Sleep No More

ELEVEN

Despite hurrying back from the mall, I’m going to be late to my second-hour class. I’m rushing down the hallway toward choir when I hear someone calling my name.

“Charlotte, wait.”

I turn to find Linden breathing hard after running to catch up and everything inside me melts and freezes all at the same time. Maybe it’s because Smith was just talking about him. About us.

It’s a story I think about almost every day, but that I’m sure Linden has forgotten. Why would he remember? To him it was just a minor playground accident.

To me it was everything.

I still remember his eyes looking down at me in concern as my sight came back. He had said, “I got the wind knocked out of me last week when I fell off my bike. It’s okay.” Then he reached out his hand. And I took it. Teachers arrived about ten seconds later, but for those brief moments it was just him and me. My little ten-year-old heart fell in love that day.

I guess I forgot to fall out again.

“I just wondered if you’re leaving town over Christmas.”

I shake my head, trying to remember how to make my mouth form words. “W-we’re staying here,” I finally manage.

“I thought maybe we could get together sometime during the break.”

Breathe, breathe, breathe.

“Sure,” I say, pulling out my phone. We exchange numbers and I focus really hard to make sure I don’t screw up and enter any of them wrong.

“I hope you don’t think this is weird,” Linden says, pocketing his phone, “but it’s nice having someone I can chat to about something—anything—other than . . . you know.”

“Yeah, it is,” I agree, although I’d have talked to Linden about anything in the world.

The bell rings, startling us both. “I’m sorry; I made you late.”

“Trust me, no one’s going to care,” I say, a lump in my throat.

“Oh yeah,” Linden says, and then is quiet.

“Hey, Linden,” I blurt, as much to change the subject as anything, “do you remember the day in fourth grade when I fell off the monkey bars?”

He grins. “No.” Then he sobers. “I didn’t push you or anything, did I?”

I laugh at the idea. “No, you rescued me.” I shrug. “So, yeah, call me anytime, okay?”

“Thanks,” he says sincerely. “I appreciate it.”

I turn and head toward class, but only until I hear his footsteps heading the other way. Then I pause and look over my shoulder and watch him walk away, a simmer of joy warming me from the inside out. Talk about a roller-coaster day.

That afternoon when I get home, I call out a hello to Mom, then slip quickly into my room and lock the door. I’ve got to get through the rest of the pages on my phone before I can decide whether or not to trust Smith. It’s two hours of squinting before my tired eyes make out the words focus stone. I sit up straight and zoom in on the scrawled paragraph.

Though the ability to enter the supernatural plane exists within all Oracles, the use of a focus stone will almost certainly be required to invoke it.

Focus stone. That’s what Smith called the necklace.

But this part of the book isn’t about revisiting visions, it’s about going to an entirely different place. I’m not even sure if it’s somewhere inside an Oracle’s mind or an actual physical location. The text talks about jumping, but I don’t know how literal that is.

Still, it’s something.

Maybe there really is more to being an Oracle than I ever imagined. Maybe even more than Smith knows.

But does that mean I should use the stone? That I should trust Smith? Ultimately even if I found a full explanation in this text of everything Smith talked about, that wouldn’t tell me whether or not I should trust him.

I have to decide that on my own.

I rub my tired eyes and turn off my phone, even though I’ve only managed to get through a few pages. I’m exhausted and starving and that’s having some severe consequences on my attention span. I wander out to grab a soda and then head into Mom’s office.

“Hey, Beautiful,” Mom says. “Have a seat; I’m just wrapping things up.”

We sit quietly for a few minutes before I say, “Linden’s been talking to me.”

Mom’s hand pauses. “Linden Linden?”

“Yeah.”

She smiles. “Still head over heels for him?”

I shrug.

“Then this is a good thing, right?”

“I think so. He was close friends with the girl who died and maybe he just wants to distance himself from that. I don’t really have any connection to her.”

She shrugs. “Friendships have certainly had worse beginnings.”

“I just wish he liked me for me.”

“You don’t know that he doesn’t.”

“I guess not,” I murmur. “But—”

“Don’t underestimate yourself. You’re very good at that.”

I let a few more minutes go by in silence. “What if he doesn’t call?” It feels a bit silly to be thinking so far ahead—I mean, he only got my number this morning. But this is the first good thing that’s happened to me in weeks. So I’m already overanalyzing it. Of course.

Mom turns to look at me squarely now. “Then you’re no worse off than you are now.”

“But I’d be so disappointed.”

“Is he worth the risk?”

“Duh,” I say with a grin.

“Charlotte, we never know what’s going to happen in the future,” my mom says, and I mentally cringe. “Look at me. Even the day before the accident I would never have believed that your dad would be gone and I’d be in a wheelchair.”

The guilt that fills me is like knives slicing my stomach.

“But I wouldn’t change a thing.”

My head jerks up.

“The time we had was worth every second of heartbreak since.” She’s quiet, her eyes unfocused as she loses herself in a memory. When she snaps back to attention, she does that forced smile that tells me she’s trying not to cry. “Some things in this world are so amazing, you have to risk everything to get them.”

I don’t feel like we’re talking about boys anymore.

“Besides,” my mom says, sounding more genuinely cheerful, “even if bad things happen, when the moment comes, you’ll be strong enough to handle it.” She strokes my hair. “You come from good, hardy stock.”

I raise my eyebrow at her, but at that moment I feel the niggle of a vision coming on. “Thanks, Mom,” I say, rising to my feet. “You’re probably right.”

“I’m always right,” she corrects playfully. “Dinner’s in the oven. It’ll be ready in five minutes.”

I nod wordlessly and then retreat back to my bedroom, closing my eyes and flopping down on my bed, hoping it’s something small that passes quickly.

But this one feels really weird. Off, maybe.

It’s only when I find myself standing ankle deep in the snow that I realize why.

It’s my vision of Jesse.

Again.

I’ve never had a vision twice. Something must have changed.

Maybe he’ll live.

But no, there he is, lying in the snow beside me.

Seconds pass and I keep waiting for something to be different. But nothing is. When the light in the foretelling dims and the scene disappears, I blink until my physical sight registers the murky twilight in my room again.

I don’t get it. Why would I have the vision again?

A thought I’ve been trying to stamp out wriggles its way to the surface and this time I let myself dwell on it.

Maybe I’m meant to do this. If there’s more to being an Oracle than I ever suspected, maybe we are supposed to help. Is it so far-fetched to wonder if I’m destined to stop these deaths? If that’s why the foretellings I have about them are so strong? And that this one has come to me twice?

Believing in destiny and fate kind of goes hand in hand with being an Oracle. So why shouldn’t this be my fate?

Still conflicted, I reach into my backpack and pull out the necklace I borrowed from Smith. Again, it feels too warm. I cradle it in my hands and stare at the stone that seems to be all colors and no colors all at the same time. I hold it up to the light, but that doesn’t make the colors clarify at all. If anything, it looks even more multihued.

Is it really a focus stone? Can it help save people?

There’s only one way to find out.

And one person who can show me.

My mom’s words echo in my mind: Some things in this world are so amazing, you have to risk everything to get them.

What could be more amazing than saving someone’s life?

I picture Jesse’s face in my mind. Alive Jesse. Working together at my house on our art project—one of the only classmates who’s ever come here.

And then I picture him dead in the snow. I see the purple bruises on his chest and wonder how excruciating it must be to have the life literally choked out of you.

Maybe I won’t succeed, but I have to try.