Gasp (Visions) (7 page)

Waves of lust rush through me and I want to be closer to him, touching him, my body becoming one with his body. I open a few buttons of my shirt, as much as I feel comfortable with, and press my chest against his, roll my hips with him, and I feel so beautiful and free. His breathing grows deeper, heavier, and it’s thrilling and scary all at the same time to watch him react to me in this way.

But then he buries his face in my shirt and gasps, “Oh. Oh, shit. Oh, shit. Oh, SHIT.” And then his torso jerks and shudders and his gasp turns into a low moan. “Oooh. Faaahck.”

I don’t know for sure what’s happening at first, but even though I’m not an anatomy expert, I think I have an idea. I ease back against the steering wheel and peer at him. “Are you okay?”

His eyes are closed and there’s a pained look on his face. “Shit,” he groans, and lets his head fall back against the seat. He brings his hand up to cover his eyes, takes a deep breath, and lets it out. “God, Jules. I’m so sorry. I didn’t even know that could . . . you know, happen, without actually, you know. Touching it.”

I bite my lip, not sure what to do now. Sawyer shifts and gingerly slides his hand into his jeans. He cringes. “Well, that’s awkward,” he mutters. I ease off his lap and
back into my seat, twist my jeans back into place, turn aside, and hook my bra. My lips tingle. I button up my shirt. And I’m not exactly the Sahara Desert in my pants either.

I’m not sure how I’m supposed to feel about what just happened. Flattered? Disgusted? I definitely don’t feel disgusted. I feel . . . smarter. Like I’m beginning to figure things out. Applying book knowledge to real life, like Mr. Polselli says, except, ew, let’s not think about him right now. But I like knowing what happens. I like knowing how things work. Cause and effect. That’s probably weird, isn’t it? But I feel like if I understand what’s going on with this whole sex thing, I can figure out how much of it I want to take part in, and I can plan better.

I glance at Sawyer to see if he’s done doing whatever needed to be done. He’s buttoning up his shirt. And then, from his still reclined position, he lolls his head sideways and gives me a sheepish grin. “That was not in the plan,” he says. “I’m sorry.” He raises his seat back to an upright position. “So, um, basically,” he says, like he needs to explain, “I don’t know if you are aware of this, but being within, like, fifty feet of you makes me want to have sex with you pretty much all the time. I think that’s normal. And I guess even just the hotness and nearness of you combined with the amount of, um, friction and stimulation that occurred,” he continues in a scientific voice, his
face flushing, “through no fewer than two hearty layers of denim protection, well . . . I guess that was enough to just wake everybody up down there and have ’em throw a party.”

I laugh. “No need for sorry.” I kind of want to ask him how it felt, but I’m too self-conscious.

He sits up and reaches out to smooth my hair. His fingers linger on my jawbone, and he says, “I love you, Jules, and not just because you make my thing happy. I love you because you make
me
happy.”

I grin.

He goes on. “I don’t want to push you into having sex, and I don’t want to push myself into it either. And I don’t want to do it until we are both ready for that, and I don’t know when that is, but I’m pretty sure it’s not today. So I hope you can forgive me for letting things get a little out of hand.”

He chuckles at his pun, and then grows serious again. “I mean it about the love thing, Jules. And I know it’s true, because every time I think about you getting hurt trying to stop one of these visions . . .” He drops his gaze. “Well, I can’t stand it. I can’t lose you. I can’t.”

My eyes well up. And the thing that is so big inside my chest spreads through my body. I have never felt like this before. I lean over and kiss him softly, gently, on the lips.

And then I smile and sit up and pat him on the chest. “Dude,” I say, “I just have to tell you that you buttoned your shirt wrong.”

Which, in JuleSawyer language, means “I love you, too. Maybe even forever.”

When Sawyer drops me off,
I go inside and find Rowan sitting at the table playing Clue Junior with the three younger cousins. She gives me the stink-eye. I wipe my chapped lips with the back of my hand to hide my grin and hope I don’t look like I’ve just been tumbling around a steamed-up vehicle with my bra undone for the past forty-five minutes.

“Where’s Trey?” I ask.

“On a date.” Rowan clips the words.

“Oh, cool. What about Mom and Dad?” I ask.

Rowan replies through clenched teeth, “On a date.”

I laugh.

“I’m serious,” Rowan says. “It’s like Trey inspired them. After you left, Mom said they haven’t been on a date
in twenty years, and she made Dad go. Then Aunt Mary decided she and Uncle Vito haven’t had a date in eighteen years, so they left too.” She smiles evilly at the kids. “Nick was supposed to babysit.”

“Where’d Nick go?”

Rowan glares, one eyebrow arched. “On. A. Date.”

“Oh my.” I snort.

“Yeah.” She looks at her cards and writes something down. “So why are you home so early?”

“Um . . .” I try to think of something other than
Sawyer spooged his pants so we called it a night
. “I don’t know. Probably because I could feel your agony.”

Rowan laughs.

The cousins look at me like I’m a jerk. “She’s not in agony,” the oldest of the three announces. “She’s having fun, aren’t you, Ro?”

“Pssh. Yeah, of course. Tons. Gosh, Jules.”

“Sorry.” I retreat to the living room, stare at my phone, where I have no messages from Tori, and pick up one of the library books and try to read it. I have a little trouble concentrating on the story, though, since I keep thinking about Sawyer and getting this goofy smile on my face. I’m kind of pathetic right now. Even the cousins’ yelling doesn’t bother me.

A half hour later Rowan makes everybody go to bed. She comes into the living room and sits on the piano
bench next to my chair. And she’s all business. “Any word from Tori?”

“No.”
In fact, I kind of forgot all about her for a while.

“You should call her.”

“But her mom might see it’s me.”

“Call the room phone. I’ll call, in case her mom answers. She doesn’t know my voice.”

I tilt my head. “Well, that’s a brilliant idea.”

“See?” she says, stretching into a yawn. “This is why you need me.”

“Isn’t it too late to call?”

“It’s, like, nine fifteen on a Saturday night. Don’t be ridiculous.”

“But she’s not exactly able to be out having fun.”

“Stop stalling.”

“Fine.” I look up the number for the hospital and give Tori’s room number to Rowan.

She calls, and after a listening for a second, punches in the room number. She looks at me. “Ringing,” she whispers. Then her eyes light up. “Hi there, Tori?” She waits. “Oh, sorry. Is Tori able to come to the phone? This is her friend Rowan from UC.”
Rowan pauses, then gives me a thumbs-up. She lowers her voice. “Hi, Tori, this is Jules’s sister. We know you can’t talk because of your mom. Maybe now would be a good time to smile or laugh like I said something funny.”

Rowan pauses. “Yes, your head hurts because of the visions and we can help you stop them if you just tell us what’s happening. Is there a good time for me to come by to see you when your mom isn’t there?”

Rowan listens for a minute. Her face grows puzzled. “Oh. I see. Maybe you could e-mail—what’s that?” Rowan frowns. “You’re welcome. Wait. Hello?” She looks at me. “She said she had to go and hung up.”

“Nice going, Demarco.”

“Shut it,” Rowan warns. She hops off the piano bench and lies down on the living room floor, splaying her limbs in all directions. “She must really be under some kind of freaky surveillance over there.”

“I told you. Her mom is really protective. She rarely leaves.”

“Clearly.”

I don’t know what else to do but wait. All I know is that some people in a house in Chicago—presumably—are going to be hurting pretty soon.

When Trey and Ben walk in, Rowan and I look at Ben. And then we both look at each other. And I turn back to Ben and say, “Help me, Obi-Wan Galang. You’re my only hope.”

Trey, Ben, Rowan, and I
decide to brainstorm before the parentals begin to trickle in, but we can’t come up with anything that we haven’t already thought of. We determine that Ben could go visit Tori, but they still wouldn’t be able to talk about anything.

“What if I bring her a notebook and hide questions in the middle of it?” Ben suggests.

“Her mom will see her answering,” Trey says. He slips his hand into Ben’s. “Nice idea, though.” Ben smiles at Trey, and all around the world millions of puppies are caught being almost as adorable as them.

I flop back in my chair. “I think all we can do is wait. The more things we try, the bigger risk there is that Mrs. Hayes will confiscate Tori’s phone. We just need to chill.
I feel like I need medication to get through this. Or some comic relief.”

Ben picks up one of the cousins’ picture books and starts reading to us. I forgot how hilarious some picture books are. The laughter takes the pressure off the Tori situation, and by the time Uncle Vito walks in, yelling, “Hey, it’s the Filipino!” we’re already in various fits of giggles over this book about a bear who wants his hat back.

•  •  •

Ben leaves around midnight—I sneak a peek of him and Trey kissing in the driveway—and our parents stay out even later. Trey has stars in his eyes, and finally, when Rowan can’t take all the blooming love any longer, she wakes up her long-distance boyfriend, Charlie, who lives in Manhattan, and Face Times with him. He’s funny when he’s sleepy. Or maybe everything is funny tonight so that it doesn’t have to be tragic.

I drift off eventually, my bones aching from sleeping on this hard living room floor for almost a week, and when I wake up, it’s still dark, and my phone is vibrating with a text message.

2 bodies outside w/ambulance, 2 inside dead, no blood, no house number, Loomis St. OMG my head! Visions everywhere I look, sirens wailing, won’t stop. Can you help me?

I look at the time. Six fifteen in the morning. And I remember when I was in the hospital after the meatball
truck crash. Right around 6:00 a.m.—that’s when they come to poke you and hand out meds and check your temperature. Maybe Mrs. Hayes sleeps through it. I text back quickly, trying to be really encouraging:
Great info! This helps a lot! Are there any clues about what day this happens? And what time—sunny, cloudy? Look hard. I know it sucks. You’re doing great! What else is nearby? What’s the house made of ? Color/style? 1 story or 2?

And then I wait. Again.

I manage to get a couple more hours of sleep, waking up only when I hear Mom and Dad leave for mass. Trey is up too, eating cereal. I show him the text, and he gets on his phone immediately, looking up Loomis Street.

“Did she say North or South Loomis?”

“She just said Loomis. I’ll ask her to look again.”

Trey scrolls down his screen, again and again. “It’s a really long street.”

I lean over to see. Trey zooms in and scrolls. “Lots of houses. Like, miles of them. See if she can narrow down what side of the street it’s on. And we really need a house number or at least a cross street.”

I doubt I can get any of that info out of her. “I’ll ask,” I say. I start a new text with these additional questions and send it. “She said she sees visions everywhere she looks. That’s not a good sign.”

“Is that because we haven’t figured things out?”

“Well, Loomis is a big clue. If the vision is still constant and not letting up, I think that means . . . it’s imminent.”

“Crap,” Trey mutters. “That’s what I thought.”

We look at each other, both thinking the same thing.
We’re not going to make it.

Tori doesn’t respond, and she
doesn’t respond, and she doesn’t respond. On Sunday afternoon Sawyer, Rowan, Trey, Ben, and I pile into Sawyer’s car and we find Loomis Street. We drive up it slowly. There are nice sections of Loomis Street and not so nice sections. I take notes on the kinds of houses on the street in hopes that Tori will give me a clue, and I text her again.
Big or small? Nice or run-down? Brick or siding?
Anything. ANYTHING.

If we only knew how the people died, we might be able to go door-to-door . . . or something. Send out a flyer warning of a homicidal maniac on the loose or whatever. But there’s nothing more to work with.

By Tuesday we’re all really on edge.

By Wednesday we’re freaking out.

On Thursday we break down and send Ben to visit her, just to make sure Tori didn’t die or something. We sit around our spot at the library and wait for Ben to call. When he finally does, Trey runs outside so they can talk, and we all follow.

Trey puts Ben on speakerphone.

“Okay,” Trey says. “We’re all here and you’re on speaker.”

“Hey, everybody,” Ben says. His voice has lost the funny/sarcastic edge for the moment, which does not reassure me in any way. “I went to the hospital and tried to see Tori. The nurse stopped me at the door and said I should wait, that Tori wasn’t feeling well today but maybe I could go in after her meds kicked in. So I waited. After about an hour, I figured everybody had forgotten about me in the waiting room, so I snuck back down the hallway and tried to peek in the window to her room but the shade was drawn. Still, I could hear something in there. So I was really quiet and I opened the door a crack, and all I could hear was Tori moaning over and over, ‘Make it stop! Make it stop!’ and her mother on the phone yelling at somebody, telling them to come immediately or she’d sue for malpractice.”

There’s a pause while we let the words sink in. Finally Trey says, “Holy shit.”

“Yeah,” says Ben.

“What happened? Did you get caught?” Rowan asks.

“No. I closed the door and slipped away. I didn’t want them to see me in case you guys need me to do something else.”