Forget Tomorrow - Pintip Dunn Page 0,4

Jessa.” I usually leave the hard stuff to Mom, but I can’t bear to sift through the chocolate cake, hunting for the few parts I can salvage.

Mom squeezes my shoulder. “Okay.”

I turn to leave and see the eating table with its empty plates and balled-up napkins, crumbs layering the floor like an overturned flowerbox. “I’m sorry about the cake, Mom.”

“I love you, dear heart,” my mother says, which isn’t a reply but answers everything that matters.

Jessa is curled on the bed, her purple stuffed dog, Princess, tucked under her chin. Her walls have been dimmed, so the only illumination comes from the moonlight slithering through the blinds.

“Knock, knock,” I say at the door.

She mumbles something, and I walk into the room. Sitting on the bed, I rub her back between the shoulder blades. Where do I start? Mom’s so much better at this than me, but since she took an extra shift at work, I’ve had to pinch hit for her more and more.

I used to worry I wouldn’t say the right thing. When I told Mom, she blew the bangs off her forehead. “You think I know what I’m doing? I make it up as I go along.”

So I gave my sister a bowl of ice cream when Alice Bitterman told her they were no longer friends. And when Jessa said she was afraid of the monsters under her bed? I gave her a toy Taser and told her to shoot them.

Maybe it’s not the best parenting in the world, but I’m not a parent.

Jessa turns her head, and in the glow of the walls, I see tears in her eyes. My heart twists. I would give up every bite of my dinner to take the sadness away. But it’s too late. The food lodges in my stomach, heavy and dense.

“I don’t want to leave,” she says. “I want to stay here, with you and Mom.”

I gather her in my arms. Her knees poke into my ribs, and her head doesn’t quite fit under my chin. Princess tumbles to the floor. “You’re not going anywhere. I promise.”

“But Mom said—”

“She’s scared. People say all kinds of things when they’re scared.”

She sticks a knuckle into her mouth and gnaws. We weaned her from the thumb-sucking years ago, but old habits die hard. “You don’t get scared.”

If she only knew. I’m scared of everything. Heights. Small, enclosed places. I’m scared no one will ever love me the way my father loved my mother. I’m scared tomorrow won’t give me the answers I’ve been waiting for.

“That’s not true,” I say out loud. “I’m scared of one thing.”

“What?”

“The tickle monster!” I attack. She shrieks and squirms away, her head flinging out. I wince as her face almost smacks the metal headboard. But this is what I want. A laugh that jerks her entire body. Screams that come from the pit of her belly.

After a full twenty seconds, I stop. Jessa flops across her pillow, her arms dangling over the edge. If only I could wipe out the topic so easily.

“What do they want me for?” she says, when her breathing slows. “I’m only six.”

I sigh. Should’ve tickled her longer. “I’m not sure. The scientists think psychic abilities are the cutting edge of technology. They want to study them so they can learn.”

She sits up and swings her legs over the bed. “Learn what?”

“Learn more, I guess.”

I look at her scrawny legs, the knees scabbed over from falling off her hovercraft. She’s right. This is ridiculous. Jessa’s talent is a parlor trick, nothing more. She can see a couple of minutes into the future, but she’s never been able to tell me anything really important—how I’ll do on a big test, say, or when I’ll get my first kiss.

Jessa’s frown relaxes as she snuggles into her pillow. “Well, tell them, okay? Tell them I don’t know anything, and then they’ll leave us alone.”

“Sure thing, Jessa.”

She closes her eyes, and a few minutes later I hear her slow, even breathing. Standing up, I’m about to slip out when she calls, “Callie?”

I turn around. “Yes?”

“Can you stay with me? Not until I fall asleep. Can you stay with me all night long?”

It’s the eve of my seventeenth birthday. I need to call Marisa, speculate with her one last time what my memory will be—if I’ll see myself as a Manual Chef or have a different profession altogether.

It’s been known to happen. Look at Rita Richards, in the class ahead of me. Never touched a keyboard in her