One
It’s been over a week since Sawyer kissed me and told me he was seeing a vision now, and it’s all I can think about. I can’t wait to get out of this apartment, which I am tethered to until Monday—that’s when the doc said my internal injuries will be healed enough so I can go to school again. My older brother and best friend, Trey, has been great, of course, slipping notes to Sawyer for me and delivering replies back to me. But for some reason Sawyer won’t explain his vision on paper. “It’s too . . . frightening. Too gruesome. Too . . . everything,” he wrote.
And me? I’m sick about it.
Absolutely sick.
Because it’s my fault. I was so relieved when my vision
LISA M c MANN ended—no more snowplow crashing and exploding into Angotti’s restaurant, no more body bags in the snow, no more Sawyer’s dead face. After weeks of that stupid vision taunting me, and after nearly getting killed because of it, I was naive enough to think it was all over and I’d get to live a happy life. Relatively, anyway. Under the current parental circumstances, that is.
But then, once I got home from the hospital, Sawyer sent me that note. He had to see me, he said. That night, 2:00 a.m. And I wanted to see him, too. I eased my broken body down the stairs and we stood in the snowdrift surrounded by breathy clouds and he kissed me, and I kissed him back, and it was the most weirdly amazing feeling. . . .
And then the amazingness of my first kiss was over. He pulled away and looked at me, his gorgeous green eyes filled with fear, and his voice shook. You know that billboard?
Those words haunt me.
Obviously I was not only psychotic enough to have a vision, but I managed to give the stupid vision disease to the one person I was trying to save.
It’s beyond horrifying, sitting here knowing he must be experiencing the worst kind of frustration and pressure to act on the vision and—Did he say “gruesome”?
Let me say it one more time. Sick. That is what I am.
And so very sorry.
I rack my brain trying to figure out how this could have happened. Was it because he hugged me on the street the night before? Because he held my hand afterward in the hospital? Maybe there’s some kind of physical transference going on. I have no idea.
I have done something horrible to the boy I love, and I don’t know how to stop it.
All I know is that I need to get out of this hoardhole before I lose my mind.
Oh, wait.
Two
Finally. School. I get up a little earlier than Trey and my younger sister, Rowan, partly because my eyes fly open at five thirty in anticipation of seeing Sawyer, and partly because it takes me a little longer to get my makeup on with the half-arm cast wrapping around the base of my thumb.
I sneak out of the bedroom I share with Rowan, plasticwrap my cast, and grab a shower, then try to do something with my hair—the bedhead look was fun for a while but, well, you know.
At six, like clockwork, I hear two doors open almost simultaneously, and then the precarious race to the bathroom as Trey and Rowan dodge my father’s hoards of junk that line the hallway. I open the door a crack and Trey bursts in. “Dang it,” Rowan mutters from somewhere behind him. “Look at you, hot girl,” Trey says, keeping his frame in
the doorway so Rowan can’t sneak past.
“Yeah?” I say, biting my lip. I freaking love my brother.
Love him to death.
“You know you’re going to get mobbed, you big hero.” Rowan pokes Trey in the back. “Come on,” she whispers, not wanting to wake our parents. “Either let me in or
get your own butt in there.”
“Whatever happened to sweet morning Rowan?” I ask
Trey like she’s not there.
He shrugs.
“Sweet morning Rowan died looking at your face,”
Rowan mutters. She gives up and goes to the kitchen. I snicker and do a final inspection. My black eye has
healed, my various stitches have been removed, and my
hair actually does look kind of awesome. My arm doesn’t
hurt anymore. My insides are feeling pretty good too,
though I’m not allowed to drive quite yet after the surgery.
Only my stubborn left thigh remains a beastly mottled
yellow-green, having abandoned black, blue, and purple
as the weeks passed. It still hurts to press on it, but at least
no one can see the bruise under my clothes. And hopefully
I’ll have this arm cast off in a few weeks.
As I slip out of Trey’s way, I stop. “Any chance we can
leave a few minutes early?”
“If you get out of here already,” Trey says.
“I’m gone.” I step into the hallway with a grin and he
closes the door in my face.
In the kitchen, Rowan has her head in the sink and
the faucet extended. She’s washing her hair like it’s frisée
lettuce.
“Gross,” I say. “Getting your hair germs all over
Mom’s nice clean sink.”
“Listen, you wanna know what goes in here?” comes
her muffled reply as she turns the water off and replaces
the faucet. “The juice of meat. I’m telling you right now
this sink is freaking overjoyed to see my awesome hair
in it.”
Did I mention I adore my sister, too?
I grab breakfast while she wraps her head in a towel
and starts doing her makeup in the reflection of the
kitchen window. “We’re leaving a little early today,” I