Gasp (Visions) - Lisa McMann Page 0,66

later.

It takes a four-eyed, hilariously blunt thirteen-year-old kid with cancer to point out the logic of the visions to me. And it’s not until after we deal with her vision disaster that we realize we’ve hit a dead end.

As it turns out, Bridget Brinkerhoff is probably the best of all of us at solving the clues and carrying out the risky actions inside a vision. Maybe it’s because she has to face death on a regular basis that she’s so fearless. And maybe she’s just faking bravery, like the rest of us. But Sawyer and I, Trey and Ben, Rowan, and probably even Rowan’s not-fake Internet boyfriend, Charlie, would all agree that Bridget has a knack for figuring out what’s in store for our little world. She’s in remission now, by the way—a detail she nearly forgot to tell us after her last doctor’s visit.

Bridget’s vision? Stadium bleachers collapse at a graduation ceremony. At one point or another in the vision, she saw each of us dead, along with dozens of strangers.

But it’s over now and here we are: Trey, Rowan, Sawyer, Ben, Bridget, and me. All still alive. We lie on our backs in the grass next to our garden, staring up at the stars.

“We could go try to get the graduating class list. Narrow down the possibilities to try to find the next person with the vision.” It hurts my stomach to say it.

“It wouldn’t help much, since none of the graduates were in those bleachers,” Sawyer says. He holds my hand.

“Yeah, but maybe their families were.”

“Extended families, friends,” Trey says, “plus other students. Over a thousand of them. Face it, Jules. Unless the person finds us, we’re done here. The vision curse moves on without us.”

I close my eyes, wishing it to be true.

Bridget props herself up on an elbow. “So, I’ve been meaning to ask, who’d you get your vision from, Jules?”

“Nobody. I started it,” I say.

Bridget snorts. “You did not.”

I open my eyes and turn my head to look at her. “How would you know?”

“Ego much?” She grins.

I rip up a handful of grass and throw it at her face.

She laughs again and says, “No, come on. Really. Who’d you get your vision from?”

“I’m not joking,” I say. “I really think it started with me. I haven’t been in any tragedies.”

“Well, when did your vision start?” she prods.

Rowan props up on her elbow too, on the other side of Bridget. “Yeah, when exactly did it start? Do you remember?”

Slowly everybody else shifts to look at me. “Suddenly I feel like I’m on a talk show,” I say. I try to remember. “I don’t know. I had my vision for a long time. Several weeks.”

“If we work backward from the night before Valentine’s, when the crash happened,” Sawyer says, “where would that put you—first of the year, maybe?”

“Christmas,” I say, thinking hard. “In fact, it was Christmas Day. We went to a movie—Trey, Rowan, and me. That first vision was in the theater.”

“You’re sure?” Ben asks.

I think harder. “Yes.”

“So if it follows a pattern,” he continues, “you would have been saved from some tragedy a day or two before, right?”

“I guess,” I say. “But like I said, I wasn’t—”

“Well, maybe somebody just did such a great job of saving you that you didn’t even know you were saved,” Bridget says.

Trey sits up. He starts to speak, and then he stops, hand poised in the air as if he was about to make a point. And then he looks at me. “Wait,” he says softly, closing his eyes, his face concentrating. “Wait a second.” His eyes pop open. “When did you get mugged?”

Sawyer sits up in concern. “You got mugged?”

But I can’t answer Sawyer because I’m thinking hard. “Christmas Eve, wasn’t it, Trey? Or the night before that? But it was no big deal. Nothing really happened. The guy ran off when another guy came out of nowhere to help me.” I look around the sea of faces, all wearing the same look. “Oh,” I say.

I sit up as the details of that night flood my brain. The rush of footsteps in the dark. The guy shoving my pizza delivery bag at my face and grabbing me from behind, then pushing my face into a snowy bush. “He had a knife,” I say. A shiver runs up my spine as I remember the click in my ear.

Everybody’s silent for a second. And then Bridget says, “So there you go. You didn’t start it. Next question?”

“So the guy