It starts three months ago, with a text.


Print out two copies of your English essay.


Kaito doesn’t recognize the number. His essay is due next week and he hasn’t even finished it yet. He deletes the text and goes to school.


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Dear Kaito, we haven’t met let but I already love you.


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Next week, three months ago, Kaito’s printer breaks. He manages to print the essay out on one of the school computers. During lunch, one of his friends spills an entire soda on his backpack, ruining the essay beyond repair. His English teacher doesn’t accept his excuses. He’ll turn it in late with half credit.


The next text: I told you so.


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Dear Kaito, last night I dreamed that we were dancing together. I didn’t know the song, but I can’t wait until I hear it next. It’s already my favorite.


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Ichirou never knew his father, and he never believed the stories of him either. It’s only when he meets beautiful Aphrodite of beautiful intuition that he begins to believe in the extraordinary.


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Bring an umbrella to school.


He listens on a whim. People give him puzzled looks, then envious ones, when a surprise storm rolls in that afternoon.


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What’s your name?


Call me the Oracle.


You sound so pretentious.


You should ask out Marissa Vargas today.


He gets viciously rejected by Marissa Vargas. Kaito learns not to insult the Oracle again.


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Ms. Dinunzio doesn’t show up for class one day, and they have a substitute for Chemistry.


Keep an eye on her.


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The first day Kaito doesn’t wake up to a text, he wakes up to a headline.


LOCAL HIGH SCHOOL TEACHER JOSIE DINUNZIO CHARGED WITH THE MURDER OF LONGTIME BOYFRIEND.


Kaito reaches for the remote, flinching from a shock of static electricity, and turns the TV off. He’s been ignoring the Oracle--no, Delphine, for the last week. His head hurts.


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Maybe it ends with a hit-and-run.


The Oracle tells him to cross the street and Kaito does. What reason would he have to doubt?


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Or maybe it starts in June 1964, when Carolyn meets Kaito Mizushima’s namesake, a handsome Japanese immigrant who can shoot lightning out of his fingertips.


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When Kaito is six years he goes missing from Mr. Hayes’ 1st grade class. The police only have to search for two hours before they find Kaito hand-in-hand with a 10 year old girl. She introduces herself calmly as Delphine. She apologizes and insists that she had to take Kaito, to protect him from the Bad Man.


They take them both to the police station. Kaito’s foster parents argue with Delphine’s mother.


She’s always been a little strange--


You think that excuses things--


We’re doing tests--


Why has she fixated on our son--


They thinks it’s Asperger’s--


It’s still kidnapping even if it’s by another kid--


Kaito’s foster parents move him to another school. A year later, Mr. Hayes is arrested for molesting several of his students.


Kaito dreams of the warmth of Delphine’s hand as she pulled him along streets every night until he forgets.


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Someone is pulling him along, but it isn’t Delphine. This woman is in her thirties, with long blonde hair and green eyes. She seems incredibly familiar, but Kaito can say for sure he has never seen her face before.


“Who are you?”


“Saoirse,” she pronounces it like ‘SEER-sha’.


“Where are we going?”


“I don’t know. It’s your mind, kid. Who was the cutie you were just with? Girlfriend?”


“No,” oh, “she’s my stalker.”


Saoirse stops to give him an interested look. “As much as I would like to follow that line of inquiry, we have more important things to be getting to. Do you want to wake up, Kaito?”


“I’m not sleeping.”


“That wasn’t what I was asking. Do you want to wake up?”


He must say yes, because he opens his eyes and sees Ms. Dinunzio leaning over him.


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The second time he wakes up its to his foster parents, his grandma Carolyn, and his doctor. His foster parents tell him they can’t wait to take him home. His grandma says she wants him to stay at her house. While they argue about this, the doctor tells him he sustained a hairline fracture in his skull, a serious concussion, and a dislocated shoulder.


Not bad, he thinks, until the doctor tells Kaito the concussion sent him into a three day coma.


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WHAT THE HELL


DID YOU JUST TRY TO KILL ME


I never would have done it if you were going to die. You’ll be fine in a couple of weeks.


It was necessary.


But I’m sorry.


Kaito?


Please respond.


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Kaito tells his foster parents about the texts. They are furious, then guilty. They unearth a twelve year old police report. Inside it are dozens of letter, all written in childish sprawl on pieces of pink, lined paper.


At the end of the file is a restraining order against SANNA, DELPHINE.


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Dear Kaito, I wrote you a lot of letters but this is the first I am sending to you. My name is Delphine Sanna and I am 10 years old. We are going to be best friends one day. Even though you are only 6 right now.


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What did you do to me?


Delphine responds with an address and a room number.


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He knocks and Ms. Dinunzio answers. The strange presence she’s had for the past three weeks is gone. She looks feels sounds tastes smells harried. Harried looks like a black sweater covered in white cat hair, feels like unglazed porcelain, sounds like nails on a chalkboard, tastes like fried eggs with a hard yolk, smells like an overheated hairdryer.


“I didn’t kill him,” she insists. “It was Saoirse. I let her in and she destroyed my life.”


Kaito listens, and Ms. Dinunzio laughs.


“You must think I’m crazy.”


Kaito let Saoirse in, and she saved his life. Kaito Mizushima II, like Kaito Mizushima I, can shoot lightning from his fingertips. Kaito Mizushima, like beautiful Aphrodite, has beautiful intuition. Kaito knows that to find answers, to find Delphine, he must first find Saoirse.

“Let me help you.”