Touched - By Cyn Balog Page 0,27
know, you will start running. You will fall and smack your face against the pavement.…”
“Script? So wait. You actually see the phrase ‘You Will’ in your head, like in a real script?”
I shake my head. “No, I see myself doing those things in my head. If I stay on that script, my mind doesn’t get clogged up with lots of possibilities. It just stays on one future. But if I go off script, even a little—”
“So that day when we met, you were—”
“According to the script, I was supposed to save that girl. Emma. I saw myself saving her. Instead I met you. And my mind went haywire with all the new outcomes.”
She stared at me, uncomprehending at first. I saw the moment it made sense to her, because her breath hitched. “Oh, my God. Really?”
“Yeah. And now something’s going to happen, and I have to fix … Oh, forget it.” I’d never explained this to anyone, and it felt so foreign coming out of my mouth. Unbelievable, even to me. “Did you make the team?” I asked, trying to change the subject.
She nodded. “You?”
“Nah. Probably better if I’m not on it. I’d know when we were going to lose and just drag down team morale.” I meant it as a joke, but it came out bitter and sad.
She stared into the water for a minute. “Well, why did you even bother trying out? You must have known you were not going to make the team, right?”
I shook my head. “You would think. But it’s like this: think of the last movie you saw.”
“Okay.”
“Are you thinking of it?”
“Yeah.”
She said it so quickly and dismissively I thought there was no way she could be thinking of it. Without even realizing I was doing it, I said, “Wow, The Little Mermaid? Seriously?”
Her eyes grew wide for a second, then she glared at me. “I babysit a lot. How did you know that?”
“I can do it sometimes. If I have something concrete to focus on, I can just go forward into our future to where I find out what I need to know.”
Her jaw dropped. “You can do that?”
“Yeah. Sometimes. I mean, I can’t go too far into the future. A couple of minutes at most. Anyway, back to The Little Mermaid. Do you remember all the lines, everything that happened?”
“Yes.” When I raised my eyebrows, she smiled. “Like I said, I babysit a lot. I’ve seen the movie four hundred times.” Then she began to sing, “ ‘Look at this stuff, isn’t it neat. Wouldn’t you think my collection’s—’ ”
“All right. But with movies you’re not secretly obsessed with—”
“I’m not obsessed!” There was a small smile playing on her lips as she punched my arm. “Right. I only remember the really big things that happen.”
“Right. Or the dialogue or action or whatever that really hit home or meant something to you. Or just random things, pieces of the whole. But if you hadn’t seen the entire movie, and you just saw that random thing out of context, you’d be a little confused, right? That’s what I see. So no, I had a strong feeling, but I didn’t know for sure I wasn’t going to make the team. I guess it didn’t matter to me so much. I remember the things that matter more.”
She nodded. “Oh.”
I took a breath and suddenly I saw red velvet, like from a tent. A gypsy tent, like the ones on the boardwalk in the Heights. Taryn was standing there, beckoning me into the tent. Then, Old Scary Lady at a table, surrounded by red velvet. “Your grandmother is a fortune-teller on the boardwalk? Seriously?”
She gave me a severe look, like it was nothing to laugh about, and it was only then I realized I was kind of laughing. Because the fortune-tellers on the boardwalk were all old crackpots who were so senile they didn’t remember their own names. Only idiot tourists went to them. Of course Old Scary Lady was a fortune-teller. It totally fit.
“Well, why not?” Taryn said. “Hey, you shouldn’t knock it. She makes a good living. You could probably make a killing doing it.”
I shook my head. “I can only see my own future. And I don’t even see that very well. Like I said.”
“Oh.” She bit her lip, another one of the cutest little mannerisms I’d ever seen on a girl. “She’s not a fortune-teller, anyway. She’s a bibliomancer.”
“A what?”
“She can tell a person’s future by passages in certain books.”
“Passages in books? Sounds