Sleep No More

It feels different this time. It’s a vise that envelops my entire head. Squeezing, squeezing. A moan builds up in my throat and I push it away.

  An Oracle never loses control. My aunt’s voice echoes through my head, but her words blow away as a storm thrashes within my brain like a physical thing, battering against my skull until I honestly fear the bones are about to shatter. What is this?! Distantly I feel my fingers grip the edges of my desk and I hold statue-still, scrolling through every tactic my aunt taught me and new ones I’ve come up with on my own throughout the years.

  But this vision is too strong. It tosses aside my defenses as though they are tissue paper trying to hold back a stampede.

  Within seconds, the formless presence of the foretelling pulses around me. I can still kind of hear Mrs. Patterson answering a question about the radius of convergence, but her voice is getting further and further away as I struggle against a pull that feels like a river, carrying me away in a whirling current. Inside my mind, shadows are beginning to emerge. Then I’m spinning, falling.

  No, no, no! I shout in my head, trying to grip my desk harder, breathe even shallower.

  None of my tricks are working.

  I’ve never had a vision this strong. Even when I was younger and didn’t know how to control them, they didn’t overwhelm me quite this way. Some tiny part of me knows that I’m in school, sitting in a classroom surrounded by other sixteen-year-olds, but in the midst of the vision, those facts seem as fantastical as stories of princesses and dragons.

  Then, with a brilliant flash of light, the falling sensation stops and my stomach feels like it flips upside down.

  My feet are on solid ground.

  I’m at the school football field.

  It’s dark.

  Cold.

  Goose bumps rise on my arms, and the air is clammy and damp like I’m standing in a thick fog. The vision pulls me forward, forcing me to walk, bending me to its will as though it were a living thing.

  I fight every step even though I know it’s too late. Still I fight. Because I’m supposed to. Because Sierra would expect it.

  Because I owe it to my mom and dad to at least try.

  I see her feet first.

  Clearly a her—small feet clad in maroon ballet flats with little bows over the toes. I focus on those bows. I don’t want to see the rest.

  But even where I look is out of my control and my gaze moves up her body. Legs, torso, shoulders. Face. In my mind, I gag and I hope my physical self doesn’t too.

  Her eyes are open, sightless and a vivid blue. The splatter of blood across her cheeks is so fine it almost looks like glitter. But deep-red liquid pools under her neck, still dripping from her unmoving body. The puddle spreads as I watch, and the slice across her neck gapes in a grotesque display that makes my whole body rebel.

  Get away!

  I want to run—need to run—but the vision isn’t finished with me yet. I focus on the rest of her body, taking in the smaller injuries I missed the first time around. Her shirt is torn across her midriff and a long, bloody scratch decorates the skin there. A knife? Fingernails? I can’t tell. Her ankle is twisted at an unnatural angle and her hand is covered in blood starting at the fingertips. Her own? Her attacker’s? There’s no way to be sure.

  Charlotte.

  The voice is almost singsongy.

  Chaaaaarlotte.

  “Charlotte!”

  I jerk my head up and air rushes into my nose. With a dull shower of sparks, my physical sight fades back in.

  “Yes, Mrs. Patterson,” I say as soon as my throat stops convulsing long enough to let me speak. Croak.

  “Number twenty-three,” she says, her hand on her hips, her voice heavy with annoyance.

  How many times did she call me?

  I make my neck tilt down; my eyes have trouble focusing as the numbers swim on my paper.

  “One hundred sixty-seven point six eight,” I say, finally locating my answer. I look up and meet her eyes, hoping she’ll just move on. I don’t even care if I got it right. She stares at me for a moment. A beat. Too long? Too short? I don’t know.

  “Jake? Twenty-four.”

  Thank you.

  My breathing returns to normal but my fingers are still clutched around the edge of my desk, pressing so hard they’re white all the way up to the second knuckle. I force them to relax, one at a time, but when I pull my arms back and tuck my hands into my lap, they ache from the tension.

  A sheen of perspiration prickles on my forehead and catches the breeze from the heater, making me shiver. More sweat is trickling down my spine, gathering under my arms. I feel gross and worn out and all I want to do is go home and take a nap.

  And some ibuprofen.

  And something that will make me forget.

  Even before I was better at blocking foretellings, tut-Buhe things I saw didn’t always happen—the future is fluid and the glimpses Sierra and I get are simply that: glimpses of how the future is currently set to play out.

  But my record is pretty solid. Because unless you do something to change the future—which I would never do again—it’s probably going to flow down the foretold path.

  My heart speeds as I try to recall every detail. But it almost hurts to remember. The stark image of the thick, syrupy blood still pouring from the slash across her neck makes my stomach churn. It may not technically have been a real body, but unless something changes, it will be.

  The bell rings—shrill and piercing—loud enough to distract me for the tiny second I need. I pull my mind away and take a deep breath, pushing back some of the nausea.

  I have to get out of here, I think as I shove my books and papers into my backpack. Get out of this classroom and I’ll be okay. I can go home. Take a nap. Forget about all of this.

  I yank the zipper closed and spin toward the door in the back of the classroom, hoping I can walk some semblance of a straight line.

  Then I freeze.

  Bethany laughs and touches her friend’s shoulder.

  I didn’t think about her face in the vision. Didn’t worry about identifying her.

  All I saw was that cut. The blood.

  She’s alive.

  For now.

  But she’s wearing those maroon ballet flats.

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  THREE

  “I’m home,” I call as I walk in the front door.

  “Office,” Mom hollers back.

  I’m almost afraid as I approach the converted bedroom where she does medical coding from home. Does it show on my face how stressed I am? I hope not. I can’t talk to her. Not about this.

  She doesn’t know what I do. She can never know.

  I peek my head around the doorway and smile, taking in my mom’s shiny brown hair that falls into perfect waves—unlike mine, which is the same color but frizzes no matter how much product I use. She’s slim and has long arms that reach for a file in one direction, a red pencil in the other, all fluid motions that flow almost like a choreographed dance rather than an entry-level job she never expected to work.

  She looks perfect, always has. If you didn’t notice her wheelchair, you’d assume she was about to jump up and give me a hug.

  But that hasn’t happened since the accident that left her paralyzed.

  The one where I traded my aunt’s life for my dad’s.

  I suck in a breath and push that thought away, the same way I do twenty times a day. At least. But it’s harder today after having a foretelling I couldn’t fight. About another death. Those are the worst. People like to laud heroes. The ones who rush in, risk their lives to save someone. And I’m not saying they don’t deserve it; they do.

  But you know what’s harder? Not doing anything. Standing back and letting bad things happen. Letting people die because they’re supposed to.

  I remember asking Sierra once, soon after she moved i
n, why we didn’t act. “We could be superheroes,” I argued with her. “We should help people. Isn’t that the right thing to do?”

  “Look what happened when you tried to save me,” she said so gently I couldn’t be angry.

  Just sad.

  In the end, it’s not the right thing. Ever. And so I stand back.

  Before I gained control—when I saw my visions more often—I foresaw a few deaths. Usually it was something like car accidents, heart attacks, that kind of thing. Things I probably couldn’t stop even if I did try.

  But murder? Just a word of warning to Bethany. To be careful. How much could it hurt?

  Especially when the other option is to let her die a terrifying death.

  “You’ve got your thinking face on, Char,” my mom says, pulling my mind back into her well-organized office.

  I make myself smile. “Lots of homework,” I lie. Not that I don’t have a bunch of homework. Just that it isn’t what I was thinking about.

  She pauses and glances up at me, her face so soft and caring it makes me want to cry at the thought of all the lies and half-truths I tell her on a daily basis. “You work so hard,” she says quietly.

  I bite the tip of my tongue. The last thing I deserve is her sympathy. I don’t take advanced math and science and every AP class the school counselor will let me into because I’m some brainiac who’s all self-motivated and ambitious. I do it because if I tire my mind out enough, I don’t have time to think as hard. About the visions, about my utter lack of social life, about the fact that I ruined my mother’s life and now we’ll grow old together, two lonely spinsters.

  Three if Sierra stays with us.

  “Gotta get into Harvard,” I say in the lightest tone I can manage. It’s another lie. I’ll go to Rogers State in Claremore, about twenty miles away, so I can live at home. For a million reasons. Because Mom needs me and I’m responsible for her. Because it’s dangerous for me to drive to Massachusetts, at least semiregularly, on the freeway, where I can’t pull over at the first sign of a foretelling.

  Because I could never live with roommates.

  But Mom doesn’t need to know any of that. Not yet.

  “Is Sierra home?” I ask, changing the subject. Even though Mom’s basically self-sufficient now, Sierra’s never left.

  And even though I hope it’s not because she thinks she still has to babysit me, she kinda does anyway. I don’t mind. Much. It means she’s there to talk to, and the three of us all get along really well. Like Gilmore Girls plus one.

  And a big-ass secret.

  Mom often reminds Sierra that, although we love her and she’s welcome to stay as long as she wants, we don’t need her anymore and she can go out and have a “real life.”

  But Sierra and I know the truth: Sierra’s an Oracle too, and her “real life” is inside her head. There’s not really a possibility of anything else for Oracles. Getting married? I’m pretty sure a spouse would notice all of the weird things we aren’t allowed to explain. I’ve always hoped that maybe someday Sierra would find that perfect person who she could trust enough tell everything to. But even assuming Sierra would be willing to go against the rules, would finding out the truth chase someone off? And if it did, would they keep their mouth shut about it? Not likely.

  Or, let’s say they did believe her—it would take a pretty big person not to start prying about their future. Everyone thinks they want to know the future.

  Everyone is wrong.

  So it just . . . wouldn’t work.

  Similarly, there’s no perfect soul mate in my future either. Only a lifetime of hiding. I didn’t choose this. I wouldn’t choose this. But it’s the hand I was dealt. The hand Sierra was dealt. Some people are short, some people have freckles, some people see the future. It’s all genetics.

  “I think so,” Mom says, and I’ve forgotten what it was I asked.

  Oh yeah. Sierra.

  “But you know how she is; she sneaks in and out and I don’t hear a thing.” Mom grins at me over her shoulder before turning back to her work. “Check her office.”

  I pull Mom’s door closed and walk down the hall to the room Mom always refers to as “Sierra’s office”; but it’s really her room/office/work/life. When Dad died, we didn’t have the money to move—especially not with all the medical bills—but Mom couldn’t handle sleeping in the master bedroom anymore, so she gave it to Sierra. It’s a big room with a small sitting area and private bathroom and . . . well, Sierra doesn’t leave it very often.

  At least not when I’m home.

  Her desk is set up in the sitting area and about half the time I bring dinner in to her so she doesn’t have to stop working. The walls are covered with bookshelves stuffed full of books about history and mythology and other Oracle stuff that she is constantly pulling out to use as references. When I was twelve, I asked what she would do if Mom came in and really took a look at her books but Sierra shrugged and said, “I’d tell her it’s research.”

  Then I asked what she would do if I started coming in and borrowing books. She said she’d start locking the door.

  Two days later when she caught me with Oracles of Rome, she started doing just that.

  She always knows more than she’s willing to tell me. She says too much knowledge makes what we can do excessively tempting and that she only trusts herself because of years of resisting as she researches. I’m not even sure what that means. I guess we might be tempted to change the future, but she talks like there’s more.

  And I desperately want to know what that more is.

  I don’t think it’s fair. I can’t really believe any other sources; they’re legends at best. But Sierra’s library is the real deal. Ancient books and manuscripts that don’t exist anywhere else in the whole world. I keep trying to sneak glances at them, but Sierra’s not stupid—she notices. That’s why she does most of her errands when I’m at school.

  And if I am home, the door is always locked when she leaves.

  I try not to resent it. After all, she’s devoted so much of her life to me. She taught me everything she knows about fighting foretellings, and she’s always patient. I’ve actually never seen her lose her tempter.

  But all those books . . . She says she’ll let me read more when I’m a member of the Sisters of Delphi. Like her.

  Sierra is an author of several texts about Greek mythology and the unseen world. That’s what she does to pay the bills. And while her books are probably really great—I can barely understand the few paragraphs I’ve read, but she wins awards all the time—it’s just camouflage for her real job: the historian of the Sisters of Delphi.

  The Sisters is an ancient organization of Oracles that basically monitors all of the Oracles in the world. All twenty or so of us. Sierra won’t tell me much about them. Which seems weird to me since there are so few of us. Shouldn’t we all share our information? But Sierra says that when I’m eighteen and it’s time to join them, I’ll be ready to know more.

  Always the promise of more. But not now. Drives me crazy.

  I knock softly on Sierra’s door. She must be home; her door is not only unlocked, but open an inch or two.

  “Come in.”

  Sierra’s work space is bright and inviting. The curtains are pulled back, letting in the sunshine, and there are two tall, standing lights flanking each side of her desk, which are on as well. The surface of her desk is jumbled and full of stacks of papers and books and about six coffee mugs, but there’s no dust, and certainly no darkness.

  Darkness is our enemy.

  Sierra doesn’t even look up until I’ve been standing beside her chair for what feels like a very long time. “Charlotte,” she finally says, pushing wisps of hair away from her face with a smile. Her hair is a shiny brown—just like mine and mom’s. At least it is now.

  I remember when it was strawberry blonde, when she curled the edges and it danced around her face. Now she dyes it. I don’t know why anyone would opt for brown over that gorgeous strawberry. Bu
t when I asked her about it a few years ago, she looked so sad I’ve never asked again.

  That was back when she always looked pretty and dressed up. Not anymore. No makeup, no fancy hairstyles. A single ponytail, a braid down her back, sometimes a bun. I glitz myself up more than Sierra does, and that’s saying something.

  She’s staring at me, eyebrows raised, waiting for me to speak, and my mind vacillates. Confess or keep quiet? I honestly don’t know what the best thing to do is. I’d like advice, but I feel like a kid again, confessing that I wasn’t able to block a vision. Despite the fact that Sierra and I are close, she’s still my mentor, and she expects a lot of me.

  “When was the last time you saw a vision?” I finally blurt out.

  That gets her full attention. She slides her reading glasses up onto her forehead and pushes her office chair back. “The last time I fought a vision or the last time a vision won?” she asks softly.

  “Both,” I say after a moment of hesitation.

  She waves her fingers in the air almost dismissively. “I fought one this morning. It was small. No big deal.” She removes her glasses now and sticks the end of one earpiece in her mouth, her teeth worrying the plastic with audible clicks. “The last time a vision beat me was ten years ago,” she whispers as though confessing a crime.

  “Ten years?” I echo in the same hallowed whisper. And I thought I was doing well going on almost six months.

  “It gets easier,” Sierra says, reaching out for my hand. “You’ll grow stronger.”

  I nod, though my throat feels tight now and I can’t actually speak.

  “Hard one today?” Sierra asks, and her thumb makes circles on my hand.

  I look at her and I know she can see the answer in my eyes. I always come in to see her on tough, draining days when blocking a foretelling takes everything out of me. Some days we don’t even talk; I simply sit and share the same space with the only person in my life who understands the struggle I face every day.

  She hesitates and I’m afraid she’s going to ask if I won my fight or not. I don’t know how I’ll answer her. “Your teens are the hardest time,” she finally says, her thumb still stroking the back of my hand. “Life is so full of things to pull your attention away from your defenses, your body is still changing, hormones are raging.”