I Have a Feeling

calm before the storm
offered her money
a new world
filled them with pride
alarm sounds
gentle breeze

Sleeping with Joolz is like sleeping together with a tiger in a burlap sack. She flails around, kicking and scratching as if she is fighting for her life in her sleep; and this is the calm before the storm, school. I feel sick just thinking about other people, I let out a cantankerous scoff and kick Joolz.
“Why are you waking me up?” She says, yawning.
“Because it’s time to get up?” I say and do a scissor kick over her to get out of our bed which is up against a wall in the cramped space of the room we have shared all our lives. Then the alarm sounds.
“How did you know?” She asks, then just like that, and she has lost interest. Over the weekend we went to the mall. I knew Joolz would get something if we went there, but I didn’t know what. A talent scout offered her money to model, however, when we told mother she said we don’t take any money from no man.
Joolz takes after Mama and our grandmother, so having someone affirm what they knew, Joolz was beautiful, filled them with pride. I followed Joolz into the bathroom. A year younger I didn’t get any of that beauty. I got a Pandora’s box, a fat baby face that made me look like a wobble-head doll. Kinky thick hair, eczema and no sense of fashion either. I took a washrag and washed, while Joolz took a shower which took longer. I sprayed Gentle Breeze deodorant under my arms and vaselined my body from head to toe; my skin was scaly from eczema, dry, and itchy. If I could I’d walk around without skin. Some of the kids at school call me chameleon instead of Camile, but never in front of Joolz, her temper is worse than mine. At eleven, she body slammed a boy at the playground, who said I was too ugly to live.
“Joolz the water is about to turn cold you should finish now.” I yelled into the shower.
“You think so, just a few minutes more…Ahhhh the water is cold!” Joolz jumped out of the shower into the towel that I was holding out for her.
“You are the special one, sister, not me. Brr.” She said, falling into the towel.
“You’re shaking. It was just a guess,” I said, let’s go get some of those eggs and bacon Mama’s cooking. It smells delicious.” Joolz and I finished getting dressed, had breakfast and made it to the bus stop on time.
Joolz sat on a fire hydrant her backpack on the ground as I leaned against the bus stop with my backpack still strapped to my back. The bus pulled up, and I heard the air breaks squeal and for some reason my head filled with the buzzing of bees. I told Joolz not to get on. I had a funny feeling. We walked instead.
When we got to school, we heard that our school bus had gotten into an accident. No one knew why yet. Some kids were severely hurt and taken to the hospital. It was all everyone talked about all day. Joolz must have told everyone in school about my prediction because between classes people had started talking to me.
“You know Camile. It’s like you can see into the future,” Joolz said.
Berniece, a junior like my sister, said, “Tell me what I’m thinking?”
“You’re thinking how stupid you are. Maybe?” I slammed my locker door closed. I wasn’t used to being the center of positive attention, and I cringed.
“Well, I want to know if a certain boy likes me. Can you tell me his name?”
“Everyone knows you like Kenny, Berniece.” Joolz said, “Anyway, she doesn’t know everything.”
“No, I just sometimes feel funny,” I said, which was true. I didn’t know how it worked, but as more and more kids gathered around me at lunch to hear about how I predicted the bus crash, I leaned into the story adding more detail about my so-called feeling. I knew it was just a fluke, but I had discovered a new world, where people looked past my imperfection and really wanted to know me. I wasn’t sure I could see into the future. I just had feelings…like everybody else.