The Possible

by Tara Altebrando

  I ran everything by Aiden.

  So I went up to my room and called him and regaled him with the tale of Crystal—and the news of Liana’s podcast.

  “That is pretty crazy, Kay. I mean, I knew you were adopted but . . .”

  “I know.” My heart seemed to be beating slightly quicker than normal. “So what would you do? Would you do the interview?”

  “I can honestly say”—he spoke slowly—“that I have no idea.”

  “Me neither,” I said, lying down on my bed. “But I mean, I think I want to do it.”

  “What would you say? I mean, what does she want to ask you about?”

  “Well, for starters, she asked me if I had telekinetic powers.”

  “Wait a second,” he said. “You said she’s from Free Public Radio? FPR?”

  “Yes.”

  “You can’t possibly believe in any of that. I mean. Do you? Does she? This podcast lady? Because you know it all had to be a hoax, right?”

  “Right. I mean. Of course.” I went to stand by the open window, the room suddenly stifling.

  Of course.

  Aiden breathed loudly. “I’m so sorry about your brother. I mean, about everything.”

  My throat constricted. Dried right up. No one apart from my parents had ever said that to me; no one else had had the chance.

  •••

  After we hung up, I stared at my phone and willed it to fly across the room, like the phone had in the most famous picture of Crystal. In it, she’s sitting in a brown armchair. A white dial phone with a cord hovers in front of her and her hands are in a weird position that makes you wonder whether she’d thrown it or was recoiling from its own sudden movement.

  The photo had always bothered me. Because why did it have to be so ambiguous? Wasn’t there a better frame captured on the camera? One where her hands were at rest on her lap?

  I stared and stared at my phone—and I watched the way the sun lit up finger- swipes and prints on the screen.

  Just move, I thought. Move.

  For years I’d dismissed it all.

  Now, for some reason, I wanted to believe.

  The central air kicked in, and air whished into my room from small round vents in the ceiling. When I went to close the window, my phone jump-buzzed.

  But it was only a text.

  •••

  •••

  She sent a link. I clicked and went down the wormhole of my own crazy life.

  •••

  When the media descended upon the household, one camera crew caught Crystal knocking a lamp over and feigning surprise. When confronted with the film, Crystal said she “just wanted them to get what they wanted so they’d leave.”

  •••

  Experts cited Crystal’s repressed adolescent rage as a possible source for whatever power was in play. Reportedly, her best friend had cut their relationship off, turning a cold shoulder to her without explanation.

  •••

  The family had been having financial problems, and some suspected the whole thing was a hoax they’d hoped would scare up cash from book and film rights. But interest in these phenomena by the mainstream culture soon faded, and only researchers on the paranormal remained intrigued by Crystal and her family.

  •••

  Whatever you believe about Crystal’s powers or lack thereof, she couldn’t control the legal system when it came to her murder trial years later. The plea deal ended up being her best option despite her claims of innocence.

  •••

  When my father came home—car crunching into the driveway, front door slamming, hard shoes hitting the hard wood floor in the foyer—I headed downstairs. My parents were in the kitchen, talking in urgent, hushed voices.

  “But if she can find Kaylee . . . I mean, what if they unseal the records?”

  “I don’t think they can do that.”

  “But shouldn’t we be sure?” My mother’s voice was all panic, like an octave higher. “Before this whole podcast thing blows it all wide open? I mean, what if this reporter already knows?”

  “Knows what?” I called out from the stairs.

  •••

  I have dreams about my brother sometimes.

  Either he is still two and I’m whatever age I am in real life and we are playing with blocks—building things and knocking them over and laughing and then building them again.

  Or I meet him and he is grown. He’s alive! But I don’t realize who he is at first and then when I do, I wake up with my hair in sweaty swirls.

  I dream sometimes we are on a hammock, swinging gently together. He smells like apples and pee.

  •••

  “Come,” my father said, looking none too happy about it. “Sit.”

  So I did.

  “You’ve read about the murder trial and we’ve talked about it,” he said.

  “Yes,” I said. “What little there is.”

  They exchanged a look; their eyebrows made the same odd curve. The courtroom had been closed, so there hadn’t been much to discuss. Or so I’d thought.

  “Well, Kay,” my dad said. “There’s a reason the courtroom was closed, a reason she ended up taking the plea. We kept meaning to talk with you about it but . . .”

  I raised my eyebrows to combat theirs, wishing they’d get on with it already.

  “You never brought it up,” my mother said. “And you seemed happy, so we never brought it up, and then so much time passed and we didn’t know what to do and thought maybe we’d somehow newly traumatize you if we reminded you that . . .”

  The room spun—

  “The reason why they closed the courtroom . . . ,” my dad said.

  “You were so young,” my mom said—then she got very still.

  “I testified,” I said, “against Crystal.”

  •••

  There’s forgetting and there’s forgetting. This was one kind and not the other. It was the kind of forgetting that comes with simply not thinking about something for a long time. The kind of forgetting that can be there one second and gone the next.

  I remembered.

  Of course I remembered.

  It was all there, simply hidden from sight in my mind for years. What I wore, how hot it was, the way the lady who was in charge of me smelled like honeysuckle, that big photo of Jack they kept showing—with baby food smeared all over his smiling face—and my mother, Crystal—sitting there at a big table, not looking at me.

  Who could ever forget?

  •••

  “It was a controversial thing,” my dad said, “the judge’s ruling to allow it. It was in the middle of nowhere, a super-rural county, or else it probably never would have happened. You were interviewed by a forensic psychologist who said she was confident you knew the difference between right and wrong and that you knew what you saw.”

  “I saw her grab him and throw him against a wall,” I said. “She said something like, ‘Will you just shut up?’ He hit his head hard.”

  My father nodded. “It was very damning and compelling. You were so young!”

  I nodded, too.

  “There wasn’t a lot of physical evidence that could prove anything beyond a reasonable doubt. So your testimony was the . . . well, the proverbial nail in the coffin.”

  “You should have told me. Or I mean, reminded me. Whatever.”

  “Probably, yes,” my father said. “We should have talked about it. I guess we didn’t want you to be . . .”

  “Be what?”

  He hesitated a second. “Scared?”

  “Of what?”

  “Of Crystal,” my mother said.

  “But she’s in prison.”

  They shared a look and then my mom said, “You can say no. To the podcast. We’ll support you.”

  My mother was good at supporting me when I was doing what she wanted, like getting good grades and playing by the rules and not drinking or smoking or having sex. She had recently become the sort of de facto leader of a
local group that was protesting the planned construction of a massive chemical plant a few miles outside town and liked talking at rallies about how they only wanted to keep the town safe for my generation, and I’d be expected to be there, smiling dutifully like the model child I was.

  I said, “I need to think about it.”

  “Yes, do that,” my father said. “We can talk more in the morning.”

  •••

  We sat down to dinner and everything became ordinary again on the surface. I told them all about my unexpected no-hitter and then Mom started to-do-listing me, asking me whether I’d done my SAT prep-class work—because heaven forbid I didn’t go to an amazing college—and whether I’d studied for my chem exam, and whether I had remembered to hand in the form about blah-blah-blah. But things felt unsure now, like fault lines were forming under me. With each bite, each step, came new cracks.

  Because I realized something while my parents were talking about their days and eating the Moroccan chicken and chickpea stew that Mom made like once every three weeks, which was maybe slightly too often.

  I realized that I wanted to meet Crystal—had to meet her.

  Again.

  Because maybe she’d be able to explain all the things I’d convinced myself needed no explaining.

  •••

  I texted Aiden from my bed after I’d turned out the lights.

  •••

  He took his time responding.

  •••

  •••

  It was sort of irritating. I looked up some prison visitation guidelines to see if I was even old enough and found this:

  Children under 16 years must be accompanied by an adult (18 years or older) with proper identification. A visitor 16 or 17 years old may visit but may not act as an adult escort of a child under 16 unless both the visitor and the inmate to be visited are the parents of that child.

  •••

  I took a minute to think about that. A sixteen- or seventeen-year-old mom could bring her kid to see the dad in prison. How depressing was that?

  •••

  •••

  I put my phone on my night table. Giving up.

  Then it buzzed.

  •••

  BECAUSE DAD HAD AN EARLY meeting Wednesday, he was up and out before me and Mom, so we didn’t talk more in the morning. Which meant they didn’t call Liana and wouldn’t all day. Maybe she’d show up on our doorstep again that afternoon, mid-nachos.

  I picked up Aiden (who wouldn’t get his license until December) and headed for Chiara’s (who wouldn’t get hers until August).

  “So what did you decide?” Aiden’s hair was still wet from the shower and he smelled like a soap I didn’t like. In spite of the forecast for heat, he wore his usual jeans and black boots and one of the ten T-shirts he owned that he rotated through regularly. This one said, simply, ANALOG; yesterday’s had said DIGITAL.

  “I’m honestly not sure,” I said. “But I decided one thing.”

  “What’s that?”

  At a Stop sign, I let go of the wheel and aired out my sweaty palms. “I want to meet with her.”

  “Wait. I thought she came to the house?”

  I shook my head. “Not the podcast chick. I want to meet Crystal. Well, I mean, not meet, but . . .”

  “I thought she was in prison,” he said.

  “She is.”

  “I thought the prison was in . . . ?” he said.

  “Pennsylvania. It’s not that far.”

  “I thought she was a murderer that you testified against.”

  We had pulled up in front of Chiara’s.

  “She’s also my mother. I just think maybe it’s time. I’m seventeen. I’m . . . curious. Do I look like her? Act like her?”

  “Kay,” he said, like some kind of reprimand.

  “What?”

  Chiara opened a backseat door. “What’s shaking?”

  I turned and said, “I’m thinking I’m ready to go see Crystal in prison.”

  Chiara went wide-eyed. “And how do Christine and Rob feel about that?”

  “I haven’t told them,” I said to her in the rearview mirror while she strapped in.

  “Of course you haven’t,” she said. “If you had, you’d be grounded.”

  “They’ll deal,” I said.

  “I’m sorry,” she said, “but I don’t see Christine and Rob taking you to see your murderous birth mother in prison. It’s not their scene.”

  “So I won’t tell them,” I said. “They won’t have to go with me.”

  “Then who will?” Aiden asked.

  “Liana Fatone will,” I said, and I liked the sound of it.

  “Who’s Liana Fatone?” Chiara asked.

  Aiden said, “Podcast.”

  “It’s not the worst idea,” Chiara said.

  “Actually I’m pretty sure it is,” Aiden said out the window. “I mean, were you even thinking of visiting before this podcast came along?”

  “No,” I said, “but things happen for a reason sometimes.”

  “But you don’t just have to let things happen to you,” Aiden insisted.

  “I want them to happen,” I said.

  “So you’re going to do it?” Chiara asked. “The podcast interview?”

  “I think so. I mean, it’ll be cool, right?”

  Aiden groaned.

  “Totally,” Chiara said. “And hey. If she ever wants to, like, talk to your bestie, give her my number.”

  “I will absolutely do that,” I said, and smiled at her in the rearview.

  •••

  School was loud. All the time. It drove me bonkers. Every day, I wanted to find the volume switch on people in the halls and turn them the hell down.

  Like that morning, the three girls I called the Triplets of Belleville were all wearing their plaid minis, which they did at least once a week—like they wished they’d gone to Catholic school—and they were jabbering away as if they were going deaf and didn’t realize it. Even the Big Bangers—a group of four nerdy guys whom Aiden should probably spend less time with—were louder than usual. The Swifties were always turned up too high—like the red lipstick somehow amplified every word coming out of their mouths. And the Rachels, a group who always seemed to be humming some schlocky girl power anthem a la pop singer Rachel Platten, were flipping their hair so much I swear you could hear each and every swish.

  But then the reason for the cranked-up volume became clear.

  At a long table in the main entry hall, junior prom tickets had gone on sale.

  So maybe I was a little bit in denial about the fact that it was only a few weeks away. I had to up the time line on trying to get Bennett to dump Princess Bubblegum.

  I was also a little bit in denial about the fact that we’d never actually spoken. But I was sure that was only because he was like me. He took his time with people. He didn’t need a billion friends.

  I’d been in the main office the morning he’d come in to register, and his parents had seemed more nervous than he had, overexplaining that they’d just moved from LA and weren’t sure they’d brought all the right documents. When the school secretary, Mrs. Ranchor, was trying to photocopy his records, the copier had jammed and he’d stood and said, “If I may?” and then he’d gone around and studied the machine for a few seconds, then opened some doors and moved some levers and yanked out a crumpled piece of paper and said, “Et voila!” and went to sit down again.

  Mrs. Ranchor had quipped, “You’re hired,” and I’d felt the same way. This was a guy I wanted on my side. It helped that he was cute.

  My daydreams mostly involved us both going to college out west, away from Princess Bubblegum and everyone else annoying, and getting into dramatic, borderline perilous situations where we both keep our cool and life together feels like an open highway. Whether or not he actually knows how to surf, I daydream about him teaching me. He shows me how to spot waves before they form and how to own them. I sometimes fantasize that I
ask him why he moved, and he tells me about his deep, dark past.

  •••

  He was by his locker, so I swam through the noise to him and tried to block it out. I had to focus on what needed to happen. This needed to happen . . . and soon, like now. I reached him and said, “Hey, did I see you in the bookstore over the weekend?”

  “I don’t know,” he said. “Did you?”

  “Yeah.” I reached for a paperback on his locker shelf. “Is this what you got?”

  “Um.” He sort of laughed. “Yeah.”

  I looked at the book and faked recognition. “I just bought this!”

  “Yeah?” He raised an eyebrow.

  I handed him the book and smiled. “We should have like a book club meeting or something when we’re both done.”

  “Totally,” he said, like in a wry way. Then he said, “I gotta go.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “Me, too,” over buzzing in my ears like a swarm of bees.

  •••

  “A book club meeting?” Chiara said.

  We were at lunch; I wasn’t hungry. Who could eat with Bennett sitting two tables away?

  “But as a joke!” I said. I was having a bad hair day and tried to fix it with my fingers without being too obvious, smoothing it behind my ears some. The table between us and Bennett’s was filled by Loafers, whom I called that on account of their chosen footwear and also general attitude.

  Chiara shook her curls, and they seemed to droop with her disappointment. “I should never let you do anything alone.”

  It was easy for her to say. She had a crush on David Ercolino, and he obviously had a crush on her, too, and they were being cute and slow and annoying about actually getting together.

  “Trust me,” I said. “It wasn’t bad. It was good. It was flirty.” I made a note on my phone of the title of the book he’d been reading. “If you want a ride home, you have to come to the bookstore with me first.”

  “That’s your big plan?” she asked. “Read the same book as him so you can talk about it?”

  “Got any better ideas?”

  “I don’t know,” she said. “Do you think you inherited any evil mind tricks from your crazy birth mother?”