by ID Johnson
At first, all three of their voices were very hush hush, and I was struggling to hear anything at all. But the more they talked, the louder my parents became, and before too much time had passed, I could hear a word or two, despite my attempts to cover up my eavesdropping by occasionally clanking a dish or scooting my chair. I had no idea if they would even notice that I was moving around, but I wanted to give them the impression that I didn’t care what they were talking about, even though I did.
I’m not sure why, though. I had completely moved on from Drew’s death, and I really didn’t even care where my sister was or what was going on with her. Still, just the presence of this strange man in my house made my senses go on full alert. And the stabbing pain in my side reminding me that I forgot something important was also a pretty good reason to pay attention. So, I tried.
All I gathered from the brief conversation was that my sister was sleeping, some procedure had gone well, and “we” hoped she’d be back tomorrow. I heard a few names I hadn’t heard before—Eliza and Christian. And then my mom kept saying “Jamie.” I remembered having heard that name before, though I didn’t know why. It’s very hard to care about something and not know why. I felt like what I was hearing was important, but couldn’t figure out why I felt that way.
Aaron was only there for maybe ten minutes when I heard them all stand up and walk toward the door. I thought I heard him say my name, but his voice was so quiet and calm, compared to my parents’ anyway, I wasn’t sure. Whatever he might have asked about me, I heard my mom say, “Cassidy is fine now.” I found that odd. When had Cassidy not been fine?
My parents were still talking to each other after the door closed. I heard footsteps coming my direction, though they didn’t seem to be in too big of a hurry. Still, I realized I hadn’t taken a single bite in the whole time they’d been gone, and if I was going to make them think I’d just kept eating my breakfast like I wasn’t trying to overhear anything, I needed to do something fast. I cut a huge wedge of pancake, which was three high, and crammed a giant bite into my mouth. Syrup began to drip down my chin as I chewed for all I was worth. I knew I’d need to swallow at least most of what was in my mouth so they wouldn’t wonder why in the world my mouth was stuffed full, but pancakes are chewier than one might think. By the time they entered the room, I had managed to choke down most of what was in my mouth, but I think they could tell by the way I was out of breath what I was up to.
“Cass, are you all right?” my mom asked, pausing beside me on her way to the other end of the table.
“Om fon,” I said, still chewing. I forced a smile and picked up my napkin to try and wipe away the syrup from my face, but it just stuck to my skin. My mom shook her head and took her seat.
Whatever Aaron had told them seemed to make them both a little less anxious than they had been before. Their smiles seemed slightly less strained. I finally swallowed the last bits of the bite I’d crammed into my mouth and took a long drink of milk.
“You not hungry, honey?” my dad asked, looking at my plate. “I figured you’d be done by now.”
All of that effort and my parents still were not thwarted. “My stomach hurts a little bit,” I replied. It wasn’t a lie.
“Oh, sweetie,” my mom said sympathetically. “Aaron was just telling us your sister is just fine. She should be back tomorrow.”
I raised an eyebrow. I wasn’t sure at first how my stomach ache was supposed to relate to Cadence, but then I realized my mom thought I was upset about her being gone. Which begged the question: should I have been? They seemed to think so. “Oh, good,” I said, exhaling loudly, still picking pieces of napkin off of my chin. “That’s great.”
They seemed to buy my routine. My mom looked at my dad and gave him that reassuring smile she makes when she’s certain her children are the most precious creatures in the world. My dad did his complimentary, “I concur,” smile.
I took another, much smaller, bite of my pancakes and chewed it slowly. After trying to eat nearly a quarter of them in one bite, they were less appealing than they had been when my dad and I had initially made them.
My mom cleared her throat the way she does when something important needs to be said, but she is not sure if she should say it or if my dad should. They were looking at each other making small shrugging motions. Finally, my mom said, “Cassidy, you should probably know that your sister has decided not to go back to school right now.”
My fork clattered out of my hand onto my plate. “What?” I asked. I had heard some unusual things recently, I guess—maybe they weren’t that unusual—but this one seemed right out of left field. “Why not?”
“Well,” Mom continued, still looking at my dad like he should be the one speaking, “she’s decided to take a break. This… situation with Drew has been hard on her. She’s decided to take a job with Aaron’s… company… for a little while.”
None of what my mother had said made any sense to me at all. For as long as I could remember, Cadence had been talking about becoming a teacher. The thought of my super smart, high-achieving sister not finishing college was mind boggling. And what did my mom mean by the “situation” with Drew? Since when was dying a situation? If anything, it was a guarantee all future situations would never occur. Finally, what kind of business was Aaron in, anyway?
I could have asked one of dozens of questions, but the one that came out of my mouth must have caught them both off guard. “You mean where Grandma used to work?”
Mom said, “Yes.”
While Dad said, “No,” at the exact same time.
They looked at each other, their eyes somehow wider than they had been before, the shrugging even more adamant.
“Well, which is it?” I asked as I began to grow dizzy from watching them gesture at each other without speaking for too long.
“It’s… both,” my dad said triumphantly, as if he’d come up with a suitable answer. “The company has gone through a few changes recently, so it’s like the same company. But different.”
A wide grin split my mother’s face, the victory shared. “That’s right,” she nodded. “It is both.”
“And what sort of company does Aaron work for?”
They exchanged glances again, daring the other to speak. My mom lost. “Security,” she said with a shrug. “It’s complicated. I don’t know the details.”
While part of me wanted to continue to question them simply because I was beginning to not believe a word they said, I also realized I didn’t care. Part of me wanted to. There was a little spark in the back of my mind, niggling in my brain, thinking, “Cassidy! This is important! This isn’t right! It doesn’t make sense!” But the rest of me said, “Ah, who cares?”
“Is it all right if I go to Lucy’s?” I asked, deciding I was done with my pancakes. I hadn’t been out of the house at all for a few days and thought it was time to go see some people who were not related to me—or strange men dressed in all black.
“Sure,” my dad said. My mom made a humming sound, making him look at her. That was her signal that he had said something wrong. He looked as astonished as I did. “What?” he asked.
My mom did a little head bobby thing which means, “Think about it,” but my dad was still confused, so she let out a sigh and said, “Do we think that’s a good idea right now?”
Confusion crinkled my dad’s forehead. “I don’t see why not. Honey, have you been talking to Lucy or anyone else on the telephone about what’s going on with your sister?”
I raised my eyebrows. “Not really,” I said, ignoring the formality of his use of the word “telephone.” I looked at my mom and then back to him. “A few of my friends have called to see if she is okay.” I had spoken to Wes, Milo, Lucy, and Emma—who seemed about as upset about the whole situation as I did right now, which wasn’t much. “I just wanna get out of the house for a while.”
My dad looked at my mom, clearly asking permission without opening his mouth. She did that “I’m exhausted, so I give in�
� face and pressed her hand to the middle of her forehead while looking down at the table. I had no idea why she was arguing in the first place or why this would be exhausting. Since when did they care if I went to Lucy’s house?
“Okay. But bundle up. It’s a little chilly.” My dad seemed confident in his answer this time.
But he shouldn’t have been. “Eli, I think it would be better if you drove her over.” My mom said each word like she was talking to a person standing on the edge of a building, like one false step and my dad would plummet into oblivion.
“Of course, Liz.” Whenever my dad uses my mom’s name, especially in that tone, it is because he is also exhausted. “Let me know when you’re ready, and I’ll give you a ride.”
“Lucy’s house is, like, five blocks from here.” I can’t remember the last time they gave me a ride to her house, or even Emma’s, which was about a half a mile away.
“I know. But… we don’t want you catching cold.” My mom’s smile was so fake she looked like a cheap mannequin.
“Okay,” I said, gathering up my plate and taking it to the kitchen. I hated throwing away my dad’s hard work, but I had lost my appetite pretty quickly once my parents started acting so weird again.
I’m not sure what they were talking about when I came back into the room, but their voices got all hushed. I did hear a few words, which didn’t make sense to me. I hurried upstairs to make sure it was okay with Luce if I came over for a while, wondering who Aaron had said probably went “back to Europe.”
Upstairs, I sent Lucy a text. “Can I come over in a few?”
She answered almost immediately. “Sure! Just about to text. And Em, too.”
“Cool. My dad’s driving me, so, maybe ten minutes?”
“Whenever. My mom’s shopping and my dad’s at the golf course.”
For some reason, I was glad her parents wouldn’t be there. It seemed like there was something important I needed to tell her, though I didn’t know what it was. “What about Daniel?”
“Are you kidding? It’s not even 10:00 yet. He’ll be asleep for another hour or two.”
“I thought he usually got up early to run?”
“Not on the weekend.”
I had been off school for a week. I guess I’d forgotten what day it was. “Okay. C U soon.”
“Hey—you’re going to tell me what the crap is going on, right?”
I was just about to put my phone in my pocket when I saw her text. I had no idea what she was talking about. “Huh?” I asked, including a puzzled-face emoji.
“Ha, ha. Very funny. You said some weird stuff was going on, and you’d tell me but you needed to say it in person. Remember?”
The conversation seemed vaguely familiar, but I had no idea what it had been that I wanted to tell her. There was no point in talking to her about it now, though. “Right,” I sent back, thinking once I had her face-to-face, I would figure it out. When I’d talked to her the other day, she’d asked me about my sister and Drew again, and I’d shrugged her off. That was old news, and I didn’t want to talk about it anymore.
I turned to look around the room, wondering if there was anything I needed to take with me. We tended to leave stuff at each other’s houses. I noticed a book I’d borrowed from Emma sitting on a stack of other books and junk on my desk and decided to take it. I’m usually not a messy person, but I do have a tendency to clutter up my desk. When I picked it up, a landslide ensued, and a bunch of books and notebooks slid off onto the floor. Mumbling one of my dad’s favorite non-swear words under my breath, I crouched to pick it all up.
One of the notebooks fell open to a page I didn’t remember ever seeing before. It was definitely my handwriting, but I had no idea when I’d written it. This was a little scary, and I crumpled to the floor to look it over.
At first, I thought maybe I’d written it so long ago it just didn’t stick with me, or maybe someone else had written it, and their handwriting just looked like mine. But a few of the words on the page leaped out at me, and I realized there was something strange going on here, and it wasn’t just with my sister or Drew. When in the world had I written this down? I struggled to remember, haunted by a word written in bold letters and underlined—“Transformation.”
Chapter 8
Lucy’s house is huge. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t exactly live in a shoebox, but she has five bathrooms—five. And there are only four people in her house! And her bedroom has a little alcove in it where she has a sofa, sort of like my sister’s room, except it is not supposed to be the master. She has a pool and a big back yard with lots of flowers in it and even a fountain. Seriously. A fountain.
I think my dad doesn’t like driving me to Lucy’s house because he feels a little inferior. Like I said, he hasn’t driven me over in years, but when I was younger he used to drive me, and he’d say things like, “I hope no one minds the rims on my truck,” like people were staring out their windows at our vehicle. I always shook my head at him but didn’t ever bother to argue because I didn’t even understand what he was worried about. Now that I’m a little older, I understand it more, but it’s still not a problem. My parents have always done a great job of providing for us, and I would never complain about not having something I needed, or even wanted. It just so happens Lucy’s dad is a lawyer and her mother is an accountant. She’s very down to earth about it and doesn’t even make the rest of us feel inferior when she disappears into her walk-in closet full of designer clothing.
My dad pulled to the curb in front of Luce’s house and I gave him a half-smile. “Would you rather I just forget to call you to come to get me and walk home? So Mom doesn’t make you come back out?” I knew he wasn’t the one who thought I shouldn’t walk.
“No, honey, it’s fine,” he said, patting my knee. “So long as they don’t close the gates on my old jalopy.”
Lucy’s neighborhood is not gated. I rolled my eyes at him. “Okay. I’ll see you in a few hours.” I reached for the door handle. “Thanks again, Dad!”
He waved and shifted his truck into gear but didn’t leave yet, and I knew it was because he was waiting for me to get safely inside of the house before he pulled away, not because he thought anything weird was going on, like my mom apparently did, but because that’s what he has always done.
I didn’t even get to the front door before it opened. Lucy was standing there with her extremely long brownish/blondish hair in a ponytail, her hands on her slender hips. She was looking at me like she was ready to pounce on me, and my mind wandered back to the notebook I’d shoved in my backpack before I left the house. She must’ve been talking about what I’d written there, even though I didn’t remember writing it down or mentioning it to her.
“Hi, Lucy,” I said with a friendly smile. She narrowed one eye at me. “What’s up?”
“Cassidy Elizabeth Findley, get in here.” She stepped out of the way and I entered into a foyer with floors made of marble and a grand staircase with ornate moldings cascaded from the second story behind my diminutive friend.
Emma came bounding in from the adjoining living room, straightening her glasses. Her short brown hair was a little frizzy, and I thought about asking her if she remembered to use her conditioning spray this morning. Lucy and I have been trying to get her to understand different products we use, not because we care so much what she looks like but because we feel it is our duty as her friend to explain the purposes behind the things that we do that Emma doesn’t get or doesn’t care about. I pushed the thoughts aside and said, “Hi, Em.”
Without looking at my face, she said, “Hi.”
“How are you?” I took a few steps toward her, and away from Lucy who had shut the door behind me as if she was sealing the world out to give us some privacy.
“Fine.”
Never in the ten or more years that I’ve been friends with Emma has she ever once asked me how I was doing, and that’s okay. It’s not that she didn’t care, she just didn’t think to ask.
�
��Well?” Lucy said, clearly put out by my insistence on being polite to my friend instead of disclosing to her everything I know about whatever happened with Drew.
I let out a sigh and said, “Can we at least sit down somewhere?”
An exhalation that loud shouldn’t be able to come out of such a tiny person. “I suppose you want a pop, too? Maybe some popcorn?”
“Clearly, I am exhausting you with my civility,” I said. “Would you rather just stand here in the entryway and talk?”
Lucy didn’t answer; she just stormed past me into the living room and plopped down on the sofa, grabbing a throw pillow and holding it against her stomach.
I followed and sat down a cushion away from her while Emma sat in a nearby chair. The TV was on, but Lucy turned it off, once she got over her exhaustion with me enough to pick up the heavy remote. “Well?” she said again.
Before I could start to say anything at all, Emma said, “Guess what, Cassidy?” You don’t get a chance to answer that when Emma says it. “I defeated the third level of my game last night.”
“You did?”
“Yes. It was really hard, too, because….” This is the point where she lost me. Emma continued to talk about how she beat the level for about ten minutes, and I nodded along. I never have any idea what she’s talking about and really didn’t care, but she loves to talk about her video games, so I played along. Usually, Lucy does, too. But not that day.
“Emma Jane! Shut it! We need to talk about Cadence and Drew.”
Emma’s eyes widened, and I felt a little sorry for her, but I knew it didn’t bother her as much as it would most people, even if she doesn’t know how to tell when Lucy is really mad or when she’s just frustrated like she was at that moment.