[Part 2 — Simon]
He scrolled past it the first time. Or maybe he didn’t. Maybe he saw it, paused for a second, then kept scrolling, not realizing his body had flinched.
It took a second post to stop him. Not from Lance. From a news outlet.
“Teen’s Viral Tweet Sparks Theories on Premonitions, Grief, and Coincidence”
He clicked it. Watched the video with the volume low. Saw the screenshot. The timestamp. The dream.
Simon closed the tab.
He got up, rinsed his face. Looked in the mirror. His cheekbones still had a bit of color. That meant he was holding up okay, right?
He’d deleted his own post weeks ago. Just before it could become anything. A single line:
“Something’s coming.”
No likes. Not even a comment. Except his best friend who just replied, “Stop being dramatic lmao.”
That was before the train.
His parents had taken the late one. Coming back from visiting his aunt. Simon had offered to pick them up from the station. They told him to rest. He didn’t argue.
At 9:43 PM, he was watching something dumb on YouTube. At 9:47, his screen froze. Then the power flickered. A second later, his phone vibrated.
A train derailment. Breaking news. Unconfirmed injuries.
By 10:12, he knew.
He didn’t want to believe in premonitions. That was the thing. He hated the idea of signs and symbols and all that mystic crap. He believed in physics. Concrete things.
But what do you call it, then? The sudden, nameless anxiety that hovered over his neck all week before it happened? The urge to go to the station for no reason? The weird static feeling in his fingertips?
And now this boy—Lance, was it?—had written it out like a diary entry. With the exact time.
Simon didn’t like it. He didn’t like being reminded that he wasn’t special. Or worse, that maybe he was part of something he couldn’t explain.
He searched his old posts. Just in case. He had cleared most of them.
But in the archive, one survived. A close-up photo of a puddle reflecting the moon. The caption read:
“Would you know before it happens?”
Dated: two days before the accident.
He stared at it for a long time. Not sure if it meant anything. Not sure if he wanted it to.
He tapped out a message to his cousin. Deleted it.
Then, almost without thinking, he typed into the search bar:
“Lance dream tweet.”
He clicked on the original thread. Scanned the replies. Scanned again. Found the comment that said, “You’re not alone.”
He tapped the profile that posted it.
No photo. One post. A blurry sky. A shooting star.
It hit him like a cough he’d been holding in.
He’d seen that exact sky before.
He didn’t know when. But he had.