Touched - By Cyn Balog Page 0,2

was pretty close to her, maybe only twenty yards away. But though it was a hot August day and the place was swarming with people, everyone else was just staring, like invalids, or like they wanted to see the girl get flattened. Some of them looked at me expectantly, like it was the duty of the guy in the red shorts to break into action à la Baywatch and save the day.

I strained to see the lifeguard stand in the bright noon sun. I could see only the top of Pedro’s head. He was slumped down, still, unmoving. Asleep. That morning when I’d arrived at the stand, he’d smelled like a brewery. He’d said he had the hangover from hell, but I thought he was still drunk. He kept pointing out hot girls and whistling at them, as if he was at some bar in the Heights. I probably shouldn’t have left him alone for lunch, but it was in the script. And I never went against the script.

Until now. I turned back toward the girl. Crap. I knew that even just standing there, frozen with indecision, was probably going to throw everything off. Sure enough, the first pangs of pain rapped at my temple.

You will …

My grandmother always said that God puts signs everywhere. Maybe if the girl in danger hadn’t looked like my best description of an angel—a lion’s mane of curly platinum hair pushed back with a headband—I wouldn’t have destroyed that perfect future I’d found for myself. In that split second that she flipped her angelic white hair back to reveal skin so perfect it practically glowed in the sun, I realized it was a sign. God wanted—no, demanded that I step in.

You will …

It was almost like I was outside my body, watching myself break away from the script. I took a few flying steps and launched myself off the boardwalk and onto Ocean Avenue, my fall cushioned by a pile of sand. Something in my head began to whir, softly at first. Yet somehow, in that moment, I held on to the naïve hope that everything wouldn’t change.

It might still be okay, I thought as I grabbed the girl’s arm and guided her out of the way. She was limp as a rag doll and didn’t fight, as if she was used to being pulled in different directions by complete strangers. As I positioned her safely on a plank near the boardwalk, I could hear the bass thumping from her earphones.

It wasn’t a very heroic scene. The rather large audience that had gathered didn’t applaud; they just quietly turned back to what they’d been doing, almost as if they’d wanted to see a tragedy. By that time, though, I wasn’t looking for applause. My hopes of getting back everything I’d had dwindled as my brain began to pound, flip-flip-flipping as new memories shuffled like cards.

I grimaced and blinked hard to stop the throbbing, the commotion in my head so loud that it drowned out the noon siren.

I’d grown used to the cycling of my future “memories.” Before that summer, it had happened every day, just a little. When I was a kid, before I’d learned to deal with them, my mind would shuffle constantly, weaving in new futures in place of the old ones, leaving others in the dust, like dreams. Maybe I’d forgotten, but back then, the cycling hadn’t seemed to hurt this much.

Of course, I’d never been able to go so long without any major cycling. Somehow I’d managed to make it almost three months without veering away from the future I saw in my head. It was a good future. A future I wanted desperately to keep. And now it was gone.

I collapsed on the pavement, breathing hard. Lifted my arms over my shoulders and squeezed my head between my elbows like a vise. Senseless images of people I’d never met, things I’d never done, shattered fragments of my future, sputtered through my head.

You will … can.… be.… not …

“Hey, are you okay?”

It was a girl’s voice. The angel. In my blurry vision I could see two silvery pink running shoes, toes pointed at me.

“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” I blurted out, trying to look up at her, when a surge of agony pulled my head down again. “Sun glare.”

She didn’t speak. I tried to raise my head, but it was a no-go, as if a fifty-pound dumbbell was dangling from my neck and someone was playing the drums on my cerebral cortex.

“Well,