Free Foretold by Carrie Ryan

exactly apply in a case like this, I take it? No, I guessed as much.
    Let me see. My first examination of Kyle and Kaleigh Claire Conrad was … what is it now? Just after their birth, sixteen years ago. They were delivered by emergency cesarean section. Seven and a half pounds each … that’s fairly normal size for a single baby, you see, but huge for twins. No idea how their poor mother carried them to full term, but she managed. Her husband, the colonel, ordered her to do it, I suppose.
    The last time I saw them—besides today on TV, of course—was the day after their sixth birthday.
    Not coincidentally, that’s the day I quit practicing medicine.
    “I’m sure it’s nothing.” That’s what their father, Colonel Conrad, said to me that day.
    If I had a nickel for every time a parent has said
I’m sure it’s nothing
when I’ve walked into an exam room, I’d have retired to Palm Springs instead of here in Peachtree County.
    Tell you the truth, with kids, it usually
is
nothing.
    Of course, with the Conrads, it turned out not to be nothing, didn’t it?
    “Let me take a look,” I said. “Right arm, is it?”
    “Yes,” Mrs. Conrad said. She seemed about to cry. Her husband was upset, too, but not for the same reasons as his wife. “And it’s
not
nothing. It’s the exact same spot, on each of them. I thought at first maybe they’d been playing with Magic Markers, but then the spots wouldn’t come off, even with nail polish remover. And they’ve been talking all morning about this spaceship—”
    “There
wasn’t
any damned spaceship,” Colonel Conrad said, exasperated. “These kids will say anything to stay out of trouble. Yesterday Kaleigh said the one hundred and one dalmatians stole her sweater, when she actually left it at school. Now it’s a spaceship, for crying out loud.”
    Alarm bells should have gone off then. But they didn’t. Because I was sure I knew what I was dealing with. Ninety-nine out of a hundred other doctors would have been, too.
    But no one’s ever dealt with anything like the Conrads, have they?
    Anyway, I examined both kids closely, then had them roll down their sleeves.
    “Well,” I said. “I can tell you exactly what those marksare, Colonel and Mrs. Conrad, and neither Magic Markers nor spaceships are responsible. They’re moles.”
    Mrs. Conrad looked shocked. “But,” she cried, “they’re
blue
!”
    “They are indeed,” I said. “They’re called a blue nevus.” Interesting thing about the blue nevus, I explained to her. It’s a fairly rare but harmless cutaneous condition, occurring in only about one to two percent of the general population.
    Of course Mrs. Conrad wanted to be reassured they weren’t cancer, especially since she was quite sure she’d never noticed them before that morning.
    I told her blue nevi can appear at any time during a child’s first ten to fifteen years. True fact. And unless they show signs of malignancy—and nevi generally don’t—I always advise leaving them alone. Removing them tends to leave a nasty scar.
    For both the Conrad children to have a blue nevus, I said, and in the exact same spot—especially considering that they’re fraternal, not identical, twins—is extremely unusual, but not unheard of.
    That’s when Kyle Conrad piped up. “That must be what he meant, Kaleigh,” he said to his sister. “About our being destined for greatness.”
    Of course I asked, “What who meant, Kyle?”
    Colonel Conrad answered before the little boy could say another word. “Kyle and Kaleigh claim that a
spaceship
landed in the field next door to our house last night, while they were camping in the backyard in the tent they got for their birthday.”
    “They say a man came out of the ship,” Mrs. Conrad added, looking much more worried than her husband. “And that
he’s
the one who gave them the marks—”
    “Which we now know isn’t true,” Colonel Conrad said.“Right, kids? And what happens when we don’t tell