Watch Me: Teen Paranormal Romance (A Touched Trilogy Book 3) (12 page)

Chapter 13

Morning was always my favorite time of day, maybe because Phoebe rarely woke up early enough to ruin the peaceful quiet.

Today though, everything seemed a hundred times better, and it all had to do with what happened last night, or rather what didn’t happen. The future had changed. Andrew hadn’t cheated on me and Nadine didn’t betray me.

Every part of my life would trace back to that event - the college I went to, the friends I socialized with, my choice to never marry.

I slipped out of bed, toes curling as my feet hit the chilly hardwood floor. My reflection in the mirror above my desk stared back at me. In a vibrant blue glow, my future floated around me. The small glimpse I had last night before I drifted off to sleep had been enough to know things were going to be different.

Butterflies swirled through my stomach. Breathing deep, I pulled inward and looked at what my life would be like.

Even with the slight blur I was growing accustomed to, what I saw went beyond anything I ever dreamed. I hold a child with brown hair and my blue eyes. A man, tall and lanky, glasses atop his graying hair. We are old, withered with age. Little boys running at our feet. Love radiates from me.

Blinking, I slid back into the present and reality hit me hard. I placed my hands on my dresser and leaned forward until my forehead pressed against the cool mirror. My heart raced and I struggled to draw in slow, deep breaths.

Somewhere inside me, I had hoped that I would be with Andrew. It may have been but a flicker barely visible in the depths of the lonely future I had anticipated, but it had been there. Last night, though, the flicker grew exponentially until I imagine I felt like most people do when they are in love.

The man in my new vision wasn’t Andrew. While his height and facial structure were familiar, the fog obscured the details of his face enough that I couldn’t say whether I already knew him. I may love Andrew now, but years from now, he would be but a faded memory resting in the shadow of my adoration for this mystery man.

The idea of still not being with Andrew tugged at my heart, tears gathering in my eyes, but they refused to fall. What this new future held for me was what I would have chosen for myself, filled with love from a partner and children and happiness. There were still so many unknowns. It would take months to fill in the gaps, yet I could live with the changes, because love would exist for me.

“You feel different.”

I turned to look at Lily. She hovered in the doorway, her eyes trained on me.

“How so?” I asked.

Her head cocked to the side as she considered the question. “Ever since Thanksgiving, when you saw something in Sebastian’s future, you’ve been tense and sad. When you told me about Nadine and Andrew, it explained the sadness, but it was still there.”

“I’m sorry.”

Lily’s ability to feel someone’s pain and negative emotions caused a burning throughout her body before and during her healing of them, intensifying the longer she resisted.

“It’s not your fault, Chloe.” She smiled softly, tucking a stray auburn curl behind her ear. “So why the change? All the tension and sadness is nearly completely gone. You’re almost happy.”

“That’s because I think for the first time in months, I really am.” I flopped backward onto the bed, legs dangling so my feet brushed the floor. “I did it, or I guess I should say Bastian did. He changed the future.”

“So he stopped…” Her words trailed off.

“Yeah.”

“How?”

“By running into Andrew on his way to the restroom.” I gave a short laugh. “It seems so simple when I say it. Nothing I tried before made any impact then Bianca mentioned Bastian wasn’t going to the party so we decided he was our chance. We got him to go, but it still didn’t seem to make a difference. Other than making things a bit foggy, no one’s futures changed.”

“But it worked.”

I laughed. “Yeah. Everything is different.”

“So the change is good?”

I thought of the emotions that had transferred through the images in my vision.

“It’s good.”

“Then I’m glad for you,” she said, but she gave a look suggesting she wasn’t sure if she believed her own words then left. I shook my head. Sometimes the Freaky Matlin label was too obvious.

It was Monday before I noticed the ripples, and they started with Nadine.

“Roaring Twenties,” Nadine said as we walked down the hall.

“What?”

“Hello, my New Year’s party? I watched this movie with the guy from Titanic. It takes place in the twenties.”

“The Great Gatsby?”

“Yeah, well okay so I didn’t watch the whole thing, but there’s this one scene where they’re at a party and it just hit me - Roaring Twenties. That’s what it’s called, right?”

“Yep,” I answered. At least it was a better concept than celebrity couples and I couldn’t find fault with her source material even if she had no clue what The Great Gatsby was about.

The party wasn’t supposed to happen. When Nadine realized everyone knew about her and Andrew, she would cancel it, but she didn’t because they never hooked up.

I shifted closer to her so my hand could pass into her future, being careful not to go too far in. I am at Nadine's. Dancing with Andrew. Bursting fireworks above us illuminate the yard. The fog creeps in and I pulled back.

Her party wasn’t canceled and the promises I made to go were suddenly more than meaningless agreements. That meant her future had been changed.

Every step I took along the path to stopping Andrew and Nadine from happening had focused on changing something I considered as my future. Those visions may have been of the two of them, but in my mind, they were about me. I was the one betrayed, the one who suffered, the one who became the crazy cat lady.

Yet, they were the ones who would have made the choice. By changing the situation around and taking that choice from them, I altered not only my future but also theirs and possibly even the people they would become.

Going back into the haze around Nadine, I drift past flashes of New Year’s. The fog lingered, thickening the farther in time I go. The jumbo screen at the drive-in theater. Nadine smiling. Darkness. It is… something I can’t see. And then the nothingness of death.

There was no sound to my visions, yet the words were as clear as if I had spoken them myself.

Dance alone and you lose. In a tug of war, right is right, and left is lost.

“You know that, right?” Nadine was saying as I pulled out of the darkness and back into the hall.

“Know what?”

“That you shouldn’t do those weird book quotes with me. I never get what you’re trying to say.”

Apparently I spoke the words from the vision out loud.

“Oh, yeah it’s just a quote.”

“From the movie I was talking about?”

“The Great Gatsby? No. It’s…Shakespeare, I think.”

“Well, what does a tug of war have to do with the flapper dress I’m gonna buy?”

I tried to remember what I said and how I could make any sense out of them.

“Well, if you go shopping for the dress alone, you’ll pick a bad one, and if you’ve got two dresses you can’t decide between, then you should go with the one on the right.”

“Huh, I didn’t know Shakespeare wrote about shopping.”

“It might have been one of The Vampire Diaries books.”

“I love that show! Damon is sooo hot.” She launched into a whole diatribe about the how Elana and Damon didn't belong together and how she belonged with Stefan.

I managed to nod at the right moments, but I paid little attention to what she said. Instead, I worked to figure out what Nadine’s future meant. It couldn’t be anything good.

If I altered her future and mine, then what had I done to Andrew’s? Would he still abandon his dreams of becoming a director? Did he still marry the girl from college? What would happen to us that we didn’t end up together?

“Do you think Andrew and I are good together?” I asked, interrupting Nadine.

“You mean, like, Elana and Damon or like Elana and Stefan?”

I rolled my eyes. “I mean like Andrew and me.”

She dug into her backpack, searching for something. “Sure, you guys are great.”

Suspicion narrowed my eyes. “You don’t sound sure.”

She gave a loud sigh and gave up her fake search. “I don’t know. Sometimes you seem really into him and then others… it’s like you don’t think you want to be with him.”

“You think I’m stringing him along?”

“No,” she said. “Okay, kinda.”

“Gee, nice to know you think I’m a total bitch.” It stung to realize she was right. I wouldn’t be with him forever, and I had played hot and cold with him for months.

“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it like that!”

She sounded honestly distressed and I remembered that she was a genuinely nice person. Everyone liked her, even Bianca, despite creating the Nada nickname. Her friendly and sweet nature was the reason Nadine was my best friend, and why it had been difficult to accept that she would so easily betray me.

But she didn’t and I was acting as if she had. It was hard not to blame her for the choice she would have made if given the chance.

“Never mind, it was a stupid question. You want to go Christmas shopping this weekend?” I asked.

“You’re not done yet?”

“Nope, I totally slacked this year. I think eighteen years of Phoebe finally rubbed off on me.”

Fight with friend averted, I spent the rest of the day trying to figure out what the words I’d said during the vision meant. Other than when I warned Micah that Lily would be injured if he made the wrong choice, the words from my visions never seemed to mean anything. Nothing dramatic ever happened. Usually I didn’t even have a clue what I said. So that left me to wonder what the point of them was. Shouldn’t they mean something?

Nadine’s party was only the first major shift. The ripples grew, spreading farther and farther, touching everyone around me. I wanted to make some kind of connection between the people involved in that one event and the new futures forming, but everything seemed so random. I couldn’t always pick out the differences, mainly because I could barely see anything.

The week before Christmas break passed by in a maze of foggy futures and, according to Bianca, weird zone outs and freaky phrases. Most of the time, I didn’t remember what I said to people, though the more it happened the more often I remembered. All I knew was that the words were coming to me as my view blurred.

It was with the people closest to me that I noticed the greatest changes, possibly since I knew the details of the futures they once had. Those lives were gone and now it was like looking at dozens of pictures printed on transparencies then stacked atop each other.

“You’re super quiet today,” Andrew said as I gathered my books from my locker Friday afternoon.

The halls were almost empty. Not surprising since classes ended almost a half hour ago. Even the staff had taken off, with classroom doors closed and locked. Ms. Garcia practically shoved us out of her room.

“Just not in a talkative mood, I guess.”

Sliding the books into my backpack, I double-checked I had everything. For some reason, teachers thought we wanted to do homework over winter break. I wouldn’t mind the English paper and reading, but the Calculus review looked daunting. If I hadn’t already seen myself passing the class, it would have made me worry about the final exam in January. Of course, now the future could change, maybe I should start to worry.

I slipped on my jacket and the cute crocheted owl beanie Nanna gave me for my birthday. The mirror stuck to the inside of my locker door reflected the wide owl eyes correctly centered.

“Do you still want to go see that new superhero movie tonight?” I asked as we headed for the student parking lot.

“Yeah, unless you have a better idea?”

Another night sitting in a theater wasn’t exactly thrilling, even if we were together.

“Bianca and Owen are going to the new pool hall. We could hang out with them.”

“Do you even know how to play?” he asked, clearly unimpressed.

“No, but we always go to the movies. It’d be nice to try something new.”

“We could go to a different movie. Your choice. There’s an artsy drama that came out last week.” He took my backpack and swung it over his shoulder.

“And if I choose something other than a movie?” Irritation scratched at me. I shoved the exit door hard enough for it to bounce back and nearly smack me in the face.

“Seriously? I’m gonna be working every night from tomorrow until Christmas.”

“You work at the theater. You’re there practically every day.” I sighed, shaking my head. “I want to hang out with Bianca. She’s going to Vegas with her family for the break. I won’t get to see her until New Year’s.”

“Fine, whatever.”

I bit my tongue. “You don’t have to come. Go to the movie if you want to. It’s fine. We can do something tomorrow.”

“I have to work tomorrow night.”