Certainty (21 page)

“Okay.”

“I know things about people…” he paused and I could tell he didn’t want to say the next part.

“Ren, no matter what you say to me, I will believe you. I swear it. Stop being afraid to talk to me. Dr. Phil says communication is very important.”

He burst out laughing and put his hand over his eyes. “I can’t do this. You’re not taking me seriously, and this is serious.”

I pulled his hand away from his eyes and he stopped smiling. He was afraid. I stood up on tiptoes and put my forehead up to his. “It will be okay.”

He took a deep breath and pulled away from me, though he held my hands.

“I know what is going to happen to people in the future.” He stared at me and I looked back, my brain trying to absorb what he’d said.

“Like a psychic?”

He was watching me, his body tight and still. “Yes.”

A shiver ran up my spine and the hairs on my neck stood up. I didn’t know how, but I knew he was telling me the truth. It was as true and real as my dumb puffy coat, as the cold that bit at my skin. As real as the fact that I loved him, even though I couldn’t prove either one. No wonder he was afraid to tell me.

“I believe you.”

He relaxed, his eyes almost disbelieving. “You do.” It was a statement, not a question.

“Yes, I do.” A car passed us, a minivan with a woman on a cell phone. The phone lines above our heads swayed. The sun was trying to come out through the clouds, but the wind blew the clouds over the one little beam that managed to find its way. My boyfriend could see the future.

He twisted our fingers together. “Can I tell you more?”

“Yes.”

So he told me about
Yurei
and how he knew what was going to happen to people, mostly years and years ahead. He didn’t know what tomorrow or a few months or even a few years ahead would bring, usually. I could hardly imagine what was going on in his head. No wonder he was so hard to read. How could I have guessed he was thinking about all that? He was full of information he couldn’t share. A veritable bowl of “ask me” candy.

“What am I going to be like? Have you seen my…
Yurei
?”

He became guarded. “Yes.”

Afraid he didn’t want to give me bad news I asked, “Is it bad?”

He shook his head. “No. I don’t want to ruin it. It’s good, though, you can trust me on that.”

“Okay, that’s ridiculous. If you can know, so can I. I can handle my own future.”

“I really don’t want to tell you.”

I kissed him. It was a little clumsy and he laughed in the middle of it. “Now will you tell me?” I asked.

He laughed again. “So if I refuse to tell, you’ll keep kissing me? What kind of negotiator are you?”

“Desperate?”

He put his arms around me in a bear hug, squishing my puffy coat. “I like my girls desperate.”

“Girls?!” I asked, outraged, but not really.

“Yeah. No. No, I’m kidding,” he said, looking down at me. He kissed my nose. “If it makes you feel any better, I know less about my future than anyone else’s. And I don’t mind it.”

“What do you know?”

He sighed, still squishing me against him. “Uh…I go to college, I travel. And…that’s about it. It’s very fuzzy.”

He was leaving out some events, I could tell. “Do you get married?”

He stared down at me. “Yes.”

“To?”

He didn’t answer, his mouth soft and his eyes deep and dark. I knew what he wasn’t going to tell me. We were only sixteen. I didn’t dare say it out loud, but I knew. It was so big neither of us could tell each other, at least not now. Every daydream about romance and wedding dresses and playing house flashed through my mind and suddenly I knew they weren’t far away dreams.  They were going to be real.
             

At that moment I realized why knowing the future made him so different from everyone else. In theory most of us all know we’re going to change but did we really believe it? Did we really know high school would be just a memory someday? We treated each other like we would all freeze in place and stay the way we were. The strong ones who thought they were immortal and the weak ones who didn’t know who they were yet. We would all change and get older. Ren didn’t need the theory we all ignored. He had fact—way before he was supposed to.

“What…what about Katie?” I asked weakly, my head spinning with it all.

He let go of me a little. “She becomes an art teacher and marries and they have some kids. Her kids are very cool. She eventually discovers she’s got a talent for stained glass—which sounds really random right now.”

“What about Steve and Crystal and the rest?

“Steve…his future is…ballin. He plays a big part in a huge technology breakthrough, but I don’t know what it is. He changes the world, kind of, but he’s always still Steve.”

“That’s not too big of a stretch. I can tell he’s really smart.”

“And Crystal…” he sighed. “I don’t know what her past is because I can’t see that. I do know that she’s messed up and she’s going to make some mistakes because of it. She’s going to marry the wrong guy, have a baby and then she has to take care of her son by herself.” He paused,  a mix of emotions running across his face.  “She eventually owns her own company and does really well. I can’t help being completely inspired, I guess, by her. She figures it all out, without much help, either. Out of all the futures I’ve seen, hers impresses me the most.”

“Wow.” I felt like I’d read her diary. A little guilty, and very intrigued. “Maybe if you warn her she won’t make those mistakes.”

“I don’t know. Maybe. You’re the first person who’s believed me. I didn’t think I would be able to tell anyone what I know.”

“You can help people. You could stop them from getting hurt,” I said, getting excited about the idea. What if Katie knew sooner she was going to be an artist? A doubt hovered in the back of my mind. Would she believe such a thing? She had no interest in stained glass that I knew of. I knew she was kind of artistic, but I would have never guessed she was going to pursue it. What would make her decide to do that anyway? Would I mess it up by trying to push her towards it? I looked up at Ren. “Or maybe they have to figure it out by themselves.”

He smiled, in a sad way. “If I knew more, or could prove what I knew. I only know the outlines of the future, not exactly how it happens or why. It’s kind of blurry.”

“It’s so amazing. And Noah?”

“Ah.” He let go of me completely. “Now that’s an interesting story.”

“Ooh. Juicy.”

“
He’s going to lose his mother and one of his sisters in an accident.”

I was shocked. “What do you mean? That’s terrible.”

“But…he makes it through. He becomes
a high school teacher. Biology
.”

I tried to imagine Noah, the arrogant and cocky guy who used to tor
ment me, becoming someone else
. “How does he get through that kind of tragedy?”

He shrugged, but I could see that he was as amazed by it as I was. “I don’t know. I don’t know how any of us do what we are going to do. But you know what I’ve realized?”

For the first time I heard enthusiasm in his voice, something more than his usual worldly-wise nonchalance.

“Life is way more complicated and unbelievable than a movie. And we are all more amazing than we think we are.”

Usually I would make a comment about how I wasn’t amazing or even interesting, but now I knew it wasn’t true. I didn’t have to be destined for greatness to be remarkable to the people that mattered. In fact, it was almost stupid to ignore my importance to my friends and my family or eventually to Ren. I wasn’t just cheating myself, I was cheating them.

“It changes everything,” I said.

“I know.”

He sighed, a deep contented breath. “I’m so glad I can tell you. You don’t know what a relief it is.”

I couldn’t tell him I was completely awed.  There was no doubt he was telling me the truth, I could feel it. In my wildest imagination I couldn’t have dreamed him up—wise beyond both of our years and willing to deal with it alone. “It must have been driving you crazy. Did you tell your parents?”

He shook his head. “No. I only told one person—and he isn’t my best friend anymore.”

“I’m sorry.”

He covered my hands with his, holding them against his chest. “It’s okay. We might be friends again someday. Who knows.”

His hands were turning icy and I suddenly realized how long we’d been talking. “We’re so late!”

He took my hand and we started walking. “No big deal. Whether we’re five minutes late or an hour, it’s still counts the same.”

I thought about it and had to agree. “That’s true.”

We walked in silence; I was too filled with what it was like to know so much about my friends and Ren and I. I wanted to warn Crystal. Could we change what would happen to Noah? Would any of them believe us? I thought about my family. Did Ren know about my parents? Or James? Or Derek?

I stopped and he looked back at me, puzzled. “What is it?”

“Do you know if Derek will wake up?”

“I told you already, but you didn’t understand what I was trying to say,” he said it softly. “He’s going to wake up. He’s going to be okay, just a little different.”

I remembered how Derek was before the coma, confused and struggling for words and the odd emptiness in his face. Was that how he would always be? I shook my head, a big, ugly weight crushing down on me. I should be grateful that he would wake up, but I couldn’t be. Stunned, I couldn’t say anything. Tears stung my eyes.

“I’m sorry,” Ren said.

Thinking back to the day when I realized Ren first tried to tell me about the future I wondered how long Ren had known Derek was going to be hurt. “How long have you known about Derek?”

He hesitated. “The moment I met him.”

“You let it happen?” I asked,  praying I was wrong.

“MacKenzie,” his voice changed, unhappy and pleading, “I only knew he would be different. I didn’t know about the bike accident. I had no idea what would change him, I only knew he would. Of course I would have saved him if I could have.”

Relieved, I sighed. “I’m sorry. I still don’t understand it all the way.”

“I don’t understand it very well either,” he said. “As for the rest of your family, James becomes a neurosurgeon and your parents are fine—your mom and dad spend vacations visiting grandchildren…”

We looked at each other and then he hastily continued, “…and researching family history. They find out some pretty cool stuff. The past is as interesting as the future, I think. It’s like what I see, sort of.” He stopped. “Anyway, it’s a pretty good future.”

“Good,” I said relieved. “My parents stay boring. That’s nice of them.”

“Yeah. My parents stay boring too, thankfully.”

“Do you ever get tired of knowing all this?”

He looked up at the sky and blew out a white, frosted sigh. “Yes. And no. It’s draining, sometimes. It’s hard to see the present, to live in it. It’s like I’m the one out of time. The present for you is the past for me. It’s weird sometimes. And sometimes I know…things that…are depressing.”

“Like what?”

“I’ve got something that has never happened to me before. I don’t know what to do.” He had that tone—the one where he wanted to talk but was afraid to. What else was there?

“What is it?” I asked.

“I know someone who is thinking about killing himself. I mean, I’ve seen suicide futures before, but this one is someone I know. He’s not a stranger.”

I wondered who it was—maybe someone I knew as well. It couldn’t be any of my regular friends, though, we’d already talked about them. And it wasn’t someone in my family, so I didn’t have to worry about that. But if he knew who it was, he might be able to change what happened. “So this time you can help?”

He shook his head. “Maybe. None of the
Yurei
have talked to me before, but this one did. And he told me to stop it. I don’t know how, though. I think this guy is going to do it no matter what I say.”

“Who is it?”

“Kyle.”

It made so much sense it was almost as if I already knew, before Ren said his name. I hadn’t been imagining Kyle’s inconsolable anguish. He really was in trouble.

“What are we going to do?” I wondered aloud.

“We? I think you’ve got enough to worry about.”

“Well, is it because of Derek?”

He explained that Kyle had some other things happening in his life—like his parents getting divorced. I hadn’t thought much about it because Kyle seemed okay with it. He even talked about how this year he had two birthdays and two Christmases, two vacations. He was getting money and stuff by the ton. And it’s not like divorce never happens. But that didn’t mean it wasn’t a big deal to him. He wasn’t some statistic.

“I don’t think this is going to be easy,” I said. I told him about the way Kyle couldn’t be comforted when he saw Derek. “It’s like he’s got walls all around him and he can’t see outside and we can’t see inside. He’s not making the walls, they’re just there. You know what I mean?”