“You learn to find your happiness, kid,” she says. “How do you go on living like normal when you know that something bad’s going to happen?” “How do you do it?” I ask after a minute. I’m relieved she’s so laid-back about it. But visions are personal, for you and you alone, in my opinion.” “You can if you want, if it would help you get things off your chest. “Should I tell you anyway?”īilly shakes her head. So far there hasn’t been much to go on but darkness, terror, an oddly slanted floor. I’ve been having this vision all summer, since Italy with Angela. “Do you want to talk about it?” she asks. I recognize the post-vision face.” She takes me by the shoulders and sits down with me at the edge of my bed. Plus I’ve been hanging around people who have visions for most of my life. “What’s the matter, kid?” she asks when I don’t answer. I blink at Billy, who leans against the door frame of my bedroom and offers up an understanding smile. The light streaming through the window hurts my eyes.

My breath is still frozen in my lungs my muscles tense, as if they are preparing me to run. I jolt back to myself in the middle of my bedroom, a pile of old magazines strewn around my feet, which I must have dropped when the vision hit. The darkness closes in, encasing me, and for a moment I fight the urge to call glory so hard that my fingernails break the surface of my palms. Instead I draw my hands into fists to stop the trembling. I could call the safety of glory, I think, but then they would find me. My nose is running, but I don’t try to wipe at it. I don’t know what this vision is about yet, where I am or what I’m supposed to be doing or who I’m hiding from. There are voices, faint voices, from somewhere above. I take a step back, and my leg strikes something hard. Tentatively I feel with my feet along the floor, which is oddly slanted, as if the room is being tilted downward.

I squint into the inky nothingness, straining to see something, anything, but my eyes don’t adjust. The first thing I’m aware of is the dark.

Boundless cynthia hand