Sleep No More

She doesn’t know what I do. She can never know.

I peek my head around the doorway and smile, taking in my mom’s shiny brown hair that falls into perfect waves—unlike mine, which is the same color but frizzes no matter how much product I use. She’s slim and has long arms that reach for a file in one direction, a red pencil in the other, all fluid motions that flow almost like a choreographed dance rather than an entry-level job she never expected to work.

She looks perfect, always has. If you didn’t notice her wheelchair, you’d assume she was about to jump up and give me a hug.

But that hasn’t happened since the accident that left her paralyzed.

The one where I traded my aunt’s life for my dad’s.

I suck in a breath and push that thought away, the same way I do twenty times a day. At least. But it’s harder today after having a foretelling I couldn’t fight. About another death. Those are the worst. People like to laud heroes. The ones who rush in, risk their lives to save someone. And I’m not saying they don’t deserve it; they do.

But you know what’s harder? Not doing anything. Standing back and letting bad things happen. Letting people die because they’re supposed to.

I remember asking Sierra once, soon after she moved in, why we didn’t act. “We could be superheroes,” I argued with her. “We should help people. Isn’t that the right thing to do?”

“Look what happened when you tried to save me,” she said so gently I couldn’t be angry.

Just sad.

In the end, it’s not the right thing. Ever. And so I stand back.

Before I gained control—when I saw my visions more often—I foresaw a few deaths. Usually it was something like car accidents, heart attacks, that kind of thing. Things I probably couldn’t stop even if I did try.

But murder? Just a word of warning to Bethany. To be careful. How much could it hurt?

Especially when the other option is to let her die a terrifying death.

“You’ve got your thinking face on, Char,” my mom says, pulling my mind back into her well-organized office.

I make myself smile. “Lots of homework,” I lie. Not that I don’t have a bunch of homework. Just that it isn’t what I was thinking about.

She pauses and glances up at me, her face so soft and caring it makes me want to cry at the thought of all the lies and half-truths I tell her on a daily basis. “You work so hard,” she says quietly.

I bite the tip of my tongue. The last thing I deserve is her sympathy. I don’t take advanced math and science and every AP class the school counselor will let me into because I’m some brainiac who’s all self-motivated and ambitious. I do it because if I tire my mind out enough, I don’t have time to think as hard. About the visions, about my utter lack of social life, about the fact that I ruined my mother’s life and now we’ll grow old together, two lonely spinsters.

Three, if Sierra stays with us.

“Gotta get into Harvard,” I say in the lightest tone I can manage. It’s another lie. I’ll go to Rogers State in Claremore, about twenty miles away, so I can live at home. For a million reasons. Because Mom needs me and I’m responsible for her. Because it’s dangerous for me to drive to Massachusetts, at least semi-irregularly, on the freeway, where I can’t pull over at the first sign of a foretelling.

Because I could never live with roommates.

But Mom doesn’t need to know any of that. Not yet.

“Is Sierra home?” I ask, changing the subject. Even though Mom’s basically self-sufficient now, Sierra’s never left.

And even though I hope it’s not because she thinks she still has to babysit me, she kinda does anyway. I don’t mind. Much. It means she’s there to talk to, and the three of us all get along really well. Like Gilmore Girls plus one.

And a big-ass secret.

Mom often reminds Sierra that, although we love her and she’s welcome to stay as long as she wants, we don’t need her anymore and she can go out and have a “real life.”

But Sierra and I know the truth: Sierra’s an Oracle too, and her “real life” is inside her head. There’s not really a possibility of anything else for Oracles. Getting married? I’m pretty sure a spouse would notice all of the weird things we aren’t allowed to explain. I’ve always hoped that maybe someday Sierra would find that perfect person who she could trust enough to confide in. But even assuming Sierra would be willing to go against the rules, would finding out the truth chase someone off? And if it did, would they keep their mouth shut about it? Not likely.

Or, let’s say they did believe her—it would take a pretty big person not to start prying about their future. Everyone thinks they want to know the future.

Everyone is wrong.

So it just … wouldn’t work.

Similarly, there’s no perfect soul mate in my future either. Only a lifetime of hiding. I didn’t choose this. I wouldn’t choose this. But it’s the hand I was dealt. The hand Sierra was dealt. Some people are short, some people have freckles, some people see the future. It’s all genetics.

“I think so,” Mom says, and I’ve forgotten what it was I asked.

Oh yeah. Sierra.

“But you know how she is; she sneaks in and out and I don’t hear a thing.” Mom grins at me over her shoulder before turning back to her work. “Check her office.”

I pull Mom’s door closed and walk down the hall to the room Mom always refers to as “Sierra’s office”; but it’s really her room/office/work/life. When Dad died, we didn’t have the money to move—especially not with all the medical bills—but Mom couldn’t handle sleeping in the master bedroom anymore, so she gave it to Sierra. It’s a big room with a small sitting area and private bathroom and … well, Sierra doesn’t leave it very often.

At least not when I’m home.

Her desk is set up in the sitting area and about half the time I bring dinner in to her so she doesn’t have to stop working. The walls are covered with shelves full of books about history and mythology and other Oracle stuff that she is constantly pulling out to use as references. When I was twelve, I asked what she would do if Mom came in and really took a look at her books but Sierra shrugged and said, “I’d tell her it’s research.”

Then I asked what she would do if I started coming in and borrowing books. She said she’d start locking the door.

Two days later when she caught me with Oracles of Rome, she started doing just that.

She always knows more than she’s willing to tell me. She says too much knowledge makes what we can do excessively tempting and that she only trusts herself because of years of resisting as she researches. I’m not even sure what that means. I guess we might be tempted to change the future, but she talks like there’s more.

And I desperately want to know what that more is.

I don’t think it’s fair. I can’t really believe any other sources; they’re legends at best. But Sierra’s library is the real deal. Ancient books and manuscripts that don’t exist anywhere else in the whole world. I keep trying to sneak glances at them, but Sierra’s not stupid—she notices. That’s why she does most of her errands when I’m at school.

And if I am home, the door is always locked when she leaves.

I try not to resent it. After all, she’s devoted so much of her life to me. She taught me everything she knows about fighting foretellings, and she’s always patient. I’ve actually never seen her lose her tempter.

But all those books … She says she’ll let me read more when I’m a member of the Sisters of Delphi. Like her.

Sierra is an author of several texts about Greek mythology and the unseen world. That’s what she does to pay the bills. And while her books are probably really great—I can barely understand the few paragraphs I’ve read, but she wins awards all the time—it’s just camouflage for her real job: the historian of the Sisters of Delphi.

The Sisters is an ancient organization of Oracles that basically monitors all of the Oracles in the world. All twenty or so of us. Sierra won’t tell me much about them. Which seems weird to me since there are so few of us. Shouldn’t we all share our information? But Sierra says that when I’m eighteen and it’s time to join them, I’ll be ready to know more.

Always the promise of more. But not now. Drives me crazy.

I knock softly on Sierra’s door. She must be home; her door is not only unlocked, but open an inch or two.

“Come in.”

Sierra’s work space is bright and inviting. The curtains are pulled back, letting in the sunshine, and there are two tall, standing lights flanking each side of her desk, which are on as well. The surface of her desk is a jumble of stacks of papers and books and about six coffee mugs, but there’s no dust, and certainly no darkness.

Darkness is our enemy.

Sierra doesn’t even look up until I’ve been standing beside her chair for what feels like a very long time. “Charlotte,” she finally says, pushing wisps of hair away from her face with a smile. Her hair is a shiny brown—just like mine and mom’s. At least it is now.

I remember when it was strawberry blonde, when she curled the edges and it danced around her face. Now she dyes it. I don’t know why anyone would opt for brown over that gorgeous strawberry. But when I asked her about it a few years ago, she looked so sad I’ve never asked again.

That was back when she always looked pretty and dressed up. Not anymore. No makeup, no fancy hairstyles. A single ponytail, a braid down her back, sometimes a bun. I glitz myself up more than Sierra does, and that’s saying something.

She’s staring at me, eyebrows raised, waiting for me to speak, and my mind vacillates. Confess or keep quiet? I honestly don’t know what the best thing to do is. I’d like advice, but I feel like a kid again, confessing that I wasn’t able to block a vision. Despite the fact that Sierra and I are close, she’s still my mentor, and she expects a lot of me.

“When was the last time you saw a vision?” I finally blurt out.

That gets her full attention. She slides her reading glasses up onto her forehead and pushes her office chair back. “The last time I fought a vision or the last time a vision won?” she asks softly.

“Both,” I say after a moment of hesitation.

She waves her fingers in the air almost dismissively. “I fought one this morning. It was small. No big deal.” She removes her glasses now and sticks the end of one earpiece in her mouth, her teeth worrying the plastic with audible clicks. “The last time a vision beat me was ten years ago,” she whispers as though confessing to a crime.

“Ten years?” I echo in the same hallowed whisper. And I thought I was doing well going on almost six months.

“It gets easier,” Sierra says, reaching out for my hand. “You’ll grow stronger.”

I nod, though my throat feels tight and I can’t actually speak.

“Hard one today?” Sierra asks, and her thumb makes circles on my hand.

I look at her and I know she can see the answer in my eyes. I always come in to see her on tough, draining days when blocking a foretelling takes everything out of me. Some days we don’t even talk; I simply sit and share the same space with the only person in my life who understands the struggle I face every day.

She hesitates and I’m afraid she’s going to ask if I won my fight or not. I don’t know how I’ll answer her. “Your teens are the hardest time,” she finally says, her thumb still stroking the back of my hand. “Life is so full of things to pull your attention away from your defenses, your body is still changing, hormones are raging.”

Oh yes, please talk about puberty right now, I think, forcing myself not to roll my eyes. I do pull my hand back though, and cross my arms over my chest.

At least she didn’t ask. She usually assumes I won. Because I almost always do. Maybe she trusts that I would tell her if I didn’t. And she should be able to. More guilt.

But ten years? I really am crappy at this.

“Things will calm down once you finish college and can withdraw from the world more,” Sierra says calmly, evenly. Like she didn’t just sentence me to a life of seclusion.

“Sierra,” I say after several long seconds of silence. “Would it really be so bad if we just let them come?” Her eyes narrow slightly, but I continue. “Not all the time, just, like when I’m alone in my room at home.” I don’t remember a lot from when I didn’t fight, but the foretellings I did get were mostly little things. Things I didn’t care about. “If I don’t do anything about it, of course,” I add when Sierra’s lips tighten.

She leans forward, looking up at me with dark brown eyes that look so much like Mom’s. “I know you think you can do that, Charlotte, but believe me, the temptation will become too great. You’ll want to change things. And that’s not a bad thing; it’s because you’re a good person and you have a desire to help people.” She furrows her brows and then she’s not meeting my gaze anymore. “You don’t know how bad the visions can get. Not even you.”

Not even me? Not even the girl who got her father killed trying to save her aunt? How much more devastating than that could it possibly get?

But then, maybe seeing a murdered teenager is worse. It makes me wonder what Sierra has seen that puts that haunted look in her eyes.

I want to ask more, but I’m not sure how I can without revealing what I saw today. And I just don’t want to. Don’t want to admit how much I suck.

I stand there silently for so long that after a few minutes, Sierra squeezes my hand, turns back to her computer, and resumes working.

I wander over to the shelf that houses the oldest books. With my arms folded, I scan the spines and titles—as close as Sierra ever lets me get. My eyes catch on a cracked leather spine printed with the words REPAIRING THE FRACTURED FUTURE.

Air slips slowly out between my teeth with a tiny hiss. This. This is what I need. I glance at Sierra, but she’s as focused as she was when I first came in. My fingers walk slowly forward, sneaking the same way I might tiptoe down a hallway. Closer. Closer.

My index finger hooks around the top of the spine and I pull slowly, tipping the book down. A whisper of the leather covers rubbing together makes me freeze, but after a few seconds I let the spine lean all the way into my palm.

Now I just have to pull it out and—

“Charlotte.”

Disappointment wells up in my throat. She didn’t snap—she never does—but that edge of “you know better than this” in her voice makes me want to melt into a puddle of shame. With my teeth tightly clenched, I push the book back where it belongs—at least she won’t know exactly which book I wanted—and turn to look at her.

Sierra sighs and rises from her chair. She comes close and puts an arm around my shoulder, deftly steering me toward the door. “You know you’re not ready,” she whispers.

“I think you’re wrong,” I say defiantly, proud of myself for voicing what I’ve thought for at least two years.

“I’m erring on the safe side this time,” Sierra says, leaning her head close enough to touch mine. “The last time I didn’t watch you closely enough, this entire family paid for it. You don’t need more temptation in your life.”

And without another word, she pushes me the last few inches through the door.

By the time I turn around, the door is closed and even as I raise my hand to turn the knob, I hear the unmistakable sound of the lock turning.

Great.

Maybe I should have told her. Now I have to decide what to do all by myself.

And I don’t even know where to start.

It’s all over the news the next morning.

Her body is covered with a white drape, and the reporter is rambling on about her injuries, but even his gruesome descriptions can’t compare to the actual sight. The one I saw only yesterday.

Mom’s hand is clenched around a mug of coffee, but she hasn’t lifted it to her mouth since she turned the television on ten minutes ago. “Who could do this?” she finally whispers after what feels like hours.

Unfortunately, despite the vision, that’s a question I can’t answer. Visions are fickle that way—sometimes they give you the important information, and sometimes they simply … don’t.

Sierra walks into the noticeably tense kitchen. “What’s going on?” she asks, looking between Mom and me and not seeming to notice that the TV is on despite its high volume. She’s like that, totally unaware of some things while being hyperaware of others. Probably because she’s constantly on guard for visions.

I guess I’ll be like that someday too.

“A teenage girl was killed at the high school last night,” Mom whispers, still staring horrified at the television. “Throat sliced right open.”

Sierra’s head swings to me and she stares with questions shining in her eyes. I feel like I did when I was six. I don’t know how she knew then, but she did.

And she knows now.

Her expression evokes the same awful guilt, even though this time I did nothing. Which makes me feel even more guilty.

Sierra fills her coffee cup with marked carefulness. She begins to leave the kitchen, but just before she disappears around the doorway she flicks her head, gesturing for me to join her.

I stall. I’ve got about five bites of now-soggy cereal in the bottom of my bowl, and I lift them to my mouth slowly. But I can’t put it off long—I have to leave for school soon.

Sierra is waiting for me just outside her bedroom door. “This is why you were asking questions yesterday, isn’t it?”

There’s no point in denying it.

“You didn’t tell me you actually saw it. I assumed you fought.” Even though her voice is soft, I can tell she’s angry. Angry that I didn’t confide in her? Maybe.

“I did fight!” To my dismay, tears are starting to build up in my eyes. I didn’t expect it to actually happen so soon. I wasn’t ready. “I fought so hard,” I continue, pleading now. “It was different from anything I’ve ever experienced before. I couldn’t stop it.”

She stares at me for a long time, but then her eyes soften and she simply says, “I wish you’d told me.”

“Why?” I shoot back. Not mad exactly, but very helpless. “So you could do something?” Her jaw tightens but I continue. “What good would it have done to tell you?”

Sierra looks down the hall toward the kitchen where I can hear the news continuing about the murder. She steps close and lays a hand on my shoulder. “Charlotte, the life of an Oracle is very solitary; we’re lucky to have each other. Please don’t push me away because I have high expectations of you. I don’t think you failed—these things happen. But that means it’s time to be even more vigilant.”

Her steady gaze makes me weirdly nervous and I pull out my phone and light up the clock on my home screen. “I gotta go.”

After getting dressed, I walk into the kitchen and pick up my set of house keys from the basket beside the back door. Surprisingly the soft jingle is what finally distracts Mom from the gruesome scene on the screen. “Where are you going?” she says in a rather irritated tone.

I blink at her, confused. “School?”

Her hair looks almost wild around her face as she shakes her head. “You can’t go to school today.”

“Why not?” The words are out of my mouth before I realize how stupid they are. Of course my mother is worried about my safety; a girl who’s in a couple of my classes just got murdered on school grounds.

She doesn’t know that I’m completely safe.

It’s kind of an open secret among Oracles; we all know how we’re going to die. Or, like me, we don’t yet because it’s too far in the future. The more personal a foretelling is, the harder to fight off. And nothing is more personal than one’s own death. I managed to get that tidbit out of Sierra once when I asked why she didn’t try to change her own death in the vision we both saw when I was six. But then she clammed up and wouldn’t tell me anything else.

I’ve never had a foretelling about myself. I’m pretty sure that means my death is years and years and years in the future. My lonely, eccentric future.

And that means I’m safe today. But Mom doesn’t know that.

“I know this is awful,” I say, “but I have a test in trigonometry today. I have to go.”

Mom fixes me with a dry look. “I have a feeling the test is going to be postponed.”

As though she can control the television, the silence between us fills with a voice announcing, “Due to the fact that William Tell High School is a crime scene that has not yet been released by the police, classes have been canceled. Principal Featherstone hopes to open campus as early as Monday, but until then, please keep your teenagers home, where they’re safe.”

Canceled or not, a quick shot from the news camera shows that the teenagers of Coldwater, Oklahoma, are certainly not at home. The football field fence is lined with students and adults alike, most in tears as they watch from behind bright yellow barriers of police tape fastened across the chain-link.

“The police haven’t released the name of the victim yet,” the news reporter continues, catching my attention again. “Only that she was a student attending this school.” She indicates the crowd of people, many on their phones. “You can imagine the panic these kids must be feeling as they call and text their friends and wait anxiously for responses. For channel six, this is—” But I tune her out; I don’t care what her name is.

My eyes are glued to the draped body that’s now being lifted onto a gurney bound for a waiting ambulance. They do a good job of keeping her face covered, but a gust of icy December wind wrenches the drape free from one foot and a maroon ballet flat comes into view.

A scream sounds from offscreen and, as though drawn to the agony, the camera swings toward the fence and shows a tall brunette crumpling to the ground, surrounded by a handful of other girls.

Rachel Barnett. She’s Bethany’s best friend. The one I saw her with yesterday. She would know instantly who those shoes belong to. Sobs shake her body as the news camera zooms in, invading her private grief. I can’t help but feel like a voyeur as Rachel wails and shakes her head. I don’t even realize I’m crying until I’m gasping for air.

I turn and leave the kitchen, ignoring my mom when she calls after me. I swing the door to my bedroom closed as fast as I can without slamming it, and lock it. My room feels too dark even with the sunlight pouring in through the window, so I turn on my overhead light, and then add my bedside lamp for good measure. After kicking off my shoes, I dive under my comforter, wishing something as simple as a fluffy feather blanket could hope to chase away the frost inside me.

I could have stopped this.

No, that’s not exactly true. I might have been able to stop this. And I didn’t even try. Even though I can hear my aunt’s voice screaming in my head that I did the right thing, I feel like a terrible person.

And what’s worse is that I hadn’t actually decided what to do yet. I thought I had more time. I was going to make the for-sure decision this weekend. And now the choice has been torn away from me.

I did nothing.

Not because I chose to do nothing, but because I didn’t make a choice at all. The thought sickens me. I wish I’d never seen the vision. I wish I’d fought harder. Assuming I even could have fought harder. The memory of how drained I felt after the foretelling makes me doubt it, but maybe there was something else I could have done.