Farsighted (Farsighted Series) (18 page)

“Did you notice? A smaller elephant is carved into the big one’s belly. A baby and a mother. Strength inside strength. A memory within a memory.”

“I can’t feel it.”

Simmi closes my hand over a long metallic rod. “Look,” she says, guiding my hand and the instrument. “The elephant has some holes carved into the sides. Your fingers are too big to fit, but this will show you.” She uses my hand and the stick to poke at the holes of the elephant. The stick goes straight through the figurine and presses into my palm. She backs the stick out of the figurine and presses in again. This time it stops before hitting my palm. “The little one inside, the baby.” She pulls the stick back a bit and outlines the shape inside.

“Wow,” I say. Simmi takes the figurine and the rod from my hands and returns them to the surface of the dresser. “I bet it’s really beautiful.”

She doesn’t say anything in response.

“Um, your parents must be wondering where we are.” I turn and begin to head back toward the door.

Simmi stops me by grabbing my wrist. She closes in and presses her lips up against mine for one glorious second. A quick but powerful kiss. Dizzy.

“I missed you, Alex,” Simmi purrs.

I’m stuck in place, my lips jutting out as if the kiss is still happening.

She laughs and hits me playfully. “C’mon, silly. Let’s go ask if Mummy needs our help.”

Chapter 13

Finally, the traveler has reached the turning point of his journey. He must confront destruction to emerge whole, ready to take the path the universe has set ahead.

“No, no, stop, please stop. Don’t hurt me anymore,” someone I’ve never heard moans between jagged breaths.

Another Dax vision. I hate these. I already get that this guy is villainous, dangerous. Why do these kinds of visions continue to plague me? My hand throbs with pain. I must be involved this time, probably trying to stop the fight. I hold still. If I react, I’ll be swept out of the vision before getting the context.

“Stop, please stop,” the man cries again. I wish I could help him. Maybe this is the kind of future that can be prevented. I’m about to get up, to halt the vision, but the man begins pleading again, stopping me cold. “Why are you doing this? Why are you hurting me, Alex?”

I freeze. What’s happening? I’m the good guy. Dax does this stuff, not me. As if my thoughts have summoned him, Dax joins the vision. “Yeah, give him what he deserves.” He laughs viciously.

A new pain pulses through my hand. The man yelps and then nothing. He’s out cold.

“Harder when you have to use your hands,” Dax jokes, slapping me on the back. “Allow me to clean up,” he says, keeping one hand glued to my back and flicking his other. The unconscious—dead?—man’s body is hurled upward. The smell of blood and sweat shoots up, higher and higher.

Dax grunts and lowers his hand. The body falls through the sky, quicker, quicker. A horrible whirring sound closes in above our heads. Our victim is going to fall right on top of us. Dax lets go of me and raises both hands above his head. He claps them together. The sound reverberates across an expansive field. A bolt of electric-feeling energy escapes his clamped hands and rockets up, raising the temperature by at least ten degrees and singeing the body. A horrible, burnt smell fills the air as ash rains down on our heads. Dax laughs and dances around in celebration.

“Great what we can do when we work together,” he gloats, slapping my back again and ending the vision.

I rock back and forth on my bed, thankful I’m safe at home rather than at school or Sweet Blossoms where my actions can’t be ignored by others. How…how could I ever work
with
Dax
? He’s the bad guy. I’m the one who stops him from doing stuff like this. I don’t help him!

I yell and punch my pillow. The pillow falls to the ground, but I keep striking the spot where it was. My fist makes contact with something much harder than a mattress. Pain shoots up my arm. This is what I deserve. I continue to punch the hard thing until I quit feeling the pain. Finally, I stop. Wrapping an old undershirt around my bleeding fingers, I pick up the beaten object. An audiobook. The one from Dad’s briefcase. My Christmas present, I guess. I had placed it under my pillow and forgotten until now.

The Crucible
. I grab my headphones and stuff the first disc into my laptop. I lie back onto my bed and listen to it without really connecting to the words. My mind is too busy thinking of the latest nightmare of a vision.

I always assumed I was the good guy, but why would I be? Maybe the universe expects me to be bad, wants it even. Who am I kidding? Dad is a bad guy. He leeched off Mom for years without doing any work himself, left without giving a reason, called and said he was coming back, but didn’t. Only a villain could hurt someone as sweet and innocent as Mom time and time again. Am I destined to be bad, too? Like father, like son?

Thoughts of what it would be like run through my head. Power without responsibility. Doing what I want, taking what I want. No one to answer to but myself. How awful could it be? Then Simmi works her way into my thoughts. Mom. Shapri. They need me to protect them. If I don’t, Dad and Dax will keep on hurting them, and I can’t let that happen.

This is the kind of vision that can be prevented, I decide. Even if the universe wants me to join forces with Dax, I won’t. I make my own decisions, and I choose to take care of the people I love, to stop those who want to hurt them.

I get dressed in a frenzy, running my hand under the tap to wash away the blood and stuff it into a glove. Mom’s already left for Sweet Blossoms, so I’ll need to walk a good thirty minutes to get there on my own. I could call and ask her to pick me up, but she’d worry. The walk over will do me good. I hope Miss Teak’s shop is open on Saturday mornings.

***

As I had feared, Miss Teak’s shop is closed up tight. Now what am I going to do? I sit down on the stoop and run over my options. I can’t go into Sweet Blossoms or Mom will worry; she’ll want to know why I walked all the way over here, and she won’t believe me unless I give her a good reason. I contemplate going to Simmi’s, but I’ve got no idea how to get there. Besides, we haven’t talked since last night at the
Lohri
party.

After dark, Simmi’s parents made a bonfire. The heat was amazing—it towered above me no matter where I sat. Simmi gave me things to add to the fire. The smell of burning peanuts and sweet exotic foods filled the air.
We kissed, danced to upbeat Bollywood tunes, and she introduced me to her parents’ friends. I wish I could go back.

If I had a normal life like everybody else, I’d be lying in bed running the events of last night through my head. Instead, I’m stuck in the freezing cold, waiting for a psychic lady who I still don’t exactly trust to tell me whether or not I’m about to go on a killing rampage.

My teeth chatter, reminding me I can’t wait out here in the cold. The only realistic option now is for me to go back home. In a couple hours, I can call Mom, tell her I’m bored and ask her to bring me to the shop. Maybe Miss Teak’s will be open then.

I’m about halfway home when a car pulls up beside me. “Get in,” Shapri instructs through an open window.

I obey, eager to escape the frigid outdoor air. Shapri waits for me to close the door and then maneuvers the car into a U-turn.

“What are you doing here?” I ask in astonishment.

“We were visiting family out of town, but this morning at like six, Mom comes into my room and says we need to go straight back to Grandon. Says you need us.” She snorts. “We came straight to the shop before going home even. She tells me, ‘Go get Alex,’” Shapri says, doing an over-the-top impression of her mother’s voice. “I head toward your house, but then I see you here, so I stop, and, well, you know the rest. So what are you doing walking around in the cold, anyway?”

“Actually, I was looking for you, too.”

“For me? Why?”

“Well, your mom. I wanted to ask her about something.”

“Oh,” Shapri says, notably dejected. Does she think there’s something between us because of our almost-kiss? She has to see my feelings for Simmi, that our thing was a fluke.

“Here we are.” She brakes and puts the car into park. “Go talk to my mom. Me? I’m going home.”

“Shapri,” I start. I guess we should talk about what happened between us.

“Get out,” she says in irritation. “I want to get back to sleep. Go do what you came here to do.”

“Okay, sweet dreams.” I get out of the car. Shapri pulls away as soon as I close the door. I shake my head in an attempt to clear the weirdness away and head into the shop. Miss Teak shifts items around inside her big wooden trunk. I trudge right over to her.

“Am I the bad guy?” I blurt out before even managing a hello.

“Perhaps,” Miss Teak answers with zero emotion as she closes the trunk and rises to a standing position.

“What?” I yell. I was expecting her to reassure me of my heroic status, not to confirm my worst suspicions. “How?”

“The potential for good and evil lies within all things. Nothing is fully dark or fully light. All have elements of both sides.”

“I don’t understand.”

“You are not
good
in the purest sense of the word. Nor does such a concept exist. You are both good and bad. Time will tell which of the two you favor.”

“I want to be good. I want to save Simmi.”

“Then so you shall be.”

“But why did I have a vision of me helping Dax kill a man? I’ve never seen something like that before.”

Miss Teak sighs. “Your inner darkness is coming to the surface.”

“I don’t want it to. How do I make it go away?”

“Do good. That’s all any of us can do.” She sounds almost bored by this proclamation.

I turn on my heel and storm out of the shop. I came all this way, and for what? Miss Teak hasn’t cleared anything up; she’s only made me more confused. If I’m going to stop Dax, I’ve got to do it on my own. I can’t rely on her or anyone else.

Chapter 14

No matter how much time the traveler spends mapping his course, the universe has already chosen it for him. He must learn to accept that he is a pawn in his own destiny.

Think, think. What brings about my visions? What’s the common thread? One by one, past hallucinations float through my brain. The first was of Dad picking me up from school. The second was Simmi dying, then a bunch more about Dax—with doctors, with people in the snow, with me, with Simmi. I cringe. No clear pattern emerges. Sometimes I’m all alone; sometimes others are around. I’ve had pointless visions, scary visions, sexy visions. My hand mindlessly drifts up to my lips—a touch memory.

The bracelet Simmi gave me on my birthday slides a couple inches down my arm, drawing my attention to it. The bracelet.
A great way to enter a psychic trance
, Simmi said. She was right. When I spun it around my wrist, the ultimate vision reel had flashed across my mind. I finger the cool silver and set it spinning. Simmi knows so much. She gave me the bracelet when I needed it the most, when I had set myself apart from the others and all but given up. Christmas Day. Except Simmi didn’t give it to me then—Dad did. I think back to the mysterious briefcase, the combination which had opened it—twelve, twenty-five. The book placed inside as a gift for me. The bracelet, too.

Did Dad know what the bracelet could do? Did he know I would wrench the case open on the exact day I had? I shake my head, trying to clear my mind of the troubling thoughts. No way. If Dad, if he… That would mean…

I stop. Stop thinking, stop spinning the bracelet, just stop. My brain is a computer. It’s been asked to perform too many tasks all at once, and now it’s frozen. Minutes pass. I’m not sure how many. My wrist throbs. Seems I’ve been clutching the bracelet tight against my skin this whole time. Why didn’t it work? Last time I spun it like this, I was shot into the middle of a vision parade. What was different this time?

I start the spinning again.
Work
, my brain commands,
work
! But it doesn’t. I groan and fall back on my bed, utterly exhausted.