The Gifting

by Katie Ganshert

  “She’s ill.”

  We all exchange looks. As far as any of us could tell, Mrs. Meecher looked perfectly healthy before break and that was only a week and a half ago.

  “How long-term will you be?” Jason asks.

  “Indefinitely.”

  Wren stumbles into the classroom—her hair shaved except for a strip of neon pink down the center of her head. A new hairdo, apparently. She glares at everybody who stares at her and slides into the empty seat next to me, smelling strongly of marijuana.

  Mr. Rathbone either doesn’t care or doesn’t notice. He takes roll call and when he reaches my name, his gaze is heavy and steady and unnerving. A tiny raincloud infiltrates the sunshine that’s been my life and hovers over my head. I wonder if I’m imagining his prolonged attention. I wonder if I’m having a delusion. A wave of panic rolls through my body. Did I forget my medicine this morning? I squish up one eye, trying to remember. No, I took it. Right after I brushed my teeth, like I always do. Another wave of panic follows the first. Is it possible that the medicine is already starting to lose its effectiveness?

  I shake the worry away. So what if he’s looking at me more than the other students? There could be any number of reasons why. For all I know, I could remind him of a niece who lives somewhere in Michigan.

  As soon as he finishes, we get out our books—tattered copies of Mein Kampf. Hitler’s memoir is both disturbing and enthralling. But the sub shakes his head and tells us to put them away. Then he writes out two words on the chalkboard that elicit a collective groan.

  Family Tree.

  “Excuse me, Mr. Rathbone?” Jason holds up his book. “We’re supposed to discuss the final three chapters of this today. Several of us came to class with discussion questions.”

  Mr. Rathbone stares at Jason with that same inscrutable face, then jerks his head at the two words on the board. “I’d like everyone to complete a family tree by next week. I want you to look into your genealogy. It’s good to know where you come from.”

  “What does this have to do with literature?” Jason asks.

  “I’m the teacher, Mr. Brane.”

  I’m impressed Rathbone remembers Jason’s last name.

  Wren raises her hand. “I object to this assignment. It’s racist against adopted people.”

  Jason scoffs. “Racist is the wrong word.”

  “Whatever. I object. I’m adopted and I have no idea who my birth parents are.”

  A few students muffle their laughter. Wren isn’t adopted.

  Mr. Rathbone picks up a stack of papers and begins passing them out. “You can use your adoptive parents, then.”

  “That’s dumb. I don’t have any of their genes. Isn’t that where the whole word genealogy comes from?”

  I skim the paper, a groan forming deep down in my chest. A paragraph about each person on our tree—living and deceased, including the legacy they left behind? I think of my grandmother for the first time in weeks. I do not, under any circumstances, want to do research on her or tell anybody about her legacy. The cloud this Rathbone character brought into my life expands.

  Wren hits her head against the table. Her forehead makes a loud thud. Several students look over at her, me included. Despite her pink hair and black clothes, I feel a connection with Wren. We are united in our disapproval of this new teacher. I smile, trying to catch her attention, then notice that the small tattoo of the strange symbol on her wrist isn’t there anymore.

  I lean forward in my chair, checking her other wrist. It’s not there either. She whips her head up, her eyes narrowed into slits. “What is your deal?”

  “Your tattoo is gone—the one on your wrist. Was it henna or something?”

  “You are such a freak. I never had a tattoo on my wrist.” And as if to prove her point, she holds up both of her arms to show me.

  My ears catch fire. I can feel the class staring. I quickly drop my attention to the paper in front of me, feigning interest. Serendipity nudges me and gives me an amused look, like it’s obvious I’m not the freak. I smile back, but for the first time since taking my medicine, the heaviness returns. I know what I saw before. Wren did too have a tattoo on her wrist.

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Distraction

  Luka and I sit together at a round table in the library. Mr. Lotsam has given us another class period to work on our project, which means we get forty-five minutes alone, without the expanse of our backyards dividing us. In fact, we sit so close I can feel his body heat. He scratches the back of his head, making his hair stick up in that tussled, fresh-out-of-bed way while he reads from the fat book of world dictators he brought from his house. I peruse one of several library books, all opened to various chapters on genocides throughout history, pretending to focus when really, the words about Mao Zedong blur into a streak of black against the white page.

  “Hey, Tess?”

  I look up. Luka is staring at me. I don’t know for how long. I stop my pencil-drumming. “Sorry.”

  His mouth quirks in a half-smile. “It’s not that.”

  “What is it?”

  “Something’s bothering you.” He says it like a fact, not a question.

  I think about Mr. Rathbone and the way he kept looking at me throughout Honors English. I look around to make sure nobody is close by, then lean closer. “Mrs. Meecher’s sub is making us all do family trees.”

  “What does that have to do with English?”

  “No idea.”

  A flash of worry flickers in his eyes. “Your grandmother.”

  I nod, my mind wandering to the bottom drawer of my desk at home, where I’ve tucked away her journal. I haven’t looked at it, haven’t even thought about it since I started taking medicine. I drop my pencil on the book, plunk my elbows on the table, and dig my fingers into my hair. After weeks of not thinking about her, my brain can’t stop now. I want to swallow the entire bottle of pills in my medicine cabinet to make the thoughts go away. I think about her plea for help on the final page. I think about her locked up in some mental institute against her will.

  Luka puts his hand over my jiggling knee beneath the table. The warmth of his touch sends my stomach swooping. “Hey.”

  I look at him.

  “You can write the bare minimum. Or you could make something up. This Rathbone guy won’t know the difference.”

  “But I do.” I bite my lip, look around again. Summer peeks at us from behind a row of encyclopedias, too far away to hear. “She’s out there, Luka.”

  He doesn’t respond.

  “Isn’t that weird? She’s out there and I’m not doing anything about it.”

  “Have you had anymore dreams about her?”

  “If I have, I don’t remember them. The medicine pretty much takes care of the dreams.”

  He scratches his jaw, then takes the book in front of me and gives me that grin that is infamous for making females swoon, and not just students either. I’ve seen him dazzle a few teachers, too. “How about this? We forget about your grandma and focus on our project instead. Surely mass murder will get our minds in the right spot.”

  “This project is depressing.”

  “Holocausts and genocides? I don’t know what you’re talking about.” He begins rattling off names of dictators—Hitler, Stalin, Hideki Tojo, Pol Pot. “Cheery fellows if you ask me.”

  I take his big, dorky book. “I guess in light of these guys, I shouldn’t really get this worked up over a silly family tree.”

  “This is true.”

  My smile falters. I want to tell Luka about Wren’s disappearing tattoo, but I’m afraid of voicing my concern out loud, as if making it audible will increase its validity. Instead, I ask a question I haven’t yet been brave enough to ask. “Do you still see … things?”

  His brow furrows. “Rarely.”

  “And your dreams, about me?”

  “Still there.”

  “Do I …?”

  He shakes his head. “Only that one time.”

/>   Confusion settles like a blanket of snow. I know the medicine is helping my psychosis but how does that explain Luka’s dreams or the things he sees or our odd connection? Are people who suffer from psychosis naturally drawn to each other? But then I study his profile and decide he can’t be ill. He’s too perfect. Too flawless. There is nothing wrong with him. So maybe the medicine isn’t helping after all and all of this—this entire conversation—is a delusion.

  “You know what I can’t stop thinking about?” he says.

  “What?”

  “The way I fought off that guy when he came at you.”

  The memory is as vivid as if it happened yesterday.

  “I’ve been trying to do it again.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Anytime I see something unusual. Like the other night when I was out to eat with my parents. There was a guy there—the same kind of guy, at least. You know, with the eyes. He was standing by this table. I got up to go to the bathroom and tried to do whatever I did in the locker bay.”

  “Did it work?”

  He shakes his head. “Nothing happened. Nothing ever does.”

  I stare at him while his words soak in. None of it makes sense.

  Luka’s attention drops to my lips. We sit so close, he would only have to lean in a couple inches and…Warmth billows inside my chest. My breath quickens. Unless you count a dare in first grade, I’ve never kissed a boy. And I really, really want to be kissed by this one.

  “Am I interrupting something?” Matt pulls out a chair at our table, smirking at us. “You know, you two should be a little more subtle. Summer’s practically in tears over there.”

  Luka glances over at the encyclopedias. “What are you doing here, Matt?”

  “Bothering you, apparently.” As if taking the hint, he stands back up and saunters away. “By all means, carry on.”

  I can’t bring myself to look at Luka. My face is much too hot.

  *

  That night, I want to think about Luka. I want everything about him to consume me—his touch, the sound of his voice, the impossible greenness of his eyes. But try as I might, my grandmother has taken up residence in my mind—her presence loud and unavoidable.

  As much as I don’t want to, I can’t help myself. I get out her journal and I lie in bed and thumb through the pages, wishing I didn’t know about her. Wishing she really were dead. I fall asleep reading an old woman’s crazy, unhinged words.

  “The pills have zapped your strength, Little Rabbit.”

  I bolt upright in bed, lungs heaving, unable to press away the sound of gunshots and spraying glass as a black woman with horse teeth wailed and clutched her bleeding son in the front lawn of a rundown apartment complex. The emotionless words, spoken by that man with the scar, reverberate inside my head. I was there. I was in the car while men with empty, white eyes pointed guns outside tinted windows. I sat there unmoving, arms and legs too heavy to lift. I sat there and did nothing while they pulled the trigger.

  Cold sweat soaks through my tank top. My heart races so frantically, I press my palm against my chest, as if the pressure might calm it down. My bed lamp casts a circle of yellow onto my ceiling. Outside my room, the hallway is dark.

  The house sleeps.

  It was a dream. I had a dream. I take a deep, rattling breath and tell myself it wasn’t real. But I cannot get that woman’s grief-stricken face out of my head or the way she rocked the small boy in her lap. The pair scroll through my mind and the words come back, spoken by that man who calls me Little Rabbit. Where was he in the dream? How did I hear him? What did he mean? And why did I have the dream at all?

  I glance at my grandma’s journal sprawled open on the floor. And it hits me—my medicine! I fell asleep reading the journal and forgot to take my medicine. I swing my comforter off my legs and stumble, a bit disoriented, into my bathroom. With shaky hands, I untwist the bottle and tip two pills directly into my mouth. I turn on the faucet, cup water in my palm, and wash the pills down. Then I lie back down and wait for sleep to take me.

  *

  I wake up with a niggling feeling in my gut, but I can’t place it. My eyes are heavy, my head fuzzy, and I wonder if I’m getting sick. The flu has taken the entire state of California by storm. Maybe I should have gotten the flu shot at school.

  I brush my teeth, splash cold water on my face, throw on a pair of jeans and a knit top and go downstairs, unable to shake the sense that I’ve forgotten something. A female voice from the television mingles with the sound of sizzling eggs that burn on the stove. The morning paper lays open and forgotten on the table in front of my dad. Both of my parents stare at the screen as the news anchor talks about a drive-by shooting in San Francisco, followed by faces of the victims. And all of a sudden, that thing I’ve forgotten comes raging back.

  Last night’s dream.

  My mom catches sight of me standing in the doorway, flips off the news, and tends to the burning eggs. A haze of smoke lingers above her head and she turns on the oven fan. “This is exactly why I will not tolerate living in a city,” she says over the drone. “They aren’t safe anymore. I don’t even understand how those guys had guns. They’re supposed to be illegal.”

  “It’s a black market, honey.” Dad reengages with the newspaper. “When we removed the second amendment from our constitution, we didn’t eradicate guns. We just ensured that the people who have them are the bad guys.”

  “I thought you agreed with the gun laws.”

  Their conversation floats around me, impossible to pin down in light of the chaos spinning inside my head. I forgot to take my medicine one night. One lousy night. And this is what happens? My fingers turn into icicles. I stretch and flex them, but it’s no use. They are numb, right along with my heart.

  Are people dying because I’m on meds? The words from last night’s dream return—the pills have zapped your strength. Is this what Dr. Roth’s warning was all about? The question is too awful to contemplate. I smash my palms over my ears, as if this might shut out the answer. But it doesn’t, because the answer isn’t coming from some place outside my ears. It’s coming from a place in between them. I close my eyes, wishing I could go back, rewind, and leave my grandmother’s journal in the bottom drawer of my desk where it belongs. Wishing I could remember my medication and forget last night’s dream with the dead boy in that woman’s arms and his face on my television screen.

  “Tess, are you okay?”

  I open my eyes.

  My parents are staring at me.

  My hands slide down the sides of my face and before I can answer, my cell phone chirps from my back pocket. Saved by the bell. I pull it out. It’s a text message from Serendipity, inviting me to a bonfire tonight at her house—a timely reminder of how normal my life has been lately. This medicine has given me friends. This medicine has given me a social life.

  Mom sets a plate of blackened eggs in front of Dad, her attention unwavering. “Tess?”

  “Yeah, I’m fine.” I show her the text, evidence that everything is okay. That nothing has to change. “Can I go to a bonfire tonight?”

  She smiles. “Of course.”

  Chapter Thirty

  Rumors

  I call up the stairs to Pete, wanting to get out of the house before Mom can ask any more questions, but he doesn’t answer. So I stomp up the steps and open his door. He’s still in bed, a mass under the covers.

  “Are you coming?”

  “I’m sick,” he mumbles. His voice is scratchy—whether from sickness or sleep, I can’t tell. I shut his door and make my way down the stairs. Mom stands in the foyer, looking up into the stairwell.

  “Where’s your brother?”

  “Sick in bed, apparently.” I swing my backpack over my shoulder and head out the door to a cloudy, cool day. I glance over the hedge into Luka’s yard, but he’s not leaning against his car like he usually does, waiting to drive us to school. Instead, his front door flies open and he stalks outside. Even across the dis
tance, I notice the rigid set of his jaw and the deep furrow in his brow. His shoe makes contact with a rock—not by accident—and he swears beneath his breath. When he reaches his car, his eyes meet mine and his expression softens.

  I approach hesitantly.

  He meets me at the passenger door, but avoids eye contact. “Hey,” he says, shoving his hands into his pockets.

  “Hey,” I say back.

  He glances over his shoulder, toward his house. His mother peeks through the drapes of the front window. When she sees us looking, her face disappears and the drapes swing back and forth. Luka opens my door, a muscle in his jaw ticking. It would appear his day is starting off much the same as mine.

  I duck inside and clasp my seatbelt, unsure if I should tell him about last night’s dream and this morning’s news. How is it possible that everything came rushing back after one lousy missed dose of medicine? Is my mental illness really that close to the surface, itching to escape and ruin my life? And if I don’t have a mental illness, what’s the medicine doing? I shake that last thought away and the shudder that follows it.

  Luka slips inside and starts the car, tension radiating from his body. I wait for him to say something, perhaps explain what’s bothering him. Instead, he reverses out of the drive while I nibble my bottom lip, stewing over my grandmother. She won’t leave me alone. Neither will the face of that grieving mother from my dream. For once, I’m thankful for Luka’s mom and the highly suspicious way she acts toward me. She serves as a nice diversion. “Is everything okay between you and your mom?”

  “She likes to worry.”

  “About?”

  Either he doesn’t hear me, or he’s choosing to ignore me.

  “She doesn’t like me.” It’s the first time I’ve said the words out loud to him. I wait to see if he’ll deny them.

  His knuckles whiten as he grips the steering wheel and pulls the car out of our gated community—one that is safe from drive-by shootings. “She knows you go to the Edward Brooks Facility.”