When
Authors: Victoria Laurie
Copyright © 2015 by Victoria Laurie
Cover design by Tyler Nevins
Cover photo of main girl © Aleshyn Andrei/Shutterstock
Photos of background figures (from left to right): Ostill, Kamenetskiy Konstantin, Kamenetskiy Konstantin, Mimage Photography, Kamenetskiy Konstantin, Radu Razvan/Shutterstock
All rights reserved. Published by Hyperion, an imprint of Disney Book Group. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or
mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without written permission from the publisher. For information address Hyperion, 125 West End
Avenue, New York, New York 10023.
ISBN 978-1-4847-1147-7
For Brian
May my own date come many years from now,
exactly one day before yours.
<3
I’M NOT EXACTLY SURE WHEN
I first started seeing the numbers. My earliest memories are filled with snatches of familiar and unfamiliar faces, each
with a set of small black digits floating like shadows just above their foreheads. The clearest first memory I have of seeing them comes from a muggy summer morning when Dad was sitting across the
table from me, already dressed for his mid-morning shift. I remember the blue of his shirt perfectly matching the color of his eyes. That morning the city traffic was loud, streaming in through
windows fully open to allow for even the faintest breeze. I was probably three or four—four, I think—and he was showing me on a piece of paper how to draw numbers and what to call
them.
I already knew my shapes—circle, square, triangle—so I picked up on the lesson really fast, and I thought Dad was finally revealing the secret. The secret of why those odd little
figures kept hovering right above everyone’s foreheads.
He taught me one, two, and three; I was so excited. But the elusive number was nine. We went through so many others to get to it, and finally it had a name. I remember repeating it out
loud—the last piece of the puzzle in place—and I pointed to him triumphantly and shouted, “Nine-two-three-two-circle-circle-four!”
Then I laughed and laughed, and I remember thinking he’d be so proud of me for saying his numbers back to him. But when I’d settled down, I saw that he had the most puzzled look on
his face. He was smiling with me, but also confused.
The memory is bittersweet. I can still see his face so clearly in my mind, the blue of his eyes, the black of his hair, the crook to his nose, and those numbers permanently etched onto his
forehead. Small black gravestones against a pale white landscape.
It took us a couple of years to figure out what they meant. Actually, it took two years and one day too many.
Ma was the first one to put it together. I remember it was a Tuesday, because in my first-grade class we had show-and-tell on Tuesdays. Jenny Beaumont (10-14-2074) had brought her collection of
Beanie Babies for us to pass around the circle, and I’d fallen in love with a little chipmunk. I’d been holding it greedily when Mrs. Lucas (2-12-2041) had to leave the circle to answer
the classroom phone and, almost before she’d turned to stare back at me with wide eyes, I’d known something bad was happening at home.
She rushed me into my coat and told me to go with my Uncle Donny (9-30-2062), who was waiting for me in the principal’s office. I hurried down the hall to him, and the moment he saw me he
scooped me up into his arms and ran to his car.
He’d driven so fast down the streets, and I could feel the whole car vibrating with fear. We came through the door of the apartment to find Ma, pale and trembling as she sat on the edge of
the couch and dialed Dad’s cell over and over and over. On the coffee table in front of her was a crayon sketch I’d made in kindergarten the year before of Ma, Dad, and me. I’d
drawn in all of our numbers, and Ma had proudly tacked it up on the fridge, where it’d gotten buried under other artwork, coupons, and love notes from Dad.
But that day, Ma had pulled the drawing down, circled the figure of my dad with a pencil, and while the TV broadcasted images of a standoff between a gang of drug dealers and the Brooklyn PD,
she’d kept dialing and dialing and dialing.
Donny sat down on the couch and pulled me into his arms, but all of his attention had been on that broadcast. I remember so vividly the images from a helicopter circling above a huge warehouse,
the chopper sending shaky images of men that looked like ants crawling over the rooftop while small sparks of gunfire flashed repetitively from the muzzles of their weapons The news reporter kept
saying there were multiple officers down, and even at six years old, I knew that scene meant terrible things for us.
We learned later that Dad had left his cell in his patrol car. He’d gone into that warehouse to back up his buddies in blue, and he’d never come out. I’ve since been haunted by
the feeling that Ma wasn’t the only one who’d put it together as she dialed and dialed and dialed. What if it’d finally clicked for Dad when he’d entered the building and
that hail of gunfire had erupted all around him? And more important…why hadn’t it clicked for me in time to save him?
That’s another question I can’t seem to answer.
How come I can see the exact date that someone will die, but nothing else about the how, where, or even why? What good does it do to know the when, if you can’t know at least one of the
other three?
Also, why am I seemingly the only person on earth who can see these numbers? Why did fate choose me for such a cruel gift?
It’s a question I’ve asked myself a million times, and I’m still looking for the answer. I think there may not be one, because knowing when someone will die has never changed
anything. I’ve never saved anybody or given them more time. I’m just the messenger.
That’s what Ma says to me all the time when one of my clients doesn’t take the news so well. Knowing that there’s nothing I can do to help them get more time still
doesn’t take the sting out of it, though.
I started reading for strangers a few years ago after Ma lost her part-time job. I knew she was really worried about money, so I didn’t argue with her when she proposed charging people for
telling them their deathdates. After a slow start, we now get about a dozen new customers a month.
There’s a little room at the back of the house, where Ma likes to seat them. The room is dim and gloomy. I never go in there unless I’ve got a client.
When I do a reading I have to focus on the forehead of the subject in question, and the numbers themselves are always the same: kinda small, less than a half an inch in size. They’re black
and thin but perfectly etched, like you’d see printed in an obituary. They hover over the foreheads of everyone I see—even in a photograph or video, they’re visible to me.
It’s why I don’t like going to the movies or watching a lot of TV. I know when every star in Hollywood will fall.
Because the numbers themselves are small and thin, I need to be within four or five feet of a person to clearly see their numbers, but if someone wears a hat, or has bangs or very dark skin, I
need to be even closer. Beyond five feet, the dates get fuzzy and start to look like wispy dots—unsightly smudges on otherwise unmarred faces. When I walk the halls of my high school those
smudges are a constant reminder that death is a mere squint away.
I try not to think about the people who don’t have a lot of years left. But it’s really hard. I’ll pass them in the halls at school, or see them around town, and I want to
wince when they go by; their numbers flashing over and over again in my mind like strobe lights at a traffic accident, daring me to walk past them and forget what I’ve seen.
It can be pretty hard to deal with, so, a few years ago I started a notebook where I’d write down all the deathdates for everyone I know or meet. I add about ten to fifteen names a
month—all my clients get listed, and it helps me cope.
When I first started seeing the numbers—these deathdates—they ran together as one long stream, but now my mind puts in the dashes.
6-28-2021. That’s Ma’s. I grew up knowing I’d be twenty-three when she died. Twenty-three is too young to be an orphan.
Still, it’s not like Ma takes care of herself. She smokes, she drinks, but mostly she doesn’t care. Not since Dad died.
A year after we lost him and moved from Brooklyn an hour and forty minutes north to Poplar Hollow, I began telling everybody I met what their deathdate was. I was a little seven-year-old on a
mission to save anybody I could. Not surprisingly, I didn’t save a soul. Instead, I got sent home with a note from my new second-grade teacher, Mrs. Gilbert (7-18-2006). She had cancer and
died the following summer, but she didn’t care to know that it was coming, and a few of the kids’ parents had complained. After that, Ma told me never to tell anybody their numbers
unless she said it was okay.
My neighbor, Mrs. Duncan—her number’s coming up really soon. 2-28-2015. She doesn’t know it yet, either, but I’m tempted to tell her. She’s a sweet old lady who
likes to redecorate her house every other month just for something to do and someone to talk to. I think she’d like to know that her time is almost up. I wouldn’t even charge her, which
might not make Ma happy if she found out, but business has been pretty good lately, and Ma said she’s thinking of upping the price for a reading from fifty bucks to seventy-five.
With Ma and me on our own with only the money from my dad’s wrongful-death settlement to pay the bills, most of what I bring in goes to cover extras like repairs to the house or food or
booze for Ma.
She’s been drinking a lot lately, which is why I’m hoping that business slows down. But that’s not likely. There are plenty of people out there who’re curious or
desperate or they simply want to prepare. Lots of my clients come to me with a list and a stack of photos, and they’ll ask about everyone in their family except themselves.
Others ask only about themselves. Most people want to know if they can change the date, if they can get more time. I tell them I don’t know. And that’s what kills me. It’d be
easier if I knew that the dates couldn’t be changed, that they’re set in stone as solid as the gravestone they’ll be printed on. If I knew for sure that a deathdate couldn’t
be changed, I think I’d feel less guilty about my dad.
Then I look at my mom, and I see her leaving me in only six years, and a weight settles onto my chest that makes it hard to breathe.