“I could try to reach Michael’s grandfather,” Charlisse said, her voice softening so that we knew she was already pulling away from us. “But even if I knew what he wanted, I suspect Michael is the only one who can help him. His spirit reached out to Michael for a reason.”
“I see,” said Ewan, but in a way that sounded like he was just trying to think up his next question.
“I don’t see,” said Julia. She sounded like Dad when the super fixes the toilet and the next day it’s leaking all over again. I couldn’t believe she was talking to Charlisse this way—especially since Julia is always polite, especially to old, rich people. “I don’t care if you’re this great psychic. I don’t care who you are or where you live. You should help Michael. You should do it right now.”
“Julia,” said Charlisse, speaking firmly, “I understand your concern. But Michael is not by himself. He is with you. And these friends. I am doing what I can, which I admit is very little—or very large, as it has taken a lifetime for me to acquire the knowledge that I give you today. But you have a part to play as well.”
“What is it? What can I do?” Julia asked.
“I don’t know the specifics,” said Charlisse, and I think I saw Julia rolling her eyes. “But whatever part you have to play, you will play it well. You are strong, and you love Michael more than you may even know. That will help you to help him.”
Julia opened her mouth to say more, but just then, her cell phone rang. She looked at the screen and pressed a button to make the ringing stop. “It’s Mom,” she said. “Michael, don’t you want Mom to know what’s going on?”
I thought about Mom. It was like I could see her in the room with me. Her short gray hair, her big eyes opening wide. One time, I had a fever so high, I lay awake at night certain there were trees growing inside the apartment. Mom held my hand. She rubbed a wet washcloth on my forehead. When she squeezed the water out of the washcloth into a bowl, I remember noticing the way her fingernails were cut down short. I could almost smell the lilac perfume she wears to parties and meetings.
But Charlisse was right. Mom would call Dad, and they would talk in low, serious voices, and then Mom would call doctors, and there would be meetings, and Dad would come to them, his cell phone ringing twenty times during each one. There would be whispering and secrets, but no one would believe that what I said was happening to me was real.
Gus was jiggling his left leg, shaking the table. “Whatever happens,” he said, “I won’t let you do this alone.” I felt a shot of warmth flow into my body through my throat and warm me from the inside out. It was the opposite of the outside-in cold feeling of the river of the dead, and it made me feel like I understood things now. Like, being friends since first grade meant more than basketball. How could either of us have missed that?
“You believe me,” I said, and it wasn’t a question anymore.
“Yes,” he answered. “I do.”
“Thanks,” I said, and I really meant it. “This has seemed kind of unreal up to now. Like you said before—a game. Like something that when there are other people around, doesn’t count. Do you know what I mean?”
“It’s real,” Ewan said.
“It most assuredly is,” Charlisse agreed. “You need to believe that, Michael. You need to listen. Pay attention, Michael.”
“Great,” I said. “Now you sound like my dad.”
Charlisse smiled. “I know.”
Chapter 13
“What now?” I said when we were standing on the bright wide sidewalk in front of Charlisse’s building.
“Starbucks,” Julia answered. “I need a latte, and we all need to talk.” I guess I must have looked pretty freaked out, because after she’d met my eye, she said, “No one ever got sucked into a river of the dead in Starbucks.”
But as soon as we were all sitting at a table by the window, I realized it was a mistake to come. Gus was doing what he always does at restaurants, folding his straw paper into an accordion and then suctioning liquid from his drink and releasing it onto the paper to make it wriggle on the table like a snake. Trip and Ewan were stirring their vente-whatevers with foot-long green straws. No one was talking. They were all waiting for me to come up with something to say.
What was I supposed to tell them? I just sat there. To be honest, I was wondering if I was going to burn my mouth on my hot chocolate or if it was safe to take a sip.
Ewan leaned forward, picked up a napkin, and began to fold it—in half, in quarters, in sixteenths, and thirty-seconds, until it was a wad. Holding it in his palm and watching it unfold on itself, he said, “So.”
“Michael needs to think,” said Trip. Was there anything he could say that wouldn’t come out sounding like a threat? “About what his grandpa wants.”
“Yes, Michael,” said Julia. But then she made me feel really stupid by leaning back in her chair and crossing her legs, as if she knew this was going to be a while.
“Think,” I repeated, as if by saying the word, I’d convince them I was doing it.
“You need to relax,” said Gus. “If you try too hard, you’ll never figure it out.”
“Okay,” I said, and repeated that word too: “Relax.” Then I closed my eyes so they would at least think I was trying.
And I did try. I tried to block out of my mind how weird it was that I was here with Gus and Trip. Not to mention the weirdness of Julia and Ewan, and that we’d just met a real live psychic, and that she actually seemed to know what she was doing. I tried to block out the weirdness of not being able to talk to my mom, and the scariness of being away from Charlisse—I’d felt so safe there, and now I kind of felt like I was floating in space. I tipped back in my chair, balancing my hands on the slab of table in front of me. “What am I supposed to be thinking about again?” I said.
“Don’t try to think about anything,” said Gus. “Empty your mind.”
“What are you, some kind of hypnotist?” said Trip. No one laughed.
“Try to remember Grandpa,” prompted Julia. “What makes him happy? What makes him sad?”
Oh, yeah, I thought. Grandpa. Where was Grandpa? I didn’t feel him with me anymore. Was he gone? I hadn’t eaten any strange food in a while. The thought of the strange food—the spinach, the oatmeal—made me hungry. Grandpa had said I was going to like those foods for the rest of my life. Although maybe I wouldn’t even have a rest of my life. How could Grandpa let something that bad happen to me? I knew he wouldn’t. But even as I thought this, I was remembering how miserable it was in the tunnels in the river of the dead. He’d led me there, hadn’t he? Still, I didn’t think he would let me drown.
But even as I was thinking this, I was starting to feel just a little bit cold. It wasn’t a river of the dead kind of cold feeling. It was just a little tingle of understanding, kind of like a shiver. It was enough, though, to make me feel Grandpa. I’m not sure how to explain this, but suddenly, I had him in my head, the way when you’re trying so hard to remember a joke, and then you stop trying and the punch line comes to you.
I felt the front legs of my chair hit the floor, and then I was back in the memory of the time with Grandpa—just for a flash. The memory was of watching the girls laughing in the hallway of his college. That was happy, right? Except he’d seemed sad to be separated from them. And the way he talked about how he would stay in the city and work when my dad and Stella were up at the cabin? That was sad. All of it was kind of sad. “He’s always sad, in a way,” I said.
Everyone must have given up on me, because suddenly they all snapped back to attention.
“Sad how?” said Ewan.
“What do you mean, in a way?” asked Gus.
“Was he ever happy?” This last was Julia, and I decided to answer her first.
“Yes,” I said. “He was almost always a little happy too.”
“How could he be both?” asked Gus.
“I don’t know,” I said. “It’s like he was enjoying seeing everything but wishing it had been differ
ent. I think he didn’t like the way the story came out.” That sounded pretty smart, I thought. I was thinking: that should hold them awhile. But they didn’t stop.
“What story?” Ewan asked.
“The story of his life,” I said. “The war, Grandma’s dying when she was young.”
Julia cleared her throat. When she spoke, her voice was small. “Was he sad about you?”
“He didn’t even know me,” I said.
Before Julia could answer, Trip blurted out, “My therapist says men always trace things back to their fathers.”
“Your therapist?” I said. Trip went red in the face, from his neck right up through his forehead.
“My mom… my brothers…,” he stammered. “Look. My mom said no allowance until my brothers and I go. Ever since my dad, you know—”
“Went to jail?” Julia finished.
“Yeah,” said Trip. He started cracking his knuckles. “Good old Dr. Chinois.” He was fiddling with the lid from his frappucino, and suddenly he tore it in half. No one knew what to say.
Except Ewan. “I go to Dr. Chinois,” he piped up. Trip looked over at him, and I could see his face relaxing, the eyebrows settling back down to their normal position. Ewan was smaller and weaker than Trip, but I was starting to see that he was also braver.
“You do?” Trip said.
“He’s an expert on kids with father issues,” said Ewan. “It’s the basis for his practice, taking the focus off mothers in the therapy of boys.”
“But Grandpa never talks about his father,” I said.
Julia cleared her throat and took a sip of her latte—she’s such a grown up, she doesn’t even use sugar. “You know the big fight he and Dad had?” she said. “Do you know what it was about?”
“No,” I said.
“It was about you.”
“They were both mad at me?” I said.
“Dad wasn’t mad at you,” Julia said. “He was trying to protect you. The last time we went up there, when Mom and Dad were out somewhere, you told Grandpa it was really boring at his house and that you didn’t want to visit anymore.”
“It was boring,” I said, mumbling because now that I knew Grandpa, I wished I hadn’t said that.
“Grandpa got really mad,” Julia said. “He gave us a giant lecture about how when he was a child he would have been grateful to be able to play in the woods, how he grew up in the city, where no one got to swim in lakes or play on the grass. And he wouldn’t let you play outside all afternoon to teach you what it was like to live in an apartment.”
“But we already lived in an apartment,” I said.
“I know,” Julia said. “When Mom and Dad came back, Dad made that point. He was even more mad than Grandpa. I guess you don’t remember this, but he and Grandpa—there was always some big yelling when we were up there. About the littlest things, like Dad wanting to cook steak and Grandpa saying it was too expensive even though Dad said he would pay for it.”
“Really?” I said. I didn’t remember that at all.
“One time,” she went on, “I remember hiding in the sleeping loft, listening to them shouting about Dad’s work. Grandpa was making it sound like Dad’s clients were a bunch of criminals, and Dad was trying to make a fire in the woodstove, and it wasn’t lighting, and the whole time he was running through a list of all his clients, saying why they deserved to be defended, and the fire still wasn’t lighting, and Grandpa was just sitting there, not saying anything, and Dad was getting madder and madder. I don’t know where you were then. Maybe you were with Mom.
“But the last time—the time Grandpa locked you in the cabin for the afternoon—Dad didn’t just storm around. He made Mom pack up our stuff and put you and me in the car. I could hear him, he was yelling at Grandpa, saying, ‘You don’t have the right to teach my children any lessons!’ and Grandpa said, ‘How dare you!’ They were both bellowing. After a few minutes, Mom came out to the car and sat with us, and what I remember most is that she was crying.”
“I don’t remember that at all,” I said.
“Yeah, I think you fell asleep,” Julia said.
“I fell asleep?” I said. “During a fight that was so bad Dad and Grandpa stopped speaking to each other forever?”
“You were just as oblivious then as you are now.”
“What do you mean, oblivious?” I said. That made me sound like such a loser. “I’m not oblivious. You’re just trying to make yourself seem smarter than me. You’re just jealous.”
“Oh, please,” said Julia. “I’m not jealous of you. I’m just trying to tell you. It’s like what Dad’s always saying. You just don’t look around you. When Mom’s super-busy, or Dad’s in a bad mood, you just sit there playing video games.”
“You’re the one who’s oblivious,” I said. “All you do is ballet.”
“That’s different.”
“No, it’s not.”
Gus jumped in. “Guys, cut it out. Julia, finish the story.”
Julia folded her hands primly in her lap. I thought she was only pretending she wasn’t still mad. “When Dad got in the car, we drove home,” she said. “He wouldn’t talk, even to Mom.”
“And that’s it?” said Trip. “He stopped talking to his own father because Michael got punished?”
“Generally, Dad loves for me to be punished,” I said.
“What do you think he wants?” Ewan asked Julia.
“I don’t know,” she said, resting her chin in her hands. She wasn’t mad anymore. When people are mad, I’ve noticed, they have a hard time relaxing their bodies into thinking positions. That was so typical of her—to say something mean about me but not even mean to be mean. To not even realize what it feels like not to be exactly perfect.
“Are you even listening, Michael?” she said. “All this time, you’re kind of spacing out. It’s like you don’t even care that you’re in danger.”
“I care,” I said.
“Then try to figure out what’s happening,” she said. “Grandpa picked you. Remember that. Charlisse said it was important. He didn’t pick Ewan, Trip, or Gus, and he didn’t pick me. I’m not jealous, Michael. I’m worried. You have to start paying attention.”
“He should have picked you,” I said, because she was right. I wasn’t going to be able to do this. “You would have figured this whole thing out by now.”
I could see in her eyes that she agreed with me, but at least she didn’t say that out loud. She just sat back in her chair and let Ewan keep taking us through the story of what had happened, looking for clues as to what Grandpa wanted. We went around in circles, and didn’t solve anything.
At six o’clock, we knew we had to leave Starbucks or Mom would start to really worry. Before we left, we made a plan. Julia had a dress rehearsal for Sleeping Beauty. Julia and I would go home. I would cover the mirrors and windows in my room, and not leave. Ewan, Gus, and Trip would tell their mothers they were working on a report, and go to Gus’s apartment, where Gus had high-speed Internet and Ewan could do more research. We’d meet the next morning at Gus’s house at ten.
I told my mom I wasn’t feeling well, and she ordered a pizza and I ate it in my room while she and Julia were out at rehearsal. It was really boring to have no TV (it’s a reflective surface), no Xbox (again, reflective), or even a Game Boy to play with (it’s like a pocket mirror—I’d never noticed that before). But it was kind of a cool feeling to have the windows covered with sheets. In New York, light comes in at night from the streetlights and the apartments across the way. With the windows covered up, I could have been anywhere. I skipped brushing my teeth to avoid the bathroom mirror, and kept my eyes closed when I peed (sorry, rug).
As I was going to sleep—insanely early, like, nine!—I remembered that I was supposed to figure out stuff about my grandpa. But I was too tired to think. I wondered how long I was going to have to go without playing video games. Maybe Ewan would have something new figured out by morning. Or Julia. The strange thing about slipping wa
s that even though I was scared a lot of the time, there was something kind of cool about having all these people helping me. I was sure that tomorrow they’d work together to figure something out.
This is what actually happened:
I woke up to my dad saying, “Start brushing.” He was sitting on the edge of my bed, holding my toothbrush, already smeared with Crest. I remembered this trick from the few times we’d actually gone on vacation as a family—lame road trips meant to take the place of longer, more exciting vacations far away. My dad hated to wait around in the mornings. He made us stay in those hotels where you park right outside the door to your room because it meant he could pack up while everyone was still sleeping and we wouldn’t get in his way.
“What time is it?” I said now. “What are you doing here?”
“It’s five thirty,” he said. “I’m going to Vermont today. I’m taking you with me.”
“To Vermont?” I said. I was still half asleep.
“We have to deal with Grandpa,” he said. “And the cabin.”
“What about school?”
“Good point, except it’s Saturday.”
“Julia!” I called, because by now I was awake enough to know that she was the only person in shouting distance who knew what the danger was.
“Shhh.” My dad clapped a hand over my mouth. “She was up until all hours last night. She and Mom are staying for Sleeping Beauty rehearsals. Don’t wake her up.”
I stared at him. I had no idea what to do.
“This feels like you’re kidnapping me,” I said.
“Start brushing,” he replied. I did.
An hour later, I was locked in the passenger seat of my dad’s Mercedes. The sun had not yet come up. As the bumpy expressways that run right up next to apartment buildings widened into the well-lit highways of the suburbs, I ran through all the things I should have said back in the apartment—that I was sick, that I would stay with Gus. I even wished I’d told my dad the truth, because the worst part about sitting on the slippery leather seat of my dad’s car was that I was alone with the knowledge of what might happen to me.
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