The Gifting

by Katie Ganshert

  “Is anyone sitting here?”

  The smoothness of the voice makes my pulse hiccup. Luka has a way of articulating his words so each sound is heard.

  I look up from my doodling. “Um. Go ahead.”

  The legs of the chair scrape against the floor as he scoots it back to sit. I peek at Summer, who glares at me with such loathing, you’d think I just murdered her dog.

  Jennalee comes in, sits on the other side of Luka, and twirls her hair. The bell rings and Mr. Lotsam announces that we need to partner up for a year-long project that will account for fifty percent of our grade. He claps his hands. “Find a partner and I’ll explain what you’ll be doing.”

  I consider excusing myself to the restroom. I hate when teachers make us choose partners, especially in this class without Leela. I don’t want Luka to witness my lameness as everybody else in the class snags a partner and I’m left alone—the perpetual loser. My palms grow clammy. I want to put up my hood and hide my face in my arms. Forget religion, picking partners should be outlawed. So should captains in gym class. I’m always picked last, which isn’t fair, since I’m fast and I can catch a pass, if somebody ever chose to throw me one.

  Luka clears his throat. “Tess?”

  My heart takes off, double time. When I look, he’s staring at me with those striking green eyes, his head slightly cocked. “Do you want to be my partner?”

  I point to my chest, not sure I comprehend his question.

  His eyes sparkle with something—curiosity, humor, pity? Oh man, I hope not pity.

  I swallow. “Uh. Sure.”

  Jennalee stares with insulting disbelief, her mouth ajar, while the rest of the class scrambles to find a partner. My limbs feel like dead weight. I’m not sure if I should move them or adjust them, but then I remember the way Leela fidgets in front of Pete and I make myself sit still while my insides hyperventilate. Luka wants to be my partner. Luka Williams chose me. I tell my heart to chill out before he hears the beating. This project comprises fifty percent of our grade and I’m smart. This is why Luka chose me. I shouldn’t read any further into it.

  He twists his hemp bracelet around his wrist. I think he might ask me something, but then Mr. Lotsam starts explaining the project and asks us to read a chapter from our history books and tells us we can talk quietly with our partners when we finish. I have no idea what the project is about. And the words I attempt to read make no sense whatsoever. But I stare at the pages, pretending to concentrate, until the majority of my classmates have put their books away.

  Luka bites his thumbnail.

  I search for something to say. Anything that might prove I can speak in semi-intelligible syllables. Nothing comes.

  “You’ve been coming to the football games,” he says.

  Okay. So he’s noticed.

  “I waved at you last Friday but you ignored me.” His smile is crooked.

  My stomach drops in that way it does whenever I accidentally skip the bottom stair. I find myself wishing I would have worn a better outfit than this old sweatshirt and a ratty pair of jeans. Maybe even the sequined top Leela pulled out of my closet on Sunday. “I didn’t see you.”

  “You were very into the game. Very focused. I was impressed.” He twirls his pencil around the tip of his thumb, his smile fainter, but still there. “Most girls don’t watch.”

  “Isn’t that the point?”

  He shrugs.

  I scramble for something to fill up the silence. He beats me to it.

  “So, you read a lot.”

  “What?”

  “I see you out on your deck. You’re usually reading. Sometimes you write, though.”

  “Oh. Yeah.”

  “What do you write about?” he asks.

  Crazy grandma. Crazy dreams. The crazy things I see that nobody else can see—like snakes and flashes and men without pupils. Him. “Nothing really.”

  “Do you like your new home?”

  “Um, sure. It’s fine.”

  “You don’t sound very convincing,” he says.

  His unwavering attention makes me feel hot and somehow, cold. I have to look away and in so doing, I catch Summer gawking at us. She’s not the only one. “Thornsdale is as good as any other place to live, I guess.”

  He folds his arms over his backpack on the table in front of us. “Have you lived in many places?”

  “Nine.”

  “Really?”

  The bell rings.

  Luka stands and hitches his backpack over his right shoulder. I wait for him to wave and leave, seeing as he’s no longer stuck with me, but he stands there and waits. So I stand too, shrug on my backpack, and we walk out of class together. “That can’t be easy on you and your brother, moving so much.”

  “You know I have a brother?” The question tumbles out before I can take it back. Of course he knows I have a brother. This is a small school. Pete and I are the first new kids since him three years ago. Everybody knows I have a brother.

  “Pete, right? Sophomore? Perpetual scowl? Kind of a loner?”

  “He’s really not.”

  “No?”

  I shake my head and loop my thumbs under the straps of my backpack as we make our way toward the main locker bay. “I think he misses his girlfriend.”

  “Yeah, I guess that would be hard.” We walk a few more steps. I’m all too aware of the tiny gap of space between his arm and mine. “Did you have to leave anyone behind?”

  My cheeks turn warm. “You mean like a boyfriend?”

  “Yeah.”

  I snort, like actually snort.

  “No?”

  “I don’t think I’m girlfriend material.”

  “Oh, I don’t know about that.”

  My stomach does that dippy thing again, because what does that mean? “I think he’s still angry at me for the move. Pete—I mean. Not my boyfriend. Because I don’t have a boyfriend.” Oh my goodness, Tess, close your mouth.

  “Angry at you?”

  “Huh?”

  “Why would your brother be angry at you for moving?”

  My insides tighten. My attention flits from one wall to the next, as if an excuse might be etched on either. “I mean, not at me. He’s just … looking for somebody to blame I guess.”

  Luka studies me like I’m an impossible-to-place puzzle piece.

  “You seemed upset during first period today.” I cringe as soon as my mouth shuts. I really should not be allowed to talk in front of cute boys.

  Luka steps in front of me, stops, and leans against the wall, his head dipped so he’s more level with my line of vision. “Sore subject.”

  His nearness, his scent—both leave me unbalanced. “Wh-why?”

  Some sort of internal battle wages war in his eyes, like he’s trying to decide how much to say. I fight back an almost insuppressible urge to tell him that he can trust me with anything. Those words would be weird. Luka and I barely know each other.

  “Are your parents against it?” I ask.

  He looks over his shoulder, as if checking for eavesdroppers. The crowd of students has thinned into nothing. Even the gaping stragglers are gone. We are alone in the hallway. Everyone has escaped into the locker bay and then outdoors into freedom. “I’m an only child, but I wasn’t my mother’s only pregnancy.”

  The hairs on the back of my neck prickle. “What happened?”

  “She failed her pregnancy screening.”

  “So she …?” The unfinished question dangles between us. I don’t have to ask it. Luka doesn’t have to answer it. Because of course she did. He just told me he’s an only child.

  “Eight months later she got pregnant again and the same thing happened.”

  I suck in a quick breath. Two failed screenings? I can’t begin to imagine what that might feel like for a woman. She must have been so relieved to finally have Luka.

  “Guilt tormented her after she terminated her first pregnancy.”

  I find myself holding back a grimace, like all my classmat
es did in first period when Luka used the word aborting. Terminated is every bit as frowned upon. It feels vulgar, somehow, and yet this boy throws out the words without hesitation.

  “When the doctors gave her the same diagnosis, she decided to go against their advice.”

  “Against their advice? You mean …?” I am captivated by his stare. Stuck, even. The hallway could explode with fireworks and I wouldn’t be able to look away. “What happened to the baby?”

  “You’re looking at him.”

  I blink. Several times. “But—”

  “I’m healthy.” He pushes away from the wall. “The doctor was wrong. He made a mistake. If she would have listened …”

  I shake my head, the motion sharp and decisive. I do not want to contemplate a world without Luka Williams.

  “That first pregnancy,” he says, “haunts her.”

  Chapter Thirteen

  A Fighter

  As I walk through the parking lot in afternoon drizzle, I cannot get Luka out of my head. I am so absorbed with replaying our totally unexpected, intimate conversation after class that I don’t process anything Leela says. She obviously has no idea Luka and I are partners for a project in World History, otherwise she’d be grilling me. I wonder how long her oblivion will last. Surely, among all the gawkers, one is bound to tell Leela that Luka and I were spotted walking and talking together.

  I can’t stop thinking about my nightmare and the debate in Mr. Lotsam’s class and the things Luka said. If the doctors were wrong about him, could they be wrong about others as well? What does this mean about all the screenings that are happening right now—not just here in America, but all over the world? Are doctors curing women of perfectly healthy fetuses because of a glitch in the system? All the questions make my brain hurt.

  By the time we reach my car, Pete is already there, earbuds in his ears. Leela waves at him and heads off to her car. When we get home, Mom asks about our day. I give her the shortest version possible, then lock myself in my bedroom under the pretense of so much homework. Only instead of cracking open any of my text books, I alternate between staring at my ceiling, writing in my journal, thinking about Luka, and trying to block out all the craziness that has conspired over the past two days.

  I don’t say much over dinner. Neither does Pete. Mom tries her best to draw us out of our shells, but eventually gives up and talks to Dad about the latest Safe Guard recall, which is always a headache. I do the dishes, retreat back to my room, and fall asleep somewhere in the middle of doing all the homework I should have done earlier.

  That night, I have my first dream about Luka Williams.

  *

  The ocean is silent. It’s as if somebody has pushed the mute button on nature’s remote control. I’m standing on the rocky beach, staring out at the waves and there is nothing. No caw of seagulls. No crashing of waves. No spray against the rocks. No sound at all.

  A soft lavender paints the sky overhead, but the sun is nowhere in sight—not in the west or in the east—so I cannot tell if it’s morning or evening. And there, straight ahead of me, is Luka, wearing a faded pair of blue jeans that fit him perfectly and the same white t-shirt he wore on my first day of school. The silent wind ruffles his hair. Walking toward him, I feel brave, almost reckless, because this isn’t real. I know that much without even having to scratch at my eczema. Oceans are not silent in the real world. I’ve lived by one or another long enough to be well-acquainted with their retinue of sounds.

  In contrast to my buoyancy is his posture of alarm. He looks left, right, up, down, taking in our surroundings, as if at any moment the boogeyman will jump out and get us both.

  “Are you okay?” I ask.

  His eyes stop their frantic searching and he cocks his head in that way I’m beginning to associate with him. “Are you?”

  I look around—besotted by our gorgeous surroundings. Everything is brighter and more vibrant—the green of the trees and the granite of the cliffs, the briny sea air, the immensity of the silent ocean. It’s as though turning off the sound has heightened everything else. “I’m more than okay, actually.”

  His posture relaxes, but only after painstaking hesitation. “Well, this is different.”

  Yes, it is. Incredibly different—instead of a nightmare, I’m in a dream I don’t want to end. “But nice.”

  He nods slowly.

  “I was thinking about you before I went to sleep. That must be why you’re in my dream.”

  “I’m pretty sure it’s my dream,” he says. “Not yours.”

  “I don’t think so.” I sense something warm nearby, but I can’t see it. Even so, its presence is this palpable, pulsing, undeniable thing—an invisible sun come down from the sky to share some of its energy. Or maybe it’s not energy, but courage. Because a question I’d never in a million years have the guts to ask in real life escapes without any hesitancy. “Remember the homecoming pep rally?”

  His green eyes smolder.

  “Did you see something in the gym?” I ask.

  “Did you?”

  I nod.

  So does he. “Me, too.”

  Even though this is just a dream, even though I’m totally projecting, my relief is intense and immediate. In dream world I am not crazy. “I see things like that sometimes. It’s why we moved.” The memory of the séance makes me shiver. It’s an unwelcome feeling in such a happy place. “I’m going to the Edward Brooks Facility because my parents think I’m crazy.”

  He takes a strand of my hair between his fingers.

  I shiver again, only this time, the shiver is not due to fear. “Sometimes I wonder if they’re right. Sometimes I think I’m going insane.”

  He steps closer. “You’re not.”

  But his voice sounds far away and the rocky sand beneath my feet sinks. I’m sinking, sinking, sinking until the sound returns. Wind whips my hair about my shoulders. Gone is the beach and Luka. I’m standing on the Golden Gate Bridge. I know because of pictures, not because I’ve ever been there before.

  A girl stands on the ledge—she can’t be more than fifteen. Fear surges through me, because surely one big gust of wind will have her plummeting into the water below. That man stands beside her. The one with the pale skin and the greasy hair and the emaciated face. He taunts the girl. He whispers in her ear. “You are ugly,” he says. “Nobody loves you. Nobody wants you. Everybody would be happier if you were dead.”

  The girl’s mascara runs black down her cheeks as she scoots closer and closer to the ledge and suddenly, I am angry. Pissed off. Seething, even. Because this man has pulled me away from Luka and he speaks words that scrape too close to home. I do not want this girl to believe any of it. I do not want her to jump on account of lies. The anger that tears through me is fierce and hot and before I can stop myself, I lunge at the man’s throat. Using every bit of strength, I tear him away from the girl and the two of us are falling off the bridge.

  Falling, falling, falling …

  He wraps his cold fingers around my neck and smiles a smile that is terrifying. “I knew you were a fighter.”

  Chapter Fourteen

  Interrogation

  It’s the first time I’ve fought in a dream. You’d think I’d wake up empowered. Instead, I feel jittery and weak, like a diabetic in need of sugar. I saw Dr. Roth on Monday. He hypnotized me. And now I have had nightmares two nights in a row. It can’t be a coincidence.

  A faint throb pulses in my temples—the beginnings of a headache—as I shuffle into the kitchen, wearing the same ratty jeans from yesterday and a slightly more respectable purplish gray sweater.

  “Your eyes look stunning in that color,” Mom says.

  I grab a bagel from the toaster.

  She cups my chin and rubs her thumb beneath my eyes. “Still having bad dreams?”

  My throat tightens. I’m so ready for this to be over. To outgrow these nightmares, if they are something I can outgrow. I pull away from Mom and pick up the butter knife next to the opened con
tainer of cream cheese while Dad crosses his ankle over his knee and holds the paper open wide. “Hard to believe it’s been sixteen years since Newport.”

  Mom pours me a glass of juice and shakes her head, like she doesn’t even have words. Dad reads snippets of the article out loud. For some reason, it settles me. Puts things in perspective. I was only one when the attack happened, when a terrorist group bombed the Naval Underwater Warfare Center in Newport, Rhode Island, completely decimating an entire city. More people died than in Pearl Harbor and 9-11 combined.

  Dad mumbles something about learning our lesson, then turns a page. “Looks like there was a close call last night on the Golden Gate Bridge.”

  A glob of white falls off my knife.

  He clucks his tongue. “What can be so bad in this world that would prompt a fourteen-year-old girl to try and kill herself?”

  I grab the paper out of Dad’s hand.

  Both of his feet come to the floor. “Tess!”

  But I am not apologetic. I’m too busy ravishing the paper, looking for a picture. And there she is. April Yodel. Fourteen years old. The same girl from last night’s dream. The same girl being taunted by the man I wrestled off the bridge. Apparently, authorities reached her before she could jump.

  “Honey?” Mom pulls down the paper and looks me in the face. “Are you okay?”

  Dad stands from his chair. “You’re as white as a sheet, kiddo.”

  I hand the paper back to Dad with icy fingers, my body trembling like an earthquake.

  “Tess, you’re scaring us.” Mom cups my forehead like she used to do when I was little, and the worst life had to offer was a fever. “Sweetie, you’re as clammy as can be.”

  First Dr. Chang and that nurse at a fetal modification clinic and now this girl—April Yodel. What is going on? What is happening to me? I clap my hand over my mouth, then turn around and run up the stairs. I am going to be sick.

  *

  Mom tries to convince me stay home from school, but I insist on going. I do not want to sit at home by myself. I cannot give myself too much time to think about any of this. The more I can keep my brain occupied, the better. And despite my slipping sanity, I want to see Luka. I want to work with him today in History.