Touched - By Cyn Balog Page 0,54
knew very well where I’d been. Whenever she was even the least bit worried about anything, she’d just think into the future and find out the answer she was looking for. She couldn’t not look.
“You know,” I muttered, slamming my bedroom door behind me. At that moment, I hated her. Hated her for having to meddle with everything instead of just taking things as they came.
I threw my sweaty, dirty clothes in a heap by my hamper and lay on my dump-truck sheets in my gym shorts, staring up at the cottage-cheese ceiling. With the door closed, the room felt like an oven, but I didn’t care.
I thought that getting away from Taryn would do it. She’d never want to talk to me again after that, right? But no, as I lay there, I could still see my future with her, so clearly it had to be real. I knew so much about her, and could feel that she was the peg in my life that held all the pieces together, and without her there, everything seemed to be loosening. I hadn’t really even cycled much. But though I knew her as if I’d spent a lifetime with her, for some reason, I still couldn’t see anything more than a few weeks into the future.
As I was contemplating what it all meant and what I could do, the door opened, blowing an ocean breeze into the room that dropped the temperature twenty degrees, making me shiver. Nan walked in. “Honey bunny?”
“Yeah?” I snapped. I was so angry at Mom, it was carrying over to Nan, even though she’d done nothing wrong.
“How was the funeral?” she asked, sitting down on the side of my bed.
It was a stupid question. Coming from anyone else I would have told them that. Instead I just rolled over and answered her. “Like a funeral.”
Then she saw my face. I hadn’t looked in a mirror, but my check still felt raw from where I’d been punched and smashed into the ground. She reached out her hand, but I flinched. “Who did that to you?”
I laughed bitterly. “Okay. It was like a funeral … with a gang fight thrown in for added excitement.”
“What is going—”
“Mom didn’t tell you? I found out why we’re like this. There’s a stand on the boardwalk where a freaky lady sells spells called Touches. Mom spent a crapload of money to be given a Touch that would make her able to see the future,” I said, watching with satisfaction as Nan’s face stiffened.
“Who told you this?”
“A girl named Taryn. Her grandmother gave Mom the Touch.” I exhaled.
Her face didn’t change. “Is this the fortune-teller you were talking about yesterday?”
“Yeah.”
“That still doesn’t explain why your face looks like it was—”
“She effed up my life. I hate her.”
“Who?”
“Mom! Who else?” I clutched handfuls of the sheet and threw them back down. “She knew it was her fault. She knew all this time and she never told me. ‘Hate’ is too nice a word.”
“Oh, you don’t mean—”
“Yeah, I do. I really do.” I sat up and touched my face, thinking about how she was even responsible for that. For everything bad in my life. “All this time, I thought Dad was the bad guy. That he was somehow responsible for our messed-up lives. Now I totally get it. He’s normal. I don’t blame him. Hell, I would have left, too.”
She shook her head. “No. Well, I don’t know what went on between your mom and dad. But I do know that when your mom became pregnant with you, she changed. She was usually so crazy—she’d go on crash diets and drink and smoke and, oh, just about everything I’d tell her not to do. But when she found out about you, she quit smoking and drinking and made sure she ate well. She worked on the boardwalk and she used to bring a container of fruit and a bottle of water with her so she wouldn’t have to eat the greasy food up there.” She smiled. “You were—you are everything to her. Whatever she did to you by getting this—this Touch, as you call it, she didn’t mean it.”
I studied her. I knew what she was doing. Trying to keep the peace. She wouldn’t let me think my dad was the bad guy, and she’d do anything to keep me from thinking my mom was a villain, too. “But my dad—I mean, you met him, right? What’s he like?”
She gave me a surprised look. On