by Robin Benway
chapter 3
“I remembered. Oh boy, did I remember.” june
I KNEW IT—OH MY GOD I KNEW IT.
I knew it when we drove past the homeless guy that morning. April thought I was being all insensitive, but I’ll tell you what was really happening.
When we passed him? I wasn’t being mean.
I could read his mind.
HOW CRAZY IS THAT?
Well, it’s not as crazy as his mind was, I’ll tell you that.
April likes to tell the story like everything was one big amazing surprise, and May always says that it didn’t get exciting until she got on the scene and risked all of our lives in the middle of afternoon traffic.
Whatever.
I’ve been telling my sisters for years about how it really started, but no one ever believed me. Everyone thought it was a cute story that I invented.
Not anymore. Now they were listening to me.
See, when you’re the youngest, everything gets explained by the fact that you’re the baby. Let’s say you’re afraid of spiders and maybe—JUST MAYBE—you once saw a black widow in the corner of your new bedroom and MAYBE you were already tired and maybe you cried JUST A LITTLE BIT and so your stupid sisters decide you’re only afraid of spiders because you’re the baby of the family.
Way to stereotype, I know.
But I also have a memory of playing outside with my sisters. I was four years old, May was five, and April was six. It was summertime, and my older sisters were being mean and not letting me play with them, so I cried not because I was the baby but because May had already pulled the heads off two of my Barbies, and also because I happen to be quite sensitive to rejection.
I heard April’s voice so clearly. “What a baby.”
“I’m not a baby!” I yelled.
“I didn’t say you were!” she shouted back.
“Yes, you did; I heard you!”
“I didn’t say anything!”
I took a breath, wiped my eyes, and used my ultimate no-fail weapon. “I’m telling Mom!”
And then May stepped in between us. Her hair was lighter back then—as blonde as April’s—and I remember it looked almost transparent in the sunlight. “Hey,” she said with a grin, “watch this.”
April and I just looked at her. April frowned and said, “Where are you going?” just before May disappeared.
The leaves rustled over our heads as if May had risen right through them, and I saw my face in the reflection of the patio doors. I had totally stopped crying, that was for sure. Next to me, April looked the same.
When I finally blinked, May was back, looking proud of herself. “Awesome,” she said. It was a word she had picked up from our neighbor who surfed three mornings a week up at the Wedge in Newport Beach. “Awesome,” she said again, like she had caught the biggest wave of the morning.
She’s not playing fair. I wanna disappear, too.
“You can’t disappear like May,” I told April. “You can’t.” And then I turned back to May, who was my new favorite sister. “Again!” I demanded. “Do it again!”
“Don’t!” April said quickly. “Mom’s coming!”
“No, she’s not!” May protested. “She’s upstairs talking to Dad!”
“Do it again!” I cried. “Again!”
“Do what again?” my mom suddenly asked, opening the back door and gazing at us. “What are you girls doing out here?”
I clasped her hands in front of my sundress and looked up at my mom with glee. She was gonna be so excited to find this out, I just knew it!
“May disappeareded,” I announced, then gave her my best smile. “Can I have a Popsicle?”
My mom still tells that story once in awhile, laughing sometimes when she gets to the end. “June has such an imagination,” she always says. Like I made it up! Like it never happened at all! Even now, my sisters don’t remember. They don’t believe me. They think that just because I’m the baby, they don’t have to listen to me. They think I don’t remember things well enough.
But I remembered. Oh boy, did I remember.
They were the ones who forgot.
Ten years later on that Monday afternoon, we said goodbye to my dad and waved as his rental car drove towards the airport. After we reassured our mom that no, we weren’t permanently damaged and no, I was just blinking because my eyes were dry from the Santa Ana winds, and yes, pizza was totally cool for dinner and yes, school was as fine/ridiculous/awesome as it always had been, my sisters and I booked it for our rooms. We went to April’s, since she had the biggest one. (Can we talk about the unfairness factor of that? She has like, two pairs of jeans and three shirts. What does she need all that space for? Her books? C’mon.)
April shut the door, and the three of us stood there for almost thirty seconds of silence. Well, I mean it was silent for them. Meanwhile, my brain was being verbally assaulted by their thoughts, April’s especially. She was taking very deep breaths, like she was hyperventilating, and I could hear her voice somewhere inside her head, a jumble of thoughts and words that I couldn’t sort out. “April, slow your roll,” I said. “You’re making me all schizo.”
That was a mistake.
April slowly turned to looked at me, her eyes starting to bug out of her head. “Can you seriously read my mind?” she whispered.
I put my hands on my hips and squared off with her. I have to admit, it was nice to be the one in the know for a change. “How many times do I have to tell you?” I glared, sounding just like our mom whenever we wouldn’t put our socks in the dirty laundry. “We were little. I could hear your thoughts, remember? You saw what Mom was going to do before she even did it, May disappeared not once but twice, and I kept reading your mind and saying your thoughts out loud.”
April opened her mouth, shut it, then opened it again. “I thought you were just being silly,” she said. “I thought you were just doing that weird little sister thing.”
“You still think that now? After this afternoon? You really want to tell me that you think I’m making it up?”
“Whoa, whoa, wait a minute,” May said, waving her hands in front of her like she was trying to erase something. “April, you can see the future?”
“I—I guess so,” she said. “But it just happened this morning! I didn’t do anything!”
May whirled to look at me. “And June, you’re seriously a mindreader? What number am I think—?”
“332,941.” It was so clear that she might as well have said it out loud.
May looked at April. “She can read minds. You and I are totally screwed.”
“I heard Avery’s mind when you almost hit her today with the car!” I huffed. “Way to go, May, by the way. Thanks for almost killing us and a total stranger.”
“What did she say?” April asked. She might as well have been wearing a tweed cap and carrying a magnifying glass, she looked so detective-y. “You could hear her?”
“Of course I could hear her!” I snapped. “May almost hit her with the car! Her name’s Avery! And I don’t know, she was just … she freaked out! She was thinking everything and nothing. She thought about her mom and some guy! What would you think if you thought you were going to die on the hood of a minivan?”
But April was too busy turning around and looking pissed at May. “And you smoked?” she demanded.
May just rubbed her forehead and sighed. “Shiiiiiiit.”
April put her hands on her hips. “Do you know the damage that one cigarette can do to your molecular structure? Do you?”
“April,” May said. “In case you haven’t noticed, my molecular structure is already a bit damaged. Let me refresh your memory. I disappeared in the middle of the intersection! While I was driving! I almost hit someone! Let’s focus on the bigger picture here, like the fact that you can see the future and June—June!—can read our minds!”
“Hey!” I snapped. “At least I’m not Casper the Friendly Ghost and going all disappear-y while I’m driving a car! By the way, y
ou totally freaked out the guy next to us! He thought he was having an acid flashback!”
“I would advise not reading my mind right now,” May said through clenched teeth. “It may be emotionally damaging to you.”
“All right, stop!” April suddenly shouted. “Stop! We don’t have time to argue about … about whatever’s happening right now. We have to … we have to do something.”
May started to laugh. She was so upset that I couldn’t even focus on a coherent thought in her mind. Great, now both of my sisters would have to be committed to insane asylums, and I’d be forced to roam the earth alone, isolated by the very thing that makes me special.
And then I wondered if they’d make a movie about my life. That would sort of be awesome, I had to admit.
Meanwhile, though, May was still losing it.
“Do what, April?” May gasped in between giggles. “What are we supposed to do? Start working on our costumes? Find a city that’s actually named Gotham and move there? What exactly is your plan, Miss Fortune-Teller?”
April put her hands on her hips. “Oh, I’m sorry!” she sneered. “I must have misplaced my ‘What to Do When You Get Crazy Superpowers’ manual! Maybe it’s under the ‘How to Kill Your Sisters and Dispose of the Bodies’ pamphlet! I’ll go double-check.”
“Oh, whatever, you’re freaking out, too,” I said as I flopped down on her bed. “And you can’t kill us. I’d know your plan and be able to hide, and May could just disappear.”
“God, June, how are you so calm?” April demanded. “You’re, like, all Zen about this!”
“Hey,” I shrugged, “maybe if someone had actually listened to me for the past ten years, this wouldn’t be such a surprise.”
I would tell you what May thought after I said that, but I’m not comfortable repeating those kinds of words.
“So let me get this straight,” April said after a few seconds. “They’re … they’re back?”
I nodded.
April swallowed hard, gripped the back of her desk chair, and didn’t say anything.
“You know,” I finally said, shoving my bangs out of my face, “you’d think that one of us would have been able to fly.”
chapter 4
“I heard the crack and saw the spark.” april
I woke up the next morning after not sleeping at all the night before. I kept having weird dreams, but then I would realize that they weren’t dreams; they were snapshots of things that were going to happen, which was pretty much the scariest thing ever, aside from when May disappeared from behind the wheel of a moving car. (And by the way, she still has not apologized for that. Rude much? God.)
I didn’t see anything that seemed too significant. I knew that our neighbor’s cat was going to become a late-night coyote snack in two weeks, and that June would get all upset and want to give the cat a funeral, even though it wasn’t hers. Just things like that, nothing terrible. At least, assuming you’re not the cat.
But then I wondered if I should be scanning my brain for any catastrophic events that may be occurring. Was that my new responsibility? Did the fate of planet earth lie with me?
It couldn’t hurt to be sure.
Mushroom clouds? No. Nuclear apocalypse? Not yet. Armed robbers raiding our house in twenty minutes? Not likely. It was like the anti-news in my head: “Things that are most likely not happening today! Story at eleven!”
By seven thirty I had managed to get into the bathroom because I knew that June wouldn’t need it until seven thirty-two when she would coming knocking and demanding to be let in. And sure enough, she was right on time.
That sort of freaked me out, not gonna lie.
“APRIIIIILLLLLL!” she yelled. “I need to talk to you!”
I was dragging a toothbrush through my mouth as I opened the door. “Wha?”
“Okay!” she announced, her round eyes taking up nearly all of her face as she put one hand on the door and shoved her way in. “I need you!”
I spat, rinsed, and turned to her. “What? What’d you see?!”
“What?”
“You look all flappy and panicky! Did something happen? Did you see a tumor in Mom’s brain or something? Is May still smoking? Or is she—?”
June just looked at me. “Whoa. Captain Morbid much?”
“What do you expect?! I’m a little on edge here. I didn’t get a lot of sleep.”
“Yeah, join the club. Anyway. I need to know something.” She cleared her throat and held up a short pink skirt that looked like it was made out of clouds. “Are people going to laugh at me if I wear this skirt today?”
I blinked twice. “You can’t be serious.”
“I’m totally serious.”
I sighed. “Of course you are.”
“Look, I realize that you and May are on a campaign to be Most Unpopular,” June huffed, “and hey, that’s great. Go you. But some of us would like to be appreciated by our peers.” She held up the skirt again. “Yes or no? Are people gonna make fun of me?”
“I honestly doubt that I got the ability to predict the future just to make you more popular.” I paused. “And I cannot believe that that sentence just came out of my mouth.”
June shook the skirt. “Yes. Or. No.”
“June, would you please just go—?”
“April!” she protested.
May drifted out of her room and past us just then, still wearing her flannel pajama pants. She stopped when she saw June’s fluffy skirt. “You’re wearing that today?” she asked.
“Maybe. Why?”
May snorted with laughter.
“And there you have it,” I announced. “Yes, June, people will laugh at you if you wear that skirt. You’re welcome. Now will you please leave me alone?” I headed to my room and started to shut the door.
“Some help you are!” she yelled. “It doesn’t count if it’s May who laughs!”
“What does that mean?” May demanded. “What, I can disappear so I don’t even count anymore?”
“Mom is downstairs!” I hissed at them. “Can you please pretend to be normal for once in your lives?”
May quivered with anger and then she was gone, literally, in the blink of an eye. I had seen her do it yesterday, but that had only been for a second or two. This time, though, it took my breath away. I think she could disappear every twenty minutes for the rest of her life, and I’ll never get used to seeing her leave.
Next to me, June gasped. She even took a step towards where May had been, which I thought was sort of sweet. “Whoa,” she whispered.
And in the next blink May was back, looking a bit tousled and aggravated. “Damnit, I got pissed off,” she said. “I was trying to stop it, but that didn’t work.”
“So … so where do you go when you … go?” June asked.
“I don’t go anywhere,” May said. “I need to get dressed.” She went towards her room again, but this time June and I trailed behind her down the hall. “Breathing room, please. The great Houdini still needs oxygen.”
“What do you mean, you don’t go anywhere?” I pressed. “You weren’t there.”
“I was standing right there the whole time,” May said. “Same thing yesterday. I was there, but nobody could see me. I could yell and scream, and it wouldn’t matter.”
“So it’s not that you disappear,” I said slowly, “it’s that people don’t see you. You can make people not see you.”
“Oh, no.” May yanked her bedroom door back open to glare at me. “I don’t make people do anything. This isn’t my fault, and June, why are you staring at me like that?”
June was still watching her, wide-eyed. “It was like magic,” she said. “You were here and then vamoose!”
“Vamoose?” May repeated, but there was a smile playing at the edge of her mouth.
“You’re missing the point,” I interrupted them. “May, you can control people with your brain. You control what they see.”
“Cool. I wonder if I can make them all into zombies next. Big f
lesh-eating zombies.”
“Ew.” June wrinkled her nose. “You’re so masochistic.”
“Big word, Junie,” May said. “Is that gonna be your next mental feat? Getting a polysyllabic vocabulary?”
“No, it’s going to be taking over the world,” June said. May just grinned, only because I think she secretly likes seeing June stick up for herself.
I decided to take advantage of their brief truce for a few more minutes. “Okay, so our brains are working overtime now,” I started to say, but June interrupted.
“No, they’re not,” she insisted. “It’s like that guy Einstein said. Most people only use 10 percent of their brains, right? Maybe we’re just using more.”
“I don’t think Einstein said that,” I interrupted.
June shrugged. “Insert famous science guy here, then.”
“Maybe one of Mr. Dwyer’s chem labs went awry,” May said, “and our brains got exposed.”
“Then why isn’t this happening to the whole school?” I pointed out.
“Maybe it is!” June cried. “Maybe we should make, like, a secret Facebook group or something!”
May rolled her eyes. One day they’ll be permanently stuck in the back of her head, I swear to God. “Get a real plan and report back to us, June,” she muttered.
June opened her mouth to snap back, but I heard our mom’s feet clomping up the stairs before she could say anything. “Crap,” I whispered.
“Nice future predicting, April,” May muttered at me. “Way to give us the heads up on Mom.”
“Shut up, it’s not an exact science. Good luck not disappearing in front of Mom, by the way.”
May flipped me the bird.
“Oh, did your other four fingers already disappear?” I sneered, but June cut me off with a cheery, “Hi, Mom!” while nudging both of us into good behavior.
My mom was carrying her mug of peppermint tea, just like she has every single morning of my life. It’s nice to know that some things don’t change. I’m pretty sure that’s why Batman kept his butler Alfred around. Sometimes you just want to hang out with someone that’s normal. “April, honey?” she said to me.