“MAYBE WE SHOULD text Grandmother Lockwood again,” I said. “She might text us back if we tell her what I saw in my last vision.”
My twin sister, Cassie, shot a cautious look toward the kitchen. Our mother was in there puttering around with something on the stove, humming under her breath. “We can talk about it later,” Cass murmured, miming a lip-zip.
I sighed and leaned back on the sofa. It was Monday afternoon. Cass and I had come home from school about half an hour earlier, and Mom was supposed to leave for work right after dinner. It made sense to wait.
Cassie shot another look toward Mom, who was paying no attention to us. Then she mimed unzipping her lips.
“Anyway, we shouldn’t be in such a hurry for Granny L to come back,” she said quietly, grabbing the remote and turning up the volume on the goofy celebrity gossip show she was watching. “She might convince Mom not to let us go on the class trip.”
I picked at my cuticles, thinking about that. The sixth-grade class trip to San Antonio was just three days away. It would be the first time Cassie and I had been back to our old hometown since Mom had landed a job on the police force in tiny Aura, Texas.
But a lot had happened in that couple of months. For one thing, Cassie and I had actually become friends again. Everyone said we looked exactly alike, from our big brown eyes to our skinny legs. But the thing was, we were very different in all kinds of other ways. That had made us drift apart for a while.
Then, shortly after the move, we’d discovered something weird. As in, really weird. We were both having crazy visions!
It happened when we touched someone. Oh, not every time—thank goodness for that! But we never knew when it might happen. All we had to do was brush up against someone, and we might suddenly find ourselves right smack in the middle of a vision about that person.
A vision of the future.
I know that sounds totally wackadoodle. But it was true! Grandmother Lockwood had confirmed it. She was our dad’s mom, and we hadn’t known she existed until she sent us a package with some family heirlooms in it for our twelfth birthday—and then showed up on our doorstep herself! She’d explained that Cass and I had inherited something called the Sight. It ran in the Lockwood family—our dad had had it, too.
Speaking of our dad, Mom had always told us he’d died when we were too young to remember. We’d had no reason to doubt that story until recently. Then I’d had another vision. It had showed our grandmother standing on a hilly street, embracing a man who looked an awful lot like the one and only picture we’d ever seen of our dad.
Needless to say, I really, really wanted to talk to Grandmother Lockwood about that vision. But she’d left town without telling us where she was going or when she’d be back. The only thing she had told us was not to go on the class trip. She didn’t say why—just that it could be dangerous. Scary, right?
Not that I was thinking much about the trip right then. I stared at the TV, where some boy band was dancing around.
“I just wish . . . ,” I began.
The shrill ring of the house phone interrupted me. Yes, Mom is still old-fashioned enough to have a landline. I leaned over and grabbed the cordless handset from the coffee table.
“Hello, Waters residence, Caitlyn speaking,” I said.
“Cait?” The voice on the other end of the line sounded muffled but familiar. “Is your mother there?”
“Aunt Cheryl?” For a second I wasn’t sure it was Mom’s sister. She sounded weird—sort of tense. “Hi, funny you should call right now,” I said. “Cass and I were just talking about San Antonio—you know, our class trip is—”
“Cait, I really need to talk to Deidre,” Aunt Cheryl cut me off. “Is she there?”
“Um, sure, hang on.” I raised my eyebrows at Cassie as I lowered the phone. “Hey Mom, Aunt Cheryl’s on the phone!”
“Thanks.” Mom bustled out of the kitchen and took the phone. “Cheryl? I don’t have much time to talk, I have to . . .”
Her voice trailed off as she listened to whatever her sister was saying. Then she abruptly turned away and hurried toward her bedroom. A second later we heard the door click shut.
“That was weird.” I stared toward the hallway leading to the bedrooms. “Aunt Cheryl sounded kind of—”
“Quiet!” Cassie ordered, suddenly leaning forward. She cranked up the volume on the TV another few notches.
I glanced at the picture. A reporter was talking, looking excited. Behind her was a headshot of a pretty young Asian woman with blue streaks in her hair.
“Is that Sakiko Star?” I asked.
Cassie shushed me again. I took that as a yes. Sakiko was Cassie’s favorite singer these days. I liked her music just fine, but I wasn’t that interested in celebrity gossip.
The story was about some escalating feud between Sakiko and her eccentric billionaire neighbor. The reporter looked super excited as she talked about how the guy was dumping his trash in the Dumpster that Sakiko had rented for a home renovation project.
“. . . and while Mr. Jeffers denies everything,” the reporter went on breathlessly, “the definite clues are parrot poop and a lot of empty sardine cans.”
“Sardine cans?” I echoed with a laugh. “Really, that’s a clue?”
“Uh-huh.” Cassie’s eyes were locked on the TV screen. “Apparently the neighbor guy always smells like fish.”
I snorted. Then I blinked as a picture of two neighboring mansions popped up on the screen. One of them looked a bit shabby—a few windows were boarded up, and the yard and shrubs were all overgrown.
But I was focused on the other house. “Wait, why does that place look familiar?” I said slowly, trying to figure it out.
Cassie shrugged. “Duh. That’s Sakiko’s place. You’ve probably seen it on TV.”
“Oh.” The picture cut away to a video of Sakiko singing onstage. I still had a nagging little feeling that the house was familiar somehow. But I figured my sister was probably right—she was always watching stuff about Sakiko online and on TV. I’d probably seen the star’s house a dozen times without really taking it in, and now it was lodged in my brain along with a zillion other useless bits of trivia.
Losing interest, I headed toward the bathroom. It was down the narrow hall that led off the living room to the rest of the house. Mom’s bedroom came first, and as I passed, I could hear her on the phone even through the closed door. She sounded kind of upset.
That was even weirder than Aunt Cheryl’s behavior on the phone. Deidre Waters wasn’t the type of person who got upset by much. Otherwise, she wouldn’t have survived her many years in the military, let alone the police academy. Sure, she yelled at Cassie and me sometimes, especially when Cass missed curfew or I forgot to put my dirty clothes in the hamper. But getting angry or annoyed or exasperated wasn’t the same as getting upset.
I paused by the door, torn between guilt and curiosity. Aunt Cheryl called all the time—she and Mom were close. But today had seemed different. It was obvious she hadn’t just called to chat and catch up, or she would have talked to me for a while before asking for Mom. And Mom wouldn’t have locked herself in her room to talk to her.
So what was going on?
I couldn’t resist leaning a little closer. The doors in our house were thin, but Mom’s voice was pretty muffled. Still, I could hear a few words here and there—something about a key chain, and then “It can’t be” and “He’s dead, Cheryl. I made my peace with that years ago.”
I gulped, flashing back again to that vision. What if it was true? What if my dad really was still alive? But how could Aunt Cheryl possibly know that, if Mom and Grandmother Lockwood had no idea?
Suddenly I realized that Mom’s voice had stopped. I jumped away from the bedroom door and reached for the bathroom knob. A split second later, Mom burst out of her room.
She spotted me standing there. I guessed maybe I looked guilty, because her eyes narrowed.
“Um, hi,” I said as cheerfully as I could manage. “How’s Aunt Cheryl?”
“Fine.” Mom’s voice was almost a growl. She strode past me into the bathroom. The door slammed shut behind her, and the lock clicked.