Touched (12 page)

Terrific. Sphincter.

He was with—of course—two girls from school with too much in the way of hair and makeup and too little in the way of clothing, the kind of girls who never gave me the time of day. They were his bookends. His smile disappeared as he took us in. “Well, hello, Taryn,” he sang in a game-show-host voice. Then he nodded at me. “Cross.”

I nodded back. Taryn gave a little wave. “Hi, Evan!” she said in her typical bubbly way, but there was something weird about how she stiffened.

“How are you doing?” he asked, not casually, but in a tone you would use if you knew a person’s close family member had just died. I knew the question was just for Taryn, because he stood so that his back, and the backs of the other girls, were to me. The perfume and cologne and whatever else they were wearing smelled worse than the incense at Babe’s tent, but the view of the girls’ asses made it tolerable. “How’s your grandmother?”

“Fine. We’re all doing good,” she said.

Both girls looked away, bored or annoyed or a little of both. One fed herself a long string of sticky blue cotton candy; the other inspected her nails. I suddenly had the feeling I was listening in on a private conversation. Like maybe Taryn knew Sphincter. Like, really knew him.

They talked a little more about school starting next week and doesn’t-it-suck-that-summer’s-almost-over? Even though it was a really generic, safe topic, the more they talked, the more my stomach churned. Sphincter moved in really close, probably just to piss me off. It was working. How did they know each other? I stared at the lame “his” slap bracelet on my wrist and silently wished Sphincter would crawl back into whatever hole he came out of. When they parted, Taryn just said, “Let’s go on this Rock n’ Roll thing. I have more tickets.”

I shrugged and we walked to the ride. I heard him mumble something about “Crazy Cross,” and the girls tittered. They headed off toward the haunted house. While Taryn reached in her bag for tickets, I turned and caught Sphincter staring.

I thought maybe I could get her to admit what they had going on. “He totally wants you,” I said as we settled into the car.

She shrugged, not impressed. “I’m sure he does.” She shifted in her seat. “They always do.”

I thought she meant guys, but I couldn’t remember when she’d last been so full of herself. So I just let out an amused “Oh, yeah?”

She nodded, biting her lip. “Yeah.” The ride started to pick up speed then, so I couldn’t be positive, but I was pretty sure there were tears in her eyes.

Meeting Sphincter was like throwing a bucket of water on whatever fire was going between us. Taryn still held my hand, which would have been a good sign if it hadn’t grown cold, stiff. I thought about asking her what was wrong, but I really didn’t want to know the answer. What about Sphincter had gotten her crying? I don’t think I could have looked at her the same if she and Sphincter had … well, if she and Sphincter had anything.

We got off the ride without a sound and stopped at the rack to get our bikes. Taryn had to let go of my hand to unlock her bike, and when she did, the You Wills began immediately. She saw the look of pain on my face and offered to hold my hand again, but it didn’t matter. I was going to have to deal with it sooner or later anyway. So we walked our bikes all the way back to her street, not talking much. By then I was feeling a little better. Still woozy, but the stabbing pain between my eyes was gone.

“So,” she said when we got to her driveway, tipping her head in the direction of the Reeses’ house. “Funeral’s tomorrow. Are you going?”

“Yeah, I think so,” I mumbled as my head pounded away. I felt that pain in my stomach again. Of course I would be there.

She narrowed her eyes. “I know it was probably traumatic for you. Are you blaming yourself?”

I didn’t want to tell her, didn’t want to talk about it at all, but I nodded. “I saw the other future. The one where I saved her.”

She put her hand on my shoulder. “Don’t beat yourself up. You did everything you could.”

I shook my head, shook her hand away. A You Will popped through immediately, wanting me to get home. Instead, I looked at my feet. “I knew Pedro was not fit to be on watch. But I did nothing. I should have said something. But I didn’t, because I wanted to stay on script. You see? It was my fault.”

Her hand found its way back to mine. The cycling stopped again. A wave of exhaustion swept over me, as if my mind was sick of starting and stopping again and again. She whispered, “It’s Pedro’s fault. Not yours.”

I nodded. I didn’t believe her, but I didn’t want to talk about it anymore. She just held my hand for a while. Then I said, “I’d better go.”

She nodded, and I dropped her hand and started to walk away. Immediately these things found their way into my head: beauty, harder to kidnap, Saint Christopher. That was when she called after me. “Have you ever been to one?”

I swallowed and, for some reason, tasted grass. I could feel the blades of grass and earth on my tongue. I brought my hand to my mouth and licked it, expecting my hand to be black, but it wasn’t. Instead, my eye began to pulsate with pain. I moved the muscle in my cheek up and down. Yeah. It felt like I’d been punched there. What the hell? When I turned back to her, she was staring at me with an expression I’d come to know so well: horrified confusion. I tried my best to cover it up. “I, um, had a hair in my mouth. Been to one of what?”

She let it slide. “A funeral.”

I started to say yes and then shrugged. I’d been to dozens, in the future. Lucky for me, none of them had worked its way into my past. The real thing was probably a lot more unpleasant than the memory. “No,” I finally said.

She laughed. “Which is it?”

“Long story,” I said, not able to say more. My head was aching so much, I felt it down to my jaw. Probably my mom was having the same feeling. Good. For the first time, I was glad. This time, I wanted her to hurt.

“Okay. You can tell me later. So want to go together?”

My heart thumped. She wanted to see me again. Yes! I hadn’t screwed everything up yet. And whatever history she had with Sphincter, it didn’t matter. But then I thought about Nan’s boat of a car, sitting in our dusty driveway. I thought of the way my hands shook on the steering wheel, of how I had trouble most times meeting the speed limit, even on residential streets. I started to sweat. “I, um, don’t … I mean, I guess I could pick you up.… Ten-thirty okay?”

“Oh, great!”

We spent another long moment standing there, outside her house. I counted four anthills in her driveway.

Here was the point when a normal guy would have gone in for the kill. Instead, I froze up. Sure, Taryn came off as innocent and angelic. But I found myself wondering what trouble she’d actually gotten into in Maine. Most likely she was a lot more experienced than me. Didn’t take much to be that way, but still. The opportunity to majorly screw up that future I’d seen of her, of us together, was right here. Right now.

And so I blew it. “See you,” I tossed over my shoulder, as if I’d been talking to just anyone. I cringed almost immediately after I pulled my bike away from the curb.

And then I went back to face the future memories that had been flapping around in my mind like wounded birds.

Nan had this 1976 Buick that was the color of calcified dog crap. It was built like a tank, all square edges, and had one of those bench seats that took a team of oxen to move into position. The Buick turned more heads than a car accident when it came down the road. It was so god-awful, people would crane their necks to see the unfortunate owner. Not like they could see little Nan behind the massive steering wheel, which was the size of a monster truck’s tire. The Buick wouldn’t fit in a regular garage, but that was fine with Nan because, as she would proudly tell you, we had the only three-car garage in town. Our garage was bigger than our house, so the car was very comfortable among Nan’s strange collections of things, like the scoops from coffee cans and used pop-up turkey timers. It only had twenty-three thousand miles on it, “a classic!”, as Nan would say. She only used it to go to the A&P and church every Sunday. She walked everyplace else.

As the sun began to melt orange against the horizon, I got Nan into the passenger’s seat and slid behind the massive wheel, where Saint Christopher stared at me from a placard on the dashboard. I gripped the wheel and inched out of the garage like an old man.

Wow. I really needed the practice. Taryn would be wanting me like crazy after this ride.

It went without saying that I didn’t like driving. Before that day I hadn’t driven since I passed my driver’s test at the beginning of the summer. Something about seeing all the accidents I could cause rubbed me the wrong way. Once, when I had my learner’s permit, I thought about flipping on the radio but saw a ten-car pileup. There were just too many opportunities to cause bad things to happen on the road. But today Nan was drugged on something that had her snoring between sentences, not to mention she was down an arm, so it looked like I wouldn’t be able to avoid driving. She’d cornered me the second I got home and told me I had to take her to the pharmacy on the mainland, because she’d realized this afternoon she’d run out of heart pills. She’d called Ocean Pharmacy on the island for a delivery, but they didn’t have the kind she needed, and she was desperate.

But that was okay, I told myself. Normally I would have been a wreck. Despite the weird way it had ended, the afternoon with Taryn had me feeling good. Like maybe I could live a seminormal life, with someone who finally understood what I was going through. Getting there, I was fine. I joked with Nan about how she looked like she had been in a prizefight and how she could tell everyone “the other guy looks worse.” I turned up the modern-rock station on the radio and drummed my fingers on the steering wheel in time to the music. I thought about how soft and small Taryn’s hand felt against mine.

On the way back, though, I lost it. It wasn’t simply the act of driving, of pressing on the gas pedal, that freaked me out. I made it over the bridge from Toms River (can’t tell you how many times I envisioned the Buick careering over the railing and into the bay) and all the way down Central, carefully following the You Wills right down to the letter. But when I was navigating around town hall, not half a mile from Nan’s cottage, it hit me.

Glass shards spraying in my face icy water droplets the smell of peanut butter

What the …?

Instinctively I squeezed my eyes shut, and doing so, I slammed on the brakes. Nan grabbed the armrest. A car horn blared behind me and a red pickup swerved around me. The driver gave me the finger.

It didn’t seem real. It couldn’t be my future. First of all, I hated peanut butter. The smell made me so sick that I couldn’t stand it. And the car was all wrong. It wasn’t the easily recognizable Buick, with the tan pleather inside and St. Christopher staring from the dashboard. Nothing about it was vaguely familiar. It could have been something that would happen fifty years in the future, or maybe it wasn’t real at all. Maybe it was just me getting all worked up about driving, as usual. I needed to stay away from Skippy, which was no problem since just thinking about it made my stomach churn, and stick to my bicycle; again, no problem because I hated driving anyway.

I looked over at Nan. For someone who’d missed her last heart pill, this was probably not the best experience to have. She started to say something to comfort me and then began snoring again.

I clenched my jaw. No matter how good things were with Taryn, nothing could protect me. This curse always found ways to remind me who was boss.

Thanks, Mom.

Carefully, I pulled into our driveway and inched the boat into the garage. I helped Nan out and drew the massive wooden doors closed, then stared at the cottage. Something was going to be off in there. I felt the tingles already.

I helped Nan up the three stairs to the back of the house, and when the screen door slammed, I heard my mom’s voice. She sounded angry again. I couldn’t tell what she was saying, though, and I didn’t care. Was it me or did the tingles feel like a thunderstorm, like a thousand times worse than before Emma drowned?

“Up here,” she called. Floorboards creaked. There was a floorboard right in the doorway to my mom’s room that groaned whenever someone was standing on it. It made that noise now. She was out of her room, but just barely. Calling to me from the doorway. “Come up here.”

I figured she wanted to tell me something about what I’d found out from Taryn. She knew, obviously, since our futures were tied to each other’s. Maybe she wanted to explain herself. Apologize in person. Whatever. I wasn’t going to listen, even if she begged forgiveness. I was steel. Stone. Finished with her.

“I don’t want to hear—” I started, but stopped when I saw the look on her face. She had made it to the top stair with one white hand on the banister and was staring down at me. The shadows dug into the creases on her forehead, making her look about twenty years older, or like one of those skeletons in the haunted house at the pier. Her eyes were heavy with worry.

I started to say “What?” but before I could she whispered, “You haven’t been able to see the future yet, have you?”

I shook my head. “No, I have, I’ve seen—” Did I really want to tell her about seeing Taryn naked? Or about what happened in the car? “Why?”

“Have you seen anything from next year? Or even next month?”

I shrugged. Weird question. She knew it was so hard to tell when these future memories took place. I just inexplicably felt my bones aching in the ones where I was an old man. Or I’d catch a glimpse of my grandchild and feel this overwhelming love and pride. No, I hadn’t had any far-off memories of my future since the Emma accident, but I only caught them once in a while, when everything was still. And things had been really screwy lately. I tried to call up a memory of the future, but they never came when I wanted them to. Usually, when I least expected it, I’d see or hear or smell something and the memory would pop into my mind. “I have no—”

“You can’t, can you?”

I didn’t like the tone. She should have been begging forgiveness. Instead, she sounded like she was accusing me of something. It was the tone I should have had with her.

“No, but—”

“That’s because you have no future,” she said. “Whatever you did to change things, Nick … now you’re the one who is going to die. Soon.”

According to my mom, Christmas was really going to suck this year. Because not only might I not live out the year, I might not live out the summer. She said that because first, she knew I had trouble remembering anything in the future anymore, and second, she saw Nan dressed in the black dress she only wore to funerals. She was wearing the cast on her arm. The only other thing she could recall was extreme grief.

Well, that was good. I’d hate for anyone to be happy at my passing.

Oh, and that it was a closed casket. Not like she would get the guts to go to her own son’s funeral, but that was what Nan told her. Which probably meant that my body would be mangled beyond recognition.

All really awesome things.

I could almost feel the jagged glass shards digging into my cheeks. An accident. The car accident I’d envisioned on my ride home.

I knew it wasn’t the Buick. The inside was all wrong. I silently told myself I wouldn’t set foot in a car again. That would do it. I hoped.

But the more I tried to see my future, the more I couldn’t.

No wonder Taryn made the memories of my future go away. No wonder she made me feel normal.

This all started when she entered my life. For some reason, because of her, I had no future.

Trouble was, the more I tried to resign myself to stay away from her, the more I felt that big hole, that emptiness. My chest tightened and ached when I thought about it. It didn’t help that I kept seeing myself kissing her, feeling my hands working through her thick platinum curls. For some reason, I couldn’t see anything in the future but that, the most improbable thing in the world.

The morning of Emma’s funeral, I put on my suit and tie. The suit was too tight. I looked like a major loser. It was only ten in the morning, and it already felt like a hundred degrees. There was no ocean breeze. I contemplated staying home about a thousand times. Then I opened up the door to the garage and climbed into the Buick.

You know those cartoons where a character is contemplating doing something, and a devil appears on one shoulder, trying to tempt him to do the bad thing, and an angel appears on the other, telling him why he should do the right thing? It was totally like that. But this time, Angel-me was telling me I needed to go and pick up Taryn, because I’d promised and it was the right thing to do. And Devil-me said I needed to go straight to the funeral, because something about Taryn was seriously screwing with my future. I went back and forth, gripping the steering wheel and mumbling to myself, until eventually the devil and the angel looked exactly the same.

Finally I just shoved the car into reverse. Gritting my teeth, I headed for the cemetery.

I knew it was a cruddy thing to do, leaving her there. I imagined her sitting on the front stoop, waiting for me. But I could explain it away. I was going to die in a car accident, right? Even though I kind of knew the Buick was safe, she’d be a moron to accept a ride with me.

It was a bright, sunny day. My limited knowledge of funerals from television and movies seemed to suggest that this was wrong; it was supposed to be raining, so much so that we would all huddle tightly around the casket in a dense forest of umbrellas. In the backseat Nan had a massive black thing, almost the size of a beach umbrella, that didn’t fold compactly like new ones did. I’d expected to use it. It would effectively seal me off from the rest of the mourners; nobody would be able to tell who was under it.

Instead, the sun shone like a spotlight pointed right on my head as I stepped out of the car and made my way across the cemetery, to the crowd. I spotted Pedro. I hadn’t seen him since that day on the beach. I didn’t think he’d have the nerve to show up, but he was probably feeling as guilty as I did. “Hey, man,” I said when I’d made my way over to him. “How’s it going?”

He nodded, looking stiff in his suit. Funny how clothes could change a person. There was a sheen of sweat mingling with the pimples on his forehead. Finally, he mumbled, “Rather be anywhere else.”

There was no doubt about it. I seconded Pedro’s emotion.

He sniffed and brought a wadded tissue to his face. Allergies, I guessed. He wasn’t the type to cry. But when he pulled the tissue away, it was covered in blood. When I looked closer, I realized there was blood on the collar of his shirt. He didn’t turn to face me, but I could see a swollen, bluish pocket on his temple and under his eye. One thing about Pedro, he was almost girlish about his appearance; he didn’t get into fights. “Whoa, man. What’s going on?”

A few people turned, saw me, and whispered. I knew it was probably, “There’s the guy who tried to revive her. The crazy one.” One old lady gave me a reproachful look and shook her head.

I’d definitely rather be anywhere else.

We stood in the last row, as far away from the rest of the mourners as possible, but suddenly Pedro faltered, almost like his knees gave out. He staggered backward. “I—can’t,” he whispered, staring at the ground.

I stared at him. For the first time I noticed there wasn’t just blood on his collar. It was all down the front of his shirt, spattering his pale blue tie. Bits of dried grass clung to the knees of his dark pants. “What? Who did that to you, man?”

“I shouldn’t have come,” he hissed. I was aware some people were beginning to turn, but then Pedro just broke into a sprint toward the line of cars. It was like he was being chased by the devil. He even looked back a few times, as if he was expecting to see Satan.

It was over ninety degrees, but I shivered. Wow. What the hell had happened to him?

The priest began to speak about finding comfort in one another. He said, “It is unexpected tragedy that brings us together today.”

“The unexpected in life is often the most difficult to deal with,” I mumbled under my breath, along with the priest. I looked over and saw Mrs. Reese with her head against someone’s shoulder. Mr. Reese, I supposed. When she pulled away, I saw that it was a younger guy. Emma’s brother, the one at Penn State. He stared ahead, unblinking, as Mrs. Reese continued to sob into his suit jacket. Mr. Reese, a white-haired version of his son, stood next to him.