by Karen Rivers
WHAT Z SEES
Book Three in the XYZ Trilogy
Karen Rivers
Published by Raincoast Books
Copyright 2008 Karen Rivers
Edited by Colin Thomas
Cover by David Drummond
For my mum, who accidentally gave me the idea
Chapter 1: Zara
Chapter 2: Axel
Chapter 3: Sin
Chapter 4: Zara
Chapter 5: Axel
Chapter 6: Sin
Chapter 7: Zara
Chapter 8: Axel
Chapter 9: Sin
Chapter 10: Zara
Chapter 11: Axel
Chapter 12: Sin
Chapter 13: Zara
Chapter 14: Axel
Chapter 15: Sin
Chapter 16: Zara
Chapter 17: Axel
Chapter 18: Sin
Chapter 19: Zara
Chapter 20: Axel
Chapter 21: Sin
Chapter 22: Zara
ZARA
Chapter 1
THERE ARE THINGS that I know without knowing how I know. Things about my twin, Axel. Impossible things.
I know, for example, that Axel is currently bone- crunchingly, heart-stoppingly, can’t-breathe-right-now capital-T Terrified. But also, I know that he is pretending not to be. He’s way too cool to show fear, his mop of Hugh Grant hair bobbing up and down as he pseudo- dances to music that isn’t playing. His eyes are darting from side to side and he’s blinking too much, touching his face too often. Those are all dead giveaways. His shoe tapping on the floor. I want to go over and put my hand on his leg, help him stop the jittering, like I’d stop my own. He squints at me, and winks. The squinting is a nervous tic, too.
I know that.
And besides, even without clues, I know what he’s thinking. I really know. I can quite literally see his thoughts like they’re a shape in the space around him. Crazy, huh?
It wasn’t always like this but it’s happened so gradually, this clarity, that I can’t remember the exact moment that it began. It started out with more normal-seeming stuff. Twin stuff, like you see on TV: I’d get chills when he was getting a cold. He’d always look up before I sneezed. The hair on the back of my neck stood up when something bad was about to happen to him, even if we weren’t in the same room. We were totally close. Linked. It was such a great feeling. Safe. Whole. I remember my mum telling me that he sat up in bed and started bawling in the middle of the night when I was at a sleepover at Sin’s when we were six. It was the exact same time as I bounced off Sin’s bed and cut my head open on her bedside lamp. Exactly.
That seemed normal. Then it turned into this.
This thing. This gift.
Which isn’t the same for him at all anymore. It’s like he’s growing away and I’m trying to follow but I can’t quite keep up. Like I’m magnetized to him but the pull isn’t strong enough to keep me attached, and he’s polarized in a different way, pushing instead of pulling. Instead of being able to stick with him, somehow the current just flows so that I can see right inside. I can read his mind.
I can’t explain it. Not really. It’s something inexplicable, like crop circles or the alignment of the pyramids. Maybe it’s something not-quite-human, you know? Axel’s thoughts form a shape, kind of a picture — a presence around him. Even when I’m looking right at them, hovering there in the space beside his oh-so-familiar face, I know it’s not real, I know that particular shape and that particular colour and that particular movement don’t exist. Not really. Not like I exist or this airplane exists or this silver bangle Dad gave me that I never take off, even though, well. Even though I probably should. It doesn’t mean what it used to, and yet I still wear it. My point is that it exists. And so do Axel’s thoughts. There they are. If I can see them, aren’t they real enough?
I don’t know how. Or why. It just is.
It’s an all-access pass to Axel’s thoughts. Every layer. As if we’re woven together like threads to make the fabric of one person. When I say stuff like that, he gets mad. He thinks it’s stupid, not to mention crazy. Freaks him out. And it makes him irritable when I know what he’s thinking before he says it. I know it does. It pushes him away. But that doesn’t mean I can stop. I can’t stop seeing.
I told you it was crazy. And never mind seeing it, I can also interpret it. No one else can do that. I know that for sure. I made up an experiment a few weeks ago, using the computer and Mum’s digital camera. I took a picture of Axel and then I used Photoshop to draw in sort of what it looked like to me when I looked at him. I added in the small pale-coloured birds that fly around him when he’s thinking about the future. I tinted the light purple to show his mood. And no one got it — they just thought it was art. Like I was making some kind of clever metaphor or something. Only it wasn’t “art,” not like they thought I meant it to be. It was how it really looks to me. I should have known no one would understand. I’m the only one who gets it, who can interpret Axel’s birds and shapes and lights and colours.
Axel refuses to talk about my “hippy-dippy hallucinations.” When I tried to tell him that I could see more than just sense, he flat out shoved me away. Hard. Not like how we used to play wrestle and that kind of thing, but in a way that left fingerprint-sized bruises on my arm. He told me to shut up. Accused me of being insane.
Later, he took it back, he apologized. He felt awful, I could tell. He loves me, I know he does. He just can’t handle the information so I stopped trying to explain. That’s okay. I guess I understand. I mean, it’s a lot to absorb. I can’t expect him to know how to accept it. I don’t know if I know how to accept it. Not really.
The shapes that I see have such an obvious meaning to me, I’m frustrated that no one else sees them. They are like a private language, but what’s the point of a language if I’m the only one who speaks it? If I tried to describe it to someone else, even my best friend, Sin, she’d think I was crazy, too. Schizophrenic, or worse. But I’m not. It’s real. I just... can’t. It would be impossible to explain how moving, shiny silver droplets like mercury meant that Axel was worried about a specific riding event, how those drops told a story. It wouldn’t make sense that small choppy rainbow-hued cubes meant he was thinking about some girl walking by in a way I wish I didn’t know about.
It’s something I can do with music, too’, in a different way that feels somehow the same. I can identify any note that I hear right away, never making a mistake. To me, musical notes sound like the shape of letters. They feel like colours. A G note is like the firm feel an R makes on the roof of your mouth when you say it. Middle C is like the round warmth of a bright yellow room. F has a soft fuzziness around it, like peaches. Perfect pitch, my music teacher calls it. She doesn’t have it. She says that, if she did, then her whole life would be different. She acts like I’m the luckiest person alive, which makes me feel good. It makes me feel lucky. I love my music teacher. Her name is Anna Louisa. She’s gone for the summer. She’s singing in the chorus of a travelling production of Cats.
The way I’d describe it, if I had to, is that I feel like I’m in tune with music. I’m connected. And it’s not just music, it happens to me at the weirdest times. Like when I’m outside, usually alone, and suddenly it’s as if there’s a note in the air. A vibration. And I feel a sort of rapture. The way I think of it is like the music of the universe. Is that dumb? It sounds so corny. It’s the only way I can describe it though. The only way I can describe that thing that happens to me, like a sudden click and I’m linked with all of it. When I’m riding or swimming or just randomly. Or when I’m singing. That feeling like suddenly a connection has been made and I’m part of everything and everything is part of me.
Maybe I just have perfect pitch whe
n it comes to my brother; too. Maybe that’s the explanation right there, all there is to it. If that’s the case, I can’t be the only one. Just like a certain percentage of people have musical ability, maybe a certain percentage of people have this crazy extra-obvious intuition with their twins.
Maybe.
But I’d be lying if I didn’t admit that it does feel like something special. Something rare. Something impossible. Even though sometimes it’s scary and sometimes it feels like I’m spying on him, I wouldn’t trade it for anything. I mean, obviously sometimes it’s too much information. But most of the time it makes me feel safe, it makes me feel secure to understand everything about him. It’s like a blanket wrapping us both up, protected. We don’t have secrets so nothing is between us. It feels important that this is how it is. It makes it okay for me to tell him every little thing because I already know all of his stuff.
It makes us a family in a way that’s otherwise kind of missing because of ... well, because of Dad. Because of his job. His secrets. His messed-up everything. Because of the way that he’s never home, not anymore, the way he’s slowly migrated all his clothes out of the closet to who- knows-where; his out-of-town gigs — he’s a specialty horse trainer dealing with difficult animals (and difficult owners) — taking longer and longer until they make up the bulk of his time. And the way that Maman pretends that’s actually an okay way to live, him popping back in when he feels like it for sex, I guess, with her. And to make us all feel bad about everything. It makes me want to scream. It’s like he’s fading out of existence but not enough that he’s gone, only enough that he’s a shadow that haunts us. I don’t want it to happen. I want him to be home, present, accountable. Or gone. I want him to be someone I can count on. I want him to be my dad. A dad. A proper dad. Not a dad who comes and goes. Not a dad like he used to be, a dad who’d be crazy insane one minute and the next minute showering us with gifts and attention like we were the only other people on the planet. Unpredictably and often enough that I don’t remember ever feeling like I could balance, as a little kid. I don’t remember ever knowing who he was going to be.
It pisses me off.
I want him to make me feel safe. And he doesn’t.
Safe.
Well, that’s the last thing that we are right now. And guess what? I am even more terrified than Axel. If my own thoughts showed up they’d be like huge jungle animals. Huge and yet more afraid than you’d imagine. But I’ll go through with it because he is going to, and for Maman, and besides, it’s too late now. I’ve passed the point where I could have chickened out. It’s like when you’re having a terrible fight with someone and you’re about to say the one thing that you know is really going to hurt them and you can’t stop yourself, it’s already inevitable and your ears ring in advance.
My ears are ringing. Believe me.
I’m strapped firmly to the instructor, although instructor is a bit of a stretch as all he’s done is rhapsodize about how “awesome” it’s going to be and suggested that I don’t hold my breath. Great instruction! Thanks!
My big foggy goggles are in place, pinching hard against my stupid, ugly freckled cheeks, threatening to crush my cheekbones, leave permanent marks on my skin. And the wind from outside is tearing at my exposed wrists. My nose. The air pressure feels like a monster, clawing and pushing at me. Like something from a nightmare, it’s like the sky itself is alive and grabbing me. (Which, come to think of it, wouldn’t be a bad idea for a horror movie called The Sky.)
I take a deep breath and try to focus on ... something. Anything. I try to capture a bit of that feeling — that click with nature or with the sky or with a musical note or whatever: With anything. I need some rapture. I’m not kidding.
Well, I definitely don’t have that right now. Nope. I feel like I wish I was connected to the plane and that way I wouldn’t have to jump out of it. That’s about it.
This is just a bad idea altogether. The worst idea. Who could possibly find this fun? And more importantly, what kind of mother gives her kids this kind of birthday gift? This isn’t a gift. It’s a nightmare. And why didn’t we just say no? We both knew, right away, that we didn’t want anything to do with skydiving. Skydiving is not our “thing.”
No way.
Not even close.
No thrill sports. Mountain climbing? Why climb when you can drive or get a lift? Base jumping? I’d rather have my wisdom teeth removed or my entire body dipped in boiling oil. No, thank you. This is one of the millions of things that Axel and I always agree about. Believe me.
We’ve never even bungee jumped. Never wanted to. The most thrilling thing we’ve ever done was when we worked down at the track, taking the horses on their endless fast-looping practice rides while the real jockeys saved themselves for the race. That was thrilling. Unbelievably fast. Scary. The kind of riding that I love. I’m way too big to be a jockey for real, obviously, much too tall, but I can see why people love it. I can see why they live for the race, for that thrill. For the rush.
But that was nothing like this.
Riding is our number one thing. Horses.
Singing is number two (well, for me it is, not so much for Axel). I actually think that without Axel being my twin, it would be my number one. And maybe it will be, later. When we’ve grown up. When he doesn’t need me to be there anymore. When I’m on my own. When I’m singing, there’s something else that’s probably strange. It’s like my voice is ... well, this will sound crazy. It’s like my voice is like thread and, as people hear me and listen, I can see it weaving something together that’s almost like a colour, like a silk scarf, like something joining me to whoever is listening. I told you it would sound crazy. It’s all part of crazy me, I guess. The extra part.
Our friends are number three.
Not one thing on our list is about danger. We just aren’t those kind of people.
I didn’t have to be a mind reader to know Axel felt the same way as me right from the start of this venture. There was an awful pause when we read the card this morning and realized what the gift entailed, what we would have to do and pretend to like. He reached under the table and squeezed my hand hard and stared right at me when he said, “Wow, this is totally amazing! We’ve always wanted to do it.” Like he was daring me to tell the truth but also telling me not to.
So I agreed.
I had to. There was Maman, and the way she was looking at us, her eyes were dancing, she was so excited. It’s complicated. It’s like she wants us to want to do it because it’s something that she would have loved, before, but not now. Now she’s afraid and wants us not to be, needs us not to be, so we have to pretend that we aren’t. We would do anything for her. I mean, come on. She’s Maman. She’s more than just our mother, she’s our ... our whole family. We have a tacit agreement: we will always pretend if we have to. For her.
I just hope we don’t die in the process.
Seriously.
I can’t look down, it’s too far, and besides, if I look I just know the earth will pull me over the edge, like a magnet and then I’ll... well, I’ll splatter into the ground. Dead. I can’t imagine dead. Can’t even begin to guess at what that is really like. I can’t die. Axel needs me. Just like he can’t die, because I need him. If anyone dies — not that we will, I know that — I hope we both do.
I look straight across instead and see nothing but sky, sky and more scary sky, interrupted by clouds at eye level that look as though they don’t belong in the picture at all. Misplaced. Dangling in the wrong place. And all that dizzying blue. The nothingness. It’s like a yawning cavern of blue nothing.
I close my eyes, which makes my vertigo so severe I feel like I’m drowning in the air. Too dangerous. I have to open them quick quick quick to stop myself from toppling, to reorient myself. I settle for counting my pulse in French, which is pretty easy considering my heart is beating so hard that I can see my whole chest (what there is of it) moving through my layers of clothing. (I’m actually wearing a jumpsuit.
This is the first time that I’ve ever connected the name jumpsuit with actual jumping. I wonder if they shouldn’t call it a fallsuit)
Probably this guy — what is his name? I can’t remember, something that sounded fake, like Skip or Buster — can feel,my heart pounding through my bony back, through his suit, against his own chest wall. Oh well. He’s probably used to it. Maybe he even likes it, feeds off the fear and excitement, like a shark smelling blood. He surely doesn’t care about me, it’s obvious from the way he talks that the only thing that matters to him is the moment. The jump. Me and my impending heart attack are just obstacles between him and the “awesome” thrill of the bottomless fall. Well, if I have real cardiac failure, he’ll certainly care. It’s not every day that a seventeen-year-old kid drops dead on a jump.
Probably.
Although he didn’t say that it had never happened, which would have — come to think of it — been nice to hear.
The plane is circling and circling, taking forever. They’re probably doing it on purpose, to draw out the fear. To make it worse. Standing at the doorway, the open doorway, this is crazy. What are we waiting for?
It’s a good thing the air is pushing at me so hard because it’s both holding me up and stopping me from shaking as violently as I know I am shaking. It’s also stopping me from breathing but I wasn’t doing that anyway, unless shallow nasal gasping counts as breathing. Which I doubt. Secretly, I’m hoping to faint and not have to experience any aspect of the jump at all. I wink at Axel, give him the thumbs-up, which looks relatively steady, although my arm is practically ripped off by the ferocious teeth of a blast of air. He gives me our secret signal — kind of a backward flipping of the bird — that means the same thing. The air is like a wild pack of dogs. It’s like jumping into a wild pack of flesh-tearing beasts.
Axel smiles, his too-white, ridiculously cheesy Hollywood smile — I totally tease him all the time about his glowing teeth and his careful nightly maintenance of their bleached perfection, he’s vain (and insecure) in the extreme — trembling at the corners. There’s no way I’m doing this, he’s thinking. Exactly that. His thought is a gleaming cube of iron quivering around him. No way, he thinks. No freaking way.