“Oh. Okay. I was just wondering. So, she was in the original picture?”
“Yeah, she was standing on the right, next to Marcus. I just moved her over next to me. You know, I don’t want you to think that I’m still in heavy crush over Emily. I’m, you know, available.”
“That’s great, Ryan.” I make a sign to Diego that we’re back at square one. Emily’s disappearance from the photo has nothing to do with the fact that she’s missing. It was just a publicity decision.
“What I mean is, we could have coffee or something.”
“Great. I’ll call you.” I hang up. I toss the photo on my desk and tell Diego about the conversation.
“I guess it’s slightly demented, but normal,” Diego says. “He’s a geek with a crush. That’s why he flamed out when you found it—he was embarrassed, that’s all. We just need to keep digging. Something will turn up.” Diego ducks out again.
I reach over for the photograph again. I stare hard at Marcus. Emily had been standing next to him in the original. Now she was gone. Could Marcus have had something to do with it, despite what Ryan said? I wish I could get a feeling that was true. All I feel is confusion.
I try to walk my brain outside what I know. I try to tune into what I feel, or rather, what’s beyond what I feel. I have to get control of the visions. I’m tired of them sneaking up on me and giving me a wallop. I have to make it happen, not wait for it to happen.
I stop staring at the photograph. I just look at it. I push every fear, every thought out of my mind and replace it with…nothing. Not even static. The photograph doesn’t make sense anymore as people and desks, just as shapes and colors.
The photograph dissolves into dots. The dots jiggle and swim. It’s a jarring thing, and nothing comes into focus for a moment.
Then I’m walking on a beach. I’m surrounded by mist. I am carrying something. It is heavy.
It is a body.
I am chilled to the bone. I look down at the face of the girl.
She is sleeping. Please let her be sleeping.
Then the girl sits up and smiles. Blood drips from her mouth.
I scream and drop her on the shells. The sharp edges cut her skin. She bleeds and smiles.
And then the scene shifts, and the shells turn into grass, and I see small children running. They are bending to look at things: flowers and bugs. There is a garden, and a bench. It’s like I’m watching from a distance this time. A girl is sitting on the bench. Not Emily, but someone I know. I can’t see her face, but she is familiar to me. She is waiting for someone. I see the shadows of the trees fall on the grass. There is something white on the bench next to her—it looks like a party hat.
He is watching her, too. He is waiting.
Footsteps approach her.
Run, I tell her. Run.
I know something terrible will happen. I am watching now, but I can’t move. She sees someone coming.
Run. Get out of there!
But she doesn’t move, and then suddenly I see water churning, close-up, and I smell gasoline, heavy and sweet. I feel sick, and my face is wet and my hands are wet. I touch my tongue to my lip and taste blood…
“Gracie.”
The word penetrates the mist. I grab onto the word as if it is a grasping hand and can pull me up. “Gracie!”
I am looking up at Diego’s face. He is directly over me. His eyes are so black, so dark. I am afraid I will fall into them the way I fell into the mist. I’m afraid I will never come back from his gaze.
He grips my arms. “You scared me. What happened? What did you see?”
I realize I am lying back on my bed. My face is wet with perspiration. My neck is wet. I touch my lip and then look at my fingers, but there is no blood, of course. I shakily try to sit. Diego helps me.
“What did you see?” he asks urgently again. There is fear on his face.
I tell him what I saw, trying to remember every detail.
“You couldn’t see the guy’s face, or anything? Think. His shoes? His hands?”
“Nothing. Just his shadow.” I cover my face with my hands. “When I saw the girl, the dead one, on the beach, I was seeing through his eyes. It was horrible. I think he killed her, Diego!”
He bites his lip. “Was it…”
“It wasn’t Emily. It could have been Kendall. I don’t know!”
“Was it the future, or the past?”
“I don’t know.”
“What about when you smelled gas, and you touched your lip…who were you then? Emily?”
“I don’t know,” I say, shaking my head. “I don’t know!” I tell him about the other vision, about the fists beating against the window of the boat.
“Was that Emily? Remember, you saw her on the boat.”
I’m tired of saying “I don’t know.” So I just look at him helplessly.
“It’s okay. It’s okay.” Diego pats my shoulder lamely. “It’s just in your head.”
“Isn’t that where all the bad stuff is?” I whisper. “Just in our heads?”
Diego clears his throat. “Let’s analyze what you saw. What about the party hat? What could that mean?”
“Who knows? I just know that she’s his next victim, whoever she is. He’s going to take another girl. I saw her.” Diego is trying to be logical, but I’m frantic. Panic thrums inside me like vibrating strings. I clutch his arm. “We have to stop him. It’s up to us.”
“We’ll go to the police…”
“With what? A vision? A photograph?” I shake my head. “We have to get to the girl before he does.”
Diego shakes his head. “Gracie, I don’t know. This has gone far enough. We should…tell someone again. Shay…”
“They won’t listen to me! And I know it’s going to happen again.”
“But you don’t know where or when.”
But even as he says this, the knowledge roars into my brain. “Yes I do. It wasn’t a party hat,” I say. “It was a Sno-Cone.”
“A Sno-Cone?”
I am already reaching for the computer, typing fast. I run the search engine and find the site I’m looking for.
“Gracie—”
The official website of Seattle Parks and Recreation. I quickly click and scroll. Then I push the computer toward him so he can read what’s on the screen.
Toddler Nature Hunt. 11 A.M. Saturday. Commodore Park.
“The park by the fish ladder,” I tell Diego. “That’s the place. They sell Sno-Cones there. It’s going to happen this Saturday. That’s where he’ll be. I know it, Diego. I know it.”
This time I am certain. And I know I have to be there, too.
TWENTY-ONE
I don’t know how I talk Diego into it, but I do. There’s no danger, I tell him. It’s a public park! There will be two- and three-year-olds running around with their parents! It will be broad daylight! And most of all, I tell him, hammering the point home until he begs for mercy, we know what we’re heading into. Whoever that girl is that I saw on the bench—she doesn’t have a clue.
Technically, Shay hasn’t given Diego permission to take the car to Seattle. Okay, definitely, Shay hasn’t given permission. Diego isn’t crazy about not telling her again. He got away with it once, but he doesn’t want to push it. That’s the toughest part of convincing him. He just doesn’t lie to his mom. Ever. I’m not sure why he gives in, but he does.
We don’t say much on the drive. Even though there’s nothing to be nervous about in a certain way, there’s everything to be nervous about in another way, so we just sit, listening to the radio and vibrating along with the tunes and our nerves.
We park. We hang out by the Sno-Cones for a while, seeing if a young girl buys one, but only a couple of people come by.
“Let’s scout out the bench,” Diego says.
We walk through the gardens, looking at the benches. When I see the one that was in my vision, I stop dead. There’s something so real about it. I’ve never been in this part of the park with Shay, but I kn
ow this bench. I know the texture of the wood and the curve of the slats. This is the first time that something in my vision really comes true, something I can see. The pattern of the leaves overhead, the trampling of the grass in front, everything is just as I had seen it. It spooks me.
“This one?” Diego asks. He looks kind of spooked, too.
I nod.
Toddlers are beginning to arrive in the gardens, along with their parents. A pair of guides appear and start talking about “nature’s marvelous wonders.” They speak in that overly animated way that people do when they’re around kids, and most of the toddlers are ignoring them while their parents are enthralled. The parents keep trying to drum up their kid’s enthusiasm, saying, “Listen to the nice man, Dylan!” and “Remember how much you like ladybugs, Marina!” The sun is filtering through the leaves, and suddenly it seems like the worst thing that could possibly happen here would be a two-year-old throwing a tantrum.
The toddler pack moves off down the path, but we can hear them. We stand there for a moment, but it’s obvious that we can’t remain.
We can’t scare off whoever is coming.
“We’d better keep moving,” Diego says. “If we stay between here and the entrance to the garden, nobody can get around us. If only we had a toddler for protective coloration.”
I bend down and pick up one of the brochures that a parent had dropped. I hand it to Diego. “Try this. At least you don’t have to buy it ice cream.”
There’s a place to hang by the entrance where we can stay behind some trees. I fidget. The shadows on the ground are telling me that this is it, this is the time my vision took place.
I see someone familiar heading toward us.
To my surprise, it’s Dora.
I elbow Diego and point.
“She’s in the computer camp,” I say.
I notice now that she’s eating a Sno-Cone. I feel a shiver rise all along my body.
We’re on the right track after all.
Dora doesn’t notice me. She walks past us, looking at her watch.
She is meeting someone.
Diego and I give each other a “what should we do now” look.
“I’ll go scope out Dora,” I say. “You stay here. If you see Marcus or Ryan, follow him.”
Diego frowns. “Be careful. Is your cell phone on?”
“It’s on.” We’ve already decided to call each other only in an emergency. I take off down the path.
Dora sits on the bench, eating her Sno-Cone. I stop. She hasn’t seen me yet, and I could keep going and pass her by, but I can’t.
I tell myself Dora can take care of herself.
I tell myself that the important thing is to wait to see who shows up.
But I see her bitten fingernails around the white cone, how her toes are dirty in her sandals, and suddenly I can feel her as well as I see her.
I know her unhappiness is deep and wide.
I know that her mother is an alcoholic.
I see Dora, wearing a short nightgown, pick her mother off the floor and put her to bed.
I know that she thinks she’s at a dead end, and this is her only way out.
She spots me. I could have waved and walked away, but I come forward.
“Hi.”
“Hey.”
Not a promising start. I sit on the bench. “Nice day.”
She half-turns. “Look, hello and everything, but I’m meeting someone, so if you don’t mind?”
“Who are you meeting?”
“Excuse me, are you my mother?” Dora asks nastily.
“Just making conversation.”
“Don’t bother. Do you mind?”
Dora leans over and dumps out the rest of her Sno-Cone. I am not surprised when she doesn’t crumple it up. She puts the empty cone down on the bench upside down, like a tent, just the way it was in my vision. She slams it down as though she’s marking her territory, making a kind of barrier between us.
I look down at the cherry ice seeping into the ground. The red color is so intense. The stain grows in my mind and I flash into the vision of the blood on the beach.
And suddenly, I know this:
Dora has to get out of here.
“You’ve got to go,” I say.
Dora narrows her eyes. She has lined them with black pencil, and she’s wearing lipstick. She has fixed herself up.
“Is it Marcus? Is it Ryan? Who is it?”
“What is wrong with you?” she asks, leaning back to put distance between us.
“Tell me who it is!”
“It’s Marcus,” she says. “Jealous?”
Marcus. It is Marcus.
“Listen, I’m psychic,” I say. “Really. And I see things.”
She smirks. “You see dead people?”
“I see your mother lying on the kitchen floor,” I say. “She needs help, and you can’t give it. You can’t save her. You tried and now you’re just angry.”
Her expression changes. “Hey…”
“Your kitchen has an orange sink,” I say. “Your nightgown has yellow flowers. You have a birthmark on your knee. A butterfly tattoo in the small of your back. Once your mother left you alone for two weeks, and you didn’t tell anyone because you were afraid she was dead.”
“Nobody knows that,” Dora says, a look of fear on her face. "Nobody knows that.”
“Your dishtowels have green stripes,” I say. “Your dish drainer is white. Your mother’s blanket is blue.”
She is pressed back against the bench now. “What do you want?”
“Get out of here,” I say. “Run. What do you think happened to Kendall and Emily? If you see him, don’t stop.” The danger is like the roar of surf in my ears. "Get out of here!”
Dora shoots to her feet. She gives me a last look, and then she takes off. Running. I don’t know if she’s spooked by me, or my warning. It doesn’t matter.
I notice that my hands are trembling. I tuck them in my armpits. I expect Diego to show up at any moment, running, to tell me that Marcus has entered the park.
But instead, Jonah Castle rounds the bend, sees me, and smiles.
“Dora?” he says.
TWENTY-TWO
"I thought Marcus was coming,” I say.
“He’s at the party,” he says.
“Oh,” I say. What party?
He settles down on the bench next to me, giving the empty cone a brief, puzzled glance. “It’s good to meet you. Marcus says you might need help.”
My brain is buzzing like a hive. I’ve got to keep following this, but I’m lost. I try to come up with Dora’s defensive attitude. “Not really.”
He smiles pleasantly. He’s got a narrow face, and his eyes are bright blue and interested behind his wire rims. He’s wearing a polo shirt and pleated khakis, standard nerd attire. Boat shoes and white socks. I try to get something from him, some kind of wave, the way I’ve done with strangers. Sometimes people have something that is so present on their minds that I can just pick it up like a radio station. But Jonah Castle is a blank. I can’t get anything from him.
“Oh, okay,” he says genially. “I guess he got it wrong. Marcus is a mysterious guy.”
“I’ll say.”
“He said you were upset at camp the other day,” he says. “He wants to help, that’s all.”
“The way he helped Kendall Farmer?”
He looks blank. “Kendall Farmer? Should I know her?”
“She was in the camp last year,” I say. “She ran away.”
“Oh. And Marcus tried to help her? I’m not surprised, he’s such a good guy.”
You think so?
“I’m sorry, I didn’t know. Marcus never mentioned her to me.” He hooks two hands around a knee. “I lost a sister, you know. So I know about loss. Guilt. All that stuff. I know how bad feelings can grow inside you until they feel like they can eat you alive. I know how scary that can be, and how the fear can add to it until you just want to run and run to get away. But there’s no pla
ce to run to. You know that saying, ‘Wherever you go, there you are’?”
No, I don’t know it. But I like how true it is. I’m listening now.
“So I started this thing, this focus group foundation. I mean, Megawall has the computer camp, and other charities, but my foundation doesn’t get any publicity. I don’t want reporters around, poking into people’s privacy. I’m out to revolutionize how social services treat at-risk kids. I’ve got scholars and shrinks on the payroll, but mostly it’s the kids themselves who have come up with the ideas. Bright kids like you. When I asked Marcus if he knew anyone I could talk to, he mentioned you. I hope you don’t mind.”
“My life is none of his business,” I say.
“No, it isn’t. And if you don’t want to get involved, I’d appreciate it if you didn’t get mad at Marcus. Remember, I’m his boss, in a way.” Jonah Castle smiles. “I can’t deny that even if I don’t use my leverage, it’s there.”
I can’t get a read on this guy. Never mind the paranormal, the normal me can’t read him, either. I feel apprehensive, but I don’t know if I can connect the feeling to Jonah Castle. Everything about him tells me that he’s an ordinary mega-billionaire looking to unload some millions on charity so he can sleep at night. But somehow he’s connected to Marcus, and Marcus asked Dora to meet him here.
Could Jonah Castle’s foundation be the key? Marcus directs troubled kids to the foundation. But not all of them. Some of them, he keeps for himself. Maybe he’d targeted Dora, only Jonah Castle got in his way.
It’s hard to think and carry on a conversation at the same time. I focus back on Jonah Castle. “I don’t think of myself as an at-risk kid,” I say. “At risk for what?”
He laughs. “Yeah, here I am saying social services is messed up, and I’m using their terms. Let’s just say this: You need a home where you can feel safe.”
That breaks like a wave of longing inside me. Those two words. Home. Safe. When those two things get taken away from you, there’s no other feeling more desolate. Maybe Jonah Castle knows what he’s talking about.