“We’re all going to die,” I muttered.

She pursed her lips, then said, “Oh, honey bunny, you don’t—”

“I do!” I growled at her in an almost animal voice I didn’t know I had. “The Touch is already working. It’s going to kill my family. Everyone. It knew. Taryn was my family. In the future. I would have married her, grown old with her. It got her first. You’ll be next. Or Mom. It won’t stop until we’re all dead.”

She sat teetering on the very edge of the recliner, looking small, like she was ready to fall off. “It’s sinful. And two wrongs don’t make—”

I jumped to my feet. “Don’t talk in clichés! You know it. It’s the only way we can stop it.” I knelt beside her. By that time a picture of Taryn, looking alive and beautiful, appeared in my head and I began to sob. “Please. I don’t want you to die because of me, too.”

She took my hand. Hers was trembling. “What is it called again?”

I raised my head to look in her eyes. She’d sucked in her bottom lip, something she only did when she was thinking hard. Hope flooded me. “Flight of Song,” I said. “She’ll be there today at five. We can go together.”

She shook her head. “I think your mother is coming down with something. She’s not right. Someone has to stay with her.”

“What?”

“She was coughing blood. She didn’t want you to see, but—”

I swallowed. Oh, no. “Nan. She’s dying, don’t you see?”

She nodded. “Yes. I see. What do I have to do?”

She had her arm propped up on the velour pillow. I motioned to it. “Can you drive?”

“I will. It’s not far. Now, tell me. What is it I have to do?”

“All you have to do is go in and tell her you want it. I have extra money from lifeguarding upstairs. Give it all to her. Tell her it can’t wait. Make sure she does it right away. Bryce Reese spends most of his nights at the Sawmill. Once you get the Touch, you need to go there and tell him to withdraw the curse on my family. He’ll have to listen. Flight of Song makes people do exactly what you say.”

She nodded. “All right,” she said. “Tonight.”

I went upstairs as Nan got ready to go out. I could smell the perfume she always wore and knew she was probably changing out of her cooking-grease-stained clothes so that she could head to the boardwalk. I knew she would do it; once she said she’d go ahead with something, she never went back. I just hoped it would work. In theory, it should have worked. For them, not for me. It was too late for me. I felt as good as dead. As if death would feel better.

“Nick?” a voice called to me in the darkness of the hallway.

“Yeah, Mom,” I said, turning into her room. I’d planned on going in there anyway. I hadn’t been inside her room in a while. She was propped against the headboard, paler and smaller than her usual pale and small. I’d never known a time when she looked right, but now something was especially wrong. “You okay? Can I get you anything?”

She shook her head and placed a hand on mine. “I know what has been happening,” she said, her voice weak.

“Well, you can see the future.” I started the joke I’d told her a hundred times, wondering how much she knew. I’d kept a lot from her. “So that doesn’t make you Einstein.”

She smiled a small, sad smile. “The funeral I saw … that girl? She was your girlfriend. I’m sorry we couldn’t … do something.”

I shrugged. It was once in a long line of times that this gift or curse or whatever it was had let me down in an epic way. But it really didn’t matter. Eventually, we’d all go. And maybe it was better that way. The world would probably be a better place without the two of us.

“And I know that we are going to die,” she said.

“We all die,” I said quickly, and then realized that she was saying she knew about the Touch. She knew we were going to die soon. “Did you have a vision?”

She shook her head and picked up the water glass next to her bed. “Did you know that if you put this to the floor, you can hear everything downstairs? I was listening when you, Nan, and your girlfriend were talking about it.”

I just stood there, startled. Mom usually lived in her own little world up here. She didn’t want to know anything that was going on outside, but it always invaded her space, anyway.

“What was her name? She seemed very nice.”

My tongue lolled in my mouth, almost like it didn’t want to form the word. “Taryn. And she was.”

She sighed. “I ruined that for you. Oh, my dear, how many things have I ruined for you?” she said, burying her face in her hands. “I don’t blame you for hating me.”

“I don’t hate you,” I said.

“Yes, you do.”

I started to argue again, to say no, no I didn’t, when in fact I did, just a little, but it didn’t matter because she was still my mom, and as much as I hated her, I loved her more. But suddenly she threw her shoulders forward and began to cough so violently it seemed her whole body would break apart. It reminded me so much of Taryn that I cringed and took a step back. Then I patted her back and helped her bring the straw in her water glass to her lips. She swallowed with a loud gulp and rubbed her temples. “The cycling is bad today.”

I hadn’t noticed. Every part of me ached with a brilliant, crushing pain. Especially my chest.

“You were always better at handling the pain. What was that thing you used to say?”

“Green elephant,” I said as she began coughing again. She brought a tissue to her mouth, and the bright crimson was a shock against the doughy white of her skin and everything else around her. I motioned to my neck. “Because of that necklace you used to wear.”

She coughed more, then reached behind her neck and pulled out a white string. It had blended with her shirt so, that I’d never seen it before. As she lifted the string she freed the green elephant from underneath her shirt. The black cord was gone and the white string she put in its place was longer, allowing the necklace to hide lower on her chest, which is why I hadn’t seen it. I stared at it. It was larger than I remembered. The trunk was gone, broken off. “I thought you …,” I began. And here I’d convinced myself a mother who couldn’t bring herself to make me breakfast, go to school concerts, or take me to the beach couldn’t care about me. “The trunk is gone. That’s bad luck.”

She smiled. “Nick. I have enough good-luck charms around. Little good they do me.” She fingered the green elephant before dropping it back to her chest. “This was never a symbol of luck to me.”

I put my hands in the pockets of my shorts and studied the dresser mirror, decorated with dozens of fortune-cookie papers. I wondered if any of them had come true. When I turned back, I noticed her face had gotten darker. “What’s wrong?”

“I was just thinking. What is yours?” she asked.

“My what?”

“What death do you fear the most?” she asked.

“Mom,” I protested. She’d always loved the morbid. “I wouldn’t tell you if I knew. But I really have no idea.”

She gave me an “I’m your mom and I know better” look. “Like your grandmother said, everyone has one.”

“Oh, really?” I thought for a second. “Well, it’s whatever would be most painful, I guess. The wood chipper would kind of suck. And being drawn and quartered doesn’t sound very fun, either.” My stomach started to churn. I really hoped that by saying it I wasn’t sealing my fate with the wood chipper. “I don’t want to talk about—”

“It’s not what would hurt the most. It’s what you’re most afraid of. Those are two different things,” she said, reaching over and placing a lock of my hair back over my forehead. “And I’m your mother. Even though I’ve spent most of my time up here, I know what you are most afraid of, Nick.”

“Come on. How can you know, when I don’t even—”

“Nick,” she said softly.

I stared at her, and at that moment I knew. I thought of the crowds watching me at tryouts, of how they parted to avoid me. I thought of Sphincter, calling me Crazy Cross in front of everyone in the busy hallway at school. The way they’d stared at me, eyes narrowed, faces wrinkled in disgust, as if I was an infection, a disease, the absolute embodiment of everything they didn’t want to be. I’d convinced myself it didn’t matter, that I didn’t care. I’d convinced myself I was used to it, but can anyone get used to treatment like that? Each time, there was a chink in my armor, a dent in my wall. It was only a matter of time before everything came crumbling down.