Page 1 of The Psychic

Ronnie looked in the mirror and examined her scowling face.

Straight, light brown hair with bangs that were hanging in her eyes just long enough to make Dad mad.

White teeth. You should smile more . Dad, of course.

Blue eyes, which Aunt Kat said were her best feature, well, except for that thing they didn’t talk about.

Not exactly a feature. A curse . Stop encouraging her, Katarina.

Dad, again. Ronnie’s gift was NOT TALKED ABOUT.

She forced a smile, then stopped herself.

It looked fake and scary. The only time it looked natural was when she was with her friends because that’s when she was HAPPY.

Living with her father was a trial. Aunt Kat’s favorite term.

She, along with Ronnie, felt Jonas Quick was a trial.

And he was. He might be her father but he’d always been remote and exacting and determined to mold his daughter in his own image— Aunt Kat’s words again—not her mother’s, whose death still haunted the empty places inside Ronnie’s heart.

That was her own saying, sort of. Maybe she read it in a book, but it was sure true.

She missed Mom terribly and it had been years since she’d been gone.

But enough of all that. Today was her tenth birthday and Brandy and Melissa, the best, bestest friends anyone could have, were coming over to celebrate.

They were bringing cupcakes and a picnic basket full of candy and little sandwiches with the crusts cut off.

Brandy’s brother, Clint, was taking them all to The Pond, which was really just a bend of the East Glen River, a place that spread out between the banks, and they were spending the afternoon there.

Beneath her shorts and shirt, Ronnie was wearing her blue, one-piece swimsuit with crisscross straps that ran over her back.

She shivered as she waited. She only wanted to think about her birthday and all the fun she was going to have …

but that familiar bad, bad feeling was creeping over her.

That special feature, that curse … It sometimes developed when she thought about her mother, even though Mom had died when Ronnie was barely four.

She didn’t remember Mom all that good … all that well, she mentally corrected herself.

When Mom died it was as if all the bad things escaped, like Pandora’s box.

Though most of the time Ronnie pushed the bad things away, sometimes, like today, they seemed to hover just outside of her vision, she could sense them, but when she turned to look, they were gone.

Poof.

As if they’d never existed.

She sat down at the table to wait and laid her head on her arms. Sliding a look out of the side of her eyes she wondered, sort of hoped, that she might actually see Mom.

Why not? She’d seen other things at other times.

Once, while going into the grocery store with Gabrielle, her babysitter, Ronnie had spotted a girl lying on the pavement in the parking lot.

Freaked, Ronnie had grabbed Gabrielle’s arm and pointed, whispering she thought the girl was dead.

Gabrielle had glanced to the spot, then shot Ronnie a warning glare as she’d yanked her arm from Ronnie’s panicked grasp.

“There’s nothing there!” she’d whispered harshly. “Stop playing games!”

Ronnie had glared back at Gabrielle, ready to argue. At sixteen, Gabrielle thought she knew everything.

But when Ronnie glanced back to the spot in the parking lot where the girl had been sprawled, she was gone.

“She was there!” Ronnie insisted, clenching her fists.

But Gabrielle had just rolled her big eyes as if Ronnie was just a drama queen, seeking attention. Gabrielle hadn’t believed her. No one believed her. They never, ever believed her. It was a living hell , a phrase Brandy liked to say.

It all made Ronnie try to hide what she saw but it was really, really hard. Aunt Kat was the only one who ever seemed to understand, but even she shushed Ronnie whenever Ronnie insisted and pointed out there was something there.

Now anger and frustration boiled up inside her and she pressed her lips together, fighting tears.

Her dad was at work, like always, which was fine, because he never believed her, either.

Gabrielle was somewhere in the house listening to music on her iPod—Kelly Clarkson, by the sound of it—which was really all Gabrielle ever did.

Ronnie could be babysitting herself, for all the good it did.

The lyrics to “Since U Been Gone” floated through the room. Ronnie wouldn’t mind having an iPod, but Dad didn’t have much use for anything except for asking her about her studies. He was always about that.

“How’s that book report coming?” he’d ask. Or, “How’d you do on that presentation on Oregon? Did you write down all the fun facts we looked up?”

Right.

Or, worse yet, “We still need to work on your thematic writing skills. I don’t think McDaniels is pushing you enough …”

Luckily, school had ended weeks ago and his questions had fallen off a bit.

“A living hell,” Ronnie muttered, repeating Brandy’s favorite phrase. Even though Ronnie tried to relax, she was jumping out of her skin and she just wanted to go.

She closed her eyes to calm herself.

But behind her eyelids she suddenly saw someone falling, falling, falling off a cliff. Heard the hard thwack of a body hitting water. Smelled something dank and muddy.

Don’t go in the water.

Her eyes flew open and she inhaled sharply.

Was that warning for her? It sounded like …

Mom … maybe? Sometimes the bad feeling crept into her brain and left scattered pictures around that she couldn’t piece together and didn’t know what to do with.

Like a body hitting water . Was that a scene from the cliff above The Pond?

Ronnie breathed deeply, in and out for several minutes, calming herself down, bringing herself back to the here and now, the summer-warm house and everything familiar.

Patrice, the therapist her father had agreed to let her see when Aunt Kat insisted that “the girl needs help, Jonas,” had taught her how to pull herself “back from the brink” of her visions.

Patrice said they were figments of her imagination, which made Ronnie skeptical of the therapist. The pictures, thoughts and feelings that sometimes flooded her mind were not figments of her imagination.

They were something more. She just didn’t know what.

She blinked several times … that falling body …

that awful thwack when it hit the water.

It sounded like … death. Was it something about to happen at the river?

She grew cold all over and hunched her shoulders.

She hadn’t told her dad where they were going.

He didn’t like water and had ordered tons of swimming lessons for her to keep her safe, and if he knew she was going with Brandy’s brother he would have a shit fit .

Brandy, again. Aunt Kat tsk-tsked that Brandy was a victim of her older brother’s bad influence, even though Aunt Kat could swear like a—

Honk! Honk!

Ronnie glanced upstairs, wondering if Gabrielle had heard.

No footsteps or shouts. Quickly Ronnie snagged her tote bag and dashed for the door. Through the side window panes she saw Brandy’s brother Clint’s SUV wheel into the driveway, sunlight glinting off the windshield. A Trailblazer, Brandy had told her.

Ronnie stopped at the door, chewing on her lip.

Dad was at work and Gabrielle was on her phone, so she could just go …

maybe. But Gabrielle would have a fit and blame Ronnie and everyone would get upset.

Both her father and Gabrielle thought she was going to the Mercers’ house and she didn’t want Gabrielle to see that Brandy’s brother was driving because Ronnie had failed to mention that little fact and she didn’t want to have to explain.

And she really wanted to go !

She threw open the door, ready to sprint to the driveway, but stopped short upon spying her two besties climbing out of the black SUV.

Brandy and Mel both smiling broadly, Brandy with a bag slung over her shoulder, Mel balancing three cupcakes with pink icing as they hurried across the dry lawn to the front door.

What? No. Ronnie stood at the threshold, then stepped back to make room for them to hurry inside.

A mistake. “Hey, maybe we should go now and—” Ronnie started, her eyes on the stairs as her friends rushed past her to the kitchen, where they set the cupcakes on the counter.

No, no, no! Ronnie heard the floorboards creaking overhead. Gabrielle was walking from one room to the other. Possibly heading for the staircase.

“And what?” Mel asked.

“Just leave,” Ronnie said, nervous.

“Wait a sec,” ordered Brandy. She whipped out ten tiny candles from her bag, then retrieved one of those long, skinny lighters.

Ronnie clenched her teeth into a smile as Mel stuck groups of candles in each of the three cupcakes while Brandy lit the wicks with the tiny wobbling flame from the lighter.

“Happy birthday to you! Happy birthday to you! Happy birthday, dear Ronnie! Happy birthday to you … !” her friends screamed, trying to out-yell each other and laughing hard. Despite her worries, Ronnie couldn’t help but laugh, too.

“We’ve got ten. There are seven more cupcakes in the picnic basket, if Clint and Evan haven’t eaten them,” said Brandy. She shot a dark look toward the still open front door, as if she thought her brother and his friend were already doing just that.

Mel piped in, “One for each year.”