Whisper

by Phoebe Kitanidis

  The butterflies in my stomach turned to bees. “But…where do I follow it to?”

  “Ask her.”

  “You mean…I can talk to her directly?”

  “She can Hear your Whispers,” she said, like it was obvious. Which I guess it was. It was just a whole new way of looking at Whispers. “Your minds are connected. You should be able to see what she sees, remember what she’s remembering.”

  “Seriously?”

  “You can’t be thinking about other things, though,” she added. “You have to focus entirely on connecting with her. Try it now.”

  Icka, I said silently, I wish I could find you.

  All I Heard at first was Aunt Jane beside me: I pray nothing happens to that girl because of me. Me, me, me. Why was it so hard to think about other people without thinking about yourself too?

  I closed my eyes and gathered up thoughts of Icka. The small purple figure disappearing into the woods. The mermaid on the rock. The lone plate of Tofurky on Thanksgiving. Icka. Jess. My sister. Have to find you, get you back.

  Almost immediately, my body lurched forward as a warm orange light bathed my vision. My mind’s eye flashed on two little girls toiling over a moated, turreted sandcastle, a sepia-toned photo that could just as well have been Mom and Aunt Jane as me and my sister. Queasiness like a wreath of cigarette smoke drifted up toward my head, and blink: I saw Jess’s grip on my hand as we ran toward the shimmering waves. Blink: the zoo at age seven, trembling behind Jess, hiding from the play-fighting grizzly bears. Blink: arms around each other at the Space Needle. Then I was staring at the café courtyard’s painted sky wall once more.

  “What’d she say? Where is she?”

  I was dazed. “I just…saw all these images. Memories, or something.”

  “No words at all,” Aunt Jane said grimly. “Suggests she might not be fully conscious. Why don’t you ask her to show you where she is now?”

  I swallowed. “We can do that?”

  Aunt Jane bit her lip. “You can do a lot more than fetch people what they want, Joy.”

  I closed my eyes again, concentrated: Jessica, I wish you could show me where to find you.

  As if in reply, I got arms-around-each-other-at-the-Space-Needle a second time. The Space Needle again…wait. “The Space Needle’s in Seattle!” I blurted out. Seattle, with its direct-trade coffee on every block, its weird art and green politics. Seattle, the birthplace of grunge music. “That’s where she’d be! That’s where she is.” I took a deep breath. “I guess that’s where I have to go.”

  I’d been the one to push her away. Crazy as it was, dangerous as it was, I had to be the one to bring her back. Because even though I’d shut her out of my life, I was the only one in the family she was still talking to. Besides, Aunt Jane, unlike my parents, had faith in me. Of course Aunt Jane just might be crazy. But when it came down to it, who in our family was totally sane?

  “Call in every hour, you hear me?” Aunt Jane swept her burlap purse off the table and turned toward the main room. I just hope I’m not making another big mistake…. I hope this makes everything better, not worse. “I’m going upstairs to talk to your mother.”

  “Good luck sorting through the lies.”

  She turned around and smoothed my hair. “I don’t blame you for being disappointed in her, Joy,” she said softly. “God knows Kelli and I have had our differences. She doesn’t get why I felt I’d be happier without my Hearing. And I don’t get how she can go through life never looking below the surface.” Or Hearing below the surface? I thought. “Then again, who am I to judge her?” Aunt Jane went on. “I chose not to have children myself because deep down, I knew I wasn’t up to the challenge of raising girls who could Hear.”

  “I guess Mom wasn’t up to it either.”

  “I wouldn’t say that.” Aunt Jane’s eyes were shiny. “All I have to do is look across the table at my niece, and I know she did a damn fine job. Now we have to help her, because she’s fallen down under the weight of supporting everyone.”

  Her words didn’t penetrate my anger. Still, I nodded. It was the first time her hippie-therapy talk had ever made sense.

  “And I’m going to help her with tough love,” she added. “I’ll tell her she has fifteen minutes to enlighten your father, or I’m calling him myself.”

  “Wait!” I grabbed her arm. “But what if they call the police?”

  “I’m pretty sure you don’t need to worry about that,” Aunt Jane said. “Your mother would sooner run a PTSA meeting naked than explain to the authorities how she lost two teenagers.” She frowned. “You dad might put a detective on your trail, though, or try to follow you himself. Don’t worry, I’ll give you a big head start before I tell them where you’re headed.”

  “Wait, how could you give me a head start?” I was confused. “As soon as Mom Hears you, she’ll know everything!”

  “Oh, please.” Aunt Jane dismissed Mom’s power with a wave of her hand. “Even I can block out Kelli.”

  “Block her?” I blinked. “Are you saying…you can stop her from Hearing you?” Realization started to dawn on me. “How would someone do that?”

  She hesitated, and I could see the wheels turning. Whatever it was, she’d assumed I knew already. If I didn’t, should she be the one to tell me? “Well. A couple ways,” she said finally. “Anyone—even a non-Hearer—can learn to control her own mind. By letting go of a desire, you change the subject in your brain. Meditation helps,” she added. “Or training yourself to think of something else. Something harmless.”

  I leaned forward. “Is that what Mom and Icka do, they let go of desires they don’t want me to Hear?”

  Again she hesitated. I hated putting her on the spot like this, but I had to know the truth. “There is another way,” she said, “but I don’t recommend it. It can damage your emotional health.” She sighed. “An adept like you can build a mental barrier and hide her Whispers behind that Wall, so no one knows what’s going on inside.”

  “A Wall?” So my family had Walls too, like Ben and his dad? I asked the question I was pretty sure I knew the answer to. “Can those Walls cause headaches?”

  “Can they ever. On both sides. When I was eighteen and my power was growing stronger every day, your grandma and I used to give each other splitting—” Suddenly Aunt Jane stopped and stared at me. “Wait a minute, are you getting headaches? Already?”

  I nodded. “Getting them and giving them, I guess.” Our house was a psychic war zone, and I’d never noticed.

  “That means you’re breaking through.” Her tone was surprised, almost awed. “Joy. Your Hearing must be very strong if you can already do that. Of course,” she added, “living in a house full of both kinds of blockers, you’ve clearly had opportunities to hone your power.”

  I almost had to sit down again. My head was spinning with terms I just barely understood. Blockers. Adepts. Hone your power. Breaking through. What else did Aunt Jane know that Mom couldn’t, or wouldn’t, pass on to us? And why had I never tried to talk to her before?

  Then it hit me. Both kinds of blockers? My hand felt the smooth stone of my topaz pendant. “Dad,” I whispered. It wasn’t that he never thought about us, he just didn’t want to burden us with his hopes and expectations. The way his own parents had done to him. “Did you teach him how—”

  “When I was in the forest,” Aunt Jane said, “your father filed my taxes for ten years. As far as favors go, I’d say we’re even.”

  Outside the café, I barely had time to zip my jacket before the Land Rover rolled up.

  I jumped into the passenger side.

  “Whoa.” Jamie reeled to the left, as if a magnet had pinned him to the inside of the car door. “You okay? Where’d you get all this energy?”

  “Get back on the freeway,” I told him. “We have to go to Seattle.”

  “Ah…no can do, Nancy Drew.” He was slowly peeling himself off the door. His voice hit me back with my own resolve and urgency. “See, the thing is, S
eattle is the opposite direction from home, and we have to return this here coach before my brother comes back from his date and turns me into a pumpkin. Which is technically Cinderella, not Nancy Drew, but—”

  “This is more important, I swear!” I said. “I’ll explain everything on the way, but we have to go.”

  He stopped. “Everything?” he said softly.

  I took a deep breath. “Everything,” I said, and I meant it.

  19

  Confessing my secret to Jamie felt like flying down a roller-coaster track, my vision blurred, my stomach weightless as exit signs whizzed past. Halfway through, when I got to the part about how hard it is for me to not grant a wish, Jamie’s right hand quit the steering wheel. It found my left hand, resting on my knee, and covered it, his long fingers flexing underneath to compress my palm. And he didn’t let go for the rest of the story, and I didn’t let go of his hand either, so he was sort of flying down the hill with me. When I got to the end—when he knew why I was throwing up and crying in the Starbucks bathroom, when he knew about my dream, and Mom’s lie about Icka being okay, and Aunt Jane telling me I had to be the one to find her—he looked at me. Just looked. A brief glance too, because he was driving, but it was enough. I felt understood.

  He didn’t speak for seven exits. Then he said, quietly, “I always wondered why everybody around you was so happy.”

  “Were they? I’m glad…sort of.” I smiled at the moon that seemed to follow us through the otherwise black night. “Mom always said our gift could make the world a happier place. I’m glad it wasn’t all lies.” I was almost afraid to ask my next question. “What about me? Was I happy?”

  “Sometimes.” He signaled to pass a Pepsi truck. “You just never stayed like that for long. You’d be smiling, but then you’d send out these Waves…out of nowhere you’d be scared, or uneasy. Couldn’t figure you out. Thought you might even have the same thing I did, but in reverse or something.” He shook his head. “Instead you have this totally amazing power.”

  I snorted. “Yeah, it’s pretty awesome being me.”

  Chopin played on my phone just then. MOM’S CELL flashed on the screen. “Augh,” I said. For the tenth time since Aunt Jane had spilled the beans to my parents, I screened her out by punching Ignore.

  “I’m not saying your life’s a picnic,” Jamie said. “But look at me. I just wish…well, hell, you can probably Hear it.” I wish I wasn’t broken like this.

  My limbs felt squirmy. The closer I was to another person, the harder it was to ignore their Whispers. Without thinking I suggested, “Maybe one day you can learn how to control it.”

  “Uh, don’t go there.” His tone had a dark, sharp edge to it suddenly. “You sound like my dad or Ben.”

  “No,” I said, hurt, “I was just saying—”

  “You think I haven’t tried?” He chuckled, a sound of pain. “Trust me, I have tried so hard, so many times…. I can’t put up a Wall, I’m just defective. It is what it is.”

  “But what if a Wall’s not the only way?” I was reaching. “I mean, if they’re Waves, can’t you, like…dive underneath, or surf them, or something?”

  “What the hell does that mean?” The edge was back.

  “I don’t know, okay?” I was starting to feel attacked. “I’m just trying to help.”

  “I’ve been dealing with this shit my whole life.” He stared at the dark road ahead, his posture stiff, hunched. “Don’t you think if there was some way out I’d have found it? Or maybe I’m just stupid and lazy, and I like being a freak.” It broke my heart the way he recited this list of insults, like it was a mantra he’d been forced to memorize. Who had told him those things?

  “Of course I don’t think that!” I brushed his bicep, and felt his shoulder relax a little. “I just don’t think you should give up hope. I didn’t know half of what I could do till this weekend. Maybe you’re still discovering your potential.”

  “Maybe.” He shrugged. “Look, I know you’re trying to help. I’m just not used to…never mind.”

  “What?”

  “Someone still having faith in me.” He said the words quickly, sounding embarrassed now.

  “Well, get used to it,” I said. “I’m not giving up on you. Trying to solve other people’s problems is in my blood.” I paused. “Also, you may be the only friend I have left.”

  “Trying to solve people’s problems for them…having no friends,” he deadpanned. “Ever thought about how those two things might relate?”

  I rolled my eyes and grinned. “Shut up.”

  Before I could attempt a better zinger, we were interrupted by my cell. For once it wasn’t Mom’s ring.

  “Please be Icka!” I wished aloud, and scrambled to fish the phone from my jacket pocket. It was Dad.

  I didn’t want to talk to him, but it wasn’t fair to keep him in the dark.

  I sighed and flipped it open.

  “Pumpkin?” I could hear the wind whipping of engine sounds in the background. “I’m driving to Seattle. To sync up with you.”

  “You what?” I held the phone at arm’s length and gave it a sidelong glare, as if I suspected it of lying. Dad wanted to “sync up” with me? Not call the police? Not hire a detective? But join my search party? “So does this mean you believe me?” I ventured. “That I’m Hearing her?”

  Dad was quiet for a moment. “I’m not sure what to believe anymore,” he admitted. “It seems I’ve been going on some faulty intelligence.”

  Faulty intelligence. I cringed, thinking about the lying note I’d left, the tense conversation he’d likely just had with Mom. Then again, Dad’s being so out of the loop was partly his own doing—he’d always kept the rest of us at a distance; understandable, perhaps, but now he was paying the price. A gloomy thought popped into my head: What if my parents ended up divorcing over Mom’s not being honest with us, or Dad’s not being there for us? I couldn’t help but notice he said, “I’m driving to Seattle,” not “we.” As if reading my mind, he added, “You know, our family has some things we need to talk about, later.” He sounded almost stern, for him. “What matters now,” he went on, “is both my girls coming home safe. I want you—and your friend—to check into the W Hotel downtown the moment you get to Seattle. I’ve booked a room for each of you. Wait for me there, understand? Do not go anywhere till I arrive.”

  I had no intention of waiting in my room. But I wasn’t going to lie to him again. “Dad, I don’t know how much longer I’ll be able to Hear her. I’m sorry, but I just have to keep looking. With you or without you.”

  He exhaled noisily. “Well, I don’t like this,” he said.

  I held my breath. Was he going to call the police on us?

  “But I can see nothing’s going to stop you, so there’s no point in arguing.” A pause. “Promise to keep your phone on?”

  “I will.”

  “And keep your wits about you.”

  “I will, Dad.”

  I hung up feeling like, for once, Dad’s Vulcan-like ability to bury his emotions was a good thing.

  Three A.M. found us in South Seattle, at an all-night Shell station. We were the only customers. At the register, a pretty Indian girl in charcoal sweats had spread her textbook on the counter and was praying she’d pass her microbiology midterm.

  Jamie had been Whispering about food for the past hour, so we headed straight for the glass case that housed gas-station cuisine: the standard nukeable breakfast bagels, energy drinks, frozen treats.

  I just want a turkey sandwich, he Whispered.

  “Second row,” I replied, not feeling the slightest bit self-conscious for responding to his thought.

  When the cashier didn’t glance up from her cram session, I rang the bell and for once in my life didn’t mind getting glared at. While I counted out cash for food and gas, Jamie ran outside to start the pump. Draining my wallet down to the last ten bucks made me nervous, but we needed fuel now, to keep going. And we had to keep going.

  The images
I had picked up from Icka since leaving Portland had disturbed me—so much so that several times, Jamie had had to pull over and leap out of the car. He’d stand by the side of the road panting, catching his breath, praying for calm. A trip that should have taken under three hours had taken four.

  In that time, I’d gotten a bit better at Whispering directly to Icka, but her responses had grown more jumbled: a mishmash of our shared memories, past wishes, and random sights and sounds and sometimes even sensations. As we’d driven through Olympia, I had flashed for several seconds on a gray courtyard swarming with young people who looked much like Icka: ripped jeans, dark jackets, silver-studded chins and eyebrows. I’d Heard no words but felt a sense of reaching out to the crowd. Searching. Was she yearning to belong? Had Icka come to Seattle hoping to find friends? Or was she searching the crowd for someone specific? The guys who were going to help her kill her Hearing.

  It had been the last clear picture for a while. Soon after, I’d begun to see disjointed images. A spinning pink elephant. An IM chat window filled with endless repetitions of the letter “O.” A stack of chemistry textbooks dancing. I saw a chorus of little kids hiss and spit like demons. Felt myself falling down a well; I hit the water and kept falling. Heard a young guy’s braying laughter on a loop. Smelled the sweet, sickening, outdoor-concert reek of pot. Was the person she was searching for…a drug dealer? If so, whatever they’d hooked her up with had to be a thousand times stronger than weed. Sitting in the car next to Jamie, I’d worried that Icka’s next dispatch of brain shit would set him careening off the road. Around the time we’d passed Tacoma, I got a crystal-like set of flashes. A dank ceiling peopled with lecherous gray shadow hands. I—or Icka—floated on a moldy mattress. My lungs screamed for oxygen. I wished desperately to turn on my side but couldn’t. I understood these were Icka’s wishes, Icka’s experiences. What the hell was happening to her?