“But what if she isn’t?” Taryn’s voice was an octave higher, clearly worried. And here I thought she’d be happy if she didn’t have to do a Touch tonight.

“Calm. Like I say, we have other interest.”

Taryn walked to the table and leaned her knuckles on it. She said, “I don’t understand how you can be that way. Calling the people stupid. They’re people. And we might just ruin their lives.”

“We don’t ruin life. They ruin life.”

“But we help them do it. Doesn’t that bother you?”

Her grandmother shifted her weighty bottom in the seat, and the small chair creaked in protest. “Let me tell you something, sevgili. It bother me. Of course it bother me. Once, long time ago, I learn something about one of them. Something terrible. Too late. It made me very, very sad. I told God to take me then. I did not care if I live or die. I went many, many years before I open the book again. But then you came. And you were the one, the next in line. And so I start again. I hoped I could finish the book before God take me. For you. But not so. Not so.”

Her grandmother’s voice trailed off, and Taryn walked around the table, leaned down, and hugged her. Her grandmother didn’t move, despite the extra weight on her. It occurred to me that hugging a cactus would probably be more natural. But then her grandmother trembled a little, and I realized they were both crying. Who knew the old lady had feelings? I felt stupid, witnessing that. First, maybe I’d misjudged Taryn’s grandmother, and second, it was a private moment, not something I was meant to witness. I rose to my feet, turned, and scuttled up the wall and into the arcade.

I’d just gotten another dollar’s worth of quarters to blow on Mr. Do! when Taryn came rushing up to me. “There you are! What happened?”

“I just—”

“She’s over a half hour late,” she said, chewing on her thumbnail.

“Why aren’t you in there?”

“I excused myself to use the ladies’ room.”

“What is the deal with three days?” I asked.

“That’s when I turn seventeen,” she said, ripping the thumbnail off. “I have to perform my first Touch before then.”

“You what?” I asked, my voice rising. “Or else what?”

She bit her lip. “Can we not talk about that?”

“Are you telling me that you needed to perform that Touch or else you’ll die?” My voice was now so loud a kid at the video game next to us stopped killing zombies and stared at me.

“Shhh!” She threw her hand over my mouth. Her voice was just as loud as mine, which was probably why a bunch of other people started giving us looks, too. “I did tell you. I told you we had to perform these Touches or we’d …”

“Well, I know, but I thought you’d have longer than three days,” I said.

“It’s fine, though,” she said. “All I need to do is—”

“She’s not coming,” I muttered.

She stared at me. “What?”

“Your five o’clock appointment.” When her eyes narrowed I said, “I figured out who it was. I knew the person. I didn’t want her to ruin her life. So I convinced her not to do it.”

Her eyes filled with something, not anger, but desperation. Horror. “You … what? Why?”

“Because I thought I was doing you a favor! I thought you wanted to get out of it. That was before I knew you would drop dead in three days if you didn’t go through with it. That makes a big difference.” I squeezed the words out of my tightening throat.

She turned and walked away, hands on hips, and then came back. Her voice was softer, more in control. “Can we ixnay the eying-day talk?”

“Sorry,” I muttered. “But hell! I can’t believe I … What are we going to do now?”

“Shhh, don’t freak. Grandma says she has some other interest,” Taryn said, thinking aloud. But she shivered as she tightened the scarf around her shoulders. She was trying to convince herself.

I studied her. She looked perfect, and there wasn’t a trace of sickness, fatigue, anything bad on her. It seemed impossible to believe that someone so full of life could succumb to that curse and die within seventy-two hours. Not an hour ago, she was acting so nonchalant about the whole thing, joking with me and laughing about it. “I’m so sorry, Taryn. Are you—I mean, how are you? Do you feel okay?”

She nodded. “Yeah. Sometimes I think it must be wrong. That it’s all a bunch of bunk. Sometimes I think I can just go about my life, ignore it, and it will leave me alone. So I push it out of my head. Like if I can keep it out of my head, it will be okay.”

“It will be,” I said, and I put my arm around her. Her brow was still tense, knitted, so I said, “Remember, I can see the future? You are not dying anytime in the near future. You have nothing to worry about.”

It was the only lie I ever told her. But wow, what a lie.

I walked Taryn home on the boardwalk. It was a long walk, two miles, and a cold breeze was blowing in from the ocean, but it felt good to move, to have the wind blowing against my chest. It was a reminder that we were still here.

“Have your visions changed?” she asked me quietly.

“Maybe,” I said to her, silently adding, Doubtfully. I didn’t bother to tell her that I’d seen it again, in the pizza place. And that it scared me. I wasn’t sure why the vision of us in Beauty was so persistent. Just making the promise never to get into her Jeep should have been enough to steer it off course. And these past few days, I’d often disregarded the script, so much so that the ache in my head was a dull, constant pain between my eyes. I’d hoped that by doing that, something would change. Still, whenever I let the visions come in now, it was always there, the final act of the sad and tumultuous play that was my life. I’d been starting to wonder if some things about life were like that: meant to be, unbreakable. Destiny. Like building a house of cards, it doesn’t matter how you build it, or what you do to make it strong. Eventually, it always comes down. But I couldn’t tell Taryn that. She had enough going on anyway. “It’s hard to tell. The You Wills aren’t as strong when I’m with you. And I haven’t been paying attention to them as much because I was trying to … I don’t know.”

We walked a little while longer, until she stopped and said, “I want to walk on the beach. Don’t you?”

I didn’t. It was freezing, and after Emma I didn’t know if I’d be okay with going out there. But I kicked off my shoes and followed her anyway. The sand was warm between my toes. She was right. It felt good. When we were halfway down the beach, she turned to me.

“Thank you for being there tonight,” she said.

I laughed. “I ruined everything.”

“No, you didn’t,” she said. “It meant a lot to me that you would be there. I knew it probably wouldn’t be easy for you to see what your mother went through.”

That didn’t bother me. After all, she’d signed up for it. “Not so much. I can be there for the next one. And I won’t mess it up. I promise.”

“Yeah? Okay, cool.”

She looked up at me, and we were standing pretty close to each other, so I thought it would be a good time to kiss her. I mean, beach, romantic sunset, et cetera. But I didn’t know how to go in for the kill. I had a vision of me gnashing my teeth against hers and I couldn’t tell if that was real or me being paranoid. So I just said, “Your grandmother … when she gave up the practice for a lot of years … do you think she did it because of my mom? Because she found out she’d given a Touch to a pregnant woman and infected an innocent kid?”

“Oh,” Taryn said, thinking it over. “Yeah. Maybe. That makes sense. I think Grandma would hate that. She always talks about her subjects taking responsibility for their actions. But to give it to someone who didn’t ask for it …”

I laughed again and sucked in a mouthful of cool sea air. “Wow.”