Touched - By Cyn Balog Page 0,89

is why I hadn’t seen it. I stared at it. It was larger than I remembered. The trunk was gone, broken off. “I thought you …,” I began. And here I’d convinced myself a mother who couldn’t bring herself to make me breakfast, go to school concerts, or take me to the beach couldn’t care about me. “The trunk is gone. That’s bad luck.”

She smiled. “Nick. I have enough good-luck charms around. Little good they do me.” She fingered the green elephant before dropping it back to her chest. “This was never a symbol of luck to me.”

I put my hands in the pockets of my shorts and studied the dresser mirror, decorated with dozens of fortune-cookie papers. I wondered if any of them had come true. When I turned back, I noticed her face had gotten darker. “What’s wrong?”

“I was just thinking. What is yours?” she asked.

“My what?”

“What death do you fear the most?” she asked.

“Mom,” I protested. She’d always loved the morbid. “I wouldn’t tell you if I knew. But I really have no idea.”

She gave me an “I’m your mom and I know better” look. “Like your grandmother said, everyone has one.”

“Oh, really?” I thought for a second. “Well, it’s whatever would be most painful, I guess. The wood chipper would kind of suck. And being drawn and quartered doesn’t sound very fun, either.” My stomach started to churn. I really hoped that by saying it I wasn’t sealing my fate with the wood chipper. “I don’t want to talk about—”

“It’s not what would hurt the most. It’s what you’re most afraid of. Those are two different things,” she said, reaching over and placing a lock of my hair back over my forehead. “And I’m your mother. Even though I’ve spent most of my time up here, I know what you are most afraid of, Nick.”

“Come on. How can you know, when I don’t even—”

“Nick,” she said softly.

I stared at her, and at that moment I knew. I thought of the crowds watching me at tryouts, of how they parted to avoid me. I thought of Sphincter, calling me Crazy Cross in front of everyone in the busy hallway at school. The way they’d stared at me, eyes narrowed, faces wrinkled in disgust, as if I was an infection, a disease, the absolute embodiment of everything they didn’t want to be. I’d convinced myself it didn’t matter, that I didn’t care. I’d convinced myself I was used to it, but can anyone get used to treatment like that? Each time, there was a chink in my armor, a dent in my wall. It was only a matter of time before everything came crumbling down.

“I don’t want to die in a way where everyone would think I was a freak,” I choked out.

She nodded, and a tear trickled down her cheek. “Another one of your quirks I’m responsible for, I’m afraid.”

I didn’t want to think what kind of death that meant I was in for. I didn’t want to know. Maybe it would be a public death. Maybe something pathetic, like a suicide. I thought of what I’d said to Nan. My life is already over. Suicide had never entered my mind before, but now, I wanted death more than anything. I wanted to be with Taryn. Now, it seemed like a definite option. In school the next day, people would whisper and raise eyebrows and some would say, “Well, what did you expect? Cross was a freak.” I would cement my status as Crazy Cross, in capital letters, until the world decided to forget about me, which wouldn’t take very long. Well, they would forget about me, but not the way I died. Years from now, at reunions, they’d say, “Remember that kid from our class who died? The freak? What was his name?” And everyone would know the sad, morbid details of the event, but nobody would recall anything else about me.

“Well,” I finally said, swallowing the lump in my throat. “What’s yours, then?”

A slow smile spread on her face. “What do you think?”

I shrugged.

She said, “Do you ever wonder about how things might have been? Without the Touch?”

I nodded. I’d thought about that often. I wondered what kind of mother she’d have been. Would she be more like Nan? I wondered what kind of person I’d be. Would I like myself? Would I be normal? Or would I find other things to obsess about? But it was useless. “What’s done is done. I know you