There’s a pause while we let the words sink in. Finally Trey says, “Holy shit.”
“Yeah,” says Ben.
“What happened? Did you get caught?” Rowan asks.
“No. I closed the door and slipped away. I didn’t want them to see me in case you guys need me to do something else.”
I catch Trey’s eye and grin despite the situation. Ben is definitely a keeper.
“Okay,” I say, realizing everybody’s looking to me to call the next play. “Great job, Ben. Seriously. We couldn’t do this without you. Thank you. I guess . . . I guess we just wait. I don’t know what else to do. We have no date or time, no exact location, not even a reasonable vicinity.” A sense of doom descends over me, and unexpected emotion clogs my throat. “So, I don’t know.” My voice squeaks at the end, and Sawyer and Rowan both put their arms around me. “I guess I failed on this one.”
“Stop it,” Trey says, and his eyes flash. “You didn’t fail. The victim failed you. It’s not your fault. We are not God.” He pauses. “Or dog.”
I half smile through watery eyes and nod. But I can’t help it. I still feel like a failure.
• • •
The next morning, as I’m drying my hair, Sawyer texts me. I’m outside the front door. Can you come out?
I set down the hair dryer with a clatter, slip past Rowan, and run down the hallway and through the dining room and kitchen and breezeway, and fling open the door. I go outside in my bare feet to Sawyer.
Sawyer, with the thick hair and green eyes and ropy lashes.
Sawyer, the boy I love.
Sawyer, who is holding a newspaper.
He looks at me, solemn, wordless. And he points.
I don’t want to look. But I do it anyway.
On the local news page, one headline reads: TWO DEAD, TWO CRITICAL FROM CARBON MONOXIDE POISONING NEAR ADA PARK.
I look at him. My lip starts trembling. “Are you sure it’s the right house?”
He nods. And then he reads for me, “ ‘Emergency response teams were called to a home on South Loomis Street late last night after a Boston man’s repeated, unsuccessful attempts to reach his sister and brother-in-law and their elderly parents. The older couple were pronounced dead at the scene, and the younger man and woman remain in critical condition. It is unknown . . .” Sawyer trails off. He lets his arms drop heavily and looks at me.
“. . . if they’ll survive,” I say softly, finishing the report. I sink to the step and bury my face in my hands. Sawyer sits next to me and wraps his arms around me. But I cannot be consoled.
Twenty
By the time I look up, Sawyer has magically summoned Rowan and Trey, and they’re staring at the news like they can’t believe it. And then they say it. “I can’t believe it.” And I almost want to shake them, because I told them this would happen. They know this. But they don’t understand the coarse reality of the visions like I do. Like Sawyer does.
I collect my racing thoughts and stand up. “I need to get ready.” Without another word, I march inside and finish my hair, feeling numb. Those people could’ve been fine. That man in a distant city, so concerned about his sister, his parents, that he called 911. That man who has to bury not only both parents at once, but also grieve for his sister and brother-in-law, who could die any minute. That man could’ve been fine too, going about his business, but not now.
All this because Tori wouldn’t tell me the information I needed. And I realize that if I’d only known the cause of death, we could have gone door-to-fucking-door up and down Loomis Street with a carbon monoxide detector a week ago, and saved their lives.
“It would have been so easy!” I yell at myself in the mirror, and I slam down the brush and take off down the hallway, shoving past Nick and Rowan on my way to grab my backpack, and then I go outside, where Sawyer still remains like I knew he would, waiting for me. I climb into his car and we go to school like good little students, and all day my fury grows. And grows. Kind of like the fire that burned down my family’s life. And I’m not sure if I can contain it.
After school I don’t even have to say it—it’s like Sawyer can read my mind.
“You want to visit Tori?” he asks.
“Yes, please.”
And without trying to stop me or suggest I wait a day until my anger dies down, he drives me to the UC hospital. And I am so furious I can’t wait for the elevator, so I take the stairs two at a time, and Sawyer follows. We go down the hallway to Tori’s room, and for a split second I worry that maybe she’s not there. Maybe she’s been discharged, and I won’t get to yell at her after all.
But my split second of worry is for nothing, because when I get to her room and open the door, there she is, sitting up, talking to her mother. Looking beautiful. I want to kill her.
They look up at me when I come in, and I almost falter, but I can feel Sawyer right behind me, and I know I have to do this. For me. For that poor man and his family. Then I almost falter again when I realize I forgot to bring the newspaper in, but Sawyer slaps it into my hand just before I make an ass of myself, and I walk over to Tori with it and shove it in her face. “Does this look familiar?” I ask, pointing to the photo of the house with the ambulance outside. I shake the paper a little to get her to look at it instead of me.
Mrs. Hayes gets to her feet and starts pointing at me, protesting my presence, but then she catches the look on Tori’s face and stops. She goes to look at the article too.