Chapter 1

I can’t begin to convey my horror — how I felt when the colors of Matt’s sweetly familiar face began to dim and fade before my eyes — without first taking my story back in time. What happened between us that night came only at the tail end of a semi-dreadful, semi-exhilarating summer that included a soul-crushing breakup, some great new friendships, and my near-drowning followed by international fame. But to grasp the full depth of my terror in that moment, you have to go back even further.

The first time I got The Warning, I was only six years old. My brother Peter and I had been allowed into the hospital to see our grandfather because the doctors were all convinced Grandpa wouldn’t survive the night. All I remember about Grandpa from that occasion was that he was lying in bed asleep, but I remember my grandmother vividly. She was wearing those fake jeans with a high elastic waistband and a bright pink shirt that made her skin look yellow. She was sitting in the chair by his window with her hands covering her face, and she was crying.

Everyone else was focusing on my grandfather, trying to give my grandmother some privacy, no doubt. But I’d never seen her cry before, and I couldn’t stop staring. Then right before my eyes, she changed colors. One second she was pink and blue and gray and yellowish, and the next she was all washed out, like an old tin-type photograph. And then the paler tones flashed dark, like a picture turning into its negative. It all happened in a second or two, and then she looked normal again.

At first, I thought something was wrong with my eyes. So I rubbed at them. But when it happened again a couple minutes later, I got upset. I started crying and pointing and asking everyone what was wrong with Grandma. Of course, no one saw what I saw, and I couldn’t explain it, and my tears were easy enough to explain away without anyone worrying about what I meant by “funny colors.” So no one did.

I didn’t either, honestly, once we left the hospital. But the next morning we received news that shocked everyone. My grandmother had suffered a massive coronary that night, sitting up in her chair. Even though she was right there in the hospital when it happened, they couldn’t save her. My grandfather had been only minimally aware of what was happening at the time. But he actually recovered and lived for seven more years.

I realize that one anecdote like that, as told by a six-year-old, wouldn’t convince anyone of anything. It didn’t convince me of anything either. As much as the whole episode upset me as a child, I didn’t understand it and I didn’t want to think about it. Why should I, when it only made me sad? But two years later, when I was in the third grade, I got The Warning again.

I was over at my friend Amy’s house. We were playing outside in her driveway and her dad was mowing the lawn. I don’t remember what he was wearing exactly, but he had dark hair and a beard. He was walking along, pushing the mower, and then his hair faded out to what I remember as an orangey color. Now I would describe it as sepia tones. I stood up and yelled at Amy that her dad’s hair had turned orange, and she thought I’d lost my mind. He never flashed light and dark like my grandmother had, but the colors of his face and clothing kept changing, for a few seconds each time. Then he’d go back to normal again.

I remembered what had happened to my grandmother, and like an idiot, I told Amy all about it. Lucky for me, she wasn’t the sensitive type. She laughed in my face and told me that her dad was healthy as a horse and that I was a crazy liar, and we went back to drawing unicorns and rainbows with sidewalk chalk. I didn’t see her dad again after that, but several weeks afterwards he collapsed in the middle of a marathon and died in the hospital the next day.

I was pretty shaken up by that news, and I remember sitting both my parents down and explaining to them that — clearly — their second-born child had been given the gift of prophesy. I was underwhelmed when Steven and Kate Chambliss (who for the record are not and never have been in the slightest bit religious) responded with a tolerant smile, a pat on the head, and the suggestion of an earlier bedtime.

Amy herself seemed not to remember that I’d ever said anything about her dad. And believe it or not, I was smart enough not to remind her.

The idea that I might be able to predict when people were about to die both frightened and secretly excited me, because at that age I could fantasize about being a superhero without the negative consequences of such knowledge (like, say, the agony of feeling helpless) ever occurring to me. Nor did they anytime soon, because for about four years after that, nothing else happened. I knew people who died, but there was no Warning. Since my thinking was pretty black and white at that point, I found myself confused. Either I could predict when anyone and everyone in the world was going to die, or I couldn’t. So when years passed with nothing else happening, I decided that I couldn’t. I must have been imagining things.

Then one day in the middle of seventh grade, I was sitting in my fourth period math class staring at Mr. Levin’s tie. Mr. Levin had exactly three ties, which he wore in rotation. This was the blue one with the gray fleur-de-lis pattern and the red stain at the bottom. (Legend had it that the stain was blood from his murdered mother, but most people agreed it was either cherry pie or General Tso’s.) As I sat there musing over whether the man had ever even tried to get the stain out, the red color turned dark and the blue and gray tones paled.

I remember not being able to draw a breath. I felt like my lungs were frozen as I sat there watching first the tie, then his shirt, drain of all normal color. In the next instant his always-ruddy face went sepia as well and his thin gray hair became tinged with a sickly orange. The colors swirled and morphed and changed, and while a nauseating feeling of dread crept over me, he continued to drone on about one-step equations like nothing was wrong.

But my world was collapsing in on me. I hadn’t been imagining things. It was real!

I got sick to my stomach and bolted for the restroom. I was hanging over a toilet bowl when another girl came in saying that Mr. Levin had sent her to check on me. I insisted I felt better, but I wouldn’t go back to class with her. I stayed in the bathroom until the bell rang and then walked through the rest of my day like a zombie. How was it possible I’d seen nothing all these years, only to have it happen again with somebody like Mr. Levin?

You have to understand, Mr. Levin was not your everyday, ordinary teacher. He wasn’t a bad teacher, as math instructors go, but he wasn’t a very likeable person. He didn’t talk much, always seemed to be in a bad mood, had no detectable sense of humor, and showed no interest in getting to know anybody he worked with on a personal basis — either his students or the other teachers. Although he was somewhere in his forties or fifties he had never married and had apparently lived at home with his mother until she’d died a few years before. (His mother actually had passed away under somewhat sketchy circumstances — hence the unkind rumors about his tie.) In short, I had no real relationship with the man.

So what could I possibly do about The Warning?

I decided, again, to try to talk to my parents. I reminded them of the last conversation we’d had on the topic, and was annoyed — but not surprised — when neither of them appeared to remember it. In their defense, it was a busy time for the family. My dad was retiring from active duty and taking a civilian job in Honolulu, and we were moving in a matter of days. They were, as you might imagine, not particularly concerned with my new information.

But I couldn’t let it go. Whether what I suspected was real or not, I couldn’t live with myself if I did nothing. Mr. Levin did not change colors again in the next few days, but I had no way of knowing if that meant anything. So before my last day of class, I made a decision. I would give the man a fighting chance.

I approached his desk before class started and reminded him that it was my last day. Most teachers would strike up a conversation at that point, wish you well in your new school, maybe even tease you about your luck in getting to move from the middle of Ohio to someplace like Hawaii. Mr. Levin just looked at me like I was wasting his time. “I’ve completed the necessary paperwork,” he said.

Even that didn’t put me off. “You’ve been looking a little pale lately,” I lied in a pathetic, squeaky voice that sounded as terrified as I felt. He looked the same way he always looked. “Have you been to a doctor recently?”

It was lame, I know, but it was the only thing I could think of. If I told him the whole truth there was no way he would believe me. But I figured this approach might at least nudge him toward getting a checkup, particularly if he was having some symptoms he’d been ignoring. I still think it was a pretty good idea for a twelve-year-old.

Too bad it didn’t work. All I got from Mr. Levin was a cool glare, a reprimand for asking inappropriate questions, and an order to return to my seat. Whether he ever went to a doctor, I don’t know. I never saw him again. A month later, after we were settled in Honolulu, I heard the news from a friend back home.

Mr. Levin had committed suicide.

I never doubted The Warning after that. My parents were another matter.

Your eyes can play tricks on you, my mother kept repeating, even when I laid out all three occurrences, complete with timeline. Coincidences happen. My father’s response was even less helpful. People die every day, honey, he would say offhandedly. In his mind, that statement alone covered all the bases.

I couldn’t understand them. They didn’t understand me. But that’s the way we always rolled in my family. I can’t complain about my parents, because there are advantages to being raised by two of the most passive human beings on earth, and my brother and I have made the most of every one of them. At least we all get along.

Naturally, I felt wretched about Mr. Levin. But I didn’t feel nearly as bad as I would have if I’d been too scared to speak to him. And rationally, I knew that there probably wasn’t anything I could have said or done to change what happened. Maybe an adult could have convinced Mr. Levin to seek psychological help — and maybe not. But one fact about his death did make me stop and think.

Mr. Levin had taken his own life. Presumably that was his choice, by his own free will. So at the time I got The Warning, his future must not have been set in stone. He could have chosen another path, couldn’t he? And did that not confirm that The Warning wasn’t always a done deal? If not, was there something else I might have done that could have changed the fate of Amy’s dad? Or of my grandmother?

Those questions burned a hole in my tender adolescent guts, I can tell you. And it wasn’t a stress I needed while changing schools and trying to make all new friends in the middle of seventh grade. Back then I was on the shy side and hadn’t come to love all my sexy curves yet, so I spent a lot of time by myself, looking up stuff on premonitions and psychic warnings, trying to figure me out. Mostly I searched online, but I found some pretty funky books in the library, too.

And it was there, sprawled on the dingy carpet in the back corner of the first floor beneath where all the parapsychology books were shelved, that I met Ty.