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Whatever.
I bodily shove some big guy talking to Robert out of my way so I can get into my locker.
Unfortunately as I touch the scratched metal surface, I feel a tickling at the edge of my brain.
A vision.
Fan-freaking-tabulous. Just what I need before school even starts.
Now it’s a race to get my locker open so I can crouch down and lean against it and look like I’m doing something. Something else.
I spin to the last number and yank up on the locker handle. It doesn’t budge.
Damn it! I start to try the combo again, but it’s too late. I’m going to have to sit on the floor. My legs bend, almost too easily, and I drop hard to my knees. I lean my forehead against the cool metal and breathe slowly, trying not to draw attention to myself.
The visions themselves aren’t that big a deal; they’re usually over in less than a minute. But I hate getting them in public because in those seconds I’m blind to the world. If no one speaks to me I’m fine—no one notices, the vision eventually dissipates, the world starts turning again, and life continues.
But if anyone tries to get my attention it’s a little hard to miss the fact that I’m completely unresponsive. After that, I suffer mockery for days. Or I used to. It’s a little better now that I’m in high school. People already know I’m a freak and just ignore me. The trade-off is, of course, that everybody knows I’m a freak.
Can’t think about that now. I suck in air slowly, like I’m breathing through a straw, and stare straight ahead. I visualize grabbing a black curtain and pulling it over my inner eye—my “third eye,” as Sierra always calls it—to block out the vision. Mental visuals seem to help.
I’ll be affected by the foretelling no matter what, but if I black out my mind, fill it with darkness, then I won’t see it.
And if I can’t see, I won’t be tempted to do anything about it.
As an added bonus, when I fight it, the vision generally passes more quickly. Which, when I’m at school, is the number one goal.
Sierra spent years trying different methods to help me block out my visions: a big, black paintbrush; turning off an imaginary switch; even covering my third eye with imaginary hands. The black curtain works best for me.
But no one can see what I’m doing on the inside; they only see the outside. And on the outside I’m some girl, kneeling on the dirty floor, my head against my locker, completely still with my eyes wide open.
I can’t close them. Closing your eyes is a gesture of surrender.
I cling to the words I used to resent:
Never surrender.
Never give up.
Don’t close your eyes.
I say them over and over, focusing on the words instead of the force of the vision fighting to get into my head.
An incoming vision feels like a huge hand squeezing your skull, trying to dig its fingers into your brain. You have to push back as hard as you can—with every ounce of concentration you have—or it’ll find a soft spot and get in. The pressure grows to a fever pitch, and then, just as it gets truly painful, it starts to fade. That’s when you know you’ve won.
Today, as usual, I win. It’s so normal, it doesn’t even feel triumphant. As the sensation ebbs away, my body belongs to me again. My lungs cry for air and even though I want to gulp it in, I do the breathing-from-a-straw thing so I don’t hyperventilate. Made that mistake once in fourth grade and passed out. Not my finest moment.
A few more seconds and I’ll be able to see again. Hear again. The noise filters in like turning the volume up on a radio and, as soon as I have the strength, I straighten my spine and let my eyes dart carefully from side to side to see if anyone noticed.
No one’s paying attention. I reach for my backpack and my hand covers a shoe instead. I look up to find Linden Christiansen towering above my head and holding my backpack.
Mortification and delight fight to drown me.
He reaches out a hand and I wish it meant anything other than that he’s a nice guy helping a girl up. But as soon as I’m on my feet, he drops his arm. “Migraine coming on?” he asks, handing over my backpack.
The lie that rules my life. “Yeah,” I mumble.
He’s looking at me and I let myself meet his gaze—and thus risk turning into a babbling moron at the sight of his light blue eyes that remind me of a still pond. “I t-took some new meds this morning,” I stammer, “but I guess they haven’t quite kicked in yet.”
“Do you want to call your mom?” he asks, his forehead wrinkling with concern. “Go home?”
I force a smile and a shaky laugh. “No, I’ll be okay. I just need to get to class and sit down. They’ll start working soon.”
“Are you sure? You want me to carry your backpack or anything?”
I’m tempted to let him. Anything to buy a few more minutes. But the vision has passed—I’m completely fine now. And my ego rebels against faking weakness for a guy.
Even Linden. Who I’ve liked since before my age reached two digits.
It’ll never happen. Even if by some miracle he were interested, there’re those stupid social lines that are practically stone walls separating us. I’m in the Artsy-Semi-Nerd pen. Linden is in the Super-Popular-Don’t-Even-Try-It pen. Despite the fact that he’s so nice. And talks to me sometimes. In choir class mostly. When he’s bored. He doesn’t actually sing very well, he just needs an arts credit.
But he wouldn’t ask me out or anything.
And what would I do if he did? I can’t date anyone. What would I tell the guy when he asks why I’m always so tense and jumpy? That I’m always on guard for unwanted foretellings of the future? Yeah, that’ll break the ice.
How about why I don’t want to go to a movie? Ever. Somehow telling someone I don’t like dim places because—like closing your eyes—they make the visions harder to fight, feels even more embarrassing than the lie that I’m afraid of the dark. Which is what I had to tell friends who used to spend the night—only once, of course, before they realized how weird I was—when they asked why I sleep with my bedside lamp on.
Not night-light. Lamp.
“You’re positive?” Linden asks, and I nod, hating that I want to cry inside. He throws me a grin—a real one, a nice one—and says, “I’ll see you in choir then.”
I wave lamely and watch him walk away. I wish I could just be normal.
But I’m not. I’m Charlotte Westing and I’m an Oracle. The kind you’ve read about who once imparted wisdom and advised great kings and queens and assisted brave knights on their quests. But those Oracles existed a long time ago. When they could actually reveal their foretellings and use them to make lives better.
The world is different now. And our role is different. Oracles once worked with the leaders of civilization to mold, shape, and change the future for the good of mankind. But corruption led to several disasters like the fall of the Roman Empire and the Mongol invasion of China, so the Oracles withdrew their power. From then to present-day, the Oracles have followed an ancient vow to allow the future to unfold as it will. Now, Oracles believe it’s best that no one sees the future. So that no one’s tempted to change it.
So that no one dies because an Oracle doesn’t have the strength to resist that temptation.
A hollow sadness fills my chest and I force it away. The past is gone. No one, anywhere, can do anything about what has already happened.
But the present? That’s what I have to deal with. The visions are part of my life—have been since my first at age three. As soon as I was capable, my aunt Sierra started teaching me how to resist them.
A child should never be burdened with knowledge of the future, she told me, and I tried to believe her even though at the time I was excited that I could “do magic.”
I know better now.
(#ulink_d77cb03b-54aa-5013-83c1-213f676e797e)
I’m more than ready to be finished with the day when I head into my final class—trigonometry. We’re going over a review test and I’m having trouble paying attention. My external senses feel oddly muffled, the subtle feeling that generally precedes a foretelling.
But I just had one this morning; twice a day is pretty unusual. And this foretelling is being weird. I never like weird. Weird is unpredictable. Usually, once I get the feeling, the vision follows within minutes, max. This time, the sensation has lasted almost half an hour and still nothing.
Class is nearly over when the blackness starts to descend around the corners of my eyes and it’s almost a relief to lay my forehead on my arms so I can get it over with.
Even though all my muscles are tensed and ready, it’s more forceful than usual and I try not to shudder as a painful weight settles on my body.
It feels different this time. It’s a vise that envelops my entire head. Squeezing, squeezing. A moan builds up in my throat and I push it away.
An Oracle never loses control. My aunt’s voice echoes through my head, but her words blow away as a storm thrashes within my brain like a physical thing, battering against my skull until I honestly fear the bones are about to shatter. What is this?! Distantly I feel my fingers grip the edges of my desk and I hold statue-still, scrolling through every tactic my aunt taught me and new ones I’ve come up with on my own throughout the years.
But this vision is too strong. It tosses aside my defenses as though they are tissue paper trying to hold back a stampede.
Within seconds, the formless presence of the foretelling pulses around me. I can still kind of hear Mrs. Patterson answering a question about the radius of convergence, but her voice is getting further and further away as I struggle against a pull that feels like a river, carrying me away in a whirling current. Inside my mind, shadows are emerging. Then I’m spinning, falling.
No, no, no! I shout in my head, trying to grip my desk harder, breathe even shallower.
None of my tricks are working.
I’ve never had a vision this strong. Even when I was younger and didn’t know how to control them, they didn’t overwhelm me quite this way. Some tiny part of me knows that I’m in school, sitting in a classroom surrounded by other sixteen-year-olds, but in the midst of the vision, those facts seem as fantastical as stories of princesses and dragons.
Then, with a brilliant flash of light, the falling sensation stops and my stomach feels like it flips upside down.
My feet are on solid ground.
I’m at the school football field.
It’s dark.
Cold.
Goose bumps rise on my arms, and the air is clammy and damp like I’m standing in a thick fog. The vision pulls me forward, forcing me to walk, bending me to its will as though it were a living thing.
I fight every step even though I know it’s too late. Still I fight. Because I’m supposed to. Because Sierra would expect it.
Because I owe it to my mom and dad to at least try.
I see her feet first.
Clearly a her—small feet clad in maroon ballet flats with little bows over the toes. I focus on those bows. I don’t want to see the rest.
But even where I look is out of my control and my gaze moves up her body. Legs, torso, shoulders. Face. In my mind, I gag and I hope my physical self doesn’t too.
Her eyes are open, sightless and a vivid blue. The splatter of blood across her cheeks is so fine it almost looks like glitter. But deep-red liquid pools under her neck, still dripping from her unmoving body. The puddle spreads as I watch, and the slice across her neck gapes in a grotesque display that makes my whole body rebel.
Get away!
I want to run—need to run—but the vision isn’t finished with me yet. I focus on the rest of her body, taking in the smaller injuries I missed the first time around. Her shirt is torn across her midriff and a long, bloody scratch decorates the skin there. A knife? Fingernails? I can’t tell. Her ankle is twisted at an unnatural angle and her hand is covered in blood starting at the fingertips. Her own? Her attacker’s? There’s no way to be sure.
Charlotte.
The voice is almost singsongy.
Chaaaaarlotte.
“Charlotte!”
I jerk my head up and air rushes into my nose. With a dull shower of sparks, my physical sight fades back in.
“Yes, Mrs. Patterson,” I say as soon as my throat stops convulsing long enough to let me speak. Croak.
“Number twenty-three,” she says, her hand on her hips, her voice heavy with annoyance.
How many times did she call me?
I make my neck tilt down; my eyes have trouble focusing as the numbers swim on my paper.
“One hundred sixty-seven point six eight,” I say, finally locating my answer. I look up and meet her eyes, hoping she’ll just move on. I don’t even care if I got it right. She stares at me for a moment. A beat. Too long? Too short? I don’t know.
“Jake? Twenty-four.”
Thank you.
My breathing returns to normal but my fingers are still clutched around the edge of my desk, pressing so hard they’re white all the way up to the second knuckle. I force them to relax, one at a time, but when I pull my arms back and tuck my hands into my lap, they ache from the tension.
A sheen of perspiration prickles on my forehead and catches the breeze from the heater, making me shiver. More sweat is trickling down my spine, gathering under my arms. I feel gross and worn out and all I want to do is go home and take a nap.
And some ibuprofen.
And something that will make me forget.
Even before I was better at blocking foretellings, the things I saw didn’t always happen—the future is fluid and the glimpses Sierra and I get are simply that: glimpses of how the future is currently set to play out.
But my record is pretty solid. Because unless you do something to change the future—which I would never do again—it’s probably going to flow down the foretold path.
My heart speeds as I try to recall every detail. But it almost hurts to remember. The stark image of the thick, syrupy blood still pouring from the slash across her neck makes my stomach churn. It may not technically have been a real body, but unless something changes, it will be.
The bell rings—shrill and piercing—loud enough to distract me for the tiny second I need. I pull my mind away and take a deep breath, pushing back some of the nausea.
I have to get out of here, I think as I shove my books and papers into my backpack. Get out of this classroom and I’ll be okay. I can go home. Take a nap. Forget about all of this.
I yank the zipper closed and spin toward the door in the back of the classroom, hoping I can walk some semblance of a straight line.
Then I freeze.
Bethany laughs and touches her friend’s shoulder.
I didn’t think about her face in the vision. Didn’t worry about identifying her.
