father? Aunt Val wanted him to call my dad? Not Dr. Nelson?
My uncle sighed. “I hate to start all this now if we could possibly put it off a while longer.” The refrigerator door squealed open, and a soda can popped, then hissed. “It was just coincidence that this happened twice in one week. It may not happen for another year, or even longer.”
Aunt Val huffed in exasperation. “Brendon, you didn’t see her. Didn’t hear her. She thinks she’s losing her mind. She’s already living on borrowed time, and she should not have to spend whatever she has left of it thinking she’s crazy.”
Borrowed time?
A jolt of shock shot through me, settling finally into my heart, which seemed reluctant to beat again for a moment. What did that mean? I was sick? Dying? How could they not have told me? And how could I be dying if I felt fine? Except for knowing when other people are going to die.
And if that were true, wouldn’t I know if I were going to die?
Uncle Brendon sighed, and a chair scraped across the floor again, then groaned as he sank into it. “Fine. Call him if you want to. You’re probably right. I just really hoped we’d have another year or two. At least until she’s out of high school.”
“That was never a certainty.” Aunt Val’s silhouette shrank as it came closer, and I scuttled toward my room, my spine still pressed against the cold wall. But then she stopped, and her shadow turned around. “Where’s the number?”
“Here, use my phone. He’s second in the contacts list.”
My aunt’s shadow elongated as she moved farther away, presumably taking the phone from my uncle. “You sure you don’t want to do it?”
“Positive.”
Another chair scraped the tiles as my aunt sat, and her shadow became an amorphous blob on the wall. A series of high-pitched beeps told me she was already pressing buttons. A moment later she spoke, and I held my breath, desperate to hear every single word of whatever they’d been keeping from me.
“Aiden? It’s Valerie.” She paused, but I couldn’t hear my father’s response. “We’re fine. Brendon’s right here. Listen, though, I’m calling about Kaylee.” Another pause, and this time I heard a low-pitched, indistinct rumble, barely recognizable as my father’s voice.
Aunt Val sighed again, and her shadow shifted as she slumped in her chair. “I know, but it’s happening again.” Pause. “Of course I’m sure. Twice in the last three days. She didn’t tell us the first time, or I would have called sooner. I’m not sure how she’s kept quiet about it, as it is.”
My father said something else I couldn’t make out.
“I did, but she won’t take them, and I’m not going to force her. I think we’ve moved beyond the pills, Aiden. It’s time to tell her the truth. You owe her that much.”
He owed me? Of course he owed me the truth—whatever that was. They all owed me.
“Yes, but I really think it should come from her father.” She sounded angry now.
My father spoke again, and this time it sounded like he was arguing. But I could have told him how futile it was to argue with Aunt Val. Once she’d made up her mind, nothing could change it.
“Aiden Cavanaugh, you put your butt on a plane today, or I’ll send your daughter to you. She deserves the truth, and you’re going to give it to her, one way or another.”
I snuck back to my room, shocked, confused, and more than a little proud of my aunt. Whatever this mysterious truth was, she wanted me to have it. And she didn’t think I was losing my mind. Neither of them did.
Though they apparently thought I was dying.
I think I’d rather be crazy.
I’d never really contemplated my own death before, but I would have thought the very idea would leave me too frightened to function. Especially having very nearly witnessed someone else’s death only hours earlier. Instead, however, I found myself more numb than terrified.
There was a substantial fear building inside me, tightening my throat and making my heart pound almost audibly inside my chest. But it was a very distant fear, as if I couldn’t quite wrap my mind around the concept of my own demise. Of simply not existing one day.
Maybe the news just hadn’t sunk in yet. Or maybe I couldn’t quite believe it. Either way, I desperately needed to talk it through with someone who wasn’t busy keeping vital secrets from me. So I texted Emma, in case her mother had lifted the cell phone ban.
Ms. Marshall replied a few minutes later, telling me that Emma was still grounded, but she’d see me the next day for Meredith’s memorial, if I was planning to go.
I wrote back to tell her I’d be there, then dropped my phone on my bed in disgust. What good is technology if your friends are always grounded from it? Or hanging out with teammates?
For lack of anything better to do, I turned the TV on again, but I couldn’t concentrate because what I’d just overheard kept playing through my mind. I analyzed every word, trying to figure out what I’d missed. What they’d been keeping from me.
I was sick; that much was clear. What else could “living on borrowed time” mean? So what did I have? What kind of twisted illness had “premonitions of death” as the primary symptom, and death itself as the eventual result?
Nothing, unless we were still considering adolescent dementia. Which we were not, based on the fact that they didn’t think I needed the zombie pills.
So what kind of illness could make me think I was crazy?
Ignoring the television now, I slid into my desk chair and fired up the Gateway notebook my father had sent me for my last birthday. Each second it took to load sent fresh waves of agitation through me, fortifying my unease until that fear I’d expected earlier finally began to take root in earnest.
I’m going to die.
Just thinking the words sent terror skittering through me. I couldn’t sit still, even for the few minutes it took Windows to load. When my leg began to jiggle with nerves, I stood in front of my dresser to peer in the mirror. Surely if I were ready to kick the proverbial bucket, I would know the minute I saw myself. That’s how it seemed to work when someone else was going to die.
But I felt nothing when I looked at my reflection, except the usual fleeting annoyance that, unlike my cousin, my skin was pale, my features completely unremarkable.
Maybe it didn’t work with reflect ions. I’d never seen Heidi in the mirror, nor Meredith. Holding my breath, and barely resisting the absurd urge to cross my fingers, I glanced down at myself, unsure whether I was more afraid of feeling the urge to scream, or of not feeling it.
Again, I felt nothing.
Did that mean I wasn’t dying, after all? Or that my gruesome gift didn’t work on myself? Or merely that my death wasn’t yet imminent? Aaagggghhh! This was pointless!
My computer chimed to tell me it was up and running, and I dropped into my desk chair. I pulled up my Internet browser and typed “leading cause of death among teenagers” into the search engine, my chest tight and aching with morbid anticipation.
The first hit contained a list of the top ten causes of death in individuals fifteen through nineteen years of age. Unintentional injury, homicide, and suicide were the top three entries. But I had no plans to end my own life, and accidents couldn’t be predicted. Neither could murder, unless my aunt and uncle were planning to take me out themselves.
Lower on the list were several equally scary entries, like heart disease, respiratory infection, and diabetes, among others. However, those all included symptoms I couldn’t possibly have overlooked.
That left only the fourth leading cause of death for people my age: malignant neoplasms.