Behind the old gymnasium, where the kids who label themselves punks and delinquents have made their base, is a small pavilion that most students don't know exists. This pavilion houses an old, white, cast-iron table and a matching set of four chairs. It's quiet and enclosed, hidden behind crumbling brick walls that are covered in crawling ivy, in the shade and safety of an old oak tree that someone keeps trimmed. I have no idea why it's there, but it's the perfect place to eat lunch without everyone looking at me like I'm something that belongs on the plate rather than holding it.

That's not to say that the student body would want to eat me – and if they did, it certainly wouldn't be because I look like I'd be tasty – but if we were trapped in the school and cannibalism was our last resort, I'd be one of the first people to end up as dead meat.

Usually when I eat here, I eat alone. The time when I don't, it's because Ryo's come to scavenge some food from me Nine times out of ten, it's because he did something to annoy his mother the day before and she refused to pack him lunch. Today, however, the pavilion had two occupants when I arrived and neither of them was Ryo.

An usual occurrence, indeed.

The first looked up and smiled. 'Hi, Evelyn. Hope you don't mind us joining you today.'

If we were trapped in the school and cannibalism was our last resort, this would be one of the few people who wouldn't try to murder me.

There are very few genuinely nice people in the world and I’d always believed that Gwen Leganne was one of them. She treated everyone equally. Jocks. Geeks. Delinquents. Populars. Unpopulars. Even social outcasts like me. Blonde-haired, green-eyed and blessed with fine, fair features, she was the type of person who never spoke to anyone unless she had a smile. In fact, the only time I'd ever seen her without one was when I shook her hand in 7th grade and told her that she was going to die from heart failure in about fifty years time.

Twelve-year-old me wasn't very clever either.

To her credit, Gwen didn't react like most people did when my mouth bypassed my brain and blurted out their fate. She just blinked for a moment or two and then the smile was back up and she was telling me about some TV show her father watched that investigated unsolved murder mysteries. I was, and still am, not quite sure what to think.

Fortunately for me, Gwen didn't react like most people did when my mouth bypassed my brain and told them the bad news. She just blinked for a moment or two and then the smile was back up and she was telling me about some TV show her father watched that investigated unsolved murder mysteries.

I was, and still am, not quite sure what to think.

I wouldn't call us friends exactly but it was nice to have someone other than Ryo treating me like a person instead of a plague. Where everyone usually whined and kicked up a fuss, Gwen didn't seem to mind partnering me for school projects or activities, saving me time and time again from being shoved into a group with people who loathed me, or awkwardly paired up with the teacher. Admittedly, she never volunteered for the job, but I never took it personally. Gwen rarely put herself forward for anything, but she also never said no when people nominated her instead. Whether it be captaincy, student council representation – or looking after a certain red-headed transfer student named Ai.

I'm not sure if I believe in God, but I swear he has it out for me.

Moving my facial muscles was like trying to move a mountain range. I plastered on a smile and said, 'No, it's fine.'

There was an awkward thirty-second silence as I pulled out a chair and sat down. Of course, it was only thirty seconds so the awkwardness may have been something only I felt. I don't blurt out imminent death prophecies anymore, but I haven't quite worked out an alternative way to greet the soon-to-be-dead either. Instead I just... stared.

The next two minutes went by in silence.

Looking from me to Ai, then Ai to me, Gwen cleared her throat and took the initiative. 'Ai,' she said, speaking slowly, as all people seem to do when they encounter someone foreign, 'this is Ryo's friend, Evelyn. Evelyn, this is Ai. She's a new transfer student.'

I almost told her that we'd already met – if our brief run-in earlier even counted as meeting – but chances were that Ai wouldn't recognise me. She never looked me directly in the face and I doubt she'd have been able to identify me through my standard-issue black lace-ups. There was also the nagging feeling that if I opened my mouth, all that would come out would be: 'Hi, I'm Evelyn. You're going to get stabbed.' Chances were that at least one of them would run away screaming, so I kept my lips zipped and continued to force a smile.

It was starting to make my cheeks hurt.

Ai lowered her head, brown eyes vanishing behind her auburn hair. 'I apologise for bumping into you earlier, Eburin.'

In that moment, I realised three things:

One; she recognised me.

Two; Ms Ellery was a terrific exaggerator. Terrible English, my foot.

Three; being called Rin-chan was definitely not as bad as being called Eburin.

Ryo had obviously realised point number two and dropped his responsibilities on Gwen, either because he chickened out at the prospect of having to spend the day chaperoning a girl, or because he and his buddies had ditched class and gone off to waste the rest of their day hanging out at the arcade.

Regardless, it was a good thing I hadn't opened my mouth and blurted out my premonition. She would have been long gone before I got to the end. However, an apology required some form of acknowledgement, usually something like: 'no problem', so I bobbed my head and opened my mouth— then the words from earlier threatened to pop out, so I shoved a quarter of a sandwich in there to force them back down.

Three days, ten hours and forty-two minutes, said the countdown in my head. 

It always thinks I need reminding.

As unbelievable as it may seem, I am not crazy – at least not yet. The countdown is not a voice, nor is it a visible set of numbers flashing above the victim's head. I look at someone and I just know, like there's internal clock that resets itself whenever I look at someone whose death I've foreseen.

Sometimes I think it would be easier if it were a voice. At least then I wouldn't have to deal with the question of how to stop a man with a knife from killing the new transfer student in three days’ time all on my own. Unfortunately, the one relatively sane person I know who does have a voice in his head tells me that they never shut up. ‘Nothing better than your skull being private’ is what he likes to say. But that’s a story for another time.

Voice or not, morbid silver lining: if I know when someone near me is supposed to die, I rarely need a watch.

Engaged in an internal struggle to get my brain to cooperate with my mouth and produce something a normal person would say, five minutes went by and I completely missed what Gwen said next. You know that thing where you sort of stare off into space and just happen to be staring at someone? Yeah, I was doing that.

When I finally managed to dislodge myself from my own head, Gwen looked straight at me and said, ‘Right?’

All I could do was blink at her. Without consulting my brain, my mouth said, ‘Yes.’

‘Great!’ said Gwen, ecstatic. ‘We'll meet at the gates after the last bell.’

Okay, let’s be honest, 17-year-old me isn’t very clever either.

* * *

It turned out that Gwen, ever the Good Samaritan, wanted to show Ai around town: take her to the shopping strip a kilometre down the road and visit some nice shops and cafés, the cinema, and the bowling arcade – show her the places where all the other students liked to hang.

It was absolute torture.

Imagine you're walking down a crowded street. You take one step and someone jostles you. Suddenly you're wearing a blue dress and having tea with a white rabbit. Take another step and someone else knocks you. Now you're a princess, dancing at the ball with a handsome prince. Now take another step and – 

You get the idea. The only difference is that instead of scenes from kids’ fairy tales, I get personalised horror flicks. If Hell were a place designed specifically for each individual, mine would be an endless corridor packed from wall to wall with people that I couldn't get past without skin-to-skin contact.

Fortunately, it was a short tour and we didn't linger long. Gwen saw us off to the train station before heading back towards her house, leaving Ai and me standing on the platform in silence. 

I had no idea what to say. Communication, as you may have noticed, is not my forte. In the end, I resorted to doing what everyone does in those situations:

‘Soooo...’

Even before it came out of my mouth, I knew it sounded stupid. She stared at me blankly and I berated myself in silence. Then someone behind us called out her name.

‘Ai?’

It was only one syllable, but hearing it was like being struck over the head with a gong. The voice didn’t just stun me, as being whacked by a flat, metal object would; it made my very bones shake in fear. I’d heard it before, that low lilting tone…

Ai turned around and smiled. ‘Andrew.’

I also turned but did not smile. I'm about as good an actress as a miniature poodle wearing a tutu, and I certainly felt no need to fake a smile for a soon-to-be killer. 

No, for all I know, he already was a killer. Just because Ai's death was the only one I’d witnessed, didn't mean that he hadn't killed anyone before.

He looked like one of those actors in a bad romance movie, six-feet-tall in a black leather jacket and ripped jeans, with his blond hair carefully gelled into place, flashing a set of perfect pearly whites as he looked down upon his prey with nauseating fake adoration.

 Even without a premonition, I would have hated him.

Andrew.

I filed the name away in my head.

Staring at him was making my skin prickle. Everything about the situation just felt so... wrong. Fate didn't usually deliver stab-happy, murderous psychopaths to me on silver platters.

Well, I mean, it did – and quite often in fact, but not when I was actually looking for one. 

In retrospect, Fate working in my favour should have been the first sign that something was wrong. 

The voice that whispered ‘Save them,’ in my ear was definitely the second.

I didn't get a chance to see who it was. A hand shoved me in the back, sending me stumbling into the flood of people that had followed Andrew through the barriers. A guy in a black hoodie grabbed me by the shirt, helping me right myself before I could land flat on my face. Behind him was a group of elementary school kids. They came running in at top speed, the curly-haired boy at the head of the group not even looking where he was going.

He collided with us.

Instinctively, I grabbed the kid's arm, and the guy who caught me earlier grabbed me again. 

The world froze.

Falling.

He was falling. 

The kid was falling. The edge of the platform left his feet and he hung there, seemingly weightless. It was silent, almost tranquil…

Then a horn blasted, rails screeched, and a train smashed into his tiny, helpless body with all the weight of an elephant stampede.

The vision dissipated. Time started up again. We were falling - me, the guy who caught me, and the kid in my arms - physically. 

‘The 4:05 on Platform One has been delayed and will be arriving in two minutes.’

I landed on top of something with a thud. 

The something yelped in pain. ‘For the love of—’ My cushion pushed me off him. ‘Are you alright?’

 ‘Sorry!’ cried the little boy, scrambling to his feet. ‘I'm sorry!’

One minute, forty-seven seconds.

I wanted to throw up.

A hand shook my shoulder and eyes that were a mismatched brown and blue peered into my face. ‘Hey,’ said the guy in the hoodie, ‘are you alright?’

His voice snapped me back to reality. The countdown had started and what was I doing? Sitting on my ass. 

Visions involving kids are the worst. Visions involving kids that become reality are the worst of the worst. 

I grabbed his hand and nearly pulled him down with me in my haste to stand. The kid was nowhere to be seen.

One minute, twenty-nine seconds.

My heart was racing. My hands were shaking. All rationality left me as I shouted in my saviour’s face. ‘Where did he go?’

‘Where did who go?’

I shoved him aside. 

‘You're welcome!’ he yelled as I elbowed my way through the crowd.

They were gone. Gone! Did I have the wrong platform? No. It couldn’t be. It was definitely this one. It had to be this one. I would have seen if they were—

A horn blasted in the distance.

One minute.

I shoved people out of the way, using sheer willpower to suppress accidental visions, leaving a stream of angry, disgruntled rail patrons in my wake.

Then I spotted them, the kids. They were chasing each other again, dancing on the border of the yellow warning line just up ahead, maybe one hundred or one-fifty metres away with the boy with the curls in the lead. Yes—

Another blast of the horn.

Twenty-seven seconds.

The panic was starting to set in.

The fastest recorded time for a one hundred metre sprint is just over ten seconds. I had about twenty. I'm not an Olympian. I don't do track. I've never even tried track. But I'd be damned if I didn't try and make it in time.

I saw it as I ran towards them. The lights in the tunnel. The face of the train.

The kids were over the yellow line.

Fifteen seconds.

A guy stepped into my path. I crashed into him.

‘The hell—?’

‘Move!’

Twelve.

Left. Right. Left. Right.

Ten.

A stationmaster saw them.

‘Kids, get back!’

Eight.

A little girl screamed.

Five.

The boy tripped—

Four.

Teetered—

Three.

Pitched forward—

Two.

My shoes skidded—

One.

I reached out to grab him—

Zero.

The screech of brakes on rail pierced the air.