When Addison was a child, she saw things all the other “normal” kids didn’t. Things no one ever talked about if they did. Things that made the people around her uncomfortable when she did. At age five, she’d attended a birthday for her friend, Natalie. As they ran around playing an innocent game of hide and seek in the backyard, Natalie’s hair ribbon had fallen out. Addison found it. As soon as she bent down to pick it up the yard around her shifted into a haze of dark, misty fog. When the fog lifted, Natalie was no longer running in the yard. She was swinging on the tree swing. Addison waved and called out, but Natalie ignored her, not even glancing in her direction. Natalie pumped her legs faster and glared at her brother, who stared upward, taunting her, saying she could touch the sky and she still wouldn’t ever be able to swing as high as he could. She made a face like she’d show him. She could do anything better than he could. Natalie stretched her legs all the way back and then kicked back as hard as she could, soaring upward until she was almost level with the branch the tree swing hung from. She curved her body forward to see if her brother was watching and squealed with victorious excitement when she saw that he was. She shouted something at him, not realizing that her body was tipped too far forward. She slipped, her hands desperately grappling at the rope on both sides of the swing to keep her from falling down. Her desperate attempt to save herself failed; the rope snapped and she fell several feet before smacking her head on one of the rock-like stepping stones that lined her mother’s koi pond.
Addison scrambled to the side of her friend. “Natalie, wake up!” Natalie’s eyes didn’t open. Her brother stared down at his sister in a daze, not believing what had happened. “Get your parents!” Addison screamed. “Now!” But he didn’t move. He just stood there. Addison ran inside the house. Her parents were sitting around the table playing cards together. “Hurry, come quick! Natalie fell. She won’t wake up.” But Natalie’s mom just smiled at her husband and played the eight of hearts. “You have to do something!” Addison screamed. No one moved. No one looked at her. It was as if they didn’t care.
Why aren’t they listening to me?!
A few seconds later, Natalie’s brother ran through the door. “Mom! Dad! Come quick. Natalie fell off the swing!”
Both parents shot up in unison. Natalie’s mother’s chair flipped on its side, slamming against the tile on the floor in the process. As mother, father, and son raced toward Natalie, Addison followed. Her mother screamed, her father dialed 9-1-1, and her brother leaned against the tree and cried. Then everything went black.
***
Addison woke to find several parents hovering over her.
“Are you all right, sweetheart?” one of the men said.
“I think so,” Addison replied. “What happened?”
“We’re not sure. We think you passed out. Are you feeling okay?”
“I—I think so. Where’s Natalie?”
“She’s in the house,” the man said. “It’s just about time to open presents. Why don’t you come inside and we’ll get you some water?”
“So, she’s okay?”
“Natalie?”
Addison nodded.
“Of course she is,” the man said.
“She didn’t get hurt when she fell off the swing?”
“What swing?”
Addison pointed to it and only then noticed something strange—it had been tied to the side of the tree.
“No one’s been on that swing at all today,” the man said.
“But I saw her,” Addison insisted. “She fell and hit her head on a stone by the pond.”
The parents looked at each other in disbelief. The man held out his hand and Addison took it. Nothing else was said as they walked back into the house.
“Have you been on the swing today?” Addison said as soon as she saw Natalie.
“No.”
“Good. Stay off of it,” Addison said.
Natalie wrinkled her nose and frowned. “Why?”
“Because you—well—you could get hurt. The rope it was made out of—it isn’t as strong as you think.”
Natalie tossed her head back and laughed. “You’re so silly, Addison. Wanna help me open my presents?”
Addison wanted to grab Natalie’s arm. She wanted to tell her what she saw. But she didn’t want to be laughed at again, so she fabricated a slight smile as she followed Natalie into the living room and tried her best to blend in with all of the other kids.
The adults were all huddled together in the corner talking when the girls walked in. One of the women in the group pinched the arm of the man standing next to her and simultaneously they looked over. All eyes were fixed on Addison, their grins a mere facade. Addison smiled back even though she knew what they were thinking: That friend of Natalie’s has something wrong with her. Something very wrong.
***
Four months later, Natalie wasn’t just hurt when she crashed to the ground while her stunned brother looked on. She was killed, in the exact same way Addison had seen in her vision. When Addison wasn’t at school, she stayed in her bedroom for hours at a time, curled up in a ball on her bed, weeping. No one, not even her own mother, had believed her story. Her mother just hugged her, saying everything was going to be all right and she needn’t worry. But nothing was all right, and it never would be. Natalie was dead and Addison heaped a great deal of the blame onto herself, always thinking there was something she might have done to prevent the inevitable from happening.
Over the next year, Addison received another vision, and then another. Most of the time the person was someone unfamiliar, someone she’d never seen before. While walking outside the city mall with her mother one day, she’d found a penny on the sidewalk. As soon as she smoothed a finger across its metallic surface, she saw a man peeking through a restaurant window. He was shivering, his arms covering his face, shielding him from the cold. He had no coat and no place to go. He just stood there, staring at the soft glow of the fire inside the place as if wishing he could be sitting beside it. Several weeks later, she saw his face again. This time it was on the news. The reporter said the man had been a transient, poor and homeless. The reporter also said the man was dead, his body found covered in newspaper on a bench at the local park. He’d been trying to keep warm, but it was an especially cold winter that year.
Addison thought about talking to her parents again, but she couldn’t; she was too afraid. Instead, she became withdrawn, rarely speaking and lacking the interests other children had at her age. Her parents assumed she hadn’t been able to get over Natalie’s death and decided the answer to their problems was taking Addison to see a therapist named Doctor Arnold W. Beatty III. He counseled her mother not to “enable” Addison in any way. Translation: convince Addison that what she saw at Natalie’s house wasn’t real, even though in the end, the inevitable had happened. Though he had no explanation as to why Addison said she saw what she did, he was a firm believer that no one except God Himself could predict another individual’s destiny. It just wasn’t possible, and all the “quacks” who thought it was were just that—crazy people. The doctor had cautioned her parents that if they couldn’t help her snap out of it, eventually she’d be ridiculed and made fun of at school for her unsocial, awkward behavior.
Addison despised Doctor Beatty, who she called “Doctor Death” because to her, he appeared old and decrepit. She also despised the constant stream of questions he asked, so after her third appointment, she did something she’d been taught never to do—she lied. She admitted to her mother and father that the day of the party she had made everything up. When she saw the tree swing in the yard, she imagined what would happen if someone ever fell from it. Her mother was satisfied enough to allow Addison to stop seeing Doctor Death and eventually Addison’s visions faded so much, she herself stopped believing. Once that happened, the visions stopped coming. By the time she was eighteen, the memories of her early childhood were so vague, she wondered if they had ever been real at all.
Now, sitting in the room staring at the dress puddled inside the dress box, every memory she’d ever had rushed back to her like the gust of wind that swept Dorothy all the way to Oz. And the worst part of all? She hardly knew what to do about it.