Grand & Humble

  What was happening to him? Harlan couldn’t figure it out. Even if the premonitions really were glimpses into the future, why had his life suddenly become so dangerous?

  “Hey,” Amber said, coming up to him in the hallway.

  “Hey,” Harlan said, his eyes still on Derrick’s golden retriever. The premonition with the bus hadn’t exactly come true; after all, he’d managed to avoid getting hit. And none of the other disasters had come true either—so far. Did that mean that he was merely seeing possible futures—that nothing was fixed and he could avoid them all if he tried hard enough?

  “How are you?” Amber asked.

  “Huh?” Harlan said. “Oh. Fine.” Or maybe the bus in the fog had just been a coincidence. It’s not like it was the first time he’d had a close call as a pedestrian. So maybe he was just suffering from some kind of hallucination. Not that that was a particularly comforting thought.

  “Just for the record?” Amber said. “I’m fine too.”

  He tore his eyes away from Derrick’s dog at last and turned to look at her. “Sorry. I’m a little preoccupied.”

  “No kidding. Been that way a lot lately. What’s wrong?”

  “What?”

  “Something’s wrong. What is it?”

  He tried to laugh it off. “Nothing’s wrong. What makes you think something’s wrong?”

  “Oh, I don’t know. How about the fact that you just spent the last ten minutes staring off into space?”

  Harlan blushed. Had anyone else noticed? He glanced around. People were looking over at him, but that didn’t mean anything. He was Harlan Chesterton; people were always staring at him.

  “It’s nothing,” Harlan said to Amber. “Just thinking about Woodburn’s lecture.”

  “The Scarlet Letter?”

  “Huh? Oh. Yeah.” In-flippin’-credible. He had taken an already pitiful lie and actually made it sound even worse. He wasn’t just losing his edge; it was long gone.

  “Harlan,” Amber said, already sounding weary. “I’m supposed to be your girlfriend. If you can’t tell me the truth, why are we even together?”

  The truth? No way could he tell her the truth. That he “saw” future disasters? He hadn’t believed it at first; why should she?

  “Harlan?”

  “What?”

  She just stared at him. He had to say something. If he didn’t, she was going to make some kind of scene, probably eventually break up with him. That wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world, but Harlan knew he didn’t have the mental energy to deal with it anytime soon.

  “It’s my parents,” Harlan said. There. That was something that was bothering him. It was “the truth.”

  “What about ’em?”

  Harlan released a heavy sigh. “They don’t let me live my own life.”

  “Of course not. They’re your parents. What else is new?”

  She started to turn away, but Harlan stopped her. “No. It’s more than that. She picks my shirts. Hell, she’s already picked out the state congressional district where I’m supposed to run for my first office when I graduate from college.”

  “Parents suck. But hey, it’s not like yours are making you sleep in a closet.”

  “Come on, Amber. You know what I’m talking about. I mean, would it be such a terrible thing if I didn’t go into politics?”

  “You, not going into politics?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Hel-looo! Student Body President!”

  “That’s not politics. That’s a popularity contest.”

  “Harlan, have you watched the news lately? What do you think politics is?”

  “This isn’t about politics. It’s about the fact that I don’t get any say.”

  “Okay,” Amber said. “What if you did have a choice? What do you wanna do?”

  Harlan thought for a second, then shook his head. “I don’t know. I’m seventeen years old. Why do I have to know? Why do I have to know anything?”

  “Harlan.” There was a strange edge to Amber’s voice. “Stop it. You’re weirding me out.”

  He stared at her. She was actually serious. This talk, questioning his life, was unsettling her. Amber had signed up to be the girlfriend of the Senator’s Son, the Student Body President, the confident rake who never questioned anything. Now he was changing, and that upset her.

  Could she really be that shallow? And how had he never noticed that before?

  “Hey!” Amber said, suddenly as light as a soap bubble. “I have an idea!”

  “What?”

  “Jerry Blain’s having a party this weekend! His parents are going to Morocco.”

  “So?”

  “So let’s go! ’Kay?”

  A party. That was the last place in the world Harlan wanted to be. It annoyed him that Amber couldn’t see this. Or maybe she could see it and this was some kind of test: was he still the boyfriend she’d hooked up with, or was he already too far gone?

  “Amber, I don’t know.”

  “Harlan.” An actual whine. How had he also never noticed how much Amber whined?

  “Okay, fine,” he said. “We’ll go to the damn party.”

  “Dude!” Ricky said, beer bottle in hand. “You came!”

  It was Saturday night, at Jerry Blain’s party, at Jerry’s parents’ house out on the lake. Make that mansion out on the lake. True, Harlan went to a public school, but only because it looked better to the voters. It was the newest, richest public high school in the city—his mom had made sure of that.

  Anyway, a promise was a promise. Now here Harlan was, right by Amber’s eager side. It was crowded, but not as mobbed as he’d expected. And the blaring music sounded slightly out of beat. Even the lights seemed unusually bright. Everything about this party was just a little off. Except, Harlan knew, it was really him that was off.

  “Why’d you think I wouldn’t come?” Harlan asked Ricky. Amber had already run off with her friends to giggle and do Jell-O shots.

  “I dunno,” Ricky said. “You just seem like you have a lot on your mind lately.”

  So Ricky knew something was up. Harlan wasn’t surprised—Ricky had always been perceptive. Was it because he was gay? Ricky had come out the year before, in an article in the school newspaper. He’d even managed to stay popular, at least with girls. It helped that Ricky was a jock. And that he had never, ever, not once, mentioned having a boyfriend, or that he found any particular guy good-looking, not even a singer or movie actor. Even in private to Harlan, supposedly his best friend.

  “It’s nothing,” Harlan said. “Parent stuff. Hey, you ready for Wednesday’s swim meet?” They were up against Harriet Tubman High School, one of their team’s most notorious rivals.

  But before Ricky could answer, Amber was back by Harlan’s side, excited about something. “Hey, come here!” she said. “There’s something I want you to see!”

  Harlan looked at Ricky. “What’s going on?”

  Ricky shrugged. “Some game or somethin’.”

  Harlan let Amber lead him into the front room. A group of people had gathered around the glass coffee table, where someone had set up a Ouija board.

  “Jeez,” mumbled Ricky, who had followed behind. “Not a Ouija board.”

  Amber pulled him toward the table. “Come on, Harlan! Let’s do it!”

  It was a classic Harlan Chesterton moment. A couple of weeks earlier, Harlan knew he would have taken a seat at that board, asked a question, then spelled out some incredibly witty remark. It all would have come to him without thought, effortlessly. And it would have been so funny that people would still be talking about it the whole week following: Can you believe what Harlan spelled out on that Ouija board!

  But now he felt strange, on the spot.

  “What?” Harlan said. “No, Amber. Let someone else go. I wanna get a beer.”

  “Oh, come on! Don’t be like that.” She knew a Harlan Chesterton moment when she saw it too. All she wanted was a little of that old Harlan magic.

&nbs
p; And now—thanks to Amber—everyone was calling for him, egging him on.

  “Hey, Har,” Ricky said casually. “Come here, you gotta see the hot tub in the backyard.” So Ricky saw his discomfort and was trying to rescue him.

  “He’s busy!” Amber snapped at Ricky. “Come on, Harlan. Just try it.”

  In other words, even Ricky couldn’t save him now.

  Harlan approached the board. “I thought these things were supposed to be satanic,” he said.

  “Satanic? Us?” said Jerry Blain. “We’d never do anything satanic.” He turned and called into the kitchen. “Hey, Beekman, bring me another bottle of babies’ blood!”

  Everyone laughed except Harlan. It was a funny line, well delivered, but Harlan wasn’t used to being the straight man for other people’s jokes.

  “Who’s going with him?” Rachel Jones asked.

  “Let me, let me!” Amber said. She practically leaped toward the board.

  Harlan knelt down across the table from her. In the upper left corner of the Ouija board, there was a picture of the sun alongside the word “Yes” in the upper right corner, there was a crescent moon with the word “No.” In the middle of the board, two arced rows spelled out every letter in the alphabet, and underneath the letters was a straight row of numbers. On the board’s surface, a big plastic pointer rested on three raised felt tips. Thanks to SAT Prep, Harlan knew that this was called a planchette, and that it supposedly spelled out mystical messages.

  “Look,” Ricky said, nodding to some writing on the bottom of the board. “The game’s made by Milton Bradley. Oh, now that is scary!”

  Everyone laughed; this time, Harlan laughed too. Good ol’ Ricky.

  He lifted his hands and rested his fingers lightly on his half of the plastic pointer.

  And immediately knew he’d made a mistake. He could already feel it—a strange electricity in the air. Milton Bradley or not, this board could very well bring on another premonition. Or maybe it was all in his mind. Either way, Harlan wanted out.

  “It’s not moving,” Harlan said, pulling his hands away. “Oh well!”

  People chuckled. It wasn’t really funny, but when people expect you to be a cutup, they pretty much laugh at anything you say. At least at first.

  “Don’t be stupid!” Amber said, and Harlan was keenly aware that she never would have spoken to him like that before, especially in public. “We have to ask it a question.”

  “So ask it a question,” Harlan mumbled, resting his fingers back on the pointer. He wasn’t going to have a premonition; he wouldn’t let himself. There was too much at stake.

  “Let’s see,” Amber said, thinking, putting her fingers on the pointer too. “I know! Will Harlan ever be elected president of the United States?”

  He glared at her across the board. This was her way of goading him after what he’d said earlier in the week about not wanting to go into politics. Not only had he never noticed how much Amber whined, he had also never noticed just what a colossal bitch she was.

  The plastic pointer jerked under his fingers.

  “Ooooo!” said Brian Meyer.

  “Harlan!” Amber said. “Knock it off.”

  Harlan wanted to take credit for moving the planchette, especially hearing the genuine unease in Amber’s voice. But he hadn’t done anything. He hadn’t even been thinking about doing anything. He’d been glaring at Amber at the time.

  The pointer jerked again.

  “Harlan!” Amber said. “Stop!”

  “I’m not doing it!” Harlan said, which was a mistake. Amber saw the look in his eyes. She knew he was telling the truth, that this wasn’t the setup for some hilarious gag.

  Then Harlan realized: if he wasn’t moving the pointer and if Amber wasn’t moving the pointer, who was?

  No, he thought. That was crazy. Amber had to be moving it. What other explanation was there?

  “It’s moving!” someone said.

  Sure enough, it was moving again, lurching awkwardly across the board. Everyone leaned forward at exactly the same time, even Ricky.

  The pointer slid at an angle, toward the upper-right-hand corner, the one with the moon. It really did feel to Harlan like neither he nor Amber was moving it. But wasn’t that what everyone said when they were using a Ouija board?

  “It’s heading for the ‘No’!” Jerry said. He spoke the rest of his thought directly to Harlan. “Sorry, buddy, looks like there’s no Oval Office in your future. But look at it this way—at least now you don’t have to worry about how you spend your weekends in college!”

  “It’s not heading for the ‘No,’” Rachel said. “It’s stopping at the letters.”

  The pointer was stopping, in the middle of the lower arc of letters. It came to rest so it was pointing right between the “T” and the “U”—the Ouija board limbo between letters.

  “What does that mean?” someone said.

  “It’s meaningless,” someone else said. “Ask another question.”

  “Wait!” Rachel said. The pointer was sliding again, but not far, just to the upper row of letters.

  “‘H,’” Brian read. The pointer had stopped right at that letter. There was no mistaking it.

  “‘H’ is for Harlan!” Jerry said.

  “Which would make sense,” Amber said, annoyed, “except for the fact that I asked it a yes-or-no question!” She talked down to the board: “Will Harlan ever be elected president?”

  The pointer started moving again, but now it wasn’t heading for either “Yes” or “No.” It was heading down, toward the row of numbers near the base of the board.

  “This isn’t working,” Amber said, looking away. “Maybe I need a new partner.”

  “Wait!” someone said. “It is working. It’s stopping on a number.”

  “Two,’” someone else said. “H’ and ‘two.’ Amber’s right. That doesn’t make any sense.”

  But the pointer was moving yet again, not herky-jerky this time, but smoothly, evenly. It was heading back to the letters.

  Once again, everyone leaned in close.

  “O,’” someone read when it stopped again.

  Amber looked back at the board. “Wait a minute,” she said, thinking aloud. “H2O.’ Water!”

  “And Harlan’s a swimmer!” Rachel said. “That’s it!”

  “Except it’s still not the answer to the question I asked!” Amber sounded seriously peeved. And Harlan would have sworn that she had figured out the meaning of “H2O” just then. Which meant that she wasn’t moving the pointer, at least not consciously.

  They were both moving the pointer. That was the answer; that’s how a Ouija board worked. Harlan remembered that he’d read about it in a book somewhere. The two people with their fingers on the pointer interacted with each other, each pushing it a little bit. The result was that it felt like neither one was really controlling it. But it was definitely the two people doing it. That’s why a Ouija board didn’t work when the players were blindfolded.

  Except, Harlan realized, Amber hadn’t even been looking at the pointer the last two times it stopped. Not only that, she was also reading the board upside down.

  “Hey, Harlan,” Jerry said. “You okay?”

  “Huh?” Harlan said. He coughed. “Sure. Why?”

  “You’re being kinda quiet.”

  “No.” Except that he was being quiet. Everyone in that room knew it.

  Harlan was actually relieved when the pointer began moving again. This time it stopped on the ‘D.’

  “D,’” someone said, even as it was moving again.

  “‘A,’” someone else said when it stopped.

  “N,’” someone said on the next letter.

  “Water Dan?” Brian said. “Who’s that?”

  “Shhhh!” Rachel said. “It’s still moving.” She looked down at the board and read the next letter. “‘G.’”

  Harlan’s heart skipped. He wasn’t having a premonition. He just had a sense that whatever this Ouija board wa
s spelling out, it wasn’t good.

  “‘E,’” someone said.

  “‘R,’” someone else said.

  “D-A-N-G-E-R,” the board had spelled.

  Danger!

  “Danger?” Brian said.

  “H2O danger,” Jerry said, and no one spoke for a second.

  Harlan’s pores were bursting with sweat—millions of tiny firecrackers exploding on his skin. Somehow he knew the message had something to do with his swimming.

  “Well,” Ricky said. “I guess the board’s saying that if he runs for president, he’ll definitely lose the mermaid vote!”

  It wasn’t a funny joke, but then, Ricky hadn’t said it to get a laugh. He’d said it to break the tension of the room—and to remind Harlan just how silly this whole exercise was.

  It worked. A couple of people laughed, and Jerry snorted. As for Harlan, the tension fell from his body like a heavy robe.

  Harlan was a swimmer, and he and Amber had subconsciously spelled out the words “H2O” and “danger” on a Ouija board. What was so strange about that? There were plenty of dangers in a swimming pool. Two years ago, a swimmer from Maple Park had dived into the shallow end, hit his head on the bottom, and almost ended up paralyzed.

  “My fingers are cramping,” Harlan said. “Someone else go.” He shifted as if to lift his fingers from the planchette.

  “Stop!” Amber barked. “We’re not done!”

  “What?” he said.

  “It’s still moving!” Amber said.

  He glared at her. Why was she doing this? A minute ago she’d been annoyed that the Ouija board wasn’t answering her question; now she wouldn’t let him stop.

  So why was he even listening to her? Why didn’t he just pull his fingers from the pointer? But for some reason, her voice had commanded him, freezing his fingers on the plastic. And even as Harlan kept staring at her, the pointer slid an inch or so to the right and stopped again.