The Predicteds

by Christine Seifert

  “Oh,” I say. “You mean me. She’s the one who hit you.” I point at Brooklyn.

  That doesn’t seem to matter to Josh. He moves toward me. I can tell he’s trying to look threatening, but it doesn’t come off as all that tough. He’s actually sort of staggering toward me like a reanimated corpse. Instead of moving, I just stand there. Like an idiot.

  “God,” Brooklyn says, because that’s her go-to phrase. I wonder if she realizes what a stereotype she is.

  I’m about to back off and apologize for my ridiculous laughing when I have (another) moment of insanity and decide that I really have nothing to apologize for. “I think you owe me an apology,” I say, looking at Josh.

  “I don’t think so,” Josh says stepping up to me. He’s so close that I can smell alcohol and cigarettes and some other strange smell, like maybe Cheerios. I’m pretty sure Great-Uncle Freddie poured beer over his Cheerios. Maybe Josh does that too.

  Sam steps closer to me. Lexus, dressed in a purple miniskirt, closes ranks around Brooklyn, surprising me by saying, “Come on, Josh.” She pulls on his shirt. “The food here tastes like dog doo-doo anyway.” I wait for people to laugh at Lexus’s choice of words, but nobody does. I shoot her a thank-you look. I glance at Sam, but he just shrugs his shoulders and moves a half-step behind Dizzy, who has crossed her arms firmly across her chest. The crowd at the door is murmuring, and the older couple has gone back to whatever they were doing before a teenage boy landed across their laps. Josh walks away from me backward.

  I’m bored with this whole thing now. I’m thinking about how hungry I am and how it would be better to just turn away. I’m about to do just that, when I feel myself falling. I have no idea what’s happening. I don’t even feel my feet under me—just a huge crack as my head and shoulders smack the glass doors of the entryway. Everything goes black for a second, and the next thing I know, I am reclining on the floor, my head sort of angled to the side, like I’ve just stretched out for a little nap. “What happened?” I try to say, but the words won’t come out right. It sounds like gibberish, even to my own ears.

  Not as lucky as Josh, I haven’t landed on any soft elderly lap. I’m on the dirty floor. The first thing I do is check to be sure that I’m not wearing a skirt, since I can feel that I haven’t landed gracefully.

  Phew. Jeans.

  There’s a rush of people around me. I try to sit up, but someone yells, “Don’t let her move.” And then hands are pushing me back toward the cold floor. I put my own hand to the back of my head, where I can feel a stinging sensation. My hair feels a little sticky.

  “Be careful of that door,” someone warns. “The glass is cracked, so it might shatter. Nobody use it.”

  “Give her my sweater,” someone says, and it must be the old lady on the bench, because I immediately smell geriatric perfume as the sweater comes near me.

  “She’s bleeding,” I hear someone else say.

  Brooklyn is crying. “He didn’t mean to,” she yells to everyone. “He didn’t mean to!”

  “Yeah, I got pushed by someone in the line. God, are you okay?” Josh says above me.

  My vision clears, and I note that Dizzy is kneeling beside me, her corkscrew ringlets almost touching my face. Sam is hovering behind her, with Brooklyn practically wrapped around his waist.

  “Oh, Daphne,” Dizzy says with the same tone you would use if you just found out your dog had been hit by a mail truck. “Sam, get me some towels or something.”

  “I’m fine,” I announce, but I can’t quite work up the energy to try sitting up again.

  “Sam! Go get some towels. She’s bleeding.”

  “I’m fine,” I repeat, but it’s clear that nobody believes me. “Really,” I tell nobody in particular. “I’m totally okay.” I pull my hand away from the back of my head and notice that it has blood on it—not a lot, but enough to make me woozy.

  I close my eyes. I don’t actually feel that bad—just a little sleepy.

  “Call 911,” a voice over me says.

  It takes me a second to realize that it’s not Dizzy anymore. “Where is she?” I ask. “Where did Dizzy go?”

  I open my eyes to see the owner of the voice taking off his jacket and rolling it up to put underneath the side of my head. It’s Jesse, but he looks different somehow. His eyes are darker in this artificial light: deep brown, the color of melted dark chocolate chips. His shoulders are broad but hunched up slightly, like he’s preparing to fight. The way he holds his lips tightly pressed together with his jaw clenched and his eyes focused directly on me tells me he is worried. And that makes me worry that maybe I’m hurt worse than I realize. I panic for about ten seconds, and then I go back to surveying Jesse’s broad shoulders, his wavy, dark hair, his—

  Jesse interrupts my thoughts. “She went with Sam to find towels.”

  “Who went with Sam?” As soon as I say it, I realize that we are talking about Dizzy. Jesse frowns at me and pats my arm gently. I let him think that the accident caused my short-term memory loss. What can I say? I was just thinking about how hot you are, and I forgot that we were even having a conversation.

  I change the subject. “No,” I protest, trying to get his coat out from under my head. “I’ll bleed on it.”

  “Shhh,” he says. “Call an ambulance,” he yells again over his shoulder. “And tell Dizzy I need that towel right away.”

  “Tell her to keep her eyes open,” a female voice says from above me.

  I look up and see a girl with pink streaks running through her hair. She runs short blue fingernails over her head. It’s January with her coat off, wearing a dress that looks like it’s made out of a cotton bed sheet.

  “It’s just so weird here,” I say out loud. “Why are you here?” It sounds perfectly clear in my head.

  “She’s not making any sense,” January says.

  “Get her some water,” Jesse tells January, and she steps around me and heads toward the seating area.

  I actually feel okay, save for the stinging sensation in my head. “I didn’t even really break it,” I tell Jesse. “The window, not my head,” I add, pointing to the cracked window behind me. “Not that my head is broken,” I clarify, wondering if I sound as idiotic as I feel.

  The goateed manager, in a stained white shirt and a green apron, is busily at work behind me. He opens the undamaged door and yells to a crowd that has clustered outside to observe what must be the most exciting thing to happen in Quiet in a very long time. “Hey, make room for the ambulance. As soon as we get her out of here, we can let you in.” He shuts the door, and then opens it a crack and yells, “Soup of the night is catfish gumbo! Chicken-fried steak is the special!”

  I snicker, but it must sound like something else, because Jesse grabs hold of one of my hands. “You’re going to be fine,” he reassures me. “Don’t move. Just stay still.” He gently pushes me back down so that my head is on his coat. I feel like taking a nap. I mumble something, but even I can’t understand what I’m saying. I drift away for a second, feeling like I’m floating on water. I’m feeling woozier now.

  “Here,” one of the servers says, holding out a white towel from the kitchen. Jesse takes it before I can, and he leans over me, holding the towel against the side of my head.

  My eyes open, and I feel almost normal again—except for the humiliation. That’s still there. “I feel like a bird that flew into a glass window.”

  “You did,” he says. “I’ve never seen anyone fly like that.” He is still holding the towel against my head.

  “Pretty impressive, huh?” I ask.

  “Yeah, I wish I could’ve caught it on camera. It would be viral on YouTube by the time you leave the emergency room.”

  When he moves the towel away from my head, it’s got blood smattered on it, and his hand glistens from some of it. “Gross,” I say. “Is that totally gross?”

  “What?” he asks. “All this blood? Nah, I always begin my meals tending head wounds.”

  “I usually tr
y to crack my head open at more convenient times, like after dinner.”

  “That’s probably wise.” He smiles at me.

  “I don’t suppose I can just get up and quietly slip away, can I?”

  “Probably not,” he answers. “I think you’re going to have to make a grand exit. But you sound better. I think you’re going to live.”

  “I mean, I wouldn’t want to ruin Brooklyn’s night or anything.” I’m sarcastic now. That’s a good sign. I’m talking to him the way I’d talk to a guy under normal circumstances, if I weren’t sprawled on a restaurant floor, bleeding from my skull. The dizziness is coming back again. I let my eyelids drop closed and begin to enjoy the hum of the diner around me. The stinging sensation in my head feels so distant now.

  “Keep your eyes open,” someone says. I wearily open them again. There’s an EMT standing over me. He has green lettuce stuck in one tooth, but I don’t tell him.

  “What’s your phone number?” the EMT says. I recite it three times in a row, just in case this is a test.

  “Good,” says a fat guy with garlic breath standing over me. Then he asks me questions like what is my name and how many fingers is he holding up, which is super-annoying when you feel mostly fine. I let him and some other people heft me onto a stretcher.

  In the parking lot, Melissa comes running to the stretcher, which just feels silly. “I don’t need to go to the ER,” I tell anyone who will listen.

  “Of course you do,” Melissa says. “They called me. I got here in record time.” Melissa runs her hand through her hair while she bites the left side of her lip. She’s worried, and for a second, I’m afraid she’s going to cry. Then she says, “What did you do? I sprinted here like a marathon runner.” She breathes heavily.

  “I’m okay,” I mumble, but I don’t think it comes out right, because she seems even more worried after I speak.

  It’s not until right before they lift me in the ambulance that I see Jesse again. Melissa has already wandered away to talk to Goateed Manager and two cops, probably the whole Quiet police force. She is undoubtedly lecturing them on something, because that’s what Melissa does in times of crisis.

  She also does that in times of no crisis. It’s kind of her signature move. You get used to it after a while.

  I look at Jesse hovering over my face, and I instinctively press my lips together to see if I still have lip gloss in place. Yes! Thank goodness for the long-wear stuff. Without lip gloss, I’d probably look like a corpse. He looks as if he’s going to say something, but he doesn’t.

  “Can you imagine it?” I ask. I’m referring to the conversation we had at the lake, when we were talking about what it feels like to be predicted.

  “I’m not sure what she’s talking about,” he says to someone.

  “Yes, you are,” I argue. “Were you trying to tell me something?”

  He doesn’t answer. He just steps away when the paramedics hoist me into the ambulance. Before they shut the doors, I look up and see him standing in the parking lot, January Morrison next to him, his arm draped around her. Their heads come together like hands in prayer.

  chapter 9

  January Morrison puts out for anybody. I should know.

  —Writing on the boys’ bathroom wall at Quiet High

  At just before midnight, the phone rings. I expected him to call. I knew he would find a way to get my number. Guys like Jesse are good at that kind of stuff.

  “Hey,” Jesse says smoothly. “I hope I’m not calling too late. I just wanted to check on you. Did I wake you?”

  I play it cool. I make a habit of not letting guys think I’ve been sitting around waiting for them. I yawn before I speak. “Actually, no, you didn’t. I’m wide awake. I somehow managed to sleep through most of Monday and all of last night. Today, I was up for a few hours in the morning, but I fell asleep this afternoon.”

  “I’m not surprised. You had quite a night on Sunday.”

  “Yeah, quite a night,” I say sarcastically. “I’m actually pretty mortified. Did you know that Nell—the granddaughter of Dell of Dell’s Diner—called here to request reimbursement for the cracked window? Because, you know, apparently Nell thinks I should be held responsible for recklessly throwing my head against the glass door.”

  “Well,” Jesse says seriously, “I can understand her concern. If she doesn’t make an example out of you, all the kids will be doing it.”

  “It’ll be the new craze,” I agree with a laugh.

  “As soon as I first saw you, I knew you were a trendsetter. Let me guess—now everyone will come to school with stitches in her skull, a shaved patch of hair, and a gauze bandage on her head. I heard all about it.”

  I groan and touch the back of my head, remembering that they had to shave a very small circle of my hair at the emergency room. It turned out that the cut wasn’t that bad, nothing a couple of stitches couldn’t take care of. And the bald patch is small enough that I can just comb my hair over it. I was home before midnight, and then I zonked out for the next twenty-four hours. “How did you know about my new bald patch? Did I make the cover of Cosmo again?”

  “No, but you did make the Quiet High news. Mrs. Temple announced it to the whole school today.”

  I cringe inwardly. Now I’ll be known as the Girl with the Head Injury. I’d rather stay The New Girl. Or just be invisible.

  “I called and talked to your mom this morning,” Jesse says. “She said to try back late tonight, when you might be awake. She said you had to get up sooner or later. How do you feel?”

  “Like I put my head through a glass window.”

  “Poor Daphne,” Jesse says sincerely.

  “What happened after I made my grand exit?”

  “Same old. Hanging out at the diner, drinking coffee, followed by a rousing evening of loitering in the parking lot until it was time to go home. Typical night in Quiet Rock City.”

  “Wow, sounds like almost as much fun as I had,” I say.

  “Well, it was slightly more exciting than usual because we had your injury to discuss. Are you aware of how emotionally scarred Brooklyn is over this?” Jesse says this with enough sarcasm to make me laugh.

  “I’m sure it was really rough for her.”

  “She almost got blood on her shirt. Furthermore, if that glass had shattered, she might have been injured! She was standing right by you!”

  “I’ll try to be more aware of her whereabouts next time I crack my head open.” Then I ask, “And January? How is she?”

  “She’s fine.” It’s a simple declaration. No secret yearnings that I can detect. Just a plain sentence. I stretch the long phone cord and wander out into the living room. Melissa’s bedroom door is closed, and her lights are off. I switch phones and go into the kitchen, where I see a note by the fridge: Plate of food for you, if you wake up hungry. Jesse and Dizzy called for you. Dizzy says she is “like, seriously concerned about you.” Wake me up if you want to talk. It’s signed by Melissa. She’s been waking me up every couple of hours. I can’t imagine what she thinks I might have to talk about.

  “And you?” I ask him.

  “What about me?”

  “Blood doesn’t freak you out?”

  “Nah, not even a little.”

  I pull the plate of food out of the fridge—fried chicken from the grocery store deli with a damp lump of mac and cheese and a side of withered green beans—and eat it cold while Jesse and I talk. It’s one of those conversations that’s completely seamless: no pauses, no awkward silences, no weird places where you talk over each other or misunderstand what the other person is trying to say.

  At three o’clock in the morning, I’m back in my bed, drowsy and full of chicken. The phone is cradled next to my ear. I start to fall asleep, and I’m just about in total darkness when I hear Jesse say, “I’ll let you go back to sleep. Can I call you again?”

  “Ahhh-hemmm,” I say, my tongue unwilling to move, the phone dropping lower and lower as I loosen my grip.

  T
he last thing I hear him say, or think that I hear him say, is this: “There’s something I have to tell you, Daphne.” It sounds ominous. Or maybe just melodramatic. I try to laugh, in case it’s a joke—part of our flirtatious conversation—but I’m just too tired. The phone slips out of my hand.

  I fall asleep, happy for the first time since before the shooting.

  ***

  The next time the phone rings, I am sleeping deeply. It feels like I’ve been sleeping for days, and I kind of have been. Except to eat and go to the bathroom—and take a quick bath—I’ve pretty much been in bed since Sunday. I pick up the phone after five long rings. Melissa is home and can hear the phone, but she never answers unless she thinks it’s for her. She’s probably been up for hours already. Melissa is one of those annoying people who thinks that getting up before the birds is a sign of some kind of moral virtue. I, however, am a night owl—and I can sense that it’s late morning already. My head is aching, and I feel like I’ve been hit by a truck. “Ughh,” I groan, instinctively reaching for my head.

  I manage to croak out a greeting that probably sounds something like hello, and a loud voice on the other end says, “Can you meet at eleven? I was thinking the mall. The one in Quiet. Not that it’s much of a mall, but it’s a place with stores that sell things, and I desperately need to find a swimsuit. It’s almost pool weather. What if I don’t find a suit? What does yours look like?”

  “Who is this?” I’m totally confused.

  “It’s Dizzy.” I half-expect her to add of course. She seems put out that I don’t recognize her voice and that I can’t seem to pick up this conversation, which feels like it started much earlier. Without me.

  “You know we don’t have school today, right?” she asks suspiciously.

  I look at my clock radio as if it can tell me what day it is, and then I remember that it’s the Thursday before Easter. We’re out until Monday. I sigh in relief. Honestly, I am probably feeling well enough to go, if I could just get out of bed. Knowing that I don’t have to sit through classes makes me smile.