Seers (2 page)

My heart stopped.

I felt it pound feebly for the last time, and then nothing. It was like a ball of lead in my body—lifeless, hard. There was no air in my lungs.

No life in my limbs. No thoughts left to think.

Nothing . . .

And there on the roadside, alone in the middle of a crowded battlefield, I died.

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One

Present Day

New Mexico, United States

I stared in the mirror, frowning deeply at my reflection.

Perfect. The first day back to school, and my makeup had never been so reluctant to cooperate with me. Once there was a time I would have been completely devastated by this. I would have seriously considered staying home. Just a week ago, I wouldn’t have bothered with the makeup at all.

But today was different. It had to be different.

I fought to even out my mascara, then gave a last finishing brush to my foundation. I scooped up my long dirty blond hair into a high ponytail, held it there a minute, then decided to leave it down. I’d always wanted thick hair, but I’d inherited my mother’s thin and soft locks. They bounced around my shoulders as I let them go, finally settling just under my shoulder blades. With one last glance in the mirror, I sighed and turned, leaving the small bathroom behind.

I stepped into the hallway, moving for the large staircase. I kept my eyes on the steps as I descended, but even without looking I could imagine perfectly the pictures that hung on the wall.

The snapshots of my life had always been the same—same frames, same memories, same people.

Me and my younger sisters, gathered around the inflatable pool in the backyard, from five or six summers ago. Skipper, our

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old golden retriever, had been caught in the background. It was the last picture we ever got of him, before he died. Next on the wall came Jenna’s first piano recital, then Josie’s first soccer team.

Me, showing my first watercolor painting, next to a picture of Grandma and Grandpa Stevens. Then the Bennett family, one Easter day years ago, complete with Grandma and Grandpa Bennett. (Grandpa Bennett was giving me bunny ears.) There was nothing surprising in the collection of pictures; every aspect of every snapshot was familiar.

Hanging on the center of the wall was the largest portrait. It depicted a kind father, skinny and bookish looking, small glasses perched high on his long nose. A woman stood at his side, her slightly curled hair billowing past her shoulders in gorgeous dark blond locks. She had a small face, and bright blue eyes. Their three daughters stood in front of them, each beaming in simple joy.

That was the picture I was avoiding most of all, and I refused to even glance at it as I reached the bottom step. I pulled my lips back into what I hoped resembled an easy, confident smile, and then I moved toward the back of the house.

Grandma Bennett was frying eggs at the stove, and Grandpa Bennett was sitting at the kitchen table, reading the paper. They both looked like their son—thin, and bookish. They were in their mid sixties, and had moved in the day after the accident.

Grandpa looked up when I came in, but didn’t set aside the paper. He only craned his neck around the side of it. He smiled at me, the wrinkles on his face pulling tighter together as he did so.

“Hey, how’s the most beautiful girl in the world?” At his warm words I felt my smile grow a bit more genuine, and I had to admit that as awful as things were I was grateful to have my grandparents. While I took the seat across from Grandpa I tried to think of a witty reply. And if not witty, then at least believable. I didn’t want them to know how much I was struggling right now.

But before I could think of a good reply, Grandma turned 8 K • • •

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around to answer her husband. “I’m doing very well, Henry.” Her voice was low and just a little rough. It was one of the most comforting sounds in the world, and no one could read “If You Give a Mouse a Cookie” better than her.

“She loves me,” Grandpa whispered conspiratorially to me, then ducked quickly behind his paper; chuckling as Grandma shook her spatula in his direction.

I watched Grandpa behind the paper, and Grandma turn back to her cooking, and it wasn’t hard at all to imagine two different people doing the same tasks. Once it would have been Jenny Bennett at the stove, and David Bennett would have been the one crouched behind the day’s newspaper.

I swallowed hard and ordered myself to stop. Today wasn’t going to be like this. I wouldn’t let it be like this. Only, it was so hard not to think about them, because their memory was still so alive . . .

To distract myself from unwanted emotions I reached for the pitcher of apple juice sitting on the table. While I poured myself a generous amount into one of the waiting cups, Grandma lifted the pan off the heat and carried it over to the table. As she dumped the scrambled eggs onto an empty plate she finally spoke. “How’d you sleep, honey?”

“Good,” I lied easily, before putting the glass to my lips.

She didn’t seem to notice the lie. “I’m glad,” Grandma smiled, scraping the rest of the eggs off the pan with the spatula. As she turned back toward the stove she paused to grunt at her husband.

“Henry, put that down while the girls eat. The world and all its troubles will still be there.”

“I’m nearly done,” his voice grumbled from behind the paper.

I grabbed the top bowl from a small stack on the table and pulled the plate of steaming eggs toward me. I spoke automatically, “Thanks grandma. It smells great.”

“You’re welcome, honey. Have you seen your sisters yet?” I started to shake my head, but then we all heard the loud

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barreling down the stairs, and the shrieks of eleven year old girls in harsh competition.

“No fair, you started on the second step!”

“You started moving before I said go!”

“You had the head start!”

“You’re the one who moved first!” I held my glass of juice and watched as my sisters burst into the kitchen, not seeming to care that they were making a spectacle of themselves. They were twins, but dressed nothing alike. Jenna preferred pinks and lime green. Josie stuck to blues and browns.

Jenna spent her time reading and playing the piano, and Josie played basketball with the boys next door. They were identical, physically, except that it was always easy to tell them apart by their noses. Jenna’s was straight and perfect, while Josie’s was a bit crooked. She’d broken it playing football when she was eight.

Josie reached the table first, and snatched up a bowl before sitting next to Grandpa. Jenna was still glaring at her twin. “You started on the second step!”

“You moved first,” Josie countered with a shrug, heaping the eggs high.

“Only to make it fair!”

Josie shook her head and grabbed for the juice. “You cheated first, loser.”

Grandma put the pan back on the stove and spoke in her too-cheerful voice. “The next one to make a sound helps with the dishes.” We all knew what that voice meant—she was serious.

The twins might have their disagreements, but where work was concerned, they both agreed that it was best avoided. They were quieted instantly, and instead settled for mute glares as they both got their breakfast.

In the sudden silence, Grandpa’s page turn was amplified, and Grandma spoke without turning away from the sink. “Henry, you’ve just won a date with the dishes.”

“Hmm?” Grandpa asked, distracted.

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The twins snorted into their food, and even my smile was real.

For a fleeting moment. But all too soon reality came back to me, and I was that depressed girl again.

Everything in this kitchen was exactly as it had been my whole life—except for two major differences. My parents had been replaced by my grandparents—a huge change in anyone’s book. And then there was the other major difference—also a pretty big one, if you ask me. Because, ever since the accident, I’d gone psychic.

At least, that’s the best word I’d come up with to describe it.

(Psychic was better than insane, anyway.) Ever since I’d woken up in the hospital, I could see auras. At first, I tried to tell everyone—

my grandparents, the hospital staff. But then reality set in, and I realized that they might not let me go home. Unless, of course, I assured them that everything was normal. So one morning when the doctor gently asked about my new ‘sight’, I pretended I didn’t know what she was talking about. They all assumed it had been related to some kind of head trauma, and a week later I was sent home.

I’d actually grown pretty used to it. The perpetual swirl of colors around people was now almost easy to ignore. And so now—two months later—as far as my family was concerned, I was perfectly normal.

Only one other person knew about my strange new vision, and that was my best friend, Kellie Pearson. (Or Lee, as she’d preferred ever since the third grade, when Jimmy Bates had teased her for being girlie. Lee had beaten him up to prove her point, and also changed her name.)

But though I pretended to be normal, I knew I wasn’t. After almost an entire summer of ignoring the strange light show, and the gold lining that everyone had around them, there were still times that I couldn’t help but focus on the auras that revealed so many emotions.

Jenna was shoving a piece of toast in her mouth. The usual

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thin golden thread outlined her body, and the blue color of content swam around her body. Josie looked much the same, sipping her juice. Only mixed in the blue was a tinge of red. I’d come to think of that as her competitive streak. It was almost always present in her, even when she was asleep.

Grandpa was still hiding behind his paper, but his visible curling fingers were surrounded by many colors. Green, which I’d come to decide was uneasiness, mixed with blue and flecks of yellow happiness. It was easy to imagine that whatever he was reading was making him worry—or maybe he was thinking about the accident, too. I didn’t need to see auras to know that Grandpa thought often of his son’s untimely death.

Grandma was as she always was. Equal amounts of blue and yellow. And then—just at the edge—gray. She was still mourning the loss of her only child, and though she was a positive person, that sadness never left her completely.

Not for the first time, I glanced down at my own arm. But all I saw was the regular lightly tanned skin. For some reason, I couldn’t see my own aura. At first, I’m not going to lie, I felt a little cheated by this fact. But, later, I decided that it might be for the best. It would only be depressing to see what I was feeling: gray, more gray, some brown for pain, and then maybe the smallest bit of white—hope that things wouldn’t be like this forever. That someday I would wake up and think of something else other than the car accident. That my first thought in the morning wouldn’t be covered in pain and loneliness.

“You girls better hurry,” Grandma called from across the kitchen, breaking through my thoughts. “You don’t want to be late your first day back.”

s

I drove the twins in my car. It wasn’t anything fancy—an older and slightly rusting Hyundai Elantra, maroon in color. My parents had given it to me for my seventeenth birthday. At one time it had 12 K • • •

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been new, but that time was long past when they’d bought it. But it was fairly priced, and surprisingly reliable. All in all, I loved it.

The girls took their regular places in the backseat, and I pulled out of the driveway carefully. Some people would probably consider me a boring driver, because I was so cautious now, so slow, but I would never take car safety for granted again.

“Pass me your iPod,” Josie demanded, leaning forward against her seatbelt.

Without taking my eyes off the road, I waved a hand toward my backpack, sitting on the seat beside me. “It’s in there.” Josie groped for the backpack, and finally managed to drag it into the back seat. I heard the zipper pull and seconds later my sister let the bag thump to the floor. “Any requests?” Josie asked, already tapping and sliding her fingers on the dial.

“No Taylor Swift,” Jenna said, nose buried in a book.

Josie found what she was looking for, and leaned forward to plug in the iPod. Seconds later the beginning strains of “Love Story” filled the car.

“Make it stop!” Jenna groaned.

I ignored their ensuing argument, not bothering to point out that they were both missing the song that had inspired the fight in the first place. But all of this was usual, so I ignored them with little effort.

I drove down the residential streets of the subdivision, heading to Lee’s house. I’d been picking her up since the day I first got the car, and I had to admit that I felt the nostalgia. Here we were, starting our senior year in High School. All too soon this routine would end; we would graduate and move onto college. Our lives would go their separate ways.

As if I needed another excuse to feel depressed.

Lee had been my best friend since second grade, when my family first moved in. Though our personalities were as different as night and day, we understood each other. Lee always made me find something to laugh about, which was an invaluable talent

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lately. Her parents were divorced, and she lived with her mom.

Every couple of months or so Lee would go through a new fashion phase. Summer had been the 70s for her, with the occasional 60s outfit thrown in. (She actually made a really good hippie.) This month she was rocking the Gothic style. Next time? No one really knew. My personal favorite had been the Twenties. Lee had not only worn the beads and dresses, but even the hats. She looked like she’d just stepped out of an old silent movie. That bespoke the type of dedication people just don’t see today—except maybe in terrorists, or nuns.

I pulled up to the familiar house and in seconds Lee was closing her front door and crossing the yard. Her hair had once been brown; of course, it had also been blond, white, blue, purple, and magenta. Today it was black as pitch. It hung in long sheets on either side of her face, which looked unnaturally pale due to all the makeup. She’d applied her makeup religiously, smearing black lipstick over her usually pink lips, and the shadows around her eyes were impressive. She’d even gone so far as to get a nose ring, which I thought was taking it a bit too far, personally. But that was Lee—she loved to make people stare.