Farsighted (Farsighted Series) (7 page)

I gulp and head toward the place where the voice originated. It’s time for me to be a brave little oak tree, like Mom always says. I need to talk to Miss Teak. She may be the only one who can help me save Simmi.

My cane is planted firmly on the maple wood floor beneath me, serving as a third leg, but even it isn’t enough to keep me stable. I reach out and place my hand onto the nearest tabletop. Luckily, nothing rolls off this time.

“Alex Kosmitoras,” Miss Teak says again, emphasizing the first part of my last name and amazingly pronouncing it with the correct Greek diction.

“M-M-Miss Teak,” I stutter. “Hi.”

“Yes.” She walks toward the far back corner of the room, opens a heavy door, and pulls aside a beaded curtain; the glass beads clack together in a jarring melody. “Come,” she beckons.

I remove my hand from the table and put it in my pocket, attempting to hide my shaking fist, and follow her to the separate back room.

“I am glad you returned,” Miss Teak says. Her voice is smooth and silky like a lullaby. I’m sure I’d be relaxed, if I wasn’t so terrified.

I stand in place, humming a nervous tune under my breath, awaiting further instruction.

“Please, sit,” she says. Even though she used the word
please
, this is obviously a command. Wooden chair legs scoot across the shaggy area rug that lies beneath the table as Miss Teak pulls out a chair for each of us.

I take my seat in the offered chair and am surprised to find it’s made of velvet—quite an unusual material for upholstery.

“Give me your palm,” Miss Teak says. Her voice lowers a couple of feet as she takes a seat at the opposite side of the table.

I still haven’t said anything. Miss Teak doesn’t seem to mind. I stretch my arm to the center of the table. A piece of fabric is laid across the surface, providing a nice cushion.

“Yes, this is most interesting,” she says, holding onto the back of my outstretched hand and tracing her index finger across the peaks and valleys of my palm.

I can’t sense Miss Teak’s gaze, which means she’s either evading my detection or not looking at me at all. “What do you see?” I ask, not totally convinced I even want to know the answer.

“What do I see?” she asks with an odd chuckle. “I do not see, yet I know. I know about you, Alex Kosmitoras.”

 “How?” I gulp.

“Like you, I divine neither your future nor your past through the use of my eyes. I rely on other, less appreciated senses,” she says, putting my hand back onto the table, palm down.

“What?” I shiver. I am still having a hard time accepting I’ve got anything in common with this odd lady.

Miss Teak traces her finger across my hands again, then picks them up and squeezes them together. “Touch,” she says. “One touch and I know everything about an object, about a person, where he has been, who he is. One touch and I know. It is a rare and often misunderstood gift.” She sniffs as if she’s had to defend her abilities one too many times.

“But you’re a palmist,” I say.

“I work as a palmist, but a palmist I am not.” She exhales. “It is my way of getting people to offer me their hands, so I may touch and know. I am a psychometrist.”

“The crystal ball,” I exclaim. “You told me when you look into it, you can see the future.”

She sighs. I seem to be aggravating her. “At times, yes, I am able. My divination via scrying, however, is fickle.”

“So you don’t use your eyes to tell the future?” I ask, summing up what I understand.

“No, I don’t use my eyes, but I am also rarely able to tell the future.”

“I don’t understand. I mean, how do you work as a psychic?” I ask, shaking my head in confusion.

“You would be amazed at how accurately one can guess at the future if one knows what lies in the past. The path of karmic retribution is generally clear. Assumptions are not difficult to make.”

“So you—” I pause. “—guess the future?”

“Yes, and for the simple things, I am, more often than not, correct in my predictions. The more challenging cases, such as your own, can be difficult to discern.”

So far, our exchange is tackily similar to every scene I’ve ever read in a book or listened to in a movie that involves a psychic. I feel more like I’m reading a mystery novel than starring in one. Now’s not the time for all of this; I need to know what’s happening to me and why. Most important, I have to find out how I can save Simmi.

Miss Teak releases my hands and folds hers neatly on the table. “Yes,” she confirms. “You want to know if you are a psychic like me. The answer is yes.”

“I’m a psycha…a psychometrist, too?” I ask, too intrigued to be troubled by the fact she just read my thoughts.

“You are not a psychometrist, but you are a psychic. I believe your gifts lie more within the realm of second sight.”

“Second sight,” I scoff. “Is this somebody’s idea of a joke? Give the blind kid second sight since he hasn’t got any first sight to begin with?”

“This is not a joke. You have a gift,” she insists.

“Yeah, okay,” I say, “a gift…” Too bad this isn’t a gift I can return. I never asked for it.

“Don’t take this lightly. Your gift is very special, and you must use it to the benefit of the entire universe.”

“This sounds a bit out-there to me.” The universe’s ironic sense of humor angers me. “What if I choose to ignore my
gift
?”

“It seems you are unable, though you have tried. Your gift has developed for a reason.”

“It’s hard to think of it as a gift, since it comes on without warning and usually gets me into some kind of trouble.”

“That will change once you learn how to harness your powers.”

“How? How can I learn that?”

“Study with me. I will show you the way.”

I reach my hand under the table to grope about in my pocket. I pull out my wallet and sigh. “I haven’t got much,” I say, holding out a single bill folded lengthwise to let me know it’s a twenty, “but I’d still like to learn.”

“Payment is not required,” Miss Teak says with a tinge of reproach. “The universe has sent me to you. It has declared that I must help you in your quest.”

“My quest? This is all starting to sound a little bit Knights of the Round Table. And what do you mean ‘the universe sent you to me’?” I’m having a hard time taking any of this seriously, especially when Miss Teak says things like that. Everything she says and does feels like a whole lot of smoke and mirrors. How do I know she can help me any more than I can help myself? I almost stand up to leave, but then I think of Simmi. I can’t risk going it on my own when her life is at stake. I just can’t. Miss Teak continues, and I listen more intently now, trying to tell her with my mind that I need to talk about Simmi more than anything else.

“It is not by chance I arrived in this town at precisely the time you needed guidance,” she says, apparently unaware of my internal struggle. She stands and paces to the other side of the small inner sanctuary.

“Why would the universe send you all the way here to help me? This doesn’t make any sense. I’m nobody special.”

“Ah, but you are,” Miss Teak says as she strikes a match across the door frame.

For some reason, I’m queasy.

Miss Teak lights a sweet-smelling stick of incense and waves the ember about in the air.

The smoke gets in my eyes, and they tear up. “I don’t understand,” I say, wiping at the trace of salt water forming in the corner of my eye.

“You will,” Miss Teak says, opening the vault-like door to the outer shop to let out some of the smoke.

My heart’s pounding even though all I’m doing is sitting on a comfortable chair inside a small, strange shop.

“Hello?” a voice calls from the front doorway. Miss Teak’s shop doesn’t have a greeting bell like Mom’s.

“Yes, enter,” Miss Teak responds, fixing the incense into a holder, concentrating the source of the fragrance.

The footsteps trace across the floor to the back room. “Oh, Alex,” Simmi says. “There you are. I was worried when you didn’t return after lunch. Is…” she hesitates and starts again. “Is everything okay?”

“It’s okay,” I say, motioning my head toward Miss Teak. “She already knows what happened.”

Simmi comes up behind me and runs her fingers idly along the top of my chair, causing my heart to flutter. “What
did
happen, Alex?”

“Nothing,” I say, wondering how I can avoid telling her about what I witnessed and also avoid lying to her. “I just, uh, heard something that wasn’t there.” I clear my throat, trying to break her focus from my lunchtime episode.

“Are you sure you’re all right?” she presses again.

“Cross my heart.” I make the corresponding gesture—Mom taught me this one when I was a little kid.

“That’s good to hear,” Simmi says, tapping my shoulder.

Although Simmi only touched my shoulder for a second, a spot of warmth continues to pulse from the place where she made contact—a soothing, comforting flow of reassurance and strength.

“I brought you the notes and work from our afternoon classes. You missed lab,” she says, placing a few scattered pages onto the table in front of me.

“Yeah, sorry. I’ll be there tomorrow, promise.”

“You better,” she teases. “Hey, I think your mom was looking for you. She wasn’t sure where you had gone.”

“Oh, yeah. Sorry, Miss Teak.” I project my voice to make sure she hears. I’m not sure where she went when Simmi entered the shop. “I’ve got to go.”

“Yes, you’d better if your mother’s looking for you. We wouldn’t want her to worry,” Miss Teak says from her place against the wall a few feet away. “Be here tomorrow,” she says—an order, not a question.

Chapter 5

The traveler’s path will intersect with another’s. Like it or not, he must carry forth with his new companions. He may even learn of a better route by following their lead.

The next day, Mom decides to open shop early, which means Dad will be driving me to school. I get ready slowly in my feeble attempt to delay the inevitable. All the while, I’m thinking about Miss Teak, Simmi, and even Shapri a little bit. They all came into my life at the same time these strange hallucinations first occurred. Is this just a coincidence? How do I know Miss Teak isn’t manipulating me in order to get me to carry out some of her psychic dirty work? What would psychic dirty work even entail? I shiver, as I so often do when thinking about Miss Teak.

 “Alex, get over here, or you’re going to be late for school,” Dad yells from across the house.

I groan and lace up my boots so quickly I miss a hole. “Coming,” I yell back, grabbing my cane, my backpack, and my jacket—the season’s just beginning to change, so I’m not sure whether I need the extra layer or not. I’d rather be hot than cold, so I sling the jacket over my shoulder as I rush down the hall.

“Let’s go,” Dad says, as I bound into the kitchen. “What took you so long?” he snarls.

Well, if not himself lately, at least Dad’s being consistent—consistently a major jerk. I ignore his question and open the fridge to grope about in the door searching for one of Mom’s diet breakfast drinks. My hand lands on the thickly insulated can. I pull it out of the fridge, give it a quick shake, and flip the tab. I take a drink and gag. This is the cardboard vanilla flavor, not the okay-tasting chocolate I had hoped for. Why does Mom even buy the vanilla? Yuck. I’ve either got to finish this or have nothing for breakfast, so I use my fingers to hold my nose and down the whole disgusting thing in a single gulp.

“Can we go now?” Dad asks. Boy, he’s impatient today.

“Y-yeah,” I say, a bit nauseated. I drag my sleeve across my lips to remove any remaining liquid cardboard residue and follow Dad out into the driveway. He barely gives me enough time to close the van’s door before he accelerates, jolting the poor, tired vehicle away faster than it’s meant to go.

“C’mon, c’mon,” Dad mutters under his breath as the car gives signs of a possible rebellion.

I smirk. Guess the van and I have similar allegiances these days.

“Hey, you seem upset lately,” Dad says, changing his tone. “What’s been going on?” If I didn’t know better, I’d think he sounded genuinely concerned for my wellbeing.

“Oh, you know. Just busy with the new school year and falling a bit behind because of the fight and being sick yesterday. I’m much better today,” I say, patting my chest in what I hope is a display of the virile strength of youth.

Dad grunts in affirmation.

Good. He bought my explanation. No way am I telling him about my feelings for Simmi or about the hallucinations or about spending time with Miss Teak and Shapri. Absolutely no way.

Dad coughs and chokes on some spittle, like something on the road has surprised him. “So, you made any new friends?” he asks in a strained voice. “Or how about girls? Any cute new girls at school this year?”

“No,” I affirm. “No friends, no girls. Just some very interesting classes.” I’m not telling Dad about Simmi, and what is going on with that accent of his anyway? It comes out more often than not now, when he used to only slip-up on rare occasions.

Dad inhales. He’s probably about to go into some unprovoked rant or long-winded story.