I pushed the buggy for Aunt Jewel while she scanned the shelves of the Piggly Wiggly, occasionally squinting at the yellow legal pad she’d pulled out of her purse. She had just put a bunch of bananas in a little plastic baggie and laid it in the buggy when she said, “So David can see the future.”

“Shh!” I hissed, glancing around us. This time of day, the Pig was mostly deserted, but I still couldn’t be too careful. “Aunt Jewel, that is a private topic.”

But she tsked at me and lifted her glasses to her nose, the sparkly chain winking in the fluorescent lights. Over the sound system, Whitney Houston wailed about finding the greatest love of all inside herself.

I trailed Aunt Jewel into the coffee and cereal aisle. “Yes,” I said as quietly as I could.

“Hmm.” Aunt Jewel picked up a can of Cream of Wheat. “How far into the future?”

I stopped, startled. Weirdly, I’d never thought of that before. It wasn’t like David was seeing spaceships or intergalactic wars. “I don’t know,” I told her. “We never tried that much, I guess.”

Aunt Jewel took that in with a little nod before adding a package of coffee to her groceries, along with some nondairy creamer. “Okay. Well, how often does he see the future? And is it only his future, or yours, or everyone in the whole wide world’s? Because it seems to me that that would be a lot going on in one brain. I know that Stark boy is bright, but I’m not sure anyone’s mind could handle all that information.”

“That’s exactly what I thought!” I exclaimed, our buggy squeaking to a halt. “But apparently me trying to keep him from seeing too much means that I’m controlling or whatever, and—”

I broke off, aware that Aunt Jewel was watching me. “Oh yeah,” I added, a little sheepishly. “I, uh, I may have done some things to be sure he couldn’t have very strong visions. But it’s only because I was trying to keep him safe, which is supposed to be the whole point of this thing.”

Sighing, Aunt Jewel wrapped her fingers around the edge of the buggy and tugged it out of my grip, wheeling it in front of her. As she took the handle and steered us down the Asian and ethnic food aisle (which contained some ramen and spaghetti sauce), she glanced over at me. “Don’t fret, honey. It seems like you and David have taken on more responsibility than most children should.”

“We’re not children,” I insisted, but Aunt Jewel only laughed.

“Of course you are. You’re barely seventeen, and you still have a whole other year of school to get through. That makes you a child as far as I’m concerned.”