“It’s none of their business,” I say. “It’s nobody’s business.” But there’s a tiny doubting part of me that wonders: maybe if I’d been honest with him from the beginning, I wouldn’t be in this situation. And maybe Mikaela wouldn’t have decided to blurt out something exciting in order to impress him. Or if I hadn’t told her? What then?
I don’t know what to do. I don’t know what I should have done.
I duck my head and take a step backward, away from him, toward the car.
“I just think you should think about it, is all,” he says, insistently. “Maybe do some practicing on your own, try to figure out how it works.” He takes a step toward me, his eyes glittering in the reflected light from the street lamp. “I know if it was me, I’d feel a lot better having some control over what was happening to me.”
I feel a surge of anger. Even though part of me wants to tell him everything, he seems to already know everything.
“Like I said, it’s my business.” I face him with my arms crossed. We glare at each other silently for a minute, and then I’m not angry any more, but deadly calm. In that next moment, I see something in his eyes that looks like hurt, and I feel something—some kind of burning intensity of emotion that I don’t know how to interpret.
—have to—
if I could just—she has to understand—
There’s a bitter orange-rind taste on my tongue. Then, as quickly as I felt it, the flash of emotion is gone. Like his expression, all I get is a blank. He smiles. It doesn’t reach his eyes.
I shiver. Suddenly I’m freezing, and I pull the sleeves of my sweater over my hands. But I continue staring daggers at him, because it doesn’t matter what he’s thinking, or even what he’s feeling. It matters what he did. “You owe me an apology.”
“I know,” he finally says. “I’m sorry. I should have asked you before telling Rennie about it. I didn’t know they’d put you on the spot like that.” He puts his hand on my shoulder for a second and then lets it fall back to his side. I don’t jerk away this time, but I’m still angry.
“Yeah, you should have asked,” I say. And Mikaela should have asked before telling him. “Let’s just drop it. I’m going to go. Can you give Mikaela a ride home?”
“Yeah, but she wants to talk to you first. She feels bad.”
She should feel bad. I’m almost too furious to talk to her, but I guess I should give her a chance to explain herself.
Cody goes back in to get Mikaela. I linger outside, wishing I’d caught more than that momentary glimpse into his mind. He’s always so guarded. And I’m never a hundred percent calm around him, can never quite focus properly, no matter how hard I try.
“Sunny!” I turn slowly. “Leaving without telling me?” Mikaela’s falsely cheerful tone gets on my nerves. I stand there, not moving, keys dangling in my hand.
“You don’t mind me staying a little longer, right?” Mi-kaela says, tentatively. “I can hitch a ride back with someone. I always wanted to ride a broomstick.”
I don’t laugh.
“Sunny, talk to me! I know it was kind of a weird scene in there, but it wasn’t that bad, was it?” She sounds hopeful, like she wants to hear me say it’s all okay. But it isn’t okay. I want to hear her apologize, want to know that she feels bad. My hands ball up into fists.
“You told Cody,” I say, my voice shrill. “I trusted you. How could you think it was okay to tell him? You didn’t even ask me.” There’s total silence for about a minute, while I stare out at the darkened parking lot and Mikaela looks down at her feet.
Finally, she looks up. “I don’t know why you’re making such a big thing out of this,” she says. “It’s not like anything bad happened.”
“A big thing?” I look at her in shock. I can’t believe she has the nerve to sound annoyed. My head throbs.
“Yeah, a big thing! It’s just Cody, for Christ’s sake. I didn’t think you’d care if I told him. But hey, I’m sorry. It just kind of slipped out.”
“I didn’t want you to tell anybody! Not Cody, and definitely not anyone else. This isn’t just a ‘fun party trick.’ It’s serious, and I’m scared.” I cross my arms tightly across my chest. “I didn’t ask for any of this. It’s a problem I might have to live with for the rest of my life!” I feel an eerie echo of Shiri’s voice in my words, and I take a breath to calm myself down.
“I already apologized. I don’t know what more you want.” Mikaela says. She stares sullenly out at the dark parking lot.
“I want tonight to have never happened. I don’t want anyone to know! I don’t want Cody to think I’m a freak.” I pace back and forth, gritting my teeth.
“He doesn’t think you’re a freak,” she says, exasperated. “Who even cares what he thinks, anyway? This is all his fault.”
“Yeah, but … ” She’s right—this is his fault. Not all of it, but some of it. I think about the warm feeling of Cody’s hand on my arm, his distinctive smell of clove cigarettes and soap, his smile. Then I think about how he told the Wiccans about me; how he stole the Magic 8 Ball without even thinking twice about it. How he brought me into a totally uncomfortable situation without even telling me what was going to happen. Maybe Spike was right about him. I sigh heavily.
“You like him, don’t you?” Mikaela says suddenly. Her voice goes hard and flat. “That explains a lot.” Her shoulders sag, and she leans against the lamppost behind her.
The silence stretches on for what seems like an eternity. I’m not even completely sure how I feel about Cody, but I still can’t help feeling drawn to him. I don’t know what to tell her. And her accusatory tone isn’t helping. “You LIKE him, don’t you?” Like she’s one to talk.
“We’re just friends. It’s not like anything’s going on.”
“Yeah, whatever,” Mikaela says. “You’re mad at me, but you’re all worried about what he’s going to think of you? It’s so obvious.” She picks idly at the bracelet I gave her earlier that evening. “You know, you could’ve told me you like him. Isn’t that what friends are supposed to do, share important feelings and bullshit like that?”
“I don’t know how I feel, okay?”
“Sure you don’t.” Her voice is bitter. “I told you about my mom. My family. I don’t just tell that to everyone. That’s important to me. I shared that with you.” I hear her take a deep, shaky breath. “The least you could do is be straight with me about liking Cody. If you can’t even be honest about that, how do I know you told me the truth about anything else? How do I know you didn’t just make it up for attention?”
I jerk my head up to glare at her. I know she’s just angry, that she can’t possibly mean it, but I can’t seem to control myself.
“I don’t need attention,” I say in a furious whisper. My voice is raw and rough. “I don’t want attention. That’s why this whole night was such a disaster. You don’t understand what it’s been like for me. Nobody does! Those stupid people at the party have no idea. Obviously you don’t, either.”
“Are you saying I’m stupid?” Her voice is dangerously quiet.
“I’m not saying you’re stupid. I’m just saying you don’t understand.”
“Oh, I understand. I understand a lot. I understand you want other people to feel sorry for you and all your problems. Well, other people have problems, too, and if you really could read minds or whatever, you’d know that.”
I stand there, stunned. Mikaela almost flings herself back in the direction of the bookstore and disappears inside.
I don’t watch her go.
I don’t sit there wallowing in my problems.
I don’t even think about what’s going to happen now that Cody knows my secret.
Because all of a sudden, I understand something, too. Confusing and messy and impossible as my life has been, as envious and even threatened as I’ve felt by Mikaela’s confidence, her individuality, her artistic talent, her interesting friends … she’s felt threatened by me.
Mikaela is scared of me.<
br />
And it feels terrible.
From Shiri Langford’s journal, May 2nd
I only have a couple more weeks to bring my grades up before the end of the semester. I was able to talk Professor Macken into giving me an extra-credit assignment, but the rest of my classes are depending on finals. I have to keep my grades high enough to keep my tennis scholarship. I have to.
When I talked to Mom on Friday, she said something really weird, something that made me wonder about THAT and why it’s happening and whether she knows more than she’s letting on. I didn’t exactly tell her everything, but I told her that sometimes I feel like I know what other people are thinking, and it makes me sad, and she said this: Shiri, sweetie, there are a lot of grim things in this world, a lot of unpleasant people. But no matter what’s happening, you can’t control what other people think, even if it makes you sad; you can’t change them. You can only change your own mind and your own life.
It made me cry. And it made me wonder: does THAT happen to Mom, too? Or something like it? Is it genetic? If it is genetic, how, WHY does it happen?
I don’t think I’ll ever understand. I’m not sure I’ll even pass undergrad biology.
fourteen
Hot tears are running down my face before I’ve even pulled out of the parking lot and onto the main road. I can’t face my parents right now. I don’t even want to face myself. I’ve been so stupid, so naive.
Instead of going back across town, I get on the freeway and drive.
The road winds between rocky dark hills covered with the lights of tract houses, and all four lanes are busy with holiday traffic, but I can hardly focus on any of it. I can’t stop thinking about the party, with all those eager, hungry faces staring at me; about Mikaela’s anger; about how I’m back where I started, alone and friendless.
After about twenty minutes I get to the cutoff for Pacific Coast Highway. I drive for another mile or two, then I pull my car onto a short dead-end street with bungalows on either side, get out and lock the doors, and climb past the guardrail that separates the road from the sand. A chilly, salty breeze cuts through my sweater, but it feels good.
Cold sand filters into my shoes as I walk. I drop down into a crouch, my breathing ragged, and hunch over, listening to the sound of the waves and trying to understand.
The half-moon is bright. I see the silhouette of a couple walking along the sand, close to the water. A dog runs after them, dashing in and out of the waves. I look down, waiting until they go past, and then stare back out at the ocean.
The reflection of the moon breaks along the water’s choppy surface. It’s what my heart feels like—scattered in a million confused pieces.
Mikaela shouldn’t have told Cody. That’s what makes me angriest. But Cody’s the one to blame for blabbing to a bunch of strangers. He must not know me very well if he thinks I would want people to know about this. And me—I should have been more honest from the beginning, or I shouldn’t have said anything at all.
My phone vibrates. It’s probably my mom, wondering where I am. I ease myself into a seated position and dig my fingers into the cold, damp sand, feeling the grit work its way under my fingernails, trying to delay the inevitable.
I should never have told Mikaela. There’s only one person in the world who might, just might have understood what’s happening to me. One person I’ll never be able to talk to again. My jaw muscles tighten; my fingers dig more painfully into the sand. I’m convinced that Shiri went through what I’m going through now. And she might have been able to help me or comfort me, but instead she left me alone on this earth, alone with nothing but this—this curse of a “power.”
Stupid. I’m angry at someone who’s dead. There’s something mean about it, too; something petty and small. Guilt takes over, and I wrap my arms around my knees, feeling completely miserable.
We’ll always have yesterday … and today, and tomorrow, her note said. Whatever that means. The truth is, I was left with an awful lot more than that. This … aloneness, this horrible knowledge, is something I never would have asked for.
Something occurs to me then. What if she somehow did “leave” me this ability? The first time it happened was the day she died. What if her death triggered it somehow?
I can’t imagine how that could even be possible, scientifically speaking. But somehow, something did happen. Even Shiri thought it could be genetic; she said in her journal that her mom was always unusually sensitive to the emotions around her. If Auntie Mina could underhear, there’s no way she’d ever have married Uncle Randall, but if her sensitivity is related somehow … it’s a theory, anyway. Nothing else even comes close to making sense.
After a while, I finally relax a little. Periodic snatches of laughter reach me on the breeze, wafting by from someone’s patio and interrupting the quiet rustling of the waves. The moon is bright, and the cold of the sand seeps through my thin skirt, making my butt numb. An occasional car roars by on the highway.
My phone vibrates again. I pull it out of my purse to check. Another call from my mom, even though it’s only nine thirty. I start to get a horrible feeling that she might have heard something from Antonia about the party, so I reluctantly haul myself up and walk back to the car.
I drive home with the radio off, and soon my angry circling thoughts return. I can’t believe Mikaela thinks I’d be self-absorbed enough to assume I’m the only one with problems. I know she’s got family issues and doesn’t get along with her dad. And I know she trusted me, confided in me. But I don’t know why she’s so threatened by the idea that I might like Cody when they’ve been friends for so much longer; why she’s so angry at me for not saying anything about it. I did confide in her—I told her the biggest secret I’ve ever had in my entire life. Whether I like Cody or not is nothing compared to that. I told her about my underhearing—and look what happened.
I try to relax my clenched muscles, and I take purposeful, deep breaths in and out as I signal for the freeway exit and merge onto Citrus Valley Boulevard. I can’t stay furious like this. My mom says that anger builds up inside you if you let it and it can cause all kinds of health problems. My stomach hurts, so I think she’s probably right.
Breathe in. Breathe out. I turn the corner onto my street. In. Out. In. Out. Almost home. I pull into the driveway.
Then my mother’s voice shatters the silence in my head.
—you can’t go there you can’t don’t please Al please listen! please come back—
Overwhelmed with an urgency I’m not sure is even mine, I slam on the brakes, kill the engine, and run for the front door.
By the time I’ve rushed inside, my parents are already halfway down the hall leading to the garage. My mom has hold of my dad’s arm, tugging at it, and they’re talking over each other in frantic, urgent voices—my mother hushed as if someone might overhear, my dad uncharacteristically loud.
“Just let me do this,” my dad says, almost in a shout, trying to pull away. “Mina needs me right now.”
“You can’t go over there!” Mom’s voice is desperate. My dad’s face is red with anger. Obviously Mom told him about what happened to Auntie Mina, her arguments with Uncle Randall. Or maybe she didn’t. Maybe something else happened, something awful. I shiver, and goose bumps raise the little hairs along my arms.
Dad says in a ragged voice, “All I know is, Randall cannot keep doing this.” I’ve never heard him sound like this before.
“Please, just wait until tomorrow,” my mom says, her face drawn and tired. She tries to pry the car keys out of my dad’s hand, unsuccessfully. “I don’t want you trying to talk to that man until you cool off a little.”
“There’s no cooling off about this. I have to do something.” He yanks his hand back out of my mom’s reach and takes another step toward the garage. “He could be hurting her again right now. God, I tried to tell her from the beginning what a mistake it was to marry him.”
I quickly move past them and lean against the door to the garag
e, my arms crossed so I don’t tremble, until they notice me standing there. My mom gives me this complicated look of apology and anxiety and frustration.
“Sunny,” she says. “I tried to call you. I was worried. You were supposed to call when you left the party. Instead hours go by, and what do I hear from you? Nothing.”
My mouth opens, then closes again. I can’t even force out a perfunctory excuse because I’m still focused on my dad, his thunderous expression, his uncharacteristic anger. It scares me. It makes him look like a stranger.
“Dad,” I finally force out, my voice raw. “Don’t go over there. Please. We’ll figure something out. We’ll help Auntie Mina.” I reach one hand back and block the doorknob, as if that will help. Tears are spilling down my cheeks. “Just tell me what happened.”
He sighs heavily and leans against the wall, letting his keys drop to the ground. “Sunny, I don’t know … I’m not sure we should involve you in this.”
“I’m already involved!” Suddenly I’m exhausted, too ex-hausted to stand, and I sink to the floor. I look down at my crossed legs. “I know she called. I know about him ‘grabbing’ her.”
“Oh, really?” Dad looks down at me, frowning. “Funny; I only heard about that tonight, myself. Why? Because your mother talked to Mina again today, and she said Randall hurt her again.” He straightens up, starts pacing the hallway. “He twisted her wrist and threatened to cut off her access to their bank accounts. And you know why? Because she told him she wants them to spend some time apart to work things out. It is not a healthy environment for her in that house, I’m telling you.”
“Al, listen,” my mom begins, in her calmest, most soo-thing everything’s-going-to-be-just-fine tone. “I’m sorry. I should have told you right away the first time she called. But Mina said it would blow over.” Her voice is pained now. “Honest to God, I believed her. She made me promise not to say anything.”
“Oh, is that right.” Dad’s voice is bitter, and I cringe. “But you still told Sunny? You told her and not me? No guys allowed?” He looks at Mom steadily.
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