by Marissa Lete
Inside, Mom’s voice rings out from the past, though she’s not even home yet today. “No, no, we need to flip it on its side! David—”
“Hold on, it’s almost through—” Dad’s echo grunts in reply.
“Wait, stop, you’re scratching the wall!”
Then there’s a scuffling of something, in fact, scraping against the wall, followed by a thud.
“I’m going to get the movie set up in your room, you get the snacks?” Grace tells me after setting her bag down and taking her shoes off. She doesn’t wait for my reply before darting up the stairs.
“Sounds like a plan,” I call to her, then watch her go, my focus going back to the abundance of echoes in the entranceway.
Dad had apparently believed that he could squeeze the couch through the narrow entranceway into the living room at the back of the house, and had, in the process, left several scratches on the walls. I remember those scratches, which Mom had demanded we paint over not a week after moving in.
Attempting to tune out the noise, I start towards the kitchen, imagining the snacks I can grab. But then the doorbell rings, causing me to pause mid-stride.
“Laura! Can you get that please?” Mom’s echo calls out from the living room. A moment later, footsteps appear on the staircase, making their way down to the door. I hesitate in the entranceway, trying to decide if I should tune out the noise or follow the echoes. I don’t remember who our first visitor at this house was, so my curiosity gets the best of me and I walk over to the door.
I hear it creak open, then the sound of my own voice greeting whoever is at the door. “Hello?”
“Hey there!” a woman’s voice answers jubilantly.
“Who is it?” Mom’s echo appears in the hallway, her footsteps thudding toward the door.
“Hi! My name is Annie, and this is my son, Maverick. We’re your new neighbors!” the woman says, but her voice doesn’t sound familiar.
“Oh hello! It’s so nice to meet you! Which neighbors are you?” Mom’s voice replies.
“Across the street and to the left, the one with the yellow flowers in front,” Annie’s echo answers, and I furrow my brows at the statement. Hadn’t that house been abandoned since before we moved in? I rack my brain, trying to remember. Our neighbor Kate and her two poodles live directly across from us, and an old man named Riko lives to the right of her. But I don’t remember anyone living to the left.
“Well, it’s so nice to meet you! You can come on in if you’d like, but it’s a little messy still. We’re just barely getting our furniture moved in,” Mom’s echo tells the new neighbors.
“Oh, no, we don’t want to intrude! But we did want to bring you this,” Annie replies, and then I hear the shuffling of something across hands.
“Wow, thank you so much! This vase is gorgeous.” Flowers, then. I don’t remember our neighbors bringing us flowers when we moved in—or anyone bringing us anything, for that matter. But maybe I’d just forgotten about it?
“Don’t be fooled, it’s only some fancy paint, not real stained glass,” Annie laughs.
“Well, it’s beautiful all the same!”
“I’m glad—” Annie begins, but gets cut off by the sound of Dad yelping loudly from the living room across the house, followed by an assurance that he was, in fact, okay.
“Oh no! I’m so sorry, Annie. That’s my husband, David. We’re having some… trouble getting our furniture moved into the house.” Mom tells her with a laugh.
“Don’t worry about it! Is it just the three of you? Could you use any help?”
“No, I couldn’t ask that of you!”
“Nonsense!” Annie insists. “I might not be able to help with the heavy lifting, but I can bring in some smaller boxes and things. And I’ve got a very capable seventeen-year-old boy here who’d be glad to help move some of the heavier stuff, right Maverick?”
“Sure, what do you need?” a male voice replies from next to Annie’s on the porch.
Mom, sounding like she doesn’t want to ask so much of a couple of strangers but also like she’s frazzled enough to do it anyways, replies, “Alright, then. Come on in, I need to go check on David to make sure he didn’t seriously injure himself.”
Mom’s footsteps clatter down the entranceway towards the living room, followed by another, softer set of footsteps. Two pairs, however, linger by the door, trailing slowly behind.
“I’m Maverick,” the guy’s voice says, and though I still don’t remember who he is or what he might look like, I can distinctly hear the smile in it.
“I heard,” comes the sound of my voice, then a bit of an awkward pause. “I’m Laura.”
“Laura,” Maverick’s echo repeats softly, like he’s tasting the name in his mouth for the first time, trying to decide if he likes it. “It’s nice to meet you—”
“Laura?” Grace’s voice rings out from the top of the stairs, dragging my focus from the echoes. “Are you coming with those snacks, or what?”
My thoughts scatter, flashes of questions and confusion. Who were these people, claiming to be our neighbors in an echo of the past that I don’t remember? Sure, I might not remember every moment of the day we moved in exactly, but wouldn’t I have recalled something about our neighbors stopping by and offering to help us move our stuff in?
“Laura, are you alive?” Grace’s voice grows louder, halting any further thoughts in my mind.
“Sorry, I just forgot something in the car!” I call back to Grace.
Apparently, what I really forgot about was meeting Annie and Maverick from across the street last year.
Chapter 2
At the same time the popcorn starts popping in the microwave, the sound of the intro music to a movie floats down the stairs from my room. Strangely, though, I find myself attempting to tune out the present noise and focus on the past. Normally, it’s the other way around.
But even as I stand in the kitchen, listening to the echoes happening in the adjacent living room, I don’t catch anything that gives away more information about the neighbors I don’t remember meeting. It’s just Mom explaining where she wanted the couch moved, and then the sounds of people moving it. The front door opens and closes a few times, too, but I don’t hear any more talking.
By the time the popcorn is done, I’m getting antsy. These neighbors—the ones who claimed to live in the house that no one lives in—had helped my family move our stuff in, and yet, I can’t seem to picture their faces, or recall meeting them at all. Would I have remembered them, though? Maybe because I never saw them again, I just forgot about them.
But still, I find myself wanting to listen to the echoes downstairs, wanting to know more about Annie and Maverick.
“Grace?” I call up the stairs.
The movie pauses. “I’ll take some kettle corn if you have it,” she calls back to me.
“Actually, I…” I hesitate, wondering if Grace will think it’s weird for me to ask this, but then I do it anyway. “I was wondering if you wanted to watch the movie downstairs instead?”
There’s a pause, and then, “I guess so. If you want to?”
Sighing in relief, I reply, “It’s a bigger screen, so it might be better.”
“I’ll bring the movie down, then!”
Grateful, I head back to the kitchen, where the popcorn has finished popping in the microwave.
“So where are y’all from? What brings you to Shorewick?” Annie’s voice from behind me almost startles me; I hadn’t heard her echo come into the kitchen.
“Pendleton! We just needed a change, I guess. Got tired of the big city,” Mom’s echo responds from the dining room.
“Well, you certainly got one! That is quite the change in scenery, I bet!”
“It really is. Have you—” Mom’s voice begins, but then Grace enters the room and I force myself to snap back into the present.
“This is what I chose,” Grace holds up a DVD case of the movie she chose, and I half-heartedly pretend to look at it while foc
using back on the echoes.
“We moved from another small town not too far from here, right after Maverick turned eleven, and we’ve been here ever since.” Annie’s echo answers.
But then there’s a scoff from across the living room. “Which is far too long, if you ask me,” Maverick adds.
“Why is that? Are the schools okay?” Mom’s voice becomes instantly etched with concern.
“Excuse me?” Grace says, slightly annoyed. I snap my head around to where she’s standing by the microwave. “I thought I asked for kettle corn.”
“Oh, sorry,” I hurry towards her, reaching for the bag, but she pulls it just out of reach, grinning.
“I’m just kidding, this is fine, honestly.” Grace snatches the movie from my hands and goes over to the living room, turning on the TV. “But you better pop another, because I’m definitely going to eat this entire bag.”
I roll my eyes and sigh, glad that she’s preoccupied for a minute so I can keep listening to the echoes. I grab another bag of popcorn from the cupboard and put it in the microwave, using the two and a half minutes I have to stand there, listening.
“—though Maverick only went there for two years before he started the early college program. But, I assure you, St. Martin is a great school, and Laura will be just fine,” Annie finishes saying. I try to fill in the gaps of the conversation, hating the fact that I keep getting distracted from it, but hating that I don’t remember any of it even more.
“Well, that’s good to hear. What’s wrong with Shorewick, then?” Mom’s echo is clearly relieved, but still contains a bit of hesitancy.
“Nothing—” Annie begins.
“It’s just—” Maverick starts at the same time. “It’s boring,” he continues when his mom pauses, “Small. Too quiet.”
Mom’s laughter fills the air. “I think quiet is exactly what we were looking for.”
Annie chuckles, too. “Then you’ll love it here. Don’t mind Maverick, he’s just tired of living in this town where everybody knows everybody. We’re grateful for some fresh faces when we see them!”
In the living room, the movie starts up again.
“I know we’ve seen this one a thousand times, but I still love watching Marcy and Dante’s playful banter every time,” Grace comments, shoving a handful of popcorn into her mouth.
“So Laura, you’re a senior, then?” Annie’s echo asks.
“Junior, actually,” my echo replies.
“My condolences,” Maverick’s smooth voice says, halfway into the kitchen now. The smile I’d heard before is back, seeping between the words. “I can’t imagine the torture of having almost two years left of high school.”
“Don’t remind me,” comes my reply. It’s a strange feeling, hearing myself take part in a conversation that I don’t remember having. As if I’m listening to an entirely different person in an entirely different life, and yet, we share the same voice and house and family. Like a parallel universe, shifting into mine for a small moment.
“Are you okay?” Grace’s fingers snap in front of my face, causing me to jump.
I shake my head, feeling heat blooming across my cheeks. “Yeah, I’m fine. Sorry.”
“You’ve just been standing there, staring at the bag of popcorn in your hands as if it was a long-lost lover you’ve finally been reunited with,” she chuckles.
“Sorry, I just got lost in thought,” I tell her, turning to the empty bowl on the counter.
Grace snatches the bag of popcorn out of my hands, then opens the microwave. “I guarantee that the reunion with this lover of yours will be much better after the bag has been popped.”
I let out a nervous laugh, closing my eyes for a few seconds to regain my bearings. I can’t keep doing this—getting so lost in the noise of the past that I forget the present. It’s already hard enough to act like a normal teenager while the echoes are always surrounding me. I’ve used every excuse in the book to get out of going to concerts, movies, dances, and other loud places with Grace. If I can’t even act normal with her in my own house, then I’ll never be able to carry out a normal life and go to college and fit in with society. I have to act normal if I want to be normal.
So when the microwave beeps, I pour my popcorn into a bowl, join Grace on the couch, and try my best to ignore the echoes for the rest of the movie.
✽✽✽✽✽
After Grace leaves, I spend most of the afternoon attempting to start writing the Mrs. Andrews-assigned research paper I’d almost thought was due today. It isn’t actually due for another two weeks, but the echo from this morning served as a good reminder that I should at least start working on it.
I don’t get very far.
Apparently, last year when we were moving into the house, I had chosen this exact time frame to start bringing things up to my room and unpacking it all. I can hear the past version of myself pacing the floor of my room, cutting open boxes, and shuffling things around. Hearing echoes like this isn’t new to me, because I hear things like this all the time outside of the house. But it’s been an entire year since I’ve heard echoes in my own home, and I realize very quickly how much I’ve taken the silence for granted.
I know that, theoretically, I could cross the hall and work on my paper in the office we’ve set aside as a quiet room for me, but I imagine that even there won’t be very quiet either, since we still had to move things into it on this day.
So, by the time my parents get home from work and Mom gently taps on my bedroom door, I’ve only read through one chapter of the book about acid rain I’m supposed to use as a source.
The door swishes open, and Mom’s soft smile emerges from behind it. “Hey, Laura.”
“Hey, Mom,” I greet her with a smile.
She crosses the room in three strides, her eyebrows creased in concern, and then presses a hand to my forehead. “How are you feeling?”
A beat of confusion passes over me until I remember that I’d left school earlier because I’d been “feeling sick.” I feign a sniffle. “I’m okay. I think it’s just a cold.”
Mom keeps her hand on my face, unconvinced. “You feel kind of warm. Maybe we should take you to the doctor. I can—”
I pull her hand off my forehead, cupping it in my own. “No, Mom. I’m okay. I promise. I might have just been feeling anxious,” I tell her, trying to stop the worry-hole she’s about to spiral down. Except, a beat after the words are out of my mouth, I realize I might be digging that hole deeper.
Mom’s brows crease, and she looks even more worried than before. “Anxious? Is it because…” she hesitates. “Well, I know that today is… you know…”
Fighting the urge to roll my eyes, I say, “The one-year anniversary of living in this house? The day I can start hearing echoes in my own home again?”
She bites her lip. “Yeah. That.”
“It’s okay, Mom. I was a little anxious, but I’ve been here all day and I’m fine.”
She tucks a strand of hair behind my ear, sitting on the bed across from me. “Are you sure? Have you been…” she trails off again.
“Hearing echoes of the past?” I flash a grim smile. “Always.” Then a memory tugs at me. Annie and Maverick. The neighbors I don’t remember.
Clearing my throat, I try to build the courage to ask my mom if she remembers them. I don’t want her to worry even more than she already does, so I have to be careful about how I phrase it.
“Do you remember the day we moved in last year?” I ask nonchalantly as if I’m just bringing up a pleasant memory.
Mom smiles brightly. “Of course I do. You were so excited.”
I smile back. “I was. This house was so great. It still is. I love living here.”
“I’m so glad to hear that,” she replies, a shine glossing over her eyes.
“And it’s such a great neighborhood, too. With friendly neighbors. Didn’t some of them drop by to welcome us?”
Mom nods. “They did, didn’t they? Riko dropped by a few days after w
e moved in, I think. He’s such a nice man. And then I think Kate stopped to chat with Dad once while she was walking her dogs.”
“Oh yeah, that’s right,” I chime in, remembering. “And then, wasn’t there another family that stopped by? A woman and her son?”
Mom pauses, thinking. “You must be thinking about Lily and her daughter—I can’t remember her name. They live next door, and they’ve always waved, but I don’t think we’ve ever spoken to them.”
My stomach drops. Mom doesn’t remember Annie and Maverick either. How could that be?
“Yeah, that must be who I’m thinking of,” I add softly.
“Well, anyway,” Mom stands up from the bed suddenly. “I was thinking we should do something special for dinner tonight, to celebrate a year in our new life. What would you like to have?”
“Didn’t you prep a casserole yesterday?”
“I did,” she drawls. “But I was thinking, maybe we can go out to eat, or something?”
“You know I hate restaurants,” I say, realizing where this is going. Mom’s trying to get me out of the house because she’s worried that I’m going to be anxious about hearing the echoes.
“We could eat in the car, of course,” she quickly adds.
“Mom, it’s fine. We can eat here,” I say firmly.
“I know. I just don’t want you to—”
“To hear the echoes? The ones I hear all the time? You can’t protect me from those. They’re not going to magically disappear,” I tell her. It isn’t until I see the hurt look on her face that I realize I might have been a little too firm. I quickly pull her into a hug. “I’m used to them anyway. Sometimes I like listening to them. It’s totally fine, Mom. You don’t have to worry about me.”
She squeezes me tight. “That’s the thing, though. I will never stop worrying about you.”
I bury my face into her shoulder, trying to ignore the tug of guilt that flashes through me. I know how long Mom and Dad waited to have a child. And I know that they wanted to give me a sibling or two as well, but couldn’t. They got one kid, and that one kid came with an inexplicable ability that makes living a normal life ridiculously hard.