The Cost of Knowing

Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of self-harm, suicide, sexual assault, homicide, gun violence, deaths of children, deaths of parents, and racism.

Sixteen-year-old Alex Rufus sees the future every time his palms touch a person or an object. He usually ends the visions as soon as they begin, but he can choose to watch them play out. Alex’s visions began when he was 12 and woke up in the hospital after the accident that killed his parents. Alex works at an ice cream shop called Scoop’s, and he has a vision that the shop will close in two years. He doesn’t tell the owner because, he thinks, he’s “tried to alter the future too many times to think it’ll work anymore” (5). When he made previous attempts to stop what he saw in his visions, people sometimes thought he caused whatever he was trying to prevent. To avoid that embarrassment, he resigns himself to letting fate run its course. The shop’s owner, Scoop, tells Alex that he needs to work the front of the store, which is “an anxiety minefield” for the teenager because of the constant flurry of visions that comes with touching the register, sample spoons, and other objects (7).