Second Thoughts (13 page)

She beamed. “It was quite nice of Dan to set up our dinner tomorrow night. I'm looking forward to it.”

The light in her eyes made it clear she was
more
than looking forward to dinner with Senator Astor. In the weeks since her visit to the Academy, she'd repeatedly mentioned her disappointment over seeing him only once. I hadn't had the heart to tell her she sounded like a school girl with a crush, since it was so rare she got excited about anything other than me or art, let alone a man, but mostly because I couldn't figure out how to feel about it.

“Me too.”

After a pause for a thoughtful bite of dinner, Aunt Tessa tilted her head and asked, “And how is Carter, honey? By which I mean, how are the two of you?”

Crap.
How were we? Strained. But I hadn't mentioned that to my aunt. “What do you mean?”

“I
mean,
are you okay?” When she pushed her hair over her shoulder, a pile of bracelets jangled on her wrist. “He was supposed to come, and, well, I thought maybe the store was an excuse. You haven't
seemed yourself since I saw you last, and…Frankly, I wondered if you weren't getting ready to break that boy's heart.”

I started at her words, nearly jumping out of my seat and spilling my cappuccino across the table. “What?! No!” I said. “I can't even believe you'd think that!” But there it was again. An echo in my head reverberated with,
She'll break your heart, Carter.
And this time it was my
aunt.
When Alexis had said it last year, I knew she had a vested interest in it coming true. My aunt, on the other hand, loved my being with Carter possibly as much as I did.

“I'm sorry, sweetie. I just wondered, that's all. You've seemed…” She frowned and flipped one hand over and back. “And you're my daughter in your heart, if not your blood. I know a little about fearing comfort more than change. For you, change
is
comfort. It's almost a year you've been with him…”

Before I'd known what being comfortable in one place really meant, I'd have agreed with her. But it turned out, maybe since I'd already had so much change in my seventeen years, I
liked
permanence. My psychologists had been right about that anyway. Or so I'd thought, until my aunt had just given new life to an old seed of doubt.

“I know,” I said. “And I'm not planning to—
never.
I
love
Carter. He just couldn't make it. The store
wasn't
an excuse. They've got one new employee since, well, you know. Jill couldn't come back this year. But the new woman is off this week. And school is stressful for me…”

I realized I
sounded
like I was making excuses, and maybe I was. There was so much distance between us the last week, and Carter was right—so much I wasn't telling him. I just wasn't sure I was ready yet, for
so
many things.

Aunt Tessa cocked her head at me again, in the other direction this time. From somewhere she'd produced a pencil and had been idly sketching on the tablecloth. Me, I realized. I recognized my long hair
and the contours of my face. “So,” she said, “you haven't had sex with him yet, have you?”

Flames leapt instantly to my face, especially because I'd just been thinking about it. “Auntie! Jesus!” My aunt was liberal enough when it came to sex, and had never been afraid to talk to me about it. She and Amy had that in common.

“You haven't. I can tell. I'm surprised, honestly. Aren't you ready?”

“Auntie!!” I repeated. If you could pass out from blushing too hard, I was about to do it. I eyed her wine glass, but it was still half full. No, this was just my aunt being herself.

She laughed at me. “It's okay, Lainey. I just thought…” She shrugged. “Anyway, there's no prize for hurrying the first time, so don't. Just don't forget to be careful when you finally do.”

My mortification complete, I nodded. “You've reminded me enough times since I was ten. I've learned that lesson well, I promise.” But inside, I laughed a little. The first part of her totally non-traditional sex talk was proof Aunt Tessa didn't know about Sententia, since having sex could jumpstart, or spark, a developing ability, like it had for Carter. Sometimes there
was
a prize.

W
E SPENT THE
next day like a normal mother and daughter, going on the campus tours, eating at the student union, and meeting other prospective students and their families. My aunt pretended she wasn't an alumna with her sculptures featured in the school museum, and I pretended I wasn't maybe going to die before I had the chance to become an alumna myself. It was actually a fun day.

Dinner that evening was possibly more fun, despite Carter's absence. The university president was friendly, down to earth, and seemed genuinely interested in me, even if it was only because of my aunt and Senator Astor, but I didn't think so. I got the impression he
cared about and would have been the same with any of the over seven thousand students.

We, naturally, talked about art, politics, and the business school, none of which was boring, and we laughed often and genuinely. My aunt flirted almost shamelessly with Dan, who seemed equally interested in charming her. I felt worried about that but entirely unsure how to stop it. Otherwise, it was a great evening, and the best part of the whole thing was the absolutely zero mention of Sententia. Up until the very end.

“Have you given any more thought to my offer?” Dan asked, almost casually, while my aunt had gone to the ladies' room and the president had taken his leave.

Of course I had. I thought about it pretty much all the time I wasn't contemplating my own impending death. Unable to tell him that, I decided to be straightforward with him.

“I don't honestly think I have it in me.”

He nodded, as if he'd expected my answer. “I understand,” he said firmly. “It's a hard thing to have to do. Tell me this—do you not believe in our mission?”

“No, it's not that. I do, sort of.” And I did. The Perceptum did a lot of good. “But…just the part that really bothers me would be my part.”

“Of course. You've heard the stories though; you know the caliber of person who receives such a vote, and the rarity.”

I sighed, wishing my aunt would just hurry up and free me from having to talk about this. My stomach churned, in part because he was right. I nodded. “Of course. Dr. Stewart said almost the same thing, but…it's not just that. It's, well honestly, it's Carter. I know what would happen to him, just because of what he
can
do, not because of what he
does
or who he
is.”

Dan's eyes lit on me like I'd made some connection without knowing it. “Objectivity is the greatest challenge, is it not? And doing things you don't necessarily want to do for the good of others. Don't you see the most important advantage to working
with
the Council, Lainey? Why do you think I've become its leader?
That
is where you have the most power to
protect
Carter.”

I inhaled so sharply the breath stabbed my throat. It had never occurred to me Dan didn't
want
to be leader of the Perceptum. It had never occurred to me there'd be any advantage to being a part of it. But there
was.
I'd been too caught up in my own fears to see it. Now, I was more confused than ever.

I opened my mouth to say…something,
anything,
when Dan patted me on the shoulder and smiled at my aunt coming up behind us.

“Tess, Lainey and I were just talking about the future, and I think she's got some important things to think about. Shall we go for a nightcap?”

A
LL THE FLIGHT
home, I replayed the conversation in my head. Was it that simple? Well, it wasn't
simple,
but…it was a good question. What
would
I do to protect Carter? I liked to say
anything,
but I'd never thought anything would include killing people, even the kind of people I'd be asked to eliminate. And I always thought my morals would stand up and say
never!
But never was a tricky word when you loved someone and that someone was in danger.

It was with these thoughts that I stepped outside the terminal, on hold with the dispatcher for the car service as they tried to locate my strangely missing reservation, when I saw Carter. He was standing next to his car and holding a sign with my name on it, just like the driver should have been. I hung up the phone and threw myself at him. He caught me and held tight. Kisses became our mutual apology.

Until another driver honked his horn, I forgot where we were. Which was at the airport, in
public,
in a taxi zone where we shouldn't be stopped. Sheepishly, I broke away and, in what had become a habit of mine just about every time I touched him, gave a quick check with my Diviner sense to see if my death had become any clearer.

At the same time I was saying, “What are you—” Carter practically leaped backwards.

“What the hell, Lainey?!”

“—doing here?” I finished. He was running his fingers through his hair and staring at me from his new distance. “What?”

“Are you trying to kill me or figure out when I'm going to die?” His low voice was harsh, angry.

Shit.
He must have seen my eyes flash. Caught up in the moment, I'd been careless. And now, I was stuck. It took me so long to reply, Carter cleared his throat. He fidgeted, shuffling his feet like he wanted, and
not
wanted, to move closer.

“Wow.
Are
you trying to kill me or
am
I going to die? Is that what you didn't want to tell me?”

I shook my head and stepped toward him, lowering my voice to match his. “Neither.” And then, without any further thought or gentleness, I plowed straight into a confession.
“I'm
going to die—and you're going to kill me. At least, that's what I saw a couple months ago.”

“What?!”
He actually tried to back up further, bumping into the car and nearly slipping off the edge of the sidewalk. The impatient taxi driver behind us honked again. Carter looked at him, looked back at me, and opened the passenger door. “Get in. Apparently we need to talk, and we can't do it here.”

W
E WERE HALFWAY
out of the airport when I started to talk but Carter cut me off completely.

“We are
not
having this conversation while I'm driving.” He wouldn't look at me, his eyes strictly focused on the road while his white-knuckled fingers gripped the steering wheel at ten and two. Minutes, then miles, ticked by in silence. Slowly.

I was beginning to wonder if he planned to drive us all the way home first. In the right lane. Going five miles below the speed limit. “It's not tonight, so you don't have to drive like my nanny,” I joked.

He glanced in my direction but didn't smile or otherwise relax his stiff posture. “You may be wrong. Right now, I'm trying to keep myself from killing you just for not telling me, so don't push it,” he said. Sometimes I forgot how passionate Carter could get when he was angry, but this was something more, something he so rarely showed I didn't recognize it at first: fear.

I reached out to touch him but thought better of it and dropped my hand back into my lap, where I recommenced wringing it with my other one. For the first time ever, I didn't think my touch would be a comfort. Instead, I apologized with all the sincerity I could infuse into two insufficient words.

“I'm sorry.”

Carter said nothing but he glanced at me again. His wet eyes shimmered in the dark. After we were about halfway home, he rather abruptly pulled off the highway into the kind of rest area with picnic tables and no bathrooms, where truckers stopped to sleep, not the bright, busy kind with gas stations. The kind where, over the summer, we'd had our almost-night. It was cold out, so he left the car running. I listened to the hum of the engine and blow of the heaters, a familiar sound not unlike the ocean, and thought how
this
night couldn't feel further from that other one.

Next to me, emotions warred on Carter's face in the glow from the dashboard, processing the thought of my death and his possible role in it. I'd had so long to accept it, I'd practically forgotten how freaked out
I used to be. Seeing Carter fight through denial, anguish, anger—all the things I felt at first—was heartbreaking. Maybe my aunt had been right.

Finally, he turned to me. “It must be an accident.”

“I don't honestly know. But the vision was real. Just…brief.”

“Tell me everything. Please. We've done it before—We'll figure out how to change this.” Desperation had crept into his voice, giving it a rough quality I'd never heard in it before. He sounded like an adult, a man, rather than a teenager. I reminded myself that he'd be twenty in only weeks.

“That's what I'm trying to do!” All of my pent-up frustration rushed out with my words. “I've been trying since that day, but I can't see any more. I can't see
anything!
I saw my face, and, the way I
know
things, I knew you were responsible, but that's it. I've seen flashes of it since, just the same little glimpse, but I can't get any closer to what happens! And—” I broke off.

Carter ducked down to look into my face and leaned toward me from his seat. “‘And?' How could there possibly be something worse you don't want to say?”

“It won't be the first time,” I whispered. “For you. I won't be the first.” It was stupid, I
knew
it was stupid, but I'd still been unable to make myself read Carter for that detail. Whatever happened before had never forced itself on me like some visions did. I'd gotten good enough with my Diviner sense that I could concentrate only on the future or the past, and this was a past I just didn't want to know. I
should have,
I knew that too, but I couldn't bring myself to find out.