The Sight Read Online Free

things he said. It was there inside him.
    He doesn’t think Emily is coming home tonight.
    I don’t think so, either.
    This is how it started.
    When I was ten, I went to the shore with mybest friend, Annie Keegan, and her three brothers. Her mom set up the cooler and blanket and the chairs, and we all ran into the ocean. Mrs. Keegan yelled for us to wait for her, but we pretended we didn’t hear her over the wind and the seagulls.
    I remember how high the waves were, but I didn’t want Annie’s brothers to tease me about being a wimp, so I waded right in. I was doing okay until I misjudged a wave. I remember being taken over by the wave, how I tumbled and tumbled, how I tried to swim and couldn’t. The force of the wave was incredible. I couldn’t get my head above water. Then when I did, another wave was coming, and that one hit me, too. I swallowed water and I suddenly knew I was drowning. I don’t remember that part very clearly, just that things slowed down, but I still couldn’t get out of the grip of the wave.
    The next thing I knew, I was on the beach. I heard a voice clearly in my head, a voice I didn’t recognize. It was saying, Come on, come on, come on, come on. I opened my eyes. A lifeguard was looking down at me. Oh please oh please oh please… She had blue eyes that were filled with fear. Her freckles stood out against her tan like blotches.
    I saw the relief on her face and I also felt it. It flooded my body, like it was inside me. Then I started to cough and threw up on her leg.
    Mrs. Keegan wrapped me in a towel and hugged me. I remember that so clearly. How scaredeveryone looked, how the lifeguard sagged down on the sand, how the other lifeguards clustered around her and me. I remember Mrs. Keegan’s hair blowing into my mouth, and that it tasted like salt. Everything looked different, somehow, like the world was sharper than it had been. Everything was louder. I could feel the day like it had weight, like I could feel seconds passing like air currents, like I could cup my hands and collect moments like water.
    Then I sat on the blanket for a while, and drank some water, and ate a chocolate chip cookie, and things shifted again, and I felt normal.
    Mrs. Keegan asked me if I was still scared. I said no. Mrs. Keegan smiled and said she thought the lifeguard had been more scared than I was. She said the lifeguard had to go home—it had been her first day on the job.
    Somehow I’d already known that. I figured I’d overheard someone saying it. I said something about how her voice had called me back, saying, come on, come on and please please please…
    Mrs. Keegan shook her head. “The lifeguard never said anything. She was trying to resuscitate you. Nobody said anything. We were all frozen. Everything went very quiet. I think even the seagulls stopped squawking.”
    I stopped asking questions and chewed on this along with my cookie. The lifeguard hadn’t spoken,but I’d heard her voice. I didn’t know what to make of that, so I just hoped I wouldn’t get in trouble when I got home for not listening to Mrs. Keegan and running into the surf.
    I didn’t realize everything that had changed until later, until after I began to see things and feel things. It’s hard to explain. People talk, and I hear what they’re saying, but I also see something in a flash, like a digital photograph starting out jagged and then filling in.
    I finally told Mom. It took her a while to accept it. Then after I told her that something was wrong in Uncle Owen’s chest and two days later he was in the ER, she got serious. She called a couple of places and thought about getting me tested, but neither of us wanted to do that. I didn’t want it to be real, somehow. I don’t think Mom did, either. She was a very practical person. I think she just wanted it to go away. I couldn’t blame her. So did I.
    I still do.
    I turn up the music. I don’t want to think about where Emily is. I don’t want to know what’s