Scorpion Shards

but I managed to solve it anyway!”

Deanna looked down and nervously began to scratch at her healing wrist, as something occurred to her. “So then . . . if you can see how things are going to happen—then you meant to hurt those people in the avalanche. You meant to hurt me.”

Dillon cringed and stood up. “Boulders aren’t billiard balls. A mountain’s not a chessboard,” he said. “And it’s not like I can predict the future—I just see patterns of the way things ought to happen— but things don’t always hap­pen the way they’re supposed to. . . .”

Dillon began to pace. “There was a tree further down the mountain,” he said. “The way I saw it, the tree was going to get smashed, and in the end four homes would get hit—the four that were empty. No one would get hurt, and the wrecking-hunger would be fed, right? So I threw the stone that I knew would start the whole avalanche. The pebbles started moving, the rocks started slipping, the boulders began to go, but when that tree got hit it didn’t fall! It deflected the boulder toward that fifth house.”

The more Dillon thought about it, the angrier he got. “I don’t want to hurt people, but people get hurt, okay? That’s just the way it is, and I can’t do anything about it!”

Suddenly he took his fist and punched it as hard as he could against the window. It vibrated with a loud thud.

“I don’t want to talk about it anymore,” he mumbled.

***

Deanna watched him closely as he sat there stewing in his own conflicted emotions. Deanna could hear that frightened voice in her head that sounded so much like her mother, telling her to run away from this crazy boy. But if he were crazy, he was no crazier than Deanna.

She sat next to him and gently touched his hand. It was hot from his anger. Hers was cold, as it always was.

“With all that money you won playing pool,” sug­gested Deanna, “we could fly east.”

“Fly where?” asked Dillon. “When you get on a plane, you need a destination, you can’t just buy a ticket ‘east.’ '

Deanna sighed. It was true: the eastbound gravity that gripped them could deposit them anywhere between Reno and New York.

“Anyway,” said Dillon with a smirk, “you’re afraid of flying . . . because if you’re in a plane, the plane’ll do everything it can to crash.”

“Are you making fun of me?”

“No,” said Dillon very seriously. “I believe you. All the things you’re afraid of—all those awful things you imag­ine happening to you—your fear is so strong that it makes them come true. It’s like your fear is a virus or something running through your veins . . . only it’s mutated. Now it’s this thing wrapped around your neck, strangling you.”

Deanna shivered. “Gee, thanks, Dillon,” she said. “You know just what to say to make me feel better.”

“But you should feel better,” insisted Dillon, “because, I can see the pattern—and as long as you’re with me none of those bad things can happen to you. I’ll push you out of the way of a speeding car, even before it comes around the bend. I’ll get you off a train before it derails. I won’t let you get on a plane that will crash. I’ll be like a good luck charm you wear around your neck! I promise.”

Deanna knew there was truth in what Dillon said.

“We’re meant to do great things, Deanna—don’t you feel it?” he said, gripping her hand tightly. “And every day, we’re closer to knowing what those things are!”

“All of us, you mean?” asked Deanna. “Us and the others?” Deanna watched to see how Dillon would react to her bringing up The Others.

Dillon shrugged uncomfortably. “Yeah, sure,” he said. “But you and me especially.”

Deanna felt her eyelids getting heavy, and so she leaned back, letting Dillon put his arm around her. He did nothing more—just held her with a wonderful innocence as if they were two small children. He asked no more from her than her presence, and it made her feel safe.

In the silence she listened as Dillon’s breathing slowed, and he fell asleep. She took comfort in the sound of his breathing, and soon matched the pace of her own breath to his. She imagined their hearts beating in time with each other as well, and wished that they could somehow be part of each other. . . .

Then she realized that in some strange and immeasur­able way, they already were.

5. Ghost Of The Rainbow

At a campsite in the woods where the Mississippi and Ohio Rivers meet, Tory Smythe tended to her aching face. She gentiy cleaned her cheeks, chin and fore­head with astringent alcohol, and three types of soaps—a ritual she performed four times a day. It stung as if she had just wiped her face with battery acid, and although all these cleansers promised results, none of them helped. She put on some perfume, which didn’t do much either, then dabbed her scaling face with Clearasil, hoping beyond hope that someday it would work.

“I want to head toward Nebraska,” she shouted to Winston, who was standing by the edge of the water. “Last year I read about this astronomer . . . in Omaha, I think. Anyway, he predicted a star was about to go super­ nova—and since that star seems to have something to do with us, maybe he knows something we don’t.”

She turned to see that Winston wasn’t even listening. He was just looking out over the river. “What are you doing, praying again?” “I’m not praying,” said Winston. “I’m taking a whiz.” But Tory knew he was just using that as an excuse. Even this far away, she could tell that he was looking at that weird blue cloth again.

***

Winston Pell stood by the water’s edge so Tory couldn’t see, fiddling with the torn piece of turquoise-blue satin that he had pulled from a trash can three days before. He felt troubled, unsure of his next move, and for some reason fiddling with that torn piece of cloth made him feel better, as if it were a tiny security blanket. He had one of those when he was little. It was just a quilt, but when he wrapped it around himself, he felt safe and se­cure. Now, as he stood by the edge of the water, he did say a little prayer; he wished for things to be like they once were, before his Ma got paralyzed . . . before his Dad died . . . He wished for the days when an old blanket was the only protection he needed. Please, God, make it like it was, he prayed, as he often did. Make everything go back . . .

Maybe his old life hadn’t been the best in the world, but it was better than it had become in these past few years and much better than what he had to face these past few days. On that first night, suddenly roaring with crick­ets, he knew his legs were moving him west, away from home, but it was like sleepwalking. Only after dawn broke did he begin to comprehend that he was running away with this hideous, crater-faced girl.

At first they traveled west: on foot and in the beds of pickup trucks, “borrowing” clothes from clotheslines along the way, and food from unharvested fields. Once they hit the Mississippi River, they followed it north. Win­ ston could feel himself being drawn upriver, the way salmon were drawn against a powerful current.

Winston knew they were moving toward Others like themselves—it was something he had sensed from the be­ginning—but where would they find them and how long would it take?

And where to go now?

As he stood at the edge of western Kentucky’s woods, he looked out across the swirling waters where the Ohio and the Mississippi met—a delta that divided three differ­ent states. Where to go from here? Kentucky, Illinois or Missouri. Decisions were getting harder and harder for Winston these days. The very thought of having to make one made him want to put his thumb deep in his mouth and suck on it to make all his problems go away. He’d been getting that thumb-sucking urge a lot lately—like he used to the first time he was little. But he reminded him­self that he was fifteen and forced the urge away. Instead he focused his attention on that piece of turquoise cloth in his other hand, studying the soothing richness of its color. There was something important about that color—he was certain of it.

In a few minutes he returned to their campsite and slipped into his sleeping bag, which was just an old