The Girl with the Silver Eyes

by Willo Davis Roberts

  In the morning, she thought, she’d get out the phone book and try all the possible names and then, if she didn’t get any answers, she’d go back to Mrs. M.’s during the evening and try again.

  And if none of the people she called turned out to have kids born that same September, Katie didn’t know quite what she was going to do next. All she was sure of was that she would never stop looking until she found some of them, the kids who might be like herself.

  “Sure,” Mrs. Michaelmas said. “I’ll keep an eye on Katie. You don’t need to pay me anything unless she gets to be a real nuisance.” She winked at Katie. “And in exchange, when I go to visit my sister over the weekend, maybe Katie can look after Lobo so I don’t have to put him in a kennel. He hates the kennel, and my sister’s allergic to cats so I can’t take him with me.”

  That was settled so easily. Now, Katie thought, if only she could solve some of her other problems.

  Monica called Mrs. Gerrold and told her she’d mail her a check. Katie didn’t hear what Mrs. G. said back, but whatever it was made Monica’s face red, so it must not have been very nice.

  It felt strange to be all alone in the apartment in the morning, but good. Katie indulged herself in letting things fly around the kitchen, the knives and forks hurtling toward the table, the cereal box tipping itself over the bowl. She had to pour the milk by hand; otherwise, it wobbled so that it spilled too much.

  No doubt she’d get better at that as she went along. When she’d finished eating—allowing an orange to peel itself and divide into sections while she watched it—Katie loaded the dishwasher, wiped up the crumbs, and hung up the dishrag, all without leaving her seat at the table.

  It was handy, and it was sort of fun. But Katie didn’t really see any special value in being able to move things that way. It didn’t make up for being so different that nobody wanted to be her friend.

  Except Mrs. M., of course. Now, with no sitter around, Katie decided she could make her phone calls from home. She went down the whole list, but only found someone in three places. When she asked for Eric VanAllsburg at one number, and Dale Casey at the other, she was told impatiently by female voices that she had the wrong number, and they hung up before she could even ask if they knew anyone by that name. Well, probably they’d have said if they did, wouldn’t they? She didn’t cross off those names, though; maybe she’d try again in the evening when there might be someone else at home.

  The third time someone answered—A. Casey—a suspicious voice said, “Who’s this?”

  “My name’s Katie Welker,” she said politely. “May I speak to Dale?” She hadn’t really thought out what she was going to say to those other kids, if she managed to reach them, but as it turned out it didn’t matter. The voice on the other end of the wire said, “Dale ain’t here now.”

  Her heartbeat quickened, though. Because there was a Dale Casey. Could he be the one she wanted? “Can you tell me when he’ll be home?”

  “About six, probably. That’s when he usually gets off work.”

  Off work? That had to mean someone more than ten years old. “I think the Dale I’m trying to reach will be ten years old in September,” Katie said. She quickly consulted the crumpled birth announcement. “September the sixteenth.”

  “I wish you kids would stay off the phone and quit bugging me,” the voice said, and the receiver was replaced hard enough so that Katie rubbed at her ear.

  Well, she thought, tonight she’d go over and visit with Mrs. M., and they’d call the numbers from her phone. Maybe then there’d be more answers. She ought to figure out what she was going to say, too, if she got hold of someone who might be the right one.

  Are your eyes silver? Do people back away from you? Are you like me, with no friends because everybody thinks you’re peculiar? Can you move things without touching them?

  She went downstairs to get the mail, after she saw the postman leaving, and leafed through the envelopes with her mother’s name on them. An electric bill, a bank statement—and a letter with a name and return address that made Katie stop dead-still in the middle of the foyer.

  Lamont, it said. And the address was in Millersville.

  Katie had never been in Millersville, but she’d heard of it. She wondered if there was a map anywhere in the apartment, so she could see how far away it was. It had to be the same Lamont, didn’t it, as the one Monica had worked with at the pharmaceutical company?

  Katie stared at the magical return address. Fern Lamont was the mother of Kerri Louise; and now that Katie knew where one of the children was, she could hardly wait to find out all about her. How to do it, though? If she simply wrote to her at the address on the envelope and asked outright if Kerri had powers no one else seemed to have, what would happen?

  If Kerri did have unusual abilities, maybe she’d write by return mail and say so. However, probably she, like Katie, realized that some things were better kept secret, and she might not want to admit anything. And there was also the possibility that anything either of them wrote would be intercepted by some adult who would be more alarmed than amused by any claim to an ability not shared by everyone else. Grownups seemed to think that kids didn’t need any privacy, nor deserve any.

  If only she could travel to Millersville and see this Kerri in person. Then she would know, Katie thought.

  “Hi. You waiting for me?”

  Katie turned to see the smiling Adam Cooper coming through the front door. “I was getting the mail,” Katie said. “Are you moving in now?”

  “Moving in now,” Mr. Cooper agreed. “I’ll go up and unlock the place while you get rid of your mail, and then you can help me carry my junk, OK?”

  It seemed as good a way to pass the time as any. Katie took a moment to copy down the address from Mrs. Lamont’s letter, just in case she never saw it again, and then went out to Mr. Cooper’s car. It had a lot of odds and ends in it, and Katie helped carry in paper bags and cardboard boxes, and even some groceries. When they were through, though, she looked around the apartment and it didn’t look as if anyone had moved in.

  “You don’t have much stuff,” she commented.

  “Oh, some of my things are in storage. If I decide to stay here, I’ll get them out then. My books, things like that.”

  Katie hadn’t seen any books in the containers they’d carried in. Her interest quickened. “Mrs. Michaelmas lends me books to read.”

  “Who’s that?”

  “The lady in 2-B. I don’t have to have a sitter any more; Mrs. M. keeps an eye on me.”

  “She’s a reader, eh? And you are, too?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, I’ll let you know when I get my books, and you can see if there’s anything you want from the Cooper lending library. What do you say we meet at the pool in ten minutes and take a dip before lunch?”

  That sounded all right, so Katie went to change into her suit. She also checked in with Mrs. M. and Lobo. Lobo purred when she ran her hand over his head. He might look evil, but he wasn’t; it was only the way his fur was marked. Just like herself, Katie thought. People were scared off because she didn’t seem or look the way they thought she ought to.

  “You look all better,” Katie told the big cat. “You don’t hurt any more, do you?”

  No. But all she gave me to eat today was dry cat food. I don’t like it very much.

  Mrs. Michaelmas was watching with interest. “What’s he say?”

  “He doesn’t like dry cat food very much.” Why was it, Katie wondered, that Mrs. M. could accept her for what she was, but nobody else could?

  Mrs. M. laughed. “I’m not surprised. But it’s a lot cheaper than the canned stuff, or tuna or chopped liver. Tell him he’ll get something better for supper.”

  That’s nice, Lobo thought. He closed his eyes and stretched out in the sun that came through the windows.

  “I don’t have to tell him; he understands what you say,” Katie informed Mrs. M.

  “Oh. Well, I thought he did. Only he
never answers me back. Can you do that with all animals? Or just cats?”

  “I don’t know,” Katie admitted. “Lobo was the first one. And maybe a dog down the street understood me yesterday, I’m not sure. He didn’t say anything back, though. I don’t know what good it does, being able to know what animals are thinking. I can’t even tell anyone, or they’ll think I’m crazy.”

  “I don’t think you’re crazy,” Mrs. M. said. She stuck a pin in her untidy white hair to keep a strand from falling over her face. “You could be a veterinarian, you know. Be very handy, if you were the doctor taking care of the animals; they could tell you where they hurt and so on.”

  “I guess it would. I’ll have to think about that. It would be more use, though, if I could know what people were thinking, instead of animals.”

  Mrs. M. shook her head, and the pin came out so that the hair fell over her eyes again. “I think you’ll be better off if you stick to animals. Could cause all sorts of problems, if you could eavesdrop on people’s private thoughts. I don’t think you’d want to, once you found out what they were like. You’re not going swimming alone, are you?”

  Katie ran a hand over her new bathing suit, the one Monica had bought for her after learning that there was a private pool at the new apartment house. “No. Monica won’t let me go in alone. She says it isn’t safe, even if you’re a good swimmer. I helped Mr. Cooper move into 2-C and now we’re going to swim. Why don’t you come with us?”

  “Me? Honey, they don’t make bathing suits for fat old ladies like me! On the other hand, there’s no law says I can’t dangle my feet in the water, is there? Maybe I’ll come along and join you.”

  So Mrs. M. sat on the edge of the pool with her muumuu pulled up to expose pale and surprisingly skinny legs with blue veins in them, while Katie showed off how she could swim and dive. Mrs. M. didn’t even care if Katie splashed on her a little; she said it cooled her off.

  Adam Cooper swam for a while and then sat beside Mrs. M., talking. He looked good in a bathing suit, Katie thought, almost as many muscles as Nathan, although he wasn’t quite as tanned. His sandy hair got lighter as it dried, and he talked easily, pleasantly. She’d bet he’d pay his bills on time, not like Mr. P.

  They left the pool when it was lunchtime. Katie wondered if Mr. C. didn’t have a job to go to, but he said he was on vacation for a few weeks and didn’t have to worry about that right now. He intended, he said, to relax and spend a lot of time around the pool, improving his tan. Nothing like a good tan, he said, to impress the females.

  “I’ll play lifeguard if you want to swim during the day,” he told Katie. “If it’s OK with your mother and dad.”

  “Nathan’s not my dad,” Katie said quickly. “He doesn’t even live with us. He’s just a friend of my mom’s.”

  “Oh. Yeah, that’s right, he said his name, and it’s not the same as yours and your mother’s, is it? Are they engaged or anything?”

  “I hope not,” Katie said, and then wondered if she should have said that.

  They were walking toward the stairs that led up to the second floor deck, leaving footprints on the cement.

  “Why? Don’t you like him?” Adam Cooper asked.

  “It’s more that I don’t think he likes me,” Katie said.

  “Oh? Does he treat you badly?”

  Katie shrugged. “Mostly he calls me kid, as if I didn’t have a name. And he thinks I’m . . .”

  She stopped, appalled at what she’d almost said. No sense in giving Mr. C. any reason to think she was peculiar, if he didn’t already think so.

  “He thinks you’re what?”

  Her feet had dried off now, and the boards of the stairs were hot. “Oh,” she said, trying to sound careless, “I don’t think he’s used to kids, is all.”

  “Well,” Mr. C. said, “your mother is a very pretty lady. I just wondered if her friend would be upset if I talked to her. You know, around the pool in the evening. I’ll probably swim again this evening. Maybe I’ll see you then.”

  That sounded all right to Katie. She wondered if Monica thought Mr. C. was attractive. Katie liked him better than Nathan. For one thing, he didn’t smoke: you could always tell; a person stunk of tobacco even when he wasn’t actually smoking. And Mr. C. talked to her as if she were a person, not a kid.

  Mrs. M. came padding along behind them, the wet hem of her muumuu flapping against her shins in a glory of multicolored flowers on a hot pink background. “Seems like a nice fellow,” she said, after Mr. C. had turned in at his own door. “I think he likes you, Katie. He kept talking about you, asking questions.”

  “Oh? What kind of questions?” A little alarm bell rang somewhere in the back of Katie’s mind, although she wasn’t sure why. Mr. Cooper had no reason to think there was anything wrong with her, did he? She hadn’t done anything peculiar while he was around.

  It was only, she thought, that she liked him, that it would be nice to have another friend, like Mrs. M. He might not be a friend if he thought she was peculiar.

  “Asked me how we got along, you and me, things like that. How much had I seen of you. Why did the babysitters both leave.”

  Katie tried to remember. Had she talked to Mr. C. about the sitters? Only to say that she didn’t have one, that Mrs. M. was keeping an eye on her.

  She said so long to Mrs. M. and went on into her own apartment, but continued to feel uneasy all the rest of the day.

  8

  THAT EVENING, WHEN MONICA AND Nathan again decided to swim, Katie told them she’d be along in a few minutes. As soon as she was sure they’d actually gone down to the pool level, she got out her list of telephone numbers and began to call.

  This time she got someone at almost every number, but most of the people who answered didn’t know anyone by the names of the kids she gave them. Once when she asked for Eric VanAllsburg, the voice on the other end said, “Just a minute.” Then Katie began to tingle all over, anticipating that it would be the right one.

  The male voice that answered a moment later, however, sounded a lot older than ten. “Who’s this?” he wanted to know.

  “Is this Eric VanAllsburg?” Katie asked carefully. Her heart had begun to pound in her chest.

  “Eric? This is Harry,” the voice said. “Who do you want?”

  “I want Eric VanAllsburg.”

  “My dad must have thought you said Harry. There’s no Eric here,” the voice said, and the connection was broken.

  Katie was disappointed, and she also realized that she didn’t really have a plan for starting to speak to the right people when she found them. It would be so much better to meet them face to face, so they could tell she was one of them, too (assuming that the other three were actually all like herself); but she didn’t know how to manage that.

  And then, under one of the Casey listings, she asked for Dale and heard a woman’s voice call, “Dale! Telephone!” and Katie crossed her fingers as hard as she could.

  “Hello?”

  “Hello, Dale Casey?”

  “Yes. Who’s this?”

  “My name is Katie Welker,” Katie said, her mouth dry. “I’m trying to find a Dale Casey who was born September”—she quickly consulted the card from her pocket—“September sixteenth, who’ll be ten years old this fall.”

  There was a long silence. Then the boy on the line spoke cautiously. “Who are you? What do you want?”

  It was one of them, Katie thought, with a prickling along her spine. She was sure it was.

  “Did your mother used to work for the Curtis Pharmaceutical Company, before you were born?”

  There was another long silence. “Who did you say you are?”

  “Katie Welker. I need to talk to you, if your birthday is September sixteenth, and your mother’s name is Sandra.”

  There was the sound of breathing, nothing else. In the background she heard a man’s voice. “I’m waiting for a call, Dale. Don’t tie up the phone.”

  “Can I call you back?” Katie asked qui
ckly. “Later tonight? Or tomorrow?”

  “Tomorrow,” the boy said. “OK, tomorrow.”

  And then that connection, too, was broken. Katie’s hand was damp with sweat when she hung up on her end. It had to be the right one, it had to be!

  She didn’t bother to call the rest of the Caseys. And the VanAllsburgs brought no results until the final one.

  “Eric? Who you trying to get, Paula’s boy?”

  Again excitement surged through her. “Yes, that’s right.”

  The woman apparently turned away from the phone to speak to someone else. “Some kid wants to speak to Paula’s boy. What’s her name, now?”

  The reply was unintelligible. The woman came back to Katie. “Paula divorced my brother-in-law and she’s remarried now, but we can’t remember what her new name is. Something sort of ordinary sounding—Dunlap, or Duncan, or Dugan—something like that.”

  “Don’t you have her number?” Katie asked desperately, picturing the long lists of Dunlaps and Duncans and Dugans in the phone book.

  “No. Haven’t talked to her since the divorce. Sorry I can’t help you.” Click. Katie was alone on the line.

  Divorced, and remarried, with a different name. That hadn’t even occurred to her. How could she possibly trace anyone under those circumstances?

  Still, she wasn’t totally discouraged this time. Because there was Dale Casey, and she would call him tomorrow.

  Katie descended the outdoor stairs to find that Nathan was swimming vigorously back and forth across the deep end of the pool, and Monica was in a lounge chair talking to Adam Cooper. They didn’t see her coming, and Katie’s bare feet made no sound on the concrete around the pool.

  “So you haven’t really seen very much of her until she came to live with you just a few days ago, then,” Mr. C. was saying, and Monica fluffed up her short blonde hair and replied, “No, not since she was less than four years old.”

  They were talking about her. He’d asked questions of Mrs. M., and now of her mother. Why? Why should a grown man be so inquisitive about a little girl?