(Except she doesn’t say our family; she says your family. But still.)
So I lie. I tell Mrs. Emerson she’s one of the people burned to death.
That at least makes her stop offering petty reassurances. For a half a second she even looks a little scared.
Then she says, “You know, with all the recent television coverage of school shootings, it’s not surprising you’d dream about something like that here. And as focused as you are on J. Rutherford Wisenhauer, it makes sense that he’d be the villain in your dream.”
I stand up. I’m so mad that I can hardly see. I knew no one would take me seriously, and here they are, not taking me seriously.
“It’s not a dream,” I say. “At best, it’s a nightmare. At worst, it’s true.”
That scared look comes back on her face and stays there longer this time. Then she gets up and goes to the filing cabinets behind her desk. She pulls open one in the middle, waves a hand over it so that I can’t even see the folders, and peers inside.
She heaves a small sigh of relief, closes the drawer, and comes back to her desk.
“He doesn’t have the ability to create fire like that,” she says. “None of the students do.”
“What about the teachers?” I ask.
She shakes her head. “That’s a black magic.”
“No, it’s not,” I say. “It’s been around longer than almost all magic. The ability to make a flame so that you can light a room or ignite kindling to keep the family warm. It’s a survival skill.”
Which makes it a domestic magic. A small magic. I hope she doesn’t figure that out. Because then that would turn the suspicion back on me.
Her jaw hardens and she says, “Is there anything else you’d like to tell me?”
Meaning am I planning this thing? As if my ability to create a tiny flame could turn into those jets of fire that I saw in my dream.
I decide to misunderstand her, even though I want to scream at her. There’s a lot I want to tell her, much of which might get me expelled.
I walk to the door, put my hand on the knob, and then stop. “I just want to tell you this. If he does spray up the school and kill a bunch of people, it’s not my fault. I’ve tried to warn you. If you die at lunchtime, it’ll be your own damn fault.”
Then I let myself out, only to find myself grabbed by two of the school’s four security guards.
They pull me into the principal’s office. Seems half of what I said in Mrs. Emerson’s office sounded like a threat, so she pressed some button, notifying them. Now they’re detaining me.
The good part is I’m not going to the cafeteria today.
The bad part is that I’ve only managed to make my crazy victim reputation worse.
Which means no one will believe me now. And the longer this day goes on, the more I think they should.
***
Of course no one talks to J. Rutherford to see what he’s planning. So when they finally let me out of Principal Haas’s office with a warning not to threaten counselors again and a reminder that they’ll be watching all of my interactions with authority figures, I realize that only one person can prevent this whole thing.
Me.
By the time they let me out of Principal Prison, it’s long past lunch. No one’s in the caf and no one will be again until tomorrow morning at 10:40 when the first lunch begins.
And nothing happened, which means everyone’ll say that my dream was a nightmare and nothing more.
But there wasn’t a timeline on the dream. It could’ve happened today or it might happen tomorrow.
Or, if I’m being charitable, it might never happen.
And that would be the best.
But it is a function of what I think about J. Rutherford that makes me believe he will attack the school and he’ll do it sooner rather than later.
So as soon as they let me out of Principal Prison, I scout the hallways. I’m looking for J. Rutherford, and I find him in the library, actually cracking a book.
He’s a lot bigger than he was when he put me in the hospital. He’s six-five and built like a football player, even though he’s not that athletic. He dresses in black, but that doesn’t mean much since half the school does.
What he doesn’t have are tats or piercings or other things that would scare the grown ups. All he has are those sharp blue eyes that, if anything, have gotten meaner.
I stop at the door. My heart is pounding. I haven’t voluntarily gotten near J. Rutherford in four years. But I’m going to do it now.
I square my shoulders and walk across the thick pile carpet until I reach his table. He’s looking at old spell books—studying them in fact—and I can’t tell if it’s for a class or because he wants to.
He doesn’t look up when I sit down. So I lean forward and put my hand over the page he’s studying. Dust rises from the parchment.
He raises his head slowly and when his gaze meets mine, I nearly run from my seat.
It takes all of my strength to stay there.
“I know what you’re planning,” I say. “Don’t do it.”
He frowns.
“It’ll hurt you more than anyone else.” Which isn’t technically true—the kids that burn alive and survive will always remember it even though healing magic’ll ensure that their skin won’t scar and the kids that die, well, their families’ll be hurt the worse.
But my lie sounds good.
For a moment, tears line his eyes, then they disappear as quickly as they appeared.
“What are you talking about?” he snaps.
“Is this spellbook about the black arts?” I ask. “Is that how you learn the fire jet spell?”
His cheeks flush. For a moment—just a moment—he looks as terrified as Mrs. Emerson did.
Then he slams the book closed, right on top of my hand, and says in a really loud voice, “How come you always accuse me of stuff? I haven’t done anything to you. I’ve never done anything to you.”
Everyone turns and stares at us. I can see them out of the corner of my eye. But I don’t look away from J. Rutherford, and I say softly, “We both know that’s not true.”
He starts to say something, but that’s when my personal security guards—the same creeps that took me to Principal Prison—grab my arms again and drag me back there.
I get a lecture on harassing other students, and when I’m not repentant (I’m angry; no one is believing me), that’s when I get suspended.
For three days.
Like I’m the bad guy.
Which I most decidedly am not.
***
Three days away from school—Wednesday, Thursday, Friday—and then the weekend. I figure nothing’s going to happen this week, because I’m not there, and I’m absolutely there in the dream, right down to rescuing my own personal slice of pizza because I somehow deem it important.
Mom is “disappointed” in me and she actually makes me go see Mr. Marx like I’m the one who’s crazy, not J. Rutherford.
Mr. Marx is, at least, sympathetic. But I have a hunch that’s because the insurance company pays him more than $100 an hour to be as nice to me as he can.
Still, he says all the right things and makes me choke up when he says, “That took a lot of courage to face J. Rutherford by yourself.”
He’s right. It did take a lot of courage. More courage than I thought I had. But I really believe lives are at stake.
He also says, “You’ve done everything you can. You’ve warned the principal and the administration, you’ve even challenged J. Rutherford himself. There’s not much more you can do.”
And he’s right about that too. Because I can’t spell away J. Rutherford’s powers nor can I dunk him in water every five seconds. I can’t get those stupid school security guards to follow him and I don’t have enough magic to fight him.
I’ve warned everyone and no one’s listening.
“So now what am I supposed to do?” I ask Mr. Marx.
He shrugs. “It’s a tough s
ituation. Let’s just hope everything you’ve done changes the tide.”
It sounds like he believes me. In fact, when he said that I thought he believed me. But as I’m leaving I realize he never actually said that. In fact, he was careful not to say he believed me.
I’ve got to say Mr. Marx is pretty good at make me feel like I’ve had a sympathetic ear. But a sympathetic ear isn’t what I want. I want someone to stop J. Rutherford. Or I want someone to prove to me that J. Rutherford isn’t about to finger-burn kids in my school.
I’m depressed again by the time I get home. Depressed and angry and frightened.
So I do what any good old domestic magician does when she loses control of her world.
I cook and cook and cook. I use real recipes and I cheat on a few others. I make pastries and cakes and pies and two different dinners and a salad that has both fruit and vegetables and a dressing I invent myself.
I cook until I can’t any more. (And Mom eats until she can’t any more.)
Then I stagger to bed, so exhausted I know that nothing will ever wake me up.
***
Except that stupid dream.
I have it again. Only this time, when J. Rutherford comes into the cafeteria, he looks right at me and his eyes are filled with tears.
But he doesn’t point at me or at Jane Bauer. He starts with a different kid, a boy I don’t recognize, and then when the same kids try to help, J. Rutherford goes after them.
I still manage to hide behind the steam tables, only this time I don’t rescue my piece of pizza. And it takes the same amount of time for Principal Haas to get his act together and drown the entire cafeteria in water.
I wake up even more terrified, and this time, I wake up Mom. She’s starting to worry now too, and she promises, in the morning, we’ll hire a true precog and see exactly what is going on.
***
The true precog is Willard Pruitt, the great-great-grandfather of last year’s prom queen, Willa Pruitt. No one knows how old Willard is, but everyone knows he’s the best precog in a family full of them.
He shows up at our house fifteen minutes early (Mom later jokes that precogs never do anything on time), banging on the door before I finish making Mom’s breakfast. So I have to use a bit of magic to double everything, just so I can offer him some.
When he comes into the kitchen, I’m glad I made the effort. He’s has that weird look some old guys get when it’s pretty clear they were really big once and aren’t any more. It’s not that his clothes don’t fit—they do—it’s just that they look like the kind of clothes a six-six guy would wear instead of a guy who’s a little under five-seven.
His bones are big too—his hands are twice the size of mine, but look frailer some how—and so is his nose. Hairs grow out of it and out of his ears, and when he sits at the table, he says, “I’ve been looking forward to this meal all week.”
Which, I was about to say, was impossible, until I realize that he probably knows everything that’s going to happen at this meeting. That creeps me out and makes me not want to talk to him.
Instead, I give him a serving of waffles sprinkled with powdered sugar and covered with strawberries so fresh they look like they’ve been airbrushed. He asks for and gets coffee, then he loads the waffles with butter and eats like he hasn’t seen food in a week.
Mom and I wait until he’s finished before telling him why we’ve called.
He listens, but with that distracted air people get when you’re telling them something they already know.
Finally, I say, “You know how this is going to come out. Why don’t you just tell us?”
He smiles, grabs the full orange juice glass in front of his empty plate, and leans back in his chair.
“Precognition isn’t quite like that,” he says. “Some events are certain—like this spectacular breakfast—and others are in flux. I have no idea what is going to happen in your school cafeteria, if anything. I am not privy to the future of the Wisenhauer family. It’s blocked. It’s always been blocked, which leads me to believe Number Two cast some kind of shield spell over the whole family about the time he decided to do his cable-access show.”
For some reason that news makes me shudder.
“So,” Willard Pruitt says, “I’m here partly to see if I can help you, partly to see if there’s any truth to your dream, and partly for that breakfast. You should open a restaurant, honey. You’re the best chef I’ve ever encountered.”
I flush in spite of myself.
Mom nods.
“Yes,” she says. “My daughter is an amazingly talented domestic.”
I look at her in shock, thinking maybe she’s talking about one of my sisters. Only my sisters aren’t domestics. So Mom has to be talking about me. Except she’s never talked about me like that before.
“What she isn’t,” Mom is saying, “is a visionary or a precog. This dream of hers, while scary, can’t be true. Our family doesn’t have the magic for it.”
Willard Pruitt clears his throat. Then he drinks some orange juice. Then he clears his throat again.
He’s obviously thinking about something, and he’s battling with himself about whether or not to say it.
Finally, he says, “There’re precogs and people who have a bit of the visionary magic, and then there’s everyone else.”
Mom nods. She knows this. I know this.
“But then there are break-through moments. Do you know what those are?”
Mom frowns. I frown. I’ve never heard of this.
“Break-through moments are future moments so powerful that even the non-magical get a sense of them. That’s why the non-magical talk about having déjà vu. They’ve had a wisp of a vision about that moment, and haven’t even acknowledged it on a conscious level. Usually they can’t acknowledge it—they don’t have the tools to access it.”
I’m beginning to feel like I’m in magical theory class. All this talk about stuff most of us just do irritates me and gives me a headache all at the same time.
But I’m trying to pay attention to Willard Pruitt because he is, after all, trying to help me.
“The magical,” he’s saying, “no matter what their talents can have these break-through moments and can remember them. Usually they come in a vision, not a dream and usually—forgive me hon…”
And he looks at me for that.
“…usually, they’re about the visionary’s impending death.”
I let out a small breath. That revelation doesn’t really surprise me. I had a hunch this might be about my death. Although that doesn’t explain why I can see how the whole thing resolves—from the ocean of water the principal unleashes to the drenched kids running across the school-yard in slow motion.
Mom picks up her coffee mug, spills some coffee, and sets it down again.
Willard Pruitt looks at her shaking hands, then reaches over and pats them. “I do not think your daughter is having a break-through moment.”
Mom purses her lips and I can tell she’s thinking he’s patronizing her.
“This could be a sending, a warning, that’s coming directly to her, something that could happen. Or it could be, as her counselor says, a manifestation of your daughter’s fear of this young man which is—”
And he looks at me again.
“—entirely justified. The Wisenhauers are terrifying people, and they get a way with a lot.”
I let out a small sigh. He’s the only person, except maybe Mom, who has ever really believed me.
“I happen to think, however, that it’s a metaphor.”
I blink. We’re not in English class. Metaphor is not a word I expected this nice old guy to say.
“A metaphor?” Mom asks.
“Your daughter sees a potential in young Mr. Wisenhauer. She understands how destructive he is. Her subconscious is sending messages to her conscious via dreams, using the imagery of modern life. This doesn’t mean that young Mr. Wisenhauer is going to destroy her school, but he is going to damage somet
hing important. Something important to your daughter. It’s not by accident that she has this dream about the cafeteria, which is the only place in a high school where her talents are relevant. He’s messing inside her magic, and the fact that in the first dream, she saves her food is important. How important I do not know. I think you should hire a dream interpreter. Then you’ll get to the bottom of this.”
A dream interpreter. I can see dollar signs in the sadness on Mom’s face. Willard Pruitt is already costing us a small fortune. We can’t afford any other help.
“What’s a sending?” I ask. He had mentioned that first, before all the other possibilities.
He sighs, as if he had hoped I hadn’t heard that part.
“A sending,” he says, “comes from someone else. Like a message or a warning. It too can be a metaphor.”
“How do I know if it’s my subconscious or someone trying to contact me?” I ask.
“Well, you can hire someone to trace the dream to its source. It’s a highly specialized form of magic. No one here has that ability, but I can give you some names—”
“What about you? Why can’t you do it?” Mom asks.
“If it’s not a vision or a true prophecy or a break-through moment, my magic can’t help you either.”
Her cheeks are flushed. Mom is getting mad. Next thing you know, she’s going to deny him his fee, which she can’t do since he already told us some valuable things.
And, I think, he’s probably the only person who really, truly believes me. That’s worth the fee too.
“Can I do anything to see if it’s a sending?” I ask. “I mean, there’s got to be a way to tell if it’s just a dream or a sending, right, without going to the source?”
He looks at me for a long time. Then he says, “You might try dedicated dreaming.”
He doesn’t have to explain that to me. We all learn dedicated dreaming in Head Start. Naptime is supposed to be about dedicated dreaming, although you learn later in the biology of magic that four-year-olds really can’t control their dreams. That ability doesn’t come until puberty. But it’s a good way to get little kids to close their eyes for a half an hour.
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