I come back to myself, shaken, and find I’m staring at the reflection of the room in the glassy surface of the fish. There’s sweat on the back of my neck and I feel uncomfortably warm.
I turn my head. Mom is looking at me a little strangely, but everyone else is still absorbed by the scrapbook or lost in their own thoughts. I give my hair a little pat as if I was just settling it back into place, try to smile reassuringly at Mom, and make a beeline for my Shirley Temple. On the way, I look at the clock on the wall and sigh. Sliding back onto the barstool, I reach for my drink with a trembling hand. Two hours left. No way out of here. And that scared feeling still hasn’t fully gone away, but seems to have settled between my shoulder blades like a cold hand.
We all race through dinner in relative silence, as if we’re in a hurry to get somewhere. The only real “conversation” consists of Uncle Randall trying to convince my dad that he should have voted for some congresswoman because of her sense of fiscal responsibility, my dad nodding but obviously not listening and my mom butting in to say “fiscal responsibility begins at home,” looking pointedly at the imported Waterford crystal vase in the middle of the table. That effectively kills the mood.
I try to imagine being Shiri, sitting here, having to deal with this every day of her life. Even after she moved away, it didn’t seem to help. But why not? I press down my mashed potatoes with my fork as if I can squeeze an answer out.
After we finish eating, the table is a disaster zone of crumpled white linen napkins, silverware sitting on empty china plates, and bread crumbs on the tablecloth. With a satisfied smile on his face, Uncle Randall starts regaling my parents with the story of how Randall Number Two met his latest piece of arm candy, some convoluted misadventure involving a blind date and mistaken identity that sounds completely exaggerated. I jump up to help Auntie Mina clear the scraps of prime rib and curried mashed potatoes from the dining room. We both try to move through the kitchen doorway at the same time, and jostle one another.
“Sorry!” I back away and let her through ahead of me with a stack of dirty plates. As I follow her through the wooden saloon-style doors, my eyes fall on an oval bruise, nearly an inch long, yellowing the brown skin of her left shoulder.
“What happened?” I point at the bruise, wincing a little in sympathy.
“Oh, that?” Auntie Mina deposits the plates on the marble countertop next to the sink and pulls her green cardigan back up so it covers the bruise again. “I was cleaning the den yesterday and one of your uncle’s silly fish fell while I was dusting it. Can you believe it? Is that stupid or what?”
“Ouch,” I say. I drop my load of dishes next to hers and start pouring tea into the cups sitting ready on the kitchen island. Something feels weird about this conversation. The tension in my shoulders returns full force.
“Those fish are such an eyesore,” she continues, running water on the plates and raising her voice to be heard over the garbage disposal. “It’s not as though he caught them himself—the CFO of our company goes fishing in Ensenada every year. Randall goes with him sometimes, but he’s not much of a fisherman.” Uncle Randall is the Vice President of Finance at an investment firm, and Auntie Mina works there doing something in financial data analysis. I can’t picture either of them on a fishing boat.
“Randall’s dream is to make the den look like a fishing lodge.” She rolls her eyes. “A fishing lodge!” Suddenly, she slams a cup down on the marble countertop with such a clatter I’m scared it’s going to break. I jump, nearly spilling boiling tea.
“And Randall Junior just encourages him.” There’s a note of exasperation, of outright hostility, in her voice that I’ve never heard before, and it’s shocking. Auntie Mina’s always been the mild one in our family, even when compared to Dad. Shiri and I, and Number Two, were the loud mischief-makers, climbing up a tree onto the patio roof and hiding out or trying to spray passing cars with silly string.
Until slowly, imperceptibly, Shiri changed.
I don’t know what to say. I stand there uncomfortably, shifting from foot to foot, wishing I hadn’t asked about the bruise. It seems far-fetched that one of the fish would have just fallen off the wall, but I have no reason not to believe her. It’s hard to believe Uncle Randall could have hurt her. Except … I’ve never heard her angry like this. And after Thanksgiving, I can’t help wondering.
I still haven’t deliberately tried to use my underhearing. But I feel terrible for her, and maybe if I find out what happened, I can help.
It’s frightening—frightening enough to make my hands tremble and my armpits sweat—but I close my eyes and still my mind. I take my confusion and worry and terror and try to channel them into a tiny boiling point in the middle of all the stillness, like a laser of emotion that can cut through the layers and let out Auntie Mina’s secret anger and fear.
But somehow—maybe because I’m trying so hard, digging my fingernails into my palms and squeezing my eyes shut—somehow it just doesn’t work. Nothing happens. It’s only me inside my head. Auntie Mina is still out there, still standing at the sink rinsing dishes with an unhappy frown on her face.
Maybe I can’t figure this out after all. The anxiety feels like a hand clutching at my intestines as I stand there, powerless. I slowly, carefully start to carry out cups of tea on a tray, composing my face into a smiling mask.
At lunchtime the next day, I pull Mikaela away from the group, hustling her around the corner from the picnic table where Cody and everyone else is gathered. We sit side-by-side against the wall and, once again, I tell her about everything. The embarrassing Shirley Temple. The scrapbook. The underhearing and my strange conversation with Auntie Mina. I even tell her about my growing suspicions that Shiri might have had some kind of ability too.
“Man.” Mikaela makes idle marks on the back of her hand with a blue ballpoint pen—a teacher saw her black marker and confiscated it. Now she’s drawing angry little blue faces over and over. “That is really intense. I’m glad I wasn’t there. But … ”
“What?” I say, after she’s quiet for a minute.
“I keep thinking about how you said you tried to listen to your aunt. ‘Underhear.’ Whatever. And nothing happened?” She peers at me sidelong, her expression unreadable.
“I wanted to,” I say miserably. “I wanted to help her somehow. But I couldn’t do anything. I tried so hard, Mikaela!”
“If you actually could have seen into her thoughts,” she says, “maybe it would just be something you didn’t want to know.” She looks down again. It’s a good point, but today, she sounds like she’s not sure if she believes me. Not that I blame her.
I feel a stab of intense loneliness. Shiri might have understood, at least if her journal entries are anything to go by, but journal entries are a poor substitute for the real thing.
Mikaela gets up, gives my ponytail a tug, and walks back to the picnic table. I spend a minute composing myself before I stroll back to rejoin the group. When I arrive, Mikaela is saying something to Cody with an impish smile, giving his cheek an affectionate, granny-like pinch. Then she heads to the other side of the table to chat with Becca.
Cody looks up at me intently. I feel warmth flood my cheeks and travel down to my stomach. I’ve tried to be aloof, but my physical reaction to him catches me off guard.
“Hey, Cody,” I say, trying to sound casual.
“Hey. Did you see what Mik did to me? So uncalled-for.” He rubs his cheek. I try not to smile, but I can’t seem to help it.
“At least she didn’t try to give you a makeover this time.”
“Like you forcing your Banana Republic hat on me. Again, uncalled-for,” he says, grinning for a second. “At least I relieved you of that nasty piece of bland, sweatshop-produced, corporate … clone-itude.”
“Yeah, I got rid of all the rest of that stuff, too,” I lie—I shoved it all into the back of my closet, including the hat, which he eventually gave back to me. I gesture vaguely at what I’m wearing today: black jea
ns and a burgundy T-shirt I got from Thumbscrew printed with a Brian Froud painting of evil-looking fairies. My hair, now dark brown again, hangs down in two sleek braids on either side of my head.
He’ll have to say something. I don’t look like the old me at all.
But Cody just smiles a little and turns abruptly to Andy, saying exactly nothing else to me. I’m surprised at how disappointed I am, but I try not to let on. I just grab my lunch out of my backpack and sit down as if nothing happened, as if I hadn’t said anything to him or expected him to respond. But my cheeks burn.
From Shiri Langford’s journal, April 13th
Friday the 13th! Lucky me. Because of course THAT happened again. It always seems to come when I least expect it, when I’m thinking about something else or nothing at all. It made me angry this time because I was with Brendan and spaced out in the middle of our date. What I heard—it seemed like he was irritated, but I couldn’t be sure if he was annoyed with me or someone else. I was so scared he was angry at me, but I couldn’t figure out why, and although I kept trying and trying, I couldn’t hear anything else.
I just wish I could understand why it happens. And why me.
I was little, maybe nine, the first time it happened. My brother was home visiting from college. He told me he’d brought me a present, but it was up in the oak tree in the backyard. I climbed up there—higher, he said—and then suddenly I was so high I was too scared to climb back down. I clung to the trunk as tightly as I could and screamed, but he just thought I was joking. He must have been drunk or on something, because he just laughed and laughed. I stopped panicking and clenched my teeth, trying to steady myself enough to figure out how to get down, and that was when I heard it.
Not out loud. Not anywhere but in my head.
“Stupid kid.”
ten
“Okay,” says Mikaela, facing me cross-legged on my bedroom floor. “Let’s try it without the candle this time.”
I open my eyes, sigh, and blow out the tiny flame. My right foot is falling asleep. I flex it a few times and rearrange my legs into a more comfortable position.
“We’ve been trying for half an hour,” I say. “I think it’s hopeless.”
“Come on. One more time, for shits and giggles.” Mi-kaela smiles at me coaxingly.
“Fine,” I say, and sigh again. Just once more. I close my eyes.
“Relax, and clear your mind,” she says in a smooth, drawn-
out voice. She sounds like an easy-listening radio DJ or my mom when she’s leading weekend yoga. Somehow, I suppress a snort of laughter. “Focus on your breathing … in … and out … ”
I keep the sound of Mikaela’s voice in the back of my mind as I inhale and exhale as calmly as possible. I hear a bird trill suddenly, flying past the window, and my parents moving around downstairs. I can even smell remnants of the candle smoke. The carpet fibers are making my ankles itch. I’m extra-aware of my five senses. But it’s not those senses that I’m trying to tap into.
“Okay. Now, remember your Uncle Randall and how angry you are at him,” Mikaela says, in a flat and hard tone. “How sexist he is, how insensitive.”
My nostrils flare and my breathing quickens.
“He never understood Shiri. He probably makes your Auntie Mina cry. Poor Auntie Mina.”
I inhale sharply, thinking of Auntie Mina, of her bruised shoulder and her bruised feelings. I’m angry, but mostly I just feel sorry for Auntie Mina, and sad.
Maybe that’s enough.
The plan was to try to hear Mikaela, though, not Auntie Mina. Mikaela would induce intense emotions. Then I’d calm myself and try to hear … something. That’s how it seems to work.
Come on, Sunny, I tell myself. Ocean waves. Whale songs. Sunsets. My mind wanders. Then everything gradually morphs into Shiri’s face the way it looked the last time I saw her alive. A little too thin; sharp-featured, smiling, but with eyes full of something deep and unfathomable.
That’s when I do get angry. Angry at how hard it is to move on with my life. Angry at myself for not being able to control the underhearing. Angry at Shiri for leaving me, for giving up on herself and on us. Rage condenses into a hard little ball inside my stomach, like a bubble of tar.
I squeeze my eyelids closed tightly and breathe in, out, in, out, until the knot in my gut slowly begins to ease. Then I feel it. That moment, the calm inside the storm. My stomach leaps in anticipation, and in that second I feel it slipping away again.
I sit as motionless as possible, trying to calm myself.
I don’t hear anything.
I open my eyes. The sun is setting and a ray of orange light reaches a finger through the gap in the curtains. Mikaela is looking at me expectantly, searchingly. I shake my head and draw an uneven breath, resting my head in my hands for a moment. My eyes fill with tears of frustration.
“For a second—Mikaela, it was happening. I’m positive it was. But I lost concentration.” I quickly look down at the floor, but not before I see a flash of disappointment cross her face. My jaw tenses. Without looking up, I say halfheartedly, “We can try again tomorrow. Maybe at your house?”
“It’s okay. We don’t have to.” There’s a short, uncomfortable silence.
She really doesn’t believe me. As sympathetic as she’s been, she just can’t understand. I stare at the carpet some more, the frustration building again.
“Anyway,” she says after a minute, “my mom will never leave us in peace.”
I feel like arguing. “Your mom’s sweet. She offered me and Becca soda like eighty times yesterday.”
“Yeah, but she worries all the time. God. I hate it.” Mikaela grabs her black purse with the elaborate silver buckles from the top of the bed and fishes out a bottle of nail polish so dark red it’s almost black. I sigh loudly, get up to switch on the CD player, grab some silvery blue polish, and start painting my toes.
“When is she going to get it through her head? I don’t care if she only makes a third of what Dad makes,” Mikaela continues. “She’s a nurse and she actually helps people. Meanwhile, Dad’s a collections lawyer and feeds off people’s broken dreams.” She shakes her head. “I’d rather be here, with her. Even if it is suburban hell. Sorry.”
Some friend I am. I never even knew until now what her dad does for a living. I want to be a better friend; better than Cassie was to me. I want to do something to help Auntie Mina. I want to underhear at will because I’m tired of feeling like a victim of some weird fluke of fate. But when it comes to any of those things, I’m a failure.
I breathe raggedly, trying to keep my face composed. Finally I settle down and just sit there, painting my toenails and not thinking about anything for once.
And then:
—no Mina it can’t be true this can’t be happening
this is the kind of thing that happens to other people, not to us, not to YOU
I can’t believe he—
not again—
A wave of exhaustion, of despair and anger, washes over me with the words, and the smell of burning autumn leaves sears my nostrils. The energy seems to drain out of my body. For a moment, I can’t breathe, and then my stomach does a slow flip-turn.
It’s happening. But it’s not who I expected to hear. It’s my mom.
I draw in a sharp breath, coughing on imaginary smoke, and brush silver-blue lacquer across the top of my foot.
“Whoops,” Mikaela says, holding out a tissue and the nail polish remover. I don’t take it from her; instead, I strain to hear something more, anything. But my mind is silent. All that’s left are sticky wisps of my mother’s shock and horror. I squirm uncomfortably. I don’t like having such an intimate glimpse into somebody’s head. I feel invaded, like I’m the one who’s exposed.
I have to get some kind of control over this.
“Hey, what’s going on?” Mikaela waves the tissue at me. “Are you okay?”
I manage a nod and lean back weakly against the bed.
“You look
pale.” She looks at me in concern. “Like really pale.”
Mikaela puts her hand on my forehead. “You know, some people spend an hour trying to get their faces that white. Becca did it for a party where she wanted to hit on this one mega-goth chick. Hey, you’re all clammy!” She brushes my hair out of my face.
“Yeah.” I slowly lever myself to a standing position. “It finally worked.” I grab the glass of soda I left on the dresser an hour ago and gulp down the flat, warm liquid in fast swallows.
“What worked?” Mikaela looks at me blankly for a second. Then it dawns on her. “Oh! Oh, my God! Are you kidding?” She sounds like she thinks I am kidding. But I’d never joke about this. I tell her so.
“Wow,” she says, over and over. “No way. Wow. What did you hear?” She carefully caps her nail polish and slips it back into her purse, looking back at me with large, intense eyes.
I hesitate. But I can’t keep it inside. I’ll burst. I start getting that sick, stomach-flipping feeling again.
I have to trust someone. Shiri didn’t trust anyone. She didn’t even trust me.
Mikaela says, “You know, if you don’t want to tell me, that’s okay.” I can hear the skepticism in her tone.
“It was my mom,” I say heavily. “It was something about Auntie Mina, something really bad.” The memory of that awful burnt smell twines into my nostrils and I start trembling.
“What’s really bad?” Mikaela scoots closer. She reaches one hand out, then pulls it back, watching me as I sit there and shake. “If you hold it in, you’ll just feel worse.”
“I don’t know what happened.” I let out a frustrated noise. “I felt all this shock and disbelief and—it just felt wrong.” I tell her how I heard Auntie Mina’s name, how my mother said something about a “he.”
“‘He’? Like who?” For a second, her eyes widen and she looks scared. Then her face relaxes. She leans in and hugs me. “It could be nothing. She’s probably fine.”
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