I looked away.
As the tour progressed, I craned my neck to look for the girl elsewhere. Maybe it was in all my imagination, or maybe I was crazy like Grandfather claimed Aunt Sabrina was. She wasn’t. Was she?
I knew the truth. She was a witch. Like me. And my family knew exactly how to get rid of us.
Dr. Carrillo took us back to the dormitory on Stanford’s campus. When she flung open the door to my room, my heart sank.
The room was the size of my closet at home. Generic with blank walls and only the essentials. A thin, striped mattress set on top of a wire coil platform. Basically, a prison. I didn’t know what I’d been expecting, really.
“I’ll let you all get settled,” Dr. Carrillo said.
Startled, I looked up at her.
“You will all meet in a half hour for dinner. Without me,” she added, striding down the hall.
I quietly shut the door, closing out her and that weird reality. I felt like I’d just swallowed sand.
I looked down at my suede clogs—the same shoes I wore the other night, when I crushed Steve and Kristi in the car. I shriveled with the memory. How was Steve doing? He must’ve really hated me after I nearly sawed his new girlfriend in half. My stomach clenched at the thought of that word. Girlfriend. I shook my head to let the worry fall off me. I didn’t care if he got mad. He was a liar just like everyone else. I was the one who should be mad. I would stay mad.
I sat on the hard bed. A pile of white bedsheets and a single blue blanket sat folded on the desk.
Dr. Carrillo’s lecture played in my head. If they figured out that we were like those Chinese kids and we indeed possessed crazy radiation, then we were certainly dangerous to someone. My heart began to pound. This was a terrible place for me to be. For all of us.
I stood up and walked over to toss my leather suitcase into the closet. I wasn’t going to unpack my clothes; I was going home. I had to go home. Although I knew home wouldn’t be much better. I imagined the series of fake smiles, followed by whispers behind my back, I would encounter just at the club. Going home would mean having to face Kristi and Steve again, and seeing the cracks in the grocery store parking lot. It would mean being shunned by my family—everyone but Victoria.
I remembered the day I sent a baseball whirling through the school window in sixth grade—with my mind— and Karen Taylor and Susan Sylvester just stared, gaping. The girls had simply left me out of their hide-and-seek game, and I lost control of my emotions. Upon realizing what I’d done, I’d sunk onto the blacktop playground and buried my eyes into my kneecaps.
Those girls had looked at me differently after that—everyone had. Later that week, from the bathroom stall, I overheard a conversation between several girls questioning whether I really did have that strange, scary ability. I heard the whispers behind me as I climbed the steps of the school, past cast-iron columns. In the hallways. Eventually, after a year or so, most people forgot about it. Assumed it wasn’t real. And that was just fine with me.
I removed a piece of pink, monogrammed stationery from my suitcase. In the dead silence of the room, I sat upright at the desk, my hand skidding across the paper.
Dear Victoria:
So, Grandfather got his wish. I’m thoroughly being punished. I’m sitting here on the campus of Stanford, and I’m dying inside. The six other kids are nice enough. But this boy Henry leers at me like I’m a steak dinner. I’m supposed to get “tested” tomorrow, and I’m queasy at the thought of it.
Being here, I need answers. Will you find out what happened to Aunt Sabrina? No one talks about her. Did they send her to this place too? Where is she now? Is she even alive? I have to know.
Please write me as soon as possible.
Hugs and kisses,
Julia
I folded the letter and addressed the envelope, and the process felt surreal. This was the last place I expected to be this summer. Nothing here was normal. Because I wasn’t normal.
3
Charley
That first night, we all sat around a table in a communal cafeteria, seven of us with freaky powers. The food tasted worse than the diner: rubbery fried chicken, room-temperature mashed potatoes. But most of the kids dug in like starving dogs.
“I'm so hungry my belly thinks my throat's been cut,” Minnie said, putting her napkin in her lap.
“Let’s take a poll and compare our capabilities,” Samuel said.
“I’m just a fortune-teller,” I said, poking at my chicken.
“Yes, but what is that really?” Samuel asked, leaning into the table. He’d be a trial lawyer one day.
“I touch peoples’ hands, see stuff.” I shrugged.
“See stuff,” Samuel scoffed.
“I get what you mean,” Cord said. His gaze stayed on me a couple beats longer. Man, his hazel eyes practically twinkled at me.
“You do know how weird it is to be talking about this stuff,” I said.
“I reckon Dr. Carrillo ain’t so sure about all the powers we got,” said Minnie. Her drawl sounded like vowels moving through molasses.
“Why bother even testing us?” I asked.
“Why bother,” Samuel repeated, rolling his eyes.
I ignored him. “I mean, together we could make a shitstorm of paranormal activity if we wanted. Why would they need studies to prove what we can do?”
The word shitstorm made Julia flinch, and I rolled my eyes. Her face looked like a perfect sugar cookie. She didn’t say anything, staring at her plate stirring the mashed potatoes with her fork, like she could see the future in the clumpy bits of white.
Henry sat next to her, gazing at the sheen of dark hair that had fallen over her face.
Cord turned to me, his elbow brushing mine. “I think they study us ’cuz they want psychic weapons.” He sat up straighter.
Samuel snorted.
“I’m telling you.” Cord sang the words.
“Groovy,” Henry said.
Minnie raised her dark eyebrows and dropped her chin. Her plump face looked like a doll’s. “And why would y’all think that’s so groovy?”
“We could sell our powers,” Henry said, shoving a piece of chicken in his mouth.
Julia frowned but her eyes didn’t leave her plate.
“To the highest bidder,” he added.
Minnie shook her head. “Nuh-uh, I’m bettin’ that Dr. Carrillo is all about the academic prestige. She’s like my Daddy.”
“Your daddy studies freaks?” I asked.
“Dr. Carrillo’s a scientist. Just like my daddy always gone wantin’ to be. And Dr. Carrillo is fixin’ to see that Stanford’s physics department sees her work,” Minnie said. “Appreciates it.”
“Appreciates,” Henry said, chewing on the thought. “You mean recognizes.”
Minnie looked only at Samuel now. “Well, sure. Recognizes extrasensory perception as an honest to goodness science. She’s fixin’ to uncover the underlying—”
“Underlying mechanisms of it.” Samuel flicked his stick-straight bangs from his eyes.
She pointed her fork at him. “Right! Even Einstein went on and on about this. We all wanna know.”
Samuel nodded, bringing his voice lower, speaking only to Minnie by his side. “Of course. Einstein wrote the forward to Upton Sinclair’s Mental Radio.”
I shrugged and tuned them out. “I don’t really care how it works.”
Cord nudged me. “Me neither.”
I picked up a hint of some aftershave and what smelled like wet newspaper. I took a bite of lumpy potatoes. “All I know is that it makes me a witch where I live.”
Julia looked up at me when I said this and caught my eye.
The conversation broke off into pieces around the table. Minnie and Samuel were like a pair of two-way radios. Samuel, made of concrete, who clearly wanted to be the smartest guy in the room, and Minnie, the syrupy Southern challenge to that.
“What about you guys? What’s your thing?” I asked Cord, Henry, and Julia, th
ough I figured she wouldn’t be much of a Chatty Cathy.
“I don’t do much,” Henry said. I couldn’t see his ears beneath the longish hair, and I wondered for a second if they were perhaps the one single flaw in his good looks. Hidden from view.
“I get these visions,” Cord said. The word these sounded like deese. “Ever since I was little. You know? At first, it was little things.” His shoulders slumped and he nodded with squinted eyes.
Henry turned his attention to Katerina. She sat with impossible posture, as if she grew up with someone poking her in the back at every meal. I glanced around the cafeteria for a sign of potential dessert.
“Like this one time.”
I looked at Cord again.
“My teacher was pregnant and didn’t tell nobody. But I knew.”
“That’s not hard.” I took another bite. The mashed potatoes tasted like they came from a box. Gritty. “I’m sure she had a bump. Something. Her boobs were probably big.”
“Naw…” He shook his head slowly. “I just knew before nobody else.” He shrugged, put another bite of chicken in his mouth, and looked at me sideways, smiling.
I let out a tired guffaw. “Well, anyone can guess that. They wouldn’t have brought you here just for that.”
“And I know my Dad gets a stroke before it happens.”
I responded with raised eyebrows. What a drag for him. I’d always been able to predict that stuff with strangers, but no one close to me. I’d tried, but it was like I was locked out of anything personal. Which, in a way, was good. “Did you say anything? I mean. Like, to prevent it?”
Cord’s jaw slowed as he chewed, and he stared off into the corner of the room. “Nah,” he said, frowning. His voice was thin like air.
“Hm,” I said through a closed mouth. I felt bad for him, but I wasn’t that impressed. I wondered how long he’d stay for the testing if that’s all he had.
He must’ve sensed my boredom, because he perked up, trying to prove his abilities. “Another time, I get a crazy dream that the snow’s gonna crash down next door.”
“A house next door?” I asked.
He nodded.
“What, you live in tents or something?” I asked.
“Made out of paper?” Henry asked with a chuckle. I grinned at him.
Julia’s eyes flit between us, and she bit her lip.
Cord turned to face me. “Log house. Big ol’ logs.” He spread his hands out wide.
“Huh.” My eyes searched the cafeteria and landed on the door to the kitchen. Ice cream. They should have an ice cream bar.
“I keep telling them. My neighbors. ‘You gotta move Chulo outta that—”
“Chulo?”
“Yeah, he’s my neighbor.”
“Chulo.”
“Nickname. Means cute in Spanish. Nine. Maybe, ten?”
“So why?”
“Why what?”
I exhaled and threw up my hands. “Why’d you tell them to move him?”
“Oh, I says to them, ‘You gotta move Chulo outta that room or he’s gonna die.’ They says, ‘Cord, man, you crazy.’”
“So.”
“I wasn’t crazy. It was gonna kill him.”
“Yeah.” I glanced one last time for a sweet. A pie? Ice cream? Even a cookie. Someone shut the kitchen doors. I slumped down. No dessert.
“So then… Bam!” Cord smacked his hands together.
I jumped and looked at him. Julia’s big gray eyes looked as big as poker chips.
“One night, this big ol’ wooden beam—”
“Beam?” Julia whispered.
“Beam,” Cord looked at her like she’d just risen from the dead. He waved about his head to indicate what held up a roof. “The whole thing and all that snow crashes down on the house.” He slammed his hands down on the table.
“Oh my,” Julia said.
He nodded and looked at the far wall. Shook his head. “Sheesh. Stuff everywhere.”
“Well, was he in there?” I asked.
“The room?” he asked.
“Yeah, the room.”
“Naw, he was sleeping in his mom’s bed.”
I sat back on my chair, feeling relieved that little Chulo and the fam didn’t die.
“All ’cuz I have this vision. Good thing the guy listens.”
I threw my hands up. “Where the hell do you even live?”
“Red Cliff.”
“Red-what?” I asked.
“Colorado. Mining town down this little ridge. Real steep drop off down the road. Crazy drop off.”
“Boring,” I sang. “Outside of roofs caving in, of course.” Henry’s attention landed on me, inflating my ego. “What do you even do there?”
“Do?” Cord asked.
“For fun? In little Red Cliff with still-alive little Chulo?”
Cord didn’t take offense. He grinned, listing off activities on his fingers. “We ride bikes. We hike. We look for berries. Play baseball in the street. I dunno. What’d you do for fun?”
“Make pies.” I took a long sip of my water.
“That it?” Cord asked.
“That’s it. And serve them to dumb people who come to our diner.”
“Dumb?” Julia asked. She looked like she’d swallowed a bag of lemons.
“Well, they’re all cranky.”
Cord nodded, as if that would make sense.
“Yeah, because first they visit their brother or dad or girlfriend in prison.”
“Prison?” Julia asked.
“It’s across the street. And lemme tell you, Julia, they’re terrible tippers.”
“Man…” Cord shook his head.
“Which is why I have to make extra money in the back, giving readings.”
“Oh,” Julia said, returning her attention to her plate. She had ripped up her napkin in her lap.
Irritation flared up in me like a whip cracking. “Oh, don’t give me that.”
“What?” she asked.
“You act like the idea of giving readings is so weird, but you’re here too. You’re probably just like the rest of us,” I said.
Julia frowned and swallowed, like that bag of lemons had gotten stuck in her damn throat.
“So yeah,” Cord waved his hand in the air, as if he could wipe away the tension. “I get these premonitions.”
“You said that,” Henry said.
“You have second sight. Or what’s known as precognition, Cord,” Samuel said from across the table. I looked up, surprised he was listening to our conversation.
Samuel twirled his hand in the air. “I have a bit of supersonic hearing. In addition to extrasensory perception, I can hear and follow conversations from across the room, even as I’m listening and engaging in another one.”
I looked at Samuel for a long moment, mashed potatoes just sitting on my tongue. I wondered how old he was. Maybe eighteen? Nineteen? But he spoke like he was actually attending Stanford.
“Wow. So that’s what they call it and all,” Cord said, nodding thoughtfully.
“Sounds like a fancy name for knowing what’s gonna happen,” I said.
Minnie and Samuel blathered on about all the different powers out there. Claircognizance is just knowing things. Pyrokinesis, or manipulating fire. Telekinesis, manipulating objects with your mind, and levitation, which I doubted was a real thing.
“Minnie, please do describe this scurrying you have,” Katerina asked, smoothing the napkin in her lap.
“Scurrying? What the heck is that?” I asked.
“It’s called scryin’. And I also see ghosts. The go-devil is what we say in the Carolinas,” Minnie said.
I grimaced. “That doesn’t sound like science. How can they prove that in some lab?”
Minnie folded her hands. “They’re fixin’ to test me for scryin’.”
“You keep saying that. But what is that?” I asked.
“Do y’all have some handwritin’?” she asked, glancing around the table.
We all exchanged
looks.
“Something that y’all scribbled down on?” she asked, holding out her hand like we just carried that stuff around.
“How about … this?” I pulled out the folded piece of paper from my purse and handed Cindy’s drawing to her.
“That’ll work just fine.” She unfolded it and looked at the drawing. I wondered if she could tell how much it meant to me.
She ran her fingers over the words, Charley and Cindy, and closed her eyes. Then her fingers traced the bodies that Cindy drew with her pencil. What would Cindy draw now, if she was to draw the two of us? She’d probably put a joint in my hand, or maybe she’d have only half of me on the page. One foot out the door.
Minnie opened her eyes and blinked quickly. I wondered if that’s what I looked like when I saw things. If I had that dumb look on my face.
“Your sister.”
“Yeah.”
“She’s lots different than when she made this picture for you,” she said.
I didn’t give her anything. I just gazed at her. Stony. Waiting. Willing away any guilt that tore at my edges. I could feel the weight of the stares of the others.
Henry caught my eye, and the magnetism between us made my stomach flip. It wasn’t that he was simply older and handsome—I was drawn to him and the mysterious dark energy around him.
“This Cindy, she knows all ’bout your slipups,” Minnie said.
My eyes snapped away from Henry. It was as if Cindy had caught me red-handed—right there, in that moment. As if she knew that’s where I always went: bad boys. Like I really need you here, so I can walk in on you and one of your creepy boyfriends.
“She thinks she’s all done grown up now. Wants to take on the whole damn world alone.” She tapped her fingers on her full lips.
I didn’t respond. The silence of the table stole my breath.
Minnie continued. “But she’s steamin’ hot mad that you just picked up and left her all alone. Inside that heart of hers, she’s scared.”
There they were: the tears pricking at the back of my eyes. I gazed at my lumpy mashed potatoes. I shouldn’t have left her. She needed me. She needed someone to parent her. In that moment, I nearly stood up and ran for the door. Packed my bag and hitchhiked home.
Extraordinary Lies Page 5
