I felt the terror grip my chest, the horrible tingling in my arms and legs and face that meant the rest of the vision was coming, that meant the world was about to split in half and reveal itself to me.

In a flash, I saw it all.

Mom’s car swerving through the night. The right front tire rattling weirdly, shaking itself free, rolling off toward the highway median. Mom’s car jerking and sparking, yanking itself from the road, slamming into a tree. The car crumpling, now half a car, the hood smashed skyward, tree limbs gouging the windshield. The stillness after the collision. Smoke and the smell of burnt tires.

Mom’s bare bloody arm, limp, dangling out the window.

I saw other things too.

A sunset glimmering over a lightning-split tree, two gray clouds like watchful eyes in the distant sky.

A blank gravestone, fireflies floating around it glowing holy in the nighttime.

A red cloud of hummingbirds flitting wild over a field, a whirlwind of color and fire.

A woman who looked like Mom but older, gray-haired with eyes that sparkled like the stars.

An owl, wings spread wide like a crucifix, perched on top of a barn.

Horace’s Trans Am in the garage. My sister, Murphy, sad in a black dress searching the trunk as if some kind of secret hid inside.

When I came to, I was screaming.

I flicked my lamp on, and the room was empty. No man was at my window, no hummingbirds anywhere.

I know what you’re thinking. I’d just finally fallen asleep and had some kind of nightmare. But I told you already: It wasn’t a dream, not some random assemblage of the day’s events thrown together haphazardly in the back of my mind, not a weird brain film collage that meant absolutely fucking zilch.

It was a vision.

A warning, a premonition.

I had to hurry. I scrambled out of my bedroom and onto the stairs to find my stepdad, Horace, screaming at Mom in the foyer below.

I saw Mom look back at him, her eyes fierce and burning. She wore jeans and a plaid button-down and combat boots, and her long blond hair was wild and tangled, like she’d been fighting in her sleep.

“Just you goddamn wait a minute,” he hollered.

I hated Horace. I hated Horace more than I’d ever hated anyone in my life.

“This ends now,” said Mom. “I’m going, and don’t you fucking try and stop me.”

Mom left, slamming the door shut. I ran down the stairs and outside, but she was already in her car, swerving out of the driveway. I chased her down the street in the hot starlit summer night, waving at her, screaming, begging her not to leave, until her headlights disappeared around a corner.

My sister, Murphy, came walking outside, half awake and worried.

“What’s wrong?” she said.

I yanked her out of the way as Horace’s Trans Am came roaring past us, cutting over the neighbor’s lawn, laying black tread marks all over our street.