Scarlett’s cold nose nudged my hands, like she was starving for attention, which, come to think of it, she probably was. “You actually miss her, don’t you?” I patted the cinnamon-colored fur on Scar’s neck. “If you could think in words, you’d wish she was here.” I lay back in the semi-darkness, and the dog nestled her warm head in my lap. I closed my eyes.
A bright light went on. “Wish you’d finally wake the fuck up, Joy-Joy!” said a sarcastic voice.
Icka. Through bleary eyes I saw her standing over my bed—her bed—in clothes I’d never seen before, a pink tie-dyed peasant skirt and checked lumberjack flannel, gleefully mismatched. “I can’t wait to be free like Aunt Jane.” To my groggy ears it felt like her voice was washing toward me from every direction, like surround sound in a theater. “I want to start fresh, be a whole new person like Aunt Jane said I could.” Her white face loomed over me, Granny Rowan’s solemn all-seeing eyes…and no mouth. Just hope these guys can help me find oblivion.
Speechless, I looked down at her feet, avoiding the ruined face that so resembled mine. She was wearing the silver boots. They shone like the moon. But, no, wait, I was wearing those boots now. Or was I still—
I wish you’d wake up and find me. I don’t want it to end like this. Her bony hand reached out for mine, but before we could touch she seemed to fall away. Gasping, I instinctively reached out to her from the bed, but all I connected with was cold, slimy seawater.
Then the bed was gone. Icka’s room was gone. I was far away, standing on top of Haystack Rock at Cannon Beach. Staring down at the stormy sea as her blond head vanished under its waves.
15
I shot off the bed. “What’s going on?” I yelled. “Icka, are you there?” Scarlett barked sternly, as if to say, “It’s bad enough she’s gone and left me, do you have to rub it in?” But I kept going, shouting at empty air. “Where are you, Icka? What’s going on? Can you hear me? What do you mean, oblivion?” The air wouldn’t answer.
Icka’s game, her stupid Hope and Faith game from years ago, hadn’t worked. I’d never Heard her once. Not when she injured herself at the construction site. Not when she lay across the tracks. So how could it be working now?
Where was she?
Was she in real trouble?
Back in my room, I picked up my phone with shaking hands. There were two fresh texts from Parker: where r u?? and r u ok??? I ignored them and hit speed dial one.
“You’ve reached Kelli Stefani—” I punched star star. “Mom,” I croaked. “Call me back, it’s about Icka! I think she might be…in trouble.” I winced. Saying Icka might be in trouble was like saying Kobe Bryant might have scored a few points in last night’s game. “She could be in danger,” I amended. Let Mom think I was jumping to conclusions, being a paranoid worrywart like Granny Rowan. I should have called right after I Heard her in the bathroom. How could I have been so selfish, so caught up in my own stupid problems that I never bothered to check if my sister was all right? I didn’t want to waste time waiting for Mom to call back. Aunt Jane’s number was stored in the kitchen cordless. I stuffed the cell into my sweatshirt’s gigantic middle pocket and ran downstairs.
Dad was sitting at the breakfast table, phone tucked between his ear and shoulder, the Lotus Garden menu spread over a place mat in front of him. “Just a moment,” he said to the order person, and turned to me with a smile. “What do you think, should we spring for sweet-and-sour tofu?”
Normally I would have been amazed and thrilled that he remembered my favorite dish, but now I was just twitching to get on that phone. I shrugged. “Sure, whatever.”
The second he hung up, I grabbed the receiver and hit pound six.
“Hey there, fellow suffering human,” said Aunt Jane’s somber voice.
“Hi, Aunt Jane, it’s—”
“If you’re stuck hearing this stupid message, it means I’m busy creating art or doing my Zen meditation. Or, maybe I’m just feeling a bit antisocial today.”
If Dad hadn’t been watching with concern from his chair, I would have pitched the phone at the wall. Instead, I waited for the beep. “Aunt Jane, please have Mom call me back ASAP. It’s Joy,” I added, and hung up. Then I stuffed the phone next to my cell phone in my sweatshirt pocket.
“Honey?” Dad raised his eyebrows.
“I’m fine,” I said reflexively. Ever since we grew past the Hear-by-touch phase, Dad had left all Hearing-related talks to the expert, Mom.
“You know.” Dad swept invisible crumbs off his knees, all overly casual. “Whatever it is, I might be able to help. I do give counsel for a living….”
I shook my head. “Thanks, but this isn’t lawyer-type stuff. It’s—” I almost said, “Family stuff,” then caught myself. “Girl stuff.”
“Oh.” He seemed to slump. “You mean your gift.” I wish I knew the magic words to make it easier. I squinted at him. Did Dad already know what was going on? Wish she hadn’t Heard Mother and Father judging her, always demanding perfection—
“What?” I blurted out. “Oh my god, that’s so not it.” Dad blinked. “I don’t even care about the Grammy and Grandpa thing anymore.” He flinched. “I mean, that’s your big issue, not mine.”
“Okay, okay, you’ve made your point.”
“Sorry.” My fingers played with the braided place mat. “Does it, um, weird you out when I do that?”
“Maybe? A little?” Dad rubbed his jaw, then after a moment he sighed and smiled. “All right, yes, a lot.” I crushed my thumb into the hard braided material. Ouch. “But I guess if you girls can get used to Hearing Whispers,” he added, “the least I can do is get used to it too, right?”
“Dad…that’s the thing,” I said, trying to keep my voice calm. “I’m not sure if I can get used to Hearing this much. My power’s been changing, or maybe it’s growing, I don’t know. It’s all just so weird.”
Dad puckered his brow and leaned closer. “Weird how?”
I hesitated. Could I really do this, open up to Dad about Hearing stuff like I would have with Mom? But he was so clueless. Then again, he was here and she wasn’t. “I Heard Icka,” I blurted out.
His lips formed a horizontal line of doubt. “But how is that possible? We know for a fact that she’s in Portland, and even your mother can’t Hear past fifty feet or so.”
“All I know is, I Heard her.” I filled him in on what happened in the men’s room. And then of course I had to explain why I was in the Starbucks men’s room, that I was throwing up. And why I was throwing up—what I’d Heard. (I left out all the stuff about Ben and Jamie—poor Dad was already looking overwhelmed.)
“Pumpkin, you’ve had a truly rough day,” he said. “But…Hearing your sister from another city?” He shook his head. “That’s outside the realm of plausibility.” Yep, saw that coming: lawyer speak. His face had taken on that same inflexible blankness it gets when he’s working. A logic trance, Mom called it. When Dad’s mind got stuck like this, she’d just smile and wink over at me. Whereas Icka wasn’t fazed at all; sometimes she’d even (in her blunt, bitchy tone) point out some little hole in his train of reasoning and instead of being mad, he’d be all impressed.
Maybe I could impress him into taking me seriously.
“What about the story of Faith and Hope?” I said, folding my arms across my chest. “Isn’t that historical precedent?”
“More like hearsay,” he said, smiling. “Honey, that’s just an old family legend. A bedtime story. I’m pretty sure one of your great-aunts made it up.”
“So what, you think I’m making it up too?” So much for being intellectual. I felt like a frustrated three-year-old. This whole conversation was a giant red illustration of why I never opened up to Dad.
“Of course I don’t think you’re lying.” Dad held his palm out, traffic-cop style. “However. You had one heck of a bad day. You threw up earlier. You’ve been getting headaches. Odds are, you’re coming down with something, sweetie.” He glanced down at the open menu as if it
contained his case notes. “Remember that time you thought you were floating over your bed?”
I rolled my eyes. Come on, that was in second grade. I had a 104-degree fever. This wasn’t the same. But how could I dispute his logic? “Dad. Forget probability and evidence and all that lawyer stuff for a second. What if I didn’t imagine it, and Icka’s in some kind of danger?”
“Now, that is two separate what-ifs,” he said, calmly. “Even if you did Hear her—big if—there’s absolutely no evidence to suggest she’s in danger. Mom saw her just this morning.”
“But that was hours ago!”
“True, and if anything had happened, we would have had a call from her freshman host, or the RAs in her dorm.”
“RAs?”
“Resident Advisers. Not to mention the Pendleton campus has a crime rate next to zero, not counting bike theft.”
I blinked. Dad was throwing so many facts at me it was hard to keep them all straight. Let alone argue.
“We both know Jessica has a tendency,” Dad went on, “to express herself in, shall we say, strong terms.” I had to nod. Couldn’t argue with that. “If she had a fight with her new friends, or got homesick, or maybe changed her mind about this being the perfect school…that would easily account for what you Heard.” Again, I couldn’t help but nod. He was making intelligent points. Points I hadn’t even thought of. Points that should have been, in theory, reassuring. So why wasn’t I feeling reassured?
“It’s just that she sounded so desperate,” I said, almost timidly. “She kept talking about getting rid of her Hearing. On purpose…and I didn’t even tell you the scariest part. Just now, I fell asleep upstairs and had this dream about her…what?” Dad grimaced slightly, and I knew I’d lost him at the word “dream.” “It felt really real!”
“Tell you what,” Dad said, rising. “I personally see no reason to worry. But if it’d make you feel better, why don’t you give Jessica a call in the dorms? Just to say hi.”
I stared at my father. Where had he been all these years? Me, call Icka to say hi? What made him think I even had a phone number for her? Was he really not aware his kid was the only teenage girl in America who spurned cell phones? And that, as she and I were no longer what you’d call close, she hadn’t bothered to fill me in on her weekend plans…much less supplied me with contact info? Not like the subject came up during my big You Are Kicked Out of My Life speech.
Would I call her if I could? The answer came in a heartbeat. It’d be worth me looking like a wishy-washy moron, worth every iota of awkwardness, to hear her bitchy voice on the line…and know she was safe.
But I didn’t have the phone number. All I had was a clueless dad who wouldn’t listen to anything but reason, and a mom who wouldn’t even call me back.
Before I could update Dad on his daughters’ lack of a sisterly relationship, the doorbell made me jump about a foot.
Ever serene, Dad glanced at his Rolex. “Golly, Lotus was fast tonight!”
I rolled my eyes inwardly. Dad’s bad sense of time was legendary in our family. It was seven fifty-one, not even ten minutes after he hung up with Lotus Garden. Unless the guy had teleported over here, it couldn’t possibly be him.
So who was it? I had a sneaking, sinking suspicion. Hint: I was known as her fan girl, and in the past hour she’d left me two voice mails and two urgent-sounding texts. If only Mom was home, I could have asked her to cover for me, say I was too sick to come to the door. But I’d never asked Dad to lie for me, and now wasn’t a good time to start: I didn’t want him to see me as someone who went around making things up.
I sighed. “I’ll get it.”
“Thanks, hon!” Dad flashed me a smile. From his posture as he stood, you could tell he thought our talk had gone swimmingly, that he’d solved all my problems using the awesome power of logic. “Cash is on the table out there,” he added. I hope they remembered the wonton soup this time.
I trudged into the entryway. Well, I’d have to deal with Parker sooner or later…at least having something so much bigger to worry about put my issues with her into perspective, right? I leaned forward to press the top of my head against the cold metal door. Please god, please let it be the Lotus people….
From outside, a low, shy male voice Whispered, Hope this is the right Stefani.
16
I never thought I’d feel relieved to see Jamie Williams on our porch. But seeing his stupid ONLY USERS LOSE DRUGS T-shirt through the peephole, I let out a leaky-balloon sigh.
Thank god, it wasn’t Parker! I wouldn’t have to deal with her just yet. Score one, me, finally.
Except…what the hell was Ben’s brother doing here? Bringing me more funeral flowers? Part of me still ached to know how he’d sensed my distress earlier—did he really Hear me? But as Ben had made clear, I wasn’t on the family-secret access list anyway. Anyway, Jamie was probably just here to ask me out, not clue me in. I sighed. Harsh as it sounded, the smart thing to do was shake him off. The way he was going, just being seen with him at school would be social suicide, the fast track to turning into Icka 2.0.
Polite but firm, I repeated to myself as I undid the dead-bolt and slipped out sideways onto the porch.
Outside it was sprinkling still, and the air smelled like wet grass and pine needles. Jamie stood unsmiling under the porch light’s glow, the dark night all around him. His eyes seemed to bore into me. For the first time I noticed they weren’t green like his brother’s but cider gold. Before I could begin my brush-off, he said, “You know, I thought about this a lot. And I’m not okay with you thinking I’m a drug-crazed psycho.”
My heart beat faster. He hadn’t come to ask me out, but to set the record straight about this afternoon…maybe even tell me his secret! Was it possible—just possible—Icka and I weren’t alone after all?
“Hey.” Frowning, Jamie waved his hand over me. “You seem kinda distracted,” he said. “If it’s a bad time—”
“No, no, I’m fine.” I splashed on a smile. “So what were you going to say?”
But he tilted his head forward and peered at me with those piercing eyes as if to say, Are you sure you’re fine? Was I Captain Obvious, despite my smile, or—unreal thought—did he know I was an emotional mess because I was Whispering straight into his mind? What if he could Hear me longing to know his secret?
The idea of a stranger Hearing my innermost thoughts was suddenly real enough to unnerve me. I backed up onto the welcome mat and shoved both hands into my sweatshirt pocket, jostling the two phones, which clattered together. The phones. Mom still hadn’t called with news about Icka. I hadn’t called Parker back.
“You look really worried,” Jamie said. “I should probably go.” He turned, then turned back. “Just tell me one thing. Is it…the thing you’re worried about…is it what you saw in there? I mean me? At Starbucks?” As he spoke of the fight, he seemed to slouch and went from meeting my eyes to watching two moths worship the lamp. God, I hope she’s not scared of me.
Scared? He thought I was worried he’d beat me up? Maybe Jamie couldn’t Hear what I was thinking. “Believe me,” I said. “It’s nothing to do with you.”
“Really.” He folded his arms across his chest. “Talking to a violent nutcase doesn’t freak you out at all?”
Why did he not seem to believe me? “No—I mean, you’re not a…Ben said it was just a bad trip,” I finished lamely.
“Yeah, well, Ben makes shit up.” He looked me in the eye. “He doesn’t want people knowing about…about my condition.”
“Condition?” The word threw me. “You mean, a medical problem?” Was there really some disease out there, like a liver defect or kidney sickness, that made people unable to stop punching their siblings?
“Not medical, exactly,” Jamie admitted. “It’s more like, I’m different.”
“Different how?”
“You know how.”
Drawn by an invisible magnet, I took a step closer to him. Tell me.
Please let it b
e true. He bit his lower lip. “Like you.”
Now my heart was really pounding. He suspected me, as I suspected him. All my life I’d feared someone would notice I wasn’t as normal as I pretended to be. But I never thought it would be someone like him. His tone wasn’t accusing, it was inviting. Inviting me to open up. But why should I trust him? “Me?” I forced a laugh. “I’m, like, really average and boring. Sorry to disappoint you.”
Jamie rolled his eyes. “Come on, don’t give me that I’m-just-a-cheerleader act. I’ve been noticing you since school started.”
“Seriously, there’s nothing special about me.” Did he say noticing me, all year?
“I think you’re amazing,” he added, ignoring my protest. “The way you control it, without any Walls.”
Walls, that’s what Ben was trying to teach him about…by force. What were Walls meant to block out, Whispers? But acting normal meant stowing my curiosity. I wrinkled my forehead. “I have no clue what you’re talking about.”
“How the hell do you do that?” He shook his head as if I’d said something funny or impressive. “You lie easier than most people breathe.”
For a moment I just stared. I couldn’t possibly have heard right. He didn’t just call me a liar. Then I felt the searing ache of my throat tightening, closing up.
“Joy, wait.” He took a deep breath as if struggling to compose himself. “Just let me explain.”
I pushed my pouffy hair in front of my face, allowed my features to twist into pain. He’d called me a fake. A phony. The only person who’d ever called me out like that was Icka, but she was at least family. She knew we’d both had to learn to lie, to hide our secret. Jamie wasn’t family, wasn’t even a friend. He was a stranger humiliating me. And I was done sending him mixed signals. “Get the hell off my porch,” I heard myself say. The words were half lost in my lump of a throat.
Whisper Page 14