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feel it.
    I’m going to leave. I have no money. Whatever. I’ll figure it out. Just planning to leave tonight I feel better already, lighter, not as jittery in my own head. There’s a camera and an alarm and a security guard at the main entrance to the huge school building. But a window on the second floor has a balcony under it. Ten-foot drop. I can do a ten-foot drop. Then I’ll climb the rest of the way down. The brick is old and uneven. I can do it.
    I know I can.
    I’m going to get out of here tonight, and I’ll never come back. I’ll walk back to my aunt’s house if I have to. I’ll live there by myself. I’ll send Annie stupid postcards, and maybe they’ll fix her eyes and she’ll even be able to read them by herself. I don’t want to be without her—that idea makes it even harder to breathe—but I can’t stay here.
    I look up to see Ms. Robertson smiling at me, and this time the smile isn’t a lie. It’s a challenge. Like she knows what I’m planning.
    But she can’t know.
    She knows. It’s a physical reaction in me, a certain quivering, empty feeling in my stomach, that tug of my gut. I know she knows. How does she know? I have to go now. NOW. I stand, knocking my chair over with a clatter into the table behind me. “I feel sick,” I say, leaving my stuff as I run out the door. Down the long hall, all tile and dark wood. Into the residence wing. Up the stairs that smell like lemon furniture polish. Straight to the window, the one I opened last week to see how far the drop was.
    It’s nailed shut.
    Screw this, I am gone. I sprint up another flight of stairs to the dorms with their warm yellow lights and plush red carpet. I will grab everything I own and I will run straight out the front doors. I will run into the sunshine and I will never come back here where everything is wrong for no reason. I burst in, and Annie’s there, on the couch, and she’s crying.
    â€œWhat’s wrong?” I ask, out of breath. “What happened?”
    She looks up, but she’s smiling. Why is she crying and smiling at the same time?
    â€œI’m not the only one,” she says. “Fia, it’s not just me! Clarice can do it, too. Clarice sees things before they happen. And she’s going to help me learn to do it better, to control it. Oh, I knew this school was the right choice.” She stands and holds her hands out for a hug and I stumble forward, letting her wrap me up because I never stay away when she wants me close. “Think about it, Fia. If I had known how to control it before, I could have seen Mom and Dad earlier, I could have understood what I was seeing, I could have . . .” I know what she saw because she’s told me so many times, crying in the middle of the night.
    She saw their lives smashed out of them. She still blames herself because she saw the accident and didn’t change it. (She didn’t change it. I am here because—no, stop.)
    Maybe this school is the best thing that ever happened to her; she can figure out how to deal with what she sees. But why do I still feel so wrong when she’s so happy and hopeful? No. It’s my job to take care of her. If staying here is what she needs, I’ll stay.
    The hairs on the back of my neck prickle and I turn to see what Annie’s eyes can’t. Ms. Robertson is standing, perfectly silent in the doorway, watching me.
    Â 
    It’s been two weeks since the window was nailed shut. Bars were installed on all the windows, on all the floors. The administration said it was because of an attempted break-in.
    Every day Annie chatters to me about what she learned, how smart Clarice is, what an amazing coincidence it is that she’d end up with the one person in the world who could understand her. I do not smile because with Annie I don’t have to, but I lie when we are together.
    Now I am sitting in class.
    I am not