Page 26 of Your Every Wish

“A little boy by the name of Roman Johnson disappeared from my hometown in Indiana. I didn’t know him and by the time he went missing, I was away at school.

I’d only heard about it from my mother, who was a nurse in the same clinic as Roman’s pediatrician.

Obviously, everyone there was shaken up about it.

My mother gave me updates on the case when we talked on the phone regularly.

It was all over the news in my state and understandably a big topic of conversation in my hometown.

Still, I was hundreds of miles away and distracted by my studies and a new social life, so not entirely invested in the case, like the people back home were.

“The working theory was that a young man by the name of Lawrence Fagan had taken Roman. Fagan was a registered sex offender and lived only two blocks away. While the police had questioned him and were monitoring his activities, they didn’t have any evidence to arrest him, and the case was getting colder by the minute.

Roman had been missing now for twelve days. Mostly everyone thought he was dead.”

“Was he?” Kennedy asks.

“I had a dream that he was alive. It was so clear and vivid that I woke up screaming. My roommate thought I was being murdered in my sleep. The weird part is that I’d never seen Roman Johnson before my dream.

But when I searched the newspaper clippings at the library the boy in my dream looked exactly like him.

There was also a woman. Initially, I assumed it was his mother.

But when I watched the televised press conference of Roman’s mother pleading for her son’s safe return, she didn’t remotely resemble the woman in my dream. ”

“Did you tell anyone about the dream, about the woman, about seeing Roman alive?” I ask.

“I told my mother. But what was she going to do, tell the police, tell Roman’s parents?

They would’ve dismissed her as a complete whackadoo.

So, I wrote an anonymous letter to the police department with a description of the woman and what I’d seen in my dream.

A day later, the police held a press conference, asking that the anonymous tipster who wrote the letter come forward. They had questions.”

“Did you come forward?” Kennedy scoots closer to the table.

Misty nods. “At first, I was afraid to, afraid they’d think I was trying to get attention or that I was somehow involved.

But if it meant saving Roman . . . A detective flew to Wisconsin the next day and asked me a lot of questions about my dream.

Two days later the FBI found Roman, alive and well, and arrested his former babysitter.

She’d taken him to Kentucky. The police said that my information was part of the reason they found him. ”

“Wow. Have you had other dreams like that about other cases?” I’ve heard of police calling psychics in on crime cases before but it’s always controversial.

“I have. I’ve helped solve five other missing persons cases. Unfortunately, they didn’t end as well as Roman’s case.”

Kennedy and I exchange glances. I can see her ambivalence. Any rational person would have a hard time believing. I count myself in that school and yet . . .

“Were you ever wrong?” Kennedy asks.

“In a missing person’s case? No, but I’ve only gotten involved when the dreams were strong, when I could see things clearly. Other times, they were less vivid, less concrete. In those situations, I pull back. You can do more harm than good, if you know what I mean.”

“Is that how you know what the key goes to, you saw it in a dream?” Kennedy says.

“Not in a dream, in my head. Like I said, you girls give me strong readings. You’re like open books, the both of you.”

Terrific. The last thing I need is for my every thought to be transmitted in stereo.

“Not stereo,” Misty says. “More like a movie.”

Whoa! She heard that. “Can you see everything I’m thinking?”

She shakes her head. “It doesn’t work like that. I only catch pieces here and there.”

“What else can you do?” Kennedy asks.

Misty pulls a face. “Like pull a rabbit out of a hat? Make you disappear?”

“I didn’t mean it that way,” Kennedy says defensively. “I meant it more like can you contact the dead?”

“I have no idea, I’ve never tried before. Who do you want to contact?”

Kennedy looks at me and I shake my head. Nothing good can come of it. We barely know the man, now we’re going to visit him in the afterlife and ask him if he has hidden money lying around?

“Is this about the trouble you’re in?” Misty says to Kennedy. “Because if it is I can’t mint dollar bills, if that’s what you’re hoping.”

“Did the Las Vegas police contact you? Is that how you know?” Kennedy toys with her empty martini glass.

“Police? No one contacted me. Why would they? I saw it in your face that first day. Something to do with an outstanding debt and a powerful man. I also saw an older woman, who looks a lot like you, though I haven’t figured out what she has to do with it.

Only that your future hangs in the balance.

Okay, that’s a little dramatic, but you get the drift. ”

“Not too dramatic,” Kennedy says. “I could lose my job and everything I’ve worked toward.”

“What about me?” I say, feeling a smidge of guilt for putting Misty on the spot this way—we’re treating her a bit like a carnival exhibit—but it’s tough to resist. It’s like having your palm read or your fortune told.

Misty pivots from me to Kennedy and something unspoken passes between them.

“What? Tell me. Is it bad?” Ah, jeez, maybe I have cancer and Misty saw the tumor, or congenital heart disease. Grandma Tuck died of it.

Kennedy starts to respond but Misty interrupts her. “It seems that you’re in a relationship that’s a tad unbalanced, dear.”

“Dex?” I look directly at Kennedy when I say this and glower. She’s made it clear on every level that she doesn’t like him and has probably poisoned the well where Misty’s concerned.

Kennedy throws up her hands. “Don’t blame me.”

I turn to Misty. “Did Kennedy tell you that she hates him?”

“She did no such thing.”

“Well, I don’t want to hear anymore.” And like a six-year-old I put my hands over my ears.

“I’ll take another one of these.” Misty hands her martini glass to Kennedy.

“Coming right up.”

It’s possibly the strangest cocktail party I’ve ever hosted—or been to, for that matter. And hours after Misty leaves, Kennedy and I go back and forth on how much of Misty’s story to believe.

It’s not until that night, while Kennedy is fast asleep, that I hop on the Google highway and get my answer.