Impact

by Steven Whibley

Colin and Lisa came over to the couch, and we matched up our phones so we’d all be seeing the same thing.

  Sarah kept talking to people in the background. I recognized a couple of faces from this morning, including Nathan. “For those of you who’ve just come into this, as you’ve been advised, visions have shown a major accident at the Abbotsford Air Show tomorrow afternoon. Current count from all members who had visions—which came from nearly half a dozen countries by the way—is sixty-seven spectators dead, including the pilot who sets off the event.”

  “Sixty-seven?” Colin whispered and then made a face. “We’re going to be busy tomorrow.”

  On the phone screen, the view pulled back to show Sarah sitting in the CS meeting room. “We expect even more injuries on top of that. We also think the cause will be the pilot crashing into the crowd.”

  “We’re not sure about the cause,” Nathan said.

  Sarah glanced to one side. “When you hear hoof beats, it’s wise to think horses, not zebras.”

  “Unless you’re in Africa,” Nathan said, and I could hear the smugness in his voice. I was impressed he could be calm about so many lives being on the line. He sounded like it didn’t even matter to him. I wondered if growing up with the Society had desensitized him to the stress of it all. Maybe visions and people dying became part of the day after a while. That thought calmed and frightened me in the same instant.

  I noticed names had popped up on one side of my screen. I squinted at them and then saw the blinking light on my phone. A camera. Meaning Colin, Lisa, and I had to be showing up on the CS meeting room monitors. I became instantly self-conscious and slid my thumb over the camera to block out anyone’s view of my face.

  If Sarah or anyone at CS noticed, no one said anything. She continued. “We have two CS members showing up tonight as part of the flight crew. A car accident disabled the flight members who were supposed to arrive at the hanger. No major injuries, but we have a doctor on staff who will keep them overnight at the hospital for observation. By morning, we will know everything about McKnight’s plane. His aircraft is also going to be grounded with minor problems. Just enough to take it out of service for the next forty-eight hours. Now, what’s the update on getting the people in our visions to stay away from the air show?”

  Several different people spoke, explaining that special deliveries had been sent out with complimentary movie passes and free dinner offers to some of the people identified. In the background, I saw Nathan shake his head. However, it was Hank who spoke up.

  “Of course, this doesn’t mean those people won’t still try to get to the show. Additionally, McKnight might try to fly another plane. We’ve looked at options to close the entire show—we could call in a bomb threat. Needless to say, we have to be careful we don’t cause even more panic and accidents. The CS is not going to start acting like a bunch of terrorists.”

  I winced. It seemed to me that calling in some threat that would keep everyone away from the fairgrounds would actually be a good idea. But the pilots might still fly, and the people who died might end up being the security staff who would stay at the grandstands. So maybe Hank was right.

  Sarah nodded as if she agreed too, and said, “We want every available CS member to be at the air show tomorrow. We will connect with as many people as we can, touching those in the front rows so we watch for second visions. That will be the alert to move the crowd. Any questions?”

  Next to me, Lisa cleared her throat. “I have one.”

  Sarah seemed to look directly at me, but I knew she was looking at a camera so Lisa could see her. “Go ahead, Lisa.”

  I knew with a sudden sinking feeling what she was going to ask. I wanted to jump up and stop her, but I knew I couldn’t. Instead, I covered my eyes.

  “How did Dean have a vision of Mr. McKnight when it’s impossible for Dean to have touched him?”

  No one said anything. Hank glared up at the camera as if he could see me, his eyes narrowed. Nathan cocked his head to one side. At least he didn’t look like he wanted to reach through the phone and grab me. Sarah shook her head. “He had to have touched him, Lisa. There’s no other way. At some point their paths crossed.”

  “Or he’s lying.” The muttered words came across the line, and I couldn’t tell who had said them. Hank? Nathan? Someone else who didn’t think I should be part of the CS? Would they use this to kick me, Lisa, and Colin out when we’d barely gotten in?

  Lisa opened her mouth to say something else, but Colin kicked her foot. I cleared my throat so she’d look at me, and I shook my head. Lisa closed her mouth and kicked Colin back.

  Sarah said, “There’s a church a block from the showgrounds. You’ll receive the address and meeting time in a text. Don’t be late. A video of this meeting will go out to members in all districts as well. We’re pulling in every available member, and we’re going to have sixty-seven wins, people.”

  The call ended, and our screens went dark. Lisa, Colin, and I just sat and stared at one another.

  Colin moved first, pushing up from the couch. “There’s something wrong with that Nathan guy.”

  Lisa scrunched up her face. “Why? Because he’s not sounding all frightened like we are? He’s grown up doing this. He’s been trained to do this. We haven’t. Of course he’s going to be calm and be able to act like this is just another day.”

  “Did you see him? He actually smiled when Sarah was talking about all the members being brought in.”

  Lisa got up and paced around a bit. “Yeah, I’m smiling about that too. We need all the help we can get. We’re not used to being part of a team, but we have to start thinking like that.”

  I got up as well and got a cookie. I didn’t feel hungry, but tearing it apart into crumbs gave me something to do. “Maybe he’s excited to be involved in such a big mission. Or maybe there’s someone from another district he knows and likes, and this means she’ll be in town.”

  “Oh, like Rylee and you?”

  I turned to Lisa, and we locked stares for a few seconds. I didn’t know why she was being so hard on me. What was it to her if I liked Rylee or if Rylee liked me?

  Colin cleared his throat. “Okay, maybe it’s just that I don’t like this Nathan guy, but what about everyone getting all weird about how Dean had to have touched McKnight? Someone even called him a liar, and I think it was Nathan who said that.”

  I shook my head. “It was probably Hank. He doesn’t think any of us should be in the CS. So we need to prove him wrong.”

  Colin tapped his phone to his chin. “I’ve been thinking.”

  “Uh-oh,” Lisa said, rolling her eyes.

  Colin ignored her. “Do you know who I think we should talk to?”

  He sounded like he had just come up with another one of his half-baked ideas. I was afraid to ask, but did anyway. “Who?”

  “Ms. Myers.”

  Lisa’s mouth fell open. She shut it with a snap and asked, “Professor Myers? From the university? Between the way you drooled on her shoes and the way Dean left her office the last time we were there, I think it’s best if she never sees us again. Ever!”

  “Just because Dean puked in the flowers outside her office …”

  “Colin!” I made a shut up face at him.

  My friend smiled and put on that voice he used to talk Lisa—and me—into almost anything. “Come on. You know she knows everything about secret societies. She knows Dean’s folks—”

  Lisa shook her head. “They all teach at the same university. That doesn’t make them all best friends.”

  We’d gone to see Professor Myers before the CS made contact with us, just after we had started to think there could be a secret group who knew what had happened to me. I’d had a vision of my little sister a few minutes into our meet, and I’d run out, screaming and freaked out. I was pretty sure Professor Myers never wanted to see me again.

  “She knew about the CS!” Colin said, as if that clinched the idea of seeing her again.

  Lisa caught on.
“She knew they’d been mentioned in history books. She didn’t think they were real. In fact, she insisted they weren’t real about a hundred times.”

  Colin raised a finger. “But she knew about them.”

  Huffing out a breath, Lisa shook her head again. Her ponytail swung this time. “We’re getting off track. We need to be focused for tomorrow. And rested.”

  “Okay. Tomorrow we save the world. Or at least a lot of Abbotsford,” Colin agreed. “The day after tomorrow, we have a date with a hot professor.” He held up his phone. “I already texted her.”

  “You didn’t!” I poked Colin in the chest. “You have to agree right now—no spilling any of the Society’s secrets. To anyone. We can’t talk about the CS in therapy. And we can’t talk about them to anyone else.”

  Lisa chewed on her lower lip and asked, “Therapy? Don’t we have to work in a visit to the museum before we see Dr. Mickelsen again?”

  “Let’s take this one day at a time,” I told her. Colin agreed. We sat down to eat the cookies. His mom would be insulted if we didn’t make them disappear, and they tasted even better than they smelled.

  It was a little weird, knowing something big was about to happen but not running around and trying to figure out just what that something big actually was. Lisa was right. We weren’t used to being part of a bigger team. Even this morning at the hotel, it had felt more like saving Mrs. Yamada was all on us.

  We hadn’t heard from Doris about Mrs. Yamada, and suddenly I couldn’t eat any more cookies. I tossed the one I’d taken back on the plate. Colin glanced at me, but he snatched up the cookie and ate it.

  Lisa shifted on the couch, drawing her knees up to her chest. “At least we’ll have help tomorrow. It won’t feel like we’re the only ones at fault when someone dies.”

  “How many times do you need to hear it’s never on us?” Colin asked her. “That person is going to die. We get to try to intervene. That’s it. It sucks if we fail, but we don’t kill anyone. Don’t you get that?”

  “You can really separate yourself from it? Like Nathan seems to?”

  “Not like Nathan,” Colin said, his eyes narrowing. “But, yeah, sort of. Look, every time we have a mission, I pretend I’m a firefighter. We’re going to a fire … the fire is the person who’s going to die and—”

  “I get it,” Lisa said, cutting him off.

  “Right, well, when it doesn’t go right, I imagine something slowed the fire truck down. Or maybe the fire was so big no one could have put it out. Either way, we heard the alarm. We responded. We did what we could.”

  “Is that what you do, too?” Lisa asked me.

  Surprised by the question, I said, “I don’t know. I guess, to a point.”

  Letting out a growl, Colin sat down on his bed. “You guys are going to go insane. Tomorrow a whole bunch of people who were going to die will probably live.”

  “It’s the probable part that gets me,” Lisa said.

  From somewhere beyond the other side of the door, Colin’s mom called, “Are Lisa and Dean staying for dinner? They’re welcome to, if their parents are okay with it.”

  Colin gestured to my clothes. “We forgot to get you cleaned up.”

  I glanced down at myself and made a face. If we really had to face a disaster tomorrow, I wanted to sleep in my own bed tonight. I wanted to see my folks. And even annoying Becky. I stood up. “I should get home.”

  But the truth sat like a knot in my stomach, and a voice in the back of my mind whispered, You’re going to fail. There’s no way you and the CS have a chance at saving over sixty people.

  I was pretty sure I wouldn’t be able to even eat dinner or get much sleep.

  Something just felt off to me. And it wasn’t just the weirdness of never having touched McKnight.

  What was I missing?

  CHAPTER 11

  I was able to sneak into the house and get to my room before anyone saw me, especially Becky. She would have told Mom and Dad that I smelled like a swimming pool.

  I should’ve been excited to be part of the CS. I had people who knew about my visions, and they also had my back. Or mostly they did. I kept thinking about Hank and how he was Sarah’s boss and Sarah was Archer’s boss. What if Hank decided I could no longer be part of the CS? What then? Could they force me to give my gift away, like maybe to Nathan or someone else they had trained? But why would they let me into the CS only to kick me out? That didn’t make sense.

  And where had I met McKnight?

  At dinner, Mom asked if I was feeling okay, and Dad kept giving me funny looks. Becky kept talking about the air show and her collection of teeth, and I figured that was a good enough reason to leave the table early. I told my folks I was going to my room to play on the computer, but I spent the rest of the time before bed looking over everything on McKnight.

  Again.

  I went to bed early, which must’ve raised concerns with my mom because she came in and asked again if I was okay.

  “Yeah. Just … I think I ate something at the mall that didn’t agree with me.”

  She nodded and smoothed my hair back. “Well, stay in bed tomorrow if you’re not feeling better.”

  That sounded so good. Stay home. Let Mom feed me homemade soup. Watch stupid TV shows. No, I couldn’t do it. “I’ll be fine. I promised … uh, Lisa and Colin that I’d go with them to the air—I mean, mall tomorrow.”

  “Mall? Don’t you want to see the air show this year? Not a lot of time left.”

  I shook my head. “Nah, I’ve seen it a hundred times. Besides, I kind of told Rylee I’d text her about going out. And I don’t think she wants to go to the show either.” I cringed. That sounded like I’d asked Rylee out on a date.

  Mom smiled and kissed my forehead. “Promise me you won’t grow up too fast, Dean.”

  I nodded, but I had no idea how to make that kind of pledge.

  That night, I tossed and turned, my sleep fraught with nightmares.

  Airplanes flew in my dreams. They crashed, too.

  I woke up with a start, hearing McKnight scream again, seeing his skin melt off his face and char. I got out of bed, staggered to the bathroom, and splashed water on my cheeks. I leaned on the edge of the sink and took deep breaths.

  At six a.m., I dressed and crept down to the kitchen. The house seemed quiet and dark around me. Colin texted me a few seconds later that he and Lisa would meet me at the bus stop so we could get to the CS meeting on time. After raiding the cupboard, I scarfed down some cereal. I wanted to duck out before anyone else woke. I dumped my dish in the sink and had turned to scribble a note for my folks when I heard the floor creak.

  Turning fast, I expected to see Mom or Dad behind me. Instead, Becky stood there in her pj’s, her hair pulled back in a ponytail, frizzy strands poking up as if she’d licked a dozen batteries. “Why are you up so early? You going somewhere?”

  “None of your business.” I headed for the counter and the notepad.

  “Do you know my friend Jill?” she asked. Becky sounded nice, and that made the skin on the back of my arms tingle.

  “No … and I don’t want to know her.” I finished my note and pinned it to the fridge with a magnet.

  “Well, she has a cousin who is visiting for the air show. Jill took her to see some of the sights in Abbotsford.”

  I stopped and stared at Becky. “That’s really great. I’m so happy you’re sharing this with me. I don’t really have time for, you know, stuff I don’t care about.”

  Becky stuck her nose in the air and went to the cupboard to pull out the cereal I’d just put away. “They went to the hot springs yesterday.”

  A lump stuck in my throat. I forced myself not to move. Not to react. A lot of people went there. It was a popular place. Oh, who was I kidding? I knew where this was going.

  Becky got out a bowl and poured out her breakfast. When she finished, she reached into her pj’s pants pocket and pulled out the cell phone she’d saved up two summers to buy. She tapped the scre
en and held it out to me. “Great video, hmm?”

  The image on the screen jostled and focused on a pool. I knew what I’d see, but it still was weird to watch Colin jump into the water, and then me. The scene played out like I remembered, although it happened a lot faster than I remembered.

  It wasn’t so much that you could see my face. The video jerked around and showed my back more than anything. However, Colin practically looked right into the camera, and you could see Lisa’s ponytail.

  The video ended. Becky and I just gaped at each other. She didn’t smile at me or anything. I had to give her credit; she knew she had me. But what was she going to do?

  I blew out a breath and pushed down my shoulders. “Did you tell Mom and Dad?”

  “Not yet.”

  “Then you plan to?”

  “I haven’t made up my mind. Who is that guy with you? I’ve seen him before.”

  Oh, yeah. Archer was in the video too. Becky had seen him when Archer had been parked outside my house, pretending to sell ice cream. I didn’t want to have to explain him to her, so I went for my next best choice. “How about five dollars to delete that video?”

  “It’s already on YouTube, you know,” she said smugly. “It hasn’t gone viral or anything, but it could. Or someone might start sending out the link.”

  I forced a laugh. “A woman has a seizure, falls into the pool, and some people pull her out. You think that will go viral? Really?” I took a breath and lowered my voice. I couldn’t have Becky start yelling back at me or else our parents would wake up and we’d be stuck here all morning talking about this. “It’s not that interesting. So what if I happened to be there to help?”

  “How did you happen to be there? It’s two hours away. How did you get there? And who is that man?”

  I leaned over Becky. “If someone put that video on YouTube, someone can take it down. Especially if someone owed me.” That was cheap. I knew it. I felt a stab of guilt immediately for even saying it. But I didn’t want that video going viral. I didn’t want my parents to ask the same questions Becky had just asked.

  I grabbed my backpack and pushed past Becky. She grabbed my arm. “Dean! We never talked about what happened at the park. You know—with the car. I never asked because I didn’t want to think it was anything other than you seeing what was going to happen. You were on a hill. You saw the car and me running.” She wet her lips. “I know I owe you.”