I couldn’t help a grin. “Okay, you jet. I’ll see you later?”

After flashing me a smile that could have melted the heart of the White Witch in Narnia, she nodded and hurried away.

I watched her leave, a little enamored myself with such a guileless creature, then turned and ran right into the one girl in school I did not want to run into. The only one who accessorized with black nail polish, a razor-blade pendant, and a switchblade.

She gaped, completely offended by my presence, then shoved me away from her. I stumbled back and barely kept from tumbling head over heels by grabbing on to another student’s backpack. He scowled over his shoulder, then jerked out of my grip before I could apologize. Or right myself. I almost fell anyway, but I managed to get my footing without any more humiliation than absolutely necessary.

“Nice save,” Kenya said, raising her brows as though impressed.

But I was still reeling from what I’d gained from our little encounter. I wasn’t fond of Kenya Slater. She wasn’t fond of me. But it was disturbing nonetheless to watch her die.

Unfortunately for me—and everyone around me—I have, for lack of a better word, visions. Sometimes when I touch people, I can see into their futures or their pasts. It’s heart-wrenching on several levels. I never see the time they were laughing at a party or riding a roller coaster at the fair, screaming with exhilaration. No, I see the bad parts of their lives. I see the catastrophic. I see the pain and fear and anxiety. And now, thanks to this nifty skill I’d inherited, I knew exactly when, where, and how Kenya was going to die.

Her death flashed before my eyes the moment we touched. The visions were thoughtful that way. And now I had a decision to make. I’d struggled with the question of divulgence before. Many times. And this scenario was no exception. I might be able to prevent her death if she’d listen to me, but that took a lot of faith. And since she threatened me with a switchblade every chance she got, I didn’t figure faith was her strong suit. Especially faith in me. The new girl. The girl she most liked to harass and promise a slow and painful death to. I was pretty sure I’d developed a nervous twitch after meeting her.

But this was different. Maybe it was a timing thing. She was going to die too soon. Too young. She literally had only days to live. And the vision stole my breath with its vividness.

In it, a storm rolled in, darkening what had been a sunny afternoon. She was on a boat with her aunt, uncle, big sister, and little brother, but it wasn’t a vacation or a pleasure trip. She was scared. Her aunt and uncle were scared, too—terrified, in fact—running, trying to get away from something, to escape. The clouds roiling overhead like a cauldron of a dark witch’s brew dipped lower and lower in the sky. If Kenya reached up, she could have touched them, but she was busy clinging to her brother for dear life. The water churned and crashed against her uncle’s sailboat. Rain slashed horizontally through the sky, the stinging chill cutting to the bone. Her sister had wedged herself between two seats, huddled there, shivering, worried she’d fall overboard.

I could feel the unimaginable fear that blinded Kenya to everything but those clouds. Yet it wasn’t the storm clouds she was afraid of. It was something else. Something inside them.

Before I could identify the source of her fear, another wave hit. It slammed against the boat, causing one side to tip and rise with the swell until the small boat had no choice but to succumb to the fates. The water hit Kenya hard, slapping against her as she crashed into it. She tried desperately to keep ahold of her brother, reached blindly for her sister, but the pull of the waves was too strong. It sucked her deeper and deeper into its icy grip. She kicked. Fought with every ounce of strength she had. Then, left with no choice, she exchanged water for air and filled her burning lungs. Panic seized her with such a violent force, she gagged, tried to swallow the entire ocean, searched desperately for oxygen in the thick liquid. And found none.

The last image that flashed in my mind was of her floating in the deep gray depths of the arctic water. Her eyes open. Her mouth a grim line as though she’d accepted her fate at last, but did so unhappily.

And she knew. She knew who was to blame.

Ricocheting back to the present, I sucked in a sharp gulp of air, fighting the feeling of suffocation, of drowning. I doubled over and coughed, then clamped a hand over my mouth when I felt bile slip up the back of my throat.

What were they running from? Why were they so scared? And why would anyone be the blame for a storm?

“Pratt?” she said, her voice edged with wariness instead of her usual menace.

I ignored her, turned, and was fighting my way to the bathroom when I bumped into a boy. Another vision gripped me and performed a hostile takeover of all brain function. And just like the vision of Kenya and her family, this boy’s expiration date was rocketing toward him. And it was disturbingly similar to hers. The storm. The dark clouds. The roaring winds. The boy was running toward his dorm on the school campus, but unlike Kenya, he was scared of the storm and nothing else. He died when a tree was uprooted and took down some electrical wires near him. The currents hammering through his body brought me down, because I didn’t just see what happened to people in my visions; I felt it, too. Every spike of fear. Every wince of anguish. Every spasm of pain. And being electrocuted to death hurt. An agonizing pain pulsated through me, attacking my nervous system until the boy breathed his last breath and his body shut down.

I felt a hand on my arm. I pushed it away and stumbled to my feet, reeling from that experience when another boy reached to help me.