Everyone in town would remember Hurricane Frances. It rained so much in those two days the first week of October that the dirty water at the reservoir overflowed and contaminated all of the clean water. At least that’s what they told us at school. As usual, my condition didn’t deliver the details on the parts of the story that were actually pertinent. all I got was a bit about the college kids.

Declan and Raven were both in their sophomore year and for them, once the news broke, that meant school had to shut down. They didn’t panic. They didn’t evacuate or anything like that. But the water didn’t run, so the school closed and they set up portapotties for people who didn’t want to go home for the week, or couldn’t.

“What you thinking, babe?” Declan asked. She sure as hell wasn’t going back to her parents’. Over the summer, she’d elected to stay with him. Awkward, considering his parents, but they were amenable, so they worked it through. Yet that didn’t hold her appeal as much as staying in the room that his roommate was evacuating.

Strange things were happening in town, though.

Having SchadowFreud come to play in the area back in the day, that was one thing, but SchadowFreud wasn’t where Anastasia Borgia had gotten her start. And her successor as the lead female vocalist of Acid Monsoon, Lucrezia Romanov… she wasn’t exactly living up to their dreams.

“Do you think we should go?” Declan asked.

“Where?”

“Acid Monsoon. Didn’t you hear?”

“Hear what?”

“They’re playing in town.”

“No, I didn’t hear that. When did that happen?”

“Everyone’s been talking about it.”

But of course, Raven didn’t actually talk to anyone.

“It’s okay,” said Declan, “we don’t have to go.”

“No, it’s okay,” said his girlfriend. “I don’t really feel up to it, but you should go.”

I don’t know quite how to get into what happened next. I saw the whole thing in my vision—of course I saw it really only as it was going on. If I’d seen it the night before, maybe I could’ve convinced Declan to stay home and accompany his girlfriend out to the portapotty when she needed to go. As it was, all I could do was send him an ominous text he’d get four hours later telling him he needed to get in touch with Raven.

I saw the whole thing well enough to remember it afterwards, but Raven doesn’t remember it. Not well. At least that’s what she says. She claims all she remembers is going out to the portapotty and that something happened. And then her talon ended up covered in blood.

Have I talked about Raven’s talon? It was one of those cheap-yet-fancy Goth girl affectations: a three-inch claw that attached to her finger. It wasn’t designed for self-defense—wasn’t meant to be, anyway. When she did use it, it was usually in kinky games with Declan that I blush to even think about, but she happened to have it on her, so when “whoever it was” attacked her, it must have been some kind of instinct that kicked in.

She insists to this day that she doesn’t remember the guy’s face. But I have an excellent memory and I’ve gotten pretty good at drawing, to boot. I won’t say how, but I managed to get the young man in question found and properly punished.

Raven, meanwhile, was super-charged. Different people react to that kind of assault in different ways, I guess. Even through time: three years ago she’d have probably locked herself in her room, shut out Declan, shut out everyone, but something about having blood on that talon…

Once she stopped to think about it, that would scare her, what it said about her that she was so full of rage—but she’d won! She’d won and she needed to celebrate and her boyfriend was unreachable at a concert.

It was too late to get tickets herself. They had wanted to call the even a “Hurricane Concert”, playing on the irony of Acid Monsoon’s name, but after they figured out what was going on in the town, they renamed it their “Broken Levee” deal. But there were still a couple of bars that were open. And one of them never let a Thursday night go by without hosting karaoke.

I won’t say what song it was she was singing when the band walked in. Let’s just say you’ve never heard of it, but they had. The concert had been a success and the bar was their afterparty and they heard our girl Raven doing her thing and they just fell head-over-heels. Even “Lucrezia” agreed she sounded good before she realized what she was actually agreeing to.

Caspar June, the front-man, had a note sent to her inviting her over and she was deep into talking to them by the time Declan finally called her.

“Hey, how’d you like the concert?”

“Not bad, I’m at Weaver’s Pies, listen I got a weird text from Kassandra.”

“Jasper’s sister?”

“Yeah, she said I should call you—are you okay?”

“Why would Kassandra want you to call me?”

“Well, she is kinda psychic, so why don’t you tell me?”

“Oh! Actually, I do have something to tell you!”

The assault from earlier didn’t slip her mind, she just didn’t want to talk about it. But she did want Declan there. She was hoping he could share her glory. If only that had been the case.

I actually think it’s kind of a miracle that it took until high school for Lucy to start dating. I don’t know whether it was a self-confidence thing or if she actually genuinely felt a close connection to every guy she ever met, but she could never stop talking about them.

Most embarrassingly, though, she just would not shut up about Jasper.

“He is so cool,” she told me once before leaning in and whispering, “Do you think he might have had sex already? I mean, he is in high school.” We were in eighth grade.

I knew that he had—I am who I am—but I still lied and said I didn’t.

Then of course Ellen Portnoy happened. And my niece. Lucy managed to be devastated and fascinated at the same time. So full of every emotion, as always. And then of course Ellen dropped out of the picture so suddenly and Lucy didn’t know what to do with herself.

“You think about sex sometimes, don’t you?”

Thought about it? I didn’t have to. I knew exactly what it was going to feel like, be like, how it was going to taste and smell and sound, I’d had visions of it for years. I didn’t knew for sure who it was going to be with. (I assumed Angus—at least I did back when I was certain that he was my mysterious redhead.) But I mean, I knew what it would be. “I guess,” I fudged to Lucy, but then realized my mistake.

“I’ve been thinking about it a lot. I mean, I always have, but… it’s like more and more, it’s almost like it’s becoming real. You know?”

A few months after Jasper went off to work at the steel mill, I had a vision that made it a little too real for me, too. It was another one of my awkward my-family-are-having-sex visions, only this time, it wasn’t limited to family.

“Hey,” Lucy asked me not long after, “can I come over and study at your place this weekend?”

I knew what she was trying to do. She knew Jasper had weekends off, that he spent them around the house with his kid. She was triying to insinuate herself into—

“Would that be so bad?” Trevor asked. “I mean, I know he’s your brother and all, but like, why do you care so much?”

I cared because much as I liked hanging out with Lucy, the thought of her becoming my sister left me slightly queasy. Or, I don’t know, maybe I didn’t want my niece getting too attached only to—

“Come on! What is the problem?”

“I don’t want you dating my brother!” I finally blurted.

“Who said anything about dating your brother?”

“You have. For years. For years you’ve been talkign about letting him take your V-card—“

“Oh, honey, that ship has sailed.”

Some psychic I am. Assuming she was telling the truth.

“I just want things… separate,” I finally managed to confess. “It’s hard for me when it’s all… muddy.”

But there was no stopping them. I knew it. It had been in my visions.

“She’s sixteen,” I reasoned with Jasper.

“So? I’m nineteen, and in the state of North Carolina—“

“Don’t give me that bullshit! She is a child!”

“Maybe that’s what I need right now!”

“Are you listening to yourself?”

“Look… I don’t know what to tell you. She makes me happy. And I… I think I make her happy, too.”

Wouldn’t it be ironic, I found myself thinking, if Jasper and fucking Lucy McDermott were the ones to live happily ever after?

But I knew I was just being jealous.

Kyle Niedermeyer went off to college when I got to seventh grade and by the time I was a junior, he came back as a teacher.

No one else could believe it. I mean, thsoe of us who had older siblings passed on the legend that was the Elk—to have one of their number in a position of authority? It was too much.

Except, of course, for me. Not only was I the only one not to gasp that first day when he revealed himself, I’d already brought along a nice shiny apple to give to him.

“Sucking up to the new teacher?” he asked me with a smile, careful to make sure everyone else was out of earshot.

“Do you remember me at all?” We’d only met once, which was enough for me, but his eyes narrowed. “Kassandra,” I helped him along. “My sister was in love with you?”

“Oh, shit,” he said, “Llywelyn?”

I don’t think of myself as much different through time. Physically, I suppose, with my hips and my breasts filling out, though very little in the face. It’s hard to really change when you know ahead of time pretty much exactly who you’ll be changing into, or so I still thought at the time.

“It’s great to have you back,” I said and he was gracious about the plattitude. “Does that mean you’ll be getting back together with Miss Kelly?”

There are only a handful of times when I’ve destroyed someone’s world with a revelation. I keep thinking I’ll cherish or even enjoy it, but the awkwardness makes that hard.

“I beg your pardon?” he asks.

“Don’t worry,” I tell him. “No one else knows. I’m kinda psychic?”

If I cared, I could prove that to him further, but there’s something more pressing. “Look, I know you’ve seen her wearing a ring, but she doesn’t love that guy. She still has feelings for you. And you still have feelings for her, which is why you came back. So you should… you know…” I looked down at my gift to him. “Give her an apple?”

He raised one eyebrow, then the other. As he reached for the apple, I bolted for the door.

There, I told my Psychicism. I did what you asked. What more do you want from me? What more could I possibly do? But there is always more to be done, isn’t there? Maybe I should just accept that.