But not yet.
It’s too early.
But I promise you; she’s in for one heck of a surprise!
*
Chapter 7
Is May one of those who’s going to die?
She honestly doesn’t know.
Ironic, isn’t it?
Knowing the futures of so many people.
Yet not her own.
But you’d be surprised just how many seers find that their own talents are restricted in exactly the same way.
For the best really, when you think about it.
(Oh come on! You don’t really need me to explain all that for you, do you?)
It can be a curse, can’t it, seeing the future?
So, can she really see the future?
Oh sure she can.
But don’t take my word for it.
Take Sammy’s
‘I don’t know how she does it! But it all came out true! I just couldn’t believe it!’
And Pat’s.
‘I never thought it would be possible. But yeah, I got a date with Guy, just like May said I would.’
But that was before they fell out with May, of course.
Now it’s all more along the lines of;
‘Crazed little b –! Just who does she think she is?’
‘Making out she can tell the future! Hah. It’s all just guesswork!’
Told you seeing the future can be a curse, didn’t I?
*
Sure, May used to find her talents incredibly entertaining.
So did her friends.
In the days when she had friends, anyway.
It was all just a bit of a laugh at first. When she just started experimenting with the cards and the palmistry.
‘I saw it in a magazine; I’ve just got to look at the lines on your hands, and I can tell you if Bobby fancies you or not.’
‘The cards are even better. They can tell you all sorts of things!’
Well, with offers like that, just what kind of response was she going to get other than:
‘Wow, okay, I’ll give it a go.’
‘Go on then; tell me the awful truth!’
‘Hey May, I’ve heard you can tell who’s going to get off with each other; could you do mine for me too, please?’
A skill like that, well, it’s bound to make you incredibly popular, isn’t it?
Naturally, rumours of the incredible accuracy of May’s predictions spread throughout the school.
Everybody wanted their fortunes told.
Even a few teachers. (Just doing it for a laugh, they claimed. To humour May. To show how silly it all was.)
Eventually, May received the ultimate accolade; an invitation to hang around with Sammy’s elite little circle.
‘May may join us, I think,’ Sammy declared imperiously, tittering at her own little joke.
Heady stuff!
Problem being, like anyone else in the clique, May was expected to adhere to every one of Sammy’s whims. No matter how stupid they were.
‘You can’t just go telling everybody they’ll end up on a date, May!’ she complained almost daily.
‘I mean,’ she would add, as if explaining her command, ‘Jenny Grantham! She’s not exactly what you call, well – attractive, is she?’
Of course, in Sammy’s ideal world, the unattractive wouldn’t be allowed to go out on dates.
It just didn’t seem right, did it?
May ignored her, naturally.
More than that.
She did just the opposite to what Sammy wanted.
She developed that whole new meaning for ‘predictive text’ I mentioned earlier.
A mobile phone, wouldn’t you know it, could answer the query that’s on just about every girl’s lips; ‘Does the guy I fancy fancy me?’
See, it would work like this.
May would text the girl a few simple questions.
What do you dream about?
What’s your deepest fear?
If you were given three wishes, what would they be?
If you could be anybody else, who would you be?
And why?
All the girl had to do was text back her answers.
Oh, plus whatever they thought the boy’s answers would be, if he’d been asked the same questions.
Answers like that, they’re all pretty revealing, if you think about it.
Why, with just a little bit of thought, you can even figure out what even the most supposedly super-confident girl believes she’s lacking.
Oh, and believe me, every girl thinks she’s lacking something!
Chances are, you might even get to work out who the boy is too.
Thing is, even if you can’t figure these things out, it doesn’t really matter.
Because May would always text back saying something like this:
‘Now I want you to say to this guy that you’ve been asked a question. A question you’re finding hard to answer. So what does he think your answer should be?
‘“If my life was turned into a movie, what type of movie would it be and who would play me? And why?”
‘And the answer he gives will be the answer to your original question.’
See, the guy’s more or less bound to be flattered that the girl’s asked his opinion.
Cos the truth is, we’re all like tight, little boxes. All just waiting to be opened by someone who’s interested in what we think.
Better still, what’s the betting he tries to figure it all out by asking questions himself?
And you know what? You can tell far more about a guy by the questions he asks than the answers he gives.
Sure, May’s friends eventually worked it out; she’d been sending them all similar texts, hadn’t she? (She had changed the question every now and again!)
But it was fun while it lasted. So hey, what did they care?
Besides, May’s tarot and runic readings were becoming increasingly accurate.
Increasingly spooky.
If only she could have seen how it was all going to go so incredibly wrong.
*
Chapter 8
If you think about it, you probably know the problem with fortune telling.
People love it if it’s going to give them the answers they’re after.
Of course he fancies you!
Riches will come your way!
Everyone will find you great fun to be with!
Successssss!
If only everyone’s future was going to be like that, eh?
Trouble is, we all know it’s far more likely that there’s going to be an awful lot of tears on the horizon, don’t we?
We just don’t like admitting it.
Don’t feel like facing up to it.
So, when someone comes along and says, ‘Ohhh, this doesn’t look too good!’ – well, we’re not exactly going to be ecstatic, are we now?
It’s sure as heck going to wipe the smile of your face, isn’t it?
The smile we had when we first asked May to tell us what the future held for us.
‘Jeez, I only came to see you for a laugh May! I didn’t want you coming on all Gypsy Rose Lee. Spreading gloom and doom and telling me I’ve got no chance with Joe! How could you possibly know that, eh?’
Ah, but May did know that, didn’t she?
She wasn’t just guessing anymore. She wasn’t playing anymore.
She’d found her talents were taking her over.
Whispering in her ear, her mind; This is the truth!
*
See, as long as May couldn’t really tell the future, she’d been fine.
All she had to do was tell everyone what they wanted to hear.
(And that was rarely hard to figure out, was it?)
Everyone would have a giggle. There might even be a few blushes.
Some of the girls, because they wanted so much to believe what May had told them, might even start chatting to the boy, might even get off wit
h him.
‘Wow, that was brilliant May? Could you tell me my future too, please?’
And if the boy turned them down? Well, no one blamed May.
It was the girl’s fault for acting too quickly.
For not waiting for things to play out as May had predicted.
They’d blown it! Silly things!
Sure, there was always an excuse for why May’s earlier predictions didn’t come true.
After all, it was just too much fun to give up.
May wasn’t really making out she could see the future, was she?
It was just a bit of a joke, wasn’t it?
Wasn’t it?
Well, originally, sure it was.
Even for May.
Even May didn’t take it seriously.
I mean – how could anyone see the future?
Impossible, right?
But when she started getting that sense that This is the truth!
What should she do? she wondered.
What should she do when she started reading warnings in the cards?
In the cast runes?
In the falling I Ching hexagrams?
When she knew, too, that these were serious warnings?
‘Like wow, May! I only came to see you cos I thought this would be a bit of fun! I don’t want to be worried about what’s going to happen to my mum!’
‘My operation? What’s that got to do with you May! No one’s supposed to know about it, right? So you’d better not go around telling people about it, right?’
‘I came to see you about Paul! Not to be scared half to death, simply because you think I’m going to get run over unless I’m careful over the next few weeks!’
And when it turned out that May had been right after all?
Wouldn’t you know it, that only made things worse!
Wait, stop, don’t worry!
The girl didn’t get run over.
Like May had advised, she’d made sure she was careful when it came to crossing or being near roads – just in case, you understand?
But was she thankful?
Course not!
‘You had me worrying over nothing May!’
It was the same reaction with any other warning May gave.
‘You caused it to happen May!’
‘You’re just bringing bad luck!’
‘Yeah, you know what you are? A Jonah!’
That’s what you get when you can really see their future.
When you can see their innermost secrets.
You know what?
People really really don’t like that.
*
Chapter 9
Of course, May, as I’ve said before, isn’t stupid.
She knew she should have kept quiet.
Knew she should have just told them what she knew they wanted to hear.
Like she had before.
Even when it was a dire warning, she was in two minds as to whether she should tell them or not.
I mean, what do you think went through her mind when she was reading Sammy’s cards and, whooppps, it came up that Sammy was going to get turned down by a guy?
A guy Sammy had automatically presumed was hers for the taking.
A guy who was going to enjoy humiliating her too.
Course, Sammy hadn’t asked May for a prediction for the same reasons any other girl would have asked her.
Sammy wasn’t one of those girls who wasn’t sure how everything would turn out.
She’d just asked because she always enjoyed seeing all the surrounding, envious faces when May yet again declared that, yep, it was a sure thing; Sammy and Tim would be an item by the end of the week.
And now, probably for the first time in Sammy’s life, and definitely for what must have been a long time, she was going to get humiliating turned down.
Go on, tell me; what would you do in situation like that?
Difficult, huh?
*
In case you don’t see the difficulty May’s in here, let me spell it out for you, right?
See, it’s a real little box of tricks May’s got in front of her
Let’s presume our plucky little heroine thinks, Oh oh, Sammy really isn’t going to like being told she’s going to fail with a boy!
So I’ll tell her a little white lie. I’ll say, Hey, whaddya know Sammy; it’s all gonna be a cinch for you, as usual!
So, whaddya know, Sammy goes off with a smile on her face.
And this guy slaps her down big time.
Wow! Like how’s Sammy gonna take that, eh?
Who’s Sammy gonna blame, do you think?
Answers on a postcard to ‘The World’s Most Obvious Competition Co.’
I think that idea’s a no no for poor old May, agreed?
Okay, so now we’ll presume May goes for option two; she comes straight out with what ‘the cards have foretold’.
Yeah, that should do it.
Providing what you’re wanting to do is humiliate Sammy big time in front of all the other girls who have gathered around to hear May’s predictions.
How to win friends and influenza people, right?
(Yeah, I did say influenza there, as everyone will be avoiding you like you’ve got the plague.)
So, what would you do?
Go on; make your choice!
Open the box!
*
May, she figured out a third option.
Hey, I swear I’m not cheating here.
Sure, I could have spelt the third option out for you, I admit it.
But aren’t you prepared to do any work around here?
I mean, like shhheeeessshh!
Give me a break, right?
Besides, the third option ain’t so good either!
May told Sammy the little white lie.
Everyone who had gathered around the prediction beamed at the news.
‘He’s yours for the taking, as usual Sammy,’ Pat chuckled.
Naturally, Sammy accepted the accolades gracefully.
She always did.
Once everyone had dispersed, heading off for class, May ran after Sammy.
Making sure she caught her alone.
‘Sammy, sorry, I know I said that you…’
It wasn’t an easy conversation, know what I’m saying?
Sammy didn’t like it one bit.
Being told that a boy would turn her down? Oh Sammy, just loved hearing that, didn’t she?
Bedsides, how would you like it if you’d been promised the boy of your dreams, only for him to be more or less snatched out of your hands?
Who would you blame?
Yourself?
Oh sure you would!
*
Now Sammy had enough sense to take May’s word for it that she shouldn’t approach the guy.
She just told her friends, ‘Sure I could have him, like May said; but hey, I can’t be bothered with him, really. There are better looking boys around.’
She told them she wasn’t the slightest bit interested in him anymore.
But she was.
Interested in him more than ever now she knew that he wouldn’t be hers. Now that she knew he would have turned her down.
What we can’t have, we always want all the more, don’t we?
See, Sammy believed in May’s predictions.
But she didn’t want to. Not when they predicted failure.
At the back of her mind, there it was nagging away at her all the time; how could the boy turn her down?
It wasn’t possible – was it?
Sure, he wasn’t going out with her now!
But that was because May had scared her!
Stopped her giving hints that, you know, maybe he should ask her out.
That’s why they weren’t going out together!
It was all May’s fault!
*
Chapter 10
Suddenly, as far as Sammy was concerned, May wasn’t such a wonderful person to knock around with
after all.
And if Sammy thought that – well, so did just about everyone else at school.
Way Sammy told it now, May was dangerous to hang around with.
She wasn’t predicting the future!
She was controlling it!
Stupid, yeah?
Like who has that kind of power, right?
I mean, only witches have that kind of power, don’t they?
But when you’ve got so many people thinking that: when you’ve got everyone avoiding you because they think…well, is she a witch, or what?
Well, even poor old May began to wonder if it was all true.
No, not about her being a witch!
She knew she wasn’t a witch!
But all that stuff about her predictions coming true because she was making them come true?
Well…was that possible?
It just might be, she thought.
*
He prophesies were coming true because…well, because…
Because of what?
Because people believed her?
And so they did what she advised?
And that made the prophecies come true?
Like the accidents she’d warned would happen unless they’d avoided them.
They avoided them; and there weren’t any accidents.
But no, no! She couldn’t control the illnesses she’d seen!
The illnesses of family and relatives that she had read in the futures of her friends’ (yeah okay; when she had friends!) but had deliberately avoided telling them about.
Surely, surely she wasn’t the one bringing those illnesses down on everyone?
Yeah, May was getting just a little bit frightened of all this fortune-telling business,
*
She tried to stop it, of course. The fortune telling.
Threw the cards away at one point. The runes and I Ching too.
But she urgently fished them all out of the waste basket before they all ended up down the municipal dump.
They were too expensive to just throw away, she told herself.
She’d be better off giving them away to someone.
She’d just put them back in the drawer for now.
If only…if only she could see her own future!
Then she’d know what to do!
*
As I’ve already mentioned, there was something you might find a little odd with her abilities.
(Yeah, okay, as if her abilities weren’t odd enough, right?)
No matter how hard she tried, she could never work out her own future.