I thought I’d be happy, thankful even, to know the true reason behind my visions. Now I wish I’d never sought the answer. Never gone to see Dr Farrow. Never met Porter at the cafe.
Audrey stirs when she notices I’m beside her. She stretches her arms above her head and rolls over to face me. “You’re home early.” Her keen gray eyes notice something’s wrong right away. “What is it?”
I shake my head and press my face into the pillow. It smells like Gran’s lemon verbena and Pops’ pipe smoke.
“Did you have another bad dream?”
Audrey’s the only person I ever told about the visions. I told her they were dreams so I could go into all the details without sounding like a complete psycho. She always liked hearing about them, but I don’t want to talk about this one. If I could have it my way, I’d forget it ever happened.
“No,” I mumble. “Felt sick so I came home.”
She smooths my hair from my face. “Did you call Daddy and let him know?”
My reply is a groan in the pillow.
“OK, OK,” she says. “I’ll let you be.” She’s quiet for a minute or two, then says, “Except…”
I lift my head. “What?”
“Weren’t you supposed to walk Claire home from school today?”
Applesauce.
BIG SISTER TIME
I make it to Claire’s school only a few minutes late. She’s at the playground hunched over on a swing, twisting around in circles, then spinning free. All the other kids are filing onto school buses or into their parents’ minivans.
I stick my fingers in my mouth and whistle for her, and her head pops up. She scoops up her pink backpack and races toward me. Her super straight chestnut hair swings behind her.
“You’re late,” she says.
“I know.” I start back home the moment she catches up. “I got sick. I left school early.”
“Did you call Daddy?”
I groan again, this time out loud. At least I have two annoying sisters to help keep my mind off Blue and Porter.
“When are you going to get your license?” Claire asks, half-jogging to keep up with me. “You need a car. Madeline’s sister has a car. She picks her up every day.”
Madeline’s sister is none other than my bestest friend in the world, Tabitha. “Well, Madeline’s sister doesn’t have to pay for her car. So that makes it easy.”
“It’s a convertible.”
“How nice.”
“It’s black.”
“Ah, the same as her heart.”
We turn a corner and continue down a tree-lined sidewalk. Blazing yellows, oranges, and reds pave the path under our feet.
“You could fix up an old car like you did for Daddy.”
Even though I appreciate Claire’s confidence in my fix-it skills, I still reply with, “I don’t think so.”
“Why not?”
I push my glasses up. “Because I’m not going to waste money on something I’d hardly ever use. I like walking.”
Claire kicks at the leaves in front of her. “I hate walking.”
“Then you buy a car.”
“Hey, look,” Claire stops and waves at a car headed our way. “That’s Madeline’s sister.”
I pull her arm down, but her other one shoots straight up.
Tabitha pulls up beside us in her black BMW convertible, one wrist resting on the steering wheel. Her blonde curls lift in the wind, then settle around the shoulders of her too-tight cashmere sweater.
Jensen Peters sits in the passenger seat.
“Hey, Wayfare,” he says with a half-smile. I expect the sound of his voice and his attention to make my stomach flip like it usually does, but it doesn’t affect me at all. If anything, it makes the sting of what happened with Blue hurt even more. “What happened back there in Mr Draper’s class? You OK? Do you need a ride?”
Tabitha slides her diva sunglasses down to the tip of her nose. “Yeah, Wayspaz, need a ride?”
Claire leaps up to the side of the car. “Yes! Can we ride home with you and Madeline?”
Tabitha shrugs like it’s OK with her, but I pull Claire back. “Absolutely not,” I say. “You don’t get into cars with strangers.”
“They’re not strangers,” Claire says. “They go to our church and your school.”
“That hurts, Wayfare,” Jensen says with a pretend pout. “I thought we were friends.”
Friends. Right. Didn’t he know it was his rumor that started me on this all-expenses-paid Freak Ride at school?
“She wishes,” Tabitha says with a laugh.
I give her a sarcastic smile, thinking of all the ways I can turn her BMW into a heap of scrap metal. If only I had a socket wrench…
“Oh, come on,” she says, draping her arm across Jensen’s shoulders. Her manicured fingernails play with the honey blond hair at the back of his neck. “I’ll give you a ride. No skin off my nose.”
Claire jumps for the car again, but I snag her by her backpack. “No, thanks.” I pull her away and start for home.
“Have it your way, Freak.” Tabitha peels away from the curb, but her trademark insults don’t bother me as much anymore. Once you’ve been in a gang fight, been shot at with Tommy guns, traveled to Limbo and back, had your first kiss erased from existence, and let a friend die because you couldn’t save him, a few stupid names are a drop in the bucket.
Just a few blocks from home, Claire says, “Madeline said you can’t drive because you have seizures.”
“Oh, give me a break. Not you, too.”
“She also said if you had a car, you’d want to ride on Jensen’s lap in the back seat.”
“What?” I stop short and stare at her.
She shrugs her shoulders up to her ears. “I don’t know. That’s just what she said.”
“You better not repeat that to Mom and Dad.”
“Why not? Is it bad?”
I push her out in front of me so I can walk by myself. Big sister time is so over.
PORTER, THE HACKER
By the time we get home, I’m so confused and frustrated and annoyed that I don’t notice Mom’s car in the driveway. Claire runs inside to catch her stupid after-school TV shows, and I almost smack right into Mom when I walk through the kitchen door.
“What’s wrong?” I blurt out, knowing something’s up right away. She never comes home early. And it couldn’t be because I cut class. Dad never calls in reinforcements for things like that. So it must be about Audrey.
I bristle at the thought. Audrey looked fine when I left to pick up Claire, but what if I was too busy thinking about Blue and hating on Porter that I didn’t notice something was wrong? “What happened?”
“Nothing happened,” Mom says, palms out to calm me. She must know what I’m thinking because of the panic written on my face. “We just had a security breach at work, that’s all.”
My entire body sags in relief, and I slump against the kitchen island. She wraps her arms around me, and I lean into her, feeling exhausted all over again.
“Audrey says you got sick at school today.” She smooths my hair from my forehead. “You feel warm and clammy.”
“I feel horrible,” I say, which is the complete truth.
“Why don’t you go rest until dinner? I’ll call you when it’s ready.”
I nod and trudge toward the doorway, but I don’t leave the kitchen just yet. I lean against the doorframe and watch her grab a box of taco shells from the pantry and a package of ground beef from the fridge. I love seeing her like this. Making dinner. Doing something a normal mom would do. Something mundane. “What was the security breach?” I ask. “Everyone OK?”