The Predicteds (6 page)

I walk away. Nobody stops me.

***

I walk down one of the docks scattered around the lake. In the night breeze—with the noise of the party behind me—I feel like I can finally relax. I can think out here. I let my feet dangle, the bottoms of my heels skimming the lake water. A breeze ruffles my hair, and I reach to adjust my barrette.

“Hey,” someone says.

I whip around. “Oh, hey,” I say, struggling to stand up.

“No,” Jesse says. “Stay there.” He walks toward me and takes a seat a few feet from me.

He brings one leg up, squaring his foot on the dock, moving his body away from mine. We don't say anything at first. I play with a rock that I've found on the ground.

“Who are you here with?” he asks me.

“Nobody. Just hanging out with Dizzy and company.”

“Ah,” he says knowingly.

“And you?”

“With January.”

“Really?” I say, surprised. Jesse doesn't seem to fit into the three major groups I've identified at QH. He's definitely not a farm boy, but he isn't preppy and All-American like Sam either. And he's certainly not a stoner loser, like that kid Nate Gormley. So what's he doing with January, who is, by Brooklyn's standards, anyway, a total genetic land mine?

He must read my mind. “We've been friends for a long time. Since we were little kids.” He sounds defensive, even though I've said nothing. I just nod.

It takes a second to dawn on me. “So you knew the shooter.”

He doesn't answer, at first. “Yeah,” he finally says. “I knew him.”

“Did you know that…I mean, did you ever suspect that he would do something like this?”

“We were friends. At least, I thought we were.”

We listen to the voices in the distance, the tinkling of beer bottles clinking, cans crushed in fists.

He breaks the silence first. “I try to keep an eye on her. On January. She's depressed. You know, this whole thing with her brother has been really hard for her.”

“I can imagine.”

“She's been drinking too much—she's getting herself into dangerous situations. It's weird to see her like this. She used to be so—sweet. Full of life. Smart. Funny.” He stares wistfully. “Now she doesn't care what happens to her. She's…” He trails off, as if he can't think of what to say. She's what?

He starts over again. “I just wanted you to know that…” He pauses. I throw a rock in the lake and watch it sink into the blackness of the water. “I just wanted you to know that she's not my girlfriend. But we are very close.”

“Oh,” I say. It's the answer to the very question I wanted to ask. Not that I ever would have asked. It's too forward. I make a point never to chase guys. It's a policy I live by. We sit for a long time without talking before we both get up to leave.

On the walk back to the parking lot, Jesse swings his hands, making fists as he walks. He pauses abruptly when we pass some geese nosing around the sidewalk. It's past eleven now—not a time you usually see geese out—but all the artificial light and noise and people must confuse them. They are like college students, vampires, or night-shift workers: the absence of sunlight is hardly cause for sleep. “Hey, there,” Jesse says, bending over. The geese are obviously tame, used to people feeding them. One of them pecks at his open palm and squawks angrily when she discovers there is no food. “Sorry,” he says to the goose in a voice that is tender and soft.

The sounds of squawking geese are replaced by a girlish scream in the distance. It echoes. It's not a scream of a girl in danger so much as a scream of a girl who is trying to get a guy to notice her.

“That's January,” Jesse says.

“Do you think she's predicted?” I wanted to ask the question before. It's rude to ask it now, but I can't help it.

“We'll find out eventually.”

“I know,” I say, thinking about what Melissa told me. They'd be releasing the names publicly. Sometime soon. “But do you think she is?”

“Yes,” he says plainly. “I do.”

“And who else?” I throw out the question before I realize that it's probably rude and gossipy to ask. I don't want to be like Brooklyn. “I'm sorry. It's none of my business.” We both start walking again, faster this time.

“No, it's okay. I think we all suspect the same people. Her brother is a suicidal school shooter. Her dad drank himself to death. Got drunk and wrapped his car around a telephone pole. Not even an original way to go.” He pauses. “What can you expect? That's what we're all thinking. Trapped by genetics.” We walk a little farther.

“Can you imagine?” I ask. “Thinking you are
destined
for something like that? I can't even fathom it.”

“No, you wouldn't know. You can't imagine what…” He stops talking and crosses his arms, looking over his shoulder at the parking lot. “I'm sure it's really hard,” he finally says.

The crowd is dwindling. People are saying good-bye, driving away. They are going home or going to drink someplace else. I've heard about the old train car just outside of Perry, thirty-five miles south of Quiet. Apparently, it's an abandoned car: open, creepy, shadowy, remote. Everybody under the age of twenty-one—so the rumor goes—drinks out there. It's haunted, they say. Sometimes the ghost of a little old woman appears, and people think she's the wife of a man who killed himself and her in that very car, back before any of us were ever born. I don't buy it. But it does make for a good creepy place to hang out, I guess.

Jesse is looking intently at me now. I look away bashfully, very unlike me. He reaches out toward my face, but he stops before he touches it. “You look real,” he tells me suddenly. “Like a real person. Not like any other girl here.” He closes his eyes. Before I can respond, we hear that scream again. It's January in the distance. His eyes snap open, his expression changes. “I really have to go.”

He's off, jogging toward the parking lot, toward January.

I stand there, staring, unable to move until I realize what's bothering me:
You can't imagine
, he'd said.

Did that mean
he
could?

We had a connection right away. Before we even talked to each other, I knew. I don't even know how to explain it.

—Jesse Kable, quoted in the book,
The Future of the Predicted
, publication forthcoming

“You
have
to come to Dell's,” Dizzy says for the eightieth time.

“Dizzy, I don't know any other way to say no.”

“Good,” she says, “then you're coming.” She grabs my hand and drags me off the porch. “I'm going out,” I call to Melissa, who is in the front room, reading medical journals. Fortunately, Dizzy lets me grab my flip-flops from the doorway, but I don't have time to change clothes. I feel like a total slob in a baby pink Gap hoodie and faded jeans so long they practically cover my feet.

Brooklyn is waiting in Dizzy's car, a shiny BMW. Nice. She's obviously not keen on the idea of me coming with them—I can tell by the tight smile plastered on her face—but it doesn't keep her from dominating the conversation on the ride over. Apparently, she's scored a major coup. After the lake party, she went home with Sam, where they hooked up. “We're pretty much dating now,” she tells me confidently.

“Congratulations,” I say sarcastically. Brooklyn strikes me as the kind of girl who needs a boyfriend to feel good about herself. I should probably have some sympathy, give her a chance, but I dismiss her easily, simply because I don't like the way she narrows her eyes when she talks, like everybody smells bad.

I've always avoided Dell's Diner on Main—it's the kind of place that you wouldn't feel right entering by yourself, kind of like the prom or a wedding chapel. Walking through the crowded parking lot with Dizzy and Brooklyn, I discover my suspicion was right: it
is
like a private party. Everybody from QH is at Dell's, the place to be when it's too hot, cold, early, or wet to be at the lake; the only thing to do in Quiet on a Sunday night. We are still talking about Sam when we walk into the diner and practically run into him. He's dressed in a football jersey and cargo shorts.

“Hey, girls!” he calls. “Daphne, right?” he says to me.

Brooklyn says to him, like she has a bite of old cauliflower in her mouth, “Daphne agreed to come with us. Aren't we lucky?” She gives me a pageant smile and a hug that actually hurts. She hates me. Well, at least it's mutual. Dizzy and Brooklyn flirt with Sam while I stand there, mushed between what feels like a zillion people in the main entryway. I stare impassively out the diner window to the parking lot. Under the streetlight, Nate Gormley—the kid I saw at the lake with January—puffs hard on a cigarette and runs his fingers through his tangled, greasy hair. January stands near him, a long trench coat covering her body, her skinny arms crossed against her chest and an inflexible scowl on her face.

“Girlfriends!” Dizzy crows, running toward Lexus and Cuteny as they step through the doors. With them is Dizzy's ex-boyfriend, Josh Heller. He's wearing plaid shorts and a baby pink polo with the collar flipped up.

Josh raises his hand to Sam for a high-five. They lock hands in guy solidarity. “What's up, ya big wussy?” Josh says to Sam with obvious affection.

“Nothing. I see you're still dressing like a clown, you stupid prepster.”

They bump shoulders, side to side, forcing everyone else to step around them and give them room.

Somebody get me a barf bag.

“Hey,” Josh says. “How come they got to go ahead of us?” He points out two women—probably in their late twenties or so—who walked in behind us, but who are now being led to an open table by the large windows. “That's discrimination,” he says. He turns to the crowd milling behind him. “Right?” he asks.

“Right,” a few voices respond.

“Don't start something, Heller,” Sam warns, but you can tell that Sam doesn't mean it. “I've seen you in action.” He laughs.

“And we won't stand for it!” Josh yells.

“Right.” The voice of the crowd is growing smaller and less indignant.

“We demand to be treated with respect.” By this time, Josh is laughing obnoxiously. He's drunk. He reminds me of my great-uncle Freddie, who used to walk around carrying those tall cans of beer in a paper bag, like a bum.

“You're such an idiot, Josh,” Dizzy says to him. She's playful, so I can't tell if she's serious or not. Did she actually like this guy?

“Is this a job for Lefty?” Josh asks, flexing his left arm. “Or Right-Man?” Neither “bodyguard” looks particularly impressive to me.

“I'm calling my dad,” Brooklyn says, pulling her cell from a giant, metallic-gold purse. She dials while Josh and his buddies snicker. Brooklyn gives a measured wave back at some girls who have just walked in the door. “Lexus,” she screeches while she waits for her dad to pick up her call, “I need to tell you about the Miss Chitlin Pageant. It was a disaster. Daddy?” she says into the phone. She pauses for a moment. “I know you are busy. I know. But this is important. I'm being discriminated on.” She looks meaningfully at an older waitress with a hairnet who is carrying coffee and slices of pie from the display case to a table of diners.

“
Against
,” Josh says, between fits of laughter. “You're being discriminated
against
, not
on
.”

She waves her hand dismissively at him. By the way she pouts, I guess that Daddy must not share her outrage. “Fine!” she says and slams the hot pink phone shut.

“Can you believe this?” she says to me, as if I am likely to be upset. “My dad is an attorney, and he is going to be so pissed when he understands what happened here tonight.”

“I can imagine. It's a complete violation of our civil rights!” I realize too late that I'm totally making fun of her, and unfortunately, she figures it out. After a twenty-second delay.

“Who asked you anyway?” Brooklyn demands, her little fake-tanned face scrunched into a pouty frown. “You know, I wasn't going to say anything, but as long as we're here, I might as well tell you: I don't like you the way you flirt with Sam. It makes you look…desperate.” She crosses her arms triumphantly. “And I don't like the way you talk to all of us. You think you're better than we are.”

Sometimes, the truth is hard to admit. So I pretend I don't hear that last part. I stay focused on the part about Sam. “What? I've talked to the guy like, once. How could I be flirting with him? Trust me. I'm not the least bit interested in Sam.” I give Sam a quick glance. He's standing with his hands in his pockets and staring at the ground. “No offense,” I say to him. “I don't even know you.”

“Come on, Brooklyn,” Sam says good-naturedly. “Don't be silly.”

Brooklyn purses her lips, looks from Sam to Josh to Dizzy to me. “I don't like you,” she says gravely. “I can't fake it anymore. There's something about you. I have a sick sense for these kind of things. There's something not right about you”

“
Sixth
sense,” I say. “You mean a
sixth
sense. Not a
sick
one.”

Josh lets out a howl of laughter. Nobody else dares speak. “Come on, Sam,” Brooklyn says, tugging at his arm. “This place is for cool people only. It's not for losers.” She seems to be on the verge of forming the shape of an
L
with her fingers, but she catches herself, perhaps realizing just how lame and outdated that gesture is. I need to close my eyes to keep them from rolling in my sockets.

I swear, Quiet is twenty years behind the rest of the world.

Regardless of my commendable restraint, her now-aborted gesture causes me to make another grave tactical error: I laugh. Not just a subtle laugh—a guffaw. It's not directed at Brooklyn, per se. It's just me getting a case of the nerves, cracking under the pressure of everything, I guess. Brooklyn puts her hands on her hips and wrinkles her noise as if something smells bed. “That is so rude, Daphne.”

She's right. It is. But that doesn't mean I can stop.

As everyone gets quieter and turns to look at me, I laugh even harder. It's something about the way Brooklyn is standing with her arms crossed, her lips pursed, and her head cocked to one side that makes me feel like laughing for days. I could easily stop—I'm not prone to laughing fits—but it feels kind of good, releasing all that tension from PROFILE and January and the shooter and everything else into the air. So I keep going, even when someone lightly pokes me in my ribs and tells me to knock it off. “I'm sorry,” I say to Dizzy, who is standing with her eyes scrunched in a confused expression.

“Calm down,” she tells me. “Brooklyn is trying really hard here.”

As I'm standing there almost doubled over, holding my gut, laughing like a maniac, I feel a
whoosh
of air through my hair. Brooklyn is furiously winding up her giant gold purse above her head like it's some kind of medieval weapon. She lets loose, and I duck just before the bag can smack me in the head. I stand there stunned, because I'm truly amazed that someone would use her oversized purse as a weapon.

In the millisecond it takes me to contemplate the oddity of this whole scene, the giant bag makes its way back around to Brooklyn's side, taking out Josh, who is standing behind her staring out the window. He falls forward on the fake-leather bench, across the laps of an old man and an old woman. The old lady fans a Kleenex over him, as if he's a too-hot dish or a bowl of soup with a fly in it. Dizzy runs to him.

Naturally, the entryway erupts in uncomfortable laughter, save for Brooklyn, who stands with her hands on her hips. “Get up,” she tells Josh.

For a second, I think that he's laughing too, but when he slides off the old people, stepping on the old man's shoes, I see that he is pissed. “You bitch,” he says, and I look to Brooklyn to gauge her reaction to this. It takes me a second before I realize that it's quiet and everyone is staring at me, including the couple on the bench, who look far too old to be eating dinner this long after sunset.

“Oh,” I say. “You mean me. She's the one who hit you.” I point at Brooklyn.

That doesn't seem to matter to Josh. He moves toward me. I can tell he's trying to look threatening, but it doesn't come off as all that tough. He's actually sort of staggering toward me like a reanimated corpse. Instead of moving, I just stand there. Like an idiot.

“God,” Brooklyn says, because that's her go-to phrase. I wonder if she realizes what a stereotype she is.

I'm about to back off and apologize for my ridiculous laughing when I have (another) moment of insanity and decide that I really have nothing to apologize for. “I think you owe
me
an apology,” I say, looking at Josh.

“I don't think so,” Josh says stepping up to me. He's so close that I can smell alcohol and cigarettes and some other strange smell, like maybe Cheerios. I'm pretty sure Great-Uncle Freddie poured beer over his Cheerios. Maybe Josh does that too.

Sam steps closer to me. Lexus, dressed in a purple miniskirt, closes ranks around Brooklyn, surprising me by saying, “Come on, Josh.” She pulls on his shirt. “The food here tastes like dog doo-doo anyway.” I wait for people to laugh at Lexus's choice of words, but nobody does. I shoot her a
thank-you
look. I glance at Sam, but he just shrugs his shoulders and moves a half-step behind Dizzy, who has crossed her arms firmly across her chest. The crowd at the door is murmuring, and the older couple has gone back to whatever they were doing before a teenage boy landed across their laps. Josh walks away from me backward.

I'm bored with this whole thing now. I'm thinking about how hungry I am and how it would be better to just turn away. I'm about to do just that, when I feel myself falling. I have no idea what's happening. I don't even feel my feet under me—just a huge crack as my head and shoulders smack the glass doors of the entryway. Everything goes black for a second, and the next thing I know, I am reclining on the floor, my head sort of angled to the side, like I've just stretched out for a little nap. “What happened?” I try to say, but the words won't come out right. It sounds like gibberish, even to my own ears.

Not as lucky as Josh, I haven't landed on any soft elderly lap. I'm on the dirty floor. The first thing I do is check to be sure that I'm not wearing a skirt, since I can feel that I haven't landed gracefully.

Phew. Jeans.

There's a rush of people around me. I try to sit up, but someone yells, “Don't let her move.” And then hands are pushing me back toward the cold floor. I put my own hand to the back of my head, where I can feel a stinging sensation. My hair feels a little sticky.

“Be careful of that door,” someone warns. “The glass is cracked, so it might shatter. Nobody use it.”

“Give her my sweater,” someone says, and it must be the old lady on the bench, because I immediately smell geriatric perfume as the sweater comes near me.

“She's bleeding,” I hear someone else say.

Brooklyn is crying. “He didn't mean to,” she yells to everyone. “He didn't mean to!”

“Yeah, I got pushed by someone in the line. God, are you okay?” Josh says above me.

My vision clears, and I note that Dizzy is kneeling beside me, her corkscrew ringlets almost touching my face. Sam is hovering behind her, with Brooklyn practically wrapped around his waist.

“Oh, Daphne,” Dizzy says with the same tone you would use if you just found out your dog had been hit by a mail truck. “Sam, get me some towels or something.”

“I'm fine,” I announce, but I can't quite work up the energy to try sitting up again.

“Sam! Go get some towels. She's bleeding.”

“I'm fine,” I repeat, but it's clear that nobody believes me. “Really,” I tell nobody in particular. “I'm totally okay.” I pull my hand away from the back of my head and notice that it has blood on it—not a lot, but enough to make me woozy.