Touched - By Cyn Balog Page 0,91

Muhammad Ali dance in front of me, and I thought about how weird it all was and that’s when I realized something else. I was thinking. Not seeing the future. Not cycling. Not suppressing visions. All that was gone. Taryn was dead, and yet … I could think. Maybe my brain was having trouble waking up. I thwacked the side of my head to get it going again, but nothing. My mind was silent.

The kid jumped on me, tackling me so that I fell backward. I braced myself for the impact on the rickety old night table, but instead I descended against a plush white carpet. What the hell? When did Nan have that installed? Where was my night table with the toy truck lamp? I jumped back onto the bed, trying to escape the hands of the little booger who seemed to think I was his live punching bag. “Nicky! Nicky! Nicky!” he shouted, careering onto the bed. I began to lift my hands to defend myself when I noticed that the dump trucks and planes were gone from my sheets. They were plain white. Nice, clean, plain white. The kid’s fist smashed into my cheek, making my teeth rattle in my mouth. For a tiny thing, he had power.

The kid lunged at me again, but this time I managed to get the scrawny little devil into a headlock. I looked around. “Ow! Nicky!” he shouted, but I didn’t let go because I was momentarily stunned. It was my bedroom, but not. Somebody had to have been playing a cruel trick on me. Everything was modern, dark blue. There was a desk in the corner with a brand-new MacBook on it, and above that, a shelf with at least a dozen trophies. Running trophies, from the looks of them. It looked like a furniture store showroom, made up like someone could live there, but way too clean and perfect for any actual, living teen.

I rubbed my head and the back of my neck with my free hand. No weird lacerations or bumps or anything of the kind that would have me hallucinating. Because that had to be what this was. A hallucination. A really vivid one. After a minute I realized the imp was just kind of lying like a dead fish in my hands. I quickly let him go. He massaged his neck. “Ow, Nicky,” he said, pouting.

“Sorry,” I said, running a cautious eye over the rest of the room. Ninety percent of it was foreign. The only things that I recognized were my Phillies cap, dangling from the mirror, and my backpack. “Who are you?”

He narrowed his eyes at me and then plodded out of the room. A second later I heard him shuffling down the stairs, calling, “Ma! Nicky’s on something.”

Not only was there a weird kid living in my house, but he thought his mom lived there, too. Great. I sat up and ran my toes through the cushy white carpeting that was not there when I went to bed. Then I got up, went to the drawers and rifled through them. All the T-shirts were folded into neat little squares. But they must have belonged to someone else because none of them looked familiar. I couldn’t find my favorite DON’T BOTHER ME T-shirt anywhere. It was definitely not on the floor, because there was nothing on the floor. For once, I could see every inch of it, that showroom carpeting in all its glory. It had vacuum tracks running through it. What the hell had Nan been up to? Didn’t she have a broken arm? Did she hire a maid? A maid with a little kid?

I looked up. And where the hell did those trophies come from? I inspected the little gold plaque on the base of each of them. First place. Mile. Nicholas Cross. When had I done that? They had the years engraved in them. Last year. The year before. Freshman year.

It was like a broken record, constantly playing the same three words over and over again in my head, but each time, the words got louder. Now they were practically screaming in my ears. What. The. Hell.

I grabbed the first tee I could find, some lame Steamboat Willie shirt that I swear I never owned before, and a pair of jeans. When I pulled the shirt over my head, I caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror. I ran a hand through my hair. I hadn’t gotten a haircut since