{"id":5565,"date":"2023-06-14T13:20:17","date_gmt":"2023-06-14T18:20:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/christineamsden.com\/wordpress\/?page_id=5565"},"modified":"2023-06-14T13:20:17","modified_gmt":"2023-06-14T18:20:17","slug":"the-seers-fate-excerpt","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/christineamsden.com\/wordpress\/?page_id=5565","title":{"rendered":"The Seer’s Fate Excerpt"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"\"<\/a><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

The Seer’s Fate<\/strong><\/h1>\n\n\n\n

by: Christine Amsden<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Prologue<\/p>\n\n\n\n

From the diary of nine-year-old Danielle Hastings:<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/a> If I believed in fate, I would swear it was conspiring against me.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/a> The week after I turn seventeen, twisters tear a path through downtown Eagle Rock. This happens down every future pathway; it\u2019s not something I can change. When the sirens go off shortly after noon, there are people everywhere\u2014on the streets, in the shops\u2026I have to warn them. I send as many as possible to the Main Street Cafe, which won\u2019t get hit, though it will be a near thing. A back window shatters there, but nothing major. Not like at the antique stores next door, and the sheriff\u2019s station down the street, and the grocery store, and the library\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I start early, warning everyone who\u2019ll listen to stay out of downtown. The tourists are the worst; they think I\u2019m crazy. Yes, I know the skies are blue, but give them an hour and they\u2019re gonna be green! When that happens, it\u2019ll be too late.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The sheriff believes me, but he\u2019s worried about evacuating the jail on account of this killer being in there and maybe making a break for it. He\u2019s not wrong to worry; the guy escapes down at least ten percent of the paths stretching forward from this point. They key is that the sheriff himself has to watch the guy; he can\u2019t hand him off to one of his deputies. I tell him so, and he seems to accept it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

On to the flower shop and the grocery store. I\u2019m cutting it too close, and I know it. There are still tourists on the streets, the idiots, and the sirens are screaming, but there\u2019s no help for them now. The library is my last stop, and that\u2019s the place I\u2019ve been avoiding.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Because Adam is there.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He\u2019s not going to die, but a librarian will. I tell myself that\u2019s the reason I always save the library for last\u2014because there\u2019s just one victim there, as opposed to dozens everywhere else\u2014but I know that\u2019s not true. It\u2019s always Adam I\u2019m avoiding. Adam, who fate is trying to throw me against.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There\u2019s no basement in the library, and it\u2019s going to take a direct hit, but there is no longer time to send Adam or the librarian to the Main Street Cafe. I grab the librarian, yell for Adam to join us, then duck with both of them behind the reference counter, ordering Adam to get between us and throw up a shield.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A tornado really does sound like a freight train. It\u2019s the same observation I\u2019ve made a few hundred times before, because this tornado always hits Eagle Rock, and always in the same pattern. It\u2019s a fixed point in time, a rarity, at least in my experience. The only things I can change here are how I respond and who dies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I\u2019m beginning to think Adam is a fixed point too.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The librarian, a gray-haired woman named Natalie who puts on a great children\u2019s story hour, screams. Debris rains down upon us, but Adam\u2019s shield holds, as I knew it would, creating a perfect dome of safety around us.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For some reason, it\u2019s always when she realizes she\u2019s safe that Natalie faints.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cYou saved my life,\u201d Adam says. His voice sounds different now, older, grown up. He\u2019s seventeen now, and he looks a lot like the men on the covers of the books my mom hides whenever I walk into the room.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI saved her life,\u201d I say, nodding at Natalie. \u201cYou were going to be fine.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI\u2019d still like to kiss you,\u201d he says. A stray lock of dark hair falls across his forehead while his eyes, blue as the sea, bore into mine. It\u2019s that look, I think, that turns my brain to mush.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The next thing I know, I\u2019m kissing him, and it\u2019s amazing and I love it. I\u2019ve never been kissed before on this path, in this lifetime, but I have been kissed thousands of times before in other lifetimes. Enough to know that even at seventeen, Adam\u2019s kiss is almost magical. His lips are firm but soft, his tongue coaxing without being invasive. I open to him, and completely lose my mind.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Again.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If I\u2019m not careful, this is going to be another one of those paths where he and I get married, have two kids, and then\u2026pain. He always seems to cause me pain in the end.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It doesn\u2019t have to end that way. Even from here, there are infinite paths forward. Some of those paths spin before me, dizzyingly fast, each one tempting me: \u201cPick me! Pick me!\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I latch onto a path down which Adam dies in his twenties, but all I see is heartache and despair. It\u2019s like I\u2019m broken or something. Seriously broken.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Rewind. Time to try this again.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/a> Chapter 1<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Danielle<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Some people think I know everything. As if seeing the future is a singular phenomenon instead of a cosmic, chaotic whirlwind. If there is one thing that seeing the future has taught me, it\u2019s how little I know.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I suppose I do know a lot, especially for my age. By peeking ahead, \u201cpeering into the void,\u201d I\u2019ve been to college hundreds of times. I\u2019ve taken Calculus and Physics, English Lit and Economics. French and Spanish and German and Polish.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I know how to say \u201cYou\u2019re going to die\u201d in a hundred languages. It\u2019s a real conversation closer. For some reason, people just can\u2019t accept that it\u2019s true. But it is. You are <\/em>going to die. Vas a morir. Vous allez mourir. Du wirst sterben. Umrzesz\u2026<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

In retrospect, the death predictions might have been why the other kids stopped wanting to play with me. That, or telling them who was going to win every game we played. They said the games were no fun if they knew who would win. I have to agree; it is no fun. I never really got the point of games.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The other kids started playing a game with me in the fourth grade that involved one of them sneaking up behind me and yanking my hair. I always knew they were coming and stopped them, which they thought was hilarious. But what they didn\u2019t get was that by intending to pull my hair, they did pull my hair. I had to live it a hundred times, over and over again, along the paths they created. After a few weeks, my scalp hurt, and I didn\u2019t want to go back to school. But I couldn\u2019t find a path down which my parents would let me stay home, not even when I explained how I could get early admission to Harvard by the age of twelve. They were of the firm, unwavering belief that a child needed to be a child.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

By the time the Spring of the twisters rolled around, I was still attending public school. At least the classes\u2014which I had literally aced in my sleep and was certain I could remaster awake\u2014gave me time to meditate. If spending the day with my eyes unfocused and my mouth hanging slightly open hurt my underwhelming popularity, it was hard to tell.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Who needed friends anyway? Not me. Even when I tried to make friends, they hurt me and stabbed me in the back down countless paths. Better to be invisible. A silent, watching specter.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If only I didn\u2019t sometimes feel the need to emerge from the shadows, life would be perfect.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It was Jenny Price this time. She sat next to me in English Lit and spent almost as much time zoned out as I did. The only difference was she couldn\u2019t read the books in her head. But her failing English Lit grade wasn\u2019t my big problem.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

No, my big problem was that I couldn\u2019t find a path down which she wasn\u2019t dead by her own hand within six months.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

She didn\u2019t like me. As far as I could tell, she didn\u2019t like anyone. Which, ironically, gave us something in common. I tried slapping her and telling her to snap out of it down at least a dozen paths, but that never seemed to work, so instead, I floated ahead and took some college psychology courses. Turns out, depression isn\u2019t cured by telling someone to \u201csnap out of it.\u201d Damn.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

People are always the most complex variable in the futures I see. They cause most of the chaos. Each choice they make, or might make, creates a new path. Billions of people times thousands of choices. It\u2019s insanity. Even when you consider that I can only see down a future path I\u2019m connected to\u2014meaning I don\u2019t know what\u2019s going to happen to random people on the other side of the world either tomorrow, next year, or next century\u2014it\u2019s a lot.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Eagle Rock has a population of 20,306 full-time residents, not counting those who live in the surrounding areas. Two hundred kids in my high school class. Twenty-four hours in a day\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I\u2019ll save you most of the math, but I\u2019ve done it. When I meditate deeply, I can live about a month in an hour, which made my mental age just shy of six thousand by the time I turned seventeen. Sounds impressive, until you start to multiply the number of citizens in Eagle Rock by the number of decisions each one makes in a day by the number of days in a year by the tree of intersecting decisions and you get\u2026chaos. I\u2019ve taken graduate level statistics, and I still don\u2019t know how to represent the math.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As I studied Jenny Price\u2019s vacant expression, though, I thought I might have more luck defining the math than fixing her.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

She was a bit repugnant, if I\u2019m being completely honest. The worst thing about her was the smell. Seriously, she smelled bad. As in I don\u2019t think anyone had ever discussed proper hygiene with her. Her baggy clothes were worn and dirty, her long brown hair, which needed a brush, was usually tied into a knot at the base of her neck.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The psychology courses I\u2019d taken in the future suggested that those things were warning signs. Strange that the school psychologist had never noticed. Or the teachers. Didn\u2019t they get training in this kind of thing?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The worst part was nobody was going to care when she died. A few would feel guilty and express the \u201cI should have known\u201d sentiment that never did anyone any good. But the meanest kids would just laugh and say the school smelled better now that she was gone, and many of the others would silently agree.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I felt a stab of despair, but I confess I wasn\u2019t thinking about her. Instead, I thought about how lonely I felt most of the time and how nobody cared enough to understand me either. Well, almost nobody. I had my parents. They tried, even if they didn\u2019t always get it. They might have been the only reason I wasn\u2019t going down the same road as Jenny.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I had to help her, but how? I\u2019d already spent one of her precious six months watching and meditating, coming up with nothing. I was running out of time. And not just for her.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The twisters were coming soon too.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I stayed behind after English Lit, following her from our first-period class to her second-period class on the opposite side of the school from mine. I was going to talk to her, even though this wasn\u2019t going to work. But nothing was going to work in a single pass. This wasn\u2019t like delaying someone after school so they wouldn\u2019t get into a car accident or having the janitor fix the pipe before it exploded and flooded the school or warning Wil Jasper to use a condom after Homecoming.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWhat do you want?\u201d she asked.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I inhaled, sharply, and wished I hadn\u2019t. \u201cWant to have lunch together?\u201d
\u201cNo.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cHow about if we hang out after school? I\u2019ve read Great Expectations <\/em>three times; maybe I can help you.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cYou actually like that book?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt grew on me after the first read.\u201d I forced myself to hold firm, to pretend I didn\u2019t already know the outcome of this conversation. Actually\u2026I had a moment of doubt that I was having the conversation in real life. Was this another practice run? I get confused sometimes\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWhy are you being nice to me?\u201d she asked.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

No, this was definitely happening. I\u2019d been down this exact path before, but I hadn\u2019t come up with a satisfactory answer to her question yet. She didn\u2019t buy that I liked her, or care that I was lonely too, and she flipped out when I told her I knew she was suicidal. Time to say something new\u2026and experience a potential surprise.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cMy mom told me I had to try to make a new friend this year,\u201d I lied. \u201cI don\u2019t really want to because all the boys are assholes and the girls bitches, but I thought you might be okay.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

She hesitated. And in that instant, someone wolf-whistled. I had seen that part coming, unfortunately, and I braced myself for the rest of it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe skunk and the ice queen,\u201d said Emily, a girl I thought deserved both titles.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Along both sides of the hallway, some of the boys began to mock-shiver. Mostly jocks, but let\u2019s not stereotype. Plenty of hangers on and wannabes joined in. It\u2019s amazing how many people are too cowardly to do the right thing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I didn\u2019t look at them; engagement always made things worse.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cKnock it off,\u201d came a new voice\u2014Adam Scot\u2019s. He sometimes told them to quit harassing other people and they always listened when he did, but that didn\u2019t make me feel anything but contempt for him. He had the power to really make them quit, if he cared.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I didn\u2019t look at him. I never looked at him. His eyes were the window to his power, and I knew better than to let it in. I\u2019d been seeing that future since I was nine, and I liked it no better now.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

By the time I slipped past him, Jenny was gone. She\u2019d fled as soon as the taunting began. Which was a shame, because she hadn\u2019t shut me out as firmly as she\u2019d done in the past\u2014well, in the possible futures I\u2019d seen in the past.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cHey, Danielle,\u201d Wil Jasper called out. \u201cWant to go out with me sometime?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I rolled my eyes, which was all the response his question deserved. He\u2019d asked before, as a joke, ever since my condom warning, which he must have taken to heart since Emily wasn\u2019t pregnant right now. Those two had long-since stopped seeing one another, but Wil\u2019s intentions remained vindictive. As if embarrassment was the worst thing that could have happened to him.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I didn\u2019t have to wonder what would happen if I ever took him up on his \u201cdate\u201d offer\u2014sometimes he stood me up and made a big joke out of it, other times he worked a little too hard to get in my pants. It all seemed to depend upon what bets were placed and what dares were issued.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Like I said\u2026who needs friends?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Buy Now Exclusively on Amazon<\/a><\/strong><\/h2>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Seer’s Fate by: Christine Amsden Prologue From the diary of nine-year-old Danielle Hastings: If I believed in fate, I would swear it was conspiring against me. The week after I turn seventeen, twisters tear a path through downtown Eagle Rock. This happens down every future pathway; it\u2019s not something I can change. When the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-5565","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry","post"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/christineamsden.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/5565","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/christineamsden.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/christineamsden.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christineamsden.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christineamsden.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5565"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/christineamsden.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/5565\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5567,"href":"https:\/\/christineamsden.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/5565\/revisions\/5567"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/christineamsden.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5565"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}