The Guardian (15 page)

Selena bursts into a fit of giggles. “Are you joking? Am I being
punked
?”

I step back, a shiver of panic trembling in my stomach.

“I guess you’d like that, wouldn’t you?” she goes on.
“B
ecause if you can’t have Carter no one should.”

“This isn’t about Carter! I have nothing against you. And I’d never lie about something like this. This is
serious
.” 

She shakes her head in disbelief, pulls her car door shut, and cranks the engine of her l
ittle white BMW.

I bang on the window with my fist, desperate.
“Selena, please!
You have to believe me! You can’t go that way today!”

A group of juniors passes behind the car, eyeing me carefully. It dawns on me that I am about two or three antics away fr
om being committed.

Selena turns up the volume on her radio. The beat of a rap song booms in her after-market stereo. The car itself rattles, the ground beneath me shaking.

She throws the gear in reverse and backs out of the space.

God! Why won’t she lis
ten?

I scream inside my head, staggering backward. The parking lot, and everything in it, twirls madly. I swipe away the sweat gathering on my neck, fearing, but not for the first time, that I might actually faint.

“Are you okay?”

I spin around.

“Oh my
God, Carter.”
Carter
. “I need you to do me a favor. It’s not for me. It’s Selena, and I can explain, but I need you to follow her.”

Already, her car is pulling out of the parking lot.

“This is crazy, I know, and I’m sorry, but we need to go after her . .
. like, right now.”

He raises a single eyebrow, hesitating for a second, but then his expression softens. “Get in.”

I run the entire way to Carter’s SUV. Carter keeps pace. I reach for my seatbelt as soon as we’re inside, hands quaking as I work to buckle
myself in. “This is really weird, but I can explain. I need you to hear me out. Just listen first, okay?”  

The engine roars to life, and, in seconds, we’re backing out of the space. “Okay.”

I inhale deeply. “I’ve been getting a lot of weird feelings late
ly. Like, I know
what’s
gonna
happen before it happens. I know. It sounds freakish . . . I think I
am
freakish, actually, but I had this vision today, and I think Selena is about to get into a wreck, but she didn’t believe me and left anyway.” My words tum
ble out, racing one after the other with barely a pause in between. “She is so freaking stubborn!” I shout. We reach the end of the parking lot. “She took a left. She’s heading to the dentist. We need to stay on The Strip.”

Carter barely pauses for the sto
p sign, makes sure no one is coming, then takes a hard left and presses the gas, passing a few cars.

“So . . . you’re saying you can predict the future?” He asks as soon as we’re on the road.

I grab the handle on the ceiling for support. “I don’t know. Wh
atever it is, it’s real. And it’s not the first time.”

“Okay. So what exactly happens?”

I sigh. “I see these . . . flashes of light in my head, and then I see an image of . . .”

“No,” he interrupts. “I mean, what happens today?”

I take another deep breath,
trying to gather my thoughts, to remember what I saw. “She’s driving, and when she gets to an intersection there’s a green car. It hits her.
Driver’s side.
She spins around. That’s all I know.”

The needle of the speedometer inches further away from the li
mit as Carter slips into the middle lane to pass a few more cars.

“I tried to tell her,” I mutter. “I told her to take a different way.”

“Selena writes her own rules.”

I rub the bridge of my nose with my fingers and close my eyes. My temples throb,
spasmin
g
rhythmically.

“Call her on my cell,” he implores. “She’ll pick up. I know it.”

I search the console.

“It’s in my bag.” He nods toward the back.

I turn around in my seat,
then
jerk back, startled to discover that the rear of the vehicle is occupied.

Seth
brings his finger to his lips. I furrow my brow, wondering where he came from, how long he’s been here. And he isn’t alone. There’s someone else—another guy, a few years older—sitting beside him. The guy nods.

He’s here.

Relief floods over me, and for a
moment, I forget what I’m supposed to be doing.

Seth finally makes a phone gesture with his hand, and mouths the word. I snap back to reality and reach for Carter’s bag. I pull it into the seat with me and fish through the front pocket until I find it.

W
hen I turn back around, Seth is still there. The other guy peers around Carter’s head, watching the road, his broad arms folded across his chest.

“It’s pre-programmed,” Carter says. “Just hit three six four and her number will show up.”

I dial and wait f
or the phone to ring.
If we can just get her off the road, or to take a detour, everything will be okay.
The phone rings twice.
Three times.
Come on, Selena, pick up your phone!
Five times.

“She had her music turned up so loud. I know she can’t hear it.”

Seven times.
Eight.

“Pick up the phone, Selena!” I scream.

“There she is!”

I jerk my head up.
“Where?”

“She’s up there, about a block away.”

Carter switches lanes again. I watch as the speedometer creeps even higher. This should make me nervous, but the l
iquid panic coursing through my veins dominates my emotions. I feel nothing else.

I lean forward, practically out of the seat, the belt pulled taut against my shoulder. I wring my fingers, not taking my eyes off the white BMW as Selena passes through anoth
er intersection.

“Try calling again,” Carter says. “If I can get behind her, I’ll honk the horn until she pulls over.”

I pick up the phone and re-dial.
One ring.
Two.
Three.

Ahead of us, I watch as she approaches a red light. Her brake lights glow.

Good.
This will give us a chance to catch up.

As soon as I think this, though, the light changes from red to green, and before Selena even comes to a complete stop, she presses the gas, speeding through it.

We seem to spot the green car at
exactly the same time: heading straight through the intersection, perpendicular to Selena.

“Shit,” one of us says, just before the green car makes contact. The metal wrenches and tires skid, squealing against the asphalt. The sound is too familiar—for bot
h of us. Selena’s car spins around the intersection in slow motion. The street lights with the glow of red taillights as cars behind and around her slam on their brakes. One ends up on the sidewalk.
Another on the grass.
In a matter of seconds, the entire
world stops.

Carter’s face is ashen, grim, completely devoid of color. His fingers grip the steering wheel.

“We have to help her!” I tell him.

He makes a quick right turn into a random parking lot and kills the engine. We jump out of the car and run toward
the accident. In the next moment, Seth is beside me.

Smoke pours out of the hood of the green car, which is folded accordion-style.

Traffic remains at a standstill. Our feet pound against the pavement as we maneuver between the cars, my breaths heavy in
my ears. Carter reaches her first.

He pulls open her door and Selena crawls out. When she sees us, she bursts into tears. She falls into Carter’s arms, her entire body shaking.

“Someone call nine one
one
!” Carter shouts, to no one in particular.

Seth pa
sses me Carter’s phone. I take it from him and dial. A crowd already gathers.

A woman in scrubs, an off-duty nurse, runs over to us. She leads Selena out of the intersection and onto a grassy knoll behind the sidewalk. As I speak to the operator, I notice
that parts of Selena’s face are red: burned from when the airbag deployed. Otherwise, she doesn’t appear to be hurt. Most of the damage is located to the back seat area and rear of the vehicle.

If she would’ve been going any slower.
. . .

Seth remains b
eside me, his hand resting gently on my shoulder, his warmth radiating through my skin, making it tingle. I lean in, closer, not wanting him to leave. The other guy—the one with him in the car—hovers near Carter. Carter doesn’t see either of them. No one d
oes.        

There’s a girl kneeling near Selena. I watch her. When she sees me staring, she offers a polite smile. I look away. 

Traffic starts moving again, flowing around the
accident,
and a siren wails in the distance.

In the intersection I recogniz
e Joshua, the same Guardian from the Japanese restaurant. He’s directing traffic, his dirty blonde hair shimmering in the sun like a crown of light. I look around: from Seth, to the guy with Carter, to Joshua and the rest of the people gathered nearby, and
wonder who is real and who isn’t. It’s impossible to tell.

Joshua vanishes when the police arrive. The nurse vanishes when the ambulance arrives. The girl climbs into the back of the rescue vehicle when the paramedics load Selena to get checked out. They
can’t see her. Selena can’t see her.

My attention is drawn to another girl, not much older than me. Her arm is covered in colorful tattoos, an entire sleeve of red, blue, and green ink. I remain still for a moment, feeling that I know this girl, too. Won
dering where I’ve seen her as she disappears inside the store. At some point, Seth leaves. When I realize he’s gone, my heart plummets. I search the crowd for him.

“I can’t believe it,” Carter mutters as the ambulance drives away. “You were serious. The wh
ole
freakin
’ time . . . you actually
knew
what was going to happen. It was just like you said.”

I hug my elbows tightly as I shiver, but not because I’m cold. “What a burden, right?” I mutter.

“Or a gift.”

I force a bitter laugh.
“Yeah.
It’s
great seeing
things that no one believes.
Your phone.”
I say, passing it back to him.

“Thanks.” My fingers brush lightly against his as he takes it.

I focus my attention on the ground—my feet—as we walk to Carter’s SUV, body still shaking from the rush of adrenaline. “
Um, if it’s okay with you, I don’t want anyone to know about this. You know, my knowing what was going to happen. This is hard enough as it is. I don’t want people asking questions. I don’t need that kind of attention.”

“Yeah, sure.
No problem.” He shrugs
like it’s no big deal, as if people ask him to keep secrets like this—of this magnitude—all the time.

“And Carter?”
I say, just as we reach his car.

“Yeah?”

“Thank you. For believing, I mean.”

S
EVENTEEN

Carter drops me off in front of Ernie’
s just as my shift is about to start. I’m dangerously close to being late—a fire-able offense, in Ernie’s eyes. But then, everything is a fire-able offense to Ernie. I run to the kitchen, grab my apron and notepad, and head to the first table without drink
s. The good thing about this—being in a rush—is that there’s no time to talk, or eat.
The truth?
I can’t stomach Stu’s eggs—I can’t stomach anything. Not today. Thankfully, the steady stream of customers demanding refills and extra napkins keeps me busy th
roughout the night. I’m grateful for the distraction, happy to have small, manageable tasks to occupy my mind. I don’t want to talk. Not to
Arsen
, who makes a point to smile at me every time I pick up a table’s entrees from the kitchen window. Not to
Flavi
a
or Stu. I even ignore my mom, who keeps asking, in passing, if something is bothering me.

It’s after eleven when we arrive home. And when we walk inside the house and she flips on the lights, I head straight for the bathroom, lock the door behind me, an
d turn on the hot water.