Grand & Humble (3 page)

But he wasn’t lost, not really. He took a deep breath of the stale air, trying to clear his head. He knew this city. Besides, he couldn’t have walked more than six or seven blocks. He just needed to keep walking until he came to a building or landmark that he recognized.

A pair of street signs materialized out of the fog. He had reached an intersection. The corner of Grand and Humble.

Everything was okay. Harlan knew this intersection. He hadn’t gone more than three blocks from the convention center. Maybe he’d been walking around in circles after all.

He stepped off the curb, into the crosswalk.

And right into the path of an oncoming bus.

Manny braced himself for the blow, but it didn’t come.

He looked around. He was standing on a wide, sandy beach in the middle of a scorcher of a day. But
was
it a beach? When he looked for the ocean, he didn’t see it. The sand sloped downward like a beach, and he definitely smelled the ocean, but there didn’t seem to be any water. How had he come to be in this place anyway? It was like he had just appeared here, as if in a dream.

And why was he bracing himself? Why had he been so certain there was a blow coming?

There were people near him, a man and woman in their late twenties. They definitely weren’t dressed for the beach. He was wearing a tuxedo, and she was wearing an elegant black dress. They were hurrying away from Manny, up the sand, and he couldn’t see
their faces. But they looked familiar somehow.

“Manny?” a voice said from behind.

It was his dad. He was dressed as a lifeguard—in red shorts and a white T-shirt that read “Lifeguard,” even with a whistle around his neck.

“Dad?” Manny said. “Why are you dressed like that?” His dad wasn’t a lifeguard; he worked as a paralegal.

“It doesn’t matter,” his dad said. “Come on, let’s eat.” He gestured toward a table in the sand. It had been set with a crisp white tablecloth, crystal goblets, and silver serving dishes. It looked nothing like a table his dad would set. It looked like a table that the man in the tuxedo and the woman in the dress would eat at. Why had his dad taken their table?

“This doesn’t look right,” Manny said. “I don’t think we should be here.”

“Why not?” his dad said, smiling. “Sit. Eat.” He guided Manny toward the table and set him down—firmly—into one of the two chairs. “Now eat.”

“But, Dad—”

The plate in front of Manny was covered with a lustrous silver lid. His dad lifted it. But it wasn’t food on the plate underneath; it was a pair of broken wire-rim glasses. The frames were bent and twisted, the lenses shattered.

“Dad?” Manny said, confused. “What
is
this?”

“What?” his dad said innocently. “Eat.” He poured something from a decanter into Manny’s crystal goblet; it looked and smelled like gasoline. “And drink.”

“But I can’t eat or drink that!” Manny said.

His dad didn’t answer. He wasn’t listening. He was staring over at the area where the ocean should have been, a blank expression on his face.

“Dad?” Manny said. “What is it?”

His dad turned to him and smiled again, but this time it was an unfamiliar grin—dark, unsettling. The instant Manny registered that smile, a shadow fell over them both, like something had blotted out the sun. Manny felt a rumble, heard a roar that grew louder by the second.

He glanced up. It wasn’t just the sun that had been blotted out. It was the entire sky.

Blotted out the sky? What could blot out the
sky?

Then he knew.
“Tidal wave!”
he shouted. That’s why there hadn’t been any ocean—it had all been sucked out into the massive wave! “We need to get out of here! We need to
run!
”

He glanced up at his dad again, but now his father’s face was all in shadows. Even so, and even over the roar of the wave, Manny could tell that his dad was laughing.

And then the wave crashed down on top of them.

At the instant of impact, Manny woke up. He sat up in bed. He was soaking wet, but not from any wave. From sweat.

Manny shuffled into the kitchen feeling like the Mummy—the shambling, lethargic mummy from the original movies in the 1930s, not the agile, computer-animated one from the crappy remakes.

“Well,” his dad said, seated at the table, looking up from his newspaper. “You look like hell.”

“Uh-huh,” Manny said, pouring a cup of tea from a pot on the counter. It had been a good four hours since he’d woken up from the nightmare—of course he hadn’t been able to get back to sleep—but it still felt weird to be with his dad. The strangest thing about the dream was how out of character his dad had acted. Now it felt like one of those movie scenes when the character thinks he’s awake, but is really still in the nightmare. Manny almost expected his dad to leap up from the table brandishing the knife from
Psycho
.

“Another nightmare, huh?” his dad said.

Manny nodded, searching for a clean plate.

“And to think you could be dreaming about sex like most teenage boys.”

“Dad,” Manny said. “Do you mind?”

“What? You don’t wanna talk about sex with your dad? Why in the world not?”

“Dad!” But Manny couldn’t keep from smiling. The truth was, his dad was the opposite of nightmarish. He was best described as boyish—clean-shaven and bouncy, often impetuous, more like an older brother than a dad. Of course, that didn’t mean he couldn’t also be strict, like the time he wouldn’t let Manny and Elsa go to that
Xena: Warrior Princess
convention in Pasadena, California. But at least he always let Manny make his case. Manny’s dad was pretty much the perfect authority figure—someone who had actually earned, and
deserved
, respect.

“I had a dream too,” his dad was saying. “I was the Head Munchkin, and I had to deny membership in the Lollipop Guild to the Keebler Elves.”

Okay, so maybe the Munchkin dream didn’t make Manny’s dad sound like some awesome authority figure. But the fact that he was willing to say things like that was exactly what made Manny’s dad so great. He also loved to cook, kept houseplants, even hugged his son. Manny had always wondered what it meant that he had such an emotionally accessible dad; was that what had made him one of the arty-fruity types at school? He also wondered how his dad had ended
up such a nontraditional guy. Was it because he’d had to be both father and mother to Manny? Manny’s mom had died when Manny was two months old. Skin cancer, his dad had said once. It was one of the things Manny and his dad didn’t talk about—one of the very few things.

“So,” his dad said, suddenly all ears. “Tell me about
your
dream.”

Manny glanced at the clock on the stove. “Shouldn’t you be on your way to work?”

His dad sipped his tea. “I can be a little late. Come on.
Talk
.”

Manny dished up two fried eggs from the pan on the stove. “I got creamed by a tidal wave.”

“I think I’m detecting a pattern. What was it last night? A herd of elephants? And before that, it was a locomotive. Didn’t you actually get hit by a falling safe once? Or maybe it was an anvil.”

“There was one thing different,” Manny said.

“Really? Do tell.”

“You were in it.”

“Me? What’d I do?”

Manny considered lying, but he didn’t seem to be able to do that to his dad. “Well, it’s not real flattering.”

“For you or for me?”

“Never mind.”

“Me, huh? Hmmmm. Well, what’d I do?”

Manny took a seat at the table across from him. “You laughed at me.”

Manny’s dad just listened.

So Manny told him the dream—the well-dressed couple hurrying away; the plate of broken eyeglasses; the way his dad, dressed as a lifeguard, had laughed when the wave was crashing down on top of them. Maybe his dad could tell him what all this meant; he had a pretty good instinct about these things.

“So?” Manny said when he was done. “What do you think?”

His dad didn’t answer right away. He was staring out the window. It was hard to tell what he was thinking. He wasn’t even drinking his tea. Manny couldn’t help but be reminded of the part of the nightmare when his dad had stopped and stared blankly out at the approaching tidal wave. At first he thought his dad was now trying to be funny—except then Manny remembered that he hadn’t told his dad that part of the dream.

“Dad?”

Suddenly his dad stood up from the table. “Oh, God, I just remembered! I gotta drop off some dry cleaning.” Was it Manny’s imagination, or was his
dad flustered? But he didn’t get
flustered
—not by beautiful women, not by patronizing car mechanics, not by anything.

“Dad?” Manny said. “Are you okay? I didn’t offend you or anything, did I?”

“Huh? You mean about the dream? Please.”

“But—”

“Manny, I really gotta go. ’Bye!”

And then his dad was gone. Manny sat at the kitchen table, alone, the fried eggs on his plate looking up at him like a pair of broken spectacles.

Manny squatted down on his haunches, staring at the bushy gray cat ten feet or so ahead of him on the sidewalk. He stretched out his hand and twiddled his fingers. The trick, he knew, was to let the animal come to you. Cats didn’t like their space invaded. Manny could relate.

He glanced at Elsa, who was waiting impatiently off to one side.
I can’t believe you!
she signed.
We can’t go anywhere without you stopping to pet the cats.

I can’t help it,
Manny signed.
I like cats. I think it’s rude to walk by and not say hi.

No kidding!

He gave his fingers another wiggle, but the cat looked warily at Elsa. So that was the problem. The
cat sensed Elsa was not a fan.

Just one more second
, Manny said to Elsa. Making contact with this particular cat called for extreme measures. Slowly, he started inching forward.

The cat turned and loped into the bushes.

Manny gave up, and they started walking again. It was easier to talk to Elsa somewhere inside, face-to-face, so they could read each other’s signs. But Manny couldn’t bear being inside right now.

Elsa tapped him on the arm. He turned to look at her.
You had another nightmare, didn’t you?
she signed.

How did you know?
he asked.

I can just tell. Wanna talk about it?

Actually
, he signed,
it’s not the nightmare that’s bugging me this time
.

Then what?

It’s this morning, when I told my dad about the dream. At first, he said he wanted to hear it. But when I told him, he acted really weird.

Elsa frowned.
Weird how?

I don’t know
, Manny said.
Nervous. Not like his usual self. Suddenly he couldn’t get away from me fast enough.

Maybe he’s having a bad day.

Yeah. Well, no. I mean, he
was
his usual self until I told him about the nightmare. That’s when he got weird.

Maybe you scared him
, Elsa said.
Something in the dream.

That’s what I think too. Because he was in this one
. He told Elsa about the nightmare.

Her eyes went wide.
That was your dream?

Yeah. Why?

Is that the way you feel about your dad? That he doesn’t listen to you? Or that he’s supposed to be protecting you from something, but isn’t?

No!
Manny said.
Not at all! My dad’s great. You know that.

That’s not the way the dream makes it sound.

Well, yeah. But it’s just a dream.

Even so
, Elsa said.
Maybe you offended him
.

Manny considered this.
Nah. My dad’s not like that. Besides, he knows how I feel about him
. He thought back on their interaction in the kitchen.
The worst part was, when I told him about the dream, it was like a little bit of it came true. He turned into this person I didn’t know at all. He stared out the window with this blank expression on his face, just like in the dream
.

Maybe he feels guilty
, Elsa signed.

About what?

She exaggerated a shrug—one of the many ways she added emphasis to her hand gestures.
Who knows
with parents? But it sounds like your dream hit a nerve. So what’s he done to you to feel guilty about? You two have any big arguments lately?

What Elsa was saying made sense, given his dad’s weird reaction. But his dad hadn’t done anything to feel guilty about—lately or ever. Manny shook his head again.
I don’t think so.

Maybe it’s something you don’t know about
, Elsa said.
Something he’s hiding. You should talk to him
.

Manny smiled.
Oh, come on! You know my dad. He couldn’t hide anything.
Or could he? Manny wondered.

Oh, no!
Elsa said, spotting something ahead of them.
Here we go again!

It was another cat—a sleek black one this time—sitting on the sidewalk right in front of them.

Go ahead
, Elsa said, rolling her eyes.
Say hi!

But now Manny wasn’t in any mood to pet a cat. Still, he knew it was expected. So he bent down again and held out his fingers.

This time the cat didn’t even consider investigating his hand. No, it took one look at Manny—and only Manny, not Elsa—and turned to run under the steps of a nearby house. Once there, it crouched in the shadows, glaring out at Manny with the wide eyes and arched back of outright fear.

Harlan stared at the dog. It was Derrick Anderson’s golden retriever, a Seeing Eye dog sitting obediently by his master’s locker just down the hallway. Harlan loved dogs. He loved their strength and confidence, and their sense of loyalty to their owners. (That loyalty was probably why his mom had never let him have one; she didn’t want anyone in the house who hadn’t sworn fealty to her.)

But Harlan wasn’t thinking about dogs just then. He was thinking about his near miss with that bus the previous Saturday night. It was just luck that he’d seen the bus and been able to pull himself back in time. If he hadn’t, it would have slammed right into him, and he’d be dead for sure. It was easily the closest he’d ever come to dying.

And he’d seen it all in advance. He’d had that
premonition in the swimming pool, the one of the swerving “van,” and it had come true. In other words, the strange mental pictures flashing through his brain weren’t just random images—they really were actual glimpses into the future!

They also hadn’t stopped. He was still experiencing the premonitions, each one a vision of his own death, each one different than before: Harlan trapped at the bottom of a slick-walled pit, Harlan plunging down a flight of massive stairs. None of these others had come true—yet!—but maybe that was only because he was back to avoiding any locations that were anything like ones he saw in his premonitions.

What was happening to him? Harlan couldn’t figure it out. Even if the premonitions really were glimpses into the future, why had his life suddenly become so dangerous?

“Hey,” Amber said, coming up to him in the hallway.

“Hey,” Harlan said, his eyes still on Derrick’s golden retriever. The premonition with the bus hadn’t
exactly
come true; after all, he’d managed to avoid getting hit. And none of the other disasters had come true either—so far. Did that mean that he was merely seeing
possible
futures—that nothing
was fixed and he could avoid them all if he tried hard enough?

“How are you?” Amber asked.

“Huh?” Harlan said. “Oh. Fine.” Or maybe the bus in the fog had just been a coincidence. It’s not like it was the first time he’d had a close call as a pedestrian. So maybe he was just suffering from some kind of hallucination. Not that that was a particularly comforting thought.

“Just for the record?” Amber said. “I’m fine too.”

He tore his eyes away from Derrick’s dog at last and turned to look at her. “Sorry. I’m a little preoccupied.”

“No kidding. Been that way a lot lately. What’s wrong?”

“What?”

“Something’s wrong. What is it?”

He tried to laugh it off. “Nothing’s wrong. What makes you think something’s wrong?”

“Oh, I don’t know. How about the fact that you just spent the last ten minutes staring off into space?”

Harlan blushed. Had anyone else noticed? He glanced around. People were looking over at him, but that didn’t mean anything. He was Harlan Chesterton; people were always staring at him.

“It’s nothing,” Harlan said to Amber. “Just thinking about Woodburn’s lecture.”

“The Scarlet Letter?”

“Huh? Oh. Yeah.” In-flippin’-credible. He had taken an already pitiful lie and actually made it sound even worse. He wasn’t just losing his edge; it was long gone.

“Harlan,” Amber said, already sounding weary. “I’m supposed to be your girlfriend. If you can’t tell me the truth, why are we even together?”

The truth? No way could he tell her the truth. That he “saw” future disasters? He hadn’t believed it at first; why should she?

“Harlan?”

“What?”

She just stared at him. He had to say something. If he didn’t, she was going to make some kind of scene, probably eventually break up with him. That wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world, but Harlan knew he didn’t have the mental energy to deal with it anytime soon.

“It’s my parents,” Harlan said. There. That was something that was bothering him. It was “the truth.”

“What about ’em?”

Harlan released a heavy sigh. “They don’t let me live my own life.”

“Of course not. They’re your parents. What else is new?”

She started to turn away, but Harlan stopped her. “No. It’s more than that. She picks my shirts. Hell, she’s already picked out the state congressional district where I’m supposed to run for my first office when I graduate from college.”

“Parents suck. But hey, it’s not like yours are making you sleep in a closet.”

“Come on, Amber. You know what I’m talking about. I mean, would it be such a terrible thing if I didn’t go into politics?”

“You, not going into politics?”

“Yeah.”

“Hel-looo! Student Body President!”

“That’s not politics. That’s a popularity contest.”

“Harlan, have you watched the news lately? What do you think politics is?”

“This isn’t about politics. It’s about the fact that I don’t get any say.”

“Okay,” Amber said. “What if you did have a choice? What do you wanna do?”

Harlan thought for a second, then shook his head. “I don’t know. I’m seventeen years old. Why do I have to know? Why do I have to know anything?”

“Harlan.” There was a strange edge to Amber’s
voice. “Stop it. You’re weirding me out.”

He stared at her. She was actually serious. This talk, questioning his life, was unsettling her. Amber had signed up to be the girlfriend of the Senator’s Son, the Student Body President, the confident rake who never questioned anything. Now he was changing, and that upset her.

Could she really be that shallow? And how had he never noticed that before?

“Hey!” Amber said, suddenly as light as a soap bubble. “I have an idea!”

“What?”

“Jerry Blain’s having a party this weekend! His parents are going to Morocco.”

“So?”

“So let’s go! ’Kay?”

A party. That was the last place in the world Harlan wanted to be. It annoyed him that Amber couldn’t see this. Or maybe she could see it and this was some kind of test: was he still the boyfriend she’d hooked up with, or was he already too far gone?

“Amber, I don’t know.”

“Harlan.”
An actual whine. How had he also never noticed how much Amber whined?

“Okay, fine,” he said. “We’ll go to the damn party.”

“Dude!”
Ricky said, beer bottle in hand. “You
came!
”

It was Saturday night, at Jerry Blain’s party, at Jerry’s parents’ house out on the lake. Make that
mansion
out on the lake. True, Harlan went to a public school, but only because it looked better to the voters. It was the newest, richest public high school in the city—his mom had made sure of that.

Anyway, a promise was a promise. Now here Harlan was, right by Amber’s eager side. It was crowded, but not as mobbed as he’d expected. And the blaring music sounded slightly out of beat. Even the lights seemed unusually bright. Everything about this party was just a little off. Except, Harlan knew, it was really him that was off.

“Why’d you think I wouldn’t come?” Harlan asked Ricky. Amber had already run off with her friends to giggle and do Jell-O shots.

“I dunno,” Ricky said. “You just seem like you have a lot on your mind lately.”

So Ricky knew something was up. Harlan wasn’t surprised—Ricky had always been perceptive. Was it because he was gay? Ricky had come out the year before, in an article in the school newspaper. He’d even managed to stay popular, at least with girls. It helped that Ricky was a jock. And that he had never,
ever, not once, mentioned having a boyfriend, or that he found any particular guy good-looking, not even a singer or movie actor. Even in private to Harlan, supposedly his best friend.

“It’s nothing,” Harlan said. “Parent stuff. Hey, you ready for Wednesday’s swim meet?” They were up against Harriet Tubman High School, one of their team’s most notorious rivals.

But before Ricky could answer, Amber was back by Harlan’s side, excited about something. “Hey, come here!” she said. “There’s something I want you to see!”

Harlan looked at Ricky. “What’s going on?”

Ricky shrugged. “Some game or somethin’.”

Harlan let Amber lead him into the front room. A group of people had gathered around the glass coffee table, where someone had set up a Ouija board.

“Jeez,” mumbled Ricky, who had followed behind. “Not a Ouija board.”

Amber pulled him toward the table. “Come on, Harlan! Let’s do it!”

It was a classic Harlan Chesterton moment. A couple of weeks earlier, Harlan knew he would have taken a seat at that board, asked a question, then spelled out some incredibly witty remark. It all would have come to him without thought, effortlessly. And
it would have been so funny that people would still be talking about it the whole week following:
Can you
believe
what Harlan spelled out on that Ouija board!

But now he felt strange, on the spot.

“What?” Harlan said. “No, Amber. Let someone else go. I wanna get a beer.”

“Oh, come on! Don’t be like that.” She knew a Harlan Chesterton moment when she saw it too. All she wanted was a little of that old Harlan magic.

And now—thanks to Amber—everyone was calling for him, egging him on.

“Hey, Har,” Ricky said casually. “Come here, you gotta see the hot tub in the backyard.” So Ricky saw his discomfort and was trying to rescue him.

“He’s busy!” Amber snapped at Ricky. “Come on, Harlan. Just try it.”

In other words, even Ricky couldn’t save him now.

Harlan approached the board. “I thought these things were supposed to be satanic,” he said.

“Satanic? Us?” said Jerry Blain. “We’d never do anything
satanic
.” He turned and called into the kitchen. “Hey, Beekman, bring me another bottle of babies’ blood!”

Everyone laughed except Harlan. It was a funny
line, well delivered, but Harlan wasn’t used to being the straight man for other people’s jokes.

“Who’s going with him?” Rachel Jones asked.

“Let me, let me!” Amber said. She practically leaped toward the board.

Harlan knelt down across the table from her. In the upper left corner of the Ouija board, there was a picture of the sun alongside the word “Yes” in the upper right corner, there was a crescent moon with the word “No.” In the middle of the board, two arced rows spelled out every letter in the alphabet, and underneath the letters was a straight row of numbers. On the board’s surface, a big plastic pointer rested on three raised felt tips. Thanks to SAT Prep, Harlan knew that this was called a planchette, and that it supposedly spelled out mystical messages.

“Look,” Ricky said, nodding to some writing on the bottom of the board. “The game’s made by Milton Bradley. Oh, now that
is
scary!”

Everyone laughed; this time, Harlan laughed too. Good ol’ Ricky.

He lifted his hands and rested his fingers lightly on his half of the plastic pointer.

And immediately knew he’d made a mistake. He could already feel it—a strange electricity in the air. Milton Bradley or not, this board could very well
bring on another premonition. Or maybe it was all in his mind. Either way, Harlan wanted out.

“It’s not moving,” Harlan said, pulling his hands away. “Oh well!”

People chuckled. It wasn’t really funny, but when people expect you to be a cutup, they pretty much laugh at anything you say. At least at first.

“Don’t be stupid!” Amber said, and Harlan was keenly aware that she never would have spoken to him like that before, especially in public. “We have to ask it a question.”

“So ask it a question,” Harlan mumbled, resting his fingers back on the pointer. He wasn’t going to have a premonition; he wouldn’t let himself. There was too much at stake.

“Let’s see,” Amber said, thinking, putting her fingers on the pointer too. “I know! Will Harlan ever be elected president of the United States?”

He glared at her across the board. This was her way of goading him after what he’d said earlier in the week about not wanting to go into politics. Not only had he never noticed how much Amber whined, he had also never noticed just what a colossal bitch she was.

The plastic pointer jerked under his fingers.

“Ooooo!” said Brian Meyer.

“Harlan!” Amber said. “Knock it off.”

Harlan wanted to take credit for moving the planchette, especially hearing the genuine unease in Amber’s voice. But he hadn’t done anything. He hadn’t even been
thinking
about doing anything. He’d been glaring at Amber at the time.

The pointer jerked again.

“Harlan!” Amber said. “Stop!”

“I’m not doing it!” Harlan said, which was a mistake. Amber saw the look in his eyes. She knew he was telling the truth, that this wasn’t the setup for some hilarious gag.

Then Harlan realized: if
he
wasn’t moving the pointer and if
Amber
wasn’t moving the pointer, who was?

No, he thought. That was crazy. Amber
had
to be moving it. What other explanation was there?

“It’s moving!” someone said.

Sure enough, it was moving again, lurching awkwardly across the board. Everyone leaned forward at exactly the same time, even Ricky.

The pointer slid at an angle, toward the upper-right-hand corner, the one with the moon. It really did feel to Harlan like neither he nor Amber was moving it. But wasn’t that what everyone said when they were using a Ouija board?

“It’s heading for the ‘No’!” Jerry said. He spoke the rest of his thought directly to Harlan. “Sorry, buddy, looks like there’s no Oval Office in your future. But look at it this way—at least now you don’t have to worry about how you spend your weekends in college!”

“It’s not heading for the ‘No,’” Rachel said. “It’s stopping at the letters.”

The pointer
was
stopping, in the middle of the lower arc of letters. It came to rest so it was pointing right between the “T” and the “U”—the Ouija board limbo between letters.

“What does that mean?” someone said.

“It’s meaningless,” someone else said. “Ask another question.”

“Wait!” Rachel said. The pointer was sliding again, but not far, just to the upper row of letters.