When (10 page)

I nodded, and we got up and snaked our way over. While we were moving, I hoped that Aiden wouldn’t look up and see me making my way closer to him—I didn’t want to be
that
girl.

Still, I felt brave with Stubby next to me. At last we were settled again and we both smiled to each other. Mission accomplished. I felt a warmth bubble up in my middle, and I couldn’t
seem to stop smiling. “We gotta be cool,” Stubby said, clearly fighting a grin of his own.

Nearby the cheerleaders were all chatting and gossiping happily to one another, and much of the attention was centered on Payton. There was a timeout from the Poplar Hollow side, and the teams
gathered around their coaches, allowing us to hear some of what the cheer squad was saying.

“You’re
so
lucky,” said one girl to Payton. “I can’t believe you’re getting a freaking
car
for your birthday!”

“It’s only because the ’rents are feeling guilty about moving me out here right before my junior year,” Payton replied, like getting a car for her birthday wasn’t a
huge deal. “I mean, I love it here and all, but
they
don’t have to know that, right?” All the girls laughed.

“When are you getting it?” another girl asked.

“Next Wednesday, on my birthday!” Payton said, so pleased with herself and the attention that I couldn’t understand how it didn’t turn Stubby off. “I get the keys
right after school, and about two seconds after that I’ll be picking you bitches up to do some major damage to my dad’s credit card!”

The girls all shrieked and giggled, and I couldn’t help but feel that if my dad were alive, no way would I say something that stupid and shallow. But when Stubby turned to grin at me, I
shoved a smile onto my lips and nodded like I was happy and excited for Payton, too.

A whistle blew then, and the teams broke their huddle and started to head back toward the center of the field. I snuck a peek at Aiden and saw that he was looking and grinning at me again. I
felt my cheeks heat, and shyly glanced away, secretly thrilled. Pretending to take an interest in the crowd, I froze when my gaze landed on someone familiar. All those warm, gushy feelings
I’d had a moment before vanished, and my blood ran cold. Staring hard at me was none other than Agent Wallace, who was sitting midway up in the stands. Right next to him was Agent Faraday,
who was busy looking at the field.

Immediately, I snapped my head to face forward again and slapped a hand on Stubby’s arm. “What?” he asked.

But I was too unnerved to speak. I couldn’t believe the two agents had managed to follow us to the game and even stalked us to the visiting team’s bleachers. I didn’t know what
to do.

“Hey, look, they’re starting!” Stubs said, his attention already back on Payton.

Sure enough, Jupiter’s squad was spreading out in the small section between the stands and the field, and they began to clap their hands and stomp their feet. Meanwhile, my mind was
racing, and I felt like I had to get out of there, but wouldn’t the feds simply follow me? Wouldn’t rushing out of the stands call attention to me? And what if Aiden was watching? Would
he see the panicked look on my face? I couldn’t risk glancing over at him.

Next to me I heard Stubby’s breath catch, and I realized that Payton was still sidestepping to the right, coming nearer and nearer to where we sat. She stopped in front of us. And then the
most horrible thing happened. She was maybe four and a half feet away from me—near enough to see the color of her eyes and read the date on her forehead.

For a moment I was so stunned I couldn’t even breathe, and then our eyes met and the expression on her face became confused.

But I couldn’t look away from her; that date on her forehead lifted off her olive skin and hovered in the air as if to taunt me. “Oh God!” I gasped, and jumped to my feet,
bolting to the stairs leading down to the side of the field. I didn’t stop until I was out in the parking lot, but from there I didn’t quite know where to go. I felt panicked and
shaken, and like my whole world was being pulled apart by a black hole of little numbers.

Stubs caught up with me, wheezing and coughing as he pulled out his inhaler. “What’s…wrong?”

Stubby has bad asthma, and I knew that his attacks were sometimes brought on by stress, but this was too big and I was too freaked out to keep it to myself. “It’s Payton,” I
said, pacing anxiously back and forth in front of him.

“What about her?” Stubby asked, his breathing settling down a little.

I stopped and looked anxiously toward the stands.

“Maddie? Come on, tell me.”

My gaze shifted back to Stubby. “I saw her deathdate.”

He squinted at me.
“Annnnnnd?”

“It’s next week.”

Stubby’s mouth fell open. “No!”

I could only stand there and hold his gaze. I wasn’t wrong. “Eleven-twelve, twenty fourteen,” I said.

“You got it wrong,” Stubby replied, but then he seemed to reconsider the date. “Wait, Maddie, that’s…that’s next Wednesday—her birthday. Maybe you saw her
birthday
and not her
deathday
.”

I pressed my lips together. I never see birthdays. I only see death.

Stubby turned and eyed the visiting team’s side of the field. “We have to warn her,” he said, and I could tell he was about to run back and do just that.

I caught his arm and squeezed it hard. “You can’t!”

Stubby tried to shake me off, but I wasn’t letting go. “Maddie, we
have
to!”

Still, I was determined. “Stubs, please listen to me for a minute, will you?!” Finally he stopped fighting and stared at me expectantly. I pointed toward the bleachers with my free
hand. “Faraday and Wallace followed us here. They’re up in the stands right now.”

Stubby paled even more. “How did they find you?”

I began to pace again. “I don’t know. Maybe they saw me leave the house out the back door, or maybe they had a hunch, but they’re here. If we go back and tell Payton that
she’s going to die next week, don’t you think that’ll look really,
really
bad to them?”

“Then you stay here and I’ll go!” Stubby said, turning away from me.

I clamped down on his arm once more and wouldn’t let go. Getting right up into his face I said, “Stubs, stop! You have to think! I mean, Faraday and Wallace
know
you.
They’ve even
talked
to you! They also know that we’re best friends and we hang out together. If you go back there and say something to Payton and she ends up dying next
Wednesday, they’ll know it came from me! Remember what Donny said? He said under
no
circumstances can I tell anybody their date!”

Stubby stood back and simply stared at me as if he couldn’t believe what was coming out of my mouth. “We’re really gonna let her
die
? Mads…come
on
! She’s
getting that new car next week! What if she goes cruising with her friends, and she gets distracted and loses control of the car, and then some of them die, too?”

I hadn’t been close enough to the other girls to see their deathdates. There could be more than one casualty next Wednesday. I balled my hands into fists, so frustrated because I
didn’t know what to do.

“We have to warn her,” Stubby repeated more gently this time as he laid a hand on my shoulder. “I mean, we didn’t try hard enough with Tevon, and look what happened to
him.”

I winced as if he’d struck me. “Ouch.”

Stubby immediately lifted both hands in surrender. “Sorry, sorry, sorry.”

I sighed. “No. You’re right. We can’t sit back and do nothing. We’ll warn her, but not here and not now.”

Stubs frowned. He didn’t like my answer. “Then when and how?”

“We have a couple of days. I’m pretty sure we can figure out how to get an anonymous message to her.”

“She’ll think it’s a joke,” he countered, looking again to the field.

“And what do you think she’ll decide if you go marching up to her right now and say, ‘Gee, not to upset you or anything, but you’re going to die on your birthday. Just
thought you should know!’”

Behind us the roar of the crowd erupted again, but this time it was from the Poplar Hollow side.

Stubby stood there looking at the field for a long time, and I could tell he was wavering about what to do. “I promise you,” I told him, “we’ll figure out a way to warn
her, Stubs. On my life I promise you, but please, not here and not now, okay? Let’s think of another place and time when there aren’t so many people around and in a way that
doesn’t lead back to us.”

Stubby stared hard at me and sighed, then he looked down and kicked at the ground. “She can’t die, Maddie. We have to save her.”

I didn’t immediately reply because I had no idea what to say. If mere words could prevent someone from dying, then my dad would still be alive and so would Tevon Tibbolt. Still, after a
long stretch of silence, what I said was, “I know, buddy, I know. But you have to trust me on this. We can’t say anything to her tonight.”

“Whatever,” he grumbled, turning away from me. “Let’s get outta here.”

I tried not to feel the sting of that cold shoulder, but it was hard. It got harder still when Stubby dropped me off in front of my house and without another word sped away. I knew he
wasn’t angry with me per se, but it felt like he was, and I wished very much that I’d waited to tell him until after the game. I didn’t know how we were going to warn Payton
without it coming back to me. I vowed to call Stubs in the morning and talk about it, but when I walked inside I found Ma on the floor, passed out cold. I cried out as I dropped to her side,
momentarily panicked by finding her on the floor facedown. Grabbing her wrist, I felt for a pulse, and glimpsed an empty liter of vodka lying under the coffee table.

I closed my eyes in relief as I felt her pulse, which was slow but steady. When I strained, I could hear her breathing rhythmically, too.

With a tired sigh I got to work cleaning up, and then moved Ma to the couch. It took me a while because she was completely limp, but at last I got her situated and covered with the afghan. And
then I stood in the doorway of the kitchen looking at her lying there on our beat-up old leather couch in a room that smelled like cigarettes, with dingy blue walls, and taupe carpeting littered
with stains. I shut my eyes to block out the sight and thought about Aiden and how he’d smiled at me and mouthed the word
Hi
.

In an instant what’d filled me with such sunny happiness clouded over with a threatening storm. I opened my eyes and looked again at Ma and our house, and I knew that no boy would ever
want to get close to a girl like me. A girl who lived in a house with threadbare carpeting and dingy walls that smelled like an ashtray. A girl who saw death in every face. Who was labeled a witch
at school. Who had a drunk for a mother, and a father who’d died in a gunfight with drug dealers. A girl who was being investigated for murder by the FBI.

I was like a whirlpool of tragedy, and anybody who dared to get too close to me could get sucked in and drown. Like I was drowning right now.

And I knew that it would never be better. Our house would continue to slowly fall down around us. I would always see death. People at school would always think I was a witch. Ma would always be
drunk. Tevon Tibbolt would always be dead, and so would my dad.

For years Aiden had been like the sun to me, shining brightly from the Jupiter sidelines. Tonight, for a brief moment, his star had nearly banished all of the misery right out of my world. But I
finally realized that I should probably let go of living in the fantasy that a boy as beautiful as him could meet a girl like me and feel anything other than pity. I needed to accept that this was
my reality, and nothing was ever going to change it.

With a heavy heart, I climbed the stairs to bed.

THAT WEEKEND WAS TERRIBLE.
Stubby remained distant and didn’t call or even send a text all day Saturday. Not that I really noticed, because my
hands were full with Ma. She had a really bad day looking online, trying to find a job, when there didn’t seem to be anything good available.

Then I caught her on the phone with Donny, asking him if I could just do a few readings a month, and he’d blown a gasket. I could hear him yell at her all the way across the room. After a
few minutes, she slammed the phone down and headed straight for her stash. “Ma!” I snapped, once I saw her filling the big plastic cup. I couldn’t take it anymore. “If
you’re going to get a job, don’t you think you should try and cut back a little?”

She glared hard at me, and before I knew it we were yelling at each other. Getting angry had never gotten Ma off the bottle, but I couldn’t help it. I yelled and yelled at her, and then I
threw my hands up and headed upstairs. When I came back down a few hours later I realized she’d left.

I checked the pantry, and sure enough, all the vodka was gone, which implied she’d taken off to replenish the stock. But by seven o’clock she still wasn’t back, and I had a bad
feeling.

I went to the front window and peered out. I hadn’t seen that familiar black sedan all day—it seemed that my least-favorite agents took Saturdays off. Next, I checked the garage, and
thankfully Dad’s vintage T-Bird was still inside. Neither one of us was allowed to drive it because we couldn’t afford the insurance after Ma got her second DUI and lost her license,
but Ma refused to sell it even though we really needed the money. She and Dad had had their first date in that car, and I think she was convinced that someday she’d get her license back and
come up with the money for the insurance and be back to driving it again. Still, I knew that sometimes, when she was really missing Dad, and she was sick of taking the bus everywhere, she would
sneak out and take it for a spin. It scared me because Ma was never sober. She woke up and the first thing she did was pour vodka into her morning coffee. All those agents had to do was call the
cops, and Ma would go to jail and CPS would be back at our door.