Certainty

For Lindsay

Text copyright  © by Eileen Sharp

All rights reserved. Except as permitted under the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

First Edition:
April 2011

CERTAINTY

CHAPTER ONE
R
en

Mrs. Kellerman's bracelets clinked on her thin wrists as she moved the mouse and typed. Her eyes glanced down at my high school transcript a few times. I hadn't wanted to leave California, but my father's company had transferred him to an east coast office. So here we were in Delaware, a state so small it could have been a county, or maybe half of a county.

Compared to Huntington Beach, and there wasn't much to look at other than small-town streets and dead leaves. We'd come at the beginning of October, the weather always in a wet chill that dampened my sun-soaked skin and went to my bones.

Mrs. Kellerman's desk took up most of the tiny office. She had a stack of folders on one side of the desk but other than that it was tidy and organized. Her pencil holder had a black and white swirled design on it and her mousepad matched. A picture of her and a young boy, and a man with his arm around her, stared back at me. Her husband and her son, I guessed.

"Ren is an honor student," my mom said, her eyes a little anxious. She sat next to me, nervously clutching her purse. Although she pretended to like this move, she didn't enjoy change, and she was worried about my credits transferring.

Mrs. Kellerman took a moment to answer, still clicking away, then she looked up and offered a smile. "He's an excellent student—we're happy to have him. His classes are going to work out fine. He actually has a few more credits than he needs.”

"Wonderful, thank you, " my mom said. She tucked some of her black hair behind her ear and stopped clutching her purse like it was a life-raft.

Mrs. Kellerman made one final click of her mouse and rolled her chair back towards the printer, catching the papers that slipped out. “Looks like we're good to go. He can start Monday morning."

She handed me and my mother a copy of the transcript and started going over my classes.

I stole a glance at the woman who stood at the window. She looked very much like Mrs. Kellerman, the same red hair and long facial features, but with a few differences. She was two decades older, with a bowed back and she had more wrinkles, her face soft. She was also slightly transparent.

I'd been seeing these ghosts since I turned eleven. It had taken me a while to understand them and what they were. These older replicas of everyone I met were ghosts of the future, the way people would be in fifteen or twenty years. Everyone had one. They appeared the moment I saw someone, and left me with their stories when they faded. I didn't know why they came. They didn't seem to notice me or have a particular need to tell me anything. They appeared and I instantly learned all about them, whether I wanted to or not, and a few seconds later they disappeared. My brain was crammed with memories that weren't my own and hadn't happened yet. After a while I found myself calling them
Yurei, a Japanese word that for spirit
.
Technically it meant someone who had died, but it was the closest I could get to what they really were.  It made them seem
friendly, though some of them weren't.

The future Mrs. Kellerman turned to look at me. Her story came to me without words, transferred as quickly as my eyes could see the color of her graying hair. Her husband would die suddenly of a heart attack a few years from the present. In the future I could see she lived alone. She had a son but he lived far away. He was married now and would soon have his first child. She'd decided to sell her house and move across the country to be with his new family. The
Yurei
smiled at me and disappeared.

The present Mrs. Kellerman smiled and handed me a copy of my schedule. I thanked her and tried to put her
Yurei
out of my mind. It was strange to know so much and keep it to myself. No one knew what I could see, not even my parents.

My mom nudged my arm. "How do your classes look?"

"Good," I said, looking down at the list of classes and times. It was hard to focus on my own life sometimes.

I'd seen the
Yurei
of my parents. My mom seemed to be shorter but a little on the soft side, though she aged well. The gift of being Asian, I suppose. My father was Asian as well, and also looked younger. He would get some gray streaks at his temples and start wearing a goatee. Seeing them become elderly changed the way I thought about them. None of us are really in control of everything, and we will all change.

We stood up to leave the office and I braced myself to enter the hallway. We had come at the end of the school day, and the hall would be flooded with students getting ready to leave, and their
Yurei
.

I stepped out into the crowd of students. The crush of
Yurei
and their stories slammed against me, a relentless flow of brilliant successes and painful tragedies. I didn't see awkward freshman, popular girls and nerds. I saw entrepreneurs, politicians, scientists, frustrated artists and everything possible, the good and the bad. Few people looked the same. Some gained weight, lost their hair or changed physically in other ways.

Some of the
Yurei
saw me, and some of them didn't. The ones who saw me stayed the longest. One boy walked by and his
Yurei
glanced at me before fading. In the present he had an exaggerated swagger, but his
Yurei
had a more measured demeanor, smart and cautious. He would make decent money investing in a few businesses, but only after a string of humiliating failures.

Another guy, tall and athletic, probably a football player, dropped one of his books. His
Yurei
watched him for a moment. This ghost was not much older, and I knew that whoever he was, this athletic kid didn't have many years left. I wasn't quite sure what would kill him, but I got the feeling it was a health problem he didn't know about. The
Yurei
caught my eye and winked out of sight, as if he didn't want me to pry any further. The ones with secrets were the fastest to leave.

I blocked out as many impressions as I could. This number was too overwhelming. Once we got in the car I relaxed a little more. When my dad first made the decision to take this job, he told me he knew the transition might be hard for me. I couldn't tell him that he had no idea. Finding new friends and fitting in was a small concern compared enduring all the
Yurei
I was about to experience. They would come like a flood at first, until I had seen all of them. There would be new ones every time I saw someone I hadn't met, but a few at a time weren't so bad. Getting lost in a sea of them was like drowning.

My mom turned on the radio and we drove down the street of the small, historic town. Every house on our street was different. There were brick colonials, cedar shingled cottages and cape cods, some of them in bright colors. The house my parents had bought was a blue Victorian, with a wrap-around porch and a tower. I liked it, but it was nothing like our old house in California.

As we drove down the street I saw a girl walking home. She had her head down, as if deep in thought, her hands tucked into her hoodie pockets. She wore her blond hair up in a ponytail, and I could see she wasn't very tall, maybe even short. Her
Yurei
appeared beside her as we drove by. She was older, but the same height, with the same pretty features.

The
Yurei
caught me in her blue-eyed gaze. An eerie sense of recognition hit me. Rather than learning about her, she told me about myself. College, falling in love, a family and a world we would build together. Shocked, I stared back at her as we drove past. She wore a ring on her finger that I would give to her, and she carried my last name. I would marry this girl. The
Yurei
smiled at me, a hint of sympathy in her eyes, and something stronger. My skin prickled and I tried to catch a glimpse of the girl, though it was hard to see because her head was down. She had a simple, natural beauty. She didn't wear a lot of makeup, but she didn't need to.

We drove past her and I turned around. Who was she? My heart hammered in my chest and I was both afraid and curious. I'd never even thought about the idea of meeting a girl who would be in my future. I wasn't ready for that.

When we got home I lingered by the front window, pretending to unpack some boxes. She walked past and I almost cut my finger on a boxcutter. She still had her head down, her hands stuffed in her pockets, and a strand of blond hair blew against her cheek. She looked up at the window and I moved away. I didn't want to meet her, and yet I did.

I stabbed at a box with a pair of scissors and cut the tape. I lifted the lid, trying to sort out my thoughts. Should I be nervous about ruining our future or confident because we had one?

I realized I'd been staring at the contents of the box for a few minutes without doing anything with them. It was a bunch of knick-knacks no one cared about but my mom. I picked up a snow globe. Inside the globe sat Tinkerbell, looking over her shoulder, her hands on her hips, her small painted lips smirking back at me. She looked as if she knew something I didn't.

With a quick jerk, I shook Tinkerbell. Sparkling glitter swirled around her until she almost disappeared, and then the glitter settled, glinting off her porcelain body. I had no idea what to do. I couldn't deny the spark I'd felt when her
Yurei
looked at me or that I wanted someone to know everything about me. It would be a relief not to have so many secrets. I looked out the window at my new neighborhood. Apparently, it was going to happen soon.

CHAPTER TWO

MacKenzie

Monday morning I couldn't find any matching socks. Digging around in my sock drawer for the one hundredth time I decided to wear boots. I had one pink striped sock and a green argyle sock but they wouldn't show. I pulled a brush through my hair, went downstairs and grabbed a yogurt and ran out the door, saying goodbye to my mom.

A cold wind shoved against me as I stepped outside. I walked by the blue Victorian, wondering who the new owners were. We only lived one house away. Mom talked about meeting them over the weekend but she decided to give them time to move in. I spent my walk to school imagining who they might be.

An eccentric old man maybe, but we already had one of those on the street. I'm not sure if you should have two. Most likely a young family with kids. Maybe someone who liked history, like a librarian. Most people who bought these homes loved the historical stuff about them.