I jumped off the bike and carefully propped it against the fence. It started to slide, so I reached over and grabbed it, realizing this was going to make me late. “—going?” I huffed out, a good portion of my words getting lost in my struggle to breathe. Jocelyn, the badge checker at the entrance to the Seventh Avenue beach, gave me a confused look, confirming my suspicion.

You will not stop to say anything more and will arrive at the lifeguard stand as the noon siren sounds.

Great. Wasn’t I supposed to twirl my whistle or something? Was it too late for that? I reached into my pocket and pulled it out, gave it a few rolls around my wrist for good measure. I could sense that the noon siren was about to go off, and there I was, a good football-field’s length from the stand. If I didn’t hurry, I’d be toast. I started to break into a jog, and that was when I heard a kid’s voice. Had I been farther down the beach, where I was supposed to be, it’s likely the fragile voice would have been drowned out by the crash of the surf or the sound of kids playing hide-and-seek in the dunes. But there I was, a step away from the boardwalk, turning to see the little boy with the cherry mustache screaming at something on the street below the boardwalk, out of my view. I couldn’t be sure why he was frantic, but what he was saying was perfectly clear:

“Watch it!”

There are certain phrases that are impossible to ignore. I knew I should have hurried off to the stand, head down, completely oblivious. But in my past three months as a Seaside Park lifeguard, I’d gotten cocky, I guess. For a split second, I thought, Maybe it will be okay if I let my guard slip for just a moment. And by the time I realized it probably wouldn’t be, the damage was done.

You will climb to the top of the lifeguard stand and Pedro will be asleep, snoring.

Just great. I knew I shouldn’t have left him alone. I started to pick up the pace but then stopped short when I heard a whistle blowing behind me.

You will nudge him awake. He will sit up, blink, and point, saying, “Pink bikini at two o’clock.”

Of course Pedro would be pointing out the hottest pieces of ass on the beach instead of doing his job. I found myself wondering why, of all the lifeguards in Seaside, I had to be paired with the biggest horndog in Jersey, when another memory broke through.

You will follow his pointing finger down the beach.

My pulse quickened. It was getting way ahead of me. I knew I looked like a total jerkwad to everyone nearby, pretending I didn’t hear that boy on the boardwalk as I continued onto the beach, but they didn’t understand. My whole life was on the line.

Like a mole, Jocelyn quietly poked her head up from her three-foot-by-three-foot box. She was so unremarkable, like a streetlight or a piece of litter, that people often walked onto the beach without seeing her. Even her “May I see your badge, please?” was feeble and spiritless and rarely turned heads. She always had this look on her face like she’d smelled something bad. Her eyes fell on me. “Can’t you do something, lifeguard?” She had to have known my name. Ten years ago, Jocelyn had been part of a long line of sitters Nan had used for me when she’d gone off to play bridge, before it became obvious that babysitters shouldn’t do the Cross house. We scared them all away. Unlike Jocelyn, we Crosses were unforgettable. I’d liked Jocelyn, though. She’d tried to play games with me, unlike all the others, who spent the time ignoring me and blabbing away on the phone.

Maybe that was why, when she asked, I stopped. Forcing a new memory down, I backtracked toward the boardwalk, kicking up scalding sand as I ran. I took all three steps at once and followed the little boy’s line of vision into the street.

You will …

A girl about my age was crouched down, tying her running shoe. She was wearing nylon shorts, a tank, and earphones, which accounted for her nodding along to the music, completely oblivious to the fact that a furniture delivery truck was slowly backing into her. Okay, yeah, in terms of distance, I was pretty close to her, maybe only twenty yards away. But though it was a hot August day and the place was swarming with people, everyone else was just staring, like invalids, or like they wanted to see the girl get flattened. Some of them looked at me expectantly, like it was the duty of the guy in the red shorts to break into action à la Baywatch and save the day.

I strained to see the lifeguard stand in the bright noon sun. I could see only the top of Pedro’s head. He was slumped down, still, unmoving. Asleep. That morning when I’d arrived at the stand, he’d smelled like a brewery. He’d said he had the hangover from hell, but I thought he was still drunk. He kept pointing out hot girls and whistling at them, as if he was at some bar in the Heights. I probably shouldn’t have left him alone for lunch, but it was in the script. And I never went against the script.

Until now. I turned back toward the girl. Crap. I knew that even just standing there, frozen with indecision, was probably going to throw everything off. Sure enough, the first pangs of pain rapped at my temple.

You will …

My grandmother always said that God puts signs everywhere. Maybe if the girl in danger hadn’t looked like my best description of an angel—a lion’s mane of curly platinum hair pushed back with a headband—I wouldn’t have destroyed that perfect future I’d found for myself. In that split second that she flipped her angelic white hair back to reveal skin so perfect it practically glowed in the sun, I realized it was a sign. God wanted—no, demanded that I step in.

You will …

It was almost like I was outside my body, watching myself break away from the script. I took a few flying steps and launched myself off the boardwalk and onto Ocean Avenue, my fall cushioned by a pile of sand. Something in my head began to whir, softly at first. Yet somehow, in that moment, I held on to the naïve hope that everything wouldn’t change.

It might still be okay, I thought as I grabbed the girl’s arm and guided her out of the way. She was limp as a rag doll and didn’t fight, as if she was used to being pulled in different directions by complete strangers. As I positioned her safely on a plank near the boardwalk, I could hear the bass thumping from her earphones.

It wasn’t a very heroic scene. The rather large audience that had gathered didn’t applaud; they just quietly turned back to what they’d been doing, almost as if they’d wanted to see a tragedy. By that time, though, I wasn’t looking for applause. My hopes of getting back everything I’d had dwindled as my brain began to pound, flip-flip-flipping as new memories shuffled like cards.

I grimaced and blinked hard to stop the throbbing, the commotion in my head so loud that it drowned out the noon siren.

I’d grown used to the cycling of my future “memories.” Before that summer, it had happened every day, just a little. When I was a kid, before I’d learned to deal with them, my mind would shuffle constantly, weaving in new futures in place of the old ones, leaving others in the dust, like dreams. Maybe I’d forgotten, but back then, the cycling hadn’t seemed to hurt this much.

Of course, I’d never been able to go so long without any major cycling. Somehow I’d managed to make it almost three months without veering away from the future I saw in my head. It was a good future. A future I wanted desperately to keep. And now it was gone.

I collapsed on the pavement, breathing hard. Lifted my arms over my shoulders and squeezed my head between my elbows like a vise. Senseless images of people I’d never met, things I’d never done, shattered fragments of my future, sputtered through my head.