Luminosity (Book One)

Chapter 3: The Reveal

When the bell rang, I was at the stove, giving the lentils a stir and pouring in a little more water. I left the spoon in the pot and went to answer the door. It was Alice.

"Hello, Bella," she said.

"Hello, Alice," I replied. "Can I help you?"

"May I come in, please?" Alice asked.

I thought about this. Charlie wouldn't likely object to my having her over; although I didn't have any classes with Alice, she was a peer in some sense, and he swore up and down that she and her family were the ideal sort of people. Besides, if I was ever going to figure out the answers to my questions, it would probably involve talking to some Cullens at some time. I stood aside and waved Alice into the house; she pranced inside.

"Want some lentils?" I asked idly, gesturing at the pot on the stove. "They're sort of related to chickpeas, I think."

"I already ate," said Alice. "Thank you very much anyway."

I nodded and sat down at the kitchen table; Alice did the same. "So," I said. "What's up?"

"Be patient with me, please," Alice said, looking pained. "I have a lot to tell you and I've never had to explain it before and it's really complicated and my family is going to be angry at me, but there's no other way, I looked, there's really not. You've got to know, and sooner's safer than later."

"I, um, register a general approval of knowing things rather than not, and of safety," I said. "Do you think you're going to be able to explain what you want to explain before Charlie - I mean, my dad - gets home?"

"Yes," said Alice confidently. "He won't get back until after eight. The basics won't take longer than that. You're going to want extra proof, but we can meet some other day and take care of it. So, uh, first - I can predict the future."

I nodded slowly, inviting her to go on. My crazy idea was looking less crazy. If Alice believed of herself that she could predict the future, and I'd independently thought of it - it was still wildly unlikely, but she was willing to let me test it, apparently, and that sure was something.

"Here," she said, passing me a folded sheet of paper. "It's the weather for the next week. I know that weather reports are sometimes right and that Forks is easier to guess than anywhere else, but weather's easy for me, and I put everything down to the minute. I can do physical events like that with no trouble. I can tell what people are going to do if they've made their decisions - if they might do any of several things I get less clear images, but not nothing - but minds can always change. So weather's one of the best tests."

I unfolded the sheet of paper. It specfied heavy rain until 11:09 that evening, after which brief sleeting was called for, and then a subdued drizzle would dominate the night. She'd thrown in a rainbow for Thursday morning. I folded the paper back up. "Dice?" I proposed.

"Cards would be better. How you shake the dice matters, but once you shuffle cards they stay put," Alice said. "I can do better than chance with dice if you prefer them, though. Oh, but you have a dice cup. I can do perfectly with dice too that way."

I got some of both from the cabinet under the stairs and offered Alice a sheet of paper. I shuffled the deck several times and she filled her page with predictions, writing rapidly and with perfect penmanship. Then I took the paper and flipped through each card in succession.

She got them all right. I didn't bother repeating the cards right away; time was limited and I already had more information than I could readily explain. Charlie indeed owned a dice cup, which Alice said would let her get all of the dice perfect as long as I hid the cubes under it for a moment after shaking them. She was right sixteen times in a row, at which point I swept the dice out of the way and planted my elbows on the table.