Chapter 14: Becca

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I wake up to the sound of my roommate snoring.

I roll over and stare at the powder-blue alarm clock I brought with me to camp. A thin layer of sleep still clings to my eyes, making the digits fade in and out of my vision like a corrupted movie film. I blink vigorously and glare at the clock again. Now I can see that the hands are pointing to half past five in the morning.

Great.

Angela, the tall brunette I'm sharing a room with, sighs loudly in her sleep and tumbles over to the other side of the bed, the mattress springs creaking and moaning. She's a restless sleeper, and her tossing and turning kept me awake all night. I think she has nightmares. If I tried hard enough, I could probably see them. It's easy to steal a snippet of a dream— as easy as plucking an apple from a tree. But I wouldn't try to sneak a peak into Angela's mind like that. What she dreams about is none of my business, and I could care less about how she torments herself in the night.

I just wish she'd shut up so I could actually fall asleep.

My new roommate is only talkative at night. We've spoken approximately ten words to each other so far, mainly about what side of the room we're going to sleep on. I don't mind the detachment. Conversation with strangers has never been my strong suite.

I close my eyes and try to go back to sleep, but I can already tell that it's not going to happen. My brain is set in its stubborn ways of waking up early in the morning to run, and even with the time difference and Angela waking me up at ungodly hours in the night, my body has decided that it's awake and ready to start the day.

I glance at the clock again. Two minutes have passed since I woke up.

Angela whispers something in her sleep. She speaks nonsense most of the time, but now I clearly hear her speak two different names. The names are spoken in sharp, jagged syllables, like Angela is trying to forcibly expel them from her head. There's a tinge of sadness to them, too. I find myself wondering what happened to the people who the names belong to— and why Angela keeps talking about them in her sleep. It makes me wonder what happened to my roommate herself.

I've been puzzling over a lot of the camper's backstories. I can't help it— I was born curious, even though I hate to admit it. I want to know what they did to get sent to Lightlake, and how they feel about leaving their friends and family behind. I want to know for the sake of knowing, because I like knowing things and being left in the dark is a cold and terrible thing. We're all mysteries here. Everyone has a backstory, and every backstory comes with a million secrets. I'm sure that every camper has names they whisper in their sleep, and faces that plague their dreams at night. I know that I do.

Angela sighs and falls silent. I push myself out of bed and pull on a pair of leggings.

I started running track in junior high after I transferred (expelled, really, but my family would rather die on the stake than admit that) out of the ultra-conservative, all-girls Catholic school that my parents forced me to go to. It was my cousin Julia that got me addicted to the sport. Julia is my age and lives in my neighborhood, so we've always been pretty tight. When we got to high school, she convinced me to try out for the team with her, and I did. During our time trial we crossed the finish line within seconds of each other. Six minute mile, flat. The same thing would happen when we started racing, too. Sometimes we'd cut it so close that our coach would just shake her head and call it a tie, knowing that we wouldn't mind getting the same place.

We ran together until junior year, until Julia had her accident and had to stop. But just because Julia can't run anymore doesn't mean I'm going to stop. Sometimes, running is the only thing that keeps me sane. If I don't move around I get restless. And people don't like me when I'm restless. To me, running is like scratching an itch. I just have to do it. There's nothing optional about it— I need it, like I would water or food. My abuela says I'm crazy because of it. I prefer the word dedicated. Also, I'm sure that Julia would be horrified if she found out I quit track because of her. I know her well enough that I can say, confidently, that she wants me to keep running without her.

I pull back the curtains to let some sunlight into the room. It's a beautiful day outside, all blue sky and cotton-ball clouds. Last night the counselors said that morning cabin checks wouldn't be until seven, which means that I have an hour and a half to take advantage of the weather. I can't wait to get out on the forest trails, where I can finally leave all of my worries behind me and just run, face in the wind, shoes in the dirt. I vaguely remember the counselor, Owen, telling us that we could use the trails at our liberty; but even if running was forbidden at camp, I would still do it anyway. It's not like any of the counselors are fast enough to stop me.

I slip into my sneakers and move over to the mirror to maneuver my hair into a ponytail. I have my abuela's hair— rich, deep brown curls that are so thick I can only wear them down in braids. My hair is a hassle, but I've never thought about getting it cut short. I think that getting my hair chopped off would be like losing a limb. I've gotten so used to the feeling of hair brushing over my shoulders and scratching at my back that I can't imagine life without it.

Julia says long hair makes me look softer— more feminine. She loves dressing up and shit and always tries to get me to wear her nice clothes and make-up too. Sometimes I give in, just to appease her, but I've never been interested in that kind of stuff. I don't judge girls who are. It's just not my thing.

I wrestle with my curls until my arms are sore. It's a trial, but I eventually manage to twist a scrunchie around my hair and the resulting look could pass for a pony-tail. If I were back in the track locker-room at my high school, I would make Julia or one of the other girls do my pony-tail for me, but now there's nobody around to help me with my hair but me. Technically, I could ask Angela, but I already know that I won't.

I stare into the mirror. Two eyes gaze back at me, one brown and one blue. People always ask me why my eyes are different colors, but the truth is I don't really know. There's a science-y word for it— heterochromia. My doctor once told me that it's hereditary, which makes sense because my abuela also has brown and blue eyes, and my mother has a diluted version of it, too. Her eyes are both brown but there's a thin sliver of green infiltrating the left one. I think that the green bugs her, because she's always wearing these thick-framed glasses even though her eyesight is perfectly fine.

I don't mind have different colored eyes. I still have 20/20 vision, so the only annoying side effect is all the weird looks I get from other people. Once, I got so fed up with all the attention that I asked my grandma to buy me color-contacts. I didn't get my color-contacts, but I did get a lecture about how our differences make us who we are. Then she talked a lot about how she loves her brown and blue eyes and would never do anything to change them.

According to my abuela, heterochromia isn't always a genetic thing— it's the sign of something else. Before I tell you what, I should probably tell you something else. My grandmother is a psychic, and so am I.

Don't laugh. I'm dead serious. It may sound ridiculous at first, but the more you think about psychics the more possible they seem. People can do so many crazy things already— why should seeing the future be off the table? Now, don't get me wrong. I can't read palms or tarot or do any of those mysterious occult things that every Hollywood movie seems to use. And I'm not some religious fanatic that thinks they can see the future because they saw Jesus' face in the frothed milk of their coffee cup once, so they're basically the next prophet.

All I'm saying is this: for as long as I can remember, I've been able to look in the future, and even see things in the past that I never saw before. And that's the Gospel truth.

My mother is completely normal, no premonitions whatsoever (as far as I know), so I assume that psychic abilities skip a generation. (Or that they don't get passed on to anal Catholic missionaries. Pray the pagan away, right?) I wouldn't know. I've never asked her about it, and I don't plan on asking her anytime soon.

The moment I started seeing things, I went straight to my abuela, because I knew that I could trust her with anything. She made me promise her not to tell anybody else. Not even my parents. Especially not my parents.

My parents are... strict. I understand now why my abuela didn't want me to tell them about being a psychic. They just wouldn't understand. They'd probably send me to another crazy religious boarding school if I told them, or maybe someplace even worse.

I'd rather not leave things up to chance. Sometimes keeping secrets is easier than telling the truth.

It was hard at first, pretending like things were normal when in reality, I felt like I was turning into Professor X— but then, when I was fourteen, I moved in with my abuela for reasons that didn't involve being a psychic at all.

My abuela lives in a small, sandy town in Arizona. Her whole family migrated there from Oaxaca, Mexico in the late fifties. I don't particularly enjoy living in a desert— and don't even get me started on the summer heat flashes— but I would take soaring temperatures over traveling with my parents any day. Besides, I enjoy living with my grandmother. She's one of the coolest people I know. She can tell you all sorts of stories, and she's pretty much an expert on all things psychic. She doesn't like to use that word, though. Psychic. She prefers curandera instead.

I speak Spanish pretty well— my mother insisted that I learn it when I was little— but I never truly understood the meaning of the word curandera until I finally convinced abuela to explain it to me. She said that in Mexican culture, curanderos, or curanderas, are mostly regarded as spiritual healers, which didn't make sense to me because I've never healed anybody in my life— in fact, I'm probably better at hurting people than healing them (I wouldn't be at this camp if the opposite were true). But according to my abuela, the gift is flexible, so you can make it into anything you want. Some people use it to heal. Other people, like me, use it for visions.

Anyways, you can call me a curandera or a psychic or whatever so pleases you— because in the end, I have the ability to see into the future and that's just the way it is. Whether you believe me or not doesn't change the fact that I can do what I can do. And no, I'm not going to read your fortune. That's carnival magic. Petty tricks. And I don't have time to fool around with bullshit.

Real visions are nothing to play around with. Real visions can be the difference between life and death.

The first time I really saw something was when I was ten, sitting in the back seat of the car while my mother drove to the grocery store to buy eggs and milk. When the vision hit me, it was clear as day— I could see the dog running across the road, see its body vanish under the car tires. So, like any child experiencing their first supernatural premonition, I screamed. Loudly.

So loudly, in fact, that my mother slammed on the brakes and stopped the car— perfect timing, because seconds later that same dog dashed out in front of us, and I knew then for a fact that if my mother hadn't stopped we would have driven right over it.

Of course, mom didn't think much of it; I was a weird little kid, so random bouts of screaming were practically normal coming from me. She probably wrote the whole incident off as a crazy coincidence. She does that a lot. She has to, with a daughter like me.

But I knew. I knew that I had seen something that I wasn't supposed to see. I knew, then, that I had seen into the future.

The visions aren't always as useful as the dog one, though. Sometimes I see random things— like when I accidentally brush a stranger's hand in the hallway at school and see them failing an exam, or I'll bump into someone at the store and an image of them proposing to their girlfriend will flash before my eyes. Trivial stuff like that. Fluff pieces, almost. There's definitely something about skin-to-skin contact that makes the visions occur. I can still see visions without touching someone else, but direct contact always makes them more vivid.

Like that day when I was running with Julia and I playfully nudged her in the arm and saw her lying on the floor of her bathroom with her eyes closed and her skin as pale as death. It scared me, bad, but I tried not to think much about it. Sometimes I get false alarms, or predictions that are so distorted you can't tell right from left, so I just assumed that that's what it was. I thought to myself, there's no way in hell that could really happen. Because Julia was supposed to be this perfect girl. She was supposed to be invincible.

She isn't, of course. (That's just wishful thinking.) But I bet you already guessed that.

You'll learn soon enough that disaster has a way of following me around like a stray dog. (For every gift there's a curse, and for every psychic there's years of emotional baggage. Ha.) For someone who can see the future, I'm really fucking bad at staying out of trouble.

I give my reflection one last once-over. I'm breaking out on my forehead, but that's to be expected. Being a psychic doesn't exactly protect you against zits. I run a hand through my hair, checking to make sure my pony-tail is still secure, and then I pull on one of my hoodies and head to the door. A cool breeze grasps my cheeks as I step outside. Perfect running weather.

I wander around until I find a trail that looks like it leads into the forest, about a quarter of a mile away from our cabin. I don't think twice— I just run. I run down the path until it forks and leads farther into the woods, away from camp, and then I pick my legs up higher and keeping running, following the trail deeper and deeper into the trees.

I inhale deeply, sucking in clean, refreshing air. Above me, rays of sunlight streaming through the lush treetops and, turning the leaves to gold with a Midas touch. The sight almost takes my breath away. Alaska really is a beautiful place. It's the polar opposite of Arizona, where the heat leeches the life out of everything, and the ground consists of sand and hot-enough-to-burn-your-feet asphalt, and the only trees are thin and scraggly and ugly to look at it.

Alaska is so alive. If I listen hard enough, I can almost hear the trees singing to each other. It's strange to me that a place like this could coexist with something as unpleasant as Lightlake.

I pick up the pace, pushing my legs until my muscles strain and my lungs tighten up. I need to train for the fall season of track, since I'm not going to be at home to run with the rest of the team and God knows what my coach would do to me if I came back from Lightlake out of shape. She'd probably kill me, bring me back to life, make me run the eight hundred, and then kill me again.

My coach is a die-hard when it comes to track. I think that the only reason she didn't kick me off the team when I told her I was going away for the summer is that I promised to train while I was at camp. I've known her for the past three years, so we've got a special connection— if there's anybody who understands me more than my abuela and Julia, it's coach. She knows that when I make a promise, I never break it. At least, when it comes to running.

I round the bend and immediately turn my chin up to face the hill in front of me. My years of training kick in. I lift my knees higher, push a little harder. When I get to the top, I press onward, refusing to let my exhaustion catch up to me. It's only when I hit the downhill that I let my legs relax and my body start to cool off.

I'm almost to the bottom of the hill when an image darts across my field of vision: a boy with red hair, freckles, and an angry scowl hurtling towards me like Haley's Comet. The vision comes too late to be of any help, though. I'm only beginning to process what it means when, seconds later, that same boy comes sprinting around the bend, and even as I yell out, "Hey! Hey!" to stop him, he crashes into my shoulder and we go sprawling 

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