"Are you stupid?!" Shauna says as we walk out of the hospital. She and Rob had driven over after the nurse contacted them. Someone needed to pay for those stitches.

"No, I'm not stupid," I say, feeling saucier than I normally get. "I simply fell off of a bridge."

"And don't do it again! Your first morning in the agency and you snuck out and cut your arm open!"

"I'm sorry. I'll stay away from water from now on. For sure."

We drive home in silence. Inside the house, Caylen is sitting on the couch, playing with some sort of pocket knife. He looks up and smiles right as I walk in.

"Rob," Shauna says. "We still have time to go to the furniture store, right? You weren't planning anything else today, were you?"

"Uh, yeah," Rob answered. Something told me he didn't especially want to go to the furniture store.

"Lenny's bed is way too small. We really need to get a new one today." Shauna turns to me. "You want to come?"

"Yeah, I might as well. I've got nothing else to do. And I can't really leave the house without almost dying these days."

She turns and opens the door.

"Wait!" Rob calls. "We're going now?"

"Yes!"

Rob looks at me an exhausted - yet amused - expression. I turn to Caylen. "You coming?"

He nods and follows us out the door.

---------------------------------------------

I was excited to sit beside Lenny in the car, although Caylen was squishing me into his booster. I wanted Lenny to look up to me, as most children did. But every time I said something, he'd tell me to stop talking, and when I didn't, he'd pinch my arm. Meanwhile, Caylen was grilling me about how I cut my arm and why I was swimming in the first place.

The ride wasn't too enjoyable.

We march into the furniture store like a family of ducks, and Shauna immediately heads to the bed section, leaving me no time to stop and look at things. I saw some really awesome rugs and desk lamps, but she didn't even give them a passing glance. I haven't even been to a furniture store since I was thirteen. It's really quite exciting.

"Oh, look Rob!" Shauna points to a little wooden bed, and it looks like it'd match the furniture in our house. "This one is perfect!"

"No, it's not," Rob says. "It's the same size as the one he has now."

"But none of the others are even the same color."

"Let's get one unfinished and I can stain it."

"But they're not the same style!"

I look at Caylen, who rolls his eyes. At least I'm not the only one who finds this a little ridiculous.

A store worker walks by and Shauna calls, "Excuse me! Are there more bed frames like this that are bigger?"

The worker stops walking and looks at us. "We can check the storage room. Follow me."

We all follow him through the store into a very large room (with me trying hard to keep walking past the ceiling fan section). The floors in the storage room are cement, and there are giant boxes of unfinished wood piled against the walls. The worker takes us to some of the boxes, scans them, and points. "That one's a little bigger. Did you want it finished?"

"I can handle that," Rob says, clearly anxious to leave.

As they continue talking about the bed and prices and such, Caylen and I drift off and look at the different boxes in the room. I look up and see a man standing at the top of the pile of boxes; he holds a marker and a measuring tape. He's dressed like the store workers.... But...he looks...familiar.

"That looks dangerous," Caylen says to me, also looking up at the worker.

"Yes, it does. I'm not sure I'd want that job."

"Me neither."

"Do you know him?"

"That guy?"

"Yeah."

"No. Why would I?"

"I don't know. It's just-"

I don't get to finish my sentence. It's cut off by a large thud that echoes throughout the storage room, and Caylen's hands, which push me to the ground. My head hits the cement hard. When I look, there's dust clouding the air, leaving me coughing and blinking my eyes.

Once the dust settles, I see a crumpled cardboard box and the broken remains of a fancy bed frame. I look desperately for Caylen, and I find him laying under a splintered wood panel.

"Caylen!" I rush over to him and struggle to pull the wood off of him. He has a large bruise on his right cheekbone, and quite a bit of dust in his hair, but other than that, he looks okay.

I hold my hand out to help him up. "What just happened?!"

"That guy dropped his box," he says.

"What? He-" I look up. The worker is gone.

"Natalie!" Oh, crap. It's Shauna. "Caylen! What the heck did you guys just do?"

I hold my hands up. "I didn't do anything!" My head is throbbing from its impact with the floor. I'd rather not deal with this right now.

"No one else was here! It must have been you!"

"So I just magically dropped a heavy box from fifteen feet in the air? It was the worker!"

"I don't see anyone else, Natalie. Now I have to use Lenny's bed money to pay for this one that you broke. I ought to make you pay for it."

"I have no money." I used what I had to buy ice cream for Jill and Preston a million years ago.

The knife in the sidewalk...the motor boat...the force that pushed me from the bridge.... Are they connected?

Slow down, Natalie.

"Easy, Shauna," Rob says. "How could she have dropped that box from way up there?"

"I don't know! How does she just fall off of a bridge?"

I'm barely listening to them. My mind is buzzing. All of these weird things have started happening to me. It seemed to start when Stephano and Susan showed up....

It still doesn't make sense.

Shauna tells the store employee that she'll buy both of the beds, the broken one and Lenny's new one. Yet, Lenny still gives me dirty looks as if I affected his chances at getting a new one. She really shouldn't have had to pay for the broken one; it definitely wasn't my fault, or Caylen's.

I look at him. He's rubbing his face. When he sees me, he says, "C'mon, don't look so concerned!"

"What?"

Oh. My thoughts about the past week must've come through to my face. Honestly, I'm not that worried about Caylen at all.

Shauna makes us leave the store quickly, with the employee following awkwardly behind, pushing the new bed frame on a giant cart.

On the way home, Lenny stares at me with the stink eye, but all I can think is: What's next?