It didn’t take long for the girls to leave the heart of town, move past the docks and start down a single lane gravel road that sloped toward the sea. Jane and Samantha wove through a minefield of mud puddles as Jane reassured Samantha that her head was fine. Several times. Though she supposed this new worry was better than Samantha looking at her and wanting to barf.
Jane’s cell phone buzzed and she retrieved it from her purse with her heart in her throat.
Samantha stopped walking. “What is it?”
Jane let go of the breath she was holding. It was only her job. “It’s Mackelroy’s telling me I don’t need to come in today. Business is slower than expected.” She tucked her phone back into her handbag. Maybe her secret admirer had finally given up. And in that instant she decided that she was far more relieved than disappointed.
“Apparently, the clearing sky is just a cruel trick and more bad weather is coming,” Jane said.
Samantha made a face at the clouds as though they had personally wronged her. “That blows.” She winked. “Pun intended.”
Jane laughed and tried not to look thrilled. She relished the idea of having some time to get to know this pretty but puzzling girl. “It does for Mr. Mackelroy.”
Samantha nodded, looking far more serious than Jane expected. “Hey, this is going to sound weird again, I guess. But I need to ask you something.”
“Sure.” Jane studied Samantha’s face. Samantha seemed eager to ask her question but was equally afraid of the answer.
Samantha finally opened her mouth to speak and turned to Jane, only to clamp her mouth shut with a look of consternation. Head forward once again, she appeared to lose herself in thought, then repeated the process.
After a few cycles, Jane was nearly beside herself. She was actually starting to perspire and barely noticed her throbbing skull. She was milliseconds away from demanding that Samantha finish what she had started to say. But if that didn’t send the tall girl running for the hills, nothing would.
Jane was fairly certain that if mint chocolate chip ice cream didn’t end up as the culprit, her lack of patience would ultimately be her undoing. So she forced herself to relax and simply wait. But that didn’t mean she had to remain silent, right?
Jane drew in a deep fortifying breath that tasted like saltwater and bruised grass and seemed fresher by virtue of their proximity to the rolling surf. “You know, I was hoping we’d run into each other today.”
Samantha brightened. “Really? I—” She suddenly narrowed her eyes at Jane’s smug look. “Very funny.”
Jane grinned. “Pun intended right back.”
Samantha pulled off her glasses and rubbed her eyes. She didn’t put them back on.
“I like them. The glasses, I mean.” That was an understatement. Jane’s hands suddenly felt clammy and her ears hot.
The corner of Samantha’s mouth quirked and her eyes sparkled. “Thanks. They’re actually givin’ me a little bit of a headache, but nothing like what you’ve probably got. I don’t wear them often, but the prescription is still newer than the ones for my contacts.”
“I could hold them in my purse for you. So you don’t have to carry them.”
“Sure. Thanks.” Samantha handed them over, then pointed straight ahead and down the road they were traveling. “Only a few more minutes straight up ahead.”
Jane took in the windswept expanse of land around them. The scruffy pitch pine trees that grew along the coast had given way to swaying American beachgrass as the houses grew farther and farther apart and civilization melted away altogether.
Waves crashed in the distance.
“I don’t know how it’s possible, Samantha, I’ve lived here my entire life, but I don’t think I’ve been down this way before.” Craggy rock formations jutted up from the sand, and the wind picked up velocity as they traversed the final bend.
In the distance, the last house before the world dropped away, and their apparent destination, was a modest, wind-worn Cape Cod cottage that stood alone on a bluff that overlooked the ocean and was capped by unfinished cedar shingles. The road they were on actually ended just a few feet from its front door. It was a little lonely-looking, and the harsh landscape made it appear sparse. But also humble and quaint. Not far from the house was a relatively small, battered white lighthouse that was clearly no longer in use but still stood silent sentry.
Jane loved it all.
In today’s market, any home so near the ocean, even something unpretentious and hours from Boston, was still shockingly expensive. She suspected that Samantha’s family had owned the cottage for a long time.
Samantha watched her take in her surroundings. “We’re still in Locklow. I promise. Though I can understand why you haven’t been down here before. There’s not much to see.”
Jane couldn’t have disagreed more. Compared to the groomed lawns that all looked the same, historical plaques full of dull facts and picture-perfect hedges on her street, this was a feast for the senses.
“The beach here is too rugged to do much of anything, though there’s good fishin’ close by. We’re the last house until you hit Ireland.” She shot Jane a worried look, as though she’d just remembered why they were heading to her house. “How’s your head?”
“You must want to be a doctor someday. A sweet but relentless one.” Jane’s pleasant tone softened the dig.
Samantha seemed to get the hint. “Okay, I get it. But enjoy the ‘sweet’ now. Your opinion might change to ‘sour’ once you know me better.”
Jane shrugged easily, pleased that Samantha assumed they were on a path to becoming friends. “Sour is good too. Just in smaller doses.”
They shared bashful grins.
Then Samantha jerked a thumb at her own chest and shook her head in disbelief. “Me, a doctor?” She drifted a little closer to Jane as they walked, their feet crunching loudly on the rocks with every step. “Never gonna happen.”
“Okay, doctor is out. How about an architect? Or engineer? Or archeologist?”
Samantha gazed at Jane as though she’d lost her mind. “You know how much school those sort of jobs take?”
Jane figured the question was mostly rhetorical but answered anyway. “Yes.” She wouldn’t start applying to different universities until next year, but she’d been researching them since she was a freshman. “Four to eight years, depending on which job, plus additional training depending on what you’d want to do and if you wanted an advanced degree.”
The set of Samantha’s shoulders telegraphed her discomfort. She thrust Jane’s umbrella out in front of her like a sword and carelessly swiped at a nonexistent opponent, a small grimace playing at her lips. “None of that will happen.”
Jane bristled at the thought that Samantha didn’t seem to think she could be any of those things. “Why shouldn’t you have a job like the ones I mentioned? You’re good at school. You’ve been listed on every honor roll for years. So what if it takes a while?”
“And you know this how?”
“I-I…It’s published in the newspaper.”
Samantha picked up her pace, her back a little straighter. “Lack of intelligence is not the only thing that keeps people from going to a billion years of college, Jane.”
Then it hit her. She’d forgotten completely about the cost. “I didn’t mean—Ugh!”
Jane was so focused on Samantha that she nearly plowed right into a large puddle. Just as her toes hit the water she tried to leap over it, cringing as she anticipated plopping down in the water somewhere just beyond the middle.
Samantha instinctively reached out and grasped Jane’s hand. She surged forward herself alongside the puddle and, with a firm tug, helped Jane across. “Close one!”
Jane wobbled for a moment but righted without so much as a splash. She brushed her hair out of her face and melted a bit under Samantha’s pleased, attentive stare. “Thanks.”
“No problem.” Samantha’s smile was blinding. “Besides, your parents would probably sue if you got hurt on the Christos property.” A few more paces and they’d be at the door.
Jane wasn’t a hundred percent sure that Samantha was joking. And she wasn’t sure she was wrong, at least when it came to her father. “Listen, about college, I didn’t mean to insult you. I’m sorry.”
“I’m not insulted. I’m tied to Locklow and that’s not such a horrible thing. This is home.”
“I’d be shocked if you didn’t get scholarships and—”
“It’s not that,” Samantha admitted quietly. “If I leave, who will take care of my grandparents? Maybe not today, but soon they’ll be too old to be on their own. They don’t have anyone else.”
Jane frowned. “Don’t you have a brother? He could help, right?”
“They need someone here, not just an occasional check in the mail. Though those are helpful too.”
Jane’s phone buzzed again. And she promptly ignored it.
Samantha poked at Jane’s purse with her finger. “Aren’t you going to get it?”
Jane shook her head. She wanted her focus right where it was at the moment. “No.”
“But what if it’s important? What if it’s work? Patrick Mackelroy is a good guy. He might need you. If your head is okay, that is.”
Jane sighed. One second Samantha was sword fighting with the wind, and the next she was surprisingly mature. She had no idea what to make of her. “Okay. One sec.” Barely paying attention, she quickly tapped the message icon on her phone. If this was Chloe bugging her for another loan after spending all her allowance again, she’d kill her.
Did I surprise you this morning?
Caught off guard, Jane shivered. The answer was yes.
Samantha gravitated a little closer to Jane. She attempted to look at the phone, but Jane unceremoniously dumped it in her purse. “What’s up?”
“Nothing. Just a stupid text,” Jane said weakly.
Samantha stared at Jane for a few long seconds before appearing to gather her courage. She let out a shaky breath. “You were at the Wayfarer Café this morning, right?”
Jane nodded, her mind reeling at the manic change of subjects. “I was. Were you there too? I didn’t see you.”
“Yeah. But you were already gone by the time I got there. Amy, the barista, told me.”
Jane did a mental dance. Samantha had been hoping to run into her too.
Samantha sucked her lips into her mouth and began to rhythmically clench and unclench her hands. She looked skyward for a moment and screwed her eyes shut. “Did someone leave you a note at your table? It was white paper…I mean, of course it was paper. You weren’t at the table. Then the note was. And it was folded in half. The note.
Jane blinked. If the note at the café was from Samantha, then who had just sent her a text? She clearly wasn’t the sender. “You left me the note?”
“Jesus.”
“The note was from Jesus? He has surprisingly poor penmanship.”
Samantha squatted and dropped her head between her knees as though she was trying to keep from passing out. The umbrella fell from her limp hand and she braced herself by planting her tented fingers in the rocks. “It wasn’t from me.” Unable to keep from toppling forward, she went down on one knee. The wet ground immediately soaked her jeans.
The stance reminded Jane of a football player who’d just scored a touchdown. Except that the football players didn’t look ready to faint.
“It can’t be. It can’t be,” Samantha chanted brokenly.
“What’s wrong?” Without pausing to decide that she shouldn’t, Jane reached out and rubbed the area between Samantha’s shoulder blades worriedly, her own anxiety rising with every breath. Samantha’s back felt damp and unnaturally hot as though her skin was on fire. “You don’t have to get so upset. I’m not mad about it or anything. You could have just told me about the note and texts.”
Samantha straightened abruptly. “There are texts too?”
“I’ve been getting them for a week.”
“You have to know, Jane, it wasn’t just today.” Samantha scrubbed her face in horror as though she wanted to wipe away whatever it was she was thinking. “He or she has been watchin’ you for a while.”
Jane’s blood turned to ice. “Watching me?” She glanced around but they were alone. “Who is watching me? What’s going on?”
“Dammit. Dammit! My dreams. This isn’t possible but it really happened. I think it’s been happening for a long time.”
“You’re scaring me.”
“Ernie was at the café? And Kyle and his friends. And Aiden?”
“They were there,” Jane confirmed, her eyes glued to Samantha’s face. She could see panic brewing just below the surface.
Samantha muttered in a detached, slightly disoriented voice, “It can’t be real.”
Jane was more confused than ever. “The note was real. I saw it. I held it.”
Samantha suddenly snapped back to the moment like a yo-yo at the end of its string. “I’m not talking about the note!” With an apologetic look, she lowered her volume, though the words were just as intense. “I’m sorry.” Samantha tore her gaze away and started for her front door.
Jane moved directly in Samantha’s path. “That’s it. What is going on? Why are you so upset? The texts are nothing. Yes, they’re starting to bug me. But someone is just messing with me. It’s harmless.”
“No, it isn’t.”
“It is. I—” Jane was cut off when Samantha abruptly grabbed her by the wrist and led her around the cottage instead of going inside. “Hey!” She dug her heels in but was no match for Samantha’s longer, powerful strides.
“You need to sit down.” Samantha quickly guided them up a short set of creaky steps that led to a faded wooden deck with a spectacular ocean view.
“I do not!”
“Well, I do.” Samantha guided Jane to a weather-ravaged chair and pushed her into the seat by the shoulders. Her butt landed with a loud thump. “That sick feeling I had when we spoke last week, it’s back with a vengeance. So unless you want me to barf on your shoes…?”
If someone had told Jane earlier in the day that there was even the remotest chance that Samantha’s hands would be all over her, she might have started to drool. This, however, was not what she had in mind.
“Samantha, you’d better have a really good explanation.” Her words were clipped. “Because I don’t like being dragged around like a naughty pet.”
“I’m not crazy. I promise.”
Jane merely lifted an eyebrow and waited.
“Just please. Give me a chance to explain?”
Jane knew in her heart that she’d give her more than one. “Okay.”
Samantha pulled her hair out of her ponytail holder to run a shaky hand through it. Instead of sitting, she began to pace. “I’ve had trouble sleeping all my life.”
She described a toddler crying on a beach with such passion and sincerity it took Jane’s breath away.
She explained how her dreams, even the ones she couldn’t remember, had barbs that embedded themselves in her waking hours and filled her with residual emotions that she didn’t understand. How certain dreams stole her sleep and sometimes left her exhausted, but how she could tell they were building up to something big.
Jane sat and listened to it all, as still as a stone. Enthralled.
* * *
Vulnerable hazel eyes filled with tears that somehow managed not to fall. This was going to be the bad part. Every ounce of Samantha screamed to keep this part to herself, but she couldn’t. “I know I sound insane. Maybe I am. But no…I don’t think…” She shook her head to restart herself. “Anyway, then last night I dreamed about you. And everything changed. I figured out what my dreams were buildin’ up to. It was today.”
“What about today?” Jane’s voice was a respectful whisper.
Squawking gulls swooped down over the cottage and over the bluff toward the water. Their cries blended with Samantha’s words.
“I dreamt about Wayfarer Café. About how it looked, and smelled, and felt against my skin. You were there this morning, in my dream. You went to get coffee and breakfast. And all that actually happened in real life, right?”
“Yes.”
“I dreamt of an entire group of people who also were in the café this morning with you. They were there in real life too. I checked.”
“Okay,” Jane said slowly, clearly not seeing where this was headed.
“There were some people in the dream that were just blobs and I couldn’t make out their faces. But some were crystal clear. I dreamt that Kyle and his friends came in and shook off the rain. After they spoke to you, they started messin’ around up at the counter, socking each other and wrestling as they ordered their frappes.”
Jane’s jaw sagged.
Samantha dragged over her chair and plopped it down directly in front of the redhead. She sat so close that their knees almost touched and she could feel the heat from Jane’s skin. How could she make Jane believe what she couldn’t accept herself? Even though she knew in her bones that it was true. “I dreamt that you stepped away from your booth.” Samantha swallowed dryly. “While you were gone, someone left you a note. On your table.”
Jane’s eyebrows creased. “That’s not possible. You couldn’t have gotten all that from a dream. You’d have to have been there yourself.”
“I know,” Samantha agreed quickly. “But it happened anyway. And it’s happened before. I mean, over small stuff, yeah, and not every time I dream, but there have been other dreams that have actually come true. I didn’t realize it until today. But they came flooding back.”
“But that happens to everyone.”
“Not like this.”
“It’s a coincidence.” Jane hesitated. “A big one, yes, but that has to be it.”
“It’s not.”
“It has to be.”
Samantha shook her head, willing Jane to understand. “You don’t get it. This isn’t like dreamin’ they’ll serve tacos in school for lunch the next day and then they actually do. Ta da!” She gestured wildly. “I didn’t just dream what happened, I experienced it.”
The words felt like they were being torn from her chest, but it was also freeing, like they had to come out, and she was only allowing the inevitable. This had to be why she’d had a sick feeling when she’d seen Jane. Her body was forcing her to tell Jane about the dreams and was pissed off when she kept it inside. “I lived every single sensation. I knew what was going to happen.”
“I don’t…” Jane stopped and shook her head. “I don’t get it.”
Samantha leaned forward, eager for Jane to understand. “It’s like when you watch a movie that you’ve already seen bunches of times. It’s so easy to get so wrapped up in what you’re seein’ on the screen that you forget you already know the story. Even if you don’t exactly remember all the bits and pieces.”
“So—and I can’t believe I’m even asking you this—you’re saying that you dream things before they happen in real life?” Jane tucked a blowing strand of hair behind her ear. “For real?”
“Exactly.”
“That’s not…” Jane’s gentle, stunned words drifted away on the breeze. “That can’t happen. Nobody knows the future.” Disillusioned eyes met Samantha’s and nearly burned a hole straight through her. “You can’t expect me to believe that gypsy fortune teller stuff.” As she leaned back, and farther away from Samantha, her chair creaked loudly. “Why are you doing this?”
The fine hairs on the back of Samantha’s neck stood at attention. Knowing or not, Jane had just stirred up a wellspring of hurt and shame. Several times over the years gypsies had settled in or near Locklow, and they’d always, and very publically, clashed with the law, then eventually moved on. It was a familiar schoolyard taunt. Gypsy scum.
She swallowed the nearly overwhelming impulse to lash out that was right there on the tip of her tongue, begging to happen. “We aren’t gypsies,” she ground out, teeth bared in a snarl.
“Samantha, you know that’s not what I meant. I went to your grandparents’s shop today for a fun psychic reading. I know that stuff isn’t real and the text messages and note were just an excuse to go. I thought that maybe I would see…” Her cheeks went scarlet and she rolled her eyes and glanced away.
Samantha’s stomach clenched so tightly it hurt. “I’m tellin’ the truth.”
Jane’s emotions started to spill out of her like a bucket of sand tipped over by the surf, its contents ruthlessly washed away with the tide. “Why are you doing this?”
“I’m trying to help you!”
“I’m not an imbecile, and you’re too smart not to believe in science.” She shook her head, looking as though she’d rather be anywhere but here. “What you’re saying is impossible. There are no human Magic 8 balls. You can’t dream the future, or read tealeaves, or coffee grounds, or whatever. You can’t read my mind.”
“Oh, at this moment, I’m pretty sure I can,” Samantha shot back, her unexpected tears making Jane go all blurry. She’d had no time to process this herself and trying to make Jane understand was turning into a massive disaster. “But that’s not what I’m sayin’.”
Anger bubbled up inside Samantha. “Do you think I want to tell you this stuff? Do you think I want it to be true? I don’t want to be able to do this. I don’t want to know what’s going to happen before it does! That makes me responsible.”
Jane scoffed. “You’re being ridiculous. You’re not responsible for me.”
“Too late. And stop looking at me like that.” Samantha groaned loudly. “Like you’re disappointed. Like I’m batshit crazy.”
Jane didn’t deny it as she wrapped her arms around herself and looked away.
Samantha put her hands on Jane’s knees, hoping any kind of physical connection would ground them both and keep them from simply spinning away into the atmosphere. She could also tell that Jane only barely allowed it.
“In my dream, I saw it. Someone is watching you. They want to touch you. They must have been watchin’ you for a while. That’s who left you the note, and I guess the texts too. This is what my dreams have been building up to. This is why I can’t look at you without feeling sick. My mind was forcing me to tell you. Nothing was going to be all right until I told you. Nothing is going to be all right until you’re safe.”
Jane looked as confused as Samantha felt. “Your dreams told you to tell me that I’m not safe? What if they told you to rob a bank? Would you believe them and do it?”
It was all Samantha could do not to grab Jane by the biceps and shake her. “Why are you askin’ stupid questions? Aren’t you listening to me?” Her entire body hummed with the need to act and not just talk. “You do not have a nice Hallmark Channel secret admirer who wants to take you to the Dairy Queen for a sundae and get to know you. This person wants to own you, Jane. I could feel it.”
Jane’s eyes were the size of saucers as she recoiled. “You’re—”
“I am not crazy!” Samantha roared. She’d lost control completely, shocking even herself. But her own frantic protest made her wonder all the more whether it was true. Had she lost her mind and just didn’t know?
For a second, the only sounds that could be heard on the porch were two sets of harsh breathing. Their eyes dueled, and Samantha finally looked away.
As Samantha began to mentally retreat, Jane stood so quickly that she lost her balance and had to grab the deck railing for support.
“Your head…I’m sorry…the ice.” Samantha reached out to help but Jane skittered away like a wounded animal, putting several feet between them that felt miles farther.
“Who is it then, Samantha? Who is watching me? You said you could see what happened in the café in your dream. So where’s the big reveal? Describe the person who is supposedly out to get me.”
“I…” Samantha’s voice trailed off with frustration, and she ducked her head and pressed the heels of her hands to her eyes. She tried to force more of the dream to the forefront of her mind but couldn’t. “I-I can’t.”
“Male or female?”
“I don’t know. I’ve tried but I don’t see a face.”
“Old or young?”
“I don’t know.”
“Fat or thin? Tall or short? Alien or human?”
Samantha’s anger began to give way to resignation and her voice cracked. “Jane, please. It’s not like some magic power that I can control. Things are fuzzy. It’s not perfect. It only just happened.”
“No? How did this person sound then? Describe it. Or his cologne or something.”
“I don’t know!”
It was hard to tell which of them was more upset. Samantha could see that what she was saying was no match for common sense and logic.
“What did the note say?”
“I—”
“But you said you saw the note.” Jane was all but pleading to be convinced.
“I did.”
“So what was written on the paper?”
“I don’t know.” Samantha could see that somehow her last words were the straw that broke the camel’s back, and Jane’s disbelief ratcheted up to anger.
She marched forward and pointed directly at Samantha’s chest, her finger barely skimming the damp T-shirt.
“I don’t think you’re crazy at all. I think you’re part of some joke. And you and whatever other jerks are in on this are having fun making fun of me. And the texts and note…are all part of it.” Everything about Jane telegraphed her hurt.
Samantha winced.
Fat tears bloomed in Jane’s eyes and hung there, ready to fall. “So was pretending to want to get to know me part of the master plan too? So you could see my reactions up close and report back to your pals?”
Samantha’s stomach dropped to her knees. “I would never. Not ever, Jane. I do want to know you. Please believe me.”
Jane’s chin quivered, but she squared her shoulders. “I don’t believe in Big Foot. Or ghosts. Or vampires. And I don’t believe you. Don’t talk to me or contact me again, Samantha.”
No.
Jane rushed past Samantha and ran down the stairs.
Samantha didn’t go after her, unable to wrap her head around what had just happened. Instead, she darted to the far side of the deck, leaned over the railing and promptly threw up. When she was finished heaving, she wiped her mouth with the back of her hand. She stayed at the railing so long she lost track of time and let the wind lash against her wet cheeks.
She gazed down at the ocean and spoke to it, as she had many times over the years. “That went well.”
Her emotions were scattered as wildly as the stars and just as far-reaching.
Everything with Jane was magnified all out of proportion, and she didn’t know how to stop it or what it meant. Neither of them should be this angry or hurt, but she felt blistered to her toes.
It began to sprinkle, and she was instantly reminded of how wet and uncomfortable she was, especially her soaked sneakers. With a frustrated bellow, she tore off her shoes and threw them against the side of the house as hard as she could, surprised when they harmlessly bounced back at her instead of splintering the wood.
She might have ruined their fledgling friendship, but that didn’t matter. Something about her and Jane was intertwined, whether they wanted it to be or not.