Coincidences (Cai, Zoe, Danny)

[itsajesusthing.insanejournal.com]

After the hospital had said he was alright, no damage done from his brief fainting spell, Cai took the bus home. School wasn’t out yet, but it wasn’t worth going back just for last period. He liked History, but not enough to miss out on getting home before everyone else. They had three kids staying with them this week, who would be with them over Easter as well; all girls, all handfuls. Noisy handfuls.

So Cai went home, had tea with his grandmother and told her about his vision, tablet on the table in front of him so he could write up the details as he spoke. He told her all about Zoe, how unsurprised she seemed at her own vision, how surprised and annoyed she’d been that he had seen it too. “She sounds like a very interesting young woman,” Nonnie agreed, after he’d been talking about her for some time. “What are you going to do about it?”

“I don’t know yet,” Cai took another biscuit from the pile on the plate. “Talk to her, see what happens.”

“Wise lad,” she smiled at him, reaching out to pat him on the arm. They were careful about touching one another, since he'd explained to her that his reluctance for touching wasn't entirely down to the fact that he was a teenage boy and touching was weird. Cai liked hugging, and secretly wished there were more hugs in his life. But he'd worked out by now that gestures of affection like pats on the arm, shoulder squeezes and hair ruffles were all safe. Nonnie's family were from the north of Chile, near the Bolivian border, and she still greeted her friends with cheek kisses. Often habit kicked in and she kissed him as well, and it had always been fine, but Cai was always worried.

Nonnie had told him that he must be very wary of visions, after he’d told her why he’d had to break up with Alex. It was a gift from God that could be easily abused, a fact that Cai had already considered. He read enough, had seen enough movies, to know people went one of two ways with superpowers.

And of course he’d thought about the possibilities. He could grab his enemies’ wrists and learn their deepest secrets; he could be blackmail king of the school. But it was just a thought, and not one that held much appeal aside from power fantasies. He knew the reality of it was different, that there was little good you could do by invading someone’s privacy.

Till now, the visions he’d had of the future had only been inconsequential things; foreseeing Dom’s car breaking down on the way home had been the worst of it. Cai hadn’t been able to do anything to stop it, since he couldn’t tell when it would happen. He kept reminding Dom to take the car in for a tune up, Dom kept dismissing him and saying the car was fine, he’d looked at it.

When Dom did eventually make it home, with a borrowed car from the repair shop, Cai couldn’t stop himself from smirking and saying “I told you so.”

“Little shit,” Dom had said, wrapping an arm around his grandson and giving him a quick squeeze. “I’ll listen next time.” That was before he'd talked to Nonnie about miracles, so his grandparents just figured he was being a know-it-all.

Seeing a future funeral was different. Someone was going to die, and something was going to happen at the funeral, and Cai and Zoe had witnessed it for a reason.

Cai searched for Zoe at school the next week, but the campus was large enough it was hard to just run into somebody unless you knew where they sat. He walked round at lunchtime and break, earphones in, searching. His friends left him to it; they were busy discussing their plans for the long weekend. Syed’s mum was away and his dad was cool with the boys taking over their living room for The LAN That Would Last Forever. It would have sounded appealing a few months ago.

He finally ran into Zoe one lunchtime, and broke away from Jared and Syed to run across the quad and catch up with her.

Zoe heard someone calling her name, and turned away from her conversation with Danny to see what was happening. Guys shouting her name across the quad did not feel like a good sign.
But it was Cai, who she’d been looking for everywhere. “You!” she exclaimed, the relief in her voice sounding like out of character gladness. “I’ve been looking for you!”

"Hi," Cai grinned at her. "Me too, and..." he said in surprise, eyes travelling to the boy she was standing with. "Danny?"

He knew Danny went to this school, of course but they were in different year levels, and hadn't really spoken to each other much in a while. He said hi in the halls when they passed each other, but they both seemed to have their own things going on. The fact that he was friends with Zoe, though, that was weird. Coincidences made him worry.

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[lightningseed.insanejournal.com]

Zoe's eyes widened in agreement, and she nodded, though she kept picking at the graffiti like it was the most interesting thing in the world. "Yup," she said. "Yup, people are shitheads."