Touched (20 page)

The gutters flooded and the puddles in the streets grew to rivers, so that I sloshed through ankle-deep water, the soles of my Vans squishing with every step. Though rain fell in waves, lightning lit the sky like daytime, and the thunder rumbled and boomed continuously overhead, I walked my bicycle home slowly, as if I had all the time in the world.

What could I do? People were going to die. And I had no way to fix it.

For some reason, I found myself thinking of Jocelyn. If I had just let her get the Touch she wanted, Taryn would be okay. Taryn wouldn’t need to perform the Touch tonight, and we would all be safe. Instead, I’d messed everything up. Just like my mom had. Funny how one decision can mean so much.

But the thing was, I’d envisioned us dying in Taryn’s Jeep before that. So maybe I’d always been meant to mess with Jocelyn’s Touch. It was almost as if my screwing everything up was beyond my control, destined, written in the stars.

And maybe my dying was, too. Maybe all the iterations of my life, all the people I was destined to be before this, were just preparing me for this one ending. It was only fitting that I’d find the perfect girl and the most tragic death in the same future.

The rain poured down on my face, obscuring my vision as I walked along the boardwalk ramp to Seventh Avenue. If only I could get that Touch, that Flight of Song. Then I could tell Bryce to call back the curse, and he would have to obey. But Taryn had said a person couldn’t be Touched twice.

There really was no way out of this.

A car horn blared at me as I tried to cross the street, and I jumped back in time to be hit by a wave of cold water kicked up from one of the enormous puddles in the road. I thought of Nan, and how she used to dress me in my duck outfit—galoshes and matching raincoat—when I was a kid. How she always did so much for me.

She’d do anything to make sure I was okay. And look what I gave her in return. It wasn’t fair to her. It wasn’t right.

Suddenly, something came to me. She’d do anything to make sure I was okay. Anything. I was sure of that.

All at once, I knew what had to happen. It was our only chance. I climbed on my bicycle and pedaled furiously down Seventh. I tossed my bike on the gravel in the front yard and stormed inside, bolting the door behind me. “Nan!”

She was, of course, sleeping in her recliner. Some reality-show host was talking about the voting process on television. I started to go into the living room, but my mom called to me. “Nick! Come up here!”

I didn’t want to. Her voice sounded strange. No doubt she was going to scold me for being out when I was grounded. But as I neared the foot of the staircase, I realized she wasn’t angry. She was excited about something, no doubt something she’d seen in a vision. I tried ignoring her, but she kept speaking. “I was wrong! I was wrong!” she said, over and over again. I didn’t want to know what it was, though. I could see fragments of the scene in the Jeep clearly now, almost as if the accident was due to happen soon, and that was all I needed to know.

“Ma, I’ll be up in a sec,” I said, and Nan started to stir at the sound of my voice.

She looked at me, still dazed. “What? What’s going on?”

“Nan,” I said, kneeling beside her. “Listen. We’re in trouble. I need you to do something for me.”

She kicked the recliner upright. “Of course. What?”

“Someone took out a Touch. And they’re going to use it on us. I need you to take out another Touch to stop him. We can go there tonight, and I’ll—”

She held out a hand. “Wait. Slow down.”

“I can’t,” I said, the words falling on top of one another. “They’re going to kill us.”

She stared at me. “You need to start from the beginning.”

I took a breath. “Bryce Reese. He’s the brother of the girl who died. Right now he’s at the boardwalk getting his own Touch. And his Touch is going to give him the ability to kill me and my family. Because he hates me. And so what I want you to do is—”

“He hates you? Why?”

“Long story. Basically, he wants me to get what I gave him. So what I need you to do is—”

“I am not dealing in that nonsense,” she said. “It’s all about people wanting to play God. Your mother thought she could play God, and she learned she was wrong. There’s only one God, and I know I’m not him. You need to talk it out with this Reese person.”

“No, Nan. It’s not nonsense. Bryce Reese won’t listen to reason. And we are going to die. You have to.”

She stood up. “I don’t have to do anything,” she said softly, turning her back on me and walking into the kitchen. “And I won’t.”

I just stared at her.

“And it is nonsense,” she whispered. “It ruined both of you. And I’ll have no part in it. Not ever.”

I opened my mouth to argue, but her tone was so cold, so final, I knew it would do no good. “Then we’ve got to go. We’ve got to get out of here. Hide, or something.”

She snorted and jutted her chin upward, towards my mom’s bedroom. “Good luck getting that one to go anywhere.” She picked up a tray with a half-eaten sandwich on it, then placed it on the kitchen counter. “You hungry?”

I clenched my fists to keep from latching on to something hard and throwing it at her, then walked up into the stairwell. My mom was standing on the landing, in the doorway. “What?” I asked her.

She narrowed her eyes. “What were you saying to your grandmother?”

I shook my head. After all, Nan was right. If my mom wouldn’t go anywhere for her son’s own funeral, she wouldn’t go if I told her she needed to get away, even if it meant her life. Not that running would make any difference.

“I was wrong,” she said, her tone light. “It wasn’t yours.”

I stared at her for a minute, annoyed that everything she said always had to be so cryptic. “My what?”

“Your funeral.”

I’d already started to head back downstairs, since I was so sure I didn’t want to hear what she had to say. But I stopped in midstep. “What? Whose was it, then?”

The thing was, I didn’t have to ask that. It didn’t really matter. There would be more funerals. Many more. And eventually, mine would be one of them.

I said, “I’m going to die, too. Because I don’t remember anything after—” My voice hitched when I was suddenly struck blind by two strong beams of light, streaming in through the sidelights at the front door. A car was here.

I didn’t need to be able to see the future to know that Taryn had successfully performed her first Touch. And that something terrible had begun.

As I peered out the window, the headlights flickered off. A You Will was just coming through when images began to play in my head, hot and rapid, making me dizzy.

Flashing lights and rain on glass. A horrible squealing tore through my eardrums
.

I strained to see the automobile in the darkness, but the rain made patterns on the pane, distorting everything beyond. Something moved in the darkness and suddenly someone rapped on the door.

“Nick?” a voice called out. Taryn.

By then my heart was in my throat. I swallowed it and unbolted the door.

“Are you okay?” we said in unison. And then, to confirm how eerily alike we were, we both exhaled and said “I’m fine” at the same time.

I ushered her into the hallway. She had her scarf over her head like a peasant girl, but she was still drenched from head to toe. Water dripped off the end of her nose. But she was alive. Her skin was glowing again and her eyes were back to normal. I didn’t have to ask her if the Touch had worked, but I did anyway. “Did everything go all right?”

She pulled the scarf off her head and her curls sprang out, vibrant once more. “I did it. But I can’t say that anything is right. Just like I thought, Bryce used the Touch on Pedro and you the second he got it. You shouldn’t be here. You need to hide or something.”

I shook my head. “My family won’t leave. And I can’t leave them.”

Her eyes widened. “You have to make them understand that—”

At that moment, Nan stepped into the hallway. “I do understand,” she said.

Taryn looked from me to Nan, questioning.

Nan smiled like she was a hostess, greeting guests at a tea party. “Nick won’t properly introduce us, but I’m his grandmother. And you are Taryn. It is nice to finally meet you, after all I’ve heard. Come in and have something to eat.”

Normally I’d shrink away in embarrassment, but I was too busy trying to sort out the visions that were flashing in my head. Headlights. Screams. They seemed so close. Taryn reluctantly followed us to the kitchen, like it was the last thing on earth she wanted to do. She helped Nan set the table and pour the tea anyway. Ten minutes later we sat around the kitchen table, nursing steaming mugs. I guess none of us felt much like drinking. Taryn didn’t even bother to remove her tea bag. She just stared at it. “I’m sorry that your family has become such a big part of my family’s curse,” she said softly. I couldn’t tell if she was addressing me or Nan.

“It seems that our family had some responsibility for inserting ourselves into it,” Nan answered. She looked Taryn over. Now that she was drying out, her hair was shiny and her cheeks were turning rosy. She looked even hotter than I remembered. It was pretty stupid considering everything else that was going on, but I still wanted her. “Nick has told me so much about you.”

I kicked her under the table to get her to stop giving the poor girl the hairy eyeball. Then I said, “Um. So what do we do now?”

Taryn shrugged. “Well, I wanted you to run away.”

“But would that do any good? Wouldn’t it just find us?”

She nodded. “Wishful thinking. It doesn’t stop until it does.”

I took a big gulp of tea and remembered too late that it was still hot. It scalded all the way down my throat and I grimaced back the pain. “What is it anyway? This thing that’s coming for us?”

She shuddered. “It’s death. And it can take any one of a million forms.”

“So like, TB? Being chopped up in a meat grinder?” Lightning flashed in the sky. “Electrocution? Anything?”

“No. It’s the worst. It’s whatever form you fear most.”

I stared at her. “I’ve never thought about that. Do people seriously sit around and try to think of the worst way to die?”

“Well, dear,” Nan said, “that’s because you’ve always been busy thinking of so many other things. But truthfully, I think that, deep down, most people know very well which type of death they would fear the most.”

Taryn nodded. I stared at her, confused, but then I suddenly remembered what she said. “I always have this feeling I’m going to die in a horrific car crash.”

Nan continued, “When I was five, I almost drowned in the ocean. I’ve been so afraid of drowning ever since.”

“Shhh,” I muttered, scanning the corners of the ceiling for—I don’t know what. Shadows, ghosts, some guy with a sickle. “You don’t want it to hear you. Whatever it is.”

Taryn said, “You don’t have to say it out loud. It already knows. Even if you don’t think you know. It does.” She shuddered again.

“Let’s find something else to talk about,” Nan said, slitting open a box of Entenmann’s with a knife. “Crumb cake?”

We all stared at it like it was a brick of dog crap. We’d lost our appetites. And clearly Nan was off her rocker. Death was coming for us, and she wanted us to sit and enjoy crumb cake. She’d let us go through our most feared deaths instead of getting a Touch just because she hated “that nonsense” so much.

“Nan,” I said, trying to keep my voice even, “can we talk in the other room?”

She shook her head and cut herself a large piece of cake. “I don’t want my tea to get cold.”

“Nan,” I grumbled. “Fine. Don’t you understand? This is why you have to do it. You have to.”

Taryn stopped staring at her tea and looked at me. “Do what?”

I explained my idea of Nan getting the Flight of Song Touch, and Taryn’s eyes widened.

“Right! Wait.” She turned to Nan. “You don’t want to?”

Nan pushed her plate away without taking a bite and began fingering the Miraculous Medal around her neck. I knew what she thought: Leave it in the hands of God. He will make everything right. I’d heard her feelings about the Heights all too often, too: nothing good could be found in the Devil’s Playground. “That’s right. The Touch is the source of my family’s problem. It’s not the solution. It’s sinful.”

“Oh, I guess,” Taryn said softly, then gave me an “is she insane?” look. “Good thought, though.”

Nan stood up. Her expression, for once, was grave. “Lovely chatting with you both. Now I must get ready for bed.”

She started for the staircase, her shoulders slumped and her head down. Normally she would have cleared the table and loaded the dishwasher, but I could tell she was rattled. And who wouldn’t be?

“Good night,” I called after her, and then I couldn’t resist getting one last dig in there. “You might want to forgo your bath. I’d stay away from water altogether, if I were you.”

Nan didn’t respond. Taryn swallowed and grimaced like there were knives in her throat. She’d shredded the paper napkin into a pile of confetti. “Maybe she will sleep on it and change her mind?” she offered.

I shrugged. “Maybe.” I kept my voice light to hide the dread that had crept over me. There was still a long night ahead of us, and evil always seemed more possible in the darkness.