Whisper

by Phoebe Kitanidis

  “I swear, I didn’t mean to insult you.” His voice broke as I spun toward the door. I wish I’d told her everything from the start….

  Slam.

  Inside I blew on my stiff fingers to warm them. The dimly lit hallway’s smell of Lemon Pledge felt sterile. Stuffy. And, as always in the silence, Mom’s grandfather clock took only about three ticks to drive me nuts. But at least no one in here was calling me a liar.

  “Hon, who was that out there?” Dad called from the kitchen.

  “No one,” I yelled back. “Just Girl Scouts!”

  Crap, did that count as a lie? I cringed. So maybe I wasn’t a stickler for brutal honesty. But honesty was overrated. Sure, I put on a happy face even when I wasn’t feeling great, pretended to be thrilled by so-so gifts, and giggled at jokes I didn’t find funny, all out of politeness, out of kindness…to make people happy. Why was that such a crime? Even Mom did it. At least I didn’t lie to make people miserable, like Icka. Or tell the truth to make people miserable, like someone else I could name.

  And yet…I’d slammed a door on him. I, polite, kind Joy Stefani, slammed a door in someone’s face. It was beyond disappointing. I’d proved my pure niceness was an act, plus I’d done exactly what Icka would do. Worst of all, my short-lived fury didn’t even come from the same place as hers, the frustration of walking through a hostile world alone, day after day. Mine came from shame.

  Hadn’t I spent all afternoon mourning the fact that no one outside my family understood me? And here this guy had—somehow—found me out. He saw through my carefully crafted shell. And I didn’t like it.

  I wish I hadn’t screwed that up.

  I almost jumped. So Jamie was still within Hearing range. I’d been cruel to him, but he hadn’t gone away. Why not?

  I want to talk to her. I have to know if she’s like me.

  Oh. I held my breath, waiting to feel wretched stomach pains because I failed to cater to someone’s Whisper. But nothing happened. No pain, no regret, just the hall clock loudly chiming eight o’clock. I could hide in the house and pretend all I wanted, but deep down, in that same place in my mind where I Heard Whispers instead of silence, I knew the truth. Jamie and I had something major in common. As different as we seemed on paper, I was like him.

  I took a deep breath and opened the door.

  He was sitting on the porch swing, his face calm and contemplative. “You don’t have to say you’re sorry,” he said, waving away the formality. “Just sit here, okay?” He stood and offered me the seat. “Just listen.”

  I sat in the splintery old wooden swing.

  Jamie paced in front of me. “This is all so strange,” he said. “I mean, I came here wanting to tell you everything and then suddenly my curiosity got the best of me and I was trying to push you to tell me about you. Then I realized…I was feeling your curiosity.”

  That stopped me. “You can feel my curiosity?”

  “Oh, yeah. It’s practically knocking me over.” He was watching me closely. “You want to know about me? Well, now you know. That’s it. That’s my condition. I can feel…I have to feel…what other people are feeling.” He leaned back against the railing.

  “Wow.” Now I had to stand and pace. So he did have the gift…or some kind of gift. But I didn’t quite get what he meant. “How…how do you do that?” I said. “You get some kind of message or signal about their feelings and that’s how you know what they are?” I had to tread carefully here. Not seem like I understood too easily how his ability worked.

  But Jamie seemed surprised. “No,” he said, frowning. “I just feel it. The emotion goes through me like a wave. That’s what we call them, in my family, Waves.”

  “Waves?” I repeated dumbly. Were Waves totally different from Whispers? All this time I’d been thinking he was either a Hearer or normal. I’d never considered there could be a third category, a gift Mom hadn’t even known about. “So other people’s feelings are Waves to you.”

  He nodded. “Sounds stupid, I guess. But it’s the best way my dad could come up with to explain it to a kid. Waves rise up out of other people, all the time. From here.” He touched his chest. “Happy Waves, sad, confused, lonely…of course, with a Wall you don’t have to feel most of those. They’ll just break and bounce off you.”

  “Okay, you keep talking about Walls. What is a Wall?”

  “It’s just a way of setting your mind, so you’re protected from Waves. Supposedly. All the men in our family can do it, except me.”

  “Except you?”

  He shrugged as if it didn’t bother him, but I wasn’t convinced. “I’m more like an open window than a Wall,” he said. “Other people’s Waves get inside me, whether I want them to or not. And if they’re strong enough, like yours were this afternoon…then all I can do is run.”

  Suddenly I remembered how he hadn’t wanted to speak to me in front of the stoners because my presence made them mad. How he fled the classroom when Mr. Jensen spewed vitriol about politics…he tried to leave whenever people got upset.

  I was trembling, and not just from the cold. He’d done it, just blurted out the truth about himself. I couldn’t do that, could I? I scanned the blue-black horizon as if for thunderbolts, but it was just a normal October night—even the rain had stopped. Mom’s crystal wind chime jingled in the breeze. Pieces of my mind were also jangling against one another, spinning wildly. Friends aren’t family, an old voice echoed. But the logical part of me knew my parents had only built up that “family secret” stuff to shield their daughters from social ostracism. Jamie wouldn’t think less of me or spread a rumor about me if I told him. The anti-freak police wouldn’t jump out from behind Mom’s azalea bush and arrest me. So what was stopping me?

  I was lost in my very own logic trance when I saw Jamie at the railing looking away, staring out at the street. I hope this isn’t the part where she points and laughs and runs to tell the story to all her friends.

  God. I’d gotten so caught up in my own feelings, I’d forgotten about his. A mistake he himself was incapable of making. Impulsively, I reached out and grabbed Jamie’s hand. My palm was ice, but as his fingers closed gently over my hand it became the only part of me that felt warm.

  “I don’t feel Waves like you,” I began. “But I’m not as avera—”

  He interrupted. “Never? You don’t call them something else or…?”

  “No.”

  “But you believed me. No one but my family’s ever believed me before.” He squeezed my hand once more, then let go. “I was wrong, I guess.” I wish you had been like me.

  “You weren’t entirely wrong about me, Jamie,” I said, then shook my head. “I just can’t tell you any more than that. I can’t. I can’t.”

  “Breathe.”

  I inhaled, studied the lines on my palm, exhaled. No doubt Jamie could feel the Waves of longing coming from me. The longing to open up, to be honest and real with someone, made me dizzy, like gazing into the void of an open airplane hatch. It wasn’t just that we both had gifts, it wasn’t just that no one had ever told me a secret of this magnitude. It was that I was desperate for someone to talk to. Someone who was there, unlike Mom. Who wouldn’t tear me down, unlike my “friends.” Who could believe me and take me seriously, unlike Dad.

  “Can I tell you something,” I ventured, “that isn’t about being different?”

  “Of course.”

  “You kept saying I seemed worried and distracted earlier. Well, I was. I still am. I think this has been the worst day of my life.”

  He nodded. “You were pretty broken up at the mall. What’s wrong?”

  “Everything,” I said flatly. “But the one thing I’m most worried about is my sister.”

  “You mean Icka?”

  Despite the seriousness of the conversation, despite everything, I had the urge to giggle. Even Jamie, the most out-to-lunch freshman at Lincoln, knew who my sister was; she was so wildly unpopular she was practically a celebrity.

  “Yes, Icka,�
� I said. “She’s visiting Pendleton U this weekend. But something about it just feels so weird.”

  “It was like that for me too,” Jamie said, nodding, “when I realized Ben wouldn’t be around next year. For the first time in my life, I’d be without him.”

  “I don’t think it’s just that,” I said, frowning. I’d never even thought of that. “It’s more like…I keep thinking about her being…in trouble. And—this is going to sound really stupid, but—I had this dream. That Icka wanted to do something…something dangerous and crazy.” I sighed. “You probably think it all sounds stupid.”

  “No…a little vague,” he admitted, “but not stupid.”

  “Maybe everything’s fine. Maybe I’m just projecting because we got into a fight before she left—not a real, physical fight,” I added. “I just know what I feel.”

  “Uneasy,” he supplied. “Anxious. I would say almost frantic.”

  I stared at him, rapt. “It’s so weird that I don’t have to tell you.”

  “It’s so weird that you believe me,” he said. “You really think she’s in danger.” It wasn’t a question.

  “It’s just a feeling…I can’t ignore it, though.”

  He paused. “So…are you going to take Max, or TriMet?”

  “Huh?” Now he’d lost me.

  “To Pendleton.”

  “Oh.” I finally got what he was saying. “You mean, like hop on a bus to Portland and track Icka down?”

  “Well, yeah, if you can’t ignore this feeling.”

  “I can’t, but…” I felt a blush spread through my face. I could see how he’d come to the conclusion that I should go out and find Icka all by myself, if I was so uneasy, anxious, and frantic. But the concept was so far out of my comfort zone, I hadn’t considered it. Leaving aside our sisterly issues, going to Portland alone at night on public transit—surrounding myself with strangers and their Whispers—terrified me. But I couldn’t tell him that. “I—I don’t know the TriMet schedule!” That one was weak, since the internet could tell me in about two clicks. “Or—what room she’s staying in,” I added. But it was a small enough campus. I was running out of excuses. “Plus,” I added, “high school girl wandering around the city at midnight?” Translation: I’m a scared little baby. “She’ll be home in a few hours anyway….”

  “I could take you there,” he said. “If you wanted.”

  I blinked. “Really, you have a license?” For a split second, I let myself picture it, driving to Pendleton together. Finding Icka, safe. Having her yell at us. Driving home free of anxiety, everything peaceful inside my head for once. It seemed just dimly possible.

  Then he said, “Well, not a license, official, like a piece of paper blessed by our government, but I’m an awesome driver. And we could borrow some wheels too,” he went on, getting so excited by his own plan that his voice got faster, lost its shy tone. “I could help you, watch out for you and stuff, two’s always safer than one, right?”

  I stared at him. Jesus. That was most certainly not what I wanted, to be hurtling toward city lights in a stolen car with an unlicensed juvenile delinquent. Groaning, I kneaded my face with my hands, wished I could hide my skepticism so he wouldn’t sense it, so he didn’t feel hurt. Why was he so eager to help solve my problems anyway…didn’t he have tons of his own? “Come on, it’s Saturday night,” I said, trying to be tactful. “I’m sure you have better things to do than go surprise my weird sister in college.”

  He dropped his gaze, making his bangs fell back into his eyes. The shyness crept back into his voice. “Honestly, no,” he said, laughing a little. “I can’t think of any.”

  Then I remembered: He had nowhere to go tonight. Ben had warned his brother to stay away, to steer clear of their father. My god, where was he going to sleep tonight? A park bench? Behind a Dumpster? And he was worried about me? I felt like a spoiled, ungrateful princess.

  “That’s incredibly nice of you to offer,” I said, trying to compose myself. “But she’d probably be home by the time we got there anyway. So let’s leave driving to Portland as…Plan B.” Or Plan Z, I thought.

  “Wait.” He lifted his eyebrows. “Do we have a Plan A?”

  “Well, I’m sure my mom’s going to call back,” I said, “and I’m just going to…you know, wait for her. It’s all I can do right now. Legally.” I felt warmth creep into my cheeks as I realized just how dumb my “plan of action” sounded. As dumb—as crazy—as his idea of stealing a car and tearing off to Portland half-cocked sounded to me. What was worse, being a scared momma’s baby or being an outlaw freak? Two days ago, I would have been certain of the answer. No longer.

  “Awright, well, the offer stands.” He stuffed his hands back in his pockets and pivoted. “If you change your mind, I’ll be at Denny’s.”

  “Denny’s?” I repeated.

  “Free soda refills,” he explained sheepishly. “They don’t kick me out till one or two.”

  “But, wait, where are you going to go after two?” I said, cringing at the mom-ish tone of worry in my voice, but he was already down the steps and didn’t turn.

  I plopped onto the couch and mechanically made it through another round of calling Mom, calling Aunt Jane, leaving voice mail. Then I tried to watch the end of Mean Girls on HBO, but my mind kept wandering back to Jamie.

  What would it be like to have his gift? To have emotion overwhelm you instead of being able to turn it down? And how did Ben control it with a Wall while Jamie couldn’t? What about their parents, the dad who didn’t want Jamie to come home tonight after fighting? Icka had gotten into her fair share of trouble—more than her share, she’d covered my share too—but I couldn’t imagine my parents ever kicking her out. What kind of sense did that make: Your kid’s drowning in problems, so you make him homeless too?

  Maybe Jamie could at least stay at the teen center Mom volunteered at. He wasn’t safe on the streets. What if someone stabbed him tonight for his wallet, or he witnessed a drug deal gone wrong, like on TV? Gang members could dump his body at a random construction site. He could even be stalked by a serial killer, one of the gross kind that froze people’s body parts. Months later, his parents would ID them and the entire nation would concur that their son’s grisly demise was all their fault….

  Okay, I was getting carried away. But at least worrying about Jamie and his problems distracted me a little from thinking of my own.

  The Lotus Garden delivery guy arrived, and I busied myself filling two plates and depositing one on top of Dad’s printer. (He hadn’t even asked me who was at the door, but floated off to his office “just to check the docket for a minute.” Yeah, right: We both knew he’d be in there till morning.)

  I set my own plate on our antique living-room coffee table. A glass sheet protected the wood, and Mom used it as a way to display family photos. Granny Rowan’s eyes peered at me solemnly from a long-past Easter picnic. Grammy and Grandpa mugged from a Venetian gondola on their silver anniversary trip to Italy. They looked so self-satisfied and annoying. I flicked at their faces with my middle finger, then felt childish. I was just punchy from boredom and worry.

  At nine o’clock I surfed over to the Disney Channel to catch The Princess Diaries. The phones were still silent.

  My stomach was on sour spin cycle, but I forced myself to take a bite of my favorite sweet-and-sour tofu. Back when she first went vegan, it had taken Icka months to convince me even to try it, and she was so thrilled when I got hooked on the stuff…but less pleased after I continued to devour cheeseburgers. Thinking about Icka, about the days when we’d been more connected, made my heart flip-flop. Like it had those times when I Heard her. Don’t think about it, I told myself. What can you do anyway? Face it, you’re not some kind of caped crusader superhero. You’re a wimp. Taking on the puppet presidency of a recycling club makes you quiver.

  Six-year-old Jess gazed up at me from the coffee table. She was cuddling with puppy Scarlett, both of them smiling. I remembered how she used to squeeze my h
and to Whisper to me. I want to fly over the Grand Canyon like a hawk! What happened to that little girl…what happened to us?

  The photo next to it made me cringe: me and my sister at the Seattle Space Needle. We were up on the observation deck, leaning awkwardly against the railing, me at ten with braces, her thirteen, already with the beginnings of that cynical sneer. A pink-and-mauve sunset glowing behind us, as if to illustrate the end of our sisterly closeness. We’d fought a lot on that trip. Our arms were only around each other because Mom told us to pose. What happened?

  Don’t look. Don’t think. Just eat and watch TV and sleep…she’s probably with Mom already, on their way home. Mom will come home any minute and everything will be fine.

  I arranged a phone on either side of me like a good-luck charm and lay back on the couch, listening to Julie Andrews’s comforting voice with my eyes closed….

  I opened my eyes. It was dark, and my body felt bleary, heavy. I was still on the living-room couch. On the cushion under my right calf, my cell was vibrating. Mom, it had to be. A wave of empty-belly nausea passed over me as I reached down to grab it and flip it open. “Mom, are you with Icka?”

  “Ew, I’m not your Mom!” Parker’s voice, Parker’s laugh.

  “Oh. Hey, Park.” I was too groggy to hide my disappointment.

  “Thanks, you sound so happy to hear from me!”

  “Sorry, I was asleep.” I sat up and pinched my wrist, willing myself to wake up. I had to be alert enough to weasel my way out of this conversation. Talking to Parker was dangerous—not to mention awkward—until I’d talked to Mom about how to handle her new Whispers. And my new feelings of resentment. “I should probably go back to sleep,” I mused.

  “Oh my gosh, it’s only ten thirty,” she said. “Are you that sick?”

  “Yeah.” I’d almost forgotten being “sick.” “I think it’s a flu.”

  “My poor little Joy.”

  I made a noncommittal sound and gritted my teeth. I was so tired of being talked down to, feeling like her puppy instead of her peer. Especially after Jamie, who took me seriously….