by Lisa Graff
I tilt back on my heels as I wait. Every once in a while, I check the time on my tablet, but I have at least an hour to get back to the tour bus before anyone misses me. Right now Aunt Nic will be deep in the audience, with Jax behind her trying to work the camera and the mics at once. I don’t feel bad about ditching the crew tonight. There’s nothing in this world that could make me help Aunt Nic ever again. I do feel a little bad that Jax is on probation—one more slip-up and he’s straight back to Florida—but I tug my coat around me tighter and try to think about all the other beings, alive and dead, I’m going to be helping instead.
Roger is nearly twenty minutes late. When I finally spot him up on the bluff overlooking the water, I wave him down.
“I told you to bring a camera,” I say as he joins me on the rocks.
“I must say, CJ,” Roger replies, looking around, “of all the locations I’ve been summoned for covert meetings, this is by far the”—he sticks his hands in his pockets—“outdoorsy-est.” Roger is not dressed for the beach. He’s wearing black jeans and a dark bomber jacket, with black boots too nice to get wet.
“I wanted to make sure you couldn’t pull any of your tricks,” I tell him. “And I knew you liked fish.”
He doesn’t even chuckle. “Why am I here, CJ?”
“Get a camera, and I’ll tell you. You said there was good money in it, right? If I say what I know about Aunt Nic? Well, I know she’s a liar. And I think everyone else should, too.”
Roger raises an eyebrow at me. “I convinced you?” he asks. “This afternoon you didn’t seem to hear a single word I was saying.”
I look off at the fat, fat moon before telling him, “I met my mom.” Then I glance back his way. “She’s not a spirit, like my aunt said. She’s been alive this whole time.”
Roger doesn’t move a muscle, not in his face or his body or anything. Just stands there on the rocks, watching me.
“I didn’t get why I was supposed to find you earlier,” I explain. “But I do now. Spirit wants me to help you, to expose Aunt Nic. All the signs line up, and everything works out perfectly.” I count off on my fingers. “My mom gets her kid back. I don’t have to go to boarding school. And Spirit gets to stop a total fraud from spreading lies about them.”
Roger only rubs the stubble on his chin. This afternoon he was practically begging for my help, so you’d think that now that I’m offering it he’d be jumping up and down. But all he finally says is, “You must be pretty mad at your aunt right now, huh?” Which seems like a fairly annoying grown-up thing to say.
I let out a puff of air so huge it fwoops up my hair. “You think I’m just some dumb kid, don’t you?” I ask. I reach up to readjust my headband.
“I think you believe a lot of things a dumb kid would believe,” Roger tells me, his voice flat.
“That was mean,” I answer.
“I thought you’d appreciate the truth. There are no such things as ‘spirits,’ CJ. ‘Far Away,’ ‘emotional energy’”—he puts air quotes around the words as he spits them out, like he can hardly stand the taste of them—“it’s all fairy tales.”
There are many things, I decide, to dislike about Roger Milmond. But probably the biggest one is the smug look he gets on his face when he’s sure he’s right. Like he’s so sorry you have to be you and not him.
“Just because you don’t believe in Spirit,” I tell him, “doesn’t make you smarter than me.”
He looks out at the ocean and shakes his head slowly, exhausted from talking to me. “CJ, you know your aunt’s a fraud. You said as much. So how can you think for a second that any other medium isn’t? That there are any ‘spirits’ there to talk to in the first place?”
“Because I know.” He wants the truth? That’s it. “I’ve paid attention and I’ve seen the signs, things that just don’t make sense otherwise. Spirit is there, whether you think they are or not.”
“They’re not,” Roger says. “The Spirit world is an illusion, like a magician’s trick onstage. And every medium is a liar, just like your aunt. It’s that simple.”
But here’s what I know. Roger Milmond is standing on a craggy beach, on a chilly December evening, arguing with a twelve-year-old. “If it was that simple,” I reply, “then you wouldn’t need my help to prove it.”
And for the first time all evening, Roger cracks a smile. “Well,” he says, “you have me there.”
“I’m ready for my interview anytime,” I tell him. “And you better’ve been serious about the money.”
He squints at me then. I think he’s trying to figure me out. “There’s money in a big interview, sure,” he says. “But no one will hear what you’re telling them unless they have a good reason to.”
“So,” I say, “get their attention first. Isn’t that what you’re good at? Fancy tricks? Fish tank walls and reappearing hot chocolate and octopus messages? Get people to listen, and then I’ll tell them why they should.”
Roger is giving me a look like I’m a cute puppy he found in a pet store window. “CJ,” he says slowly, “when you came to me earlier, I told you everything I knew about your aunt. I presented you with scads of evidence about her lies. I could not have been more clear. And yet . . .” He stops, like he’s waiting for me to finish the thought.
“I didn’t believe you,” I say.
“Bingo!” He tosses his hands in the air. “You didn’t believe me because it was easier not to. You didn’t believe me until you were shown something so undeniably true that you had no choice but to believe me. And whether I like it or not, that’s human nature. This world would be a much better place if we were all purely rational creatures, but we’re not. We’re emotional. So we go along believing whatever suits us, until that belief runs us smack into a brick wall, and then we face the truth. What you made me realize today, CJ—and I guess it’s my own brick wall I’ve been ignoring—is that if I want to convince people that your aunt uses cold reading to trick them, then I’ll need to prove to every single one of them, without a shadow of a doubt, that she was lying directly to them. And that’s just never going to happen.”
The tide has been rising while we’ve been talking, and the rocks we’re standing on are starting to get damp. I bend down, thinking I catch sight of something, a bit of movement. A hermit crab. I pluck it up by the shell.
“So thanks for the offer, CJ,” Roger goes on, “but I think we truth-tellers can count this one as a loss.” He glances back toward the parking lot. “Let me call you a cab, get you back to the theater.”
“No,” I say. And I feel calm. Because I know this is not how this ends. This is not what Spirit wants from either of us.
“No?”
I study the hermit crab. His tiny claws are flicking in and out of his shell, poking at the air. He’s wondering, I bet, where he is, and why his world has changed so suddenly, and when it will all get back to normal.
I set the crab back down on the rocks, and he scuttles off to safety.
“I think you’re right you can’t prove Aunt Nic does cold reading,” I tell Roger. I tug on the strap of my messenger bag. “But you’re wrong that we can’t prove anything.”
And Roger just stands there, rubbing his chin, like Go on.
“What’s that other kind of trick you were talking about,” I ask, “back at the mansion? Where mediums dig up information about people beforehand?”
“Hot reading,” Roger replies. “Although I believe I explained to you that it’s definitely not what your aunt is doing.”
I raise an eyebrow. “But her audience doesn’t know that, do they?” And when Roger’s eyes go wide, I unhook the latch on my messenger bag and slip out my tablet. “You told me all you’d need was somebody’s email address, right, and then you could find out anything you wanted about them?”
“CJ,” Roger says. “I’m . . . surprised.” His hands are frozen in the air in f
ront of him, like he wants to take the tablet but can’t quite make himself grab it.
He also looks like he’s deciding I might not be as dumb as he thought.
“You want the email addresses or not?” I ask.
He inches his fingers closer to the tablet. “Are you sure you want to prove that your aunt’s been lying”—he picks over his words carefully—“by telling another lie?”
I look to the rocks, where the hermit crab found the place he was meant to be.
“If you see someone running straight for a brick wall,” I tell Roger, “does it matter how you warn them?”
Roger takes the tablet.
* * *
• • •
When I wake up the next morning in the Oceanside Performing Arts Center parking lot, I hear the twittering of birds outside my loft window. I don’t come down for breakfast with Aunt Nic, even though the coffee smells good, way better than Meg’s. I don’t ask to visit Jax at the hotel where he’s staying with Oscar, because I don’t care how the show went last night without me, or if Jax is still on probation, or if he’s booked on the next flight back to Miami. Jax can look after himself. I don’t come down till Aunt Nic is in the shower. That’s when I snatch her phone from where it’s charging on the counter and make two calls.
The first is to Roger, who assures me his crew of magicians has everything under control to capture the audience’s attention at tonight’s show. “All you have to do,” he tells me, “is be on time for your interview tomorrow morning at the Cable 9 studios. Think you can do that? Explain to the nice lady interviewer how you discovered your aunt was using her client’s email addresses to learn the intimate details of their lives. She’ll hand you a big juicy check afterward.”
“Of course I can do that,” I tell him. “It was my idea.”
I glance across the parking lot to where Jax’s hotel looms in the distance. I know what he’d say if he knew what I was doing. But I also know that sometimes, Jax is wrong.
Next I call my mom, nervous bubbles fizzing inside me as I wait for her to pick up.
“Nic?” she answers. “What do you want?”
“Hi,” I say extra softly, even though the shower is still running so there’s no way Aunt Nic can hear. “It’s me. Uh, CJ.”
“Darling!” My mom’s voice softens in an instant. “How are you?” But then, before I can answer, her voice goes all worried. “Don’t tell me you’re canceling on me tonight? I was so looking forward to seeing you again!”
“Oh,” I say. “No. Nothing like that. Actually. I wanted to know . . . Can you come earlier? At six forty-five, right before the show? I can wait outside the theater. It’ll just be me, I . . .” My words are tumbling out like water, but I still haven’t gotten to the important part. “I want to come live with you,” I say at last. And then all the words I was holding back gush out at once. “I know you were worried, because kids are expensive, but I can pay for everything myself, I promise. I’m about to get a bunch of money, so you don’t have to worry about that anymore.” When I stop talking, that’s when my mom will respond. And I think maybe I’m not ready to hear what she has to say. Not quite yet. “I think it would be really great to live with you. I mean, that’s what Spirit wants me to do anyway, and they kind of know everything, but I know I didn’t talk to you about it before, and I know it’s sort of a surprise and everything, but I was sort of hoping that—”
“CJ,” my mom cuts me off.
Only she doesn’t exactly say anything else.
“Um, yeah?” I ask after a too-long moment.
When she does finally say what she does next, I am filled with more bubbles of joy than I ever knew existed.
“You know I would be crazy not to want to spend every second with you, beautiful girl.” That’s what she says.
“Yeah?” I squeak. Because I need to make sure it’s true.
“CJ,” she tells me, “if you want to come live here, I’ll throw you a party. Assuming . . . You sure you want to live with me? I do tend to hog the bathroom.”
I laugh, because I have too many bubbles in me not to. “Positive,” I tell her. Then, because I hear the shower shut off in the bathroom: “Six forty-five tonight, right?”
“Six forty-five,” she confirms. “You got it, kid.”
“Bye, Mom.”
And I can hear the smile in her voice when she says, “‘Mom.’ I like the sound of that.”
I’m back in my loft before Aunt Nic opens the bathroom door. And when she asks me if I’m sure everything’s okay, I don’t even have to lie.
“Everything is wonderful,” I tell her.
FOURTEEN
I DON’T KNOW what kind of car my mom drives, so every vehicle that slows down near the entrance of the theater parking lot makes all the bubbles inside me rise up to my throat. I swallow them down again after the red Mustang pulls back onto the street, using the parking lot to make a U-turn.
I can’t check the time, since I gave my tablet to Roger, but it feels like I’ve been standing here for eons. The sky is dark. The air is cold. My shoulders are already achy from the weight of my messenger bag and backpack together—I packed my mom’s orange box of artwork, and all the clothes I could fit. Aunt Nic can ship the rest of my stuff later. I stick my hands in my coat pockets for warmth, and the knuckles of my right hand knock against the cement mushroom cap. Another car slows near the entrance, then speeds off.
Where is she?
I wonder what sort of show-stopping reveal Roger has planned for this evening, and whether it’s already begun. I wonder if Aunt Nic will be mad or sad or guilty once she knows I helped ruin her career. I wonder if she’ll ever try to talk to me again.
I wait and wait, but no cars turn into the parking lot.
The theater lobby is warm and bright when I step inside, and empty, too—except for the woman in the box office, who is very friendly. “You’re Monica Ames’s niece, right?” she asks me, a big smile on her face.
Behind the theater doors at the far end of the lobby, I hear the muffled rumble of Aunt Nic’s voice. “Yeah,” I say. “Can I use your phone?”
“I just love your aunt,” the woman tells me as she ushers me inside the box office. “She’s amazing.”
I memorized my mom’s number as soon as she gave it to me yesterday. I memorized her address, too, so I know the theater’s only a short drive away. She should be here by now.
The phone rings once. Then twice. Three times.
Six.
“You’ve reached the one and only James Darek,” her voice mail picks up. “Leave your message at the beep, and I’ll think about calling you back!”
“Mom?” I say to the recording. “It’s me. CJ. You probably didn’t answer your phone because you’re driving here. Aunt Nic never picks up when she’s driving.” I hear a roar of laughter from inside the theater, then applause. “I bet traffic’s pretty bad. I was just checking that you’re okay, because you’re late.” Spirit wouldn’t let anything happen to her, not after all this. “I mean, not too late. It’s fine. Only.” The woman beside me is doing a terrible job pretending not to listen. “It’s fine.” I make my voice as chipper as I can. “Okay, great, see you soon!”
I hang up the phone.
“I thought your mom died when you were a baby,” the box office woman says as she takes back her phone.
“Nope,” I reply.
Her eyebrows shoot up on her forehead.
“If you think that’s shocking,” I tell her, “then you’ll definitely want to watch the news tomorrow morning. Cable 9.”
I should wait outside, but it’s cold. More laughter trickles in from the audience.
What is Roger waiting for?
I pick my way across the lobby and pull open the heavy door to the theater. The houselights are down on the audience, but the stage is bright, with Oscar’s
spotlight trained on Aunt Nic in her lime-green tracksuit. Jax is probably freaking out backstage, with only a few minutes left before he joins her down on the floor.
“And so your loved ones are gonna tell me things,” Aunt Nic is explaining to the crowd, “and I’m gonna pass those words on to you, exactly how I hear them. Sometimes what they say won’t make a whole lotta sense to me, so you might have to help me out a little.” I’ve heard this speech a thousand times before. Why did I never question if any of it was true? “And just so you know, these spirits have minds of their own. Sometimes you wanna talk about Dad’s will, but all he wants to talk about is his azalea bushes. So don’t get mad at me if he won’t shut up about gardening. I swear I find flowers just as boring as you do.” That last bit gets a big laugh.
The bubbles inside me are bitter like poison. All these words I knew so well that always seemed silly or interesting or insignificant—now they just seem mean. Like my aunt carefully selected every single one so she could make her audience believe exactly what she wanted.
“Psst!” someone hisses at me. I look over, and there’s a tech operator leaning his head out of the booth, his annoyed expression clearly saying, Close that door already!
My hand is still propping open the lobby door, letting in a sliver of light. I should leave. My mom will be here any second.
“Who’s ready to talk to their loved ones?” Aunt Nic calls from the stage. The audience cheers wildly. The tech guy glares at me.
I step deeper into the audience, letting the door close behind me.
It doesn’t happen right away. First, Aunt Nic reads for a couple who lost a close friend. Then she moves on to a high school teacher whose mother died when she was a kid. The whole time, Jax is right behind her, filming and swapping mics and actually doing a pretty decent job. He doesn’t have any free hands to scratch his arm with, but from where I stand at the back of the theater, he doesn’t look like he wants to.