Touched - By Cyn Balog Page 0,69
my mouth, still not certain what would come out. “Jocelyn? Are you okay?”
“Yeah.” She’d been inspecting her fingernails and I startled her. When she recognized me, her face softened. “Hey.”
“You looking for something or someone?” I ventured.
She just stood there for a second, perplexed. Then she smirked as if to say, “Wouldn’t you like to know?”
“You just look a little out of your element,” I explained, and as I did I saw it all in perfect clarity.
When we were done speaking, she would walk away from me, step out onto the boardwalk, and go next door. To the tent. I swallowed as I saw it, as if it had already happened.
Jocelyn was the one getting the Touch.
“I’m perfectly fine, thanks,” she said, her voice a whisper. “I have an … I’m meeting someone.”
She began to turn away, but I grabbed her hand before she could. When she turned back, the shock and anger in her face made me flinch. She started to yank free when I said, “Why are you doing it?”
She stood there, her cheeks aflame and eyes intent. “What?”
I didn’t need her to confirm it. I knew it like I knew my own birthday. “The Touch. It’s you, isn’t it?”
Her eyes softened, but she finally yanked her arm away from me. “Why should you care?”
“Because I …” I searched for the words. “Because I don’t want you to do it. It could ruin your life.”
“I already got the warnings and precautions talk,” she said, her voice dull. “What do you know about it, anyway?”
I laughed under my breath. “More than you.”
“Oh, really?”
“Why do you want people to do whatever you say?” I asked. “You really think it would be that great?”
Surprise dawned on her face. She opened her mouth to speak, but I stopped her.
“What if you told someone to go jump off a bridge?”
She bit her tongue. “Well, I wouldn’t—”
“How do you know? What if the Touch made everyone do everything you said, no matter what? Even if it killed them?”
“Then I would just be careful to—”
“Have you ever said anything you didn’t mean?”
She choked on her words. “Well, yes, but …” She sighed. “Please go away. This has nothing to do with you. You don’t know what it’s like. What my life is like.” I waited for her to say more, to tell me what it was like, but she didn’t. She just stood there, staring at the ground, her breathing short and erratic. “I can’t. I can’t go into this with you.”
I backed away. Of course she couldn’t. I was everything she detested; that much I could see in her eyes. “Do you remember when you used to come over to my house to babysit?”
She nodded. “So?”
“My mom. The moaning upstairs. Nan probably told you she was sick,” I said. “She wasn’t sick. She was Touched. Jocelyn, I’m Touched.”
She drew in a breath, her fists clenched slightly. “You … you are?”
I nodded.
“What do you have?”
“I can see my future.”
She slumped against the pinball machine, dropped her bag to the ground, and shook her head. “But then you should understand how important—”
“I understand that you can ruin your life. My Touch ruined mine. Sure, some things about it are good, but they’re seriously overshadowed by the bad. Just … keep that in mind.”
She looked out the door, toward the seagulls circling above the beach in the clear blue sky. “My whole life, everyone ignores me. Everyone walks all over me. I’m about to lose my job. It’s like nobody even sees me.” She buried her face in her hands. “I am so sick of being walked on, and I don’t know what else to do.”
I shrugged. I knew what she meant. Sometimes I was so sick of being a freak that I probably would get a Touch if it promised to make me normal. I said, “You were the best babysitter I ever had, you know. You were the only one who ever played with me. I was crushed when you went to college.”
Her frown didn’t soften, but her eyes brightened for an instant. She looked away. “I’ve got to go,” she said. From the way she said it, I didn’t think she’d pay any attention to me. Now the arcade was a little more crowded. I walked to the outer edge of the room, where the cinder-block wall stood, and, checking to make sure nobody was watching, quietly slid over it. I hit the ground unsteadily and had to grasp the velvet curtain to prevent