Fairy Tale (3 page)

He growls into the phone, which makes me laugh. "Okay, Boo. In a sec. One, two, three."

"One, two, three," I say back, pulling the sheet up to my chin and flipping the phone closed.

He jumps up and closes the curtains again, but after that, the light doesn't go off. After another minute of lying on my side, silently willing the room to go dark, I throw off the covers and pull myself up on my elbows. This calls for desperate measures. Cam might not want to know his future, but it doesn't mean that I can't take my own little sneak peek. Just because he blacked out once doesn't mean he's destined to be the subject of the next episode
of House.
Maybe I can find something that will calm him down.

And, okay, me too.

I stumble over the jeans I'd left balled up on the shag rug, grab my iPod, and tune it to some Enya. Then I sit cross-legged on my bed and begin the routine I use to calm myself and help bring up my visions.

Closing my eyes, I picture water. Clear, aquamarine ripples from a swimming pool. I guess I could use any soothing background as a canvas, but a swimming pool is what I've always used. Then I say "Fluffernutter" over and over again, until the syllables fall atop one another: Really, any word or phrase would probably do; it's just something to clear the mind. Just at the time that "Fluffernutter" becomes "lufferfutter," I introduce the name of the subject whose future I want to see. After two or three minutes, the waves become grainy, and images begin to float up to the surface. Fuzzy at first, they eventually clear, and I can see the subject just like they're on TV. I've predicted so many futures that I've found this method works best for me. But I still haven't gotten all the kinks out. For one thing, there's no sound in my visions. I can't hear what people are saying. And, even worse, I can't control what point in the future my gift will take me to. It might be tomorrow, or it might be fifty years from now. Sometimes I can scan the surroundings to catch a sign or something in the background, but not always.

"Lufferfluffernuffer...," I say, massaging my temples and staring at the cool, inviting water. "Show me Cam Browne."

The image of Cam's face floats up. He's sitting on the comer of a stool, hunched over, elbows on his knees. Completely normal- that is, until I see the look on his face. It looks like he swallowed ammonia. In fifteen years I'd never realized Cam's sexy facial muscles had such flexibility to contort into something that hideous. A chill pecks at my shoulders. What could be so wrong?

The camera pans back, and then I see he's surrounded by art. The most horrendous paintings I've ever seen. Where is he-the Academy of Fine Arts for the Blind? And Cam has his T-shirt pulled up to his armpits. Then I see myself, standing behind him. What am I doing? Giving him a massage? Like that would ever happen.

That's when I notice my expression. It's like I just saw my grandfather naked. I'm staring at his back and clearly disgusted. And... are those tears in my eyes? I admit to being a bit of a leaky faucet, but Cam's muscular back, with the way it comes to a perfect V over his tight waist, usually makes me drool like a dog. So what about it could have reduced me to crying? A mongo-zit?

I scrunch my nose and find myself snapping my head over, willing myself to switch viewpoints, to pan behind his shoulder so I can see what's up. That's another bad thing about my gift. I have absolutely no control over what I can or can't see. Someone else is holding the camera, so at times it has a way of showing enough to pique my curiosity, but not the whole story. I found it merely annoying when it showed Emily Andersen convulsing at the sight of her PSAT scores yet wouldn't show actual numbers, but this is unbearable.

The vision pops out of my head, so I pull my earphones down and open my eyes. Tossing my iPod aside, I bear-hug my pillow and turn toward the window. Cam's light is still on. I imagine telling Cam tomorrow, "Don't worry, hon. I may not have discovered why you blacked out at the Came yesterday, but I did find out that you will soon be the proud owner of a gross back pimple. Now, doesn't that make you feel better?"

I'm nearly asleep by the time it hits me. I sit up straight in bed, and my entire body goes cold.

I FLIP ON the lights and call Eden on my cell. "Cam is dying," I cry out, before she even says hello. "Wha...?" a half-human voice comes back.

"Wake up. Did you hear me?"

"Yeah, but..." A long groan. "It's two in the morning!"

I can't breathe, because my heart is in my throat and it's cutting off my oxygen supply. "Did you hear me? He's dying.
Dy
ing."

"To do what?"

"Eden! I mean death. Skull and crossbones. Big scary dude with a sickle. He's sick."

With that, I start to cry, big, sloppy tears that run down my chin and schmutz up my Neutrogena facial.

"What do you mean, sick?"

"Cam blacked out during the Came," I tell her. "It's a tumor."

"What? Oh, my God. But he was fine a few hours ago. He did that
amaz
ing play." She sounds like she might cry, too. Finally, the reaction I was looking for.

"I know. What am I going to do? I saw it. on an episode of
ER
once. This awesomely talented figure skater was having blackouts and seizures, and it turned out that she had a tumor in her spine."

"How did he find out? Did he go to the doctor?"

I pick up the corner of my pink sheet and run it over my eyes. I stop short of using it to blow my nose. "He doesn't know."

"You mean..." There's this extended pause. The elevator might not always go to Eden's top floor, but she's been friends with me long enough to get the picture. She makes a clucking noise with her tongue. "Don't tell me... you didn't... What exactly did you see?"

"He had his shirt off. I was looking at his back... and it was horrible. I couldn't see exactly what it was I was looking at, but I was
crying"

"You cried when they canceled
The OC"
she points out. "It could be heat rash. That stuff is nasty."

"But then, why did he black out today?"

"I don't know. God, Morg, you are the worst psychic ever. You're like a TV that only gets local channels."

I'd be hurt, but Eden has good reason to think that. Every time I try to look into her future, I see her in the apartment, alone, talking to her Precious Moments figurines. I'd hate to tell her that, so when she asks me to tell her future, I usually reveal something obvious, like, "You will be eating pizza for dinner tomorrow," which is a given, because her father has no culinary skills.

''Anyway, I have my own problems." She sighs. "Mike called me."

I can sense the excitement in her voice, which is so sad, considering how the only way he'd ever call her
^-
for the reasons she's hoping would be if she sprouted testicles and chest hair overnight. "He did? For what?"

"I have no idea. I missed the call because I was doing my Whitestrips," she whines. She and I have a matching obsession for white teeth. "I can't believe it. He finally calls me, and I miss the freaking call."

"Did he leave a message?"

"No! Can you believe it?" She cries in a voice that makes me wonder if prior to my call she wasn't trying to hang herself with her bedsheets. "I think, maybe, it was, like, a social call."

I'm not betting on it, but she sounds so hopeful. "Possibly," I say. "So call him back and find out."

"No, I don't want him to think I'm the type of girl who spends hours analyzing her missed calls. That would look totally desperate, don't you think?"

"Okay, okay. So just keep your phone glued to your side for the next time he calls."

"What if he never calls?"

She goes on about how she thinks he wants to ask her out but is just too shy and how the birthmark on his upper cheek is just so wonderful and blah blah blah.

"What if he dies and leaves me alone?" I ask, finally breaking into part 3 of the dream she had about Mike last night, in which they were floating about on a polar ice cap, having a snowball fight. I am not sure what makes people think that others want to hear their dreams, but can anything possibly be more boring?

"Who?" she asks, temporarily confused. "Cam? You two are going to be together forever."

"That's what I thought." I sigh, thinking of the girls at school. Most of them are going through hell for guys-playing weird head Cames like "ignore him and he'll fall all over you" or seeing who can fit into the clothes with the biggest price tags and the smallest sizes. I've never been a part of that world, and I don't want to be. I want to be with Cam. That's the only thing about my life that makes sense.

Then I turn toward my bedside table, where there's a picture of Cam and me on the Kingda Ka roller coaster, from a day trip we took to Six Flags Great Adventure last summer: He has his arms up straight over his head in victory; I have my eyes clamped tightly shut, and I'm squeezed so close to him, they could have fit another person in the seat with me. My face is twisted in agony. Though I'd begged him not to buy it, since I look like hell, Cam did anyway, "because," he'd said, "even though you thought you'd die, you survived. And you need to remember that. Things aren't as bad as they seem."

Things aren't as bad as they seem
I repeat to myself.

Meanwhile, Eden is going on. "Stop it. He's not dying."

I catch my reflection in the mirror across the room and notice my bussed-out, unfocused eyes. I'm acting like a total loser. "I'm not thinking straight. I'm probably getting all worked up over something a tube of calamine lotion can fix. I'm just tired."

"What do you mink it means?" she asks.

"I don't know..." In the mirror, I can see the tips of my fingers turning white on my cell phone, and it's only then that I realize I'm holding it in a sweaty death grip. "I guess it could be heat rash."

"I was talking about my dream. I mean, polar ice caps? Where do you think
that
came from? Totally odd."

"Oh. Um." I know exactly what it means, actually. That she has a snowball's chance in hell of ever heating anything up with Mike Kensington. Even her subconscious is more informed than she is. "Maybe that you're two cold, lonely souls searching for love?"

The line is silent as she contemplates that load of crap for a moment. "Yeah. That could be. Do you think you could..."

I know what she's asking. It's the way most people start conversations with me: "Do you think you could tell my future?" "Sure, one sec," I say. I put the phone down for a minute, study my nails, the picture of Cam and me on Kingda Ka, a dust bunny skimming across the floor of my room "sorry. Pizza again."

"Gah!" she screams. "I know you love me, but your gift hates me."

"Sorry. I do love you, though. And if Mike doesn't too, he's an idiot. Or... gay."

She giggles as if it's the most insane idea in the world. "Night Morgan."

I press End on the phone and flip it closed, then sink under the covers again. The light is finally out in Cam's bedroom, and somehow, I fall asleep.

MY PARENTS ARE the world's youngest senior citizens. They have spent virtually every night since I was a kid watching old TV Land reruns in our family room. They dim the lights, which makes it "just like a movie theater," according to my mom, then pop some microwave Orville Redenbacher and sit on their respective matching recliners until they fall asleep. They refuse to go anywhere for dinner unless they have a coupon or know of an early-bird special, and they need to be home before dark, since they're both afraid of driving at night.

Yawn.

That's why I have absolutely no idea how I ended up a psychic. You'd expect someone with such a gilt to have parents with equally thrilling abilities, like telekinesis or the power to see through people's clothes. But they've got nada. My dad can say the capitals of the fifty states in alphabetical order, but that's where the magic ends.

"You must be exhausted," my mom, who never gets fewer than ten hours of sleep a night, says after offering me a glass of OJ.

I can tell she's fishing for something. "Not really. And before you go asking, I did my homework in study hall."

Scissors in hand, she looks up from a stack of advertisements and several piles of coupons, which she has sorited by supermarket aisle. "I wasn't saying anything," she says defensively.

"Ri-ight."

"Any plans for the weekend?" she asks casually, even though I'm sure she's dying to know so that she can arrange the porch furniture accordingly.

"Not sure yet" I tell her. Though I'd eventually made it to sleep last night, when morning came, a new batch of worries dawned on me: If Cam is sick, I'll have to be the strong one. And who am I kidding-I rely on him to kill spiders in my room the size of my thumbnail. My hair gel is stronger than I am.

"No plans with Cameron?" she asks as I'm shaking the Cheerios box to get the last few Os into my dish.

Ugh. "Mom! I said I'm not sure."

She raises her hands in surrender. "Excuse me for caring. I want to know if I can expect you home for dinner at all. I'm making
sfogliatelle
for the Nelsons, and you know how they dirty up the kitchen."

Uh-oh. My mother only whips up her
sfogliatelle
when there's an impending death. A hundred years ago, one of her great-greatgrandfathers was on his deathbed in Italy, and it was his wife's famous
sfogliatelle
recipe that brought him back from the beyond. He was able to live another ten healthy years, until he fell into a well. Or something like that. So, though they haven't saved a person since, the recipe has been part of a sacred, treasured family tradition. Italians are weird like that. "Who's dying?"

My mother grasps for her heart "Oh, it's terrible. Their little daughter, Gracie." She whispers, "Leukemia. She isn't supposed to last the month."