Delicate Monsters (13 page)

“How?”

“I would probably have to call the police.”

“That's it?”

“If I knew who it was you were planning on hurting, it would be my duty to warn those parties, as well.”

Miles nodded. Duty to warn. It's what he'd always believed. That the reason he saw things from the future was so that he could change them. Only, he'd never actually warned anybody about the things he saw. Ever. People kept dying and people kept suffering, even when he knew about it ahead of time.

So maybe his duty was something different.

That's what he was beginning to think, anyway.

“So are you?” Dr. MacDougall asked.

Miles lifted his head for the first time. “Am I what?”

“Are you planning on hurting somebody?”

“Planning's not the same as knowing something's going to happen, is it?”

“No, it's not.” The therapist frowned. “But you know, I don't think I'm understanding exactly what it is you're trying to say. Are you saying you know something's going to happen to somebody else?”

Miles wrapped his arms around himself and rubbed his shoulders. Then he leaned forward and pressed the toes of his shoes together,
tap tap tap.
“I'm saying that sometimes the future is our destiny. I'm saying that sometimes we know where we're going, but we're still helpless to stop it. That's what I'm saying. That's what I mean.”

 

chapter twenty-six

Wednesday morning, Sadie stopped by the coffee shop again on her way to school and bought her double vanilla latte. Only Dumpster Boy wasn't there. Not that she was looking for him or anything, but it got her wondering a bit about where he was and what he might be doing, and when she came upon him walking along the side of the road beneath a row of eucalyptus trees, maybe a mile from campus, she felt the tiniest sense of relief. She pulled up behind him and laid on the horn, as hard as she could.

The boy jumped straight into the air. He whirled around to stare at her for a moment. Then he turned and kept walking. He was wearing some ugly T-shirt from a bait shop. It was green and had a cartoon fish with googly eyes on the back.

Sadie eased the car forward, letting the Jetta stay pace with him while she rolled her window down.

“Hey!” she shouted. “Hey, you!”

He didn't respond. Just walked in his weird hunched-shoulder way.

“Hey, asshole. I know you can hear me.”

The boy still didn't answer or even acknowledge her presence.

Enough fucking around. Sadie punched the gas and swerved onto the shoulder right in front of him. With the engine still running, she stepped out of the car and stalked back to where he was. “What the hell are you doing? I'm trying to do something nice for you, you know.”

Nothing. He said nothing. The boy was too busy staring at the back of her car.

“What are you looking at?” she snapped.

He pointed. “What's that?”

“What?”

“That.” He walked forward and placed his hand on the sticker decal on the rear window of the purring car. Soft puffs of exhaust floated toward his legs.

Sadie frowned. “That? Just something dumb. It's from my family's vineyard. Su Vin.”

The boy blinked and looked at her with those sad, sleepy eyes of his, like he was seeing her for the first time. “Your family?”

“Yeah. Well, it's our name. Su. My parents don't really have anything to do with the actual winemaking. They used to, when they first bought the property, but not anymore.”

“What do they do now?”

“My dad travels. My mom doesn't.”

“Why doesn't she?”

“I don't know why.”

“Maybe you're the why.”

Sadie snorted. “Come on. I'm giving you a ride.”

“You don't have to do that.”

“Jesus, kid. I know I don't have to. Just get in the damn car, already.”

He got in the car and sat down. He tilted his head and gazed at the car's in-dash speaker like he could actually see the music streaming out of it.

“What is this?” he asked.

“Onegin.”

“What?”

“It's Tchaikovsky.”

“What's an Onegin?”

“It's the name of the opera. It was based on a poem by Pushkin. It's about this rich guy named Eugene Onegin who thinks his troubled angsty persona gives him an excuse to be a real dick.”

“Ah.”

She looked at him. “I heard about what happened to you, you know. How you got hurt the other day.”

He shrugged.

“Those guys who did that to you are assholes.”

“Whatever.”

“Well,” she said. “If you're not going to care, I won't, either.”

“Thank you.”

They rode in silence for a while. But as they approached the school, Sadie peeked over at the boy. “Can I ask you one question, though?”

He nodded. “Okay.”

“Two questions actually.”

“Sure.”

“First. What's your name?”

“Miles,” he said.

“I'm Sadie. And Miles, huh? You should be a runner, not a fencer.”

“I don't want to be either.”

“Fair enough. Second question: Do you think you got jumped by those guys because there's something wrong with you? Or because there's something wrong with them?”

Miles reached to touch the speaker in front of him, his fingers gently traveling across its grooved dips and valleys. “I don't know why people do the things they do. I can only see ahead, into the future. The past doesn't make a lot of sense to me.”

“You can see the future?” Sadie asked doubtfully.

He nodded.

“What does it look like?”

“Bad.”

“Yeah? No shit. I bet we're all going to die, too.”

The boy leaned back in his seat. “There's a lot wrong with me, though. Sometimes I worry that I'm not a very normal person.”

Sadie frowned. “What kind of person are you, then?”

“Disturbed.” he said, letting his eyes shut with a flutter. “I'm a disturbed person. That's what I am.”

*   *   *

In her research class, Sadie sat beside Emerson Tate's girlfriend again. She did it just to be a huge pain in his ass and because she liked the look on his face when he came into the room and saw her, the way he turned all pink and awkward and bumbled his words. The girlfriend, however, clearly liked Emerson, which made Sadie doubt what side of the bell curve her Stanford-Binet quotient fell on. The girl immediately went over to him and started flirting. Poor taste, Sadie thought, even if she didn't know what he'd done to her at that party. Emerson was attractive enough, sure, but he was seriously dull. So very different from when they first knew each other.

“Hey, Emerson,” Sadie called out.

“Huh?” He turned and looked at her.

“What's your phone number?”

“Why?”

“I want to send you something. I got a couple pictures of you from the other night.”

He blanched.

“So what's your number?” she asked again.

“My phone can't get photo texts,” he mumbled.

“What? Why's that?”

“Because I'm poor as shit, Sadie.”

The girlfriend piped up. “You can send the pictures to me.”

“No. Email me.” Emerson came over to Sadie's desk. He picked up her pen and wrote his school address on her notebook. When he was done, he glared at her. She smiled brightly.

Just then, the bell rang and their teacher walked in.

Sadie leaned down and grabbed her bag. She started jamming her stuff away, pen, notebook, navy cardigan sweater. Then she got up from her desk and walked toward the door.

“Where do you think you're going?” the teacher asked.

“Nurse's office,” Sadie said over her shoulder. “Cramps.”

“That bad?”

She nodded and touched her stomach. “It feels like I'm having a baby.”

The teacher ignored the giggling that came from this response. “I want to see a note from the nurse, Miss Su. Or else.”

*   *   *

Sadie cruised the halls of the school a little bit, looking for the perfect spot where no one would bug her. There was a new message on her phone from Roman, which was why she'd left. She wanted to read it. Now. But as she strolled farther and farther away from her classroom, Sadie realized she felt good for once. Better than good. Little moments like this were some of the thrills that made life worth living. It was all about perspective, not the facts of the matter. Because the fact of the matter was, walking down the hallway of a grubby overcrowded suburban high school was more than a little unsavory. But walking these halls after screwing with Emerson and weaseling her way out of class with the boldest of lies? Well, that was an act that filled Sadie head to toe with a feeling far better than any of the more corporeal pleasures.

It meant she'd won.

Which was the only thing she cared about.

In a way, it was how she and Roman had met in the first place. Sadie had been caught smoking at Rothshire her first week there. As punishment, she was assigned the job of proctor for the weeknight sophomore study hall and ended up tutoring a football player named Charlie Burns in World History.

“Those flashcards you made Charlie are all wrong,” Roman came up and told her one evening, after the rest of the room had cleared out. Sadie had been surprised. He'd never spoken to her before. She had no idea who he was.

“I know they're wrong,” she said. “I wrote them. What's it to you?”

“It's nothing to me. I just want to know why you're doing it.”

She shrugged. “Maybe there's no why other than the obvious one.”

Roman cocked his head. “And what would that be?”

“I mean, it's kind of obvious to me that there would be nothing better on this earth than for Charlie Burns to fill out his World History blue book with statements like ‘an oligarchy is a form of government whose ruling class is determined by wishes.'”

Roman had laughed then, a real laugh, deep and rich, and to her surprise, Sadie found that she was laughing, too.

“Maybe I went a little overboard with that one,” she admitted.

“No,” Roman said. “That's perfect. Charlie Burns, he's not … he's not the nicest guy around, if you want to know the truth.”

Sadie hadn't responded to this statement. She didn't care one bit about Charlie's niceness. Or anyone's niceness, for that matter. What she objected to was the fact that Charlie Burns was dumber than a nutsack and that he was dating her roommate, thereby ruining Sadie's life by coming to their room all the time and sticking his hand down Lily Monroe's pants. She'd walked in on them on more than one occasion and once they'd actually been going at it
on Sadie's bed
.

But now, as Sadie climbed up the interior stairs of the main classroom building and kicked open a service door to step out onto the gravel and tar-paper roof, she wondered what Roman had meant. About Charlie.

She walked to the roof's edge, sat her butt on the narrow turret, and pulled out a cigarette. Some weird late-season heat wave had snuck into town, and already the sun's strength was unbearable. She stared down at the shade in the courtyard, three long stories away. Then she read his email:

Theory #2: your zero-sum mind

George Patton once said “the object of war is not to die for your country but to make the other bastard die for his.” I don't know much about war and I don't know that you do either, but this quote reminded me of you. I think you're always at war with everyone and everything. That if you don't win every argument, every point, then you think you've failed. That's why you don't have friends. Friends aren't at war with each other. But we were. Or maybe you were at war with me, and I was just the dying bastard too stupid to realize it.

Sadie squared her jaw. She didn't know what to say to that, nor did he appear to be inviting any sort of commentary. So she simply replied:

I want to know what happened with you and Charlie Burns.

Tell me.

 

chapter twenty-seven

A trail of truth for him to follow …

Late in the morning during math class, Miles felt the hum of electricity build inside his body. It was like getting a jolt from an electric fence, only the jolt kept going. And going.

Until his limbs went tingly.

Until his gut went hot.

Until he started to see things in the
right way.

He knew what was happening, so he raised his hand and asked his algebra teacher if he could go to the bathroom. Or at least, that's what he thought he did. As the tingle and hum of prevision aura washed over him, Miles wasn't sure of very much at all. He could hear his own voice, his inflection stammering and shy, but it sounded like it was coming from the next room, not out of his own mouth. Then, almost as if he were floating, Miles watched as he got up from his desk and walked down the hall like a robot, heading for the room with the mirrors.

The mirrors.

In the bathroom, Miles leaned so close to the sink, he got a wet spot on the front of his pants. But for once impending embarrassment didn't make him blush or feel sick to his stomach. He was too busy staring at his own reflection.

He stared.

And stared.

And stared.

Until
click,
like a key in a lock, the future opened, right before him.

It waved him forward. And back.

For one blurred instant, he was standing behind that girl's car again, looking at the sticker in her window.

An
S
and a
V
intertwined.

Su Vin.

Then the car was gone, and Miles was somewhere else, shuttled into the unknown. Somewhere dark and terrible. Here, he saw death again. Along with his own face, pale and miserable.