Future Flash

by Kita Helmetag Murdock

  “Axel Johnson,” Ms. Fontane says, stopping the music yet again. “That is unacceptable.”

  “I think it’s just Lyle, Ms. Fontane,” Axel replies with a grin. “He has this effect on people.”

  Now it’s Lyle’s turn to stare down at his sneakers. Unlike mine, his jeans and shoes look brand new. I imagine his mom taking him out to buy a new outfit to get him ready for the first day of school, full of hope that things will be different here.

  Ms. Fontane just shakes her head. “Let’s try again from the beginning.”

  I’ve made things worse for Lyle than they already were. No, we’ve made things worse for each other. I’m not having a future flash, but I know exactly what is going to happen. So much for flying under the radar. I have no choice. I am going to be forced to stick with Lyle. I’m going to have to protect him, to prevent him from walking into that fire, and to stop whatever happened that made him and the thing on the floor drip with blood. Thinking of that is terrible enough, but then there’s the obvious questions: Will that even help? Can I stop something I’ve already seen in the future? I’ve never tried to prevent a future flash from occurring in real life because I’ve never seen anything so horrific before.

  My stomach churns at the idea of taking on a future flash to stop it from happening. So far every single one I’ve had that should have come true by now has, down to the tiniest detail. Most of my future flashes have been interesting but without the threat of danger: an image of a cat that Tabitha would later adopt or the tree house Walt would build for me two years in the future. Once I saw Walt’s father dying in his bed, but he was already old, with wispy white hair and crinkly yellow skin, and it didn’t come as a surprise to anyone when it happened. I think of the crumb on Walt’s chin this morning. Down to the tiniest detail. There’s no way I’m going to be able to stop a fire.

  On the walk back to our classroom, I hang behind the rest of the kids, avoiding everyone, especially Lyle. Laughter erupts ahead of me and I am sure that Axel is teasing him, making sure that everyone understands he’s someone to avoid. I’m still digesting what I saw and need more space. I trace my finger across the door as we pass it, wishing I dared to push it open and escape into the open fields and away from school.

  “Hope everyone’s ready for fractions!” Mrs. Whipple announces to the class as we file back into the room. She’s unaware that anything out of the ordinary has taken place in the last forty minutes and waves a handful of tests in the air as if she’s handing out treats to her pet dogs.

  Math has never been my subject. To be honest, aside from art, pretty much nothing has ever been my subject. But I was telling Walt the truth; I studied for this one.

  Mrs. Whipple makes her way around the room, handing out the tests face down. My head reels and I can’t adjust to finding myself back in the routine of a regular school day. I need to pause everything so that I can sort things out, but Mrs. Whipple has other plans.

  “Alright, ready, set, go!” she says, looking up at the clock. I flip over the paper and see rows of math problems, neat and orderly. How can I focus on fractions when I’m imagining flames licking the corner of page? I peek over at Lyle, who is flipping through the pages of our math textbook. He doesn’t have to take the test since it’s his first day of school.

  I flip my paper back over and pick up my pencil. Instead of answering whether ¾ is bigger than ⅝, I begin to sketch the scene I saw in my head. I’m always compelled to draw the images I see in my future flashes, but usually I wait until I am safely in my tree house. Today, I cover the page with flames and draw Lyle, his hair sticking up all over his head, the splatters of blood on his shirt. I squint at the image I’ve created. Then I remember that something or someone was lying in a pool of blood on the floor. Was it a body? Was someone else there? I shade in a spot on the floor and am so busy trying to catch the shadow exactly as I saw it, hoping that seeing it on paper will solve the mystery of who else was there, that I don’t notice the real shadow over my desk as Mrs. Whipple peers over my shoulder.

  “Elaine Magee!” she shrieks, tearing the test off my desk. It’s barely 9 a.m. and already two teachers have reprimanded students by using their first and last names, which is never a good sign. Mrs. Whipple carries my drawing to the front of the room, holding it high in the air above her head as if it smells bad. When she reaches the trash can, she crumples it in her hand and throws it away. It’s too late. The whole class, including Lyle, has already gotten a good view of the drawing.

  I hate that I’ve done this to Lyle. While his skin under his freckles was lobster red in the gym, it is now as gray as his T-shirt. He glares at me as if I’ve just stabbed him in the stomach, his expression full of questions and pain.

  “You don’t understand,” I want to say to him, but of course I don’t. No one would believe the real explanation. For the second time this morning, the entire class is staring at me. I suppose, like Lyle, they think I’m just being mean. I look over at Axel and he sticks his thumb up. Considering that he’s spent the last eight years targeting me, this might be considered a breakthrough. But I’ve never cared about Axel’s approval. I gaze down at my desk and pretty much don’t look up for the rest of the day, except to occasionally check the clock, whose hands appear to be stuck in one spot.

  When the dismissal bell rings, I’m tempted to run home as fast as I can. My tree house is calling for me, and I want nothing more than to be propped up against my soft quilted pillow, leaning against the wood wall with a sketchbook in my hand, trying to make sense of what happened today. But when I leave the building, I see Lyle at the bike rack fumbling with his lock and I know I can’t just run away. I take a deep breath and head over to the bike rack.

  “Hey,” I say, but he doesn’t seem to hear me. I lean over the bike rack just as he pops open the lock and stands up, nearly clocking me in the chin. I jump back and Lyle looks right at me. His eyes are the same color as his freckles and they lock with mine for a moment. I realize I came over with no idea of what to say.

  “Thanks for making my first day completely awful,” he finally says, yanking his bike out of the rack and swinging his leg over it.

  “Wait,” I grab onto his handlebar before he can bike away. “I’m sorry. It’s not what you think.”

  “Really? Then what is it? I’m dying to know.” His tone indicates that he isn’t.

  “It’s hard to explain.” He looks at me, waiting. I don’t have an explanation, not one that I can tell him.

  “Well, when you come up with an excuse, let me know,” Lyle says and then, before I can stop him, he bikes away.

  So much for the new kid becoming my friend.

  Chapter Four

  THE WALK HOME TAKES LONGER THAN USUAL. I drag my feet through the dry dirt, hoping that extending the time it takes to get from school to my house will make what happened today feel farther away. The rolling hills, which have never looked like anything but rolling hills to me before, now remind me of the back of a sleeping dragon—one that could rear his fire breathing head any minute and destroy the world around it.

  Tabitha is no longer on her porch when I pass by her house, but the lounging cats haven’t moved since morning. They raise their heads idly and blink at me before falling back asleep. Frida surprises me by tearing past, chasing a grasshopper in the dirt. She stops and does a mid-air flip when she sees me. I pick her up and bury my face into her fur. The image of Lyle’s expression after seeing the picture I drew is seared in my mind and even Frida’s rumbly purr can’t shake it.

  “Should’ve just stayed with you today,” I tell her. “Skipping school would’ve gotten me in a lot less trouble than going did.” It’s not that simple, of course. If I hadn’t gone today, I would have to meet Lyle tomorrow. And even if I never touched his hand, that fire is still his future. The difference is that I wouldn’t know about it. Maybe that’s not a bad thing if I can’t do anything about it anyway.

  I put Frida down and shake my head, not wanting to thin
k about any of this. She follows me as I continue toward my house. I try to shoo her back, but she’s persistent and I don’t have the energy to knock on Tabitha’s door to return a wayward cat.

  “Alright,” I say, leaning down to scratch her back, “but you have to go home later.” She responds by meowing and rubbing against my legs the rest of the way home.

  Carmen’s car is parked in front of my house. Cherry red with CARMEN’S CREATIONS painted across the side, it’s hard to miss. Carmen owns a bakery and, since she closes shop at two o’clock every day, often stops by in the afternoon to keep me company until Walt gets home for dinner.

  Carmen looks as unlikely to be a baker as Ms. Fontane looks to be a gym teacher. In movies, bakers are women with sweet smiles and puffs of flour on their plump cheeks. Carmen is tall and thin, all angles and candy red lipstick and matching nails. She also has a sharp sense of humor that you don’t necessarily associate with a baker of cream puffs and éclairs. When I hug her hello, I can always detect a faint trace of cinnamon under her perfume.

  I was four years old when I first met Carmen. I still remember Walt introducing her as his good friend. She leaned down and looked me in the eyes and shook my hand. And just like that, I had a future flash of her in a wedding dress. Her dress was a simple white sheath, paired with sparkly silver shoes. Her thick brown hair hung loose down her back.

  In the future flash, Carmen waited at the end of the aisle, her arms linked with an older man who had to be her father. He was tall with the same wide smile, thick hair, and light brown skin. Chairs full of people lined the aisle—some I recognized from town and some I didn’t. Carmen smiled as she began to walk down the aisle, her lips painted with the same candy red lipstick she always wears.

  I opened my eyes and beamed at Carmen.

  “You’re gonna look like a princess at your wedding.”

  That was a huge compliment from four-year-old me. These days, I wear my hair short and rarely change out of my black hoodie, ripped up jeans, and shoes covered in ink doodles. But when I was four, I wouldn’t leave the house unless I was wearing my pink princess dress and a tiara. I had been obsessed with Sleeping Beauty for two years.

  Carmen smiled back at me. “What makes you say that?” she asked.

  “I saw it. I saw you at your wedding. I closed my eyes and it was like I was there for real in the future. You were getting married and you had the prettiest dress.” I sighed at the memory.

  Then we both looked at Walt. A crease formed between his eyebrows.

  “What do you mean it was like you were there for real in the future?” he asked.

  “I saw her. I really did. She looked like a princess,” I insisted. Then, to clarify, “You know how sometimes you see things that are gonna happen and then they come true?” As soon as I said it, I wasn’t sure of my own words. I had experienced future flashes before, but it wasn’t until I spoke about seeing Carmen’s wedding that I realized I had never heard anyone else talk about seeing events from the future.

  Carmen stepped back and Walt kneeled down in front of me. The color had drained from his cheeks. He grabbed my hands and pulled me close to him, his eyes level to mine. “What do you mean you see things that are going to happen? What do you mean you saw her? Tell me what you mean, Laney.”

  “I just saw her.” I whispered now, sensing from Walt’s tone that the answer to something important hinged on my words.

  “Laney, don’t say you saw something unless you really mean it. I need to know this. Did you see her at a wedding? Do you really know things are going to happen before they do?” The crease between his eyebrows deepened.

  “What are you talking about? Give her a break, Walt,” Carmen said, standing up and straightening her dress. “You told me she loves princess movies. So she is having fun imagining a fancy wedding, what’s wrong with that?” Walt let go of my hands, but studied my face.

  “If you really saw something, tell me. You have to tell me,” Walt said. “I know you can’t understand, but it’s very, very scary to hear—”

  “I’m not expecting to get married anytime soon, Laney,” Carmen interrupted. Her bright red lips trembled slightly and she ran her fingers through her hair. “But I’m glad you think I’ll look like a princess when I do.”

  That was the first and last time I ever shared a future flash with anyone. For years all I knew was that Walt didn’t like me talking about what I saw that day. It wasn’t until years later that I realized Carmen was upset because she believed that even the daughter of the man she wanted to marry could see what he couldn’t and still can’t: she and Walt should be together.

  I brought up Walt getting married to Carmen one other time. It was the afternoon of my eighth birthday and Walt headed out to buy some wood to build me a tree house just as Carmen stepped in with a bag full of groceries.

  “Today I am going to teach you how to cook,” she announced, setting a bulging grocery bag on the counter.

  “No thanks,” I said from my seat at the kitchen table. I grabbed a red pencil from my art box, carefully outlining a collar on the fuzzy puppy with floppy ears on my drawing pad. At eight, I had moved on from princesses to puppies. When begging Walt repeatedly for a puppy didn’t work, I decided to cover the entire house with pictures of puppies, figuring he’d either be so moved or so annoyed that he’d give in and buy me one.

  “What do you mean ‘no thanks?’”

  “I mean, I don’t want to learn how to cook.”

  “But you love helping me in the bakery.”

  “Baking is about licking the bowl. Cooking is a means to an end.” At least that’s what Walt always said about cooking when he sweated over the grill or boiled our boxed macaroni noodles too long.

  Carmen laughed and waved a yellow pepper in my face.

  “Cooking is an art,” she said. “Just like drawing puppies.”

  I drew swirls around my puppy’s tail to indicate that it was wagging. How could Walt resist a puppy with a wagging tail? I taped my drawing on the kitchen wall next to a drawing of a puppy in a pickup truck and a watercolor of a puppy sleeping on my bed.

  “Wash up in the sink,” Carmen said before I could wipe my pencil-smudged palms on my jeans. As I scrubbed my hands, she dragged my chair over to the kitchen counter. When I stepped onto the chair, we were the same height.

  “Why don’t you see what we’ve got?” Carmen pushed the grocery bag toward me. I reached in and pulled out one vegetable after another until the counter was covered with eggplants, tomatoes, peppers, and onions.

  “Now don’t tell me this counter doesn’t look like one of your pallets,” she said. My eyes took in the purples, reds, yellows, and greens, and I had to admit that it did.

  Carmen placed a cutting board in front of me. “Now that you’re eight, you’re old enough to use a knife.” She handed me a knife and put an eggplant down in front of me. “But it’s important to use it right. You need to hold it like this.” She wrapped her hand around mine, showing me how to grip the handle. “And always cut away from yourself.” Together, we sliced off the end of the eggplant. “Now you do the other end by yourself.”

  I cut into the other end of the eggplant and the small piece flew off the counter and rolled under the table. I put down my knife to grab the flyaway piece and throw it away, but Carmen stopped me.

  “Cooking is messy, just like painting or drawing. You clean up when you’re done, but you don’t need to worry about it during the creative process.”

  “Sounds good to me.”

  “See? You’re loving it already. Now you’re going to slice the eggplant lengthwise into thin slivers.” She demonstrated and I attempted to imitate her, but my piece ended up too fat at the top and too thin at the bottom. Carmen reassured me that it took time to learn and that my piece of eggplant would still taste just as good. After slicing three eggplants, we lay them on plates and salted their white flesh until drops of water appeared like dew on their surfaces. Carmen told me to blot the drops of w
ater with a paper towel while she poured milk into one bowl and bread crumbs into another.

  “Now we have to dip them in the milk and then the bread crumbs.”

  I dipped the first slice of eggplant in the milk and then into the breadcrumbs, accidentally knocking some crumbs out of the bowl and onto Carmen’s shirt.

  “Cover the eggplant, not me!” Carmen complained, but she was grinning. She reached into the bowl and sprinkled some breadcrumbs on my hair. “Now we’re even.”

  “No way!” I laughed, tossing a pinch of breadcrumbs back at her. She threw a handful back and I ducked, turning away. That’s when I noticed Walt at the door. I don’t know how long he had been there, standing in the doorway like that. We had been too focused on our cooking to hear him come in. His mouth was turned up at the edges, but from the look on his face, I couldn’t tell if he was holding back a smile or tears. Before I could say anything, he walked over to Carmen and me and wrapped his arms around both of us. Surprised, Carmen shrieked and then tried to push away, insisting that we were both covered in breadcrumbs and milk.

  “Who cares about breadcrumbs and milk?” he said, hugging us tighter. “I love you guys.”

  Carmen stopped protesting and wrapped one arm around him and the other around me. I wanted to stand like that forever, smelling the cinnamon and sawdusty smells of my two favorite people.

  When Carmen left that night, after the most delicious pasta dinner I’d ever eaten, Walt and I stood on the porch and watched her go. As her car pulled away, I blurted out, “Please can we keep her?” It was silly to ask like that, as if she were a puppy. I meant that I wanted Carmen to be there always.

  Walt blew through his lips and cleared his throat.