Touched - By Cyn Balog Page 0,82

her that I loved her, too, she was gone.

The gutters flooded and the puddles in the streets grew to rivers, so that I sloshed through ankle-deep water, the soles of my Vans squishing with every step. Though rain fell in waves, lightning lit the sky like daytime, and the thunder rumbled and boomed continuously overhead, I walked my bicycle home slowly, as if I had all the time in the world.

What could I do? People were going to die. And I had no way to fix it.

For some reason, I found myself thinking of Jocelyn. If I had just let her get the Touch she wanted, Taryn would be okay. Taryn wouldn’t need to perform the Touch tonight, and we would all be safe. Instead, I’d messed everything up. Just like my mom had. Funny how one decision can mean so much.

But the thing was, I’d envisioned us dying in Taryn’s Jeep before that. So maybe I’d always been meant to mess with Jocelyn’s Touch. It was almost as if my screwing everything up was beyond my control, destined, written in the stars.

And maybe my dying was, too. Maybe all the iterations of my life, all the people I was destined to be before this, were just preparing me for this one ending. It was only fitting that I’d find the perfect girl and the most tragic death in the same future.

The rain poured down on my face, obscuring my vision as I walked along the boardwalk ramp to Seventh Avenue. If only I could get that Touch, that Flight of Song. Then I could tell Bryce to call back the curse, and he would have to obey. But Taryn had said a person couldn’t be Touched twice.

There really was no way out of this.

A car horn blared at me as I tried to cross the street, and I jumped back in time to be hit by a wave of cold water kicked up from one of the enormous puddles in the road. I thought of Nan, and how she used to dress me in my duck outfit—galoshes and matching raincoat—when I was a kid. How she always did so much for me.

She’d do anything to make sure I was okay. And look what I gave her in return. It wasn’t fair to her. It wasn’t right.

Suddenly, something came to me. She’d do anything to make sure I was okay. Anything. I was sure of that.

All at once, I knew what had to happen. It was our only chance. I climbed on my bicycle and pedaled furiously down Seventh. I tossed my bike on the gravel in the front yard and stormed inside, bolting the door behind me. “Nan!”

She was, of course, sleeping in her recliner. Some reality-show host was talking about the voting process on television. I started to go into the living room, but my mom called to me. “Nick! Come up here!”

I didn’t want to. Her voice sounded strange. No doubt she was going to scold me for being out when I was grounded. But as I neared the foot of the staircase, I realized she wasn’t angry. She was excited about something, no doubt something she’d seen in a vision. I tried ignoring her, but she kept speaking. “I was wrong! I was wrong!” she said, over and over again. I didn’t want to know what it was, though. I could see fragments of the scene in the Jeep clearly now, almost as if the accident was due to happen soon, and that was all I needed to know.

“Ma, I’ll be up in a sec,” I said, and Nan started to stir at the sound of my voice.

She looked at me, still dazed. “What? What’s going on?”

“Nan,” I said, kneeling beside her. “Listen. We’re in trouble. I need you to do something for me.”

She kicked the recliner upright. “Of course. What?”

“Someone took out a Touch. And they’re going to use it on us. I need you to take out another Touch to stop him. We can go there tonight, and I’ll—”

She held out a hand. “Wait. Slow down.”

“I can’t,” I said, the words falling on top of one another. “They’re going to kill us.”

She stared at me. “You need to start from the beginning.”

I took a breath. “Bryce Reese. He’s the brother of the girl who died. Right now he’s at the boardwalk getting his own Touch. And his Touch is going to give him the ability to kill me and my family. Because he hates