What Are The Chances?. D. Graham R.
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make him forget he ever met her.”
“I don’t want to. I accepted the scholarship in Toronto. There’s no point to having a summer fling that can’t go anywhere after that.”
“Oh, there’s a point to a summer fling. Trust me.”
“Not with Trevor.” I shook my head. “I would want more if I ever got together with him. But.” I paused for dramatic effect. “I heard Mason is back in town. I wouldn’t mind a summer fling with him. He would definitely be a nice way to soak up every second of the last summer I will ever spend in Britannia Beach. Fun. Carefree.”
“Mason?” Her lips puckered into a fish face and she glanced up at the ceiling as she thought back. “Cartwright? I almost forgot about that guy.”
“I didn’t.” I lifted my eyebrows in an animated way and smiled.
She wrinkled her nose, not as enthusiastic about the option of Mason as I was.
Thunder cracked outside. When I glanced out the window a series of completely random images flicked through my mind: It was pouring rain. I fell and my body jolted from the painful impact. Rocks and water flooded towards me. Fast. Lots of rushing water. Then freezing-cold darkness engulfed me. I couldn’t breathe. I was drowning.
“Derian.” Sophie gently placed her hand on my wrist. She was one of the few people outside my family and Trevor’s family who knew I sometimes experienced intuitive visions. She also knew that it usually predicted something traumatic. She studied my expression as she waited for me to tell her what I’d seen.
My heart pounded. My breath was still ragged, as if I had actually fallen and almost drowned.
“What happens?” Sophie whispered so the guys wouldn’t hear.
“I don’t know. It felt like someone drowning. It was too vague, as usual. Just rain and water and, ugh, nothing useful about who, when, or where.” I glanced over at the guys in the band to see if any of them had noticed me have my brain glitch. Fortunately, they were busy washing their dishes and not paying attention. I lowered my voice and said, “I didn’t have any visions the entire time I was in Europe. Maybe they only happen when I’m near something I’m emotionally connected to, like Britannia Beach.”
“Or Trevor,” she said.
Hmm. That hadn’t occurred to me, but it was possible. Trevor and Britannia Beach went hand in hand, so it was hard to separate which one had more influence. My unusually heightened intuition was something I inherited from my grandmother’s grandmother and it started when I was about three. When I was young, I’d do things that could be explained as just coincidental, like get up to go meet my dad at the door before his truck even turned in off the highway. Or I would insist on wearing rain boots on a sunny morning in preparation for the unforecasted storm that inevitably showed up in the afternoon. I thought everyone could see things before they happened and I was shocked when Trevor told me he couldn’t. As I got older, I almost only ever saw traumatic things before they happened. And although my visions sometimes helped to prevent the bad thing from happening, they didn’t always. And that was hard to deal with. If I moved away and stopped having the visions, it would be both a relief and a weird loss.
Kailyn interrupted my thoughts when she randomly said to Sophie, “I like your red lips and black eyeliner. You look pretty.”
“Thank you, Kailyn. Could you please tell my mother that?” Sophie slid her sunglasses down from the top of her head and tipped the stool onto all four feet again.
“Are the sunglasses really necessary in the rain?” I asked.
“I have a rock-star image to uphold. Apparently we’re destined to go on a world tour.” She stood and pointed at me threateningly. “You better have some sort of juicy romance details by the time I get back. This is your last hoorah.” The band thanked me for breakfast and filed out the kitchen door. Sophie paused at the doorframe. “Hey, Kailyn, if we see Riley Rivers we’ll tell him you want to marry him. Okay?”
Ecstatic, Kailyn grinned and pressed her fists tightly against her chubby, freckled cheeks as she nodded.
“And Deri, if you don’t get busy with someone soon, I will put up a billboard on the highway to advertise that you’re open for business.” She winked. “Okay?”
“Break a leg. Literally,” I sneered.
“Psychics shouldn’t say shit like that.”
“Oh my God.” I stood abruptly and the stool scarped across the linoleum. “Sorry. You’re right. What if my vision has something to do with your trip? Maybe you guys shouldn’t go.”
“You saw rain and water. It’s kind of vague.”
“And someone falling and drowning.”
“We’ll drive carefully over bridges. And I’ll check the location for life vests on the ferry. I promise. Try to have a vision about the band getting discovered by a music exec.”
“Sophie, seriously. Maybe you shouldn’t go.”
“We’ll be fine, and if we’re not, at least you can take comfort in the fact that you tried to stop me.”
Knowing there was no way to convince her to not take risks, I shook my head and sighed. “Be careful.”
“I will, and if I meet a girl named Lindy, I’ll kick her ass for you.”
“Aw, you’re so sweet. But I don’t care that he has a girlfriend. I moved on, remember?”
“Yeah. Sure you did.”
“Seriously. I have. Any idea when you’re going to move on and let the pipe dream go, too?”
She flashed me a peace sign and disappeared out the door. I watched through the windows as she ran back through the rain to the van, covering her long, black hair with her arms. A thick, grey mist had rolled in over the mountain and gave the dark silhouettes of the giant cedars and Douglas firs a ghost-like appearance. The fog swallowed the van as it drove away, which I hoped wasn’t a bad omen. I gave Kailyn a plate of food to take next door to her dad and promised to play checkers with her in the afternoon. She exited out the kitchen door and walked across the parking lot to their house with big, wide strides that made her body sway exaggeratedly from side to side. The rain didn’t seem to bother her.
As I headed to the lobby, my phone buzzed with a text. It was from Trevor: Save me a muffin?
Considering that I had moved on, receiving a text from him really shouldn’t have had the effect on my body that it did. To force my old feelings for him back below the surface I reminded myself he had a girlfriend and I was leaving for Toronto at the end of the summer. Then I responded: They’re not as good when they’re not hot out of the oven.
Trevor’s reply dinged right away: Been thinking about your famous apple cinnamon muffins the whole time you were gone. Looking forward to it.
I smiled and shook my head as I typed back: Weird that you spend that much time thinking about muffins.
Did you miss me?
My breathing halted and I stared at the screen of my phone. Why? Why did he ask things like that? How is a person supposed to respond to a question like that? No, I didn’t miss you because you have a girlfriend and I’ve actually been trying to forget about my feelings for you all year. Or, yes, I missed you. I miss you every single day. I always have, and I can’t imagine ever not missing you.
Before I had a chance to come up with an appropriate response that couldn’t be misread, my phone rang. It was him, so I answered.
“Welcome home,” he said. His smile was audible.
“You too.” Not wanting to touch on the “did you miss me?” question I said, “I was hoping you’d come over for breakfast so I could hear how the road trip was.”
“Yeah, sorry. I want to hear