well—I had lost my appetite anyway.
“Touch is the trigger, then,” Al said.
I sighed. “Looks like.”
“And you saw the basketball game? How did you control it?”
“I didn’t. That’s just what I saw.” I rubbed my hands over my face. “This is all so exhausting and strange.”
Al frowned in sympathy. They offered me a chicken nugget, and when I shook my head, they bit off the end of it.
“When it happens, what does it look like?”
“It’s weird. I saw the game through Dennis.” I frowned at my lunch. “Like I was him on the court. Because I for sure can’t dribble and pass, so it wasn’t me . And I felt what he felt—the excitement, and the worry, and…”
Wait. I had seen this glimpse because it was what Dennis’s future self would experience. But the other glimpse… that hadn’t been from the girl’s point of view. It was the experience of someone who had been there, who was seeing her in that field. Someone who frightened her, someone she’d begged to… stay away? Leave her alone? Someone who held a knife.
Al snapped their fingers. “Earth to Cam. What’s wrong?”
“The girl,” I breathed.
“Yeah?”
“She couldn’t have been the person who touched me in the hallway.”
Al cocked their head to the side. “Why not?”
“Because I didn’t see the vision from her point of view. It was from someone else’s.”
“Who could it have been, then?”
My blood went cold. I couldn’t believe what I was about to say. It sounded like something out of one of those teen drama shows that I secretly watched, but… it was true. It had to be true. All signs pointed to this conclusion.
“Cam?” Al prodded. “Who?”
I gulped. “Her murderer.”