seeing it for the first—or last—time. Had he gotten the email that I’d supposedly sent? Was he thinking what I was thinking? Had he seen my last vision? Remi’s expression filled me with fear.
He’d always looked like a cherub. Not like a baby, but innocent, untouched by negative things. Remi plopped down on the bed, wiping sandy brown ringlets away from his forehead and leaning on his elbows with his face in his hands. When he was happy, his eyes were the color of a cloudless sky. Any other emotion or a rainy day made them seem grayer. I tried not to notice the dull hue to his eyes that night.
“You shouldn’t be so down, you know.” I attempted to sound chipper so he wouldn’t notice how effected I was by the emails. “We’re gonna be rich.”
“Is that so?” he countered, failing to sound chipper as well. I squirmed as discomfort snaked into the room, slithered upward, and wrapped itself around me. Something was definitely wrong.
“Yep! We won the Rwandan lottery, and I’m gonna split the entire three hundred eighty-eight million with you!”
My attempt at humor was wasted. Remi’s facial expression was somewhere between fear and amusement, like a child watching a circus clown for the first time, unsure of which emotion to settle into: fear or happiness. In my gut, I knew something was wrong with Remi. With me. With everything. The day I’d hoped would come since age nine was here. I knew at that moment that everything was about to change. That Remi and I were about to find out why we had these abilities, that whatever was happening, that Remi had known all along. And yet, I immediately felt a need to comfort him, to make what he was about to tell me OK for him. For both of us.
I steadied myself against the impending doom. “You can tell me anything, you know. You look a little green. Maybe you should—” But he was already lying down. I swallowed back a gulp.
I had never seen him like this: so deep in thought and, from the looks of it, not a good one. He cracked a half-smile. Overwhelmed, I began to cry.
“I have a strange feeling,” Remi started. He seemed almost in a daze, far away, as if he was seeing something. “Something bad is gonna happen.”
“What? Why would you say that? Did you see something?” I reached for his hand.
“It’s the same feeling I had before Dad died.” Remi took my hand in his.
Tears fell in lines, one after the other, down my face. I began to shake softly. I sat staring at him, and he closed his eyes as if to block unpleasant images from his mind.
A tear fell from his left eye, still closed. I watched as the singular tear made a slow and deliberate effort down the hills and valleys of his cheek, then jaw line, and thin at his chin. It was as if it was the only tear left in him, or maybe it had been waiting for a moment such as this to fall.
I clutched my sides, which had begun to ache, afraid to accept what Remi had said.
The night before Dad died, Remi told me he dreamed Dad had been in a car accident on Reddington Highway. He described in detail the time of day, the weather, the position of the sun and clouds in the sky. What stood out more than anything, he’d said, was the presence of huge, wide-winged birds. I tried to assure him that this was impossible since Dad was away on business and would not be back for two days. I didn’t know then if my attempts to calm him had worked. I ran from the room shortly after his revelation because I was afraid. I couldn’t let him see me that way. I didn’t want him to know the truth. I’d had the same dream.
The next day, Remi had invited friends over. Jenny Larson and I cleared the table to the sound of both the TV and the boys in the other room.
“Hey, sis, your phone’s ringing,” Remi called from the living room.
With a plate in hand, I ran into the living room to get my phone. Remi threw it to me before anyone noticed how quickly he had moved. When had he gotten so fast, so graceful? I was neither of those things, and could either hold the plate or catch the phone. I reached for the phone, and that’s when things