‘Um … we were talking about your skiing.’ I looked at Zed but he was whistling innocently as he wiped down the work surface. Too innocently.
‘Oh yeah. Wel , I don’t think I’l go the professional skier route. Got too much else I want to do with my life.’
‘I can imagine.’ But I wasn’t sure he meant it. It felt like an excuse to me.
‘I’m stopping as Colorado junior champion and retiring undefeated.’
‘And never lets us forget it,’ added Zed.
Something weird happened to the lemon at that point: it exploded.
‘Boys!’ Saul rapped on the counter.
‘Sorry,’ they intoned dutiful y. Xavier got up to clean away the mess.
‘No explanation, right?’ I asked. They confused me, these Benedicts, but just at the moment I wanted to laugh.
‘Nope, not from me. He’s going to tel you.’ Xavier chucked the rag at Zed. ‘Later.’ He made a sudden dash for the stove. ‘Sheesh, Zed, you’ve let it burn! I thought you said this was going to be the best yet.’
He grabbed oven gloves and dumped a slightly blackened pizza on the side.
Zed took a sniff. ‘It is. Only singed. I’m improving.’
Xavier hit him round the head. ‘What’s the use of being a know-it-al when you can’t even cook pizza?’
‘I ask myself that every day,’ Zed replied good-humouredly, getting out the pizza slicer.
After dinner, Zed suggested we went for a walk in the woods at the side of the ski run to burn off al that melted cheese.
‘Xav’s got clear-up duty as I cooked so we’re free,’ he explained, holding my jacket out for me.
‘Cooked? Is that what you did?’
‘OK. Charred.’
Taking my hand, he led me out of the back door.
The house had hardly any garden, just a fence before the end of a ski run and the bottom of the lift.
You couldn’t see the peak of the mountain from here, only the steep slope of the forest climbing above the cable car station, firs closely packed to form a carpet. I took a breath, the air cold and dry on the back of my throat, making my skin feel tight across my face. My head felt slightly muzzy, which I put down to the altitude.
‘Up or down?’ Zed asked, gesturing to the slope.
Best to get the worst over with. ‘Up first.’
‘Good choice. I’ve a favourite place I want to show you.’
We passed under the trees. Most of the snow from a light fal earlier in the day had slid off the branches, melting away to reveal the dark green of needles and lighter shade of larch. The air was clear, bril iant like the dazzle of a crystal bringing the stars into sharp relief against the sky, pinpricks of light. We took it slowly, winding our way through the trees. A little higher and we hit snowdrifts, edging down the mountain as winter made its claim.
‘Snow doesn’t stay lower down til around Thanksgiving,’ Zed explained.
We walked on hand in hand for a few more minutes. He gently brushed my knuckles through my glove. I found it strangely sweet that this boy, reputed to be the toughest nut in Wrickenridge, seemed content to walk like this. He was intriguing in his contradictions.
Unless, of course, Tina was right and he was just being what he thought I wanted. Way to go, Sky: how to spoil a lovely moment.
The snow was now ankle-deep and my val ey shoes were not doing a very good job at keeping my feet dry.
‘I should’ve thought,’ I grumbled, kicking a clump of ice off my canvas toe cap before it could melt through.
‘My sight isn’t much help for practical stuff like that
—sorry. Shoulda told you to bring boots.’
He was one strange boy sometimes. ‘So, what powers do you think you have, aside from the telepathy thing?’
‘Various, but mainly I can see the future.’ He paused at a particularly beautiful spot, a clearing in the forest where the snow lay deep and pristine.
‘Wanna make an angel?’
He dropped it so casual y into the conversation, I was stil reeling. ‘You go ahead. Don’t let me stop you.’
He grinned as he tumbled back into the deep snow, waving his arms and legs to make an angel shape.
‘Come on—I know you’re going to.’
‘Because you can see?’
‘Nope, because I’m gonna do this.’
He sat up quickly and tugged me down beside him before I had a chance to brace.
Wel , now I was here, I had to make an angel, of course. Lying on my back, looking up at the patch of stars, I tried not to let my worries about being a savant and the possible danger coming for me sour the breathtaking beauty of the forest at night. I could feel Zed beside me, waiting for me to make another step towards him.
‘So what can you see?’ I asked him.
‘Not everything and not al the time. I can’t “see”
my family’s future, or only rarely. We’re too close—
there’s too much interference, too many variables.’
‘Do they do the same thing?’
‘Only Mom, thankful y.’ He sat up, brushing the snow from his elbows. ‘The rest have other gifts.’
‘You’ve seen my future? In that premonition?’
He rubbed a hand over his face. ‘Maybe. But if I tel you exactly what I saw, I might either change things or be the reason it happens—I can’t know that for sure. My sight gets more precise the closer I am to an event. I only know with any certainty something is going to happen a second or two before it does.
Yet it can go real y wrong. That’s what happened in the raft—by interfering I helped cause what I was trying to stop.’
‘So you won’t tel me if I’m going to be a good skier?’
He shook his head and tapped my forehead. ‘No, not even that.’
‘Good, I think I’d prefer not to know.’
The breeze rustled the branches. The shadows were deepening under the trees.
‘What’s it like? How can you bear knowing so much?’ I asked softly. He was my opposite in many ways: I knew so little about myself, about the past; he knew too much about the future.
Zed got up and pul ed me to my feet. ‘Most days, it’s a curse. I know what people are going to say—
how the film wil end—what the score’s going to be.
My brothers don’t real y understand, or don’t want to think, what it’s like. We’ve al got our own gifts to handle.’
No wonder he was having problems getting along at school. If he was always ahead of the rest, always knowing, then he would be weighed down by a terrible sense of futility, not being able to change outcomes, like the pizza burning. It made my head hurt just thinking about it. ‘This is al too weird.’
He put his arm round me, tucking me under his shoulder. ‘Yeah, I get that. But I need you to understand. You see, Sky, it’s like, I dunno, I suppose a bit like being in a lift with muzak. It’s playing away in the background but you don’t notice until you pay attention. But from time to time, I get a sudden trumpet burst of things. Scenes play out. I don’t always know the people or understand what they mean. Not until later anyway. I may try and stop things but they usual y just happen in a way I didn’t anticipate. I try to block it out—I can for a time—but once I forget it comes back.’
I decided it sounded more like a curse than a gift.
He’d be a little ahead of everyone when he tuned in.
Then I realized.
‘You bloody cheater!’ I elbowed him in the ribs.
‘No wonder you are unbeatable when you pitch or kick goals!’
‘Yeah, it does have that fringe benefit.’ He turned to me and smirked. ‘Helped you out, didn’t it?’
I remembered the fluke save. ‘Oh.’
‘Yeah, oh. I sacrificed my perfect goal scoring record for you.’
‘Hardly—you scored, like, twenty or something.’
‘No, real y. What are people gonna remember about that match? That I scored loads or that you saved that one? I’m never gonna live it down.’
‘Idiot.’ I swatted him.
He had the gal to laugh at me. ‘That’s done it. I’l have to distract you again before you hit me a second time.’