Touch: Saving Ai | ✓

3

It took all my strength to break momentum and pull myself backwards. The metal sides of half-a-dozen train carriages flashed in front of my face and I landed on my left hand with a dull, but audible, crack. Some distant part of my consciousness registered pain.

The platform was in chaos. All around me people were screaming and yelling and carrying on. The train doors opened with a ping and the passengers about to disembark stopped short, looking at the commotion in confusion.

Then they saw me and stopped.

I must have looked awful: face sweaty and red with exertion, skin pale and clammy with fear. My heart felt like it was trying to pound itself out of my ribcage and every breath felt like someone was stabbing me in the chest with a pick made out of ice. My left hand was killing me and seemed to be swelling to the size of my calf. Stinging tears had formed in the corners of my eyes...

The worst thing about having these visions is that majority of the time there's nothing I can do to prevent them from coming true. The only deaths I can stop are murders and accidents, and even with those, I can't save every victim.

By some miracle, this time, I did.

Breathing ragged, I looked down at the boy in my lap, my right hand still tangled in the back of his shirt. He stared back at me, trembling like a leaf. I don't know what possessed me, but I wiped my hair out of my face, smiled and said, 'Hi.'

He wet himself and cried.

As if on cue, everyone sprang forward. The other elementary school kids ran up and started bawling, blubbering things about how they wanted their mothers and promising never to play at a railway station again. It took a business woman, a young couple and one stationmaster to try and calm them down.

A man in a business suit got on the phone and called the paramedics, kneeling down and asking me questions like a responsible adult.

What's your name? Evelyn White.

Does anything hurt? Everything hurts.

The answers came automatically, blurted out with no real thought. Might have been the shock setting in, or perhaps it was just that such events had become routine.

I went through it all again when the ambulance arrived fifteen minutes later. The stationmasters had gotten service back on track and most of the crowd had dispersed with the train. As the paramedics helped me stand – I was too stubborn to go on a stretcher – I looked over at the other platform.

Mismatched brown and blue eyes met mine. The boy in the black hoodie stared back at me and the expression on his face was cold.

* * *

Aunt Linda was waiting for me when I emerged from the outpatient wing. My left arm was wrapped in a cast and a sling and she'd brought me a change of clothes since my uniform was wet and smelled like pee.

I don't blame the kid. If I weren't so experienced in life-threatening situations, I probably would have peed a little too.

... I really shouldn't be proud of that. Let's go back to Aunt Linda.

Aunt Linda isn't really my aunt; she's one of those aunts that gained her title by being a good friend of Dad's. The two of them are so close that it took me twelve years to figure out that she and I aren't actually blood-related. If we were, then I'd have a little Mediterranean in me and would tan instead of looking like a broiled lobster after being exposed to the sun.

Dad likes to joke that she's an old flame he dropped when he met Mum. Aunt Linda on the other hand insists that he's full of rubbish and that they only know each other because she assists him with his research.