Wow. I really needed the practice. Taryn would be wanting me like crazy after this ride.

It went without saying that I didn’t like driving. Before that day I hadn’t driven since I passed my driver’s test at the beginning of the summer. Something about seeing all the accidents I could cause rubbed me the wrong way. Once, when I had my learner’s permit, I thought about flipping on the radio but saw a ten-car pileup. There were just too many opportunities to cause bad things to happen on the road. But today Nan was drugged on something that had her snoring between sentences, not to mention she was down an arm, so it looked like I wouldn’t be able to avoid driving. She’d cornered me the second I got home and told me I had to take her to the pharmacy on the mainland, because she’d realized this afternoon she’d run out of heart pills. She’d called Ocean Pharmacy on the island for a delivery, but they didn’t have the kind she needed, and she was desperate.

But that was okay, I told myself. Normally I would have been a wreck. Despite the weird way it had ended, the afternoon with Taryn had me feeling good. Like maybe I could live a seminormal life, with someone who finally understood what I was going through. Getting there, I was fine. I joked with Nan about how she looked like she had been in a prizefight and how she could tell everyone “the other guy looks worse.” I turned up the modern-rock station on the radio and drummed my fingers on the steering wheel in time to the music. I thought about how soft and small Taryn’s hand felt against mine.

On the way back, though, I lost it. It wasn’t simply the act of driving, of pressing on the gas pedal, that freaked me out. I made it over the bridge from Toms River (can’t tell you how many times I envisioned the Buick careering over the railing and into the bay) and all the way down Central, carefully following the You Wills right down to the letter. But when I was navigating around town hall, not half a mile from Nan’s cottage, it hit me.

Glass shards spraying in my face icy water droplets the smell of peanut butter

What the …?

Instinctively I squeezed my eyes shut, and doing so, I slammed on the brakes. Nan grabbed the armrest. A car horn blared behind me and a red pickup swerved around me. The driver gave me the finger.

It didn’t seem real. It couldn’t be my future. First of all, I hated peanut butter. The smell made me so sick that I couldn’t stand it. And the car was all wrong. It wasn’t the easily recognizable Buick, with the tan pleather inside and St. Christopher staring from the dashboard. Nothing about it was vaguely familiar. It could have been something that would happen fifty years in the future, or maybe it wasn’t real at all. Maybe it was just me getting all worked up about driving, as usual. I needed to stay away from Skippy, which was no problem since just thinking about it made my stomach churn, and stick to my bicycle; again, no problem because I hated driving anyway.

I looked over at Nan. For someone who’d missed her last heart pill, this was probably not the best experience to have. She started to say something to comfort me and then began snoring again.

I clenched my jaw. No matter how good things were with Taryn, nothing could protect me. This curse always found ways to remind me who was boss.

Thanks, Mom.

Carefully, I pulled into our driveway and inched the boat into the garage. I helped Nan out and drew the massive wooden doors closed, then stared at the cottage. Something was going to be off in there. I felt the tingles already.

I helped Nan up the three stairs to the back of the house, and when the screen door slammed, I heard my mom’s voice. She sounded angry again. I couldn’t tell what she was saying, though, and I didn’t care. Was it me or did the tingles feel like a thunderstorm, like a thousand times worse than before Emma drowned?

“Up here,” she called. Floorboards creaked. There was a floorboard right in the doorway to my mom’s room that groaned whenever someone was standing on it. It made that noise now. She was out of her room, but just barely. Calling to me from the doorway. “Come up here.”

I figured she wanted to tell me something about what I’d found out from Taryn. She knew, obviously, since our futures were tied to each other’s. Maybe she wanted to explain herself. Apologize in person. Whatever. I wasn’t going to listen, even if she begged forgiveness. I was steel. Stone. Finished with her.

“I don’t want to hear—” I started, but stopped when I saw the look on her face. She had made it to the top stair with one white hand on the banister and was staring down at me. The shadows dug into the creases on her forehead, making her look about twenty years older, or like one of those skeletons in the haunted house at the pier. Her eyes were heavy with worry.

I started to say “What?” but before I could she whispered, “You haven’t been able to see the future yet, have you?”

I shook my head. “No, I have, I’ve seen—” Did I really want to tell her about seeing Taryn naked? Or about what happened in the car? “Why?”

“Have you seen anything from next year? Or even next month?”

I shrugged. Weird question. She knew it was so hard to tell when these future memories took place. I just inexplicably felt my bones aching in the ones where I was an old man. Or I’d catch a glimpse of my grandchild and feel this overwhelming love and pride. No, I hadn’t had any far-off memories of my future since the Emma accident, but I only caught them once in a while, when everything was still. And things had been really screwy lately. I tried to call up a memory of the future, but they never came when I wanted them to. Usually, when I least expected it, I’d see or hear or smell something and the memory would pop into my mind. “I have no—”

“You can’t, can you?”

I didn’t like the tone. She should have been begging forgiveness. Instead, she sounded like she was accusing me of something. It was the tone I should have had with her.

“No, but—”

“That’s because you have no future,” she said. “Whatever you did to change things, Nick … now you’re the one who is going to die. Soon.”

According to my mom, Christmas was really going to suck this year. Because not only might I not live out the year, I might not live out the summer. She said that because first, she knew I had trouble remembering anything in the future anymore, and second, she saw Nan dressed in the black dress she only wore to funerals. She was wearing the cast on her arm. The only other thing she could recall was extreme grief.

Well, that was good. I’d hate for anyone to be happy at my passing.

Oh, and that it was a closed casket. Not like she would get the guts to go to her own son’s funeral, but that was what Nan told her. Which probably meant that my body would be mangled beyond recognition.

All really awesome things.

I could almost feel the jagged glass shards digging into my cheeks. An accident. The car accident I’d envisioned on my ride home.

I knew it wasn’t the Buick. The inside was all wrong. I silently told myself I wouldn’t set foot in a car again. That would do it. I hoped.

But the more I tried to see my future, the more I couldn’t.

No wonder Taryn made the memories of my future go away. No wonder she made me feel normal.

This all started when she entered my life. For some reason, because of her, I had no future.

Trouble was, the more I tried to resign myself to stay away from her, the more I felt that big hole, that emptiness. My chest tightened and ached when I thought about it. It didn’t help that I kept seeing myself kissing her, feeling my hands working through her thick platinum curls. For some reason, I couldn’t see anything in the future but that, the most improbable thing in the world.

The morning of Emma’s funeral, I put on my suit and tie. The suit was too tight. I looked like a major loser. It was only ten in the morning, and it already felt like a hundred degrees. There was no ocean breeze. I contemplated staying home about a thousand times. Then I opened up the door to the garage and climbed into the Buick.