Second Thoughts

by Cara Bertrand

“Really though, I know what you mean.”

  I wasn’t sure that was true. Something was different that I couldn’t put my finger on.

  Amy’s voice interrupted my thoughts again. “Okay, Lane, I get it. You’re still in ooh-la-la land, not really on the phone with me right now.”

  It was only half right, but I couldn’t help but laugh. “I’m sorry.”

  “Just tell me this—did you like it, or at least not, you know, hate it? You’re kind of a freak about things you’ve never done before, so I figure you’re a little extra freaked about this one.”

  After a brief hesitation, during which I really thought about the answer and also told myself to just relax already, I decided to tell her the truth. I cleared my throat. “Well, it wasn’t magic and rainbows,” I said, as she’d once joked, “but…I wish he was here right now, so yeah. I liked it.”

  “That’s my girl! So, how many in—?”

  “AMY!”

  After we hung up, I went back to thinking. Really, what I liked most about it was that I was doing it with Carter. And it was true I wished he was with me right now, but really more for comfort than for sex. I was fidgeting. I couldn’t figure myself out. Yes, my body felt different in a not entirely unpleasant way, like when you exercise muscles you haven’t used in a long time. Or ever, as the case was. But that wasn’t what was bothering me. I liked that feeling. No, something was wrong.

  I shook my head to try to clear it. My aunt’s flight would be landing soon and she’d be here before I knew it. I had to get myself together before then. What was it? Why did I feel so…off?

  Maybe the problem was simply that I wanted to see Carter. I was feeling strange and lonely and I needed to kiss him. To see the delighted expression he never hid whenever I walked into the bookstore, and remind myself that everything was fine. Better than fine. He wasn’t just my boyfriend anymore. Now, he was my…lover. I’d never imagined using that word in relation to myself, but that’s what he was. He’d make me feel better.

  I decided to send him a message, or call, just to hear his voice. By this time, he’d already have run and showered and be downstairs in the bookstore, reading a newspaper or four. I reached for where I’d tossed my phone onto the divan next to me, sliding my fingers across the beautiful—creepy—silk when I stopped. That was it. I couldn’t feel the couch. Not the silk, that was still there, but its history.

  I couldn’t feel the couch’s imprint, the tiny bit of nausea it never failed to cause me, as its memories tried to force their way into my brain.

  The whole reason I’d sat on it was to help wake me up while I tried to talk coherently to Amy. But it hadn’t worked. I ran my fingers across it faster, but nothing came. Nothing but a tiny tingling, a spark of not warning but intuition, telling me there was something to know about this couch.

  A spark.

  I closed my eyes and opened my mind, letting loose the Diviner sense I usually kept tightly controlled. The vision that played out was clearer, and more precise, and more informative than any I’d ever had. I opened my eyes not a moment later and understood.

  My Sententia gift had been sparked.

  Chapter Thirteen

  I laughed. It wasn’t exactly funny, but the longer I spent in the Sententia world, the more morbid my sense of humor became. Sparked! Me! Carter had told me about it, the way sex could fast-forward the development of Sententia gifts, but it wasn’t a possibility I’d entertained a single thought of. I’d been far busier thinking about other things, or not thinking at all.

  But now! If I hadn’t been laughing, I probably would have screamed. All the migraines, and all that time I’d spent working and fretting and passing out, trying to develop control over my Grim senses. And all that time I’d spent worrying and fretting and waiting to have sex too—what a waste! If I’d just gone ahead and done it months ago, I’d have solved all my problems and had a whole summer of lots of easy private time with Carter.

  What. An. Idiot.

  I mean, how often did that happen? Once every never? I was the girl who actually waits to have sex and it turns out to be the wrong choice. Just my luck. I wished I could call Amy and tell her this. She’d understand and laugh along with me.

  But I couldn’t, so I decided I would call Carter, like I’d originally planned.

  “HEY YOU,” CARTER said, sounding so sweet and serious and happy that I called, all at the same time, that I temporarily lost the ability to respond. My mouth opened, but no words came out, like the right thing to say got lost and was trying to fight its way past my vocal cords.

  All I managed to produce was a breathy, “Uh.”

  “What’s wrong?” Just like that, the delight of a few seconds ago was gone.

  “Nothing!” I lied. “I just…miss you. My aunt will be here soon, and I have to get ready. But I, uh, really want to see you.”

  He exhaled. “Okay, well, maybe I can help with the first problem. Your timing is perfect. Come downstairs.”

  I guessed that meant he was on my porch. Just like last year. “Um, can you give me a few? I’m not dressed.” And not sure how to tell him what I needed to tell him, but sure I didn’t want it to happen on the porch.

  “I don’t care. Seriously. Just go downstairs and you’ll understand why.” I sensed he was smiling on the other end of the line. I hated disappointing him.

  “Okay, I’m going.” I tied my robe tightly and tramped down to the front door.

  Behind it was not Carter but a woman I didn’t recognize, her back turned to the door. When I opened it, she turned around and smiled. “Oh, there you are. Lainey Young?” she asked. When I nodded, she handed me the exquisite bouquet of roses she was holding.

  They were lush and full, a perfect mix of red, fuchsia, and deep orange blooms, and smelled like love and happiness. They also must have cost a fortune in November and probably came all the way from Vermont.

  “They’re beautiful,” I told Carter, after I thanked the florist and closed the door.

  “So are you,” he said. Dropping his voice, he added, “So beautiful, it hurt me to leave you this morning.”

  At that I sighed, and almost thought I might cry. No matter what happened, I wondered sometimes how I got so lucky to have someone love me so much. As I stepped back into my room, and before I could think any more about it, I said, “Carter, I have something to tell you.”

  If he was concerned earlier, he was absolutely frantic now. “What? Are you okay? Did I…? Is it, it’s not the vision, is it?”

  “No! I’m okay, I guess. It’s just, I…think I was sparked.” The last words came out all in a rush. I wasn’t sure why it seemed such an embarrassing thing to say.

  Silence. “Carter? Did you hear me?” I slumped back down on the divan. Now that I felt more in control of my connection to it, it no longer bothered me as much.

  He finally said, “Which, uh, gift?”

  Now that was an interesting question. I hadn’t even thought how the other gift, the one I didn’t like to think about, could have been sparked too, or what that might mean. I wondered, though. “Are they really even separate?”

  “I don’t know.”

  I looked at the roses, in all their blooming loveliness, where I’d placed them on my dresser. And decided to kill one.

  The petals were like satin memories between my fingers, and I hated to do this to them, but I couldn’t think of another way to test my theory. I was ready to Think the flower to its possible demise but decided the stem would be a better place to touch. Careful to avoid the thorns, I pulled one from the vase, closed my eyes, and Thought.

  Nothing happened. The rose was still as beautiful as when I first touched it. I’d felt none of the electricity of Thought in my blood either.

  “Lane?” I heard Carter say.

  “Sorry, I was…testing something. I don’t know about the other one, but Divining, yeah. Definitely.”

  “Shit,” he muttered. “I can’t leave. You’ll have to come here.”

 
“What?”

  “I’m the only one at the store. I can’t leave. I need you to come here. I’m sorry.”

  “Why? You mean now?”

  “As soon as you can anyway.”

  “But my aunt—”

  I could almost hear his fingers running through his hair. “The vision, Lainey. Maybe you can see more now. God, why do I feel like I’m more concerned about this than you are?”

  “I…” honestly hadn’t thought about the vision, not yet today. Usually it was my first thought every morning, but Amy had woken me up and then I’d been thinking about Carter for entirely different reasons. I felt a little foolish. “You’re not, I swear.” But then again… “But, well, nothing can happen right now, can it? I’m here and you’re there.”

  “Shit,” he repeated. Then, muffled, like the phone was in his lap, “No, no, I’m sorry. You’ll need to go upstairs. I’ll be right there…Lainey?”

  “Customer?”

  He sighed. “Yeah. I’m sorry. I’m…just get here when you can, okay? As soon as you can.”

  “Soon,” I promised. Because now that he’d brought up the obvious, I couldn’t get there soon enough.

  THE SECOND I ducked under the century-and-a-half-old counter of Penrose Books, Carter grabbed my hand and tugged me through the door behind the register. “C’mon.”

  “But, the customers—”

  Once out of view in the service area, he turned around and pulled me into a crushing hug. “I don’t care if they steal the whole fucking store right now. You’re okay, right? I…the spark, I know it’s disorienting, and everything el—”

  “I’m great,” I told him. Truth. “About everything.”

  “Okay.” He nodded his head—I could feel it, against my shoulder—and absently patted my back with his hand. He was nervous, I realized.

  “Carter.” I pulled back to look at him. “Everything’s okay. Seriously.”

  He held my eyes and nodded again. “Okay,” he repeated. “Let’s do this.” He led me to the dated floral couch that rested against the wall between the store and the stairwell. I’d always wondered why it was there, since no one ever used it, but it made itself useful this morning.

  We sat down together, tiny puffs of dust floating up around us. It was dim in the small space and quiet. I reached for his hands and held them. Before I closed my eyes, I told him, “Don’t be scared.”

  He nodded his head once but that was it. He was scared, and how could I blame him? We were talking about my life and his part in taking it.

  I didn’t need to close my eyes, but it helped me concentrate. It also meant that, whatever I saw, Carter wouldn’t be able to gauge my reaction until I was ready. I took a deep breath and opened my Diviner senses. What I saw surprised even me. I thought I’d been ready for anything, any possibility, even the worst—that it wasn’t an accident.

  But it wasn’t that. It was nothing.

  There was nothing. No vision, no details, no nothing. No image of my face and the certainty that Carter would kill me. My future demise was a great, blank emptiness.

  I couldn’t believe it, so I kept trying. I’d been seeing it or feeling the echoes for months, and now nothing. It was gone. Carter held still, but the longer we sat, the more I could tell his nervousness grew. I held on for a long time. His hands were warm, even a little damp, but he felt solid and whole and strong, just the way I always thought of him.

  But also, alive. When divining produced nothing, I tried everything, including my other gift. Not using it, but sort of seeking. It was strange at first. I wasn’t sure anything would happen, but the longer we sat there the more clearly I felt it. Life. All the life I hadn’t felt with the rose, here it was. Carter thrummed with life.

  I wondered if anyone had ever done this before, felt the life resonating within another person. If any of my ancestors had felt it within their victims. I hadn’t with Jill, but I hadn’t tried. I hadn’t been sparked then either, so maybe I couldn’t.

  Or maybe it was something about me. Maybe my Diviner gift had influenced my Hangman gift in the way I’d become only a Grim Diviner. Maybe it was just chance, by a miraculous accident of genes and the way they combined, I could divine life, the paths and beats of it, before I took it. I wondered if it went any deeper than that. Was it only hearts I could stop? What if that was only one path, the simplest?

  When I opened my eyes, Carter was staring at me, pleading for whatever would be the least terrible answer. I gave him what was probably the best: “I see nothing.”

  He didn’t say anything for what stretched into an uncomfortably long time, watching me with his measured look combined with an expression that was parts incredulity and relief. “Nothing,” he repeated.

  I shook my head and he ran both hands through his too-long hair. He was past-due for a cut. I kept trying to get him to go shorter, shorter than his usual and much shorter than it was now. Not that he’d admit it, but I think he felt like if it was too short, he couldn’t tug on it. It was a sort of stress relief for him.

  “Try again,” he said next.

  “I don’t have to.”

  “Please. Just humor me.”

  So I did. I closed my eyes once more, squeezed his fingers, and tried again. Still there was nothing.

  I shook my head again. “No vision.”

  “Nothing at all.”

  “No.”

  He dropped my hands and it was as if all the tension that ever existed in the world rushed out of him. Before I knew it, he’d grabbed me into a deep hug, pulling me up off the couch and swinging me around.

  “We did it,” he said. “We did it again! I can’t…I…thank you.” He was practically laughing. Once he came to a standstill, he kissed me, recklessly, the kind of kiss that threatened to burn a hole in the very thin wall behind us, setting fire to the store and everyone in it. The kind of kiss that made me forget my name, the date, and even where we were.

  For a long time, there was nothing in the world but Carter’s lips moving on mine and a joy so deep it almost scared me. Finally I was able to say, “We really didn’t do anything.”

  It was hard not to be caught up in Carter’s elation, but I couldn’t completely unravel the knot of dread that had been living in my stomach for so many months. That was me, Lainey Young, the consummate buzz-kill.

  “Maybe we did,” Carter countered. “Maybe it doesn’t have to be as active as when we saved David this summer. Maybe it was our choices, or just by sticking together. Maybe…are you sure it was a real vision?”

  “Yes.” I was sure. I knew what I saw. What I felt and what I knew.

  “The future is never def—”

  “Definite, I know.” One of the first things he’d taught me about being Sententia. “I can’t explain why I can’t see anything now, but it was as real a vision as any I’ve ever had.”

  Carter sank onto the couch, seemingly exhausted—in the best possible way—by his relief. He leaned his head back and closed his eyes. “It doesn’t matter why you can’t see it anymore. Maybe it was a real vision…at that moment. Something made that our most probable future. But the future isn’t fixed. There’s constant flux. Maybe that’s why you had only hints of it since then, and now, none at all. It’s changed. It’s over.”

  My response was interrupted by the ring of the bell on the counter out in the store. “Customer, shit.” Kissing me quickly once more as he stood, Carter murmured, “Here’s to the future. I love you.”

  I didn’t follow him immediately but stayed on the couch for a minute longer, trying to come to terms with the prospect of a wide-open future, of the sudden weightlessness without the vision hanging over me. I wanted to wrap myself in Carter’s optimism, to feel as free and confident as he did. Instead I felt strangely…let down.

  That was it? The months of stress of keeping the secret, telling the secret, wondering and worrying about how I was going to die and why I couldn’t predict it better? It all amounted to nothing?! For the second time in the da
y, I wanted to laugh and cry. I couldn’t believe it was that simple. The vision had been real. I had no doubts about that. But I trusted that it was gone now, too. I had no reason not to.

  So far, my gift had never been wrong.

  THE NEXT WEEK did wonders for convincing me everything really would be fine. For all I knew, it would, and Thanksgiving break was an entire week of forgetting my problems and living my life. With my aunt visiting, I got to pretend the Sententia didn’t exist and let myself forget that I was one of them. The year before, I’d been worried about being able to keep my new secret from Aunt Tessa, and I’d spent half the time intentionally hunting for objects that would give me visions.

  This year, I relished the chance to let it all go. We visited the city, spent time with Carter and the Revells, humored Dr. Stewart, and acted like girlfriends who hadn’t seen each other in months. At the movies on the day after Thanksgiving, we ate every last bite of popcorn, and when it was over, I told my aunt I was no longer a virgin.

  What actually happened was she guessed it without my telling her, which is why I told her at all. I should have known it would be obvious to her, and I should also have known what she’d do next: insist I get a prescription for birth control first thing Monday morning.

  “That’s for you, remember, not for him,” she insisted. “And a little bit for me. I love you more than anything, but I was too young to be a mother when I got you and I’m way too young to be a grandmother yet.”

  In all the times she’d brought it up since I was eleven or twelve years old, I hadn’t believed anything could be more embarrassing than talking about sex in theory with my parent—until theory became practice and that parent was explaining how contraception worked and making sure I used it properly. I shouldn’t have been embarrassed, but privacy was in my nature despite Aunt Tessa’s years of trying to get me to loosen up. Sometimes I thought my roommate was the daughter she never had. If Amy had been there, they’d probably have high-fived.

  When my aunt left at the end of the week, I didn’t even have time to miss her. Seniors at Northbrook called the weeks between Thanks giving and the end of December the Winter Push, or just Push. It seemed like everything was due in that little stretch of time. Mid-term and semester assignments, schedules, and for us, college applications. It was the most intense academic period I’d ever had, with multiple all-nighters and one group project catastrophe. I was exhausted, but with Christmas only two days away, I was packed and headed to the airport for my customary weeks in Mexico. After Push, I’d never needed them, or deserved them, so much.