The Beginning
My name is Alice Weaver. And I'm different. At least that's what everyone else thinks. But I'm used to it now.
Not different in the gifted way, where everyone praises you for your genius, or even the developmental delay type of way where people are patient and kind to you. I wish that was the case.
But no. I'm just cursed. Or at least that's what I think it is. There really is no other way to describe what I've been through. I wish I could go back to the beginning and figure out just how this happened, but I don't think it's possible to fix this.
I think it started when I was a baby and my brother threw me in the river. Obviously, I don't remember what happened, and I've been told this story by my mother a couple times when she tries to describe my 'string of bad luck' to her friends. But no one else speaks of it.
I don't know if he actually meant to do it. He was only 3 years old, and Bryant never seemed to be mean. Maybe he just thought it was a hot day and that I wanted to go for a swim... I was 2 months old.
And really, how can I blame him? I don't think he knew babies didn't know how to swim, or that they might actually be swept up in the current. Every time Mom brings the story up, he looks really uncomfortable.
Anyway, Mom freaked out and jumped into the river and pulled me out. She made me spit up all the water and got me breathing again. When the ambulance got to me, there was nothing really to do, but I was brought to the hospital anyway.
I often wonder if the river latched onto my soul that day and took it away. Because after that I was never normal. I'm not sure what my life would've been like if the event never happened. Maybe everything would've happened the same way anyway. I guess I'll never know.
My Dad won't even look at me. He won't hurt me, never that. He's a gentle soul. He just, can't seem to look me in the eye. I don't know what I've done wrong to be shunned by my own father, but I'm 17 now, and there is just no changing the past. It is what it is.
But at night when I'm supposed to be sleeping, I hear him talking to Mom. To be honest, I really wish I could just fall asleep, so I won't hear my own father talk about me like I'm some sort of inconvenience.
"Beth, there is something wrong with her! I think we need to take her to a doctor!" he would whisper, scared of being heard. "Maybe we can send her to an institution? They can figure out how to fix her!"
"Clark, there is nothing wrong with our daughter. We just need to love her. She'll be fine!" Mom argues. She's been on my side my whole life, and I don't know if she knows how much that means to me. Her unconditional love is my everything.
"Elizabeth! It's not fine! Even the other kids are scared of her! Only Bry isn't scared of her!" He would argue. Their arguments would go deep into the night.
There are times I wonder if it would just be easier for them to set me up for adoption to keep their marriage together. I know it's hard on both of them, and I really don't want to be the thing that destroys their happiness.
Bryant is my older brother. And Dad is right. He is the only one who treats me normally. Most of the time. As long as I'm not hanging around him when his friends come over, or be seen with him, he's pretty cool. But isn't that what most big brothers are like?
I love Bryant, but even when he was at school, (he graduated 2 years ago and is now going to the community college) he sat with the popular kids and ignored me. That's fine! I wanted him to be happy and hang out with his friends. And none of his friends even like me, so...
I guess it all started when I was about 5, I think. I had a dream about our neighbor Jessica. She was my friend. But in my dream, she fell off her bike and broke her arm.
It scared me! I woke up in a sweat and cried. I didn't want my friend to have a broken arm! I didn't want her to be hurt!
Bry was there in an instant. He pulled me into his big brother arms and rocked me back and forth. "What's the matter Alice?" he asked.
"Bry! Jess fell off her bike and broke her arm!" I sobbed into his chest. I was absolutely sure it was the truth! I'd seen it and there was nothing he could do to convince me otherwise.
"It was just a dream, Ali. She's fine! You can play with her tomorrow! I promise!" He assured me. "In the morning, she will come over here and ask to play like she does every day and you will see! She won't be hurt!"
I didn't know if I believed him or not, but it did calm me down. He was right. She would come to play with me tomorrow, and maybe it was just a bad dream?
The next day she showed up just Bry had said, only this time she wanted to show me her new bike. She brought out the pretty pink two wheeled bike with pretty pink tassels, and I got scared.
Bryant and her brother Jason were outside playing too. They were both playing catch and not paying attention to either of us. They were just the big brothers after all.
"Jess, please don't get on your bike!" I was panicking, but she didn't listen to me. This was the exact bike I saw in my dream, and in the end, the bike would be all twisted up and the tassels ripped off.
"I wanna play, Ali!" She grumbled. "Daddy just got it for me yesterday and made me wait all night before I could ride it, and he told me I could ride it now!"
So, she got on, and she was speeding down the hill, and I yelled at her to slow down; to stop; but she just wouldn't listen to me. Soon the bike had gotten out of her control, and she overturned and slammed into a tree.
And then she fell off and broke her arm, just like in my dream.
I screamed!
This was exactly what I had seen in my dream the night before and Bry had told me it was all a bad dream! But he was wrong! Because here is Jessica, with her bike all twisted up and her arm broken!
I screamed and screamed and screamed.
My brother looked at me. And then he looked at Jason. Jessica's Mom and Dad were already out and taking her to the hospital by the time I calmed down.
"Jay," Bryant whispered as he watched me curl up into a ball on the grass. "Alice had a dream last night. She told me Jess was going to fall off her bike and break her arm!"
"No way man," Jason scoffed.
"I'm not kidding dude! She woke up in a sweat, bawling her eyes out!" Bry argued. "Look at her! She was so dang scared, she tried to stop your sister from getting on the bike, but Jess didn't listen to her and she got hurt!"
That was the first time.
The dreams come on sporadically, and there is nothing to hint at when or why they come. I have no control over who or when they happen. If I could, they would never happen!
For a long time, I thought it was a fluke, until 2 years later I had a dream about a boy named Hayden. He was in an accident, and he lost his mom.
Bryant came into my room, once again, and I told him my dream.
"Ali, that is ridiculous! Why the heck would Hayden be in your dream, let alone in a car accident?" He tried to reassure me, in his brotherly way. He even hugged me for a while before I could calm down.
But again, the next day, news went around school saying that Hayden had been in an accident on the way to school, and his mother didn't see the bus when she was turning.
My brother didn't say a single thing.
After that, I started watching the people I dreamed about, and it would freak them out. Of course it would! They screamed at me to look away. But they didn't know that I was just sad about what was going to happen to them.
Other kids noticed this and started calling me a freak. Bry never stopped them, but he didn't join in. He just didn't seem to know what to do with me. I think, mostly he just tried to keep his friends away from me. That was nice of him.
I learned just not to look. I would just walk away when I knew there was nothing I could do to warn them or change their fate. Once I had dreamed it, it was set in stone.
When I turned 10, I started writing the dreams down in a journal. I don't show it to anyone, not even Bryant. But I had to put them down to get them out of my head, or they would replay over and over again.
I've stopped screaming awake when I have the dreams, and I've stopped talking to Bryant about them too. I know he really doesn't want to know anyway, and it's just better for everyone if I keep my mouth shut.
If someone found out what I was writing, they would think what I already know. I'm cursed. Or they would think I've got a morbid sense of humor, writing the stories after they already happened. But they would have it all wrong. I don't want any of this to happen.
But last night, I had a dream about Jason, and this time I cried.
Jason just thinks of me as Bry's little sister and that's okay. He doesn't have to know I've had a crush on him for years. He is the only one of Bryant's friends that doesn't actively dislike me. I guess because he's known me my whole life.
But this dream takes place next week at the festival. I've never had a dream this far out in advance.
And he's going to die.
For the first time in my life, I'm going to try to rewrite fate. Even if it means I have to die to do it.
