Chapter Ten
“Vision - the ability or an instance of great perception, esp of future developments.”
Piper
I shut the door and leaned against it heavily, trying to calm the swirling emotions inside me. Of all things, that was the last thing I expected to happen to me today. Or any day for that matter.
He was just a regular guy—another customer in the diner, no one I would’ve normally paid any attention to.
Then he touched me.
The vision was so fast, so swift it would’ve knocked me on my butt if he didn’t have a hold of me.
Ironic, really, because the only reason I had the vision at all was because he was holding on to me.
It was just like before, exactly the same.
It was an abrupt vision—more of an image really—of a man with very dark hair and dark, serious eyes.
Those eyes were in direct contrast to the smile he wore on his face. It was a beautiful smile, full of joy.
And that was all of it.
So simple and I wouldn’t have thought twice about it if I had it any other time.
But there was nothing simple about this.
Because this vision belonged to someone else. To the man who died.
The fact that I had visions was something I understood as being different, an ability that not everyone (okay, no one) else had.
I had my first visualization at the age of fifteen and I really didn’t know what it was at the time.
And then I saw it happen in real time about two weeks later.
I didn’t understand how it worked and it took me a while to realize I only had a vision when I touched someone.
It took so long to figure out because it didn’t happen every time…
just sometimes. The visions were always about the person I touched and they were always a piece of something that was going to happen to them in the future.
Until now.
Right before he got hit by the bus, the man touched me—he caught me when I slipped. The vision came over me and the next thing I knew I was hitting the sidewalk. When my sight cleared, I saw him lying in the street, clinging to his last breath of life.
Yes, I was studying to be a doctor and I understood death.
I accepted it as a part of life. But watching the life drain from a man who was too young to die, watching his eyes, unfocused with pain, trying to focus on something—anything—was heart-wrenching.
I’d never felt that kind of loneliness before sitting there in the ice and the snow, knowing there was nothing I could do for him.
Knowing his last moments on Earth were full of pain and probably confusion.
Why? Why did he push me—someone he didn’t even know—out of the way like that? It was the most selfless thing anyone could ever do, and his heroic action was rewarded with death. Maybe that’s why the heroes of the world were becoming few and far between.
I hadn’t even thought of the vision until much later, when I was home and the numbness of what happened began to wear off.
It was over a steaming mug of Lipton Ginger Twist tea that I saw his smiling face again and I was caught off guard.
How could that possibly be his future when he was dead?
Why was I seeing him smile with happiness?
Since then, the vision haunted me. I saw it in my dreams. I saw it when I was awake.
It was never far from the surface of my mind.
Sometimes I clung to it, pretended it was a memory so I could think of the man who gave his life for me as someone other than the broken body I saw upon the ice.
I almost convinced myself that the vision had been my mind’s way of protecting itself, a way to give me something to hold on to after he died.
After all, it was much easier to accept his death when I thought of his smile rather than watching the life drain out of his eyes and seep into the cold street where he lay.
But then the vision came to me again. Not as something I remembered, not as something I thought about, but as a true vision prompted by touch. Except this time I was touching the wrong man.
How could that be? What did it mean?
I had no idea, but when he walked out of that diner tonight, I had to follow.
I had to know more about him. What was his connection to that man on the street?
Did he know him? Were they friends? I’d never seen him at the diner before, and I was certain I would’ve remembered him.
Maybe he knew his friend died on that street.
Maybe it was his way of remembering. Maybe he knew where the body was.
Except he acted like he didn’t know about the accident. But the things he said… sometimes I thought he spoke about that night.
We keep meeting like this.
His words drifted like smoke through the back of my mind.
I couldn’t help but feel like he was referencing when I slipped and the man caught me.
But how would he know? There was no one else on the street that night and the witnesses on the bus saw nothing.
The bus driver had been so frantic to stop the bus, he remembered only his own panic.
But I remembered. I remembered everything and there was something strange about that man. There was something about him I didn’t know, something I wanted to know.
And when I wanted something, I usually got it. I was a woman with a stubborn streak a mile long. It was only a matter of time before I figured out who he was and what this vision really meant.
* * *
I was standing beside the door waiting when I heard the knock. Bursting forward, I yanked it open. “Get in here!” I said as Frankie stepped inside.
“Gheesh, what’s the rush?” she asked, but added a little speed to her step. “Did you almost die again?” she demanded, spinning to face me. Her curls were wild, most likely from the wind, and her cheeks were red.
“Frankie!” I gasped. “No, I didn’t almost die again.”
She pulled off her red coat and threw it on the end of the couch, then sat down in the middle. She was dressed in a pair of dark denim jeans, a fitted T-shirt, and a bright blue blazer over top. The chunky black necklace around her neck was the gift I’d given her for Christmas this past year.
“Why are you still wearing that uniform?” she asked, wrinkling her nose at my waitress outfit.
“Huh?” I asked, looking down. “I guess I forgot to change.”
“You smell like the diner.”
“Who cares?” I said. “I had another vision,” I told her excitedly.
“That’s like an almost everyday occurrence, Pipe. Why would you call me over here for that?”
“I had it before. The night I touched the guy who got hit by the bus,”
“So you’re having visions now without having to touch people?” she asked, intrigued.
I shook my head. “No. I did touch someone. Someone else.”
“Tell me more,” she urged.
I explained about the guy in the diner, the things he said, about getting a ride home, and how the visions were exactly the same. When I finished I stopped my pacing and looked at Frankie who was still sitting on the couch.
“You asked a stranger for a ride home?” she asked, lifting her sculpted eyebrow.
“Yes. Who cares about that? Did you hear what I said about the vision?”
“Well, I care. I don’t really want to have to ID your body at the morgue.” She sniffed. But then she said, “So what do you think the vision means?”
“I don’t know.” I frowned. I couldn’t figure it out. “I was hoping you could help me.”
“I’ll help you if you take off that stinky uniform,” she said, standing up and pulling me along to my bedroom. I stood there while she opened up the door to the tiniest closet known to man and peered in. Her blond head reappeared moments later, and she said “Your wardrobe is pathetic.”
I rolled my eyes. We had this conversation hundreds of times. “I’m a struggling college student. I don’t have money for clothes.”
“Girl, you gotta get your priorities straight. I know you want to be some hero doctor, but you gotta look the part. Dying people don’t want to look at a fugly mess.”
I laughed. But then I thought about the man on the street. I wondered if he was able to see me before he died. Suddenly, it did seem important to look pretty.
Frankie must’ve noticed the change in me because she sighed. “It’s not that bad in here. We can find something.”
“Frankie. Will you help me?” I said, plopping down on the end of my twin-size bed.
She appeared again, this time with a scarf around her neck and several articles of clothing draped over her arms. “Of course I will; you know that.” She thrust a pair of jeans at me and a long-sleeved white T-shirt.
I stood up and stepped into the jeans, pulling them up under my waitress skirt. “Well, what I want you to do is kinda illegal.”
“Oooh. Do tell,” she sang as she dove back into my closet. I had no idea what she was doing because I had hardly any clothes.
“Well, he drives this really fancy car. It’s a Mercedes Roadster.” I began and I heard her gasp from somewhere in the closet.
“You’re just now telling me this? Is he rich? Is he cute? Does he have a brother?” Her words tripped over each other.
“I have no idea about any of that stuff,” I said. “Anyway, I was thinking—”
Frankie cut me off to say, “How can you know none of this? Have I taught you nothing?!”
“He wasn’t the talkative type,” I said, discarding my uniform completely and pulling on the T-shirt.
“He’s a serial killer. I knew it. He drives that car to lure in poor women.”
I laughed again. “Oh my God, Frank. You’re so paranoid. Will you just listen already?”
She sniffed. “Fine. But if you die, I’m not crying at your funeral.”
“You will too,” I argued.
“Fine. I will. But only a little.”
“Anyway,” I said, trying to get back to the subject. “I was hoping you could, you know, look him up, see where he lives?”
“I knew working at the Motor Vehicle Administration would be good for something someday, other than making me feel dead inside.”
She now had a hat on her head, three bracelets on her right wrist, and one glove on her left hand.
“What are you doing and where did you get that bracelet?”
She wagged her eyebrows. “I told you I could find something.”
“I got his license plate number when he drove off earlier. I’ll give it to you and you can look him up.”
“I’ll do it on Wednesday. My supervisor is off. She has an appointment to get the broom she flies on serviced.”
“You’re too much,” I said, giggling.
“I know you love me,” she said, stepping back from the closet. It was organized into outfits that all hung together with accessories and everything.
“How’d you do that?”
She smiled and draped the chunky knit scarf around my neck. “It’s a calling,” she said and sighed. “Come on, I’m taking you to a late-night movie. You’ve been working and thinking too much lately.”
“Can we get popcorn?”
“Sure, I already have it stashed in my purse. Candy too. That usher won’t dare try to search me after what happened last time.” She wagged her eyebrows.
I grinned at the memory of the very embarrassed usher’s face. “I’ve never seen any guy get so flustered in all my life.”
“It takes a special kind of man to handle all of this,” she said, motioning to herself. “He was out of his element.”
Most men were out of their element when it came to Frankie.
Most women, too. But she was the best friend I could ever hope for.
I wondered about what kind of information she would find on Wednesday.
I wondered what his name would be. Most of all, I wondered what I would do with the information when I got it.