Through Indigo's Eyes (2 page)

I stopped rocking and looked at the ceiling. “Why
am
I like this?” I was no longer a kid, but the same things still happened to me.

“Why did I have to see Burke with Amber? Why?” I yelled. Then I looked down and spoke softly. “I'd rather see a dead hamster.”

I flopped back on my bed and stared at the ceiling again.
Was
Burke messing around on Lacey?
Please, be wrong.

But I knew the vision would be true.

If only
this
vision wouldn't come true. Just this once, could I get lucky and not have it come true?

I got up, went to my dresser, and pulled out a sketch pad. I flipped it open to the page where I had doodled
Lacey Hughes and Burke Brown
together in black scrolling letters inside a big flaming red heart. Little peach-colored cherubs and sparkling silver and gold stars made with a special glitter pen surrounded the drawing. This handiwork had been done at the start of grade nine.

When Lacey and I started high school, each of us picked a guy to like, and she had picked Burke. We had sat cross-legged on the floor of her bedroom, with paper, scissors, colored markers, pencil crayons, and glitter sticks scattered happily and haphazardly around us, like we were back in elementary school. That was the last time we had done crafts, as we called it, and we promised not to tell anyone because we had just started our high school journey and needed to act mature. We'd giggled as we sketched the hearts, dreaming of the day when we would have boyfriends. Lacey and I had been friends since kindergarten. We were five; she had brunette hair, and mine was blonde. She was tall; I was short. She was outgoing, and I was what teachers called “shy.”

“Burke!” I exclaimed that day. “Lacey, he's the hottest guy in school.”

“Might as well dream big,” she'd replied, as she haughtily lifted her chin, having drawn a heart around his name.

Then she grinned, and suddenly my brain had felt like a computer downloading information. My eyes glazed over, my mind went blank, and I blurted out, “Red. You'll wear a red shirt the day he asks you out.”

“Oh my god,” she'd squealed. “It's going to come true! You've seen it.” Then she'd smiled and wiggled her eyebrows up and down. “Red checked shirt? Red turtleneck? Or maybe … red sexy tank?” She did a little dance with her shoulders.

I heard the word
tank
in my head. I grinned. “Red tank, ‘cause it'll be spring.”

Then I had jumped up, and pretending to hold a microphone in my hand, I started belting out, “There goes
her
baby! And his name is Burke!”

Lacey rolled onto her side, laughing hysterically. “You crack me up.”

I kept singing and dancing around the room. Lacey kept laughing.

Then she jumped up, made her fist into a microphone, and started to sing along with me. After a few minutes of off-key screeching, we both fell onto her bed in a fit of giggles. Lacey was my only friend who knew about my visions, and she accepted them as a part of me. I loved her for that.

As we lay on her bed, side by side, our shoulders touching, staring at her stucco ceiling, she asked, “Is he really going to ask me out?”

“Yup,” I said with conviction. “He sure is.”

Blond, muscular, and a stud hockey player, Burke was every girl's dream. He played center on his hockey team, and his photo was always somewhere on the
Ottawa Citizen
‘s sports page after one of his games. He walked with a swagger, wore a hockey jacket, and was the star of his OHL Major Junior Team. In my city, and especially in my high school, hockey boys got perks. Dressed in his gear, leaning on his stick, looking serious and tough, his photo was also displayed in every Royal Bank in the city.

In the spring of grade 11, he finally asked Lacey out. Sure enough, that day she'd worn a red sexy tank top. It had taken Lacey almost two school years of dressing like everyone else, wearing the same makeup, doing her hair just right, and attending the “in” parties to get Burke to notice her. She'd also honed her skills as the star setter on the volleyball team. The combination of style and athletics made her one of the most popular girls in the school, and now they were a total power couple.

Today, many months later and after a full summer of romance, what was I to do with this vision? Tell her and ruin everything? She was in love with Burke and would be devastated. Maybe I was wrong about him and Amber. It was just a thought….

You must learn to trust.
It was the kind man's voice again.

“Stop talking to me!”

My throat dried up. I tried to swallow but tasted only dry dust. I covered my ears to the voice that haunted me, even though it was always nice to me no matter how I yelled at it.

“Okay, I'm sorry. I know you're trying to be nice. But please, I'm begging, leave me alone.”

There was a knock on my door. “Hey, little sister, who you talking to in there?”

It was Brian! And he was mocking me again.

“See?” I hissed to the air. “Leave me alone.” Then I said loudly, “Cedar.”

“Yeah. Right you are. Cuckoo crazy girl.”

Sometimes Brian barged in and made a joke about me talking to myself, but today I heard his footsteps heading down the hall to his room. He loved standing outside my door, listening to me talk to no one. He thought it was funny. Ha ha. So funny. Brian was older than me by two years and had finished high school. He was working now, at a popular hamburger joint called Licks. He was thinking about his future in the restaurant business, but to save money he still lived at home. Although we both had blond hair and blue eyes, our personalities couldn't have been more different. Loud—and what I would call obnoxious—Brian had friends from all different groups. He had jock friends, musician friends, and geek friends, and just … tons of friends. Everyone loved him because he was the life of the party. Girls loved him, too. There was always a new girlfriend at the house.

I exhaled, forcing the air out so that my lips vibrated. Then I ran my hands through my hair and listened to make sure that Brian was indeed gone. I heard his bedroom door slam and sighed. I'm sure he hated my issues as much as I did. Behind closed doors, every family has their “stuff,” and ours was and still is me.

I slowly turned the page of this book that Lacey and I had madeto see another heart.

I would never reach
my
dream if I couldn't stop the visions. This heart had been colored with purple marker, not the traditional red associated with love, and the names were written in green block letters. Angels dressed in gray and black circled the heart, and there were no glitter stars. The two drawings were polar opposites: one dark, one light.

I traced my finger along the word
John.

Then I let my finger slowly cruise along my own name. That day in grade nine, I hadn't chosen John. I'd chosen Dale Anderson just to pick someone, to feel part of the high school experience. Then last year, John was transferred to our school.

I closed my eyes. I'd been reliving the first time I saw him over and over and over since it happened. I couldn't help myself.

I'd been sitting in English class, at the back of the room, of course. It was “hockey jersey day” at school, and most of the kids were wearing some sort of loud hockey jersey with a huge logo on the front and the number and name of their favorite hero on the back. It all felt so conformist, and I hated it. I refused to play the part and wear a stupid jersey. As I sat there brooding, slouching, and doodling, a waft of fresh soap and some type of musky, masculine woody aftershave combined with the familiar smell of cigarette smoke hit my nostrils. My body tensed and my stomach flipped and my breathing picked up speed and then …
he
passed by my desk. I tried hard not to stare.

Who was
he
?

I'd never seen him before. He had to be new to our school. I swear my heart stopped beating for a second. He wore jeans and a nondescript gray hoodie and … no jersey. His flip-flops slapped the floor, and his frayed jeans dragged along the tiles. Nobody wore flip-flops to school. Talk about not conforming. He sat in the desk kitty-corner to me.

Who was this guy?

My throat dried up, and sweat started beading on my upper lip. I slid deeper into my seat and lowered my head, letting my hair hang in front of my eyes, just so I could catch a glimpse of him without him knowing I was staring. Right away I was drawn to his strong, chiseled looks, his square jaw, straight posture, and wide shoulders. No way did he look like a jock, though. He was lean, almost skinny, but he had this strong, long look. And he had unruly thick, dark, curly hair that was so incredibly cool because it was wild and unkempt and yet still all in the right place. I continued doodling, my pen ripping right through my paper because I pressed so hard. Why was I still staring at him? This was crazy and totally stupid. But he was intriguing, because I just
knew
he wasn't a conformist. He was different, like me, perhaps. The teacher started talking, droning on and on, and I didn't hear one word until a question was posed to the class about the book we were supposed to be reading and
he
put up his hand.

I sat up in my desk, holding my breath, waiting to hear his voice, wondering what it would sound like, what he was going to say. His low, smooth, almost syrupy voice spoke words that were clear and concise, and he reeled off an answer that shocked me, because he sounded like he was a professor and not a student. The teacher nodded his head. “Excellent answer. And your name is?”

“John. John Smith.”

“Excellent answer, Mr. Smith.”

I'd never heard a student talk so intelligently before, and I'd definitely never met anyone who was as mystifying. Right then and there, I decided I was going to do everything I could to get to know him. I had to.

Later that week, Lacey and I were together in my room, and I said, “I want to change my guy in our book.”

“Ah, so Dale is a dud. Figured as much.”

I nodded. Unable to speak.

“So, who do you want?”

“John Smith.”

Lacey looked at me wide-eyed and laughed. Then she said, “Indie, he's trouble. You know he got kicked out of his last school.”

“I don't care.” And I didn't. Not even one little bit.

“He hardly talks to anyone. No one knows who he is. Plus, he's got the worst name
ever.
I mean, honestly,
John Smith
? It sounds like John Doe. Bor-ing.”

“He's not boring, Lacey.” I hugged my knees to my chest. “Not even close. His name may be plain, but he's so mysterious. He's aloof, and it's like something I just can't describe surrounds him and makes him deep and dark, and … I want to
know
him.” The last part of my sentence came out in a breathy whisper.

“He's a bad boy, Indie.”

“But you just said that you don't even know him.” I rested my chin on my knees and smiled. “And
that's
why I like him.” Then I grabbed a black marker, scratched out
Dale
, and wrote in huge letters the word
John.

Fast-forward to more than a year later, and I still hadn't really talked to him. Sure we'd said hi and all that kind of stuff, but we'd never talked, just the two of us, alone.

I snapped the book shut, not wanting to turn the next page to read the pathetic poetry I'd written about John since that day, and shoved it in the bottom drawer of my desk. I grabbed some headphones, put them on, and turned on my portable CD player. I plopped back on my bed, and as I listened to the music, I stared at my white stucco ceiling. Did John like classic rock, too? It wasn't mainstream. I wondered what music he liked. Heavy metal? Grunge?

“Okay, so at least I didn't see anyone or anything die today,” I said out loud. “And I hope I never do. Not even another animal.”

“Indie,” said my mom from behind my bedroom door.

I quickly pulled my headphones off and put them on the nightstand. “I'm okay,” I replied “I'm just talking to Cedar.”