by Alicia Rades
***
After we cleared our dishes, I finally found a moment alone with my mother. “Do you want to walk down to the beach with me?” I asked, hoping she would get the hint and accept my offer.
She smiled in reply.
My mother followed me down the stairs that led to the beach. I sat beside her in the sand and dug my exposed toes into it. Neither of us spoke for a long time. I grabbed a handful of sand and watched it fall through my fingers and back to the earth. Silence stretched between us as I mentally worked up the courage to confide in her.
“Mom,” I finally spoke, but I didn’t meet her gaze. “Have you ever used your abilities to help someone? I mean, to really help someone, like I did with Kelli and Olivia?”
“Oh, sweetheart,” she said sympathetically, running a hand down through my blonde hair. “Is this about Hope? You’re afraid you’re not doing enough to help her, right?”
I knew my mother was intuitive, but she’d also told me that her psychic visions and feelings didn’t work with her family members. That’s how I knew she was speaking out of her motherly instinct, the one that taught her to understand me so well and to pick up on my emotions in a snap. I didn’t always like when people could read my moods because it made it hard to lie, but at times like this, I was grateful my mother knew me well enough to understand me.
I lifted my head to look into her eyes. “That’s just it, Mom. I haven’t done anything to help her. I mean, I know I should use my gift to help people and everything, but it’s just, sometimes I don’t know what I’m doing.”
“I know, sweetie.” She ran a hand down my head again the way she always does when she’s trying to comfort me. “Believe it or not, I do know how you feel. I’ve been called on to help people in the past, too.”
I breathed a sigh of relief. At least I wasn’t in this alone. “Really?” I asked, almost in admiration. My mom had been helping me over the past few weeks alongside Emma as I discovered more about my abilities, but only now did I realize that I didn’t know that much about hers. I knew she could see pieces of the future and that she could find things through touch, but she hadn’t told me much about her past as a psychic. Suddenly, I wanted to know.
“Who have you helped?” I asked.
“A few people,” she answered vaguely.
Now I only felt like she was making me beg for information. “Like who? And how did you help them?” Maybe if I knew more about the people she’d helped, I could understand better how to help Hope and anyone else who came along.
“There was this guy once,” she explained. “I had a dream—a vision—that he was going to die. For the longest time, I never knew what my dream meant. I didn’t even know the guy at the time. In the end, my dream helped save his life.”
I smiled at the thought that my mom was a real hero. Maybe I could be a real hero to Hope, too.
“Was it hard for you, you know, when you found out you were psychic?” I asked.
“That’s where I have some regrets,” she admitted. “You know my mom didn’t have the gift but my grandma did. My grandma had always spoken to me about it, so when I started realizing that I had it, it wasn’t completely confusing. My mom hated my grandma. I think she felt left out that my grandma and I were both psychic and she wasn’t.”
She sighed and then continued. “So I always thought it had skipped you like it skipped my mom. I didn’t want to have an awful relationship with you like my mom and grandma did, and I wanted you to live a normal life. But now that I know you have the gift, I regret never telling you about it.”
She’d mentioned this to me before, but she’d never delved into so much detail.
“I’m trying to be there for you as much as I can, sweetheart, but if there’s one thing I remember when I was growing up, it’s that I needed my space a lot of the time to think things through, so I’m trying to give that to you.” Her hand came to grip mine in comfort. “But to answer your initial question, yes, it was hard for me, too.”
I let this information sit in my mind for a minute, and then I moved onto a new question. “Have you ever saved someone who was abducted or kidnapped?” I asked, hoping her insight could help me here.
“Kidnapped? No, I haven’t.” She paused for a moment. “But with my experience, I’ve learned that psychic abilities can work in mysterious ways. You’ll see what you need to see when you need to see it.”
I thought about this for a second. “I don’t know, Mom. Like you said before, maybe I’m just missing something. Maybe I’m supposed to be seeing something, but I’m just not. It gets really hard sometimes. Like tonight around the dinner table, everything was so happy and simple, and then the happy moment ended and my thoughts drifted back to Hope. And I feel I’m working myself up over something I have no control over, but at the same time, I feel guilty if I’m not worrying about her.”
“Sweetie, I know you’re scared, but the best advice I can give you is to stop worrying so much, face your abilities head-on, and wait for the answers to come. You can’t control when or how you’ll get answers, but you can control how you interpret them and use the information.”
With that, my mother kissed me on the forehead and left me sitting on the beach alone. I could tell she left me so her last statement could sink in. So I let it.
8
Stop worrying so much. I repeated my mother’s advice in my head while I walked back up the stairs to the house. I decided I needed something to take my mind off everything psychic related to actually make this possible. Just then, I spotted Robin exiting the back porch and coming my way. I figured a little criticism and snarky comments from him might do the trick. Or maybe there’d be enough human left in him that we could actually enjoy each other’s company.
“Hey,” I greeted.
To my surprise, Robin actually smiled at me in response.
“Where are you headed?” I asked.
“Actually,” he said, running his hand through his hair, “I came out here looking for you. I don’t really know what happened earlier today, but you seemed pretty upset about it. I just wanted to make sure you were still okay.”
I almost fell back down the stairs I’d just walked up. Robin was concerned about me?
“I am okay,” I assured him. “Want to . . . I don’t know . . . walk down the beach or something?” I didn’t understand why I couldn’t formulate my words correctly or why I wouldn’t meet his gaze.
“Sure,” he said, once again taking me off guard.
“So,” I started when we finally reached the sand. “I, uh, saw you texting a lot on our way down here. Is that, like, your girlfriend or something?” Why was I asking him this? I wasn’t actually interested if he was single or not, was I? Or maybe I was just wondering because if I found out he was single, it would probably give him an excuse for being so bitter because, you know, he didn’t have anyone to keep him company.
He laughed. “Or something.”
Oh. So he did have a love interest.
“And you?” he asked. “You’ve been texting your boyfriend, too?”
I laughed so loud it was almost embarrassing. I quickly snapped my jaw tight. “Me? A boyfriend? No. That’s just Emma and Derek. They’re my best friends.”
“Derek, huh?” Robin said in thought. “So you two aren’t — “
“No!” I practically shouted. “I mean, I think he kind of has a thing for me, but I know Emma likes him. I could never date a guy my best friend likes.” I tucked a strand of stray hair behind my ear.
We both went silent for a few moments until I spoke. “Don’t you think the ocean is really pretty here?” The sun was already setting, but there was just enough light to enjoy the scenery.
He gazed out on the water. “Yeah, it is really pretty.”
“I kind of want to stick my toes in it. Do you think it’s cold?” I crossed ahead of him and approached the water. A small wave crashed at my feet. I squealed. “Yes, it’s cold!”
Robin laughed from behind me
.
“Aren’t you going to stick your feet in?” I asked.
I glanced back at him only to notice that he was wearing long pants and still had his socks and shoes on. His sweatshirt hung unzipped around his shoulders. He shook his head. “No, I’m okay.”
“You don’t like the feeling of sand in your toes?” I asked, playfully digging my feet into the white powder that lined the beach.
Robin shrugged. “It’s okay, I guess. Just not for me.”
We walked along the beach until we couldn’t quite see Wayne and Gail’s house anymore. We eventually hit a pier next to a park, and lights from nearby houses illuminated our way until we made it to the end. We dangled our feet off the side and sat mostly in silence as we watched lights glitter off the water.
“This is nice,” Robin said. Something about his tone seemed awkward, like he was forcing himself to be kind to me.
“Yeah,” I agreed because I didn’t know how else to respond. The hairs on my arms rose in response to the chilly air. I hadn’t realized how cold it would get as soon as the sun set. I was still dressed in the shorts and t-shirt I wore on our way down here.
“You look cold,” Robin pointed out.
I nodded. “I’ll be fine, though.”
“Are you sure? Because you can have my sweatshirt if you want it.” He was already shrugging it off his shoulders before I could refuse.
I eyed him as he held it out to me, not daring to touch it.
“What?” he asked.
“Why are you being so nice? You’ve, like, never been nice to me.”
He sighed. “I’m not being nice. Just put the sweatshirt on.”
I didn’t know where in his world he thought sharing his sweatshirt with me didn’t constitute as “nice,” but I couldn’t reject his insistence. I took it and wrapped it around my shoulders, comforted slightly by its fresh smell.
We didn’t talk about anything important while we sat there, and I was surprised that he hadn’t asked more about what happened earlier. Eventually, we figured we should head back. At the house, we went our separate ways. It was only when I was crawling into bed that I realized Robin had taken my mind off Hope, if only briefly.
***
I opened my eyes to a room full of people. I wasn’t sure how I got there. Practically everyone was dressed in black, and a few people were crying. I spun around to take in the scene. Chairs were lined up in rows on each side of the room, and I was standing along the center aisle. Almost every chair was taken. My eyes moved toward the front of the room, and that’s when I saw a casket sitting there. It was closed and had a flower wreathe sitting on top of it.
For a moment, my breath caught in my chest as I thought about my father. And then I saw the picture of him, the man with green eyes who I saw in the mirror earlier that day. It was positioned near the casket and nearly took my breath away.
Oh. My. God, I thought, fixing my eyes on the photo. A strange vibe called to me from behind, willing me to look away. I turned slowly to investigate what exactly was tingling my senses. A woman with tears in her eyes sat in the back row. Her large red bun and black hat seemed to conceal the source of my feeling until she shifted and I spotted the man I was sure the strange vibe was coming from. His eyes were dark under his brows, and his hair was cropped short. My breath actually left my chest this time when I realized he was the same man in the picture Teddy had shown to the desk attendant at our motel.
His eyes shifted and focused on something toward the front of the room. I followed his gaze, and I had to swallow a lump in my throat before I could start breathing again. My eyes fell upon a little girl with short brown hair and big chocolate eyes who was fidgeting at the front of the room. For a moment, I was dumbfounded, completely paralyzed.
I regained as much composure as I could—which honestly wasn’t much given the circumstances. “Hope!” I tried to say to get her attention, only nothing came out.
Suddenly, I understood what was going on. This was Hope’s dad’s funeral. The ghost I saw in the mirror and at the gas station was her dad, Scott, not Hope’s abductor. And the man in the back was her uncle Jeff. I looked back at him again, studying his face. His eyes were still fixed on Hope.
“What did you do to her?” I wanted to shout, only there still wasn’t any sound. No one reacted to my being there, but I already knew they wouldn’t since I was looking into the past. But I didn’t care. I was too overcome with anger and frustration. I clenched my hands into fists, and my body shook in rage. All I wanted to do was find Hope, and now I was staring into the eyes of her abductor. I was sure of it. That must have been what Scott came to warn me about—about his brother.
But I still needed answers. “Where is she?” I said, quietly at first to myself. Then, even though I knew no one would respond in a dream, I gritted my teeth and shouted the question at the top of my lungs.
A blood curdling scream tore me from my vision and jolted me awake. The scream continued, and only then did I realize it was my own.
My mom and Teddy rushed into the room.
I covered my face in embarrassment. I had never awoke from one of my nightmares screaming so loud and terrified like that before. Or was it anger? I couldn’t fight it. A sob broke from my chest, and then suddenly, I was bawling into my hands. I curled my knees to my chest. My mother knelt beside my air mattress and wrapped her arms around me. Footsteps echoed outside the room just before Wayne and Gail hurried in to see what was wrong.
“Is she okay?” Gail asked.
“She’ll be fine.” I could still somehow hear Teddy’s whispers over my sobs. “She just gets nightmares. It’s fine. You can go back to bed. We’ll handle it.”
“Poor thing,” Wayne said before he left.
Teddy closed the door to give the three of us privacy. I felt the mattress shift when he sat down and rubbed my shoulder for comfort. Even though I was crying, I was glad he was back to his sympathetic self.
My breath came in shallow heaves at first, but when I regained control of my body, I inhaled a deep breath to calm myself. “He took her,” I finally said.
“Who, sweetie?” my mother asked. “Who took her?”
“Jeff,” I said. “At the funeral, he was watching her. He was planning something. I just know it.” I couldn’t be wrong again. I just couldn’t.
“Well,” Teddy said, “he was our main suspect.” I could hear it in his tone that he was forcing himself not to add, But he’s already been cleared.
I took another few deep breaths to ease my cries. “I’m sorry to worry you guys.”
“No, it’s okay. We don’t mind, Kiddo,” Teddy assured me. “When you feel you have something you need to talk about, you know you can come to either of us, right?”
I met his gaze and nodded. I knew he was being honest with me, but I still wasn’t sure how much he trusted my latest instinct. “Yeah, I know that. I just—there’s no reason to worry you. The vision wasn’t all that scary anyway. I think I was more angry than anything.”
Mom and Teddy stayed to console me for quite some time, and then they said their goodnights and headed back toward their bedroom. I knew they were going to discuss the incident in private. Knowing they were just on the other side of the wall from me, I took advantage of this. I pressed my ear to the wall. Through muffled whispers, the only thing I could make out was Teddy saying, “My gut is still telling me it wasn’t Jeff.”
I wasn’t sure if I was supposed to trust my own intuition or his.
9
I was grateful when I woke and hadn’t had another dream. Even so, I couldn’t fight the knot in my chest that was full of concern for Hope. I had to find her. I just had to. I lay in bed for what must have been 20 minutes trying to sort through everything. I replayed the dream of the funeral in my mind, and suddenly, something occurred to me. I was aware it was a vision the whole time. Why could I see the peripheral details in that vision but not in the one of Hope’s abduction?
I thought this through for sever
al long minutes and realized that in Hope’s abduction scenario, I was always in her head. At the funeral, I was a disembodied person looking down on the scene as if it were playing on a television. I knew I couldn’t fall asleep and dream now because I wasn’t tired, but I did know that when the opportunity presented itself, I had to look deeper into Hope’s abduction and discover what I was missing.
After what felt like lying in bed forever, I decided there wasn’t anything more I could do by staying under the covers. I threw on a pair of shorts and a t-shirt and listened to the ocean waves out the window. I checked my phone. Emma had already sent several texts reminding me about our morning stress relief session.
Sorry, I replied. I just woke up.
It was Monday morning, which meant Emma was already at school and I couldn’t expect a text back for a few hours. I felt kind of bad for sleeping in through her texts. Emma was only trying to do me well.
I heard voices from the next room, but the ocean air called out to me. I decided to head down to the water instead of greeting my family immediately. I figured it would give me a chance to do some relaxation exercises like I’d promised Emma I would. Maybe it would even help me get in touch with Hope. I honestly didn’t have a better option.
I sat along the bank with my legs crossed and my eyes closed. I tried to clear my mind, but thoughts of Hope, my friends back home, and even Robin kept creeping into my consciousness. I shifted to get more comfortable and then focused on the sound of the water and my own slowing breath while I let my mind drift in a realm that wasn’t quite my own. It took several times of catching my mind wander before I finally let my body relax. I felt like I was floating, and my mind drifted on its own accord.