Free The Predicteds by Christine Seifert

Jesse says, bending over. The geese are obviously tame, used to people feeding them. One of them pecks at his open palm and squawks angrily when she discovers there is no food. “Sorry,” he says to the goose in a voice that is tender and soft.
    The sounds of squawking geese are replaced by a girlish scream in the distance. It echoes. It’s not a scream of a girl in danger so much as a scream of a girl who is trying to get a guy to notice her.
    â€œThat’s January,” Jesse says.
    â€œDo you think she’s predicted?” I wanted to ask the question before. It’s rude to ask it now, but I can’t help it.
    â€œWe’ll find out eventually.”
    â€œI know,” I say, thinking about what Melissa told me. They’d be releasing the names publicly. Sometime soon. “But do you think she is?”
    â€œYes,” he says plainly. “I do.”
    â€œAnd who else?” I throw out the question before I realize that it’s probably rude and gossipy to ask. I don’t want to be like Brooklyn. “I’m sorry. It’s none of my business.” We both start walking again, faster this time.
    â€œNo, it’s okay. I think we all suspect the same people. Her brother is a suicidal school shooter. Her dad drank himself to death. Got drunk and wrapped his car around a telephone pole. Not even an original way to go.” He pauses. “What can you expect? That’s what we’re all thinking. Trapped by genetics.” We walk a little farther.
    â€œCan you imagine?” I ask. “Thinking you are destined for something like that? I can’t even fathom it.”
    â€œNo, you wouldn’t know. You can’t imagine what…” He stops talking and crosses his arms, looking over his shoulder at the parking lot. “I’m sure it’s really hard,” he finally says.
    The crowd is dwindling. People are saying good-bye, driving away. They are going home or going to drink someplace else. I’ve heard about the old train car just outside of Perry, thirty-five miles south of Quiet. Apparently, it’s an abandoned car: open, creepy, shadowy, remote. Everybody under the age of twenty-one—so the rumor goes—drinks out there. It’s haunted, they say. Sometimes the ghost of a little old woman appears, and people think she’s the wife of a man who killed himself and her in that very car, back before any of us were ever born. I don’t buy it. But it does make for a good creepy place to hang out, I guess.
    Jesse is looking intently at me now. I look away bashfully, very unlike me. He reaches out toward my face, but he stops before he touches it. “You look real,” he tells me suddenly. “Like a real person. Not like any other girl here.” He closes his eyes. Before I can respond, we hear that scream again. It’s January in the distance. His eyes snap open, his expression changes. “I really have to go.”
    He’s off, jogging toward the parking lot, toward January.
    I stand there, staring, unable to move until I realize what’s bothering me: You can’t imagine , he’d said.
    Did that mean he could?

PART II
together

chapter 8
    We had a connection right away. Before we even talked to each other, I knew. I don’t even know how to explain it.
    â€”Jesse Kable, quoted in the book, The Future of the Predicted , publication forthcoming
    â€œYou have to come to Dell’s,” Dizzy says for the eightieth time.
    â€œDizzy, I don’t know any other way to say no.”
    â€œGood,” she says, “then you’re coming.” She grabs my hand and drags me off the porch. “I’m going out,” I call to Melissa, who is in the front room, reading medical journals. Fortunately, Dizzy lets me grab my flip-flops from the doorway, but I don’t have time to change clothes. I feel like a total slob in a baby pink Gap hoodie and faded jeans so long they