Poe - [Anthology]

by Edited By Ellen Datlow

He pushed his face up close to mine again. “You don’t want to find out.”

  The guys around me moved away slightly as I took a step back. “Yeah? Well, it couldn’t be anywhere near as bad as what’s coming up for you,” the devil went on. “Yuk it up while you can, because this Sunday you’re gonna d—” I stumbled slightly on a bit of uneven pavement and finally managed to shut myself up.

  He tilted his head to one side, eyes bright with curiosity. “Don’t stop now, it’s just getting’ good. I’mm gonna what?”

  Now I had no voice at all.

  “Come on, girlie.” He gave a nasty laugh. “I’m gonnawhat?”

  I swallowed hard and took another step back and then another. He moved toward me.

  “Come on, I’m gonna what?”

  “You—you’re—” I all but choked. “You’re gonna have a really bad night!”

  I turned and ran until I couldn’t hear them jeering any more.

  * * * *

  You’re not just a bad person, you’re the worst person in the world. No, you’re the worst person who ever lived.

  Sitting at the back of the bus, I said it over and over, trying to fill my brain with it so I couldn’t think about anything else. I actually managed to distract myself enough so that I didn’t notice as many deaths as I might have otherwise.

  Or maybe I was just full of my thug’s imminent death. That and what I had told him.

  Except he couldn’t have understood. When that steering column went through his chest, he wasn’t going to think,OMGWTFBBQ, she knew!in the last second before he died.

  Was he?

  * * * *

  The Public Library was my usual hideout when I felt overwhelmed or needed somewhere quiet to get my head together. Today, however, I was out of luck—the place was closed due to some problem with the plumbing. Figured, I thought. No hiding place for the worst person in the world.

  By this time, my mother would be teetering on the threshold between annoyed and genuinely worried. I called her from the payphone by the front door of the library.

  “This had better be good,” she said, a cheery edge in her voice.

  I gave her a rambling story about having to finish a math assignment and then going to the library to get a head start on a project only to find it was closed.

  “Just get your butt home,” she said when I paused for breath. To my relief, she sounded more affectionate than mad now. I told her I’d be there as soon as I could and hung up.

  If I were going to live a long time, I thought as I walked two and a half blocks to a bus stop, then wouldn’t the chances be really good that my mother and brothers would, too?

  And if any of them were going to die in an accident, then Ihad to tell them so we could stop it from happening. I shouldn’t have been afraid to go home. I should haverushed home.

  I had to tell my mother everything, especially what I had said. She would know what to do.

  Was this the kind of problem Loomis had made for himself, I wondered? Was this why no one had begged him to stay?

  At least being home wasn’t an ordeal. My mother would fade away in her sleep at ninety-two, Benny would suffer a massive stroke at eighty-nine, and Tim would achieve a hundred-and-five before his heart failed, making him the grand old man of the house. We were quite the long-lived bunch. I wondered what Mr. Bodette’s mother the statistician would have made of that. Maybe nothing.

  And it was nothing next to the fact that I didn’t tell my mother anything after all.

  But I had a good reason. It was Benny’s night; he’d gotten a perfect score on a history test at school and my mother had decided to celebrate by taking us all to Wiggins, which had the best ice cream in the county, if not the world. We didn’t get Wiggins very often and never on a school night. I just couldn’t bring myself to spoil the evening with the curse of Loomis.

  * * * *

  My thug’s name, I discovered, was Phil Lattimore. He was sixteen, a linebacker on the varsity football team. There were lots of team photos in the school trophy case, which was the first thing you saw when you came up the stairs from the front door. I had never paid much attention to it. Sports didn’t interest me much, especially sports I couldn’t play.

  When I went to school on Friday, however, the trophy case that had once barely existed for me seemed to draw me like a magnet—any time I had to go from one place to another, I’d find myself walking past it and I couldn’t pass without looking at my thug’s grinning face.

  Worse, I was suddenly noticing photos of the team everywhere, adorned with small pennants in the school colors reading !PRIDE!, !STRENGTH!, and !!!CHAMPIONS!!!, and it wasn’t even football season any more. You’d have thought they’d cured cancer or something.

  Unbidden, it came to me: this could be a sign. Maybe if I saved my thug’s life, he would cure cancer—or AIDS, or Ebola. Or maybe he’d stop global warming or world hunger. Plenty of people turned their lives around after a close brush with death. It was extremely hard to imagine my thug doing anything like that, but what did I know?

  Unless I really was supposed to leave him to his fate.

  That was like a whack upside my bead. Was I supposed to fix this the way my mother fixed broken machines? Or just live with what I knew, like my Aunt Donna?

  I couldn’t do anything about what I didn’t know, I decided. I had to do something about what I did know.

  I was thirteen.

  * * * *

  Ambrose made a pained face and shoved my math book back at me. “Liar.”

  “What do you mean?” I said, uneasily. “This stuff’s driving me crazy.”

  “You’re a liar. You make me come all the way over here when you don’t need any help. Not with that, anyway. You just need your head examined.” He started to get up from my desk and I caught his arm.

  “Gimme a break—”

  “Give me a break.” My cousin gave me a sour, sarcastic smile. “Let me remind you of something you’ve forgotten: I know what you’ve forgotten.” He tapped my math book with two fingers. “You haven’t forgotten this. Ergo, you actually understand it. Congratulations, you’re not a moron, just crazy. It’s Saturday, it’s spring, and there are a gazillion other things I’d rather do.”

  “Do you know Phil Lattimore?” I blurted just as he reached the doorway of my room.

  He turned, the expression on his face a mix of surprise and revulsion. “Are you kidding? Everybody knows Phil the Fuckhead. According to him, anyway. What about him and why should I care?”

  I took a deep, uncomfortable breath and let it out slowly. “I, uh...”

  Ambrose stuck his fists on his narrow hips and tilted his head to one side. “You what?”

  I swallowed and tried again. “There’s something...” I cleared my throat. “Close the door.”

  He frowned as if this were something no one had ever asked him to do before.

  “And come back over here and sit down,” I added, “so I can tell you what I know.”

  He did so, looking wary. “You mean... Know?”

  “Yeah,” I said. “Tomorrow night, Phil Lattimore—” I floundered, trying to think of the right words. “Okay, look—if you knew you could save someone’s life, wouldn’t you do it? Even a fuckhead?”

  Ambrose’s face turned serious. “What are you saying?”

  “It’s a car accident. Phil Lattimore—he—he’ll be hurt.”

  He stared at me for I don’t know how long. “You really, like...know this?” he said finally.

  I nodded.

  “Anyone else going to get hurt with him?”

  “Not that I... uh... know of.”

  “Damn.” Ambrose shook his head and gave a short, amazed laugh. “You really haven’t told anyone else?”

  “No one. Just you.”

  “I don’t know why not.” He ran a hand through his thick, brown hair. “If I could warn people when they were going to have an accident instead of just telling them where they left their keys—man, that would be fucki
n’ awesome.” He gave me a significant look. “A hell of a lot better than telling people when they were going to die.”

  * * * *

  There are so many ways you can go wrong without meaning to.

  You can make a mistake, an error, or a faux pas. You can screw things up, you can screw things up royally, or just screw the pooch. Or you can fuck up beyond all hope, like I did. Deliberately.

  I knew it was wrong but I was afraid he wouldn’t help me. But a life was at stake and that was more important than anything, I told myself. As soon as Phil Lattimore was safe, I’d tell Ambrose the truth. He might be angry with me at first but then he would understand, I told myself. So would the rest of the family. They couldn’t possibly not understand. I told myself. I was thirteen.

  * * * *

  “But why don’t you want to tell anyone?” Ambrose asked as he worked on a Wiggins butterscotch shake.

  “It’s complicated. And keep your voice down.” We were sitting outside at one of the bright yellow plastic tables near the entrance to the parking lot.

  Ambrose made a business of looking around. The only other people there were a young couple with a baby three tables away. “Right. Because they might hear us over the traffic noise!” He bellowed the last words as a truck went by on the street. The couple with the baby never looked in our direction.

  “Fine, you made your point,” I said. Normally two scoops of coffee ice cream topped with hot fudge was enough to put the world right but not today. The people with the baby had arrived after we had and they were directly in my line of sight.

  “You know, it’s rare but there are a few other people in the family with your trait,” Ambrose was saying.

  “There are?”

  “Yeah, one of our cousins, she lives in California, I think. My dad mentioned her once. Also one of his aunts, which I guess makes her our great-aunt. Dad said she so was high-strung that sometimes she was afraid to go out.”

  “Because of what she knew?” I said.

  Ambrose frowned. “Not exactly. Something real bad happened—I don’t know what—that everyone thought was an accident. Only it wasn’t, because she didn’t know about it in advance. Since she had no connection to anyone involved and no evidence; there was nothing she could do. Dad said she freaked out and never really recovered.”

  “She couldn’t have made an anonymous call to the police? Or sent a letter or something?”

  Ambrose shrugged. “I don’t know the whole story. Maybe she tried that and it didn’t work.” His expression became slightly concerned. “I hope nothing like that ever happens to you.”

  “I can’t worry about that right now,” I said. “Are you sure Phil the Fuck-head’s gonna be here?”

  “I told you, my friend Jerry works weekends here and Phil always shows. After the fill-in manager goes home, he comes in to hassle the girls on the counter. Is there something about those people that bothers you?”

  The sudden change in subject caught me by surprise. “What people? Why?”

  “You keep putting up your hand to your head like you want to block out the sight of them but at the same time you’re sneaking little peeks. Something wrong with them?”

  Not really. Other than the fact that in nine years, seven months, and one week, the kid is going to drown, it’s all good. I had to bite my lip.

  Ambrose’s eyes widened as he leaned forward. “Arethey going to have an accident?”

  The dad and mom would go on for another forty-five and sixty-eight years respectively before they died of two different cancers. I hoped they’d have other children.

  “Nothing in the immediate future,” I said.

  “What about you and me?” His face was very serious now. “Are we gonna be OK?”

  Ambrose had another fifty-two years ahead of him. Not as long as anyone at my house but not what I’d have called being cut off in his prime. “We’re fine,” I said. “We seem to be pretty I—ah, lucky.” I’d been about to saylong-lived.

  “For the immediate future,” he said, still serious. “How far ahead do you know about—two months? Six months? Longer?”

  I took an uncomfortable breath. “I-I don’t know. I haven’t picked up on anyone else yet. What about the cousin and that great-aunt? How far ahead did they see?”

  “My dad said the great-aunt wouldn’t tell. He thinks maybe six months for the cousin but he couldn’t remember.” “Six months would be pretty helpful,” I said lamely.

  Ambrose wasn’t listening. He was looking at a car pulling into the parking lot.

  “Fuckhead alert,” he said. “Driving his land yacht. The only thing big enough for his fuckhead posse.”

  Land yacht was right; the metallic brown convertible was enormous, old, but obviously cared for. The top was down, either to show off the tan and plaid upholstery or just to let the guys enjoy the wind blowing through their crew cuts. Phil parked down at the far end of the lot by the exit, taking up two spaces. Not just typical but predictable, like he was following a program laid out for him. The Fuckhead Lifeplan. Maybe I reallywas supposed to leave him to his fate.

  As if catching the flavor of my thoughts, Ambrose said, “Yousure you want to help this asshole? He’s got plenty of friends. Let them rush him to the hospital.”

  “Shut up.” I slipped over to Ambrose’s side of the table. “And turn around; don’t let them see we’re looking at them.”

  “Whatever.” Pause. “Hey, we’re not doing this because you have some kinda masochistic crush on him, are we?”

  “No, I hate him.”

  “Oh, look—it’s my little girlie friend!” bellowed that stupid, awful voice. “And who’s that with her? Hey, you’re not cheating on me, are you? Better not or I’ll have to teach you both a lesson—”

  I wiped both hands over my face, begging the earth to open up and swallow me but as usual it didn’t. Phil Lattimore loomed over me like the Thug of Doom, his chuckling goon squad backing him up. I glanced at Ambrose. He sat with his arms crossed, staring straight ahead.

  “Oh, hey, you got a pet fag!” my thug said with loud delight. “I got no problem with fags as long as they’re housetrained and don’t try to hump my leg or nothing. You wouldn’t do something like that, would you, pet fag? Hey, you got a name? You look like a Fifi. Right, guys?”

  Fuckin’ A, said the guys, high-fiving each other.

  Phil Lattimore bent down so we were eye to eye. “Who said you could eat ice cream here?”

  Would his buddies be in the car with him when it happened, would they be hurt? If so, they’d recover. The soonest any of them would pass away was thirty years from now; the goon on Phil’s immediate left would die of blood poisoning. Another avoidable death. Should I make a note to phone him in three decades, two months, and six days: Hey, if you get a splinter today, you’d better go to the hospital immediately because you’ll die if you don’t.

  All this went through my head in a fraction of a second, before Phil straightened up and went on. “Any a you guys get a memo saying girlie and Fifi could eat here?”

  The goon squad chorus didn’t answer; instead, they all turned and went into Wiggins.

  I turned to Ambrose, stunned. “What just happened?”

  “A minor miracle.” He pointed; a police car had just pulled into the lot. “Maybe they’ve been following him.” We watched as the cops got out of the car and went inside. “Bunch of guys riding around on Saturday night. Could be trouble.”

  “It’s not night yet,” I pointed out.

  “But it will be soon. Let’s get out of here before Phil and the posse come back out. They’re not gonna feel like hassling the waitresses with a couple of cops watching.”

  We threw our empty dishes away and got into the VW. Technically the car was his mother’s but she had left it behind after moving out. His parents, like mine, both carried traits but, unlike mine, they had gotten married. Despite splitting up, however, they still weren’t divorced.

  “You sure this isn’t a pervy
crush?” Ambrose grumbled as he backed out of the parking space. “Wanting to help that asshole—”

  “I don’t want to,” I said. “I have to.”

  “Because?” Ambrose prompted as we approached the exit; it was right near where Phil Lattimore had parked his land yacht. “Or is that a deep, dark, pervy secret?”

  “Because I said something to him about what I know.”

  Ambrose slammed on the brakes so sharply I flopped in my shoulder harness.

  “You told Phil the Fuckhead that you know he’s gonna have an accident tomorrow night?” My cousin’s voice was half an octave higher than I’d thought it could go. “You really are fucking crazy!”