I Felt It

When I was fourteen, I had a best friend named Boone Hicks. He was real sweet looking, with long blonde hair, Irish green eyes, and an elvish face. He was a little on the short side, only about five feet tall, and we hung out mostly indoors because he was so fair skinned. His parents didn’t like him too much, though, and he spent most of his time at my house, but I never minded it.

It was when his aunt announced the gender of her unborn baby that things started to get weird. “When the doctor told me, I was so excited,” His aunt Caroline said, rubbing her belly affectionately. “I just knew it was going to be a girl.” We were all at Boone’s house, sitting in the family room; he had invited me over to meet his aunt. Boone just kind of stared at her with his piercing green eyes and a blank expression.

“No, it’s going to be a boy.” He said, still giving Caroline that heavy stare. She gave him a questioning look.

“But the doctors said it was a girl.”

“I guess there was a mistake,” he said, his expression never changing. “It’s going to be a boy.”

His aunt stared back at him with a worried look. “Are you feeling okay, Boone? Why are you saying these things?”

“I felt it.” He said simply, shifting his eyes to the floor. His mother threw the book she had been reading earlier at him, hitting him in the chest. It fell to the floor, but he didn’t even look at it.

“Boone, hush up, you idiot! Quit trying to scare your aunt!”

“Hang on, Julie,” his aunt said, holding a hand up. “What else did you, uh… “Feel” about the baby?”

“Well, it’s a boy,” he said, causing his mother to roll her eyes. “a-and it’s going to be born a month early, January third at eleven thirty A.M to be exact.” He went into another stare, eyes back on his aunt. “You were thinking about naming your girl Addison, but you want to name your boy Aiden now.” His aunt went wide eyed.

“H-how did you know that?” She asked, furrowing her eyebrows at him. “I haven’t told anyone about that!”

“I felt it.”

“No!” She yelled, grabbing his shoulders. “How did you know that?”

“I told you, I felt it-”

“Quit saying that, you freak!”

“Hey!” I said, interfering the fit that she was about to throw. “It was probably just a coincidence that he guessed his name, I mean, how many choices are there, really? You said you wanted it’s name to start with A, right?” I asked, recalling something Boone had told me a couple weeks earlier. “Besides, you haven’t even figured out if he was right about the birthdate or gender. Everyone just needs to calm down.”

Caroline looked at me for moment, and I honestly thought she was about to slap me. She just stood up. “I’m leaving.” And she did just that.

“Boone, you screw up! Get out!” Mrs. Hicks yelled, shoving Boone and me out the front door. I decided to let Boone sleep over at my house that night.

“Dude, why’d you do that?” I asked him as we walked down the road, the sun setting in the distance. “I think that was a little much.”

“But Viktor,” he said quietly, sounding a little like he was about to cry. “I felt it.”

I felt shivers rack my spine at that moment, and I slept as far away as I could from Boone that night. A few months later, his aunt gave birth to a baby boy, one month early, on January third at eleven A.M, and she named him Aiden. I don’t think he ever saw his aunt Caroline again.

Months passed and we soon forgot about the scare Boone had given his aunt. We went on with our normal lives, hung out and played video games like old times. That was, until my accident.

I was walking home from school one day, alone because Boone was home with a cold. The school was only a couple blocks from my house, but I decided to stop by a gas station and get a Pepsi before heading home. Too do that, though, I had to cross the street. Keep in mind, I was fourteen. If I didn’t see a car passing straight in front of me, I was not going to wait before running across the street. I began jogging across the road without a second thought. All I heard was squealing tires and a crash, then nothing. When I came to, I was being wheeled into a hospital room and poked with needles.

I don’t know how long I had been in there when one of the doctors came into my room. “Excuse me, sir, but someone’s here to see you.”

I expected it to be my parents, but it was Boone who came through the door. He rushed to my side, tears in his eyes. His hands hovered over me, like he was scared if he touched me he would hurt me. He finally settled one on my forehead. “I knew I’d find you here,” he mumbled, lips trembling. “I felt it.”

I shivered at those words. I didn’t know what was going on with Boone, but it was scaring me a little. “Did you call my parents?”

“Yeah,” he said, sitting in one of the plastic chairs beside the hospital bed. “They’re on their way.”

“Boone,” I started, turning my head to look at him. I couldn’t move my left leg, and I had a killer headache. “What are these “feelings” you get?” I had to ask; it was eating at me.

“I don’t know,” he mumbled, playing with his shirt sleeves. “I’ll just be sitting there and all the sudden I know about something before it happens. Or before anyone knows about it.”

I looked at his Irish green eyes one more time. They looked far more frightened than I felt. “That’s… That’s really cool.”

He grinned at me, then my parents came in, bawling and yelling about how I should’ve watched for cars. I was put in a cast later that day, my left leg was declared broken, and I had a minor concussion.

It was a year later before Boone had anymore “feelings”, but his last one haunts me to this very day.

It was a perfectly normal day, just like any other, except for the fact that Boone had been exceptionally quiet at school. I asked him about it at lunch, but he shrugged me off saying he hadn’t got much sleep the night before. I wasn’t convinced, but I dropped it. Boone didn’t walk home with me that afternoon, but I didn’t run across the road again. I went home, did homework, ate dinner, and went to sleep like always.

I awoke to tapping on my window at what my clock said was two in the morning. I moaned, rubbing my eyes and rolling over to face the window. Boone stood outside, in his pajamas, motioning for me to come over. I sighed, falling out of bed and shuffling to the window. I unlatched it and yanked it open, popping my head out. “What is it? Shouldn’t you be in bed?”

“Come on,” he motioned for me to climb outside. I raised an eyebrow at him.

“What?”

“Shhhhh! Come out, we’re going to the police station.”

“What the heck are you talking about?” I asked, closing my eyes. I just wanted to slam the window in his face and go back to bed.

“Just trust me!” He gave me a pleading look and I grudgingly put on my shoes.

“Fine,” I snapped, climbing out of the window and hopping to the ground. “But if my parents find out, you’re dead.” Boone didn’t say anything, just began jogging towards the police station.

You should have seen the look on the police officer’s face when Boone asked him to do my finger prints. He looked at him like he had two heads, but took me into a room and did as Boone said. After I washed the ink off of my fingers, I came back into the front room where Boone was saying something to one of the officers. When I got closer, I heard him telling him to compare my fingerprints to the ones of a missing persons case from eleven years before. I stopped dead in my tracks. He had to be crazy.

I felt something like a weight drop in my stomach and I thought for a second I was going to be sick all over the police station floor. I started shaking, then I tore out of the door before they noticed I was listening. I left Boone at the police station that night, running all the way home. I climbed through my window, collapsed on my bed, and cried myself to sleep.

It was a few weeks later when my “parents” were sent to court, and then sentenced to prison for kidnapping. Apparently, my name wasn’t Viktor. It’s Garret, and I was taken from my parents when I was only four years old. The police found my real parents, who I met the day my “parents” went to prison. They were bawling and hugging me, saying they thought they’d never see me again. They told me I’d be moving with them several states away, back to my home in Montana. I’d be leaving Boone.

Our goodbyes were short, and they ended with a long hug and a few tears. I would never forget Boone Hicks and the impact he had on my life, and as I watched him waving goodbye to me when I boarded the plane to Montana with my real parents, I didn’t have any questions about how he knew I’d been a missing person’s case. I knew he felt it.