I rest my head against his shoulder and stay quiet, not wanting to interrupt.
“The next thing was the billboard. A still picture of a figure, arms raised and pointing straight ahead, firing a gun—muzzle flash and everything.”
I frown. “Muzzle flash?”
“When you pull the trigger of a gun, it ignites gunpowder, which explodes, pushing the bullet out. There’s a little flash of fire that comes out the barrel, but you can’t usually see it.”
“Why not?”
He shrugs and thinks about that for a minute. “Partly because it happens really fast. But also because there’s usually too much natural light, I guess.”
“Ah. So this vision of yours—it happens at night?”
He frowns. “Huh,” he says, and then he looks at me. “Maybe. You’re good at this.”
I give a sordid laugh. “Forced on-the-job training makes you an expert in a hurry. You’ll learn, kid. Stick with me.”
“No worries there,” he says, looking slightly relieved.
“So you’re only seeing stills? And you hear gunfire from them?”
“No, no sound from the stills. We have TVs in the restaurant bar, and not long after the billboard incident, when I was bussing a table, I glanced at it and saw the same figure—person with a gun, arm outstretched, and he was stepping backward and swinging the gun wide, like he was feeling threatened. I stopped working and stared at it, and then the gunshots exploded in my head and I dropped my tray.”
I wince. “Was it dark?”
He hesitates. “Well, I could see the guy. Not his face— he was turned away. And I could see, um, bodies. But it wasn’t sunny or bright in there or anything.”
I knit my brows, thinking. “How do you know this guy is at a school?”
“I don’t know—it just looked like a school. It was all really fast—it felt . . . schoolish.”
“Yeah, okay,” I say, trying not to sound impatient. I remember how many hundreds of times I had to see mine before I caught everything. “You’ll get more information eventually.”
Just then somebody opens the door, sees us, and says, “Oops!” really loudly. I can hear people swarming the hallways. The dude closes the door again, and I glance at the clock. Four minutes until lunch is over.
Sawyer follows my gaze. “That went way too fast,” he says, getting up. He picks up the food trays and stacks one on top of the other like the server pro that he is, balancing them with one hand. “I guess I should get these back to the kitchen.”
I stand up too, grabbing a roll from the top tray and pulling a hunk off. “You should try to eat something,” I say. “You’re going to need the energy.”
He gives me a weary smile. “Does that mean it only gets worse from here?”
I nod, taking a bite of the roll.
“And it doesn’t end until . . . ?”
I swallow. “Until it’s over.”
We walk to the door and he pauses. “Wait a sec.” With his free hand he reaches into his pocket. “I hope this isn’t weird,” he says, “and you can say no and I won’t be offended or anything, but I can’t stand not being able to talk to you, especially with . . . this thing going on.” He pulls out a cell phone and hands it to me. “It’s just one of those cheap prepaid ones. No frills. Phone only.”
I take it, and it feels like I just got out of jail. “You are brilliant,” I say, turning it over in my hand, and then I look up at him and my heart swishes. “Thank you.”
“Don’t get caught.”
“I won’t.” I shove the phone into my pocket and reach up, thumbing the corner of his mouth until he gives me the smile I love. “I’ll call you tonight.” It’s amazing how nice it feels to be able to say that.
He hesitates, his hand on the doorknob. “Jules?”
I look at him.
“In the vision, I don’t see any faces I know.”
“Oh.” I’m not sure what he’s trying to say. “Okay, well, that’s good, right?”
But that’s not what he means. He hesitates, and then he squeezes his eyes shut like he’s making the hardest decision of his life and says, “I was kind of wondering what happens if I don’t want to do this.”
Six
The bell rings before I can answer, and besides, the question is too much to absorb in ten seconds, so we say a hasty good-bye. All afternoon I think about what he said. And I wonder. If he doesn’t know or care about any of the people in the vision, does he have to do something? Is he legally obligated to do something? What about, like, morally?
My guess is that my vision probably would have gone away whether I saved people or not, but I didn’t know that back then. Does that change anything? I go back in time in my mind. If I knew that the vision would stop pounding me at every turn if I only waited long enough, would I have done what I did?
That one’s not hard. Sure I would have, because of Sawyer’s dead face in the body bag. But then I wonder how I would have looked at it had it been a stranger’s face. If every part of the vision stayed the same except Sawyer wasn’t going to be hurt or killed, would I have done what I did?
Not quite as simple, but the answer is still yes, because it was Sawyer’s family business, and chances were good that some family members filled the other body bags. And as much as we both are disgusted by our parents’ behavior—and I’m not talking just my dad’s affair with Sawyer’s mom, but also the ridiculous rivalry over a stupid sauce recipe—that doesn’t mean we want them to die, and I wouldn’t want Sawyer to go through that pain.