Second Thoughts (18 page)

Or maybe it was something about
me.
Maybe my Diviner gift had influenced my Hangman gift in the way I'd become only a
Grim
Diviner. Maybe it was just chance, by a miraculous accident of genes and the way they combined, I could
divine
life, the paths and beats of it, before I took it. I wondered if it went any deeper than that. Was it only hearts I could stop? What if that was only one path, the simplest?

When I opened my eyes, Carter was staring at me, pleading for whatever would be the least terrible answer. I gave him what was probably the best: “I see nothing.”

He didn't say anything for what stretched into an uncomfortably long time, watching me with his measured look combined with an expression that was parts incredulity and relief. “Nothing,” he repeated.

I shook my head and he ran
both
hands through his too-long hair. He was past-due for a cut. I kept trying to get him to go shorter, shorter than his usual and much shorter than it was now. Not that he'd admit it, but I think he felt like if it was too short, he couldn't tug on it. It was a sort of stress relief for him.

“Try again,” he said next.

“I don't have to.”

“Please. Just humor me.”

So I did. I closed my eyes once more, squeezed his fingers, and tried again. Still there was nothing.

I shook my head again. “No vision.”

“Nothing
at all.”

“No.”

He dropped my hands and it was as if all the tension that ever existed in the world rushed out of him. Before I knew it, he'd grabbed me into a deep hug, pulling me up off the couch and swinging me around.

“We
did it,”
he said. “We did it again! I can't…I…
thank you.”
He was practically laughing. Once he came to a standstill, he kissed me, recklessly, the kind of kiss that threatened to burn a hole in the very thin wall behind us, setting fire to the store and everyone in it. The kind of kiss that made me forget my name, the date, and even where we were.

For a long time, there was nothing in the world but Carter's lips moving on mine and a joy so deep it almost scared me. Finally I was able to say, “We really didn't
do
anything.”

It was hard not to be caught up in Carter's elation, but I couldn't completely unravel the knot of dread that had been living in my stomach for so many months. That was me, Lainey Young, the consummate buzz-kill.

“Maybe we did,” Carter countered. “Maybe it doesn't have to be as active as when we saved David this summer. Maybe it was our choices, or just by sticking together. Maybe…are you sure it was a real vision?”

“Yes.” I was sure. I knew what I saw. What I felt and what I
knew.

“The future is never def—”

“Definite, I know.” One of the first things he'd taught me about being Sententia. “I can't explain why I can't see anything now, but it was as real a vision as any I've ever had.”

Carter sank onto the couch, seemingly exhausted—in the best possible way—by his relief. He leaned his head back and closed his eyes. “It doesn't
matter
why you can't see it anymore. Maybe it was a real vision…at that
moment. Something
made that our most probable future. But the future
isn't
fixed. There's constant flux. Maybe that's why you had only hints of it since then, and now, none at all. It's changed. It's
over.”

My response was interrupted by the ring of the bell on the counter out in the store. “Customer, shit.” Kissing me quickly once more as he stood, Carter murmured, “Here's to the future.
I love you.”

I didn't follow him immediately but stayed on the couch for a minute longer, trying to come to terms with the prospect of a wide-open future, of the sudden weightlessness without the vision hanging over me. I wanted to wrap myself in Carter's optimism, to feel as free and confident as he did. Instead I felt strangely…let down.

That was it? The months of stress of keeping the secret, telling the secret, wondering and worrying about how I was going to die and why I couldn't predict it better? It all amounted to
nothing?!
For the second time in the day, I wanted to laugh and cry. I couldn't believe it was that simple. The vision
had
been real. I had no doubts about that. But I trusted that it was gone now, too. I had no reason not to.

So far, my gift had never been wrong.

T
HE NEXT WEEK
did wonders for convincing me everything really would be fine. For all I knew, it would, and Thanksgiving break was an entire week of forgetting my problems and living my life. With my aunt visiting, I got to pretend the Sententia didn't exist and let myself forget that I was one of them. The year before, I'd been worried about being able to keep my new secret from Aunt Tessa, and I'd spent half the time intentionally hunting for objects that would give me visions.

This year, I relished the chance to let it all go. We visited the city, spent time with Carter and the Revells, humored Dr. Stewart, and acted like girlfriends who hadn't seen each other in months. At the movies on the day after Thanksgiving, we ate every last bite of popcorn, and when it was over, I told my aunt I was no longer a virgin.

What actually happened was she guessed it without my telling her, which is why I told her at all. I should have known it would be obvious to her, and I should also have known what she'd do next: insist I get a prescription for birth control first thing Monday morning.

“That's for
you,
remember, not for him,” she insisted. “And a little bit for me. I love you more than anything, but I was too young to be a mother when I got you and I'm way too young to be a grandmother yet.”

In all the times she'd brought it up since I was eleven or twelve years old, I hadn't believed anything could be more embarrassing than talking about sex in theory with my parent—until theory became practice and that parent was explaining how contraception worked and making sure I used it properly. I
shouldn't
have been embarrassed, but privacy was in my nature despite Aunt Tessa's years of trying to get me to loosen up. Sometimes I thought my roommate was the daughter she never had. If Amy had been there, they'd probably have high-fived.

When my aunt left at the end of the week, I didn't even have time to miss her. Seniors at Northbrook called the weeks between Thanks
giving and the end of December the Winter Push, or just Push. It seemed like
everything
was due in that little stretch of time. Mid-term and semester assignments, schedules, and for us, college applications. It was the most intense academic period I'd ever had, with multiple all-nighters and one group project catastrophe. I was exhausted, but with Christmas only two days away, I was packed and headed to the airport for my customary weeks in Mexico. After Push, I'd never needed them, or deserved them, so much.

Carter volunteered to chauffeur me one more time to the airport, an offer I wouldn't refuse. I didn't mind taking the airport shuttle services, but I didn't really want any of those drivers to hold my hand or kiss me goodbye for the holidays. We took my car, but I was so tired from Push I let Carter drive. I loved my little red coupe, but I didn't stress out about letting someone else behind the wheel. In truth, I liked it when Carter drove.

My flight left in the evening, so it was dark by the time we were halfway to Logan. Traffic was light in our direction at that time of day. As the sun set somewhere behind us and the evening gloom began its quiet rush past the windows, I decided to ask a question I'd had for the longest time. I'd been thinking about it, off and on, since meeting Dan Astor.

“How does it work, Carter? Thought Moving.”

He tapped his fingers on the wheel. “What kind?” If he was surprised by the question, he didn't show it. If anything, he was intrigued. He loved talking Sententia.

“Not yours. Your uncle's.”

“He knows better than I do.”

“I know, but just give me the basics.” I could tell he was working up some of his standard disclaimer, something about
we don't know, exactly,
so I clarified. “Mostly I mean making people forget. Last year,
your Uncle Jeff told that story about the man…the rapist, and how he made the women forget. How could he do that?”

“It's not complex, but not easy either. You have to do it in advance. Once a memory's there, it's there. You can't move it away…can't kill it once it's taken root. You can move thoughts around it, when you're in the person's presence, but as soon as the influence is gone, the person goes back to themselves. But before a memory, it's a different game. What you can do in advance is plant
suggestions.
Strong Thought Movers can plant a seed of forgetting, basically, just before something happens and carry it through to the end.”

Carter reached over and deliberately covered one of my hands with his. He continued, “And it has to be the right Thought, specific enough to what's going to happen. ‘Forget everything' apparently doesn't work very well, but something like ‘Don't remember
this'”
—he pinched my hand and I yelped—“or
‘This
didn't happen'”—he picked my hand up and kissed it—“can work well for strong influencers. The best could make you remember the pinch
was
a kiss, instead of just forgetting altogether.”

Outside, the twilight deepened, made darker by a moving cloud cover that had threatened all day. I thought I understood. “What about…like a trigger? Could someone move a thought to do something, or even forget something, in the future?”

“Nope.” He squeezed my fingers before returning his hand to the wheel. “Our gifts work with immediacy, now or never. You have to be there for the whole thing. Some of us can predict the future, but no one can project into it. You couldn't touch someone today and have them die tomorrow.”

And thank God for that. We were quiet for a while as I thought about Thought Moving, and what I'd just learned about it. At least Sententia had to be present to do their dirty work, unless, I supposed,
that Sententia was Carter. He didn't have to be nearby, but his power wasn't limitless. He was still bound by immediacy, by time.

Something else he'd said kept rattling around in my head, about memories. Memories were thoughts. Thought Movers moved thoughts.
I
was a brand of Thought Mover, or so Dan and Carter had both said to me. Pieces of things I'd learned about my abilities in the last year and the last few weeks began to come together. I stared out the windshield as a theory tried to coalesce, watching the few red tail-lights that dotted the darkness ahead of us on the highway.

Watching them swerve and brighten. Watching a pair of white lights coming toward us, but that had to be wrong. They shouldn't have been white.

But they were.

Headlights, traveling the wrong way on the highway.

And then they were right in front of us.

This is it,
I thought.
It really was an accident and there was nothing I could do.
I hadn't bothered to check our future today, and now it was about to end.

In my last moments, I heard Carter swearing, along with tires screeching, metal crunching, and glass breaking. I thought I might have heard a scream too, and that it might have come from me.

And then I heard nothing at all.

O
pening my eyes was an enormous, wonderful surprise. Especially since I hadn't expected to open them ever again. Dying, or sincerely believing I was dying, was nothing like people claim. It was just like blacking out, and after years of doing that while my Sententia gift was developing, I was practically a pro at being unconscious.

There'd been no life flashing before my eyes, and the only bright lights I saw were the ones shining down on me when I came to. There was never any concept of the lost time either. You're aware and then you're not and then you're aware again. I had no idea how long I'd been out, whether it was seconds or hours or days.

But no matter how long it had been, when I opened my eyes, I saw Carter, and he was beautiful. It was hardly the first time I'd been unconscious and woken up to his face, but since my whole being had been convinced I'd never see it again, this was definitely the best time ever. His lips formed a little grin as he noticed my open eyes, and I finally realized that he actually
wasn't
that beautiful.

In fact, he looked awful. There were red marks across his forehead, nose, and cheeks, like severe windburn or a rash, his bottom lip was
split, and dark circles filled the hollows beneath his eyes. He also looked absolutely disheveled and exhausted.

And relieved.

“Hey beautiful,” he croaked and then cleared his throat. “It's good to see those pretty hazel eyes. I've missed them.”

I tried a smile but my face felt tight and wind burned, much like Carter's looked. When I reached my hand up to touch the marks on his face, I found my arm was much heavier than I remembered. I looked down to see it was encased in a thick cast that covered most of my hand to halfway up my forearm. And it was
purple.
Frowning hurt as much as smiling.

My head felt foggy and too heavy to lift, so I looked back up at Carter and said, “What happened to your face?” My voice sounded scratchy and out of practice.

He reached forward and brushed my hair back before tentatively surrounding my fingers where they protruded from the cast with his own. My other hand sported an IV. “The same thing that happened to yours,” he replied. “It's from the airbags. No one ever mentions how much they
hurt.”
I must have grimaced because he laughed and gave my finger ends a gentle squeeze. “You don't look quite so bad, don't worry. No split lip or black eyes, but a pretty good rash.”