The Mark (17 page)

“Look,” I said, feeling my face start to burn, “the truth is I had already tried and it didn’t work. The day Nan died. I saw it on her, the doctors ran all kinds of tests. But how could they know? It could have been anything. If I couldn’t stop it for her, with so many people trying, how could I stop it for anyone else?”

Lucas stared at me, frowning. “That’s it, Cassandra? One time? You tried once and gave up?”

“I didn’t give up,” I said defensively. “Besides, even if I’d thought I could change things, who says I’m supposed to? What if it’s not the right thing to do?”

“Right for them or for you?”

“Are you calling me selfish?” My tone told him I was outraged, but really I was as angry and frustrated with myself as I was with Lucas. His interrogation was bringing up all the things I’d been struggling with these many months. Things I’d wondered about, but did nothing, not nearly enough, I thought now, to explore.

“I’m just wondering, Cassandra. I don’t understand your objection. You have the power to save lives.” He asked again, “Why wouldn’t you?”

The way Lucas said it, it seemed so simple. Why wouldn’t I?

It was then that it struck me—I had let that girl die. I’d known I might change things, had done so for Lucas, but had chosen to stay silent, following her down those dirty New York sidewalks to her fated destination. Watching as she jumped. I felt monstrous. Is
this
who I am?

Still, something held me back from wanting to dive headlong into rescuing everyone marked by the light. What about what was meant to be? Fate? In my gut, I knew there was more. Had to be, or I was just a coward. Or worse. “What if I’m not supposed to tell?”

“What do you mean?”

“What if … this mark … is really meant just for me to see?”

“Why would it be? Meant for you by whom?”

“I don’t know. God?”

“Ridiculous,” Lucas said. “Do you think God would give you an ability you weren’t meant to use? Is a gifted pianist meant not to play? An artist not to paint? It doesn’t make sense, Cassandra.”

“So I’m to save these people? God put me here, with this ability, to hold off death for the people of Bering, Kansas? Does that make sense, Lucas?”

He shrugged.

“And what, might I ask, would you say? Hi, I’m Lucas and today’s your day to die?”

“I’m not in your shoes, Cassie, so I’m sure it’s easy for me to say,” Lucas said quietly, “but I’d like to think I’d figure something out.”

I stared at my food angrily.
How dare he
.

“Listen.” Lucas leaned in, speaking softly. “I know it’s hard, but don’t you think you should at least consider it?”

“What could I have done for that girl, Lucas? She already knew it was her day to die.”

He nodded. “I thought about that. But maybe if you had talked to her, you’d have realized the problem, could have told someone else.”

I snorted. “Right. In a five-minute conversation I could have deduced that she was suicidal.”

“Well, don’t forget, you had a head start. You knew she was going to die. Surely you considered that possibility?”

I remembered the train rushing into the station, thinking she might jump. I said nothing.

“Maybe nothing would have come of it,” Lucas acknowledged. “Maybe you wouldn’t have figured it out. But maybe you would.”

“And if I had, then what? If I knew her, maybe I could have helped, reminded her that people cared or that things’ll get better, but honestly, Lucas, why would she believe a total stranger? Why would she even stop to listen?”

He shrugged. “Maybe she wouldn’t have, but you don’t know. Maybe just talking to her about death would have scared her enough to make her reconsider, Cassie.” He continued, “What you do know is that it couldn’t be any worse, right? I mean, she was already going to die. Anything would be worth trying, wouldn’t it?”

It was hard to disagree, but I wasn’t ready to agree either.

“Think about what you’re saying, Lucas,” I countered. “What would that mean for me? Following people around, trying to convince them they’re about to die? They’d never believe me. Think about how you reacted. You thought I was nuts, and you know me.”

“But I listened,” he said, “and I’m still here.”

I was silent.

“It won’t be easy, Cassandra. You’re right about that. But you’re strong. It’s one of the things I admired about you, what drew me to you. I would never have pegged you as one to take the easy way out. Especially about something as important as this. Don’t you see?” he said earnestly. “This is it. Your purpose. Maybe mine too. Helping you use this extraordinary gift.”

I knew then that this was more than a conversation. It was an ultimatum. And maybe he was right. Maybe it was as simple as helping people and I was taking the coward’s way out. “All right, Lucas,” I mumbled, struggling to say the words. “I’ll try.”

He beamed. “You’re making the right decision, Cassandra. And I will support you a hundred percent. I want you to tell me all about it: who you see, what you say to them, how they react …” He rambled on, about how incredible this was, about destiny and meaning. I stopped listening, already dreading the days ahead, actually doing what I’d just agreed to.

Finally Lucas stood, collecting our trays, smiling at me. “We’ll do it together, Cassandra. Together we’ll find a way to turn this into the best possible good.”

I stayed with him that night. I should have been thrilled, but there was something different in the way he looked at me. I used to catch him watching as I read or dressed or cooked, but his expression now was as if he were watching a rare but dangerous animal: intrigued, drawn, repelled, and above all, cautious. He smiled when I caught him looking, but it was without warmth. Calculating.

“Remember,” he said the next day as we were leaving the apartment, “if you see one, you can call me. I’ll come help you or if I’m too far, we can talk through what you should say. I’ll keep my cell on vibrate during meetings. I’ll see you in class.”

I hadn’t studied for that day’s lesson, only skimmed the reading. It was the first time I’d slacked, but with all that had happened, I just couldn’t do it.

After class, I barely had time to collect my books before he was at my side. “Did you see anything?” he whispered urgently.

I shook my head.

“I’ve got the afternoon free,” he said. “Let’s go look. We can go to the mall or in town to the square …”

“I can’t, Lucas,” I lied. “I promised Doug I’d help him with some stuff at the shop.”

“I thought you were off today.”

I shrugged. “We got some extra orders; he asked if I could help with restocking, inventory, you know.”

“What time will you be finished?”

I had to squeeze past him to get through the door. “Not sure,” I said. “I’ll call you.”

chapter 23

He wanted to be with me all the time. I was less a girlfriend than a project. Every conversation started with: “Did you see one yet?” He was disappointed when I said no, but he would have been equally disappointed if I’d said yes and failed to call him before the confrontation.

At Lucas’s behest, I’d been spending my free time haunting the most populated places of Bering: the town square, the shopping centers, even the strip of bars near campus at night. Lucas came with me for those excursions. In all our times out, I’d seen nothing, but I developed a persistent stomachache, my gut churning unpleasantly every morning at the thought of another day searching.

Finally I decided to give myself a day off. It was a Tuesday, Lucas’s busiest day on campus, so I knew he’d be less likely to hound me and I had the early shift at Cuppa, with the rest of the day free. It was mid-August, still hot, but breezy, and I was determined to spend it away from the places I’d been visiting in search of the mark. I planned to read by my pond in the park, not for class, but purely for pleasure, something that felt in very short supply lately.

I was walking down the path toward the pond when I saw a woman pushing a stroller. As she came closer, what I first suspected was confirmed: there was a misty glow inside the hooded carriage, a mark on her baby. I slowed down, not wanting the moment to come when our paths would cross and I either would or wouldn’t do as I’d promised.

This was exactly the kind of untimely death that should be prevented, I thought, gritting my teeth. My mind raced, working through the things I could say, but she was nearly upon me and I was so nervous that I knew I wouldn’t be able to stammer anything coherent. She smiled pleasantly. I glanced inside the stroller. The baby was small. An infant, wrapped in a blanket monogrammed JDS, sleeping peacefully amid a pool of light. And then she was past.

“Excuse me,” I said, too loudly.

She turned back. “Yes?”

“I … I …”

She looked concerned. “Are you okay? Do you need help?”

I shook my head. “I … This is going to sound crazy,” I said hoarsely, “but I think something’s going to happen to your baby.”

She drew back sharply, as if I’d threatened her. “What are you talking about?”

I held out my hands, trying to soothe. “I don’t mean to scare you. I … I’m a little bit psychic. I can see things sometimes …” She was backing up, angry and afraid.

“Stay away,” she said shrilly, looking around for help. “Don’t get near me.”

“No, no, I won’t.” This was going terribly. I had done it all wrong. She wasn’t even listening. “I’m just trying to help, to warn you. I think your baby might be in danger. Has …” I looked back at the stroller, trying to get the gender right, but she had turned it fully away and was standing in front, blocking my view. “Has he or she been sick?”

Her voice was low, barely controlled. “If you say one more word to me, I’m going to scream and then call the police. Do you understand?”

I nodded.

“There is nothing wrong with my baby, but there’s something
seriously
wrong with you. Get the hell away from me.” With that, she turned and practically ran out of the park, the stroller jouncing along in front.

I sat on the grass, shaking as I fumbled for my phone.

“Hello?” Lucas whispered.

“It’s me. I saw one.”

“Hold on.” He was back on the line thirty seconds later. “I left my meeting. Tell me about it, Cassandra. Is the person still there?”

“No. She left.”

“Did you talk to her?”

“I tried. It … it was a mess.” I started crying.

“Oh, Cassie, I’m sorry. Where are you? I’ll come get you.”

“No, no, it’s okay.” I wiped at the tears and took a deep breath. “It was a woman. With a baby. The baby had the mark.”

“Oh.”

“Yeah. I tried, Lucas. I really did, but I guess I didn’t do it right, because she didn’t listen, she got scared and pissed …”

“Tell me what happened.”

So I did. When I was finished, he said, “I’m proud of you for trying, Cassandra. I know it wasn’t easy. Who knows? Maybe she did hear you. Maybe she’ll think about what you said later, when she calms down.”

That made me feel a little better. “Maybe.”

But she didn’t. Or, if she did, she wasn’t able to protect the baby anyway. We found his obituary two days later. Jacob Daniel Stern, four months old. Crib death.

Lucas left for school, but I stayed in his apartment, unable to drag myself through the routines that would get me to work on time. Did she think of me when she found her baby that morning? What had I done but compound her guilt about something she had little, maybe no control over? I wanted to bang my head on the table or scream my guts out. It was so unfair.

Lucas tried to cheer me up that night, but I could tell he felt it too. There is nothing poetic about death. It is ugly and awful, and the more time you spend around it, the uglier and more awful you feel.

“You’ve got to keep at it, Cassandra,” he told me in his “buck up, little camper” speech. “You tried. It’s not like you made anything worse. It was going to happen anyway.”

I was too exhausted and depressed to argue or tell him that I probably
had
made it worse. I had stayed in bed all day. Lucas brought me soup and tea for dinner and didn’t even try to make me get up.

I skipped class that week, called in to work too. I moped around Drea’s apartment during the times I wasn’t at Lucas’s. Drea had gotten over her brief bout of guilt or responsibility, whatever it had been, and was back to her usual absent self. They’d won a new client, she’d told me, were totally immersed.

Finally, by the weekend, I decided it was time to put it aside. Being at Cuppa helped. I dug back into my philosophy lessons too, anything to take my mind off what had happened.

On Sunday, five days after my day in the park, Lucas asked gently if I didn’t think I should try again.

“You know, get back out there, see if you can find another that you might be able to help.”

“I don’t think I can do it, Lucas.”

“Wouldn’t it help if it worked? Erase the sting of … of this last one?”

“And what if it didn’t? You saw how hard this was.” I shook my head. “I don’t think I’m cut out for this.”

“Cassandra, you’re the only one cut out for this. Who else has the ability? You’re stronger than you know. It’s hard, but …” I stopped listening, knowing how the speech went, having heard a hundred iterations of it already.

“Fine, fine,” I said, holding up my hands, anything to stop the barrage of words.

I could have just lied to Lucas, told him I didn’t see any. After all, more often than not, it had been months, even years between times I saw the mark. The truth is, as much as I dreaded having to talk to another one, I did wonder if Lucas was right. I mean, there had to be a reason I could see the mark, didn’t there? One attempt was hardly a fair test.

I read the coroner’s statistics: one hundred seventy-some accidental deaths a year in a population of over eighty thousand. I tried to figure out how many people I saw each day. Working at Cuppa alone—between customers and those who passed our window—the number had to be in the hundreds. Realizing that made me feel better, helped explain why I’d seen more here than in Ashville. Then, if I added making the rounds, as I’d come to call it—visiting downtown, the malls, the parks—I had to be hitting the thousands. It wasn’t like I needed to be close to the person. The light made them stand out, even in a crowd, like the girl in New York.