“What’s your fault, hon?” Nora’s tone was gentle, understanding. Zadie artfully dodged her mother’s gaze as she shared the phrase that had entered her head moments before Clarence fell. That was the day she learned what a psychic was and that maybe she was one. It was also the day she decided that a psychic was something she’d rather not be.

Unfortunately for Zadie, she didn’t have much say in the matter. Like an outdoor cat, her premonitions came and went as they pleased, filling her head with strange and often cryptic phrases that she had no idea how to interpret. Thankfully, she never had visions. Her sight was her own. It was her mind that sometimes felt like it belonged to someone else.

If she felt one of these unwanted thoughts coming on, she’d stick her fingers in her ears, close her eyes, and hum a song. Sometimes that was enough to quiet her mind, at least for a while.

Her attitude shifted as she entered her teen years, however, and she taught herself how to harness her gift to her advantage. Her primary objective was no more complicated than that of other kids her age: to impress her friends. And it worked for the most part. When she won six free concert tickets from an unsuspecting DJ by predicting what song would come on the radio next, she invited the five cutest boys in her class to go with her. She got her first kiss that night.

But even as she cheated radio stations and dumped boys hours before they’d planned to dump her, she had one steadfast rule: never use her ability for anything of consequence. She preferred it that way. The last thing she wanted was to be that person in a disaster movie whom everyone thinks is crazy for predicting the apocalypse. Then when it turns out she was right all along, everyone looks to her to fix it. Zadie didn’t want that kind of responsibility. It was hard enough just getting to work on time every day without neighbors bugging you about when the rapture was coming.

Or at least that’s what she told herself to help her sleep at night. A half-baked practical argument was easier to stomach than the true reason she’d stopped using her gift completely: that one awful moment she’d spent a thousand wishes trying to undo.