Sleep No More

FOUR

It’s all over the news the next morning.

Her body is covered with a white drape, and the reporter is rambling on about her injuries, but even his gruesome descriptions can’t compare to the actual sight. The one I saw only yesterday.

Mom’s hand is clenched around a mug of coffee, but she hasn’t lifted it to her mouth since she turned the television on ten minutes ago. “Who could do this?” she finally whispers after what feels like hours.

Unfortunately, despite the vision, that’s a question I can’t answer. Visions are fickle that way—sometimes they give you the important information, and sometimes they simply . . . don’t.

Sierra walks into the noticeably tense kitchen. “What’s going on?” she asks, looking between Mom and me and not seeming to notice that the TV is on despite its high volume. She’s like that, totally unaware of some things while being hyperaware of others. Probably because she’s constantly on guard for visions.

I guess I’ll be like that someday too.

“A teenage girl was killed at the high school last night,” Mom whispers, still staring horrified at the television. “Throat sliced right open.”

Sierra’s head swings to me and she stares with questions shining in her eyes. I feel like I did when I was six. I don’t know how she knew then, but she did.

And she knows now.

Her expression evokes the same awful guilt, even though this time I did nothing. Which makes me feel even more guilty.

Sierra fills her coffee cup with marked carefulness. She begins to leave the kitchen, but just before she disappears around the doorway she flicks her head, gesturing for me to join her.

I stall. I’ve got about five bites of now-soggy cereal in the bottom of my bowl, and I lift them to my mouth slowly. But I can’t put it off long—I have to leave for school soon.

Sierra is waiting for me just outside her bedroom door. “This is why you were asking questions yesterday, isn’t it?”

There’s no point in denying it.

“You didn’t tell me you actually saw it. I assumed you fought.” Even though her voice is soft, I can tell she’s angry. Angry that I didn’t confide in her? Maybe.

“I did fight!” To my dismay, tears are starting to build up in my eyes. I didn’t expect it to actually happen so soon. I wasn’t ready. “I fought so hard,” I continue, pleading now. “It was different from anything I’ve ever experienced before. I couldn’t stop it.”

She stares at me for a long time, but then her eyes soften and she simply says, “I wish you’d told me.”

“Why?” I shoot back. Not mad exactly, but very helpless. “So you could do something?” Her jaw tightens but I continue. “What good would it have done to tell you?”

Sierra looks down the hall toward the kitchen where I can hear the news continuing about the murder. She steps close and lays a hand on my shoulder. “Charlotte, the life of an Oracle is very solitary; we’re lucky to have each other. Please don’t push me away because I have high expectations of you. I don’t think you failed—these things happen. But that means it’s time to be even more vigilant.”

Her steady gaze makes me weirdly nervous and I pull out my phone and light up the clock on my home screen. “I gotta go.”

After getting dressed, I walk into the kitchen and pick up my set of house keys from the basket beside the back door. Surprisingly the soft jingle is what finally distracts Mom from the gruesome scene on the screen. “Where are you going?” she says in a rather irritated tone.

I blink at her, confused. “School?”

Her hair looks almost wild around her face as she shakes her head. “You can’t go to school today.”

“Why not?” The words are out of my mouth before I realize how stupid they are. Of course my mother is worried about my safety; a teenage girl who’s in a couple of my classes just got murdered on school grounds.

She doesn’t know that I’m completely safe.

It’s kind of an open secret among Oracles; we all know how we’re going to die. Or, like me, we don’t yet because it’s too far in the future. The more personal a foretelling is, the harder to fight off. And nothing is more personal than one’s own death. I managed to get that tidbit out of Sierra once when I asked why she didn’t try to change her own death in the vision we both saw when I was six. But then she clammed up and wouldn’t tell me anything else.

I’ve never had a foretelling about myself. I’m pretty sure that means my death is years and years and years in the future. My lonely, eccentric future.

And that means I’m safe today. But Mom doesn’t know that.

“I know this is awful,” I say, “but I have a test in trigonometry today. I have to go.”

Mom fixes me with a dry look. “I have a feeling the test is going to be postponed.”

As though she can control the television, the silence between us fills with a voice announcing, “Due to the fact that William Tell High School is a crime scene that has not yet been released by the police, classes have been canceled. Principal Featherstone hopes to open campus as early as Monday, but until then, please keep your teenagers home, where they’re safe.”

Canceled or not, a quick shot from the news camera shows that the teenagers of Coldwater, Oklahoma, are certainly not at home. The football field fence is lined with students and adults alike, most in tears as they watch from behind bright yellow barriers of police tape fastened across the chain-link.

“The police haven’t released the name of the victim yet,” the news reporter continues, catching my attention again. “Only that it was a female teenager.” She indicates the crowd of people, many on their phones. “You can imagine the panic these kids must be feeling as they call and text their friends and wait anxiously for responses. For channel six, this is—” But I tune her out; I don’t care what her name is.

My eyes are glued to the draped body that’s now being lifted onto a gurney bound for a waiting ambulance. They do a good job of keeping her face covered, but a gust of icy December wind wrenches the drape free from one foot and a maroon ballet flat comes into view.

A scream sounds from offscreen and, as though drawn to the agony, the camera swings toward the fence and shows a tall brunette crumpling to the ground, surrounded by a handful of other girls.

Rachel Barnett. She’s Bethany’s best friend. The one I saw her with yesterday. She would know instantly who those shoes belong to. Sobs shake her body as the news camera zooms in, invading her private grief. I can’t help but feel like a voyeur as Rachel wails and shakes her head. I don’t even realize I’m crying until I’m gasping for air.

I turn and leave the kitchen, ignoring my mom when she calls after me. I swing the door to my bedroom closed as fast as I can without slamming it, and lock it. My room feels too dark even with the sunlight pouring in through the window, so I turn on my overhead light, and then add my bedside lamp for good measure. After kicking off my shoes, I dive under my comforter, wishing something as simple as a fluffy feather blanket could hope to chase away the frost inside me.

I could have stopped this.

No, that’s not exactly true. I might have been able to stop this. And I didn’t even try. Even though I can hear my aunt’s voice screaming in my head that I did the right thing, I feel like a terrible person.

And what’s worse is that I hadn’t actually decided what to do yet. I thought I had more time. I was going to make the for-sure decision this weekend. And now the choice has been torn away from me.

I did nothing.

Not because I chose to do nothing, but because I didn’t make a choice at all. The thought sickens me. I wish I’d never seen the vision. I wish I’d fought harder. Assuming I even could have fought harder. The memory of how drained I felt after the foretelling makes me doubt it, but maybe there was something else I could have done.

Even without a vision, the whole idea of a murder would have seemed surreal. Coldwater is the kind of place where stuff like this just doesn’t happen. We’re not teeny tiny; there are, like, ten or fifteen thousand people in the community. Lots of farmers, people who say hi at the grocery store even though they don’t exactly know who you are. Half the town goes out to the high school football games Friday nights without fail. That kind of thing.

Our idea of a crime-filled night is some couple getting drunk and causing a “domestic disturbance,” or maybe a high schooler attempting to steal a bottle of tequila from the liquor store on a dare.

Not killing people. Not killing kids.

I should have warned her. I shove my head under my blanket in some long-forgotten instinct, and then tear it off again to escape the darkness.

As light flashes across my eyes, I have a terrifying thought: maybe that was the reason the vision overwhelmed all of my defenses—because I was supposed to help her and I failed.

But what if I had done something? If I’d warned her to be careful she might have taken Rachel with her. Then two people would be dead. And that second death would have been entirely my fault.

This isn’t about choosing between right and wrong; it’s about trying to predict the line between wrong . . . and more wrong.