Touched - By Cyn Balog Page 0,70

myself from landing in the tent. I found the opening and crouched there, where I could hear Taryn’s smooth, sweet voice and her grandmother’s gruff one playing off each other. Just another way in which they were extreme opposites. They were busy gazing at the entrance and hadn’t noticed my less-than-slick appearance.

“What time is it now?” her grandmother croaked.

“Ten after,” Taryn said. From between the decorative tassels on the curtains, I could see her peeking outside the tent.

Ten after, I thought. I hadn’t realized I was that late. But Jocelyn still wasn’t there. If she’d gone straight from talking to me to the tent, she would have been. I tried to think of the future but couldn’t place Jocelyn in the tent. Maybe I had convinced her. Yes!

The tent was dark, lit only by the cobwebbed crystal chandelier that was up so high it barely cast down any light. But I could see creases in Taryn’s face. She looked in my direction, shrugged, and then sighed. “Well, what do we do if she doesn’t show up?” she asked.

Her grandmother was sitting with her back toward me, and I could see the book opened on the table in front of her. “We go home, sevgili,” she said.

“But I only have three days left,” Taryn said.

“Yes. We will find another. I have some interest.”

I found myself leaning forward, my forehead almost out the opening of the curtains, trying to figure out what they were talking about. Three days? Three days for what?

“But don’t worry, sevgili. This one’s a stupid girl. She will come. Stupid people are easily led to us,” her grandmother croaked.

“But what if she isn’t?” Taryn’s voice was an octave higher, clearly worried. And here I thought she’d be happy if she didn’t have to do a Touch tonight.

“Calm. Like I say, we have other interest.”

Taryn walked to the table and leaned her knuckles on it. She said, “I don’t understand how you can be that way. Calling the people stupid. They’re people. And we might just ruin their lives.”

“We don’t ruin life. They ruin life.”

“But we help them do it. Doesn’t that bother you?”

Her grandmother shifted her weighty bottom in the seat, and the small chair creaked in protest. “Let me tell you something, sevgili. It bother me. Of course it bother me. Once, long time ago, I learn something about one of them. Something terrible. Too late. It made me very, very sad. I told God to take me then. I did not care if I live or die. I went many, many years before I open the book again. But then you came. And you were the one, the next in line. And so I start again. I hoped I could finish the book before God take me. For you. But not so. Not so.”

Her grandmother’s voice trailed off, and Taryn walked around the table, leaned down, and hugged her. Her grandmother didn’t move, despite the extra weight on her. It occurred to me that hugging a cactus would probably be more natural. But then her grandmother trembled a little, and I realized they were both crying. Who knew the old lady had feelings? I felt stupid, witnessing that. First, maybe I’d misjudged Taryn’s grandmother, and second, it was a private moment, not something I was meant to witness. I rose to my feet, turned, and scuttled up the wall and into the arcade.

I’d just gotten another dollar’s worth of quarters to blow on Mr. Do! when Taryn came rushing up to me. “There you are! What happened?”

“I just—”

“She’s over a half hour late,” she said, chewing on her thumbnail.

“Why aren’t you in there?”

“I excused myself to use the ladies’ room.”

“What is the deal with three days?” I asked.

“That’s when I turn seventeen,” she said, ripping the thumbnail off. “I have to perform my first Touch before then.”

“You what?” I asked, my voice rising. “Or else what?”

She bit her lip. “Can we not talk about that?”

“Are you telling me that you needed to perform that Touch or else you’ll die?” My voice was now so loud a kid at the video game next to us stopped killing zombies and stared at me.

“Shhh!” She threw her hand over my mouth. Her voice was just as loud as mine, which was probably why a bunch of other people started giving us looks, too. “I did tell you. I told you we had to perform these Touches or we’d …”

“Well, I know, but I thought you’d have longer than three