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  “Who told you?”

  “So it is true,” Colin said. He pointed at Lisa. “I told you it was.”

  “I didn’t say it wasn’t true,” Lisa said. “I just said your sister isn’t exactly a reliable source.”

  “Your sister?” I asked. “Jasmine?”

  “Becky told her,” Colin said.

  “Of course she did,” I groaned. Jasmine was Colin’s sister and one of Becky’s best friends. “Remind me to drop my sister’s toothbrush in the toilet.”

  “Eww.” Lisa grimaced. “You wouldn’t really do that, would you?”

  Colin waved his hands. “C’mon, man. If you’ve had another vision, let’s hear it.” He rubbed his hands together. “I’ve been dying for another mission.”

  “They’re not missions,” Lisa muttered. “And we just finished one, how can you already want another one?” She lowered herself to the edge of my bed. “But we better hear it anyway. Who is it? Anyone we know?”

  I drew a couple deep breaths. “Okay, so it’s like this…”

  When I finished telling them what happened, they spoke in the same breath. “A burglary?”

  “That’s what I figure.”

  “We get to thwart a burglary!” Colin said excitedly. “This just gets better and better.” He rubbed his hands. “I’ve always wanted to thwart something.”

  “I’m surprised you even know the word thwart,” Lisa said.

  “Call him,” Colin said. I didn't need to ask who he meant.

  I nodded and pulled out my phone and then dialed the numbers from the card. The phone rang four times before voice mail on the other end picked up:

  “This is Archer.” Beep.

  The message was so abrupt that it caught me off guard. “Oh, um,” I stammered, “Archer. This is Dean. Dean Curse. We met yesterday…well, you probably remember. Of course you do…um, yeah. Anyway, we were just wondering if we could meet you at the park today.” I suddenly remembered the forced apology I had to give at the museum. “Erm, this afternoon if possible,” I added. “Maybe around one o’clock. Okay, hope to see—” The machine beeped, cutting me off. I turned to my friends. “How was that?”

  “Awkward,” Colin said. “Really awkward.”

  “It wasn’t that bad,” Lisa said, “but why are we meeting him this afternoon? Group therapy is over way before that.”

  I groaned. “I forgot about therapy.” I stretched my arms and pulled some clothes from my dresser. “My mom’s making me apologize to that monk.”

  “The one from the museum?” Colin asked.

  “No, Colin,” I said, “the one from the grocery store. How many monks do you know?”

  Lisa shook her head while Colin laughed. “Oh, yeah. Well, hurry up and get ready. We should get that over with as soon as possible. Are you going to say something to that security guard while we’re there?”

  “Just get dressed,” Lisa said, pulling Colin out of my room. “We’ll talk about it on the way.”

  I pulled on a t-shirt and jeans, ducked into the washroom to get cleaned up, and headed to the kitchen. I wasn’t even five minutes behind my friends, but five minutes was plenty of time for my sister to try to make me look bad. I rounded the corner just in time to hear Becky say, “And then he screamed and asked my parents if he could sleep with them.”

  “What?” Lisa’s eyes were the size of dinner plates.

  “He did what?” Colin choked out.

  Becky smiled wide. She turned to me and brought her hands up to her chin, imitating a scared, frizzy-haired brat. “Widdle Deannie got scared and wanted to sweep with his widdle mommy.”

  “You’re such a brat,” I muttered.

  Lisa was still staring at me. “You wanted to sleep in your parents’ bed? Really?”

  “No,” I sighed. “That’s not what happened at all.” Lisa looked unconvinced so I added, emphatically, “I didn’t.”

  My mom strolled into the kitchen behind me and came to an abrupt stop when she saw Lisa and Colin gawking at me, and Becky sneering like the devil brat she was. “Do I even want to know?” she said. Before anyone could mutter a word, she shook her head. “Nope. I don’t.” She turned to me. “You almost ready? I’ll drop you three off at your group meeting a little early, and you can swing by the museum on your way home.”

  My dad came in from outside a second later. He had a newspaper in one hand and a cup of coffee in the other. He folded the paper in half, took a careful sip of his coffee and said, “So you say you didn’t try to hurt that monk yesterday?”

  I sighed. “C’mon, Dad. I already told you I didn’t. Ask anyone.”

  My dad nodded. “Anyone?” He seemed almost amused as he dropped the paper to the table so we could all see the front page. The headline made me groan: “Local Hero Attacks Monk.” Underneath was a picture of me connecting a wicked elbow to the side of the young monk’s head.

  After a week of protests over the Abbotsford Museum’s new Buddhist exhibit, tensions reached a boiling point when local hero Dean Curse got into a fistfight with one of the protestors: a Cambodian monk. Witnesses say it was unclear who started the scuffle, but there was no question who finished it.

  “I think the monk tackled Dean to the ground,” one bystander reported. “But that boy wasn’t going down without a fight.”

  This reporter managed to speak to one of Dean Curse’s schoolmates, Eric Feldman, who said, “Dean’s unstable. He killed an animal with a fork once and bragged about it. I’m not surprised at all that he beat up a monk.”

  The curator of the museum, Mr. Jonathan Overton, said that the boys got into a little scuffle that was settled by their respective families. No property was damaged, and no one was injured.

  Lisa looked at me pitifully. “Why the heck did they interview Eric?”

  “I’m sure he volunteered,” I said, groaning.

  “At least it’s a great shot,” Colin said. “And to be fair to Eric, you do look like a crazy person.”

  “Great,” I said. “Just great.”

  Becky shouldered her way past me holding a pair of scissors, and in a flash, she chopped the article out and held it up with a smirk. “I think I might keep a collection of crazy things Dean does,” she said. “That way when the judge asks why we think he needs to be locked up, we’ll have lots of proof.”

  “Can we please just go?” I asked.

  Chapter 11

  Group therapy was held in a dance studio, which, I have to admit, always worried me a bit. Our psychologist, Dr. Mickelsen, was a bit of a weirdo and I constantly wondered if he’d try to get us to dance about our feelings. Colin used to joke that a dance about an exploded teacher would be hilarious, but Lisa didn’t really like those jokes so he only said stuff like that when we were alone. Most of the other therapy kids were already in the studio when we arrived, milling around, chatting near the circle of chairs.

  “Hi, Dean.” I turned and found myself facing Rylee Davis. She was a year older, in the tenth grade. She had dark hair with blonde streaks, and really big green eyes.

  “Oh, hi, Rylee.” I swallowed. “How’s it going?”

  She smiled. “Good.”

  Colin stepped closer to me. “Hi, Rylee.”

  She nodded to Colin and gave Lisa a little wave. Then she pointed at my leg. “You got your cast off.”

  “Oh, um, yeah. Doctors said it was all healed up, so…”

  Rylee leaned close. Close enough that I could smell her watermelon lip gloss. “I saw the paper,” she whispered.

  I winced.

  “Don’t worry,” she said, “I know they exaggerate. It’s good to see your leg’s okay, though.” She smiled again and then turned and joined up with a couple other girls from the group.

  “I can’t believe Rylee Davis just came over and talked to you,” Colin said. “She approached you. And that’s sweet for two reasons.”

  I laughed nervously. “Oh, yeah?”

  “For one,” he said, speaking just above a whisper, “Rylee’s m
ega hot, so you’d be the luckiest guy in ninth grade. And for two…him.” He nodded across the circle and I followed his gaze to Eric Feldman, the biggest jerk in our grade. Eric glared daggers at us from across the circle and Colin gave him a mocking little wave.

  “What does Eric have to do with it?” I asked.

  “Are you kidding?” Colin said. “He’s obsessed with her. I bet he has a giant I LOVE RYLEE tattoo on his back.” He smiled. “Making him jealous is icing on the cake.”

  I hated Eric, and making him mad would be excellent—Rodney Palmer, Eric’s best friend, on the other hand…I wasn’t interested in making that psychopath angry. I shook my head. If Rylee liked me, it was as a friend. Besides, it’s not like I could do the whole boyfriend thing and still manage to deal with my visions.

  It was fun to think about, though.

  I didn’t realize I was smiling until Lisa stepped past me and whispered, “You’re pathetic.” I dropped into the seat beside her and she added, “But I think she might like you too.”

  “Yeah, right,” I said.

  “Let’s get started, shall we?” Dr. Mickelsen said. He had on a blue dress shirt and a tweed coat, which was odd since it was so hot and everyone else in the room was wearing shorts and t-shirts. He started the session the same way he always did: by going around the room asking everyone to share their feelings. You could say “pass” if you didn’t want to share, which was something Colin, Lisa and I used pretty much every session. But this time, when he got to me, and I said, “Pass,” he didn’t move on.

  “Are you sure?” he asked.

  I felt my eyebrows rise. “Um, yes. Very sure. Thank you.”

  “Nothing you’re interested in talking about?”

  I took another look at the therapist and realized he had a newspaper under his clipboard. My face suddenly felt warm. I swallowed and repeated, “Pass, sir.”

  “First he kills an animal with a fork,” Eric said from across the circle, “and now he’s attacking peaceful monks at libraries.”

  “It was at a museum, you dolt,” Colin said.

  “Oh, well that makes it all better, then,” Eric added. He looked around the group and stopped when his gaze landed on Rylee. “It’s okay to beat up monks, just so long as it’s at museums.”

  The rest of the students in the group shifted in their seats in anticipation of what was to come. There was a tiny part of me that wanted to punch Eric. I’d done it before—right in the middle of group therapy too—and I’d be lying if I said it hadn’t felt awesome. But another, larger part of me didn’t care one bit what the little dweeb had to say. There was going to be a museum robbery and at least two people could die. I was pretty sure Archer would help us deal with it, but it put things in perspective a bit. I had way bigger issues than Eric Feldman and Rodney Palmer.

  Colin glanced at me, and gave me a look that asked, “Are you going to punch him again?” I shook my head and leaned back and then stared Dr. Mickelsen right in the face and said, for the third time, “Pass.”

  Eric snorted and shook his head at me. If he did like Rylee, and he thought she liked me, he might redouble his efforts to make my life miserable. I’d have to watch out for that.

  Dr. Mickelsen nodded and moved on to Colin, who said, “Pass,” as did pretty much everyone else. Then he launched into a discussion about the stages of grief, and then death in general. I actually thought it was a creepier discussion than the usual creepy discussion about our exploded teacher.

  “What about you, Dean?” Dr. Mickelsen asked.

  I blinked. I’d missed the question. “Sorry,” I said, “what was the question?”

  “Well, I know we’ve discussed this before, but I’d like you to tell the group what you were thinking in the moments before your accident.”

  I sighed. It had been seven weeks since my “accident” and Dr. Mickelsen still said the word the way my dad did, like it was a substitute word for suicide—which it wasn’t. Sure, it might have seemed like a suicide attempt, since I basically jumped into oncoming traffic, but if I hadn’t done it, my sister would have been killed.

  Part of me really wanted to tell the truth, say that I’d jumped in front of that car on purpose, that I was part of the Congregatio de Sacrificio. But talking about secret societies and admitting you had visions of people who only had twenty-four hours to live seemed terribly counterproductive when people already thought I was nuts. No, doing that would lead to more therapy, not less. I’d end up locked in a room with padded walls before I could say “antipsychotic medication.”

  So of course, I didn’t tell them any of that stuff.

  I said what everyone in the room had heard me say a dozen and a half times: “I really wasn’t thinking of anything. I was just jogging across the street, and I didn’t see the car. Stupid mistake. I should have looked both ways.”

  Eric snorted from across the circle. “He got the stupid part right.” He elbowed Rodney, and the two of them laughed.

  “Okay, boys,” Dr. Mickelsen said. “That’s quite enough. We don’t want any more fights during therapy sessions.” He looked around the group. “We have time for one more,” the doctor said. “Who’d like to share?” He turned and pointed a couple chairs to my left. “Liam? Care to add something to the group?”

  Liam Carter was in my grade and had been with Lisa in Mrs. Farnsworthy’s history class when the explosion in the chemistry lab had obliterated the wall between the two rooms. They’d both seen Mrs. Farnsworthy die. He’d always been a sort of nervous kid, but not a complete loner. He reminded me a little of myself: not anxious to take center stage, preferring instead to blend into the background. But since the explosion, or at least since he started therapy, Liam had become almost entirely mute. He always sat in the same chair, kept his head down, and rubbed his bare arms as though he was trying to stay warm. As I looked at him, I realized how similar he and Lisa acted and I wondered if Lisa wasn’t having a harder time with everything than she let on.

  “What a freak,” Eric said.

  Liam shook his head, and Dr. Mickelsen made a note before looking out at the rest of us. “Anyone?” he asked.

  I glanced at my watch and whispered, “Ten fifty-five.”

  “You’ve all made such progress,” Dr. Mickelsen said, smiling. “Next week will be our last mandatory session. But I will be here every Friday, at the same time, for the rest of the summer should anyone, or everyone, decide they would benefit from some more talks.” He opened his clipboard and scanned a page. “Most of you shared your thoughts today, but I hope those who didn’t will share in the next session.” His eyes lingered on me and he drew a deep breath and smiled. “We’ll see you all next week.”

  “One more session,” Colin said as the group dispersed. “Finally, just one more of these things. I can’t wait.”

  As soon as I was on my feet, Eric came out of nowhere and shoved me. Hard. My leg was feeling nearly a hundred percent, but the suddenness of the shove caught me off guard and I clipped my chair with my foot and stumbled to the floor.

  “That’s only part of the payback,” he spat.

  Colin leaned forward like he was about to pound Eric, but Rodney loomed behind Eric like a thundercloud. Rodney was fourteen, but he looked eighteen. I’d known Rodney since I was nine, and I barely believed he was fourteen. He was like a science experiment gone horribly wrong. I’d say he was ogre-like, only “ogre” isn’t a scary enough description for him. If ogres really existed, Rodney would be the thing that killed them. He’d kill them and then eat them and then use their bones to kill more of them. Eric would be the thing that sat on his shoulder while he did it.

  Colin shrank back under the shadow of Rodney, but his hands remained in tight fists.

  “What’s wrong with you, Eric?” Lisa said, narrowing her eyes. “You know he only just got his cast off.” The muscles in her jaw tightened, and then she sprang forward and shoved the little twerp square in the chest. He staggered back and tripped over Rodney’s size twel
ve shoes, crumpling to the floor with a whimper.

  His face reddened, and he looked, slack-jawed, first at Lisa, then up at his friend. “Are you just going to stand there?”

  Rodney’s gaze moved between Eric and Lisa. He reminded me of an ox, the way his head lolled one way then the next, confused and dumb. “But she’s a girl,” he said in a half whisper. Lisa jutted out her chin and planted her fists on her hips, glowering down at the heap of Eric on the floor.

  I craned my neck to see if Dr. Mickelsen was on his way over, but the studio was pretty big and he was at the other end, standing in the entrance with his back to us, talking to some parents picking up their kids. Plus, the few remaining kids were crowding around, blocking a clear view from the door.

  “C’mon,” Eric said, looking up at Rodney, “do something!” His voice was half whining and half ordering.

  Rodney growled and then lunged. Except he didn’t lunge at Lisa. Colin stood beside her and took the full force of the shove. He hit the floor, skipping across the wood like a stone on a lake.

  “What’s going on over there?” Dr. Mickelsen called, finally roused from his conversation. He moved toward us cautiously, no doubt worried that Rodney would shuttle him across the floor next.

  Lisa pulled me to my feet as Eric jumped to his. He pointed at the two of us. “This isn’t over,” he growled. “We’re not even. Not even close.” He stormed off with Rodney trailing him just as Dr. Mickelsen arrived.

  “Well?” the doctor said. He watched Eric and Rodney leave the studio before turning back to us. “What was that about?”

  I shook my head. “Nothing.” Eric and Rodney may have been royal pains, but telling on them would only accomplish two things, neither of them good: Eric and Rodney would want even more revenge, and Dr. Mickelsen would inform his good friend and fellow psychologist, my dad. I needed the spotlight off me. Getting into fights wasn’t the way to do that.