Extraordinary Lies

by Jennifer Alsever

  A hollow guilt swept through me. She’s in the hospital. Because of me.

  “Julia. We would like to understand how this could have happened. I can only imagine how hard this has been for you, dear.” His voice reminded me of the days he would rock me to sleep as a little girl—a gentle purr in contrast to Mother’s square, sharp edges.

  I shook my head, bit my lip, and looked at the pages of Jane Eyre again. I blushed and my thighs tingled—that feeling of powerlessness flooding me. If I did go to this lab, I’d have to ensure that no one knew that I had any kind of psychic ability. Otherwise, I’d be powerless forever. Otherwise, I might as well discard the Cavanaugh name. Forget about my life, my friends, my school, and our money. They’d take it away. Just like they did to Aunt Sabrina.

  3

  Charley

  The sky looked like ash and the porchlight flickered, as if flinching from the nonstop yelling that was a constant in my house. I had already breezed past Egg Salad Man’s house, and unfortunately, he wasn’t dead yet. It’d been two days. I considered standing outside his bedroom window and trying to will his heart to stop. But I knew I really didn’t have that kind of power.

  “Excuse me.” A woman limped toward me as I climbed off my bike. She wore a trench coat and Mary Jane shoes. “Are you the girl from the billboard?”

  I dropped my banana-seat bike on the front lawn and veered away from her. “Yeah, I’m her. But I don’t work from here. You’ll have to go to the diner tomorrow at three o’clock to get a reading.”

  I trotted up the steps to my front door without looking at her. Mom and Dad rarely got home before I did, but when that happened, it was always a tough time for Cindy. In the last year, she’d evolved from neatly parted hair and tight ponytail, clean hands and perfectly lined up Barbie dolls, to a surly twelve year old seemingly overnight. She had said barely two words to me all week, hadn’t brushed her hair, and was the subject of rumors that she was seen smoking down by the pharmacy’s soda fountain.

  I had to get in there to make sure she got a decent dinner and fell asleep before the inevitable tipping point where Mom and Dad went at each other. I imagined the bills piling up on the countertop. Dad’s neglect to pay them would set Mom off. Then, her words like ice water, she’d set him off. The lights hadn’t worked last month, and the diner had started using more flour and potatoes—ingredients sure to cut costs.

  I stomped up the stairs to the front door.

  “No, I don’t want a reading,” the woman said. It made me turn around. Her face and body were sort of boxy. She stuck out her hand, offering a business card. “I’m Dr. Carrillo. I’m studying people like you.”

  I stopped and gazed at the card still in her hand. Studying people like me? “What do you mean?”

  “I’m at the Stanford Research Institute, and we’re studying extrasensory perception. It’s one thing that has befuddled all of us. Is it fundamental to human consciousness? Is it the result of nerve conduction?”

  I didn’t move.

  “I’d like to pay you to participate. Quite a bit. I’ll offer you a place to stay for the summer in San Francisco.”

  “When?”

  “As soon as possible. Today if you want.”

  “It’s… You know, it’s like eight o’clock at night.”

  She looked like a fish trying to smile. Unnatural.

  “How much?”

  “Five thousand dollars.”

  I tried to look cool, but that was a helluva lot of money. Probably as much as my teachers would make in a year. If I made that kind of money in a summer, I could get Mom and Dad out of debt.

  Too good to be true, sang the familiar voice inside me.

  “You gotta be kidding.”

  “I’m not, Charlotte.”

  She knew my name. That was weird. “You’re really with Stanford?” I asked, taking the white card from her hand and staring at it. Thick card stock. Not something you’d just make at home.

  The money was tempting. Poof. I could just make all my problems evaporate. Like magic. I shrugged and shoved her card inside the pocket of my bell-bottom jeans. “I’ll think about it.”

  I turned back to the house.

  “To show you I’m serious, I’d like to give you some cash up front.”

  I turned around. She handed me an envelope, and I took it. “It’s a stipend. You can use it for the airplane ticket and extras. Just call me to tell me of your plans and we’ll arrange to get you.”

  I looked at the fat envelope.

  As soon as she was out of sight, I dug into it and pulled out the wad of bills, wrapped in a rubber band. The money felt heavy in my hand. I brought the cash to my nose and inhaled. Some people smelled the pages of books. I smelled money.

  Silently I counted the bills. Two hundred goddamn dollars. I couldn’t stop smiling. The black car disappeared down the street, and part of me wanted to scream and chase it, then jump in the backseat and drive off into the sunset to California with her. Even more so when I heard Mom’s voice break through the air like a brick through a window. “Harvey!”

  Gingerly I poked my head through the front door. The mail lay strewn on the kitchen floor. A yellow chair toppled on its side. The TV news played, and I caught snippets of a newscaster’s voice. “Federal authorities on Tuesday expelled fourteen Soviet nationals suspected of espionage, the largest such incident in Cold War history.”

  “You bastard!” Mom yelled, and she started spouting something about cigarette burns on the sofa. Her voice was so high-pitched and so fast, I couldn’t really understand.

  The sound of breaking glass interrupted her rant, and then Dad’s thundering voice shook my chest.

  The TV continued to play. “And coming this summer, the debut of The Sonny & Cher Comedy Hour, only on CBS.”

  Silently I shut the door.

  I paused on the porch for a moment. My sister was somewhere in the mess of their fight. Unless maybe, hopefully, she was out TP-ing houses or squishing pennies on train tracks. The thought of her stuck in her room and me dodging the craziness and pulling her outside—all of it made me nauseous. She wouldn’t leave her room if I asked her anyway. She’d become the most obstinate person I knew. If you told her not to eat bread because it was moldy, she’d shove it in her mouth and chew with a smile. She was tough. She’d be fine. Right?

  I jogged across the lawn to my friend’s house next door. I knocked twice, and Ruby stuck her head through the crack of the door. “What’s going on, Chars?”

  “They’re up to their same ol’ shit.” I pinched my thumb and pointer finger together, pressing them to my lips. I raised my eyebrows in a question.

  “Sure,” she said, and slipped out the door. We sat down in the lava rock bed side-by-side with our backs against my house. I pulled out my joint, lit up, took a long drag that burned my lungs, and then passed it to Ruby.

  The smoke bobbed around my face, and I turned to her. “I’m leaving town.”

  “Really? It’s about time.” She squeezed her eyes shut and sucked on the small doobie. Her curly hair looked like a poodle’s coat in that light.

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” I asked.

  “You graduated.”

  “So.”

  “Two weeks ago.” The skunky smell floated in the air.

  I took the joint from her hand, gazed at it, waiting for her.

  “It’s about time.” Her mouth opened and head shook with the last two words.

  “Yeah.” The joint grew hot in my fingers.

  “You always talk about it. Over. And over.”

  Her eyes stayed trained on the joint. Finally, she snatched it from me and sucked.

  “Yeah, well. I’m leaving.”

  I pulled out the cash from my pocket.

  “Holy shit, you rob a bank?” Ruby’s eyes bulged, and she reached to touch the wad of money. I pulled it away from her.

  “Look.” I removed Dr. Carrillo’s business card from my back pocket and then handed it to her.


  “Beth Car … Ril-ooh?”

  I plucked the card from her hand and put back it into my pocket.

  “Who is that?”

  “It’s Car-EE-yo, dummy.”

  “Why’d she give—”

  “She’s some fancy scientist. Studying people like me.”

  “You.”

  “Psychics. She’s putting me up in San Francisco this summer.”

  “Far out…” she whispered.

  After a few beats, I added, “I’m not telling my mom and dad.”

  She snorted. “They’ll lose their shit.”

  “Yeah.” I chuckled, imagining how they’d react when they finally realized I was gone. They’d run around the house, searching, like they did when they lost our dog, Gravy. But when I came home with the pile of cash, they’d treat me like old-fashioned royalty.

  “I’m sick of it,” I said, tossing my head at the house. Shouts and cussing smacked the air.

  “Why don’t they just get divorced already?”

  “No doubt—”

  “They hate each other.”

  “Yeah, but who’d they blame for a crappy day?”

  We both laughed and slowly, simultaneously pointed at my chest.

  “San Fran is so perfect,” she said.

  I frowned. “Why?”

  “You know.”

  I didn’t. I gazed at my sneakers, my head buzzing.

  “You can maybe join one of them hippie communes, you know?” Her eyes traced me up and down. She flicked the thin straight hair that hung past my shoulders, and I jerked away. I wasn’t a flower child. Maybe I should chop it off.

  “I’m getting cash. Cindy needs me.”

  She shrugged with glassy eyes. She gazed vacantly at the big evergreen bush that blocked the view of us from her kitchen window. If her dad would’ve spotted us, he’d yell, take our joint—and light it up later.

  The pot got me. No more jitters like always when I heard their fights. Gone was that god-awful feeling like I was being crushed by all of that black energy. Instead, I’d just sunk into the ground—something good for that moment, but I knew if I stayed in Carmel long enough and kept smoking that shit with Ruby, that’s where I’d die.

  “You bringin’ her?” she asked.

  “She’s fine. Besides.” I shrugged. “She wouldn’t come anyway.”

  “You gonna ask her?”

  I shrugged. If Cindy came, for sure Mom would call the cops, and I’d miss out on my escape.

  Plus if I disappeared, my parents might worry. That felt kind of good. Vindictive good. They needed to feel something for me. Even if it made them lose some sleep.

  4

  Julia

  “Should we listen to that song, ‘You Can’t Always Get What You Want’?” I asked, thumbing through Victoria’s record collection. Janis Joplin. Creedence Clearwater Revival. I held the Rolling Stones album close to my chest before sliding out the black vinyl record. I loved the cover of the album— a picture of a strange cake with layers made of a tire, a clock face, a pizza, and more. That was how life was supposed to be, stacks of strange on top of one another.

  Victoria sprawled on her bed, painting her fingernails ruby red. Her long, dark hair fell across her face. Gently, I placed the album on the record player. I had just lifted the needle to play the first song when the phone rang.

  Victoria answered, her voice sing-song, as she cradled the pink receiver between her shoulder and ear.

  I switched on the turntable and suspended the needle over the record, annoyed she’d answered the call. I still couldn’t shake the nerves from my conversation with Father. Music would help.

  “Of course, well you know how things can be turned—” she said slowly.

  I glanced at her, wondering who was on the phone. Victoria held the nail-polish brush over her finger, her eyes trained on the ceiling, listening. The glossy album spun around and around as I waited for her to hang up the damn phone. Finally, I huffed out loud and frowned at her.

  “Well, what you heard was just wrong,” she said. “Julia was invited to go to a summer program at Stanford University.”

  She nodded, gazing up at the ceiling again. “Yup. Invitation only. She’ll be studying right there on campus.”

  I had no idea which of our so-called friends was calling then to spread the rumors, but God, how I loved my cousin’s ability to spin the truth. She’d been doing that for years, softening or rewriting stories about our family and creating fantastical tales about us. We’d met the Queen of England. (We hadn’t.) We’d met the Rolling Stones. (We saw them at a party once.) Our family had found gold in Indonesia. (Not sure where that one had come from.) In everyone else’s minds, we had it all. We were The Cavanaughs.

  I dropped the needle onto the vinyl. The song opened with what sounded like a children’s choir. She continued the lie. “It will be fabulous.” She drew out the word. “Shopping.”

  She paused. “You heard wrong.”

  I sighed, but she didn’t get off the phone.

  “Alcatraz. Before it’s opened officially to the public.”

  She paused and frowned. “Mmm-hmm.” The voice on the other end sounded like a gnat. She interrupted. “No. Must’ve been someone who looked like her.”

  I felt flattened like a pancake. My cousin shook her head but didn’t make eye contact with me. Maybe it was easier to lie without looking at me.

  “She had no idea that happened, no… Yeah, weird, right? It must’ve been an earthquake.”

  I turned away, unable to go back to that memory, the way I had lost control, the way I had felt as if the entire earth’s energy reverberated through me. How it had happened like a dream.

  Mick Jagger crooned, and I turned up the volume.

  Victoria quickly ended the call. She frowned at me.

  “Why’d you turn up—” she shouted over the music. I turned down the volume. She placed her nail-polish brush back into the jar and sighed so heavy her body sank further into the bed. She pouted. “Jules…”

  I looked away. I didn’t thank her for her lies, and I didn’t address the fact that the whole town was watching, questioning, wondering. Again.

  I turned up the music louder, crawled onto her bed and laid next to her, resting my head on her satin pillow. Her feet waved in my face. I closed my eyes, and the music wandered the walls of her room. We could turn it up as loud as we wanted, because her room was tucked at the far end of her house—two floors from the living room where her parents could have sat reading the Wall Street Journal and drinking bourbon.

  “Can’t believe Gramps didn’t banish me,” Victoria said.

  I frowned.

  “He hates my bullshit.”

  I didn’t understand why she was talking about herself when my life was clearly teetering on the edge of an abyss. “Oh, come on.” I slapped her foot.

  Victoria sat up straight. “Seriously, look at me. I’m like your twin.”

  I didn’t respond.

  “But the Funhouse Mirror opposite. Short. Fat—”

  “Stop.”

  She did. Her lips looked like a heart. “Pretty,” I said. “You are.”

  “Not in the Cavanaugh way.”

  “It’s what you do that’s not exactly Cavanaugh.” I reminded her of that night the week before, when she climbed out the window to go to the Rolling Stones in concert and I’d heard her screeching at three o’clock in the morning as she crawled across the lawn, tripping on LSD.

  “Screaming about monkeys on the lawn doesn’t fit the whole family image thing,” I said.

  “They were monkeys, though. Swear it.” Victoria smiled. “Thanks for sneaking me back to bed.”

  I shook my head.

  “You’re like a good mother. A Cavanaugh Mother.”

  I cringed at that backhanded compliment and turned away to look at the wall.

  “But that’s what I’m saying, Julia. What I’m completely utterly baffled by…”

  I looked up at her thr
ough my bangs.

  “Here you are, being sent away. It’s like our family thinks losing face means—”

  “Means…” I said.

  “We’ll lose our … our gold-plated statues.”

  “Statues?”

  “Okay, our wads of hundred-dollar bills.”

  My stomach soured.

  Victoria knew where I was going in my head. “Come on. What happened with Aunt Sabrina.” She patted my leg. “It doesn’t mean it’ll happen to you.”

  My eyes burned into the floral silk bedding. Anxiety flapped inside me like a tree branch in a windstorm.

  The drumbeat and choir grew more louder before the song came to a close. After a second, Vic tapped my arm twice. “Summer will be a drag without you,” she said. “I mean it. Really big drag.”

  She climbed across the bed to put on a new album. The dark, hallucinogenic sound of Jefferson Airplane’s “White Rabbit” filled the room. If not for Victoria, I would’ve still been listening to the same Simon & Garfunkel album over and over.

  “This song is weird,” I said.

  She didn’t look at me, just dipped her brush back into the red polish. “Yeah, well, get ready for a whole summer of weird.”

  My parents didn’t see me off to the train the next day. Mother said she had some sort of appointment with the gardener about overgrown rhododendrons. And Father? He couldn’t look me in the eye.

  But Victoria was there.

  My stomach had been in knots all day, and I could feel the stares and rumors in the hallway of school, hovering like a thunderhead. When the bell rang, Victoria and I dashed outside Lake Forest Academy, a Gothic-style building with arched, stained-glass windows, and slipped into the black car where our driver, Robbie, was waiting for us with the air conditioning blowing.

  The car hummed, and we weaved through traffic. After a few moments of silence, I gazed at my cousin. A heaviness hung between us.

  “I guess they wanted me gone pretty badly.”

  “Assholes.” She waved her hand at me but didn’t make eye contact.