by Robin Benway
There was sort of an awkward pause, which was just enough time for Daphne to think Can we please go now? before I added, “Do you flatiron? Because it’s always really nice and straight.”
Abort! I thought. Abort! Danger! You’re trying too hard!
But Mariah didn’t even think about it. “Yeah. Thanks. I can never get it this straight with just a blowdryer.” She shook her hair over her shoulder and looked so cool doing it that it made me feel like a balloon filled with margarine to stand next to her.
It didn’t make Jessica and Daphne feel that great, either. They had a low murmur of jealousy around them, and it had nothing to do with me. They just hated me, but they were jealous of Mariah.
Very iiiiiiiiinteresting.
“So,” Mariah said to me. “Who are you?”
“I’m June,” I said. “I’m just waiting for my sister April.”
She smirked. “April and June?”
“I’ve got a middle sister named May, too,” I offered.
She just laughed. “Let me guess. Hippie parents?”
I started to answer, but then she went on before I could say anything. “Yeah,” she said, “I just had to fix this thing in my schedule. Otherwise I’d have been outta here.”
She was lying. She was there because she was failing Spanish and had to talk to the vice principal. It was supposed to be a parent-teacher conference meeting, but her mom hadn’t shown up. Bitch, Mariah had thought about her, and the word sounded icy in her head.
In a weird way, her lying sort of empowered me. (My mom TiVo’s Oprah, so I know all about being empowered.) Mariah was lying to me, some stupid freshman girl. She was trying to make herself look better in front of me.
I was pretty sure that this was what the Pearly Gates looked like.
“That’s cool,” was all I said, though. “Yeah, I know, I’m having the worst time trying to get out of my Spanish class. It’s like—” I remembered what she had thought to herself earlier “—I’m not going to Mexico anytime soon, you know? Why does it even matter?”
Mariah smiled then, a real smile. “Yeah,” she said. “And you know everyone in Europe speaks English, anyway, so we don’t even need Spanish to go to Morocco or whatever.”
Morocco is actually in North Africa, but that wasn’t important. Morocco could have been an Ohio suburb for all I cared. “I know!” I said. “And who cares where it is once you get there, anyway?”
Mariah laughed, and I saw a flurry of images go through her brain. She was thinking about parties, parties she had attended before. The small house packed with people, red plastic cups everywhere, music so loud it made my chest feel tight, a real high school party. People laughing. Girls dancing. A guy was there with Mariah, his arm slung across her shoulders.
I wanted to go to a party like that. I wanted it more than I have ever wanted anything in my life. Well, except for the golden retriever puppy when I was four. Or those red Mary Janes when I was eight. Or tickets to see—okay, fine. I’ve wanted a lot of things in my life, but this was suddenly the most important one. For so long now I had been just waiting for my real life to begin. And now it seemed like maybe that was going to happen. Yeah, it had sucked that we had to leave our old friends and old neighborhood, but maybe that was the point. Maybe I had to shake off the sad stuff and embrace my new life, the life I was supposed to be living. No more lonely lunches. No more awkwardness in the halls. My heart raced, and I grinned all of a sudden, surprising even myself.
Mariah gestured over her shoulder. “So. You wanna ride? My boyfriend Blake is picking me up in a few minutes. It’s cool.”
I was about to open my mouth to say “YES!” but just then I heard a voice in my head.
Stupid fricking disappearing act European history Henry ASSHOLE MORE LIKE IT …
Guess who.
“Um, thanks, but I can’t,” I sighed. “I have to go, um, meet up with my sister.” I silently cursed May in my head.
“Okay, cool.” Mariah nodded towards Jessica and Daphne. “What about you guys?”
“No, we’re gonna go study,” Jessica said. “We have to or we’re gonna fail chem.”
But they weren’t going to study. They were going to hang out at Daphne’s house and watch crappy DVDs and drink Red Bull. I could see the plan in both of their minds, and I knew that they were lying.
And somewhere in the back of my brain, my plan started to form.
“Fine, whatever,” Mariah said to her friends, then looked over to me as she started down the hill. “See ya later.”
“Bye!” I said, sounding as nerdy as I didn’t want to sound, but her last thought caught me cold.
That’s a cute skirt.
I grinned and fingered the hem of my now-wonderful skirt. My God, April and May would never even belie—
May.
Crap.
The clock in the hallway said three twenty-two as I went inside and towards the girls’ bathroom, where May’s thoughts were cutting in and out like a flickering lightbulb. I wondered who Henry was, though, and I have to admit that I was impressed at my sister’s ability to work so many curse words into one sentence.
I went into the bathroom and flipped the master door lock behind me. May was nowhere to be seen, and I started searching the stalls for her. “C’mon, May,” I muttered. “I really don’t like public restrooms. This is gross.”
“June?” It was May’s voice. Her real voice, not her brain voice, and I went down the corridor and carefully opened the last stall.
She was slumped against the wall, her hands over her face, and she peeked at me from between her long fingers. “Oh, fantastic,” she muttered, then covered her face again. “What the hell are you doing here?”
“Oh, you know, I just love staying after school.” I rolled my eyes at her. “Seriously, what’s wrong with you? Is Henry your history tutor?”
May moved her hands and shoved herself off the wall, glaring at me. “Do not say his name around me. Actually, better yet, do not read my mind. What are you doing here?”
I watched as she went over to the sink and started to wash her hands. Not the worst idea, that was for sure. “I heard you,” I said. “You were, like, all yell-y in your brain, so I came to save you. Too bad my cape’s at the drycleaner’s; I would have gotten here faster.”
Superhero humor: It never gets old.
“Oh yeah?” May splashed cold water on her face. She wasn’t even listening to me, I could tell, and she looked a little bit like this deer we once saw in our backyard, all knobby knees, shaky limbs, and big eyes.
“Yeah,” I replied. “So who’s Henry?”
“One of the many kings of England, don’t you know?”
“No, I mean modern-day Henry. Who is he? What’d he say?”
May jerked some paper towels out of the dispenser with more force than necessary before turning to look at me. “You look happy,” she muttered. “Why are you so happy-looking?”
I sighed and examined my manicure. I was way overdue for a new one. Maybe I’d get french tips like Mariah. “Oh, nothing.” I pretended to act all casual. “It’s just that I think Mariah and I are really gonna be friends, and she’s awesome and her friends hate her.”
May laughed. “Three reasons to be ecstatic, for sure.”
“Whatever.” I had no time for May’s glass-half-empty routine. “So tomorrow? Do you think that I should talk to Mariah again or should I just—?”
“Jesus, June, I don’t know! I’m too busy dealing with that fact that I got pissed at Henry and we started arguing and then my foot disappeared and I had to flee like a goddamn library refugee!”
“Yeah, because we weren’t talking about me just now or anything.” I fumed. No one ever listens to me, and it seriously gets old. May’s brain was a jumble of curse words and adrenaline and Henry’s face. I couldn’t get a coherent thought out of the mess, and a new wave of realization hit me. “Oh my God,” I suddenly said, trying not to laugh. “Do you like Henry?”
&nb
sp; May whirled around so fast that her hair almost slapped me in the face. “Okay, June, now you’re delusional.”
“No, I’m a truth-teller,” I replied, then ducked when she threw her wadded-up paper towel at me.
“You’re a psychopath.”
“Revealer of light.”
“A representation of deranged lunacy.”
I tried to think of something more clever than that, but I couldn’t. “Takes one to know one,” I finally said.
“Ha, I win.” May pushed her hair behind her ears and added, “The only reason that I would ever like Henry is if they used him as a tackling dummy at football practice.” Then she added, “This is gonna be way harder than I thought.”
“What is?”
Duh, she thought, clearly for my benefit.
“Oh,” I said. “This. Got it.”
“I mean, aren’t you tired of reading people’s minds?”
I shrugged. “Not really. It’s just like having a bunch of radio stations on at the same time. But I got to read Mariah’s brain today. That was pretty cool.”
May just looked at me. “That’s it?”
“It’s a lot!” I protested. “She liked my skirt!”
May just shook her head and started to gather up her bag again. “It’s good to know that some things haven’t changed,” she muttered. “You’re still all about shiny pretty things. Can’t worry your lovely little head about anything.”
“Oh, give me a break,” I said, pushing my bangs out of my eyes. “Look at you! You could eavesdrop just as easily as I can, and what do you do? You’re still avoiding everyone! What a crock.”
“Well, excuse me if I don’t want to cause mass hysteria by disappearing into thin air in front of the entire student body!”
“Well, excuse me if I’m actually putting these things to good use!” I shot back. “I’m sorry if I’m trying to win friends and influence people like any other normal person would!”
“You think we’re normal?” May yelled back. We were squared off now, and obviously April hadn’t seen this happening or she would have hauled her ass in here a long time—
There was a sudden knock on the door.
Oh. Maybe she had seen it after all.
“You guys, I know you’re in there!” April called, and then in a softer voice, “Will you just open the door already? I feel ridiculous talking to the door.”
I walked over and yanked the door open. “Nice timing.”
“Thanks.” She looked past me. “Where’s May?”
I looked over my shoulder and saw that May had disappeared again. “This is getting old,” I muttered. “And I know you can hear me, May!”
She came back so fast that I barely saw it happen. One second she was gone, and in the next second, she was back. “Yo,” she said. “’Sup?”
April rolled her eyes. “How much did I miss?”
“You tell us,” May retorted. “You’re the one who knew we were in here. And thanks for the warning on that earthquake, by the way. That was great.”
“Yeah,” I agreed. “I could have died, you never know.”
“Actually, I did know. And you are not dead. So can we go, please? God, of all the places you two pick to argue, a public restroom? Really?”
I grabbed my bag, and May hitched her backpack up further on her shoulders as we followed April out of the bathroom. “You know,” May was starting to say, but just then I got a thought from April that was so intense that I couldn’t ignore it.
I’m gonna cash in my v-card with him?! her brain was shrieking. With him? Julian??? That can’t be right! Something must be wrong! I don’t even like him, how can I—!
“Oh, my God!” I cried, and both April and May turned around to look at me. “Oh my Gooooood,” I said again, then clamped my hand over my mouth.
“What?” April said, trying to look all innocent.
“You know what!” I slapped her arm. “I saw you! With him! In your thoughts!”
“You saw that?” she said in a sort of whispery scream that was scarier than if she had actually screamed.
“With who?” May said, looking confused. “Who’s ‘him’? What just happened?”
“June, I swear to God that it’s not—”
“His name’s Julian,” I told April, just to prove what I had seen. “You know you can’t lie to me; I can read your mind! Oh my God, oh my God, oh my God!”
“Just because you can do something doesn’t mean you should!” April was turning a nice shade of purple now.
“What?” May said. “Seriously, what’s going on?”
I just grinned at April. “I didn’t know you like the rebels!” I said gleefully.
April sighed and hugged her book tighter to her chest. “I am totally, completely, metaphorically screwed.”
chapter 7
“That’s, like, Superhero 101!” april
Driving home with my sisters was not the way I wanted to spend the next ten minutes. June kept babbling on about her skirt and Mariah and God knows what else, and then she’d look at me in the rearview mirror and giggle. Meanwhile, May was pissed that we wouldn’t tell her anything, and when we got home, she stomped upstairs to her room. “Stupid mind-game-playing sisters,” I heard her mutter.
“I heard that!” June called after her.
“I wanted you to hear it!” May yelled back.
I didn’t care if they were arguing, though. I had bigger problems on my plate, like the fact that apparently I was going to to sleep with Julian.
It brought new meaning to the word “mindfuck,” that was for sure.
I was already coming up with my plan, though, the How to Avoid Julian Forever & Ever Plan. I’d get to school early so I wouldn’t have to see him at our lockers, carry all of my books with me so that I wouldn’t have to see him during class, and then hang around late so that he’d be gone by the time I went to put my books away.
Plans are good. I like having a plan.
“So what do you think?”
I glanced up and realized that June was standing in the kitchen with her hands on her hips, waiting for my response to something. “What?”
“Oh, like you even heard anything I said,” she scoffed. “Please. It’s okay, though. You’re probably too occupied with thoughts of Julian. I get it.”
“I’m not—!” I started to shriek, but thought better of it. “I am going to be very calm,” I told her. “Extremely calm. I’m radiating the calmness of a yogi right now.”
“Whatevs, Dalai Lama.”
“Can’t you even talk like a normal person?”
June just laughed. “Why? News at eleven, April. We’re not normal.”
“Well, you’ve never been normal,” I retorted.
She made her way towards the kitchen, and I went upstairs, eager to get to my own room and away from my mindreading little sister. “I give that a three out of ten on the comeback scale,” she yelled after me, but I was too far away to retort.
May was lying on her bed as I walked past her room, listening to her iPod and working on her online photo album. I had seen it a few times, but all it had were pictures of Paris in the rain and French singers and things like that. “Oh, hey, it’s one half of the paranormal peeps,” she said as she glanced up at me. “Go away.”
I opened my mouth to speak, but June started screaming downstairs. “WE’VE BEEN ROBBED!!! OH MY GOD CALL THE POLICE!!! CHECK AND SEE IF THEY TOOK ANYTHING OUT OF MY ROOM!!!”
I immediately whirled and looked into my bedroom to make sure no one had stolen my Harry Potter books. My dad and I read that whole series together, and I couldn’t imagine something happening to them. They were still there, though, arranged sequentially on my bookshelf, even while June continued screaming downstairs.
May and I both raced towards her, my heart in my throat. I hadn’t seen anything about a robbery! It couldn’t be true! Next to me, May was gone but still there. I could almost feel her pulse at one point, and I guessed that I had run straight t
hrough her in my hurry to get to the living room.
June was standing there, the television remote control in one hand and an accusing finger pointing at the blank space where our television once had been. It was gone, making the whole room look like a six-year-old with a missing tooth. “LOOK!” June gasped. “They took it!”
May was suddenly there, staring along with the rest of us, and then she turned to me and crossed her arms. “Congratulations, April,” she drawled. “Since you’ve become a future-predictor, we’ve almost hit that Avery girl with a car—”
“There’s no ‘we’ in that sentence!” I protested.
“—had an earthquake, and been robbed. Can you even see the future, or are you just making it up?”
“Oh, she can see it, all right,” June defended me. I would have felt better about her statement if I knew she wasn’t thinking about Julian and me. She was still pointing at the gaping hole in our entertainment center, and I reached over and tugged her arm down.
“You shouldn’t point,” I said automatically.
“Yes, I should, because OUR TV IS MISSING!”
“Okay, wait a minute—” I started to say, but May interrupted yet again.
“Why, April? Why should we wait? Is the roof about to come crashing in?” she glared. “Not that you could predict it happening, of course.”
“No,” I fumed. “I just think that we should call Mom before we get all crazy.”
Ten minutes later, things had calmed down considerably. “Oh, that,” my mom had sighed when June frantically explained about our missing television via speakerphone. “Yeah, your dad wanted the TV back.”
“Dad?” May said. “They don’t sell TVs in Houston? He had to have ours?”
“Well, your dad says it’s his,” my mom replied. There it was again, that “your” word, the same way people say “your bunion” or “your stomach flu.” “He said he was gonna have some people pick it up today to have it shipped back. I’m sorry, girls, I thought I mentioned it.”
May was still glaring at the phone, but June had bigger concerns. “But Survivor is on tonight!” she wailed. It fascinated me that she sounded as traumatized about missing Survivor as she did when she thought we’d been robbed. I love her, but wow, June has a narrow emotional capacity.