My aunt"s shadow elongated as she moved farther away, presumably taking the phone from my uncle. "You sure you don"t want to do it?"
"Positive."
Another chair sc.r.a.ped the tiles as my aunt sat, and her shadow became an amorphous blob on the wall. A series of high-pitched beeps told me she was already pressing b.u.t.tons. A moment later she spoke, and I held my breath, desperate to hear every single word of whatever they"d been keeping from me.
"Aiden? It"s Valerie." She paused, but I couldn"t hear my father"s response. "We"re fine. Brendon"s right here. Listen, though, I"m calling about Kaylee." Another pause, and this time I heard a low-pitched, indistinct rumble, barely recognizable as my father"s voice.
Aunt Val sighed again, and her shadow shifted as she slumped in her chair. "I know, but it"s happening again." Pause. "Of course I"m sure. Twice in the last three days. She didn"t tell us the first time, or I would have called sooner. I"m not sure how she"s kept quiet about it, as it is."
My father said something else I couldn"t make out.
"I did, but she won"t take them, and I"m not going to force her. I think we"ve moved beyond the pills, Aiden. It"s time to tell her the truth. You owe her that much."
He owed me? Of course he owed me the truth-whatever that was. They all owed me.
"Yes, but I really think it should come from her father." She sounded angry now.
My father spoke again, and this time it sounded like he was arguing. But I could have told him how futile it was to argue with Aunt Val. Once she"d made up her mind, nothing could change it.
"Aiden Cavanaugh, you put your b.u.t.t on a plane today, or I"ll send your daughter to you. She deserves the truth, and you"re going to give it to her, one way or another."
I snuck back to my room, shocked, confused, and more than a little proud of my aunt. Whatever this mysterious truth was, she wanted me to have it. And she didn"t think I was losing my mind. Neither of them did.
Though they apparently thought I was dying.
I think I"d rather be crazy.
I"d never really contemplated my own death before, but I would have thought the very idea would leave me too frightened to function. Especially having very nearly witnessed someone else"s death only hours earlier. Instead, however, I found myself more numb than terrified.
There was a substantial fear building inside me, tightening my throat and making my heart pound almost audibly inside my chest. But it was a very distant fear, as if I couldn"t quite wrap my mind around the concept of my own demise. Of simply not existing one day.
Maybe the news just hadn"t sunk in yet. Or maybe I couldn"t quite believe it. Either way, I desperately needed to talk it through with someone who wasn"t busy keeping vital secrets from me. So I texted Emma, in case her mother had lifted the cell phone ban.
Ms. Marshall replied a few minutes later, telling me that Emma was still grounded, but she"d see me the next day for Meredith"s memorial, if I was planning to go.
I wrote back to tell her I"d be there, then dropped my phone on my bed in disgust. What good is technology if your friends are always grounded from it? Or hanging out with teammates?
For lack of anything better to do, I turned the TV on again, but I couldn"t concentrate because what I"d just overheard kept playing through my mind. I a.n.a.lyzed every word, trying to figure out what I"d missed. What they"d been keeping from me.
I was sick; that much was clear. What else could "living on borrowed time" mean? So what did I have? What kind of twisted illness had "premonitions of death" as the primary symptom, and death itself as the eventual result?
Nothing, unless we were still considering adolescent dementia. Which we were not, based on the fact that they didn"t think I needed the zombie pills.
So what kind of illness could make me think I was crazy?
Ignoring the television now, I slid into my desk chair and fired up the Gateway notebook my father had sent me for my last birthday. Each second it took to load sent fresh waves of agitation through me, fortifying my unease until that fear I"d expected earlier finally began to take root in earnest.
I"m going to die.
Just thinking the words sent terror skittering through me. I couldn"t sit still, even for the few minutes it took Windows to load. When my leg began to jiggle with nerves, I stood in front of my dresser to peer in the mirror. Surely if I were ready to kick the proverbial bucket, I would know the minute I saw myself. That"s how it seemed to work when someone else was going to die.
But I felt nothing when I looked at my reflection, except the usual fleeting annoyance that, unlike my cousin, my skin was pale, my features completely unremarkable.
Maybe it didn"t work with reflections. I"d never seen Heidi in the mirror, nor Meredith. Holding my breath, and barely resisting the absurd urge to cross my fingers, I glanced down at myself, unsure whether I was more afraid of feeling the urge to scream, or of not feeling it.
Again, I felt nothing.
Did that mean I wasn"t dying, after all? Or that my gruesome gift didn"t work on myself? Or merely that my death wasn"t yet imminent? Aaagggghhh! This was pointless!
My computer chimed to tell me it was up and running, and I dropped into my desk chair. I pulled up my Internet browser and typed "leading cause of death among teenagers" into the search engine, my chest tight and aching with morbid antic.i.p.ation.
The first hit contained a list of the top ten causes of death in individuals fifteen through nineteen years of age. Unintentional injury, homicide, and suicide were the top three entries. But I had no plans to end my own life, and accidents couldn"t be predicted. Neither could murder, unless my aunt and uncle were planning to take me out themselves.
Lower on the list were several equally scary entries, like heart disease, respiratory infection, and diabetes, among others. However, those all included symptoms I couldn"t possibly have overlooked.
That left only the fourth leading cause of death for people my age: malignant neoplasms.
I had to look that one up.
The description from a separate, respected medical site was dense and nearly impossible to comprehend. But the layman"s definition under that was too clear for comfort. "Malignant neoplasm" was doctor-talk for cancer.
Cancer.
And suddenly every hope I"d ever harbored, every dream I"d ever entertained, seemed too fragile a possibility to survive.
I had a tumor. What else could it be? And it had to be brain cancer to affect the things I felt and knew, didn"t it? Or the things I thought I knew.
Did that mean the premonitions weren"t real? Were brain tumors giving me delusions? Some sort of sensory hallucinations? Had I imagined predicting Heidi"s and Meredith"s deaths, after the fact?
No. It couldn"t be. I refused to believe that any mere illness-short of Alzheimer"s-could rewrite my memories.
Hovering on the sharp, hot edge of panic now, I returned to the search engine and typed "symptoms of brain cancer." The first hit was an oncology Web site that listed seven kinds of brain cancer along with the leading symptoms of each. But I had none of them. No nausea, seizures, or hearing loss. I had no impaired speech or motor function, and no spatial disorders. I wasn"t dizzy, had no headaches, and no muscle weakness. I wasn"t incontinent-thank goodness-nor did I have any unexplained bleeding or swelling, nor any impaired judgment.
Okay, some might say sneaking into a nightclub was a sign of impaired judgment, but I was pretty sure my decision-making skills were right on target for someone my age, and miles above the judgment of others. Such as certain spoiled, vomit-p.r.o.ne cousins, who shall remain nameless.
I was tempted to rule out brain cancer based on the symptoms alone, until I noticed the section on tumors in the temporal lobe. According to the Web site, while temporal-lobe "neoplasms" sometimes impaired speech and caused seizures, they were just as often asymptomatic.
As was I.
That was it. I had a tumor in my temporal lobe. But if so, how did Aunt Val and Uncle Brendon know? More important, how long had they known? And how long did I have?
My fingers shook on the keys, and a nonsense word appeared in the address bar. I pushed my chair away from the desk and closed my laptop without bothering to shut it down. I had to talk to someone. Now.
I shoved my chair aside and crawled onto my bed on my hands and knees, s.n.a.t.c.hing my phone from the comforter on the way to my headboard. At the top of the bed, I leaned back and pulled my knees up to my chest. My eyes watered as I scrolled through my contacts for Nash"s number. I was wiping tears from my face with my sleeves by the time he answered.
"h.e.l.lo?" He sounded distracted, and in the background, I heard canned fight sounds, then several guys groaned in unison.
"Hey, it"s me." I sniffed to keep my nose from running.
"Kaylee?" Couch springs creaked as he sat up-I had his attention now. "What"s wrong?" He switched to an urgent whisper. "Did it happen again?"
"No, um...Are you still at Scott"s?"
"Yeah. Hang on." Something brushed against the phone, and dimly I heard Nash say, "Here, man, take over for me." Then footsteps clomped, and the background noise gradually softened until a door creaked closed, and the racket stopped altogether. "What"s up?"
I hesitated, rolling onto my stomach on my bed. He hadn"t signed on for this kind of drama. But he hadn"t run from the death predictions, and I had to talk to someone, and it was either Nash or Emma"s mother. "Okay, this is going to sound stupid, but I don"t know what else to think. I heard my aunt and uncle arguing, then my aunt called my dad" I swallowed back a sob and wiped more moisture from my face. "Nash...I think I"m dying."
There was silence over the line, then engine noise as a car drove past him. He must have been in Scott"s front yard. "Wait, I don"t get it. Why do you think you"re dying?"
I folded my lumpy feather pillow in half and lay with one cheek on it, treasuring the coolness against my tear-flushed face. "My uncle said he thought I"d have more time, then my aunt told my dad that he needed to tell me the truth, so I wouldn"t think I was crazy. I think it"s a brain tumor."
"Kaylee, you"re adding two and two and coming up with seven. You must have missed something." He paused and footsteps clomped on concrete, like he was on the sidewalk. "What did they say, exactly?"
I sat up and made myself inhale slowly, trying to calm down. The words weren"t coming out right. No wonder he had no idea what I was talking about. "Um...Aunt Val said I was living on borrowed time, and that I shouldn"t have to spend any of it thinking I was crazy. She told my dad it was time to tell me the truth." I stood and found myself pacing nervously back and forth across my fuzzy purple throw rug. "That means I"m dying, right? And she wants him to tell me?"
"Well, they obviously have something important to tell you, but I seriously doubt you have a brain tumor. Shouldn"t you have some symptoms, or something, if you"re sick?"
I dropped into my desk chair again and ran my finger over the mouse pad to wake up the monitor. "I looked it up, and-"
"You researched brain tumors? This afternoon?" Nash hesitated, and the footsteps paused. "Kaylee, is this because of Meredith?"
"No!" I shoved off against the desk so hard my wheeled chair hit the side of the bed. "I"m not a hypochondriac! I"m just trying to figure out why this is happening to me, and nothing else makes sense." Frustrated, I scrubbed one hand over my face and made myself take another deep breath. "They don"t think I"m crazy, so it"s not psychological." And my relief at knowing that was big enough to swallow the Pacific Ocean. "So it has to be physical."
"And you think it"s brain cancer...."
"I don"t know what else to think. There"s one kind of brain cancer that sometimes doesn"t have any symptoms. Maybe I have that kind."
"Wait..." He paused as a gust of wind whistled over the line. "You think you have a tumor because you have no symptoms?"
Okay, I still wasn"t making any sense. I closed my eyes and let my head fall against the back of the chair. "Or maybe the premonitions are my symptom. Some kind of hallucination."
Nash laughed. "You"re not hallucinating, Kaylee. Not unless Emma and I have tumors too. We both saw you predict two deaths, and we saw one of them actually happen. You weren"t imagining that."
I sat up in my chair, and this time my long, soft exhalation was in relief. "I was seriously hoping you"d say that." It helped-albeit a tiny little bit-to know that if I was dying, at least I was going out with my mind intact.
"Glad I could help." I could hear the smile in his voice, which drew one from me in response.
I swiveled in my chair and propped my feet up on my nightstand. "Okay, so maybe I"m having premonitions because of the tumor. Like, it"s activating some part of my brain most people can"t access. Like John Travolta in that old movie."
"Sat.u.r.day Night Fever?"
"Not that old." My smile grew a little, in spite of what should have been a very somber conversation. I loved how easily Nash calmed me, even over the phone. His voice was hypnotic, like some kind of auditory tranquilizer. One I could easily get hooked on. "The one where he can move stuff with his mind, and learn whole languages by reading one book. And it all turns out to be because he has brain cancer and he"s dying."
"I don"t think I"ve seen that one."
"He gets all kinds of freaky abilities, then he dies. It"s tragic. I don"t want to be tragic, Nash. I want to be alive." And suddenly the tears were back. I couldn"t help it. I"d had more than enough of death in the past few days, without adding my own to the list.
"Okay, you"re going to have to trust me on this, Kaylee." The footsteps were back, and then a door closed, cutting off the bl.u.s.ter of wind on his end of the call. Then his voice got softer. "Your premonitions don"t come from brain cancer. Whatever your aunt and uncle were talking about, that"s not it."
"How do you know?" I blinked the moisture from my eyes, irritated with how emotional I was becoming. Wasn"t that another symptom of brain cancer?
Nash sighed, but he sounded more worried than exasperated. "I have to tell you something. I"ll pick you up in ten minutes."
CHAPTER 8.
Seven minutes later, I sat on the living-room couch, my keys in my pocket, my phone in my lap, my fingernails rasping anxiously across the satin upholstery. I was angled to face both the television-muted, but tuned to the local evening news-and the front window, hoping no one would realize I was expecting company. "No one," meaning my aunt and uncle. Sophie was still out cold, and I was starting to wonder how many of those pills her mother had given her.
Aunt Val was in the kitchen, banging pots, pans, and cabinet doors as she made spaghetti, her favorite comfort food. Normally she wouldn"t indulge in so many carbs in a single meal, but she was obviously having a rough day. A very rough day, if the scent of garlic bread was any indication.
"Hey, Kay-Bear, how you holdin" up?"
I glanced up to find my uncle leaning against the plaster column separating the dining room from the living room. He hadn"t called me that in nearly a decade, and the fact that he was using my old nickname probably meant he thought I was...fragile.
"I"m not crazy." I met his clear green eyes, daring him to argue.
He smiled, and the resulting smile lines somehow made him look even younger than usual. "I never said you were."
I huffed and shot a glare toward the kitchen, where Aunt Val was stirring noodles in a huge aluminum pot. "She thinks I am." I knew better than that now, of course, but wasn"t about to let on that I"d heard their argument.
Uncle Brendon shook his head and crossed the eggsh.e.l.l carpet toward me, arms folded over the faded tee he"d changed into after work. "She"s just worried about you. We both are." He sank into the floral-print armchair opposite me. He always sat there, rather than on the solid white chair or sofa, hoping that if he spilled something, Aunt Val would never notice the stain on such a busy pattern.
"Why aren"t you worried about Sophie?"
"We are." He paused, then seemed to consider his answer. "But Sophie"s...resilient. She"ll be fine once she"s had a chance to grieve."
"And I won"t?"
My uncle raised one brow at me. "Val said you barely knew Meredith Cole." And just like that, he"d sidestepped the real question-that of my future well-being.
And we both knew it.
Before I could answer-and I was in no hurry-an engine purred outside, and I glanced through the sheers to see an unfamiliar blue convertible pull into the driveway beside my car, glittering in the late-afternoon sun. Behind the wheel was a very familiar face, crowned by an equally familiar head of thick brown hair.
I stood, stuffing my phone into my empty pocket.
"Who"s that?" Uncle Brendon twisted to look out the window.
"A friend. I gotta go."
He stood, but I was already halfway across the room. "Val"s making dinner!" he called after me.