Lies I Live By

by Lauren Sabel

  As far as they know, I’m going to San Francisco State, and I couldn’t be happier about it. I haven’t told them about the acceptance letter to NYU in my desk. Why tell them if I can’t go anyway? Besides, if I told Mom, and she did encourage me to go, I’d have to make up a convincing lie about why I can’t go to New York. Sounds exhausting. “Of course,” I respond.

  “Good,” Richard says, and hands Mom her house keys. “Found these on the way in.”

  “I’ve been looking for those,” Mom says.

  “In the door,” he says. “Again. You sure know how to leave things in easy places for me to find.”

  They grin at each other. Mom’s joy is so pure and uncomplicated that it worries me. Over the past fifteen months, I’ve learned to care about Richard a lot. He’s the first man I’ve ever been able to imagine myself, eventually, calling Dad. I want him to stay around. And even though I know Mom does too, she’s usually as careless with her boyfriends as she is with her house keys. Over time, they get lost.

  And this one I don’t want to lose.

  The quad is full of students this morning, most of them either racing to the science building for their Friday morning class, textbooks gripped tightly in hands, or sitting in groups chatting. I walk through the mass of Berkeley T-shirts and shaggy-haired students, not interested until I see Jasper across the quad. My heart leaps as I watch him take large steps across the grassy lawn, heading away from the redbrick buildings. He’s swinging a black helmet absently from one hand, and his face is angry. He looks totally different from the boy I met two days ago, the one who split my name into two syllables. I watch him duck around the science building before I cross the quad and enter our building.

  As usual, Anthony is sitting behind the front desk eating Cheetos. He’s on the phone, so he holds up one orange index finger for me to wait.

  The conveyer belt starts up with a whirring sound. “Chicks love shooting stars,” Anthony is saying. I tap my fingers impatiently. “Coming,” Anthony mouths over the phone, and then focuses on his call again. “Big blanket this time, dude. Anthony doesn’t wanna sit next to your ugly face. Out.” He hangs up the phone.

  “National emergency?” I ask as Anthony steps up to the metal detector. I take off my jacket and backpack and drop them on the conveyer belt. The house keys in my jacket pocket jingle as they hit the rubberized surface.

  “Something like that,” Anthony says. He holds out the bag of Cheetos toward me. “Cheeto?”

  I shake my head. “Not really a breakfast food.”

  “Since when does food have rules?” Anthony protests.

  “Since always.”

  Anthony looks at the black-and-white images of my jacket and backpack on the X-ray. “Cell phone, house keys, no ticking packages,” he says, checking each off on his fingers.

  “Oh good. So I’m not a terrorist.”

  “Apparently, no. But you’d be a lovely one.”

  “Thanks,” I say, and then I step into the elevator and let the doors shut behind me.

  Indigo is waiting for me in the viewing room, perched tensely on his leather chair. He’s sipping coffee from a white Styrofoam cup, a scowl slashed across his face.

  “You all right?” I ask, wondering if Indigo’s scowl has anything to do with the angry look I saw on Jasper’s face when he was leaving the building.

  Indigo glances up at me, the cup almost to his lips. “People don’t always see eye to eye,” he says, “especially where money’s concerned.” He drinks half of his coffee in one gulp. “I mean, it’s not like he has to keep this place running.” Before I can ask anything else, Indigo mutters, “Terrible coffee.”

  “The worst,” I agree.

  A smile crosses Indigo’s face as he motions for me to sit down across from him. “Let’s get started.”

  I settle down on the couch, both dying of curiosity and equally glad that I’m not involved. What could Jasper possibly fight with Indigo about?

  “Focus,” Indigo says gently.

  I lean back against the cushions and close my eyes. I hear Indigo shuffling paper across from me and open my eyes briefly, but he mouths sorry and stops moving. I close my eyes again, and let myself sink into the water.

  At first, there is just light and color. Then shapes emerge, and basic feelings: cold creeping under my skin, the flickering of fish passing through me, an uncomfortable tickling sensation. Then, above me, I see the hull of the aircraft carrier. That’s where I need to be.

  Soon I am swimming and flying and rising, a bend of light in a glass of water, and then I am on the aircraft carrier.

  It’s complete chaos.

  People are running past me in a whir of movement and sound. The noise is deafening. An alarm is going off, a high-pitched squeal, and over the alarm, male voices are barking orders back and forth. I can feel the heart-racing panic, but I’m not sure what’s going on.

  Looking for the source of the panic, I float through the aircraft carrier, starting with the island, the six-floor tower in the middle of the deck. I see the island laid out as a blueprint, little boxes stacked neatly one on top of the other: first the Primary Flight Control, then Vulture’s Row, and then the Control Room. This time, there’s no Russian captain leaning back in his leather chair, just an empty room with papers scattered across the floor, like he jolted out of the room at a dead run.

  “Focus on the target,” I hear Indigo say above my vision.

  I drop down the island until I’m floating above the flight deck, and directly below me is the laser. It’s mounted on a square metal base, with tracks for it to rotate on, although I’ve never seen it move. “I see it,” I say aloud.

  A voice booms through the ship’s intercom and people start rushing toward the fantail from all directions. As people move faster toward the laser, I realize that the laser is also moving. It has always pointed at the bow, the front of the boat. But now it’s slowly rotating toward the stern, the back of the boat.

  The Russian captain races out to the fantail. The laser is facing the stern now, and the captain’s confused look tells me that this was not what he had planned.

  “What do you see?” Indigo asks above the scene.

  “The laser has turned in the opposite direction,” I say, “and it seems like no one knows why.”

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  As I walk to the diner near my house, my mind is still whirring with images of the laser, and the captain’s shocked look when he saw it facing the stern. I almost trip over a crack in the pavement, and force myself not to think about it. After my exhausting session with Indigo, I need to get away and rest my mind.

  Charlie’s not here yet, but Sylvester is holding the door open from the inside, a smile beaming across his face.

  “Hello, Callie,” Sylvester says in a thick Ugandan accent. The owners are two brothers from Uganda. One is a doomsdayer, and he’s been trying to convince me to stock up on end-of-the-world supplies for years (you know my answer), and the other one is Sylvester. He serves a good cup of coffee, and makes an okay tofu scramble. Better than mine, anyway.

  “Hi, Sylvester,” I take a seat on the cushy white love seat to the right of the kitchen. Dangling from the ceiling above me, there are billowy waves of white material, so it feels like I’m sitting in a cloud. “Waiting for Charlie,” I add, and Sylvester nods and slips back into the kitchen.

  I love the American Dream Diner. The brothers changed the name from the Ugandan Café to the American Dream Diner when they got their green cards a few years ago. “We are Americans now,” Sylvester told me, and gave everyone free coffees for a week.

  As I settle into the cloud, the laser on the aircraft carrier flashes through my mind again, and, as if a trigger has been pulled, I hear Indigo’s voice in my head: “Analyzing information outside of the office can compromise the mission.” As hard as it is not to think about what I see at work, Indigo’s right, because if I analyze something I viewed in a session, and then I view it again, I may make judgments abou
t it that result in incorrect information. It is precisely this lack of analysis—the ability to only see, not judge—for which I am hired. But still, sometimes I can’t help but think about it, like now, when I can’t stop wondering why the laser turned in a different direction, and why the captain didn’t know it was going to do that. Did somebody else have control of the ship’s laser?

  The kitchen door opens and Sylvester pops out with a cup of coffee, his phone pressed to his ear. Behind him, talk radio leaks out of the open doorway, and the monotone voice of a NASA scientist explains the meaning of meteorites and asteroids to the ancient Egyptians. Why don’t adults ever listen to music?

  Sylvester puts the coffee down in front of me and smiles briefly before going back to his phone conversation. “But Leroy,” he says, and then pauses to listen. “You’ve said this before.” Sylvester sounds irritated talking to his brother. Leroy’s sure the earth is going to come to a violent and dramatic end, and soon. It’s possible, I guess, but Leroy also has a mud-walled basement that he dug with his own hands, filled with a thousand bottles of water and an inflatable life raft for the next flood, or so he says. “Well, don’t come, then,” Sylvester adds, hanging up the phone as he walks back through the swinging doorway.

  When the door closes behind him, I pick up my cloth napkin and unroll it. A knife, two forks, and a spoon fall out with a clang. I lift the spoon by the end, and, after checking the doorway to make sure Charlie’s not coming in, I stare at the spoon. As usual, my lips form silently around the word bend, but nothing happens. At least Mom met Richard because of that party, I remind myself, smiling at the memory of Richard bursting into the drenched Stanford dining hall in his yellow fireman gear.

  The bell dings from its rusting hook on the door, and I drop the spoon on the table. Charlie looks stunningly handsome, as usual, in his blue rugby shirt and a pair of faded jeans. His face breaks into a smile when he sees me. Behind him, Colin trudges in, wearing a Superman T-shirt, his hands deep in his pockets. At twelve, Colin has the social skills of a four-year old, but is the sweetest boy I’ve ever met. When he sees me, he barrels in, his big head of pale hair atop skinny shoulders.

  “Sorry, I had to bring Colin,” Charlie says as Colin scampers off into the corner booth, where there is a gigantic set of Legos in a red plastic box. Charlie perches on the white vinyl cushion beside me and throws a quick wave at Sylvester, who has popped his head out of the kitchen to greet him.

  “One black coffee and a steamed milk,” Sylvester says. “And one egg over easy with toast, one tofu scramble with fake bacon, one pancake with whipped cream.” We nod our agreement. Charlie and I always have breakfast for dinner at the diner. It’s kind of our thing.

  “School’s a total drag without you,” Charlie says, scooting across our booth until his knee is pressed against mine. “I actually have to learn now.”

  “Is that all I am? A distraction?”

  “Yes, definitely,” Charlie says, kissing me on the nose. “But a good one.”

  My nostrils get itchy all of a sudden, and I wrinkle my nose. “I think I’m allergic to you.”

  “Not a surprise. Happens all the time,” he says, hooking his arms over the back of booth. “I like meeting here. It has everything I like: Coffee, check. Pancakes, check. Legos for Colin, check.”

  “You missed something.”

  “Did I?” he says, and then adds, “Callie. Big check.”

  I grin. “Do you have anything left to do before your show?”

  “Everything. I have to print the photographs, find semi-cheap frames, and frame the prints. Then I have to tell everyone I know to come, since if nobody shows up I will be so embarrassed I might just die right there.”

  “You haven’t told anyone yet?”

  “I’ve told everyone I know, and some I don’t. But I have to remind them, that’s all.”

  Sylvester pops out of the kitchen, deposits Charlie’s coffee on the table, and crosses the room to give Colin his steamed milk. Colin takes it from his hand without looking up, so Sylvester adds a Lego to Colin’s tower, which is now starting to look like a spaceship, and rubs his messy hair before ducking back into the kitchen. Alone again, Charlie and I sip the cups of rich Ugandan coffee gratefully. At least that’s one thing Sylvester hasn’t Americanized.

  “A new one?” Charlie asks, pointing to my open backpack.

  “Richard gave it to me,” I say, pulling the National Geographic out of my backpack.

  “Pretty cool,” Charlie says. He takes it from my hands and flips through it, looking at each of the pictures. “How big’s your collection now?”

  “Almost a dozen,” I say, leaning over to see the pictures.

  “I’m so glad you’re still getting along,” Charlie says.

  I know what he means. I’ve never really been into any of Mom’s boyfriends. I think about the handful of men Mom’s been through over the years, and how none of them ever made her happy for long. There was Saul, the Jewish Museum curator, Paulie, the Stanford librarian with the long ponytail, and Chris, the accountant with the monotone voice. And then, out of nowhere, Richard the fireman. I think she was as surprised as I was by her attraction to him. “It’s nice just to see her happy,” I say, warming my hands around the steaming mug.

  “It is,” Charlie comments, taking a sip of his coffee. “He’s good for her.”

  “He is,” I agree, and I already feel better. Five minutes with Charlie and I’m back to normal.

  This time, when the door swings open to the kitchen, Sylvester steps out and hands us our giant plates of food. Colin scampers over and climbs into the booth between us.

  “Do you know how the dinosaurs died?” Colin asks me, and then answers his own question, “When an asteroid hit the earth. How fast does a satellite travel?” he asks immediately, and then answers himself again. “Eighteen thousand miles per hour.”

  Colin is playing his do-you-know game again. He shoots questions at you until you realize how little you actually know about science, and how much he does know. Charlie says it makes his ears bleed. But he says it with a half-smile, half-grimace. Charlie has a soft spot for Colin. That boy gets away with everything.

  “Let her eat,” Charlie says gently, and I grin over at him. I don’t mind.

  Colin ignores him, waving his hands in my face as though I’m across a football stadium, not a foot away. “Callie,” he sings.

  “Huh?”

  He waves his hands in my face again, more violently this time. “How many gallons of water are there in the ocean? Three hundred twenty-six quintillion gallons.” He giggles.

  “Colin, sit down,” Charlie says.

  Colin jumps off the booth and runs around the room with his arms open wide, skipping along on his newfound wings. “Radioman says that’s three hundred forty-three million trillion gallons,” Colin yells. Radioman is what Colin calls the reporter for Science Friday, a science radio show that plays on, well, Friday. Or every day for several hours, if you’re Colin. I look at Charlie, and he shrugs.

  “Colin, sit down,” Charlie says more sternly this time.

  Colin speeds back to us and plops down at the table in front of his food. He shovels his pancake in his mouth and keeps trying to say something, but Charlie shakes his head repeatedly, until I think it’s going to make him dizzy.

  “Callie Sandwich,” Colin says, tugging on my sleeve. “Did you know—”

  “Big kid time,” Charlie finally says, and Colin lowers his eyes to the table and continues to shovel his food in, but silently this time. “Thought any more about the place-that-will-not-be-named?” Charlie asks me.

  Charlie hasn’t told Colin that he’s leaving for college yet. Since Charlie isn’t leaving for another four months, he says he has plenty of time. Of course, he’s been saying that for two months now.

  I shake my head. I love Charlie, I do, but my job has to come first, like Indigo says. And unless I manage to magically start bending metal and influencing minds in the next few
months and get transferred to the New York office, I’m stuck here. “I’ll let you know if anything changes,” I say.

  Charlie nods, and it tears me up how hard he’s trying to be supportive of whatever decision I make. But we both know that four years is a long time. I just wish I could tell him the truth of why I can’t go, and explain that this job as a psychic viewer—as inconvenient as it is right now—is the core of everything I am.

  Of the person he loves, who he doesn’t know at all.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Charlie and I hang around my house all weekend listening to music, scouring the internet for funny kitten videos, taking turns explaining our nonsense conversations to Colin. Basically doing what people do who don’t have TVs. But sometimes having a boring weekend like that is a relief, especially since, when I walk in the office today, Indigo says we have to work in the Faraday cage.

  “Orders from up high,” Indigo says, which means that he can’t tell me anything more, and maybe that he doesn’t know either.

  The Faraday cage is a circular cage, like a metal hamster ball, and the viewer sits inside of it. The cage is blocked by electromagnetic radiation, so that when I am watching other people’s lives, they aren’t watching mine. Because it’s very difficult to psychically break into from the outside, it’s the safest place to view classified information. The United States isn’t the only country that has psychics working for its military, and we’ve all heard the rumors about the dangers of enemy psychics: if one tries to break into your mind, it can be dangerous, but if several break in at the same time, it can drive you out of your mind.

  “Why don’t we have more of these in the office?” I ask Indigo, thinking of the information that goes through our minds every day. Would the CIA headquarters just let people walk in and look through classified documents?