The Boy in the Gray Hoodie

11...

This chapter is dedicated to Mystery245 for the awesome fan art she made for this story! Thank you!!!

11…

I stood at the end of the hallway, staring at the guestroom door, my hands clenching and unclenching at my sides. He was in there. The one dad had brought with him. The teenage boy whose arrival had caused such a stir was in that room, that completely silent room.

            The house was dead. It was past midnight and there were no lights on other than the one coming from my phone. I glanced down at the screen, staring at the text from my mom.

            Happy b-day, it read. That was nice. She was too lazy to spell birthday and hadn’t even sent the message to me until the occasion was officially over. But that was kind of her thing, being late. That is what caused her divorce, after all.

            Swallowing, I glanced back up at the door, staring at the rippling white paint with wide eyes. I felt awkward standing in the hallway wearing nothing but a nightgown and a pair of Aunt Pam’s thick wool socks. The air was so cold I could almost see my breath. I was sure the fire downstairs had gone out, but still I stood there with damp hair and trembling hands. I knew I should go back to bed, but I couldn’t take my eyes off that door. I shivered. I couldn’t sleep knowing that boy was in the house. The boy with those eyes—those eyes that had locked onto mine just seconds before I was supposed to die.

I had seen it last night, as the Forester raced toward me. I had seen myself die. I had seen my death in his eyes when he looked at me before dad’s car had suddenly flipped and twisted around me like a plastic bag thrown off-course by the wind. A girl in a green coat, crumpled on the side of the road, one pink boot lying empty on its side next to her mangled arm.

Mud and gravel mixed with the blood leaking from her mouth. Her neck had snapped on impact.

Her brown eyes were empty.

I had been so afraid that I had left two people bleeding on the road. I hadn’t even had the courage to get Aunt Pam, because I couldn’t imagine going back to the crash with her. It was a pathetic excuse, I knew. But in that moment I wasn’t thinking. I was just running.

            I shivered again, but this time it wasn’t from the cold. I pushed the images out of my mind, chewing my lip anxiously. I didn’t understand why I’d seen them, but I knew for certain where those images had come from. The boy in that room had shown them to me. He had given me a glimpse of…what, fate? No, I didn’t have confidence in that sort of thing. I barely trusted the things I could see.

            So what had the boy shown me? One possible future, that’s what. I’d caught a horrifying glimpse at one possible future before plans changed. But who had changed them? That’s what I should have been worrying about. And yet, I wasn’t worrying about that at all.

I knew who had caused the Forester to take a nose dive into a tree thirty yards from the course of its trajectory. That’s why I was standing out in the hallway well after midnight, staring at a bedroom door.

            It was the boy. Somehow, after he showed me how I was going to die, he’d made that death become a bad dream. He changed reality as I had seen it. I was dead. But he made me live. I didn’t want to know how or why.

I didn’t want to. I needed to. This was a need that I couldn’t ignore.

            Rubbing the chill from my arms, I took several small steps forward. I had tried for hours to go to sleep. But it just wasn’t possible for my body to shut down when my head would not shut up. I couldn’t even close my eyes without seeing that girl lying dead on the gravel road. I couldn’t stop thinking about all the blood, or the sound of the car crushing her beneath its tires.