Death, and the Girl He Loves

“I’m so glad to be back.” I leaned in to her. “But what about the other thing. I mean, your other position?”

“I had to report that I’d been found out. They sent another.”

“Who is it?” I asked, intrigued.

“If I told you, he or she would have to report in that they had been compromised, and we’d have to start all over again. Besides, I have no idea.”

Not too disappointed, I decided to pry just a bit further. “Who sent you to observe in the first place? I mean, who even knows about us? About what’s going on here?”

“I’m not supposed to tell, actually, but since—” A sadness fell over her. “Since it’s all happening, really happening, I guess it can’t hurt anything.”

I inched closer to her. “And?”

“I’m an emissary of the Vatican.”

If she’d hit me with a two-by-four, I would not have been more surprised. “The Vatican? Like the one in Vatican City?”

She laughed softly. “The very one.”

I blinked. “But why?”

“We’ve been following the prophecies of the descendants of Arabeth for centuries. When you were born, well, we had to send someone, and I was chosen. It was a great honor.”

I stepped back in astonishment. “I don’t understand. I mean, if they’ve been studying the prophecies, too, do they know how to stop this war? Surely they know more than we do.”

“They do know.”

I straightened and waited expectantly.

“You.”

Just as quickly, I deflated. “Don’t tell me. It all hinges on me, and I’m going to stop this war before it even begins.”

“That pretty much covers it.”

Disappointment cut into me. “Ms. Mullins, I don’t know how. I didn’t know how yesterday and I still don’t know how today.”

“But you will.”

“No! I won’t. Everyone … everyone has such high hopes. I just don’t know what to do.” Tears burned my eyes. If anyone would understand, surely it was my favorite teacher. “Call them,” I said, a new plan forming in my mind. “Call them and tell them the truth. Tell them I’m an idiot and I don’t know what I’m doing and if they don’t do something immediately, we’re all going to die.”

“Lorelei—”

“Please, Ms. Mullins. They have to know more. They have to tell me what to do.”

She pulled me close. “Lorelei, we will get through this. You’ll figure it out.”

She was wrong. So very, very wrong. My last hope for information vanished into thin air. “Do they at least know who opened the gates in the first place?”

“No.” Even she seemed disappointed with that. “They have no idea.”

“Sadly, neither do we.”

I walked to Ms. Mullins’s class in a daze and feeling a little bipolar. One minute I was certain we’d figure it out; the next, I was just as certain we were all going to die screaming. I was tired and cold and hungry. No, wait, just tired. Since over half the class was gone, Ms. Mullins showed a video on the difference between fusion and fission while she, Brooklyn, and I chatted in the back of the room, setting a horrible example for the rest of the students. While we came to exactly zero conclusions, we did have a nice time.

After first hour, Brooke and I headed for the bathroom.

I opened the door with my hip while saying over my shoulder, “I bet we could be tardy to second and no one would care.”

“Oh, they don’t. Trust me. I’m tardy to almost every class now. The world has turned upside down.” She said all this while checking under the stalls to make sure no one else was in the room. When the coast was clear, she said, “Okay, I have you alone at last, which, my God, is so much harder to accomplish than one might think.” She put her backpack on the ground and stabbed me with one of her mom stares. “What happened last night when you touched your drawing?”

I shouldn’t have been surprised that she’d seen my reaction. “You were supposed to be looking away.”

“Whatever. What happened?”

“Nothing. Not a vision anyway, if that’s what you want to hear.”

“But something did happen, yes?”

“Yes. But it was, I don’t know, a ripple.”

She hitched a hip against a sink. “A ripple. Like in time? Like you were about to go into the drawing?”

“Not really. I don’t know,” I said, adding a childish whine to my voice. Why did we have to talk about this?

“Lorelei, you are the most powerful prophet in the line. Did you know that?”

“Jared told me last night. Did my grandparents find that written somewhere?” I asked, trying to change the subject.

“Yes, in lots of places. It’s odd because as some of the prophecies come to pass, others make more sense. I’m not sure what it all means, but more than one of your ancestors said you’d be the most powerful of them all.”

“I don’t feel very powerful.”

“I’m just saying, you should try that again. Maybe you can go into it. Maybe you didn’t give it enough time.”

“I gave it enough time.”

“But maybe you didn’t.”

“But I did.”

“But maybe—”

“Fine,” I said, exasperated. I pulled out the sketch. “Would you like me to try it now?”