The Fifty-Seven Lives of Alex Wayfare (6 page)

The blue-eyed boy turned his attention to me. He scanned me from head to toe, making me feel exposed. “Want to explain that?”

I tugged at my coat, wrapping it tighter around me. “What do you mean?”

He gestured at the crowd, which had begun to move on. “Everyone else has to pay. Why not you?”

I hated where this was going. Not only did I get in trouble in real life, but my visions had to follow suit as well. Why didn't I ever have visions of sunbathing on the coast of Fiji? Or hiking across the Isle of Skye? Or winning the Nobel Peace Prize?

I had to get out of there. The black needed to come now.

I shrugged both of them off with a wave of my hand and walked away. Maybe if I went back to that spot in the street, the black would close in around me and I'd be back in Mr Draper's class. I had never moved from the same spot in my previous visions. Maybe walking down the street made the vision last longer this time. Either way, I didn't want to experiment with the visions anymore. When I got home, I would tell Mom all about them. I'd tell her that she wouldn't have to worry, though, because once Dr Farrow finished her tests, she'd write me a prescription. Everything would be fine. I'd be normal. Claire wouldn't have a laughing stock as a sister anymore.

I made it back to the bakery and glanced at my reflection one last time. Some of my hair had fallen from my ribbon during that ridiculous struggle with Newspaper Boy. For the first time in my life, with my hair darker and my face thinner, I actually resembled Mom a little bit.

So different, yet still so very the same.

A strange nostalgic feeling tapped at my shoulder and called my name, but I shrugged it off and turned to step out into the street. Tires squealed and a woman's scream pierced the air.

Up the road to my right, a black roadster had swerved into oncoming traffic, and it was heading my way. While the other cars in the street careened out of its path, heaving to the side and almost tipping over on their tall, thin wheels, I stood rooted to the sidewalk, unable to move. I couldn't tear my eyes, or my feet, away.

As the roadster sped closer, two men hefted guns out the side windows and aimed the barrels right at me.

Only one thought crossed my mind.

Now would be a damn good time for this vision to end. 

CHAPTER 5

 

 

Before I had a chance to scream or run, the blue-eyed boy slammed into me, tackling me flat on my back. Wind burst from my lungs and the back of my head smacked the concrete. A blaze of white light flashed behind my closed eyelids, but the sharp, blinding pain was the least of my worries.

A barrage of gunfire rang out, and I stiffened beneath the boy, expecting the bullets to slash through his body and pierce mine. Instead, the windows of the bakery shattered, and a thousand razor-sharp diamonds showered down on top of us. I buried my face in the boy's neck, and a scream ripped from my throat as shards of glass and brick struck the top of my head and lodged in my tangled hair.

I'd seen enough gangster movies to know what a Tommy gun sounded like, but to hear one in person, to be so close you could feel the percussion of the bullets battering inside your ribcage…

That was something else entirely.

A dozen thoughts flashed through my mind as I clung to that boy, my muscles tense and cramping. The baker who shooed me from his window – was he dead? Were his customers bullet-riddled, their bodies slumped on the floor? What if the boy hadn't knocked me down? Would I have been shot? If I died in one of my visions, did I die in real life? Would Dr Farrow have a “perfectly logical” explanation for that too?

It felt like ages before the gunfire stopped and the roadster sped away, but as soon as it did, Blue Eyes pulled me to my feet.

“Run,” he shouted.

I ran.

I wasn't sure what we could possibly be running from now that the shooting was over, but it didn't take long to find out. The bakery exploded and I felt the pressure of the blast on my back as it shoved me to the ground. I hit the concrete, shielding my head with my hands.

Blue Eyes reached for me, finding my sleeve and fisting the material in his hand. More glass and brick plummeted down on us like thick, random raindrops. Only everything was hot. Scorched. My skin, my clothes, the sidewalk, the air.

My ears felt thick and full, like I was wearing those smooshy, expandable earplugs. My mouth was dry and gritty, and I tasted the salty tang of blood on my teeth. Every bone and muscle in my body felt cracked in half, and I wanted nothing more than for the vision to end. I wanted to see Mr Draper sneeze into the old handkerchief he carried in his back pocket and ask us what the billboard in The Great Gatsby symbolized. I tried desperately to summon the black by squeezing my eyes shut as tightly as I could, but my senses never left. I still felt the concrete biting into my palms and cheek, and how difficult it was to get one good, decent deep breath.

As the thickness in my ears faded, I could make out a dog barking nearby, men arguing, a siren off in the distance, a child crying. I slowly lifted my head, the pain of hitting it on the sidewalk sending a rush of dizziness through me. I tried to look around, but everything looked tilted.

Two strong hands took hold of my arms and hauled me to my feet, holding me steady as the world shifted, then came back into focus.

“Aw, geez. You're covered in blood.” Blue Eyes took my face in his leather-gloved hands, swept my hair from my eyes, and tilted my head in every direction, assessing the damage. “Can you hear what I'm saying?”

I nodded.

“What's your name?”

“Alex.” My tongue was a blob of wet sand.

“That's a boy's name.”

I rubbed my jaw. “Yeah. It's also a nickname.”

“Short for something?”

“Duh.”

“‘Duh?'” He scrunched his nose. “What day is it?”

“October twenty-third. Tuesday.”

He frowned. “You hit your head harder than I thought. Come on, I'll take you to Doc Stein.”

Blue took two long strides, pulling me along, but I stopped and wriggled my arm free. “No, it's all right, my head's fine. I don't have a concussion.”

He wrinkled his brow. “A what?”

“I'm fine. I just need to sit down.” And wait for the black.

He hesitated, searching my eyes. Then he reached out and pulled a piece of glittering glass from my hair. “All right, but you tell me if you feel faint or you need to throw up.”

I nodded again. He took my arm, gently this time, and led me around the corner, down a back alley to a stack of wooden crates. He pulled one down and helped me sit on it, then leaned beside me against the wall of the building. He crossed one ankle over the other.

We stayed like that for a long while, me taking in slow, shuddering breaths and staring at my boots, him rolling that piece of glass between his gloved fingers.

I just couldn't get over what happened. I'd never witnessed such public violence in my life. Back home, they said we were desensitized to violence, us modern American teenagers with our graphic movies and video games. But now I knew that wasn't exactly true, at least for me. I was so far removed from violence in my cushy home, in my cushy city where police patrolled day and night, in my cushy world where lawmakers did their best to keep criminals off the street. No amount of blood and gore on screen could've prepared me for the true horror I'd just experienced.

While I felt paralyzed with shock and fear, the boy who saved my life appeared unshaken. Maybe violence was like germs or allergies. If you exposed yourself to real violence, did you build up a tolerance against it? Were these drive-by shootings normal for him, living in a time when gangsters ruled the streets and cops craned their necks the other way?

I stole a glance at Blue. He was watching me. When my eyes met his, a memory, faint and sort of sweet, tickled the outer reaches of my mind, and I felt the unmistakable sensation of déjà vu. It made my stomach dip. I was just about to ask if I knew him from somewhere, but he spoke first. The memory fluttered away on a breeze.

“I'm sorry you had to see that,” he said.

I swallowed, trying to get rid of the wet sand feeling. “Does that – this sort of thing – happen often?”

He tossed the piece of glass in the air, and we watched it hit the ground and roll away. “Not often, but it's getting worse.”

“Were those men gangsters?”

He slid his back down the wall and sat on the ground, his arms propped on his knees. “They work for the Cafferelli Brothers. The Cafferellis think they own the whole damn neighborhood.”

I'd never heard of the Cafferelli Brothers before. Al Capone and Bugsy Malone, sure. But Cafferelli? “Why would they attack a bakery?”

“Sloan's isn't exactly a real bakery.”

“You mean it's a front? For liquor or something?”

He nodded. “Sloan tried to do business on his own, but when the Cafferellis found out, they wanted a cut. They've been at odds for months. Which is why I'm curious…” Blue lifted his handsome face up at me. A swipe of dark stubble lined his jaw. “Everyone around here knows to stay away from Sloan's. Why didn't you?”

I kept my head down and stared at my boots. Keeping my eyes focused on one spot seemed to help with the dizziness and the shock. My throbbing toe didn't matter much anymore compared to my throbbing head. “I'm not... from around here.”

“Where are you from?”

“Annapolis.”

“Maryland? Really? What are you doing in Chicago?”

Chicago. Was that where I was? I knew the accents sounded a little off from what I was used to on the East Coast, but I wouldn't have been able to peg it on my own. I'd never been to Chicago.

“Just visiting,” I said. I pulled a few more pieces of glass from my hair. They were tinted pink with blood. I looked Blue in the eye. “Are they – those people I saw in the bakery – are they dead?”

He glanced away, which was answer enough. I played the scene back over in my mind, and there was no other way to reconcile it. If it hadn't been for Blue, I'd be dead along with them.

“You saved my life.”

He gave a half-hearted shrug and said nothing. I could tell he didn't want me to make a big deal out of it. So I just sat there, pulling glass and brick from my hair, wondering how sick my subconscious must be to come up with such a horrifying vision. And what did it mean to have this hot guy come to my rescue? I bet Freud would have something to say about that one.

After a long while, Blue asked, “Feeling any better?”

The wet sand feeling seemed to have moved to my ankles and feet, making my legs heavy and somewhat still immobilized from shock, but I thought I might be able to stand. I nodded and he pushed himself to his feet. “Where are you staying? I'll walk you.”

I took his outstretched hands and stood up. My muscles shuddered and felt like oatmeal. “Shouldn't you talk to the police before we leave? Give them your statement?” I asked.

His eyebrows shot up his forehead. “Are you nuts?”

“I thought you of all people would want to. You were all Defender of Justice at the newspaper stand.” I wobbled, and he gripped my elbow to steady me.

“That was different.”

“Yeah, that was a newspaper and these are human lives.”

“You really aren't from around here, are you? I can't go to the cops. They know me. They'll rat me out.”

“So you're just going to walk away?”

“Yep. You point the way.”

I stood there, staring at him, trying to think of what to do next. I guess I didn't necessarily have to talk to the police. If Dr Farrow was correct and this was just a hallucination, then I didn't have to do anything. And if I was correct and my visions showed me things that really happened in the past, then how would my witness statement make a difference? The explosion had already happened. Those people were long dead.

I didn't know what to make of it all. I just wanted to forget about it and find a way out of the vision. “I think I can manage on my own from here,” I told Blue, “but thank you. For everything.” I paused so he knew I was sincere, then willed my oatmeal feet to move down the alley.

Within seconds, I heard his footfalls behind me. “Wait,” he said, catching up. “I'd really feel better if you let me walk you home.”

What was he, a compulsive gentleman? “Really, I'll be fine.”

He hurried in front of me, his hands out, making me stop. “Look, Cafferellis' thugs? They saw you. With me. That means you're in trouble. And it won't matter to them that you're a girl.”

Maybe not, but it wouldn't matter at all once the vision was over. I stepped around him. “Don't worry,” I said. “The Cafferellis won't lay a finger on me.”

I rounded the corner, Blue trailing my heels, but we stopped short the moment we saw the bakery scene in full. Glass covered the sidewalk in a lace veil of winking ice. Spots of blood mingled with the glass, and I remembered what Blue said. Aw, geez. You're covered in blood.

Was that my blood on the concrete?

I reached up and my fingers skimmed over a knot forming at the back of my head. Even that slight touch was enough to make me wince. Then there came a sharp ache, spreading from the knot to my temples. The kind of headache that causes you to shut out the world and lie still and silent until the sun goes down.

I tried not to think about it.

Instead, I patted my hair gently, assessing the damage. There were more glass bits, and the hair around the knot was coated in thick, sticky blood. At least that meant the wound was clotting. I could live with clotting. Healing. Even if it did feel like an ice pick stuck in my skull.