Gasp (Visions) - Lisa McMann Page 0,1

other, and then at Ben, who is looking like a cornered feral cat right about now, wondering if there’s a way out of this room, and probably willing to use force if necessary to achieve it.

Trey clears his throat and says quietly, “Then Sawyer started seeing a vision of a mass shooting. At a school.”

Ben’s eyebrows twitch.

“For the past few weeks,” Trey continues, “Sawyer heard eleven gunshots in his head. And reflected in windows, on billboards, on TV screens and other places, he saw the music room on the fourth floor of that building, and he saw . . . bodies. Piles of bodies. And so that’s why two high school sophomores were hanging around here last weekend, when the University of Chicago wasn’t even officially in session. They weren’t checking out the school. They were here to stop a mass murder—or at least keep it from being as horrible as it was in the vision.” Trey smiles grimly. “That’s why, Ben.”

Ben’s face is strained. He looks from one of us to the next. “This isn’t funny,” he says. “It’s not funny.”

“It’s not a joke,” I say. “I promise we wouldn’t do that to you. I promise.”

Ben glances at Trey again, like he trusts him more than us.

Trey nods.

Ben turns to Sawyer and studies him for a moment more. “Piles of bodies?”

Sawyer meets his gaze. “Yes.”

Ben stands up and paces in the tiny space. He stops. “Me?” he asks, stabbing his thumb into his chest. “My body?” His voice wavers.

Sawyer drops his gaze to the floor. He doesn’t answer.

Three

Trey interrupts the silence. “So you’re not having any visions, then?”

At first Ben doesn’t appear to hear him, but then, after a moment, he looks at Trey and shakes his head. “What? No. I’m sorry.”

Trey leans back and lets out a sigh of relief. “Don’t be sorry. This is a good thing.”

I catch Sawyer’s eye. He looks relieved, but I’m even more stressed, because if it’s not Ben, that means we have to keep looking. “Ben,” I say, “here’s the thing. Just like I passed the vision to Sawyer, I’m worried that Sawyer might have passed the—the curse of the vision on to somebody else.” I frown, thinking “curse” sounds too whackjob, but I can’t think of a better word. “Like, maybe somebody else who was in that room is now infected, or whatever, and they’re seeing a vision of something else—the next tragedy. So . . . um . . . I need to find out. So we can help them.”

“We need to find out,” Sawyer says.

Ben looks at us like we’re speaking a foreign language.

“So,” I continue, “can you remember everyone who was in the room at the time of the shooting? Do you know them all?”

Ben’s face clears slightly, like he’s beginning to understand what I’m asking. “I—I know most of them,” he murmurs. “Some just by face—it was a combined event with the Motet Choir.”

“Can you, like, I don’t know—find out everyone’s names?” Ugh. I hate this.

Ben bristles. “Okay, this is really getting weird. I’m not sure that’s a good idea. I mean, it’s pretty strange, what you’re asking.”

“I know.”

“And even the people who haven’t left school over it are still pretty shaken up, you know. It’s only been a week.”

“Totally, totally—so are we,” Sawyer says, nodding emphatically. “And, well, if one of them is having a vision of the next disaster waiting to happen, they will definitely stay shaken up, because the visions are—well, they’re just horrible, Ben. So yeah, anybody with the vision will stay very shaken up, until either they go insane or they die trying to save the next victims.” Sawyer adjusts his jacket like he’s getting defensive, ready to argue. Just the other night he said he wasn’t going to help me with this. Now he’s totally invested. I heart that guy.

Ben leans back and sighs. He takes off his glasses and rubs his eyes. “This is so insane.”

I give Trey a pleading look.

Trey sits up. “Please,” he says, his voice soft and earnest. “We all know how weird this sounds. We just—we don’t really have any other choice, you know? We feel like we can’t let somebody struggle with this thing alone.”

Ben absently starts to clean his glasses with his shirt. “Why don’t you call the police or something?”

Trey, Sawyer, and I all wilt. We’ve been over this before, having vetted this option time and time again. “Because,” I begin, but Ben stops me.

“No, it’s okay,” he says. “I get it. They’d