to fade. That’s when you know you’ve won.
Today, as usual, I win. It’s so normal, it doesn’t even feel triumphant. As the sensation ebbs away, my body belongs to me again. My lungs cry for air and even though I want to gulp it in, I do the breathing-from-a-straw thing so I don’t hyperventilate. Made that mistake once in fourth grade and passed out. Not my finest moment.
A few more seconds and I’ll be able to see again. Hear again. The noise filters in like turning the volume up on a radio and, as soon as I have the strength, I straighten my spine and let my eyes dart carefully from side to side to see if anyone noticed.
No one’s paying attention. I reach for my backpack and my hand covers a shoe instead. I look up to find Linden Christiansen towering above my head and holding my backpack.
Mortification and delight fight to drown me.
He reaches out a hand and I wish it meant anything other than that he’s a nice guy helping a girl up. But as soon as I’m on my feet, he drops his arm. “Migraine coming on?” he asks, handing over my backpack.
The lie that rules my life. “Yeah,” I mumble.
He’s looking at me and I let myself meet his gaze—and thus risk turning into a babbling moron at the sight of his light blue eyes that remind me of a still pond. “I t-took some new meds this morning,” I stammer, “but I guess they haven’t quite kicked in yet.”
“Do you want to call your mom?” he asks, his forehead wrinkling with concern. “Go home?”
I force a smile and a shaky laugh. “No, I’ll be okay. I just need to get to class and sit down. They’ll start working soon.”
“Are you sure? You want me to carry your backpack or anything?”
I’m tempted to let him. Anything to buy a few more minutes. But the vision has passed—I’m completely fine now. And my ego rebels against faking weakness for a guy.
Even Linden. Who I’ve liked since before my age reached two digits.
It’ll never happen. Even if by some miracle he were interested, there’re those stupid social lines that are practically stone walls separating us. I’m in the Artsy-Semi-Nerd pen. Linden is in the Super-Popular-Don’t-Even-Try-It pen. Despite the fact that he’s so nice. And talks to me sometimes. In choir class mostly. When he’s bored. He doesn’t actually sing very well, he just needs an arts credit.
But he wouldn’t ask me out or anything.
And what would I do if he did? I can’t date anyone. What would I tell the guy when he asks why I’m always so tense and jumpy? That I’m always on guard for unwanted foretellings of the future? Yeah, that’ll break the ice.
How about why I don’t want to go to a movie? Ever. Somehow telling someone I don’t like dim places because—like closing your eyes—they make the visions harder to fight, feels even more embarrassing than the lie that I’m afraid of the dark. Which is what I had to tell friends who used to spend the night—only once, of course, before they realized how weird I was—when they asked why I sleep with my bedside lamp on.
Not night-light. Lamp.
“You’re positive?” Linden asks, and I nod, hating that I want to cry inside. He throws me a grin—a real one, a nice one—and says, “I’ll see you in choir then.”
I wave lamely and watch him walk away. I wish I could just be normal.
But I’m not. I’m Charlotte Westing and I’m an Oracle. The kind you’ve read about who once imparted wisdom and advised great kings and queens and assisted brave knights on their quests. But those Oracles existed a long time ago. When they could actually reveal their foretellings and use them to make lives better.
The world is different now. And our role is different. Oracles once worked with the leaders of civilization to mold, shape, and change the future for the good of mankind. But corruption led to several disasters like the fall of the Roman Empire and the Mongol invasion of China, so the Oracles withdrew their power. From then to present-day, the Oracles have followed an ancient vow to allow the future to unfold as it will. Now, Oracles believe it’s best that no one sees the future. So that no one’s tempted to change it.
So that no one dies because an Oracle doesn’t have the strength to resist that temptation.
A hollow sadness fills my chest and I force it away. The past is gone. No one, anywhere, can do anything about what has already happened.
But the present? That’s what I have to deal with. The visions are part of my life—have been since my first at age three. As soon as I was capable, my aunt Sierra started teaching me how to resist them.
A child should never be burdened with knowledge of the future, she told me, and I tried to believe her even though at the time I was excited that I could “do magic.”
I know better now.
I’m more than ready to be finished with the day when I head into my final class—trigonometry. We’re going over a review test and I’m having trouble paying attention. My external senses feel oddly muffled, the subtle feeling that generally precedes a foretelling.
But I just had one this morning; twice a day is pretty unusual. And this foretelling is being weird. I never like weird. Weird is unpredictable. Usually, once I get the feeling, the vision follows within minutes, max. This time, the sensation has lasted almost half an hour and still nothing.
Class is nearly over when the blackness starts to descend around the corners of my eyes and it’s almost a relief to lay my forehead on my arms so I can get it over with.
Even though all my muscles are tensed and ready, it’s more forceful than usual and I try not to shudder as a painful weight settles on my body.
It feels different this time. It’s a vise that envelops my entire head. Squeezing, squeezing. A moan builds up in my throat and I push it away.
An Oracle never loses control. My aunt’s voice echoes through my head, but her words blow away as a storm thrashes within my brain like a physical thing, battering against my skull until I honestly fear the bones are about to shatter. What is this?! Distantly I feel my fingers grip the edges of my desk and I hold statue-still, scrolling through every tactic my aunt taught me and new ones I’ve come up with on my own throughout the years.
But this vision is too strong. It tosses aside my defenses as though they are tissue paper trying to hold back a stampede.
Within seconds, the formless presence of the foretelling pulses around me. I can still kind of hear Mrs. Patterson answering a question about the radius of convergence, but her voice is getting further and further away as I struggle against a pull that feels like a river, carrying me away in a whirling current. Inside my mind, shadows are emerging. Then I’m spinning, falling.
No, no, no! I shout in my head, trying to grip my desk harder, breathe even shallower.
None of my tricks are working.
I’ve never had a vision this strong. Even when I was younger and didn’t know how to control them, they didn’t overwhelm me quite this way. Some tiny part of me knows that I’m in school, sitting in a classroom surrounded by other sixteen-year-olds, but in the midst of the vision, those facts seem as fantastical as stories of princesses and dragons.
Then, with a brilliant flash of light, the falling sensation stops and my stomach feels like it flips upside down.
My feet are on solid ground.
I’m at the school football field.
It’s