Touched (14 page)

I drove back home at a slug’s pace. It was the middle of the day on the Saturday before Labor Day, and though some of the rich folk with summerhouses had already packed up and gone to their winter residences, the tourist activity was in full swing. I kept imagining the Buick plowing into beachgoers with their brightly colored umbrellas and beach chairs, which always brought me back to Bryce, at graveside, weeping. Which brought me back to Emma. The day she died, something big had been set in motion. I couldn’t get it out of my head that whatever had started needed to happen, that it was right. That it was my punishment.

When I got home, the first thing I did was run up the stairs. I already had my tie and jacket off, but I starting ripping at the buttons of my shirt as soon as I got in the door. I was halfway up the stairs when my mom called to me. “What?” I snapped, still clawing at my chest.

“We were just wondering where you’ve been. We were worried,” she said, all innocent. It made me all the more angry because she knew very well where I’d been. Whenever she was even the least bit worried about anything, she’d just think into the future and find out the answer she was looking for. She couldn’t not look.

“You know,” I muttered, slamming my bedroom door behind me. At that moment, I hated her. Hated her for having to meddle with everything instead of just taking things as they came.

I threw my sweaty, dirty clothes in a heap by my hamper and lay on my dump-truck sheets in my gym shorts, staring up at the cottage-cheese ceiling. With the door closed, the room felt like an oven, but I didn’t care.

I thought that getting away from Taryn would do it. She’d never want to talk to me again after that, right? But no, as I lay there, I could still see my future with her, so clearly it had to be real. I knew so much about her, and could feel that she was the peg in my life that held all the pieces together, and without her there, everything seemed to be loosening. I hadn’t really even cycled much. But though I knew her as if I’d spent a lifetime with her, for some reason, I still couldn’t see anything more than a few weeks into the future.

As I was contemplating what it all meant and what I could do, the door opened, blowing an ocean breeze into the room that dropped the temperature twenty degrees, making me shiver. Nan walked in. “Honey bunny?”

“Yeah?” I snapped. I was so angry at Mom, it was carrying over to Nan, even though she’d done nothing wrong.

“How was the funeral?” she asked, sitting down on the side of my bed.

It was a stupid question. Coming from anyone else I would have told them that. Instead I just rolled over and answered her. “Like a funeral.”

Then she saw my face. I hadn’t looked in a mirror, but my check still felt raw from where I’d been punched and smashed into the ground. She reached out her hand, but I flinched. “Who did that to you?”

I laughed bitterly. “Okay. It was like a funeral … with a gang fight thrown in for added excitement.”

“What is going—”

“Mom didn’t tell you? I found out why we’re like this. There’s a stand on the boardwalk where a freaky lady sells spells called Touches. Mom spent a crapload of money to be given a Touch that would make her able to see the future,” I said, watching with satisfaction as Nan’s face stiffened.

“Who told you this?”

“A girl named Taryn. Her grandmother gave Mom the Touch.” I exhaled.

Her face didn’t change. “Is this the fortune-teller you were talking about yesterday?”

“Yeah.”

“That still doesn’t explain why your face looks like it was—”

“She effed up my life. I hate her.”

“Who?”

“Mom! Who else?” I clutched handfuls of the sheet and threw them back down. “She knew it was her fault. She knew all this time and she never told me. ‘Hate’ is too nice a word.”

“Oh, you don’t mean—”

“Yeah, I do. I really do.” I sat up and touched my face, thinking about how she was even responsible for that. For everything bad in my life. “All this time, I thought Dad was the bad guy. That he was somehow responsible for our messed-up lives. Now I totally get it. He’s normal. I don’t blame him. Hell, I would have left, too.”

She shook her head. “No. Well, I don’t know what went on between your mom and dad. But I do know that when your mom became pregnant with you, she changed. She was usually so crazy—she’d go on crash diets and drink and smoke and, oh, just about everything I’d tell her not to do. But when she found out about you, she quit smoking and drinking and made sure she ate well. She worked on the boardwalk and she used to bring a container of fruit and a bottle of water with her so she wouldn’t have to eat the greasy food up there.” She smiled. “You were—you
are
everything to her. Whatever she did to you by getting this—this Touch, as you call it, she didn’t mean it.”

I studied her. I knew what she was doing. Trying to keep the peace. She wouldn’t let me think my dad was the bad guy, and she’d do anything to keep me from thinking my mom was a villain, too. “But my dad—I mean, you met him, right? What’s he like?”

She gave me a surprised look. On the rare times I talked about my dad, I always did it with a glower, with hate, and she would always reply, “Your dad was a good man in a bad situation.” But coming from her, “good” meant nothing. To her, nobody was downright bad. You could steal her purse and whack her over the head with it, and she wouldn’t think you were bad. And she’d say the same thing about a roast she picked up at the supermarket. “It’s a good piece of meat.” It meant zero.

Now, she opened her mouth, and I knew what she was going to say, so I stopped her. “But what was he like?”

“You got your eyes from him. And your dark skin. I only met him a handful of times. The first time, he made quite an impression. I could see why your mother was charmed by him. He had that wild side to him, too. He was a rocker. The typical teen back then. Had blue hair. Wore tight leather pants. Pierced and tattooed all over. Your grandfather almost threw him out of the house!”

I knew some of this, but before, I didn’t care. Before, I wished I could have emptied my head of any bits of information that had to do with my father. Now, I listened intently. He was wild. Nothing like me. I wondered if I might have been the blue-haired rocker type had things been different.

“But he was an athlete, too. I remember he played basketball. He had all sorts of talents. And I liked him. Deep down, under all the tattoos and piercings, I knew he really loved your mom.” She looked down at the shag carpet, her mouth moving but no sound coming out, as if she was trying to figure out how to put her thoughts into words. “And I know that is why he left. He couldn’t stand to see your mom so weak. She was falling apart. It was difficult to see her so sick, so afraid. But it was as much the fault of your mother as it was his. She refused to speak to him. Partly she hated herself, but she also saw something in the future with him … something she didn’t want. So she shut him out, too. He left before you were born. But he was a good man in a bad situation.”

“You always say that he was a good man. Past tense.”

She sighed. “I think he desperately wanted things to work out between him and your mother. I don’t think he got over losing you both. I don’t know what happened to him, but he’s never tried to contact us since that day. I don’t know what your mother knows.”

Of course, Mom would know better than anyone. We had ways of finding these things out. Knowing her, she probably created futures in her head all the time that had her tracking him down. She was just so … She couldn’t leave anything alone. I sat there, surprised at how numb I felt. I guess nothing where he was concerned would matter to me now. He’d already been dead to me for too long.

“She didn’t tell you because she feels so terrible about what it’s done to you,” Nan said. “Haven’t you ever wished you could undo something in your life?”

Of course I thought of Emma. Of Bryce weeping at the graveside, of Mrs. Reese watering the asphalt. I’d ruined them. With one stupid decision, I’d ruined them all forever. When Nan patted my hand and left the room, I couldn’t get out of my head how strange it was that the smallest decisions in our lives can leave the biggest scars.

That night I had a dream. It’s not unusual for me to dream when I sleep, but it is unusual for me to sleep very much. This time I dreamt of slivers of pale blue light, breaking through a spiderweb in the darkness. Of glass raining down on me. Of me reaching for someone and grabbing handfuls of wet hair. Of pain.

I woke up with a scream caught in my throat. When I came to, I was sitting up in bed, sheets twisted around my legs. My hands were out in front of me, as if I was bracing myself for a fall. My heartbeat echoed in my ears.

It was just a dream. But it felt real. More like my future.

The worst thing was, I hadn’t been on script in days. I’d been ignoring most of the You Wills or doing the opposite of what they instructed, hoping to shake something up. But nothing had changed.

I’m not going in a car, I told myself.

Sometimes, all I needed to do to change the future was to convince myself I was going to change. When I saw the future of me at the dentist, getting all my teeth pulled because of too many butterscotch candies, I just told myself, “I will no longer eat them.” And the more I thought that, the more that memory of me at the dentist faded, became less real. So telling myself I would not drive a car should have worked. Instead, though, the memory seemed clearer. I could make out the pretty spiderweb pattern on the windshield, I could feel the zip of the seat belt on my chest, my fingers digging into the soft plastic seat.

But I am not going in a car. You got that? No car!

But there was no cycling. No new memories. Nothing to suggest that I’d changed the future. It was useless and crazy, arguing with my own mind. Like arguing with a girl. No matter what my position was, I could never win.

I changed my shorts and pulled an old surfing T-shirt over my head as I ran down the stairs. The You Wills whispered and I tried not to pay attention, but random things floated through my mind: unmentionables, lighthouse, fire-engine red. Something smelled like strawberries. When I reached the screen door, Nan was standing by the washing machine. “It’s laundry day,” she said, a tinge of defeat in her voice.

I realized why she was upset when I saw the cast on her arm and remembered her injury. Nan was one of those people who would keep chugging along even with every bone in her body broken. I rushed to her side, despite the fact that on the few occasions I’d helped with laundry in the past, I’d almost been scarred for life. Something about having to handle my mom’s and grandmother’s silky, giant underwear, knowing that Nan handled mine, hanging them up on the line outside for the whole world to see. I’d much rather believe they just dried and folded themselves and jumped into my drawer. But with one arm, Nan was pretty helpless. “Yeah, I can help.”

“Oh, perfect,” she said, to my dismay. She pointed to a big wicker basket of damp whites, all ready to go out on the line. Perfect. Her unmentionables, or at least, that’s what Nan called them.

“How is your arm feeling?” I asked, hoping she’d say it was miraculously cured and she could take off the cast. I wasn’t sure I could handle more than one week of laundry.

“Oh, fine,” she answered through gritted teeth. She waved me out the door.

I walked outside and grabbed the bucket of clothespins, then started with my socks. The easy thing. Unfortunately since I’d only gone running once this week, I only had one pair in the laundry. I moved on to my boxers, hoping that by the time I got to the more serious stuff, a rainstorm would come or the world would implode or something. I was just clipping the last pair to the line when the world did implode. Because she started coming up the pathway. Taryn. And here I was, surrounded by my underwear, all flapping happily in the breeze.

Okay, maybe a real man wouldn’t have felt weird about it. It was completely third grade to be embarrassed. But I was. Like I said, I didn’t have much real experience with girls. And it was embarrassing enough as it was, being accosted in my ugly backyard, which was all overgrown and filled with rusting, peeling patio furniture. There were faded green aliens and army men (you really couldn’t tell the difference) painted on the clamshells that surrounded the cracked walk. I’d made a bird feeder out of Popsicle sticks and that was there, too, lopsided and pathetic, by Nan’s garden. Nan saved every weird creative endeavor from my youth; they were valued trophies to her. The garbage cans were nearby, and they still reeked from the fish from a few nights before. All my surroundings reeked too much of me, of things I didn’t want Taryn knowing about.

She approached cautiously. She was wearing sunglasses and her hair was up in a bun, making her look older and even more out of my league. “Are you better now?” she asked. “I just came to check on you.”

Could she be any nicer? How many times would I have to freak out on her before she left me alone? But I was glad she was persistent. I was so happy to see her it was only then I realized one of Nan’s silky white skivvies had landed on my foot. I plucked it off and said, “Yeah, thanks. Thanks for asking.”

“Whoa, you don’t look better. What happened to your eye?”

I’d almost forgotten about the run-in with Bryce, despite the constant sting where his fist had met my temple. I thought maybe she’d been lingering to witness it, so I was glad to learn that she hadn’t. And I really didn’t want to go over it again. “Nothing. Just a minor misunderstanding with a door.”

She raised her eyebrows and I knew right away she didn’t believe me. But she gave me a pass. “So how are you doing?”

She had that look, the one doctors gave to their patients who only had three months to live. Like I was a charity case. Right. That’s probably what I was to her. She felt guilty about what her grandmother had done to us, and this was her way of making it up to me. “Why do you keep asking me that?” I said.

“I just”—she shrugged—“care.”

“That’s warped. I’ve been a total jerkwad to you. You should be running in the other direction.” I looked away, toward the clothesline, then mumbled, “Save yourself.”

“What’s that supposed to mean? You saw something. Something with me? That’s why you don’t want to see me anymore. Right?”

She was inspecting the shells on the ground. So while she wasn’t looking, I quickly flung the undies back into the wicker basket. She raised her head just in time to see them make a safe landing and raised her eyebrows again but said nothing. I played it off by nodding and saying, really nonchalantly, “Yep.”

“Bad, huh? How bad?”

I was still trying to block her view of the basket. I gave her a smirk. “Terror, pain. Death, dismemberment. All that good stuff.”

“Really?” She gulped.

I expected her to make herself scarce, like I had when I found out. Instead, she just stood there. Staring, directly, at the row of boxers behind me. “This is the part where you run away, screaming,” I prompted after a minute.

“Is it?” She seemed reluctant to move. Almost like she liked the idea of dying.

“Yeah. Why? You don’t want to?”

“Well, I was just thinking. You can change it, right? You said your future changes all the time?”

“Sometimes. Not always. Like my mom says, fix one thing, another breaks. And sometimes you can’t fix things.”

“Why?”

I shrugged. “I told you. I only see part of things. If I don’t know what’s wrong, I can’t fix it. And some things can’t be prevented.”

She frowned. “So what is it? A car accident?” I didn’t answer, but my face must have given it away. “Soon?”

“Pretty soon, I think.”

She covered her mouth with her hands. “Oh, my God. Not Beauty. I just got it, and my dad keeps getting on me because of what happened in Maine. He’ll kill me if I total my car!”

I waved her away with my hand. “So run away. Save yourself.”

But again she just stood there. I checked to see if she was growing roots under those pretty red toenails of hers. Then she just hoisted her bag over her shoulder. “I am not afraid,” she said.

I laughed. “You should be.”

“We can change it.”

I shrugged. “Not always. Not if we keep …” I stopped. Not if we keep running into each other. I didn’t want to say it. I didn’t even want to suggest it. “Look. This is not your fault. You don’t have to be nice to me. If there’s anyone you should be able to say no to, I’m it. Why don’t you start practicing?” I exaggerated the word. “
No
. Say it with me.”

She just stared at me.

“And then you turn and walk away.”

“You really think that I’m bothering with you just because I feel guilty?”

I nodded. “Isn’t it?”

“No. I like you, Nick. When you’re not being weird, I like spending time with you. That’s the truth.”

I shook my head. “I’m never not weird.”

“That’s not true. We had a good time on the boardwalk.” She moved closer, so her next words were almost whispered. “And listen. You know things about me. Things that you never would have been able to find out about me if you were a total jerk, through and through. If you were that person, if that was truly who you were, I would have shut you out. But for some reason, in some version of the future, I let you in. I let you get close to me. Right? That proves to me that there is good in you.”

I considered it for a moment. “Maybe in that version of the future, you were stupid. Maybe you kept trying to convince yourself there was good in me, even though there wasn’t. I’ve done really stupid things in some of my futures. I know how to freebase coke,” I said, thinking of my short life in Vegas, married to the stripper. “That’s pretty stupid.”

She shook her head. “I know you’re pushing me away just because you’re trying to protect me. That’s a noble, good thing.”

I just stood there, unable to meet her eyes. Unable to meet the eyes of the one person on this earth who knew me better than I knew myself.

“And so your vision says we are going to be in a car accident. If that can’t change, if we are doomed to this future, then how can you know me so well? Maybe because we don’t die in it. Or maybe because that future isn’t set. Maybe seeing two different versions of the future. You just need to pick the right one. The one that doesn’t end in tragedy.”

It’s obvious she’d put a lot of thought into it, and she was probably right.

“All I am saying is that you don’t have to shut me out completely.”

“That would be taking a chance.” I swallowed and looked away. “I’m sick of taking chances.”

“But I’m not,” she said, looking over her shoulder. “Look. You said that touching me made you feel normal. Right?”

I sighed. “It’s a joke. I’m not normal.”

She frowned and started to speak again, but thankfully, just then, a car horn blared. She looked behind her nervously. “I do have to go.”

“So, go,” I said, surprised at how gruff I could be. I wondered if it would be the last time I’d ever see her. If so, I wouldn’t blame her. That would be the smart thing to do.

But that would kill me. In other ways.

She turned and walked back down the path, her head lowered. I felt this weird sense of dread in the pit of my stomach, like a hole inside of me gaping open. I reached down to pick up the wicker basket and when I stood up, I saw a car speeding away from the house, a red convertible. Sphincter’s Mustang. Two blond heads, a his and a hers, poked out from the front seat. Sphincter and Taryn. Taryn and Sphincter. No, he didn’t have his arm around her and her head wasn’t nestled on his shoulder, but in my mind, as soon as the car turned the next corner, it would be.

That wasn’t the future. That was just me.

Being paranoid.

Being a sucker.

Watching the best thing I’d ever had, in any of my lifetimes, moving farther and farther away.