Fourteen

We go to the library and sit at the computers. I tell Sawyer to pull up a video while I take some notebook paper and a pencil out of my backpack.

“Are you seeing it?” “One sec,” he says, pushing play. “Yeah.” He presses pause, rewinds, and hits play, then pause again.

“Okay. What do you see?”

“Hey—can’t I just print—”

“Ah, no. Tried that. Doesn’t work.”

He frowns. “This is one of the new pieces. It’s our guy walking. He’s outside, wearing the same clothes.”

“Bonus. Finally. Is it dark or light out?”

“Dusk.”

“What do you see?”

“A sidewalk. Grass. A bare tree.”

“Grass?”

He nods. “Brownish-yellow grass, all flat and wet.” “Any buds on that tree?”

“No. Eh . . . wait. Yes, tiny buds. It’s blurry.” “Any snow at all?”

“No, just wet grass and wet sidewalk.”

I look out the library window. There’s snow on the ground a couple of inches deep, but huge honking piles of the dirty kind along the road and the sidewalk. On my computer I check the weather report. The ten-day forecast shows a quick warming trend with rain on the weekend and temperatures reaching the sixties by next Tuesday. One week from today.

“Shit,” I mutter. “Rain plus warmth equals snow melted by this weekend.” I look at Sawyer. “How bad has the vision been, exactly?”

Sawyer stares at the computer. His hand shakes on the mouse. “Bad. It’s everywhere.”

“Car windows?”

“Sometimes.”

“Mirrors too?”

“Yes.”

I stare at him. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

“I—I thought I was telling you.”

“Well, yeah, but you didn’t say it was getting so intense. That means it’s happening soon!” My whisper is on the verge of breaking decibel records.

He turns to me, his eyes weary and red rimmed. “I know. But there’s no fucking information here, okay? I can’t do anything unless it tells me how to find it!”

“Sawyer, there has to be something there. That’s the way it works! You have to look for stuff!”

“That’s the way it worked for you,” he says, no longer whispering. He pushes his chair back. “You keep telling me I’m doing it wrong, but you don’t see it. You don’t know. There are no body bags, no faces I can recognize, because the faces are all blown to bits. Okay? There’s nothing there that I recognize. You had a building that you could figure out. You had a face you recognized, and that helped you put it all together. Me? I don’t have jack shit.”

I stare at him. He stares back. And I think about what I just said and close my eyes. “God, you’re right,” I say finally. “I’m sorry, Sawyer, I don’t know what I’m saying.”

The intensity on his face wanes a little, but he leans forward and adds, “Don’t treat me like I’m stupid just because my vision is different from yours. I get what we’re trying to do here. I’m doing my best.”

I hang my head. Dear dogs. What am I doing to him? Nothing like adding another layer of pressure—as if the vision wasn’t enough. “Sorry,” I say again.

He gives me a rueful smile. “S’okay. I know you’re worried too. You must feel pretty helpless.”

I nod. “Anyway,” I say.

“Anyway,” he agrees. “Okay, so I liked the questions you were asking earlier. That was helpful.”

I nod again. And I like that we just talked this out. No big fight, nobody getting all hurt feelings or acting passive-aggressive or whatever . . . it’s nice. As nice as it can be, anyway. “In this frame, are there any buildings?”

“No. But there’s a road. More like, um, not a public road with painted lines or anything—it’s like a private paved road.”

“Like a school would have. Makes sense. Any signs? Street signs, big cement block signs, school marquee-type signs in the distance?”

“There’s a little stop sign down at the end of the road. Not like full size.”

“Can you see the sky?”

“The sky? Yeah, I guess. It’s dark, cloudy.”

“No sign of a sun or sunset or anything?”

“No.”

I take a few notes. “Any idea what kind of tree that is?”

He squints. “It’s got really thin branches. The trunk is sort of squat and rounded and the branches are like long, narrow fingers going everywhere.”

I frown. “Like a weeping willow? All hanging down like hair?”

“No, more like . . . hmm. Like the kinds of trees that line downtown streets, you know? They aren’t like hulking oaks or maples; they’re daintier, low to the ground, like a big bush.”

“A flowering tree, maybe?” I tilt my head, trying to picture it. “Here, can you draw?”

“Not well.” But he takes the pencil and tries.

“What if you hold up the paper to the monitor and trace it?”

He glances sidelong at me. “Smart.” He does it, and it’s so weird to see him tracing something I can’t see. The bare branches look like fish skeletons. “I don’t know what good this will do.”

“I know. Probably none. But at least we’re accomplishing something. How’s the vision now—if you look out the window, is it there?”