“Oh, no,” I groaned when the mechanic pulled up the garage door and revealed my very totaled car.

Charlie just shook his head disdainfully as the man began running through a list he had on his clipboard. We already knew it would cost a ridiculous amount to fix it. The figures at the bottom of the estimation the mechanic had handed Charlie only confirmed that we might as well start peddling on street corners. I grimaced as Charlie quickly scribbled a check. “This should cover it,” he muttered and thrust it at the mechanic.

“Thanks,” the man said with a nod, “I’ll call you guys with an update in a few days. Have a nice day.”

As the mechanic shuffled away to run the transaction over in his office inside the garage, Charlie eyed me reproachfully. “Grounded,” he stated simply before turning on his heel back toward his police cruiser. I sighed with one last scornful look at my wrecked truck before turning to trudge a few steps behind him.

I kept silent as we drove down the gravelly main road heading to our house, my mind preoccupied with thoughts of my book and my recent half-dreams. I was still befuddled as to what they meant and I was troubled by the notion that they were bound to recur in real life – the fact that I might not realize when they do was irritating. But I didn’t really know what I wanted anymore, which was why my half-dreams probably occurred so frequently now. Because apparently, they did.

Maybe I would just have to trust my subconscious for the time being, considering it had a new kind of control over my future that only appeared to grow stronger with every half-dream more vivid than the last. From what knowledge I’ve gathered from the book and my experiences with the dreams themselves, they seemed to only occur whenever I wished something without realizing it, and I spent enough energy dwelling on that wish. So until I could figure out how to manipulate these precognitions to my advantage, I would just have to hope that my constantly changing fate would eventually lead me down the right path.

I only bothered to look at the road as we drove along when I felt the ground’s texture change under the tires. I looked up to see Charlie had taken a different turn that did not lead in the direction of our house. We were now slowly driving down a heavily wooded dirt road. I turned to glance at Charlie questioningly. He caught my look and shrugged innocently. “I’m thirsty.”