Try Not to Breathe

by Jennifer R. Hubbard

“I mean, lots of people believe in it and have experiences with it. They can’t all be wrong.”

  “Yeah, they can.”

  She sighed. “Then why are you even here?”

  “Because I don’t think you should do this alone.”

  A mile of fast-food restaurants and banks and gas stations whizzed by our windows. At last she said, “Don’t you want to know what happens after we die?” When I didn’t answer, she said, “What did you think was going to happen to you, anyway?”

  “What?”

  “When you—you know, when you tried it. What were you expecting?”

  I pressed my fingers against the car window. They left sweaty prints. “To tell you the truth, I didn’t think much about it.”

  “How could you not think about it?”

  “Well—” I smelled the garage again, the gasoline and musty cement, felt the key under my hand. “I thought it would be like sleep.”

  “Forever?” She shook her head. “God, I hope it’s more than that.”

  • • • • •

  Somerton was the blandest place I’d ever seen: a suburb like the one I lived in before my mother got the yearning to build her forest retreat. It was rectangle after rectangle of identical lots, identical houses, every last one of them a split-level ranch. I told Nicki where to turn, and we pulled up in front of a yellow house where close-sheared grass burned in the sun.

  “She’s supposed to be very good,” Nicki said, staring at the house, making no move to open her door.

  “According to who? The American Academy of Psychics?”

  “According to people who’ve used her.” Nicki’s back snapped to straightness. “Come on, let’s go in.”

  • • • • •

  The psychic, Paula, was at least six feet tall. Her face reminded me of a chainsaw carving in a tree trunk. She examined each of us as if she could x-ray our brains. Nicki paled and seemed to shrink. I figured that if Paula was psychic, at least she had the eyes for it. And then I reminded myself I didn’t believe in psychics.

  She had us turn off our phones (interference with the spirit world?) and brought us into an office with dark paneling and a red carpet. Nicki and I took chairs facing Paula, who sat and studied us. I scratched my chin, and her eyes followed my hand. I put my hand back in my lap, and her eyes followed that. Nicki coughed, and Paula’s eyes shifted to her.

  “You wish to speak with someone important to you, someone with great meaning in your life,” Paula said, her voice as deep as a man’s. Her wrist bones jutted as she folded her hands.

  “Yes,” Nicki said.

  Paula’s eyes fixed on hers. Nicki stared back. Was this hypnosis? Maybe that’s how Paula would make Nicki believe she’d contacted her father.

  “He hears you,” Paula said.

  “Um, what?” Nicki said.

  “He hears you. The person you seek.”

  Nicki rubbed her feet against the red carpet. “What—what does he have to say to me?”

  Their eyes never wavered from each other. I began to feel invisible, to melt into the pattern on the chair fabric. The air in this room was heavy and brown, as if it had been hanging in here for decades. It didn’t smell bad, exactly—just old.

  Paula sighed and spread a broad hand over her thigh. “There are many unanswered questions.”

  Yeah, no kidding, I thought. That’s why we’re here.

  Paula swung her head over to me. My skin prickled as her eyes pinned me to the chair. “You are blocking.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Your negative energy is blocking the spirit.” She raised her hand to illustrate. “He cannot come through.”

  She turned back to Nicki. “Your friend must leave. He must wait outside.”

  Nicki glanced at me.

  I didn’t want to leave her alone in this place. What did we know about Psychic Paula, anyway? But I knew how badly Nicki wanted to talk to her father. Maybe I could sit right outside the door. Like the watchdog I was supposed to be.

  Nicki rubbed her mouth. Paula sat there like a monument, heavy and still.

  I was about to get up when Nicki said, “No. He stays.”

  “He is interfering with the connection,” Paula growled.

  “He is the connection.”

  What?

  Paula and Nicki stared at each other so long I thought their eyeballs would dry out. Paula said, “I cannot make the connection if you insist upon blocking it. I have done my best; you stand in your own way.”

  Nicki stood. “That’s it, then.”

  “As you wish.”

  Nicki and I were at the doorway when Paula said, “You are forgetting the payment.”

  Nicki whirled. “For what? You didn’t do the reading.”

  “That is not my fault. You scheduled my time, and your own decision kept you from receiving a reading. If your friend will leave, you may still receive it, but in either case, you owe me payment.”

  Nicki clutched the purse she’d brought with her—I couldn’t get used to seeing her with a purse—as if Paula might wrestle it away, and she marched into the hall. Paula was out of her chair and had clamped her hand on my shoulder before I could take two steps.

  “Let go,” I said. “You’ll get your money.”

  She released my shoulder but stood over me while I dug out the money. “I’m paying for your time,” I said, “because I don’t believe anything else you offer is worth a crap.”

  “I am aware of that. I pity you and your closed mind.” She aimed her giant chin at the door. “Leave my house.”

  “Glad to.” I kept my back straight as I walked outside to where Nicki waited, but a weird quivering traveled from my stomach down my legs. An aftereffect of the adrenaline jolt, I guessed. I’d never had an allegedly psychic giant grab me and demand money before.

  Nicki scowled at me. “Did you pay her?”

  “Forget about it.”

  “I didn’t want you to give her money!”

  “She never would’ve left you alone until she got her money. Anyway, she had a point. Not that her reading would’ve been worth anything if we had gotten it.”

  “I’ll pay you, then.”

  “Forget it.”

  “I don’t want you to—”

  “Nicki, forget it. Let’s say it was my fault you didn’t get your reading, and now we’re even.”

  I followed her to the truck. It wasn’t until we were back on the streets of the development, with me trying to unravel the directions in reverse, that Nicki spoke again.

  “I can’t believe she did it.”

  “Did what? Turn left here.”

  “Tried to kick you out.”

  “Well, obviously she could tell I didn’t believe in this whole thing. She wanted me out of there so she could try to scam you.”

  Nicki’s mouth curled. “Why do you think I’m so dumb? You think she could con me if you weren’t there?”

  “She thought so. Did you think she was conning you, or did you believe she was really in touch with your dad?”

  “I don’t know.” I gave her a few more directions, and then Nicki said, “But if it was my dad, I think he would want you there.”

  “Yeah, that’s what you said. What did you mean?”

  She focused on the road the way she’d focused on Paula’s eyes. “Because—it’s going to sound weird, but—it’s like my dad led me to you in the first place. I’ve always thought you have something to tell me about him.” She heaved the wheel to the right, brought us to a stop at the curb. “And if you would just tell me, I wouldn’t have to go to all these psychics.” She turned to me.

  “Nicki, I don’t know whatever it is you think I know. I don’t have the answers you—”

  “You do. You’ve been to the same place as him. It’s like—if someone went to China, and I asked them what it was like, and they wouldn’t tell me.” She swallowed, her face pink. “I know it’s probably hard for you, and you don’t want to talk about it, so, fine—that’s why
I’m trying the psychics. But I think you’re part of this for a reason. I mean, when I first talked to you at the waterfall, you could’ve told me to fuck off, but you didn’t. You’ve stuck around ever since. And that’s why I don’t trust any psychic who tells me to send you out of the room.”

  She stepped on the gas, swerved back into the road. “Anyway, Paula wasn’t our only shot. We have another appointment at three.”

  “What?”

  “Yeah, I decided to set up two appointments. I wanted to check one psychic’s reading against the other. So, we don’t have anything from Paula—oh, well. We’ll see how the second one does.”

  From the way she set her lips, I wondered if we’d visit every psychic in the state. If she didn’t get what she wanted from this next one, where would it end? How many would she have to see before she gave up? I’d thought that after one or two, she would see how useless this was. I had stuck by her so she wouldn’t be alone when she hit that particular brick wall of reality. But now I was starting to think she might still be paying out money to psychics when she was fifty, traveling the world to find “the one” who could tell her everything.

  “Nicki,” I said.

  “Look, Ryan, if you don’t want to tell me what happened with you, I totally respect that. But then you can’t complain about me going to these psychics. If you won’t help me, I have to find someone who will.”

  What if nobody can help you? I wanted to ask, but didn’t.

  SEVENTEEN

  Nicki whipped out another page of directions, and we followed them to a twisting, rutted dirt lane outside Kirkville. Some of the yards we passed had goats or horses in them. Most had dogs. The air smelled of clover, manure, mud, and grass—scents thick enough to taste.

  I wouldn’t have expected a psychic to live out here. Psychics and farms weren’t connected in my mind. But then, none of the psychics had been what I’d expected.

  Nicki took off her suit jacket, panting. Her shirt clung to her, and I tried not to look. For most of the day, I’d been able to forget what had happened on the picnic table at the rest stop. But at some moments, I would remember, and the air almost seemed to hum between us. I had no idea if she felt it, too, or if it was all me.

  I didn’t plan to ask her, either. Especially while leftover feelings for Val were mucking up my brain.

  Nicki pulled the truck into a muddy driveway full of holes. I braced my hands against the roof to keep from smacking my head. “Shit,” she said, “I hope I don’t get stuck.”

  The driveway squeezed through a narrow slot between trees. We stopped to roll up the windows, and branches whacked the glass as we drove by. Finally we pulled up in front of a small brown house. Its porch sagged over broken lattices. A cat with clumpy fur, dotted with bald patches, blinked at us from the bottom step.

  “Well,” Nicki said. “I guess we’re here.”

  I waited for her to open her door. I always wanted her to know we didn’t have to go in these places, that she could back out if she wanted. I probably shouldn’t have bothered. Knowing Nicki, she was going in these houses no matter what.

  She gripped my hand, wrapped her slippery fingers around mine. “It’s going to be okay, right?” she said, her eyes bright. Not happy-bright; more fever-bright.

  “I don’t know,” I said, because I found it hard to lie to her. In the next instant I wished I’d said yes, because she so obviously needed a yes, but she laughed. The fever snapped; her eyes lost that hard glaze and came to life again. She slapped my shoulder, laughing.

  “I can always depend on you,” she said.

  I got out and went around the front of the truck, waiting, while she climbed down (not so easy with a skirt on, I noticed, catching a flash of vanilla-colored lace). I followed her up the steps, where the cat mewed and slithered around our ankles.

  The woman who came to the door looked almost as young as we were. Her long blond curls fell down to her waist, and she blinked at us with big china-doll eyes. “Come in,” she said in an unbelievably high, tiny, little-girl voice, the voice of a mechanical doll. The sound of it sent a chill right up the middle of my back, as if I’d been stabbed with an icicle. If she really was psychic, her powers must be centered in her voice, as Paula’s had been centered in her eyes.

  We stepped into a hot, airless room, so dim I had trouble seeing my feet on the floor. Celestia, the psychic, led us through the darkness to a small box of a room lit only by candles. At first I thought the room had no windows, but when my eyes adjusted I could tell that the windows had been blocked with dark towels or blankets. So far, this house came the closest to what I’d expected for communing with the dead, although I didn’t see any crystal balls.

  At Celestia’s gesture, we sat in low chairs, across a table from her.

  Nicki pulled at her sweaty shirt. I wanted to press my lips to her neck and tell her to forget all this craziness. I looked away from her neck, away from her altogether.

  Celestia bent toward us. In her place, I would’ve been afraid to get singed by the candles, especially if I had as much hair as she did. But she thrust her head fearlessly between the flames and rested her arms on the table. “I understand you’re here to contact someone specific.”

  “Yes,” Nicki answered, while I thought about what Celestia had said. Didn’t everyone come to talk to someone specific? Did anyone drive all the way out here to talk to random dead people, just any old spirit who happened to be hanging around between worlds?

  I forced myself to concentrate on what was happening in front of me.

  Celestia shut her eyes and began to drone, if anyone with her shrill voice could be said to drone: “O spirits, we call upon you especially the one spirit our dear friend Nicki most greatly desires to speak with. O spirits, please hear her call and direct to us in this room at this very moment that very spirit. O spirits, please clear the way and let that one come forth, O spirits—”

  Nicki’s eyes darted around the room, as if the spirits might materialize and answer Celestia at any moment. I struggled to breathe in the dense, humid air. Sweat wormed its way down my back. The candles seemed to make the room hotter, small as the flames were.

  Celestia’s head dropped. Nicki and I glanced at each other. I got ready to jump forward and smother Celestia’s head if her hair caught fire.

  Silence. Just the buzz of cicadas outside, a droning that made me sleepy. The blood seemed to thicken in my veins.

  “I hear them,” Celestia murmured.

  “What?” Nicki said.

  Celestia’s chin came up, and she opened her eyes. “We have made contact.”

  “With my dad?”

  “With those spirits who are willing to appear. Do you wish to hear their message?”

  Nicki nodded.

  Celestia glanced at me; I didn’t move. She closed her eyes again and said, “All right. We will hear the messages.”

  She took a breath and began that weird drone again. “Speaking on behalf of the spirits you have summoned, the invisible ones the ones who have answered your call, we give you some of the wisdom we possess and share with you what we see that pertains to you and to your life and to your future happiness. There is a bond between the two of you here before us, a bond that must not be ignored because it is not merely an earthly bond but a spirit bond as well, a bond forged for your true spiritual purposes, and you must each learn and teach and exchange the gifts of your spirit and act as spirit messengers toward each other.”

  “Wait,” Nicki said. “Are you talking about me and Ryan? Because I didn’t come here for relationship advice. I want to talk to my father.”

  “The answers you have been seeking are not where you think they are and do not look the way you think they should look. In fact you may have seen them and overlooked them already. Pay attention to your spirit messenger and the message he carries and do not despair if the answer is not what you thought it would be. It is time for you to know the truth.”

  Celestia rambled on that way for a w
hile, but didn’t say much of anything new. The gist of it seemed to be that Nicki and I had some sort of destiny together. I guessed that was why most people came to Celestia: they wanted to hear that love was right around the corner, and she told them what they wanted to hear. But I didn’t know why she hadn’t listened to Nicki about what Nicki wanted, which was to know something about her father. Couldn’t Celestia make up something that sounded like a father message?

  Finally, she opened her eyes and sighed. “It’s exhausting,” she said, “to act as a vehicle that way, to use my living energy to support their message, but I do it because I believe it’s important work.”

  Nicki just gaped at her.

  “Was Nicki’s father in there anywhere?” I asked.

  Celestia smiled. “When people pass on, they are no longer in their fully human, fully separate form. They merge to some extent with the psychic energy of others. And I can’t always distinguish exactly who is there—but I believe he may have been. I felt a very urgent energy wishing to communicate with the two of you.”

  Nicki’s lips puckered.

  “I can see that you’re upset,” Celestia said, “but listen, truly listen, to the words I’ve said. The answers are all there for you. You’ve been fooled over and over—you’ve been walking right past the answers, because they don’t look the way you expect them to look.”

  Nicki paid. Whatever else Celestia had or hadn’t done, she had given a hell of a long reading. We came out into the glare of the afternoon sun, blinking, and paused on the porch while the scrawny cat inspected our feet.

  Nicki opened her mouth, but shut it again. She pulled out her car keys and stepped down to the truck.

  “So what do you think?” I asked as she cranked the engine. I was curious whether she would find some meaning in that stream of words, or if she would invent meaning, build something for herself from it. Which was probably the way Celestia operated to begin with.

  “Shut up,” Nicki said. The truck bucked as she turned us around. “If you say ‘I told you so—’”

  “I wasn’t going to.” I braced my hands against the ceiling as we jounced back down the driveway. “I really want to know what you thought all that stuff meant.”