Sawyer tilts his head, thinking. “Yeah, maybe Rowan is right. Tori realized she doesn’t have the support she thought she had from her mom, and now can only text when her mom isn’t around. It wouldn’t surprise me if Mrs. Hayes looks over Tori’s shoulder and reads every text she sends.” He pauses. “I mean, don’t get me wrong. It’s great Mrs. Hayes has dropped everything to be at her daughter’s side. It just seems like she’s gone a little overboard.”
“So what should I reply?” I ask. “Just tell her we can stop the visions but only if she tells us everything?” I shake my head, trying to imagine getting all the info we need from her text messages.
“Yeah,” Trey says. “Don’t waste time asking her what’s up with her mother. Just get right to the point.”
I type: We can help but we need to know everything about your vision so we can stop the tragedy from happening. It’s a tragedy of some sort, isn’t it? I look up, my finger hovering over the send button. “Okay?”
Everybody nods. I press the button.
Yes, comes the reply.
Sawyer groans. “Come on, Tori. Give us something.”
“Hold on, she’s typing more,” I say.
We stare, breathless, waiting to find out what our next impossible mission will be.
“I think I’m going to throw up,” Sawyer whispers.
“Me too,” I say.
And finally: Must hurry—there’s a house. Sirens. Ambulance. Paramedics taking bodies out on stretchers.
I read the text aloud, and then type: Do you see any street signs? What kind of house? Is there a house number? How many bodies? Can you tell what’s wrong with them? I look around the group. “Okay?”
They nod. I send. And we wait.
She doesn’t reply.
After a few moments of silence, all of us willing my phone to vibrate, willing Tori’s name to show up on my screen, we give up and try to do our homework for a while.
“This is agonizing,” Rowan says as the “Library closes in ten minutes” recording breaks our concentration. We pack up and make our way through the teen section, each of us grabbing a few books to borrow, and stop at the checkout desk.
Once outside, I look at my phone again to make sure I didn’t miss anything. I echo Rowan’s words. “It is agonizing. It must be for Tori, too. Especially since it seems like she thought it was okay to talk about this in front of her mom.” I think back to my vision—how horrible and alone I felt. And that helps strengthen my weakened resolve to help Tori.
I say a quick good night to Sawyer in the parking lot and head home with Rowan and Trey.
“I wonder what happened to the people on the stretchers,” Rowan says. “Do you think they were murdered?”
Trey frowns. “I don’t think paramedics are supposed to move bodies if they’re dead. So there must be some hope of them surviving if they’re carrying them out to the ambulance.” He pauses. “Of course, there could be dead people inside the house.”
I look at Tori’s description on my phone. “She didn’t give us much to go on. I hope she has a chance to text me again soon. ‘A house.’ That’s about all we’ve got. Hello, this is Chicago, land of many houses.”
• • •
On Saturday morning I send Tori the longest text known to humankind: Tori, I think we can help you but we need more information. Can you please answer the questions I asked? Tell us everything you can. Please. The only way to stop the visions from driving you crazy is for you to stop the tragedy from happening. But since you can’t, we will do it for you. I’m sure the vision is getting worse every day. Believe me, I understand. I want to help.
My phone is so silent I think it must be broken. I forward the message to Sawyer just to make sure my phone is actually sending text messages. He replies in a nanosecond: Good job.
The hours crawl by as we go out as a family to look at some houses for rent. By midafternoon my parents think they’ve found the one they want. Even though the rent is a little higher than they’d planned, it’s really close to our pile of ashes, and I guess they find that comforting. They go back and forth in quiet voices about the rent being seventy dollars a month higher than they had budgeted based on the insurance money, and after ten minutes of that I want to butt in and tell them I’ll give them the stupid seventy bucks a month . . . except I forgot I no longer have a job.
But then, in a flash of brilliance, I remember the envelope Mr. Polselli gave me yesterday. When we get back to Aunt Mary’s I race to the living room, pull it from my backpack, and present it to my dad. “This is from the teachers at school,” I say.
With a puzzled look on his face, he opens the envelope and pulls out a wad of twenties. He counts the money—all eight hundred dollars of it.
“Holy moly,” I say. I feel so weird about it. Teachers don’t have a lot of extra cash. I bet most of them sacrificed something pretty important in order to chip in, like, I don’t know, bifocals or cat food or whatever teachers buy.
“That’s incredibly generous,” Mom says. Her eyes are shining.
And my dad grips the cash like somebody just threw him a lifeline.
Sixteen
On Saturday night Sawyer comes over, and Dad still doesn’t yell at him, not even when I say we’re going out for a while. Together. Alone.
“Definite progress,” Sawyer says later in the car. “Is he just distracted, or do you think he’s actually starting to like me?”