Pyro

“Are you sure?” I asked.

“Very,” the woman said. “The girl you described to me works at that hotel. I’ve been keeping an eye out for her since you mentioned what you saw.”

“Helen…”

“It’s what friends do. They look out for each other.”

I didn’t want to tell Helen that she was going to die in a couple of years from cancer. I wanted her to enjoy the time she had left.

Every once in awhile, I had to stop myself, because I thought she had a right to know, but she wasn’t showing any symptoms yet and I didn’t want her to worry.

Helen had been my best friend growing up. She knew that my family was a little different and she had embraced it. The rest of her family was a little different, too.

Naturally the two families were close.

So close that Helen was like a sister to me. We were practically raised together once our parents met.

“Is everything okay?” she asked. “You’ve been a little off lately.”

“Yeah, I’m okay. Just tired, I guess. I’m so excited to finally get my life truly started. I want all of those things to come true, you know?”

“Yeah. It will. When has a premonition of yours not come true?”

“I know, but I’ve got this feeling of dread and I don’t like it.”

“Any idea where its coming from?”

“No,” I said, lying. I knew it was because the hotel that my future wife worked at was the hotel that Jackson had told me to stay away from. “I wish I could figure it out. I hate not knowing.”

“What good is knowing the future if you can’t help?”

“Beats me.”

“What are you going to do?”

I shrugged.

“I think you should walk in there and start talking to her.”

“I couldn’t do that.”

“Why not?”

“It’s the story I want to be telling our kids one day. I want something romantic and sweet.”

“What do you mean?”

“I don’t want our story to start by me just walking up the counter and starting to talk to her. I want something heroic, something bigger.”

“Like what?”

“I don’t know yet.”

I looked at the hotel and wondered what I was going to do. If my current feeling was correct, she was the one that was important to me. She was the one that was going to die.

I couldn’t let that happen.