He’d had the curse since 9th grade. Back in middle school, before everything went wrong, Ricky had actually been a bright, outgoing kid. He’d had many friends, and he had truly enjoyed life.

That was hard to believe now. Four years later, on a damp gloomy day in February, Ricky was an outcast in his school. His fellow seniors avoided and feared his creepy presence, as if he was a ghost. The annoying freshmen bees buzzing around, yelling and screaming in the hallways, stopped screeching when he was nearby. Even Lola, Conner, and Julie, who had been his best friends since elementary school, never talked to him anymore. But Ricky didn’t care. Nothing mattered to him now. After bearing the curse, things like “friends” and “school” seemed incredibly unimportant.

In 1st hour that day, he felt it. It was the familiar nauseating feeling of his curse about to come. Ricky grabbed the bathroom pass and stumbled his way to the boy’s bathroom.

After locking himself in a stall, he sank down to the floor. Ricky opened his mouth, letting out a silent scream, as his head felt like it was splitting open. No matter how many times he experienced this, he would never get used to it.

Next came the images. Countless images flashed through his mind. It was too fast for Ricky to decipher them all. They showed shadowy places reeking of death, children covering their eyes in horror, lifeless eyes staring blankly ahead… Ricky didn’t care about the images. He just wanted them to be over…

But one image made his heartbeat skip. It was him, Ricky Enderton, with an absolutely horrified look on his face.

And then it was over. That had been the last image. Ricky collapsed, breathing heavily. His face was chalky white.

He tried to calm down, and to convince himself that it was just his imagination that he thought he saw himself in one of his visions. But he felt it in his guts that it was, in fact, him. He couldn’t lie to himself. He was going to die. That’s what it meant, to see his own face in one of his images.

His curse was that he could see the deaths of people who are about to die unfairly. And the deaths would actually happen a few hours after he saw them. So, he could see the future. But it definitely isn’t as cool as it sounds.

Ricky got these visions at completely random moments, about random people he usually didn’t know. Some people died peacefully in their beds. Others died horrid deaths, so gruesome that they were what had morphed Ricky into a dark, antisocial boy in the last several years. But these people always were people who shouldn’t have died.

Sometimes, unfortunately, he had visions about people he knew. For example, in 10th grade, Ricky saw that his classmate Jackie was going to commit suicide, and in 11th grade, he saw that Amy from his band class was going to get run over by a truck. Both times, Ricky had desperately tried to stop the tragedies from happening. He’d tried to talk Jackie in to realizing that people loved him. Also, he’d tried to stall Amy after school so that she wouldn’t encounter the truck that will run her over. But both times, he had failed. They had died, and Ricky couldn’t stop that from happening. From these past experiences, he had learned that no one could overcome their fate.

Now, slumped down on the bathroom floor, tears dampened his face. He brushed them off angrily but more kept coming. Ricky didn’t think he would be so upset about death. He saw it happen all the time, thanks to his curse. Besides, he had nothing to lose from death. He didn’t care about anything in life. So why was he crying at the idea of dying?

A hesitant knock on the stall door jerked Ricky to his senses. Putting on his hard blank expression, he slammed open the door to find Conner standing there.

“What do you want?” Ricky said flatly with icy eyes.

Conner took a small step back. “I heard you crying,” he mumbled, avoiding his gaze.

Ricky was about to snap back a hurtful, sarcastic comment, but stopped. Conner was trembling. He was scared of him. Ricky remembered the good old days when they used to be best friends. They had hid nothing from each other. Why had things changed so much?

Something inside Ricky snapped. For the first time in 4 years, his hard cold mask cracked. Bursting in to tears again, he let all his frustration and grief out and told his old friend everything.

After hearing the story, Conner looked shocked. But, he’d always known that something terribly wrong had happened to Ricky to make their long friendship end, so he believed it. He took Ricky’s hand and pulled him out of the bathroom without a word.

Ricky just let himself be dragged out. Once they were both outside the boys’ bathroom, Conner texted Lola and Julie rapidly. Used to skipping class, the girls each made up excuses and lied to their teachers without blinking an eye, and quickly arrived.

After Conner re-explained the whole situation, Lola demanded that Ricky tell them every detail he could remember about the image that he saw himself in.
Ricky sighed. Why did they care so much? He’d ditched them as a friend, a long time ago. Shouldn’t they be mad at him for that? Besides, Ricky had already given up and accepted his destiny to die. He expressed these thoughts to Lola, Julie, and Conner.

“Don’t say things like that!” Julie accused, “That doesn’t sound like the Rikku we know. Try to remember. There has to be a clue!”

Ricky caught his breath. He remembered now, how people used to call him Rikku affectionately in middle school. This triggered something inside of him, and memories started flooding back to him. He had to concentrate to force his tears in.

Obediently, he closed his eyes and attempted to recall the image that had been burned to the inside of his eyelids only half an hour ago. It was hard though, since he’d only gotten a glimpse of it. His images came in bits and pieces, for only nanoseconds at a time. But finally he remembered what had been in the background, behind his own terrified face. In that dark room with him, there had been mops and buckets leaning against the wall.
“The janitor’s room!” Lola exclaimed, and then added quickly, “Sorry, go on.”

Ricky concentrated hard. Then his eyes shot open in shock as he recalled one key detail from the image.

“I was murdered.”

The group’s excited glint in their eyes dulled.

“How do you know?” Conner whispered.

Ricky closed his eyes again. His voice trembled slightly as he answered, “Well, I looked really scared. And, the murderer’s face was reflected on my eye. I know he was going to kill me; his eyes had that crazed look that murderers have. I’ve never seen that man before, though.”

It took a while for the information to sink in. Finally, Lola broke the silence.

“Rikku, we’re not just letting you get murdered. Let’s think of a plan.”

Ricky shook his head. “I appreciate you guys’ support, but it’s my fate.”

Conner stood up abruptly. His face was flushed, and his eyes had an angry glint in it, not unlike the murderer’s. “Fate, destiny, that’s all you talk about! Don’t give up without even trying!” Conner stuttered, and looked down, as if contemplating whether or not he should say something. Then, finally reaching his decision, he continued.
“You don’t know this, but I was there when you tried to convince Jack not to commit suicide in 10th grade. You told him that there were people who would be sad if he died. That goes for you, too…!”

Ricky gulped, then questioned, “Why do you care so much about me?”

To that, Lola scowled. “You might have thought that we weren’t your friends anymore, but you’ve always been our friend. We knew something was up when you stopped being your normal self, but we were afraid to approach you… Now we know what happened, and we’re gonna help you. We’re gonna make up for the four years we abandoned you.”

Just then, the PA system cackled on. “Rick Enderton, Rick Enderton. Please come down to the attendance office. Someone is here to see you. Rick Enderton, to the attendance office.”

The group’s expression turned cold. “The murderer?” Julie squeaked.

Ricky stood up stiffly. “It has to be this way,” he said. “Thanks for staying with me for the end.”

With that, he left.

The three was frozen with fear, until Julie snapped up, and dashed toward the janitor’s room without a word.

After a while, Lola and Conner followed.

When Julie arrived, she found the door wide open. Ricky was cowering in the far corner of the small room. When he caught sight of her, he gasped and urgently shook his head, trying to tell her to leave. Ignoring her friend’s desperate motions, Julie calmly took in the whole scene. Looming over Ricky was a slightly obese man with a moustache, and a shining bald spot in the shape of a perfect circle on top of his head. Too occupied with his evil task, he seemed like he hadn’t noticed Julie yet. Just as he was about to force a pearl white pill down Ricky’s throat, a tornado that was Lola and Conner came crashing in to the room, breathing hard.

Thrown off guard at the unexpected intruders, the man flinched and took a step back. In his shock, he dropped the deathly yet innocent-looking pill, and it rolled in to a dark corner. Using this moment as a chance, Julie tackled the man, as Lola and Conner rushed to help the shaken Ricky up. The man’s round stomach got in his way as he lost his balance, and both him and Julie crashed to the ground. The young girl winced as the man’s greasy hair got in her face, but she didn’t let go. Ricky watched all this in amazement and disbelief, as Conner promptly dialed 911. The man was arrested soon after for attempted murder.

Later that day, Ricky went home to find his mom waiting on the front porch looking pale. She had heard about the incident at school. Ricky quickly tried to comfort her, by telling her that today had been the best day that he’s had in 4 years, hanging out with Conner, Lola, and Julie.

“That’s nice, dear. You were still friends with them?” she replied with a shaky voice.

“Yeah, I always was.” Ricky answered.

After a few awkward minutes of both of them trying to think of what to say, his mom broke the silence by clearing her throat. With an unsteady voice, she asked her son if he wanted to tell her something.

Ricky took a deep breath and revealed everything. He’d never even told his own mother about his curse, but he felt ready now. Ricky also informed her about what had happened earlier that day. He had expected at least several exclamations of disbelief, but his mom didn’t look surprised at any of what he said.

“Ricky, I’m sorry I didn’t notice earlier that you had, what you call, the curse,” she sighed. “In 9th grade I knew something wrong had happened, and I kept asking you about it but you never answered… I should have known…” She sighed again, before telling the story.

“Very rarely, a member of the Enderton family gets this “curse”. Your great-great-great-grandfather was the last to have it before you.”

Ricky’s fingertips were ice cold as he listened to what his mom had to say.

“It’s not a curse, though, it’s a gift. That man who tried to kill you today, he was a son from the Latterell family. They’re the only ones, other than us, who know about this special power our family has, and they’re our old enemies. That family hates us because they know how valuable our power is, and they think it’s unfair that our family is the ones who have them. I’m so sorry you had to go through all that, dear.”

When Ricky protested that seeing people die isn’t a gift, his mom just nodded. “I know it can be hard. But it allows you to know the future. It lets you know who is about to die that shouldn’t die. And using that information, it’s possible for you to change the future for the better.”

That night in bed, Ricky stared at a dark stain on the ceiling of his bedroom, unable to fall asleep. He thought of what his mom had told him, that with practice, he would be able to control his power. And then, he would eventually train to be a hero, like his great-great-great-grandfather had been. He would change the world. He couldn’t wait. It would be a nice change after years of being an outcast.

With happy hopes for his own future, Ricky closed his eyes and let himself be swept out of consciousness.