Prism

by Faye Kellerman; Aliza Kellerman

  “I didn’t!” She sobbed without tears. “It’s fine!”

  “Then why are you clutching it?” Zeke asked her.

  “Leave her alone!” I whispered fiercely. “And keep your voice down.”

  “Sorry….” Zeke turned to Joy. “Sorry.”

  “We all had the same dream,” I said. “I’m sure of it. The good news is that we’re probably not crazy. The bad news is something’s going on, and we don’t know what it is.”

  “It has to be a dream,” Joy said. “Mr. Addison is still alive.”

  I had no answer to that one, and neither did Zeke.

  I said, “The last thing I remember before waking up is falling.”

  “Me, too,” Zeke said. “We got lost in the cave and we were struggling to find our way out. Then we saw light.”

  “We began running toward an opening,” Joy said.

  “And then we fell,” I said. “But I don’t remember hitting the ground.”

  “I didn’t hit the ground,” Joy said. “I woke up and my arm was red and sore.”

  “So where are we?” When no one answered, I said, “Everything’s the same, except it isn’t. What is it? Like a bizarro world where everything’s backwards?”

  “Nothing is backwards,” Joy said. “Everything’s the same except no one will help me with my arm. I told my mom about it and she slapped me.” Her eyes grew moist. “She said I was fine. I was really angry at her until I noticed this terrified look in her eyes…like I was going to die or something. It scared the living crap out of me. Then I told my boyfriend about it and he got angry at me and told me to shut up.” More tears. “He never talks that way to me. I was so mad at him, I told him I never wanted to see him again.”

  “So how is your arm?” I asked her.

  “If I don’t move it too much, it’s okay. Please don’t speak about it. I just want to forget about it, okay?”

  “So there is disease.” My head was throbbing, and an inferno was raging inside my stomach. “Disease exists, but no one wants to talk about it.”

  “Wait.” Zeke snapped his fingers. “You said Maria was sick. Did she go home early?”

  I tossed my hair back. “No.”

  “That’s it!” Zeke cried. “There is disease, but there’s no concept of getting sick!”

  No one said anything.

  Zeke exclaimed, “No one truly understands the meaning of illness.”

  “She did get pissed when I suggested she take a sick day,” I added.

  Joy shook her head. “No, then she wouldn’t have gotten pissed. She’d just be confused. They know what getting sick means. And both my mom and my boyfriend—my ex-boyfriend—knew what being hurt was. They just don’t want to acknowledge being sick or hurt. Like getting germs is a death sentence or something.”

  “That could be,” Zeke said. “Leslie was weird when I tried to kiss her last night. And then she looked at me like I was nuts.”

  “And that’s just making out.” Joy smashed her cigarette against my windowpane. “I could only imagine what it’s like for people who seriously hook up—if you know what I mean.”

  I knew exactly what she meant. I got up and began to walk around my room. It was in a state of chaos. My plaid kilt was rumpled on the floor and my underwear drawer was embarrassingly open. Subtly I tried to close it with the side of my body. “So maybe people do understand sick but just don’t want to talk about it because there are no cures.”

  “That could be,” Joy said. “After my mom slapped me…I went into the kitchen cupboard to look for Advil. That’s where we keep it—or used to keep it. It was gone. Maybe we just ran out, but I wasn’t about to ask my mom about it.”

  “It could be that there’s no pills here. My medicine cabinet was missing my stuff, too.” I glanced at my bulletin board. On it were pictures of Maria and me, Iggy and Stephen. There was also a photo from last year in the hospital when Suzanne had just been born. It was of my whole family and one of my favorites. The photo was right in the middle—

  My mouth dropped open.

  “Kaida, are you all right?” Joy asked.

  I whipped my head around. I was panting.

  “Sit down,” Zeke told me. “You’re white.”

  “More like gray.” Joy pulled out another cigarette and lit it. “Are you okay?”

  I didn’t answer her. “My photo!” I smacked the wall. “It’s gone!”

  Not really physically gone, but it had morphed. We were no longer at the hospital, but at my grandmother’s house. I just stared and stared and stared. “I think I finally get this.”

  “What?” Zeke said. “Clue us in.”

  “No medicine, no hospitals, no nurses, and no doctors.”

  We sat in dazed silence.

  “People do understand sick.” I shivered. “They just don’t understand better.”

  9

  It was a defining moment.

  “People get sick,” I whispered. “They don’t understand how to stop being sick.”

  Zeke was appalled. “How could you have a society with flat screens, email, computers, cell phones, and fax machines but no medicine?”

  “Then come up with something better.” I turned away from my bulletin board and faced the two of them. Zeke was too big for my chair. Joy didn’t seem at ease with her cigarette. It was as if she had stolen it from her mother’s dresser drawer—a kid in Mommy’s makeup.

  I took the cigarette from Joy’s fingers, crushed it under my foot, and threw it out of the window. “If there’s no such thing as better, you don’t need to have crap in your lungs.”

  “I…” Joy looked down. “I don’t know what to say.”

  I turned to look at Zeke. “You just coughed!”

  “I did?”

  “Yeah, you did,” Joy confirmed.

  I told him, “Cough again tonight. Ask your mom for a cough drop! She probably won’t even know what it is. That’s why Moose thought you were coming on to his girlfriend. There’s no such thing as a Heimlich maneuver.”

  “Kaida, calm down,” Joy said.

  I was talking too loud. I took two yoga breaths and tried to calm my thumping heart. “You’re both in denial!”

  I felt the tears come.

  Gah!

  I hate crying in front of other people. I sat on my bed, pulling my knees to my chin. My head felt safe in the space between my knees: nice and dark.

  “No one’s in denial,” Zeke said in hushed tones. “At least, I’m not. I’m just utterly confused. Like we’re here and everything’s the same, except it’s not the same. Like we’re in some kind of facsimile of our world…” His voice broke.

  I knew it was bad when a boy like Zeke got choked up.

  Joy’s voice was also shaky. “What’s going on?”

  “I have no idea, but something has radically changed.” I told them about how the hospital where my sister was born had disappeared from the picture on my bulletin board.

  Zeke put his hand over his mouth. “This is too weird. I need to think about this.”

  “And I need to get home,” Joy said. “My mother…she doesn’t care about me smoking, but she’s suddenly become a bug on time.”

  I looked up. “Take care of the arm. I’ll try to find some Advil.”

  “Yeah, me too,” Zeke said. “I’ll hunt around.”

  “We need to agree not to talk to anyone about it,” Joy said. “No one.”

  We all nodded.

  Joy said, “I’m beginning to believe Kaida…that medicine doesn’t exist.”

  “Or hospitals or doctors,” I said. “It’s either that or I’m going mad.”

  “Then I’m going crazy, too,” Zeke said. “I have to go as well.”

  But no one moved.

  Zeke said, “It’s going to look really weird if we all suddenly hang out together when we never did before the accide…before the dream.”

  “I agree,” I said. “We’ll keep a low profile. We shouldn’t hang out. But maybe can meet for a few
minutes at lunch and talk about it tomorrow.”

  They both nodded. I dried my eyes and tried to appear as normal as possible. I walked them to my door and closed it softly after they left. Then I ran back to my room, stuffed my face into my pillow, and silently cried. But I wasn’t alone for long.

  “Knock, knock,” Jace called from outside.

  “Screw you,” I told him.

  He opened my door anyway. When he saw my red eyes, he swallowed dryly. “You okay?”

  “I’m fine. I’m having a bad day.”

  “Sorry about that.” He sat beside me on my bed and twisted my earlobe. I have the type of earlobes that connect directly into my head, hence earning me the loving name “Lobeless.” Jace had called me that since I was ten. He didn’t twist it hard, but I found it irritating.

  “Ow.” I swatted his hand away. “Something is wrong.”

  “I’ll say, Lobeless. I’m in your room of my own free will.”

  “Don’t call me that. I’m not in the mood.”

  Jace rubbed his hands together. “It’s about what happened. You know, the thing with the car and the guys in white…”

  I hadn’t even told him about the choking incident. I wanted to tell him about that as well but then thought better of it.

  Jace’s eyes swept across my room. “Your questioning about the accident is not acceptable. You know that.”

  I hadn’t known that, but I was starting to learn. “Nothing is making sense.”

  He nodded. “You’re asking about things that you know can’t be answered. I once felt the same as you did. Confused. Do you know what I did?”

  “Eat?”

  “Well, yeah, I did that, too.” He looked around my room again. “When I had those kinds of questions and I didn’t want to ask anyone about them because…well, you know how parents are.”

  “I’m figuring that out as we speak.”

  “Anyway, when I had questions, I went to the library.”

  “Jace, I do not need one of those ‘you and your body’ books—”

  “Stop, stop, stop!” He exhaled again. “You’re not going to get the kind of answers you want. You’ll never get exactly what you want. But there are people out there…who have thought about these things…things that we’re not supposed to think about.”

  “But why aren’t we supposed to think about them?”

  “Because spills are dangerous, bad, and if you use them and something happens, you’ll be accused of murder. You know that. Everyone knows that. Spills kill.”

  I didn’t understand a word he was saying. “Spills?”

  He looked around as if we were being videotaped. “Let me say that I found that out the hard way and nearly got us all arrested.”

  “Arrested?”

  “It was two years ago during the summer, when they sent you away to Aunt Jen and Uncle Len for a couple of weeks.”

  “Ugh. That was horrible!”

  “They didn’t want you around, just in case. That’s why I got so pissed off when you started asking questions.” He pulled my earlobes again. “You remind me of me. So if you’re going to ask questions, make sure you go through the proper channels. You can’t do it unannounced.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “The archives.”

  “The what?”

  “I was told that there are interesting things down there. But you have to be careful, okay?” He reached into his pocket, fished out a crumpled ID, and gave it to me. His face looked very emotional. “I saved this.”

  “Who is…” I read the ID. “Who’s Erin White?”

  “A girl I once knew who doesn’t exist anymore.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  He looked away, then back at me. “If you go to the library and find the archives, this may work. Tell whoever is in charge that you’re doing a college research paper for Iona Boyd.”

  “College? I’m not even sixteen.”

  “Just do it.” He walked out of my room but popped his head back in a few seconds later to say, “And if you want to look older, wear makeup.”

  “I do!” I shouted.

  But he was long gone.

  I rubbed my right eye, and a splotch of black leaked onto my hand.

  Aha.

  Proof!

  Zeke and Joy were eating lunch together. They were leaning their heads inward as if they were having a very private conversation. Joy’s silky hair was draped over one side of her face and one of her slim hands was supporting her head, a silver ring on her pinky finger. She was nodding, looking grave and much older than fourteen.

  Much older than eighteen, actually, and that was good. Maybe she could convince whoever needed to be convinced that she was in college and doing a research paper.

  Zeke was rubbing his temples in concentrated frustration.

  “Hi.” I dropped my tray onto their table and my apple bounced and fell off.

  “Kaida!” Joy cleared her throat. She sat up. Zeke put on a fake grin.

  “Look, I’m going to be honest,” I said as I sat down. “Either we believe the dream wasn’t a dream or we don’t. We can’t waste time arguing about it.”

  They looked at each other. Zeke’s eyes reminded me of a clear lake—without any fish swimming in it, of course. “We were just talking about this,” he began. “It’s not about believing, Kaida, it’s about whether it’s smart to believe whether it happened or not.”

  I reached for my tray, but Joy stopped me.

  “Hold on for a moment, okay?” Joy whispered. “I’m the one with the arm, so quit being a baby.”

  I nodded. I was acting pretty infantile. Not getting my way and having a temper tantrum. “I’m moving forward. If you two want to be in on this, then fine. We’ll move forward together. Because what we’re doing…what we’ve been saying…people are talking. We’ve got to be careful if we continue.”

  They both nodded.

  Zeke said, “So what’s next?”

  Joy said, “Your theory, Kaida, is definitely a possibility. But don’t you think we should do a little more research before we start going all Nancy Drew?”

  “Yes, and that’s exactly why I’m here. I have an idea.”

  Zeke and Joy leaned in close. I felt like a conspirator involved in something very dangerous. My parents always call me “rebel without a cause.” Now I had a legitimate cause, and instead of making me feel special, it only made me scared. “My brother and I were talking last night.” I dug my spoon into a cup of vanilla yogurt. “He was really nervous…saying that I was asking questions that can’t be answered.”

  “We really need to stop asking other people questions,” Zeke said.

  “No, what we really need is to find some answers,” I told him. “But carefully…really carefully.”

  The two of them agreed.

  I took a deep breath and let it out. “He said to check in the archives at the library.”

  “What archives?” Joy asked. She tucked her hair behind her ears.

  “I don’t know. I’ve never been there. But he did say that I might find answers, or at least find people who have asked the questions we’re asking. The trouble is you have to get permission to get into them.”

  Zeke asked, “What kind of permission?”

  “I’m not sure. He gave me this ID card and told me to use it if I find the archives. The girl looks a little like me, so maybe that’s a good idea. He also said my cover story…our cover story…should be that we’re in college and doing a research paper with a woman named Iona Boyd. He also told me to wear makeup so I look older and more believable.” I shrugged and swallowed my yogurt. “Or maybe he just thinks I look ugly.”

  My attempt at levity fell flat.

  Zeke said, “How do we get permission to use the archives?”

  “I haven’t the faintest idea. And he made it sound like asking for permission was a dangerous thing.”

  “Dangerous in what way?” Joy wanted to know.

  “He wasn
’t specific.” I fudged on this one. I wasn’t about to tell them that he almost got my entire family arrested and about how using “spills” was like committing murder. Or maybe he was exaggerating.

  I was in a quandary. I wanted to warn them but not scare them off. But the more I thought about it, the more I concluded that it was morally wrong not to come clean. Just because I was going on a crusade didn’t mean I had the right to drag others into my quest.

  “My brother made it sound like doing this kind of research could potentially get us into deep, deep trouble. Like really bad trouble. Like being arrested.”

  “For what?” Joy asked.

  “I don’t know! That’s the problem.” I looked at their anxious faces. “But we need to find out. I need to find out. So if anyone wants to back away, now’s your chance.”

  No response. I gave it another shot.

  “Honestly, from what he told me, it sounded like we could all get arrested for murder.”

  “For doing research?” Zeke was skeptical.

  “It’s insane, but nothing surprises me anymore.”

  “I’m with Kaida,” Joy said. “We’re operating under different rules. The trouble is we don’t know what they are.”

  “In or out?” I said.

  “In,” Zeke and Joy said at the same time.

  “So we’ll meet on Saturday at Hawthorne Library…say, eleven o’clock?”

  “We have to wait until Saturday?” Zeke said.

  “I don’t know about you, but I’d rather commit an entire day to this, not have to squeeze it in as an after-school project.”

  “I agree,” Joy said.

  I realized that Joy was holding her arm. She did it all the time now. “So Saturday at eleven?”

  “See you then,” Zeke said.

  “And maybe in the meantime, we should act like before…like not hang around one another?”

  “Just when I was beginning to think you were tolerable,” Zeke told me. “Whatever you want, Hutchenson, you seem to have elected yourself the boss.”

  Just at that moment, Leslie Barker and a friend who seemed to be shadowing her passed us and knocked over an empty seat at our table.