Silent Echoes

by Carla Jablonski

  But she couldn’t risk anyone overhearing her ever again. She’d find some other way to contact Lucy.

  A bell rang and the girls filed down to breakfast. There were six, including Lindsay, ranging from an Asian girl who spoke no English to a pushy, talkative nineteen-year-old named Jillian who reminded Lindsay of Haley. Lindsay sat by a girl with multiple piercings and tattoos who very quickly told Lindsay she’d been clean for a whole month, didn’t want it, didn’t need it, and was Lindsay gonna eat that toast?

  After breakfast the girls scattered, some to school, some to jobs, and Lindsay was left alone with Chandar, the receptionist.

  “The first day Molly and Michael want you to hang out while they work with you on your ‘life plan,’” Chandar explained. “Some of that is going to be seriously boring, and sometimes it seems like a big waste of time, but give it a shot. I did.”

  “You came here too?” Lindsay asked.

  “Oh yeah. I was hard-core twisted up. But the wack thing with Molly is that even though she looks like a cupcake and sometimes sounds like Dr. Phil in a dumpy dress, she’s actually cool. On a super-deep level.”

  “She seems nice,” Lindsay said. “Michael too.”

  Chandar shrugged. “He’s okay, I guess. I hate all that shrink stuff. All that ‘tell me your feeelings’ crap.”

  “I know what you mean. I kind of got sick of talking about myself yesterday.”

  “Well, today you’re going to be doing just as much talking, but you’re also going to have to be filling out loads of forms. Molly’s cool, but she’s still a bureaucrat.” She laughed.

  “Are you complaining about me again?” Molly said, coming into the building.

  “Of course! Just warning Lindsay she better warm up her writing muscles.”

  “Sad but true,” Molly said, taking off her coat. “You look good,” she added, scanning Lindsay.

  “Thanks for letting me stay here.”

  “Michael in yet?” Molly asked, flipping through the messages on Chandar’s desk.

  “Before me, even.”

  “Come on,” Molly said to Lindsay. “Let’s go talk to Michael.”

  “Good morning, Lindsay,” Michael greeted her as she entered his office. He was quite tall, with a sharp, beaklike nose. “Sleep all right?”

  “Yes, thank you.”

  “So we’d like to start setting up a plan for Lindsay,” Molly said. “Which means starting with Michael’s assessment,” she added to Lindsay.

  Lindsay’s stomach clenched. Here goes.

  “Just one conversation isn’t enough for me to really know what’s going on,” Michael said. “What I’d like is for Lindsay to agree to see me on a regular basis and to sign some forms that would give me permission to discuss her case with the doctors who saw her at Riverview.”

  “I know what they’re going to tell you,” Lindsay said. “So I guess I can’t stay here.” She stood.

  “Why does every girl who comes in here think she can read my mind?” Michael asked Molly. “And predict the future?”

  “It’s a symptom of being a teenager,” Molly said.

  “Lindsay, why don’t you sit down and listen?”

  Lindsay sank back down into the chair.

  Michael leaned back, hands clasped behind his head. “What I actually think is that you were misdiagnosed. So I’d like to see what meds they had you on, get more-detailed information about your sessions from them, and also get to know you better.”

  “You believe me?” Lindsay asked in a hoarse whisper. “That I’m not really crazy?”

  “I’m not going to make the mistake of giving you a quickie diagnosis, and I will say that given the circumstances, they did everything right. But I think if you’d been there longer or were able to move into an outpatient setting away from your mother and stepfather, they might also have come around to a different conclusion.”

  “You see, sometimes for a girl in an extreme home situation like yours,” Molly added, “stress can create all kinds of behaviors. Symptoms. Cries for help or just coping skills that look really strange to outsiders. It is possible that’s what your voices were. A way to deal with what was going on at home that you felt you couldn’t tell anyone else.”

  “So I heard her because I needed her?” Lindsay asked, the words coming slowly as their significance became more and more clear. There was a reason she and Lucy had made contact after all.

  Twenty-nine

  Lindsay and Tanya sat at the computer terminals in the East Village library. Lindsay had filled Tanya in on everything she’d found out at the Phillips Center—that she might be able to get reclassified, that they would help her become an emancipated minor if that’s what she wanted to do. They also said they’d help her try to track down relatives on her father’s side if she wanted to go that route while looking into foster care.

  They had given her permission to stay a full week as long as she let them inform her mother. Because Carl had never hurt her, they weren’t required to report him to the police, although they did say that if Melanie ever needed help, they could hook her up with the appropriate agencies. Lindsay wasn’t going to hold her breath on that.

  “They’re calling her now,” she told Tanya. “And once I have a game plan, I’ll call her myself. You won’t have to feel like I’m your big secret anymore.”

  “I’m just glad you’re okay,” Tanya said. “And it’s so cool that you saw a picture of Lucy Phillips.”

  “You should come check it out,” Lindsay said. “I’m allowed visitors during certain hours.”

  “Definitely. And she married the doc, not the rich dude.”

  Lindsay nodded. “She took a big risk. I guess it paid off.”

  “Ooh—let’s see if she had kids!”

  Tanya pulled up the genealogy site they had used to try to find out information about Lucy’s mother.

  “Check this out!” Tanya exclaimed.

  Lindsay leaned over her friend’s arm to look at the screen. “She named her girl Lindsay!”

  Lindsay’s eyes welled up. “That’s awesome.”

  “They named one of their boys Alan,” Tanya read. “Makes sense. One Beau—”

  “That’s her dad,” Lindsay interrupted.

  “But here’s a weird name. Smithton. Poor kid. I bet he got beat up every day at school for that one.”

  Tanya scrolled through lists of names, and Lindsay noticed that as the years grew closer to their own, little bios were included.

  “Hey, see if it tells who’s been on the board of the Phillips Center. Molly said that there’s always a member of the family on the board.”

  “Sure.”

  Lindsay watched the list of names, all leading back toward Lucy. A name appeared and she gripped Tanya’s arm. “Slow down,” she gasped. “Go back.”

  “Are you okay?” Tanya asked.

  “Oh my God,” Lindsay said. She pointed to the screen. “That’s my so-called dad’s mother. And right there is my so-called dad!”

  “And there’s you,” Tanya whispered.

  Lindsay gaped at the computer, then turned and faced Tanya, whose eyes were huge with wonder. “That means Lucy Phillips is my great-to-the-third-power-granny!”

  Lucy paced outside the Old House at Home saloon, better known as McSorley’s. She just had to know if Lindsay had retrieved the card. She had tried over and over to reach Lindsay at the boardinghouse but had never gotten a response.

  Alan came out with a perplexed expression on his face. “How strange,” he said. “There was a note, just as you hoped. But also this.” He held up the oddest piece of paper. It was an ornate bill of some sort, a grayish green. “It seems to be some sort of currency,” he said, “but not like any I’ve ever seen. It must be a kind of joke.”

  Lucy looked at the note in her hand. She wished she could share this amazing secret with Alan but knew it was better not to, though perhaps someday, when she understood it all better, she could.

  Dear Lucy,


  Thank you. I went to the Phillips Girls Center, and it ’s wonderful. It is still up and running. You obviously left it in very good hands.

  I now know why we were able to communicate, but in the interests of science-fiction fans everywhere…

  Lucy looked up at Alan. “Science fiction?”

  Alan shrugged. “I have no idea.”

  She went back to reading:

  …in the interest of science-fiction fans everywhere (and because my best friend, Tanya, made me swear), I’m not going to tell you. There ’s all this worry about changing history. You changed mine, but for the better. It ’s safest to just leave it at that.

  I’ve sent you money from my time. You won’t be able to use it; in fact, you shouldn’t show it to anyone.

  Lucy glanced at Alan guiltily, then back at the paper.

  Think of it as a souvenir of your visits to the future.

  Love, Lindsay

  Lucy smiled as she slipped the note into her pocket. She had a feeling this was the very last contact she was going to have with Lindsay. It was like Mr. Smithton said: the spirits contacted her for a reason. The first thing Lucy ever heard Lindsay say was “Help me.” She’d done just that. Lindsay didn’t need her anymore.

  “You look like the Cheshire cat, grinning so mysteriously,” Alan teased. “Twice now I’ve been your accomplice in something. It would be nice if you would tell me what.”

  Lucy smiled at him. “Yes, it would be nice. But I’m not going to. Not right now, anyway.”

  “Perhaps I’ll worm it out of you eventually.”

  Lucy shrugged. “Perhaps. Even I can’t always predict what’s going to happen.”

  “Well, thank goodness for that!” Alan said, slipping his arm through hers. “It would be terrible if there were no surprises.”