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  ELEVEN

  Despite hurrying back from the mall, I’m going to be late to my second-hour class. I’m rushing down the hallway toward choir when I hear someone calling my name.

  “Charlotte, wait.”

  I turn to find Linden breathing hard after running to catch up and everything inside me melts and freezes all at the same time. Maybe it’s because Smith was just talking about him. About us.

  It’s a story I think about almost every day, but that I’m sure Linden has forgotten. Why would he remember? To him it was just a minor playground accident.

  To me it was everything.

  I still remember his eyes looking down at me in concern as my sight came back. He had said, “I got the wind knocked out of me last week when I fell off my bike. It’s okay.” Then he reached out his hand. And I took it. Teachers arrived about ten seconds later, but for those brief moments it was just him and me. My little ten-year-old heart fell in love that day.

  I guess I forgot to fall out again.

  “I just wondered if you’re leaving town over Christmas.”

  I shake my head, trying to remember how to make my mouth form words. “W-we’re staying here,” I finally manage.

  “I thought maybe we could get together sometime during the break.”

  Breathe, breathe, breathe.

  “Sure,” I say, pulling out my phone. We exchange numbers and I focus really hard to make sure I don’t screw up and enter any of them wrong.

  “I hope you don’t think this is weird,” Linden says, pocketing his phone, “but it’s nice having someone I can chat to about something—anything—other than . . . you know.”

  “Yeah, it is,” I agree, although I’d have talked to Linden about anything in the world.

  The bell rings, startling us both. “I’m sorry; I made you late.”

  “Trust me, no one’s going to care,” I say, a lump in my throat.

  “Oh yeah,” Linden says, and then is quiet.

  “Hey, Linden,” I blurt, as much to change the subject as anything, “do you remember the day in fourth grade when I fell off the monkey bars?”

  He grins. “No.” Then he sobers. “I didn’t push you or anything, did I?”

  I laugh at the idea. “No, you rescued me.” I shrug. “So, yeah, call me anytime, okay?”

  “Thanks,” he says sincerely. “I appreciate it.”

  I turn and head toward class, but only until I hear his footsteps heading the other way. Then I pause and look over my shoulder and watch him walk away, a simmer of joy warming me from the inside out. Talk about a roller-coaster day.

  That afternoon when I get home, I call out a hello to Mom, then slip quickly into my room and lock the door. I’ve got to get through the rest of the pages on my phone before I can decide whether or not to trust Smith. It’s two hours of squinting before my tired eyes make out the words focus stone. I sit up straight and zoom in on the scrawled paragraph.

  Though the ability to enter the supernatural plane exists within all Oracles, the use of a focus stone will almost certainly be required to invoke it.

  Focus stone. That’s what Smith called the necklace.

  But this part of the book isn’t about revisiting visions, it’s about going to an entirely different place. I’m not even sure if it’s somewhere inside an Oracle’s mind or an actual physical location. The text talks about jumping, but I don’t know how literal that is.

  Still, it’s something.

  Maybe there really is more to being an Oracle than I ever imagined. Maybe even more than Smith knows.

  But does that mean I should use the stone? That I should trust Smith? Ultimately even if I found a full explanation in this text of everything Smith talked about, that wouldn’t tell me whether or not I should trust him.

  I have to decide that on my own.

  I rub my tired eyes and turn off my phone, even though I’ve only managed to get through a few pages. I’m exhausted and starving and that’s having some severe consequences on my attention span. I wander out to grab a soda and then head into Mom’s office.

  “Hey, Beautiful,” Mom says. “Have a seat; I’m just wrapping things up.”

  We sit quietly for a few minutes before I say, “Linden’s been talking to me.”

  Mom’s hand pauses. “Linden Linden?”

  “Yeah.”

  She smiles. “Still head over heels for him?”

  I shrug.

  “Then this is a good thing, right?”

  “I think so. He was close friends with the girl who died and maybe he just wants to distance himself from that. I don’t really have any connection to her.”

  She shrugs. “Friendships have certainly had worse beginnings.”

  “I just wish he liked me for me.”

  “You don’t know that he doesn’t.”

  “I guess not,” I murmur. “But—”

  “Don’t underestimate yourself. You’re very good at that.”

  I let a few more minutes go by in silence. “What if he doesn’t call?” It feels a bit silly to be thinking so far ahead—I mean, he only got my number this morning. But this is the first good thing that’s happened to me in weeks. So I’m already overanalyzing it. Of course.

  Mom turns to look at me squarely now. “Then you’re no worse off than you are now.”

  “But I’d be so disappointed.”

  “Is he worth the risk?”

  “Duh,” I say with a grin.

  “Charlotte, we never know what’s going to happen in the future,” my mom says, and I mentally cringe. “Look at me. Even the day before the accident I would never have believed that your dad would be gone and I’d be in a wheelchair.”

  The guilt that fills me is like knives slicing my stomach.

  “But I wouldn’t change a thing.”

  My head jerks up.

  “The time we had was worth every second of heartbreak since.” She’s quiet, her eyes unfocused as she loses herself in a memory. When she snaps back to attention, she does that forced smile that tells me she’s trying not to cry. “Some things in this world are so amazing, you have to risk everything to get them.”

  I don’t feel like we’re talking about boys anymore.

  “Besides,” my mom says, sounding more genuinely cheerful, “even if bad things happen, when the moment comes, you’ll be strong enough to handle it.” She strokes my hair. “You come from good, hardy stock.”

  I raise my eyebrow at her, but at that moment I feel the niggle of a vision coming on. “Thanks, Mom,” I say, rising to my feet. “You’re probably right.”

  “I’m always right,” she corrects playfully. “Dinner’s in the oven. It’ll be ready in five minutes.”

  I nod wordlessly and then retreat back to my bedroom, closing my eyes and flopping down on my bed, hoping it’s something small that passes quickly.

  But this one feels really weird. Off, maybe.

  It’s only when I find myself standing ankle deep in the snow that I realize why.

  It’s my vision of Jesse.

  Again.

  I’ve never had a vision twice. Something must have changed.

  Maybe he’ll live.

  But no, there he is, lying in the snow beside me.

  Seconds pass and I keep waiting for something to be different. But nothing is. When the light in the foretelling dims and the scene disappears, I blink until my physical sight registers the murky twilight in my room again.

  I don’t get it. Why would I have the vision again?

  A thought I’ve been trying to stamp out wriggles its way to the surface and this time I let myself dwell on it.

  Maybe I’m meant to do this. If there’s more to being an Oracle than I ever suspected, maybe we are supposed to help. Is it so far-fetched to wonder if I’m destined to stop these deaths? If that’s why the foretellings I have about them are so strong? And that this one has come to me twice?

  Believing in destiny and fate kind of goes hand in hand with being an Oracle. So wh
y shouldn’t this be my fate?

  Still conflicted, I reach into my backpack and pull out the necklace I borrowed from Smith. Again, it feels too warm. I cradle it in my hands and stare at the stone that seems to be all colors and no colors all at the same time. I hold it up to the light, but that doesn’t make the colors clarify at all. If anything, it looks even more multihued.

  Is it really a focus stone? Can it help save people?

  There’s only one way to find out.

  And one person who can show me.

  My mom’s words echo in my mind: Some things in this world are so amazing, you have to risk everything to get them.

  What could be more amazing than saving someone’s life?

  I picture Jesse’s face in my mind. Alive Jesse. Working together at my house on our art project—one of the only classmates who’s ever come here.

  And then I picture him dead in the snow. I see the purple bruises on his chest and wonder how excruciating it must be to have the life literally choked out of you.

  Maybe I won’t succeed, but I have to try.

  UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

  HarperCollins Publishers

  ..................................................................

  TWELVE

  I’m nervous. Like, meeting-a-first-date nervous.

  Not that I actually know how that feels.

  I decided we should meet somewhere more private this time. So I chose the library, which has private study rooms that you can reserve.

  I should have realized Smith would be there before me.

  “Do you have it?”

  Not hello, not I’m so glad you made this decision. “Yes,” I reply with more than a little duh in my tone. When Smith doesn’t look convinced, I pull the pouch out of my pocket and hand it over.

  And he still unfastens the drawstrings and looks inside to check.

  “Maybe you need to learn to trust me,” I say dryly.

  He doesn’t meet my eyes as he nods. “I know. I know,” he says, almost to himself. “I’ve just spent so many years . . .” His words trail off as he slides the necklace onto his palm. “We should get started.”

  A jolt of fear races through my whole body, but the decision is made. Whatever he has to teach me, I’m determined to learn. “I had the vision again last night,” I offer after I close and lock the study-room door and jiggle the blinds shut. “The one about Jesse.”

  “Exactly the same?”

  “I think so.”

  “Tell me about it.”

  Despite the closed door and thick walls, I lean forward and lower my voice to a bare hush. I tell him about Jesse, the strangulation marks, and what I remember about the scene. Smith tents his fingers and lifts them to his lips, contemplating for a few seconds. “I can teach you to change the scene on your own—and I will,” he adds. “But I think for this first one I should come into your vision and coach you.”

  “What do you mean, ‘come into’?” I ask, the fear returning with a vengeance.

  “With both of us in contact with the stone, I can enter the vision with you. I have no power there, but I can help.”

  It sounds so bizarre.

  “You’re really going to have to trust me.”

  “Okay.” He must hear the hesitation in my voice.

  “Not just with your secrets. I need you to trust me to . . . get into your head, essentially. It’ll only be for a few minutes, max, but you have to open yourself entirely. Hold nothing back.”

  “You can save him?” I ask, letting that last drop of doubt seep through.

  “I can show you how to save him.”

  “You’re sure?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then I trust you.” I’ll make myself trust him. For Jesse.

  “Okay,” Smith says, pulling his chair closer until our knees are touching. “We both need to be in contact with the stone. You, so you can return to your foretelling, and me, so I can come with you.”

  Again my stomach clenches at the thought of anyone else seeing my visions. My life—my already bizarre life—has turned completely upside down.

  “Shelby and I did this hundreds of times,” Smith says when I don’t reach out for the necklace. “I promise, it’s safe. Strange, but safe.”

  I nod and then lay my hands on top of his so we’re cradling the stone in between our two palms.

  “No, no,” Smith says, moving my hand. “It’s easier if you can see the stone.”

  I adjust and we start again.

  “Okay, gaze into the stone and bring forward the scene you saw with Jesse. Then put yourself back in it.”

  Back in it? Back into one of the most terrifying experiences of my life? But this is how I can change it. No risk, no reward. Here goes nothing. I look at the stone—it seems pink now—and picture the scene. When I’m sure I have it fixed in my head, I say, “Okay.”

  “No. You’re using your mind. Your mind is not your . . . um, you probably call it your ‘third eye’? Maybe ‘second sight’?”

  I look up at him, my forehead scrunched. “I know the words, but I don’t know what you mean.”

  He sighs. “It’s hard to describe something you’ve never actually experienced. Okay, when you have visions—not the ones you’ve fought off, the ones you’ve actually experienced—you keep your eyes open, but inside you . . . you go somewhere else and darkness covers your physical sight, right?”

  I nod, oddly frightened that he has described exactly what happens. Like some stranger telling you in detail what your underwear looks like even though you’re fully clothed.

  “Stare at the stone again, and, um . . . will that darkness to cover your physical eyes. And do you . . . when you fight, do you have something you throw over the vision so you can’t see it?”

  “A drape,” I say, still trying to push back the horror at a conversation that feels so suddenly intimate.

  “Good! Perfect!” he says, latching on to that. “Once your physical sight goes dark except for the stone right in the middle, pull the drape aside. Don’t just peek behind it, you need to yank it away. Be committed. Your mind will sense if you have doubts.”

  “Okay.” I try again with only the barest idea of what I’m doing. This time, instead of remembering the scene with Jesse, I picture the blackness in front of my physical sight that a vision always induces. As soon as I do, I almost lose concentration entirely when it appears right at the edges of my vision, but without the muffled sensation that always accompanies a foretelling. Okay, I think, trying to calm myself down, I just imagine it and it happens.

  When I concentrate again, the blackness advances unnaturally, beginning at the edges of my peripheral vision, a slowly—so slowly—shrinking circle of sight surrounded by darkness. I widen my eyes and, oddly, that seems to help. The circle of light shrinks, smaller, smaller, until only the gem, shining purple now, remains. A tiny, tight center in the middle of sheer blackness.

  An odd instinct kicks in and I know I need to raise my hands—not my physical hands, but the hands I rarely have control of in the visions. I lift my arms and reach for the dark veil that covers my third eye. It’s as though these hands weigh twenty pounds each, but I lift them anyway. After a few seconds, my fingers find the edge and pull it back.

  I’m standing in the snow again, and Jesse’s body lies covered in a thin layer of flakes beside me.

  I did it! I want to yell, to cheer, but even though I’ve managed to enter a foretelling on purpose for the first time in my life, there’s still a dead teenager on the ground beside me. Nothing about that has changed.

  I glance around me, and everything feels familiar and foreign at the same time. I’ve been here before—technically I always come here during the visions I don’t fight—but it’s not somewhere I know. Not somewhere I was even aware I could know. It’s somewhere I fight against coming to almost every day—well, used to fight. To be here now feels wrong and strange. But even so, there’s a sense of possessiveness that’s welling u
p within me.

  It’s my second sight; why shouldn’t I come here?

  “You’re there, I can tell,” a soft voice says in that faint, faraway pitch that all outside noises take on when I’m either in or fighting a vision. Smith. “Now comes the hard part.”

  The hard part? I’m nearly shaking from the effort of having done this much. “What do I have to do?” I ask, but the wind sweeps my voice away. I realize I’ve never tried to speak while in a vision before. There’s never been a reason to. Does my physical mouth talk when I’m in this other plane? Can Smith tell I’m speaking?

  “I’ll talk you through it,” Smith says. “And don’t try to ask questions; you’re only talking inside your vision.” Well, that answers that. “First I’m going to place my fingers on one of your temples. It’s going to feel very jarring, like you’re in two places at once. Your mind won’t like that and will want you to pick one or the other. You can’t let it send you back. We’ll have to start all over again.”

  I say nothing, just brace myself for his touch.

  As soon as his skin comes in contact with mine, I gasp. Though I can distantly feel that it’s his fingertips very gently touching the side of my head, in the second sight it’s like his hands have wrapped around the entire scene, moving in closer and closer and threatening to suffocate me. My mind screams at me to return to the physical world, but I hold on, focusing my thoughts on the stone—until I’m wholly in my second sight again.

  “Okay,” the reverberating voice says. “I should be at your curtain. This is the trickiest part. I need you to let me in.”

  I sense him standing just outside of my vision. My whole world when I’m in my second sight. But I’m realizing now that this space is really very small. I don’t think there’s room for both of us. And . . . and it’s mine. He shouldn’t be here. He shouldn’t—

  “Charlotte! Don’t push me away!” His voice is getting further and further away. It’s panicked now and it snaps me back into focus. “I can’t do this part; you have to let me come in.”

  I look down at Jesse. My time in my second sight has now lasted longer than my original vision and the snow is starting to obscure his features. “Jesse,” I whisper, remembering why I’m here. I have to do this. I have to trust Smith.