Fated to the Alpha

6

Alice

The sun was a concept alien to me ever since I had moved to Rapid Falls. Every day was a day shadowed by dark clouds. On the brief moments in the afternoon that the sun peeked from behind the drapes of cumulonimbus clouds, it looked like a tame white ball, incapable of heat, incapable of light.

As I lay in bed the following day, repeating the vision I had, I contemplated what to do now that I’d skipped school for two days now. Back in Chicago, rules were rules and if you skipped school for three days in a row, you got a warning call. Two warning calls later, you got suspended. After suspension, you got expelled. Would Rapid Falls High be as strict?

I didn’t care. At this point, I couldn’t give a s**t about anything in the world. Not my missing father, not how my mom and my sister were adjusting to the new town, and most certainly not about Brandon. It was the goddamn vision that had made me this catatonic. Granted, I wasn’t a ball of sunshine before it, but given my track record with psychotic visions and their aftermath, it was understandable why I was as reserved as I was.

“Baby?” That would be my mom, knocking on the door. The knock was nothing more than a formality. I could scream, hey don’t come in here, I’m naked, and she’d barge in nevertheless.

“Mm?” Yep. That was all I could muster. I wasn’t going to string together syllables to form words. I was too drained, too sad, and too depressed for that.

“Why aren’t you at school?” She never asked you how you were. That wasn’t the way Joyce Hawkins was raised. She’d ask an insinuating question, which would be her way of asking if was doing okay.

“Mom. Leave me alone.”

“Remember what Dr. Richard Nygard said, honey. We have to communicate if we want to make things work,” she said. That was the pot calling the kettle black. Communicate? Why don’t you try first, Mom?

“Dr. Richard can go suck a big fat one,” I muttered from under the sheets.

I saw her outline from under the sheets coming closer to me. At least the woman was trying, I’d give her that. She sat down by my side and tugged the sheets off.

“Tell me what’s wrong,” she said.

“I had a vision again,” I told her. Dr. Richard Nygard, the esteemed shrink to the deranged teens of South Side, had told Mom and me that my first course of action in case of a psychosis (yeah, that’s right, he didn’t believe that I had visions) was to confide in my mom first and foremost.

“What did you see?” Mom asked. I felt love for her in that moment. She believed me, despite what Dr. Richard had told her. When I told her about the visions, she never said that I was crazy or stupid or trying to gain attention. She always believed me.

I threw myself into her lap and hugged her tightly. “It was the worst thing I’ve ever seen. Well, second worst.”

“What do you think we should do?” Mom asked.

“There’s this boy. He’s … well, he’s all that and much more. I don’t want to get into it. It’s super embarrassing. I saw him die,” I said.

“Fine,” Mom said in a robust voice. “We follow the plan. Okay? That’s something we can do. The visions and their outcomes might not be in our control, but we can do what we have control over. Is that right?”

“That’s right, ma’am.”

Ah, yes. The plan. The emergency plan that mom and Dr. Richard Nygard had come up with; Dr. Richard, the pretentious psychiatrist with Harvard Degrees on the wall of his strip mall office. That man was as much a psychiatrist as I was a deep sea diver. Still, he had given some valid advice.

“We’re going to go back to the meds. The antipsychotics. They helped you before. They’re going to help you again. I’m sure. I’ll send a note to the school, tell them you’re taking some time off. What do you want me to do about the boy?”

“The boy? Well, his name’s Brandon. He’s completely innocent. He’s done nothing wrong, but I don’t want to see him. It’s traumatic. I can’t even tell you how much. So, if he shows up, just tell him that I don’t want to see him. Hell, get a restraining order if you have to,” I said. Every word that I uttered broke me a little from the inside. But it was what we had to do.

“Get some rest. I’ll send Elma to keep you company,” Mom said as she ruffled my hair. “I have to go to a meeting. I’ll be back in the afternoon. We can get Thai food, your favorite.”

“Thanks, Mom,” I said, blowing her a kiss, then creeping back under the sheets to catch some shut-eye.