Midweek Excerpt

This week's excerpt comes from my current work in progress: PLATINUM DIARIES. This is also my NaNo project (or one of them...see here).
To give you a bit of background...
Sayra Nieves has the ability to see the furture through her dreams. Her dreams have always been typical teen angst type dreams and they have ALWAYS come true. One night, she dreams of the violent murder of a man she does not know and the scene below is of her telling her best friends about it.

Hope you like it!

~*~

As usual, Ivan arrived first. He looked a question at me, but I only shook my head, knowing it would be easier to tell them both at the same time. I didn’t think I could repeat it anyway. He sat beside me on the steps and took my chin in his long fingers—ideal for stroking the keys of a computer. His thumb ran over the crusted scrap on my chin and the welt on my cheek.

“You fall off your bike?”

I nodded, unable to go into detail about how I’d been nearly mowed down by Chaz’s car. A few minutes later, Penelope zipped into her parking spot and hopped out with her usual bubbling energy. Her smile fell away the moment she saw me.

“Sayra, please tell me you aren’t still moping over that parking space.” Then her eyes narrowed. “No, this isn’t about the spot.” She stooped in front of me. “What happened?”

With both of them there, I simply opened my diary and handed it to her. She stood as did Ivan, curving his long torso over her back. As if sensing the seriousness of what he was about to read, Ivan didn’t make his usual joke about hoping I’d dreamed up a girlfriend for him. They both scrunched up their faces and I realized how sloppy my writing must’ve looked. Short, choppy, scribbles made by a frightened hand, but even if I’d decided to write it over again, my hands were no less shaky.

Penelope gasped and a second later, so did Ivan. She flipped the page and Ivan snatched it back, scowling as he read the last few lines, lagging behind Penelope. The headache ratcheted up the back of my head and stuck behind my eyes. I didn’t want to talk about the dream, but I knew I had to. I couldn’t just pretend it never happened, no matter how hard I prayed.

“Maybe,” Penelope began, holding the book in her palm like it might explode,” maybe…it was just a nightmare.”

I shook my head.

Ivan sat beside me again. “Haven’t you ever had a dream that was just a dream?”

Again, I shook my head.

“Maybe this is the first,” he said hopefully.

“Yeah,” Penelope added.

They were trying to make me feel better, and I loved them for it, but there was no denying it. I dreamed that man’s murder and it was going to happen. The diary was snatched out of Penelope’s hand before any of us knew what happened.