Touched - By Cyn Balog Page 0,43

and moved me to Maine. And everything was okay for a while. My dad started doing really good. He was one of the top executives at the factory. Everything was great. I think my parents thought we’d escaped it. But like I said, I have these powers. The power to attract certain people. I had friends up there, or at least, I thought they were friends before I came here and realized they were just being drawn by the Touch. And you know how I am about saying no.”

“So you were a troublemaker, huh?” I said, raising an eyebrow.

“Uh-huh.”

“Seriously?” I asked. She just didn’t seem the type.

“I was! I was terrible. It started when I was thirteen or fourteen. My friends and I would stay up all night, doing things. Mostly little, stupid things that bored kids do when they have nothing better to do. Breaking into houses. Destroying property. Stuff like that. I refused to listen to my parents, and no matter what they did, I found a way around it. They barred my windows, for God’s sake. And I knew it was stupid but—”

“You couldn’t say no.”

“Right. And I couldn’t shake them. Just as they were attracted to me, I fell for them, too. They kept following me around, worshipping me, and I never realized that it was because they were attracted to what I could do for them. The Touch. I kept running away from home and my dad took all this time from work to go looking for me or deal with the trouble I’d gotten myself into. So he was fired. And we were forced to move here. The funny thing was, all those great friends I had back in Maine never emailed me, called, texted … not even once. They didn’t want me, they just wanted to be Touched.”

“That sucks.”

“Like my grandmother said, I can’t escape my destiny. I have to take over for my grandmother and perform these Touches, or else things will get bad. Really bad. My parents are finally accepting that, I guess.” Her face had paled past its normal pale, to an unnatural and deathly bluish-white. “They have no other choice.”

“What do you mean by ‘really bad’?” I asked.

She wrinkled her nose. “The worst. But I don’t want to talk about that. I get really nervous thinking about it. That’s why I like hanging out with you. I don’t think about it constantly when I’m with you.”

I ran out of balls, so I stood there and watched her throw her second gutter ball. When she threw a third one, she grimaced and massaged her arm. As soon as she started throwing again, she hit the 50.

“And that’s why I knew you were Touched. The second I felt your hand, it was like I understood everything. But it’s more than that. We’re alike. Usually, people get Touched of their own free will. But you didn’t. We’re both cursed, but it’s not our fault.”

I nodded. “When I touched your hand, I couldn’t see the future anymore. It made me almost feel normal.”

She stopped throwing balls and straightened. “I guess that makes sense.” Then she said, “Do you like it?”

“What? Touching your hand?”

She grinned. “Feeling normal.”

I smiled. It didn’t matter which question she had been asking; either way, the answer was yes. “Of course.”

She reached over and grabbed my hand. “Better?”

My mind stopped in the middle of a You Will and I just nodded. “Yeah. Much. It’s like … almost …”

She squinted. “Like what?”

“Almost too quiet. I’m used to multitasking. Doing things while seeing what’s coming next. You know, like if you have two televisions tuned to the same program, but on different signals, and one is a few seconds ahead? That’s what it’s like. I’m used to it. This is …”

“Exciting?” she said, giving me this coy smile. “For once in your life you have no idea what is coming next.”

I was going to say scary, but then I realized that made me sound like a wuss. “Um, yeah. I guess normal life can be exciting.”

Never letting go of my hand, she ripped her tickets from the dispenser and dragged me to the prize center, where she traded in her twenty-five tickets for two neon slap bracelets. She gave the blue one to me and kept the hot pink one for herself. Then we walked onto the boardwalk, away from her grandmother’s tent and toward the rides. I felt two feet taller. I’d never held hands with a girl before, much less