Whispering Minds

by A. T. O'Connor

  But was I good enough to pull off blind texting?

  Of course we are.

  I knew they were right. My/Luna’s text to Travis proved that. But it still didn’t explain how James had tracked down my cell phone number.

  I did.

  “Yes, Luna. You did. But you are in my mind. You are a part of me. My number is your number.”

  Then wouldn’t James know it, too?

  JayJay is crying.

  Oh for Pete’s sake, why?

  He’s coming. I can feel him.

  “He’s not a part of us.” I said it to calm JayJay, but as soon as the words came out, I knew they were true. I repeated them, tasting the truth of it on my tongue. “James is not a part of us. He has never been a part of us. He is the memory of our Jimmy, taken without permission.”

  JayJay’s panic surged through me. He’s real?

  So are we. Einstein.

  But not like that.

  Jimmy was taken for a reason. Angel.

  My mind grew silent. The only noise was the squelch of tires on the road. I stopped at the first light and turned left following the directions.

  “How do you know, Angel? Who told you there was a reason?”

  That lady with the thin face. I’ve seen her before.

  The hair on my arms prickled despite the heat pumping out of the vents. Three blocks later I followed the gentle right swell of the road.

  She made me play with dolls.

  I pulled over to the side of the road and parked in front of a painted stucco. Christmas lights adorned the front porch, leading to the front door.

  She wanted me to tell her things, Angel continued on, her voice low, as if in a confessional.

  I turned off the ignition and squeezed my eyes closed to quell the queasiness in my stomach.

  Dirty things.

  I opened my door and stepped out into the cold.

  I lied to her so she would leave you alone. I told her Jimmy touched you.

  “Hush, Angel. She can’t hurt you now. Nobody can.”

  As if on autopilot I followed the path, slipping once on a patch of ice.

  My cell phone buzzed again. I checked both pockets, even though I knew Luna’s phone sat silent in the front seat.

  I’m waiting for you.

  I stopped at the front door and raised my hand to knock. Everything fell into place. Angel’s lie of sexual abuse resulting in Jimmy’s disappearance from my childhood. His life spent in treatment for a brain injury caused by our dad. Emerging in adulthood as James, only to be tormented by Collin’s hand. The anger he must feel toward me. I texted back.

  I’m here.

  I let my hand fall with a solid thud against the wood.

  A chain slid from the inside of the door. It opened a crack. Then wider.

  A woman stood in front of me. She wore blue jeans and a gray sweatshirt. She also wore Mom’s features.

  “Tracy?” I mimicked the name from Mom’s phone conversation.

  Her wary eyes peered at me. “Yes?”

  “I’m Gemini Baker.”

  Chapter 37

  The woman barely made it to the couch before she collapsed. Her delicate hand reached for her throat and pulled the hood strings tighter, as if keeping a chill at bay. “I…I’m your…your…aunt.”

  A sound from the back of the house caught my attention. I crossed the living room and stood next to the worn floral print couch. “Is Jimmy here?”

  “James. And no, that’s just the cat.” Her eyes darkened, and a tight smile played on her lips. Her nod betrayed her words. Jimmy was home. When she spoke again, her voice was a whisper, and I had to lean forward to hear. “You should probably go.”

  “I need to talk to him,” I whispered back.

  Her eyes darted past me and down the hall. “I think you should go.”

  “If Jimmy is not here, then I’d like to talk to you.”

  “Leave now, please. Before he hurts you.”

  Outside, a car pulled into the driveway.

  I turned toward the door.

  My cell phone vibrated.

  I flipped it open.

  A shooting pain smashed into my head, and I hit the floor. I opened my mouth to scream, but it was filled with blood. I spit it onto the carpet to keep from choking.

  Roll over. Brutus.

  I pulled myself together and rolled to the side.

  A face loomed over me. The boy from Collin’s video. He blew his blond hair out of his gray-green eyes.

  I wasn’t surprised to see him.

  He cocked his hand for another shot.

  “Jimmy?”

  His fist stopped just shy of my chin.

  I knew I was right. I knew that Jimmy had been removed from my life by Sarah Stemple. Somehow, she had kept him from coming back to me. Somehow we’d found each other again.

  I put my hand out and reached for his. When I found his fingers, they were cold hard stone, locked together like in the video. Dead.

  Without taking my eyes off his, I wrapped my fingers around his hand. “I’ve missed you.”

  A look of pain shot across his face. The doorbell rang. The fabric on the couch rustled. Jimmy shot a look toward Tracy, and she settled back onto the furniture. He worked his jaw before speaking to me. “You sent me away.”

  Guilt from Angel’s confession ate at me. It was my fault he’d been sent away. “Jimmy, I’m sorry. When you left with Dad, I didn’t know. I didn’t know you weren’t coming home. I sat in that closet and waited for you.”

  “He wouldn’t let me.” His voice sounded far away, as if he were back in time, back in the yellow room with striped curtains. Then his eyes sharpened and changed. “You wouldn’t let me.”

  “I never even knew you were gone until now. I thought you were dead.”

  Jimmy straddled me, his face twisted. His hands pinned mine to the carpet in an iron grip. All his anger seemed to grind into my wrists.

  Insistent knocking followed a series of doorbell rings.

  “How did you find me?” But even as I asked, I knew. I saw Jimmy, sobbing his sister’s unheard name at Collin’s marble table. Unheard except by Collin who passed my information onto Jimmy. We’d both been pawns in his sick games, and easy prey for all our problems.

  “I’ve always known where you were.” He spat the words out like they were rotten.

  That threw me. “Even before my dream study?”

  A dark furrow cut across Jimmy’s brow. “He talked about you all the time.”

  “Who did? I didn’t even know Collin until this year.”

  But Jimmy wasn’t listening to the present. He was in the past. “Dad would bring his presents every year. He wanted me to play football or baseball or tennis. But I’m none of those things. I’m a monster. And you made me that way. Dad always said they took the wrong kid.”

  I shook my head. “We were both the wrong kids. They shouldn’t have taken either of us because nothing ever happened.”

  The door smashed in. Jimmy’s hands loosened on mine, and he jumped to his feet. He was fast, but not quick enough.

  A shadow lunged at Jimmy and knocked him to the ground. From the couch, Tracy screamed and took off down the hall. A door slammed in the distance. I scrambled behind the coffee table. Someone bellowed. In a sudden rush, both bodies crashed to the ground.

  Travis wrapped his arm across Jimmy’s neck in a headlock. I screamed at him to stop. Sirens sounded from far off. Travis jerked Jimmy into a sitting position. His arm tightened around Jimmy’s throat.

  “Don’t you ever lay a hand on her.”

  I squeezed my body between them and begged with Travis. “Let him go.”

  Travis released his grip and stepped back, his eyes fierce. As he did, Jimmy snaked his arm around my neck. I felt the cold prick of a knife in my side. My teeth chattered, and I shook uncontrollably. His arm tightened and cut off my air.

  I warned you to stay away from him.

  Now is not the time, Luna. I think she’s f
igured out for herself that some memories are best left forgotten.

  Stop your crying, Angel. You didn’t know.

  My sight dimmed. I looked into Trav’s eyes and regretted never telling him I loved him. How could I have been so selfish?

  We are all selfish.

  Some of us are not.

  Tell him now.

  My head pounded. With the little energy I still possessed, I reached my hand up and twined my fingers through Jimmy’s. His arm tightened around my neck for a fraction of a second, then released ever so slightly. I sucked in a lungful of air. With my other arm, I reached out toward Travis. Jimmy pulled me backward, and the knife prodded my side.

  “I just need to…give me your hand...”

  In slow motion, Travis reached his hand toward mine. I latched on and watched our fingers lace together like a spider. At the same time, I squeezed Jimmy’s hand in my own. His fingers tightened, then returned my squeeze. We were once again connected. “Forever…”

  “…and always.” Jimmy breathed the words into my ear. The knife slashed away from me, cutting my side in an electric wave.

  Travis lurched forward and pulled me from Jimmy’s grasp. I turned, spilling blood as I did. In one swift motion, Jimmy sliced through the pale skin on the inside of his wrist. The stroke went up, pulling at muscle, tearing through veins. Blood spurted from his wound.

  I jerked forward and clamped my hand on his wrist to stop the flow. Jimmy swayed and collapsed, taking me down with him. I pulled his head into my lap and cradled his hand in mine. Our fingers meshed together, slippery with blood. “Why?”

  His eyes met mine. “I just wanted to know. If it was you or me.”

  “It was me, Jimmy. I lied to them. I messed up your life, and I’m so very sorry.”

  His words were soft, his eyes closed. “I knew I could never hurt you. And now I know why I never remembered doing those things they said. Dad was right. It was you. It was always you.”

  “You should have asked, Jimmy. You knew where I was.”

  “They said not to. I couldn’t talk to you. They said you didn’t know me. And sometimes I would see you on campus or in the mall and it was true. You didn’t know me. But I never stopped knowing you. Why did you stop knowing me?”

  I stroked the hair from Jimmy’s forehead and agreed with him, trying to ease his pain even as my heart broke in two. Angel had committed the ultimate sin. Her lies on my behalf had destroyed Jimmy’s life. I destroyed his life.

  Tears slid down my cheeks and fell onto my brother. I had just found him, and now I was losing him all over again. Unable to bear the pain I had caused him, I looked up at Travis and a feeling of helplessness washed over me. “Help me.”

  Jimmy shuddered in my arms. His lips moved to form words I could barely hear. “He always loved you best.”

  “No. You have it wrong. Daddy never loved me. Once you were gone, he died inside.”

  Jimmy smiled and opened his eyes. They slid past me then returned. “Someday you will understand.”

  “Someday you can tell me.”

  Sirens screamed into the driveway. Paramedics swarmed into the house, tore Jimmy from my grip. Before our fingers parted, I leaned in and kissed his cheek. “I love you Jimmy Baker. Forever…”

  His hand slid from mine. “…and always.”

  Chapter 38

  Life did not return to normal, it merely settled into a pattern of shallow comfort. After yet another round of police reports, I moved in with Clarence for good. Mom moved into a halfway house and found a job in an art gallery. She spent her free time creating abstract sculptures and visiting her psychologist. Mental health was not my family’s strong suit. My dad sobered up long enough to be charged with arson. He denied it, of course, but with his past record and his present performance, he seemed like the most obvious suspect.

  A part of me believed otherwise, but I had no evidence to convict myself. Luna’s insistence that James had done it fell on deaf ears. None of us were willing to point fingers in his direction after the way Angel botched up the first investigation with Jimmy.

  School resumed after the holidays. Between that and work, I had little extra time for anything. Especially Travis. We ate dinner together every Sunday per the Stone family tradition, and that was it. Clarence and Eli would retire to the living room while Travis and I cleaned up dishes in silence, neither knowing what to say, so not saying anything at all.

  January fell to February, and I longed for the easy comfort we used to share. Yet, I didn’t know how to move past this agonizing dance. Scratch that. I longed for much more than easy comfort. I wanted Travis like I had never wanted anything in my life.

  While finishing up my utopian paper for psychology, I realized two things. One: utopia does not exist in the real world. Someone, somewhere is always hurting. In the span of three weeks, I had lost everything I ever cared about. My parents. My house. Granny, Travis and Jimmy. I was left with a shell—an empty shell, as far as I could tell.

  With the risk of exposure to Jimmy over and my childhood pretty much laid open, my alters had quietly faded away into my subconscious. Well, all of them except Fell. She went down with a fight. Jealousy, it seemed, was universal. Even within myself.

  Through therapy, I pieced together a gray and dismal childhood. Long before Jimmy was taken away, Rae had soothed me while my parents fought. Jimmy’s disappearance and my dad’s rages created an influx of alters to help me cope. Each year, my dad would buy Jimmy gifts, only to have them returned. Each year, he became less stable, and Mom allowed his abuse out of guilt for cheating on him.

  He loved me for those first six years he thought I was his, and he hated me for the next eleven as he mourned Jimmy’s loss at my hand. I didn’t blame him. We’d all made our fair share of mistakes, and we’d all paid a heavy price. My parents drank, Jimmy raged, and I forgot.

  When I had moved back to Prairie Flats in the eighth grade, I handed over my Fluff Bunny to Clarence and told him my past never existed. It obviously worked, because I ceased to remember Travis from that school year to the next. My alters fell dormant, apparently at ease with the routine of school and work.

  Yet as dismal as it was, the occasional splash of color found its way into my life. And that was the second lesson on utopia. It did exist in very small moments. A hummingbird feather collected for me. Tea and fairy tales with Granny. The touch of a silken spider web.

  That seemed to be all I could think of lately. Webs. A web of lies. A web of secrets. Concentric circles connected to one irrefutable center. And inevitably, these webs always led me to think of the spider on the smooth skin of Trav’s shoulder.

  When it finally popped into my view, it startled me. More for the perfect gleam of dark skin rippled over muscle than for the web itself. That Travis was busy at Clarence’s house was not uncommon. That I had literally walked right into him without noticing was.

  I had just left the bathroom after my shower and was humming a lullaby when Travis came down the ladder from the attic. Unseasonably warm temps forced Travis to strip off his shirt while working to replace the insulation. A sheen of sweat covered his skin.

  He turned. I stepped aside to give him room, but he just stood there, staring at me. I cleared my throat, and his dark eyes locked on mine.

  Something about them reminded me of the look Jimmy gave Travis before the paramedics arrived. He always loved you best.

  Jimmy hadn’t been talking about our dad like I assumed. Rather, he’d been talking about Travis. As kids, Jimmy had loved Travis as much as I had, yet it was my affections Travis returned.

  Like the rest of my childhood, the Baker’s Dozen helped me sterilize the truth. Jimmy was not the perfect brother. Nor I the perfect sister. And neither had we grown up flawless. Within us, we each carried the burden of our childhoods. I withheld my love. Jimmy gave too much.

  “Travis?”

  He shifted his weight onto one foot. His jeans hung just off his hips.

  “Hey, Gem.
Didn’t see you there.”

  Yeah right. Self-consciously, I tugged at the towel wrapped around my hair, letting it fall around my shoulders. “Can I ask you something?”

  He nodded, and I plunged ahead, afraid to lose my courage if I didn’t. “Why did you play along with me all those years? Why didn’t you tell me about us? About me?”

  “I couldn’t.”

  “Couldn’t or wouldn’t?” This was the part I didn’t get. I understood how I had blocked Travis out of my mind, but he had no such excuse. Not unless we were both seriously messed up.

  Travis climbed back up the ladder and brought down a shoe box. He opened it, and when I leaned forward, my handwriting appeared on the face of an envelope tucked inside. Trav’s name, underlined with a squiggly, the “i” dotted with a heart.

  On his urging, I pulled the letter free. The scent of cinnamon wafted through the air.

  Travis,

  I don’t want to forget you.

  Forever and Always,

  Gemi

  One after the other, the letters read the same. Four simple lines, laced with perfume, dotted with love. I counted them. Thirty-seven in all. They started the month I moved to Prairie Flats.

  “Only one is different.” Travis pulled out a thicker envelope and handed it to me. “It’s the last one.”

  I think I’m falling in love with you.

  I grabbed the envelope and checked the postmark. October.

  Understanding dawned. “You’re the reason.”

  It wasn’t Granny’s death or the formation of the Dozen for my psych project that caused me to lose my mind. Rather, my feelings for Travis triggered my alters’ full-fledged return and Fell’s loss of control.

  The first law of utopia. For one to find happiness, another will feel pain. When I finally gave in to my feelings for Travis and Angel sent that letter, I had plunged my alters back into turmoil. The past we had so neatly tucked away threatened to surface, and we were once again thrust into crisis mode.

  It disturbed me to know I was so vulnerable. That my life might never be truly my own. “How much do you know about me?”