Lance’s ability to sketch the future has brought him nothing but pain and misery all his life, because the only kind of future he can draw is that of death. One day, he meets Takashi Shirogane, older brother of mullet-wearing Keith Kogane opening a new bookstore across from Lance’s favourite coffee shop. Hours later, he sketches Shiro’s death. In three months, Lance has to somehow prevent what he drew from becoming reality and save Shiro’s life, deal with his family’s ostracizing of him for what he can do, struggle to figure out what he truly wants for himself, and juggle his budding feelings for Keith whilst keeping Shiro’s inevitable future a secret from Keith for fear of being rejected because of an ability he can’t control.
Just like his family blames him for his sister’s death.
Written 2018, last remembered edit 2018
A child’s scribbles aren’t supposed to mean as much as Lance’s did.
He was five. He didn’t know that there was something wrong with the slashes he made across the page – with the way the pen he gripped so hard that it left imprints in his palm and made whorls of black ink that seemed to come alive on the page – with the image that slowly started to form in what should have been a simple drawing that shouldn’t have meant anything. He didn’t know that other kids his age were drawing simpler things – with more or less the same finesse any five-year-old would possess – but none of them were drawing things like he was.
He thought he was the one who was normal for what he drew. He thought they were the odd ones. He thought he was special for how normal he was. He didn’t know that the truth was that yes, he was special – but they were the normal ones. They were the normal ones because they were the ones who weren’t drawing what he was.
He was special, but not because he was normal.
He didn’t figure it out until it was too late to do anything about it.
He remembers the day, a few years later, that he realized that there was something wrong with what he was drawing. Not just different, but sinfully wrong. He remembers that day with a painful clarity that has haunted him for most of his life.
It started out normal, all things considered. He was eight so he had to go to school while Luis the youngest went to kindergarten, Lance off to middle school, and Marco and his sister, Veronica, went to high school. He liked going to school, back then. He always came home having learnt something new. He liked learning new things. It made him feel smart, like Veronica.
Lance loves Veronica.
Lance is a middle child. Not quite old enough to have as much attention drawn to him because he has to be good and set a perfect example to the younger ones, not quite young enough to have as much attention naturally drawn to him just because he was the most recent born, the baby of the family. He minded it, sometimes, how he’d have to fight for that attention, craving it more than he got it.
Veronica was older than him, and she was a girl. By that reasoning, she didn’t need to spend as much time with him as she did. Even her friends, when they came over, would say how weird he was for clinging to Veronica, though she shut them down pretty fast.
He tried to stop after that so that Veronica wouldn’t get annoyed with him, but she pulled him aside and told him that she spent time with him because she wanted to. He was her baby brother, and she loved him very much. She loved all her siblings (even Marco, when he dunked a bucket of mud full of wriggly, alive, worms over her head one day as a prank), but she had a special bond with Lance. Maybe it was because they were both middle children. Maybe it was because she liked how genuinely interested he was in the things she did, with none of the pretentious patronization that usually comes with boys his age.
He didn’t care why she liked spending time with him. All he cared about was spending time with the big sister who liked being around him, who he didn’t have to raise his voice at for her to turn her head and see him.
That day, Lance went to school like normal. He sat through the classes like normal. Bored out of his mind in those classes he didn’t care about, sitting on the edge of his seat for those he did care for. He ate lunch in the cafeteria with his classmates, cracked jokes and laughed with the small band of boys he’d befriended. His loud personality, from coming from a loud house and needing to fight for every bit of attention he got in that house, naturally drew people to him. He was like a lighthouse beacon, or a flame, and they were the moths drawn to him.
It felt nice. He just wished it happened more often with his family than with strangers. It wasn’t like he was neglected, definitely not. He knew his parents loved him. It’s just – the attention needed to the attention received ratio was a little skewed in the wrong direction.