Extraordinary Lies

by Jennifer Alsever

  But she didn’t curb his bitterness. Flanked by Minnie and Henry, his face looked kind of vacant, his neck looked longer.

  “You don’t have to prove yourself, ya know.” I stretched my legs out in front of me.

  “Yeah, man,” Henry said, squeezing his hand again on Samuel’s shoulder.

  Samuel sneered, an expression so unfamiliar it looked like it was painted on his face. “Are you always such an idiot, Charley, or do you just show off when I’m around?” He didn’t sound like himself. Sure, he was also pretty stuck up, but not so cutting.

  A spark lit the telephone wires strung overhead. The electric zap made me jump. Stunned, I blinked. This guy wasn’t just bitter, he was pretty freaking mad. An irate guy with an ability to mess with electronics. Just what we need.

  Julia climbed to her feet and moved between us, hands held up as if to keep us from lunging at each other. I swear her voice sounded like butterfly wings. “Everyone, please. Let’s move on to other matters.”

  Samuel turned his ferocity on her. “Oh, Julia.” He smirked. “Julia. Julia. Julia.” She looked up at him, wide-eyed. “We all know that quiet little girls like you must stay quiet. Steve might agree, right? Yet it appears he’s feeding his girlfriend soup because she still cannot stomach solid foods.”

  Everyone turned to look at Julia. What is he talking about?

  Henry moved behind her, touching her waist, and she paused and gaped, looking like a trout on ice. Then she trembled. At first, the way her arms went stiff and her eyes kind of rolled back into her head, I worried she was having a seizure.

  I climbed to my knees. “Julia! You okay?”

  The ground shook, a little tremble at first, and then so hard it knocked me over. Oh my God. We were in the midst of one of those famous San Francisco earthquakes. A tiny yellow ball of light twisted around the blanket on the ground, and from the corner of my eye, it looked like a firefly. Julia’s shoulders hitched up to her ears; her nostrils flared.

  It clicked.

  Oh. So this was her psychic ability. Holy Batman, this girl has a terrifying power. No wonder she didn’t want anyone knowing about it.

  The thumping bongo drums stopped and actually lifted into the air, ripped from the hands of the barefoot drummers. Then, as if they were tied to an invisible rope, the drums swung wildly before crashing into a eucalyptus tree not far away. They dangled from branches, tattered and bent with their stretched hides torn. We watched, speechless and scared half to death, as a gust of wind rushed through us, and tree branches snapped and flew through the air like wild witch brooms.

  A cracking sound cut through the air, followed by a deep creaking. I swear the earth was groaning. A tree tilted so low it looked as if it was reaching down to pick up a leaf. The green lawn around it opened up and roots protruded, like giant black octopus legs. Then, just like that, the tree toppled over onto the ground.

  The hippies screamed and scattered. All except one girl, who lay sprawled out on a blanket. She looked asleep. Either that, or she was seriously oblivious to the chaos around her.

  The tree missed her by inches, pinning down a few locks of her strawberry-blonde hair.

  I turned to Julia, whose eyes had shifted from a slate blue to a steely gray, intense and eerie.

  “Julia!” I shouted. “Stop!”

  She looked at me, startled, and then everything quieted. Everyone had run away until finally, it was just the seven of us standing there in the park. The girl who had been on her back had finally come to and stumbled out of the way.

  Katerina, surely way braver than the rest of us, took a couple steps toward Julia, wrapping an arm around her before hugging her tight. They swayed together, and Julia silently cried. Her body shook, as if all that crazy energy had been bottled back up inside her little frame.

  17

  Julia

  Well, there you had it. After that moment, everyone knew about my temper. Everyone knew about my abilities. And once again, I had nearly killed someone.

  That night, I lay on the mattress inside my room, trying not to hyperventilate. I didn’t know what had happened in the park. I hadn’t been that mad. The incessant drumming had certainly annoyed me, giving me a bit of a headache, and Samuel’s anger targeting Charley was completely unwarranted. It bothered me, but I was not angry.

  Samuel’s reaction to Charley’s question was so out of the blue, so out of line. But then, so was my own anger. After he mocked me, once again, I had lost it.

  The rest of them—Charley, Minnie, and Cord—were a lot alike. They were psychic vacuum cleaners sucking up people’s private diaries. I couldn’t figure out if that made it a curse or a blessing. At least they weren’t walking tornadoes.

  This time, I had felt different than previous episodes. My knees felt weak and it was as if I’d been lifted out of my own body and my own powers went berserk without me even realizing it. What was different? Unlike the Kristi and Steve’s car-crushing event, there had been a weird glowing light this time, and it didn’t seem right. I’d never seen that before. Though I’d never seen my aunt’s ghost either, so maybe there was just something about California.

  What else? Henry. He put his hand on my waist, and I felt that feeling swell inside me: like an electric eel wrapping around your throat.

  Lying on the bed, I felt as if a gag had been placed over my nose and mouth, blocking my air. I was terrified of myself.

  The sharp coils of the mattress dug into my lower back, but I didn’t move. A penance for what I had done.

  I tried to piece together the rest of what had happened. I still couldn’t understand how Samuel knew about Steve. He even knew my hang-up about being quiet. I thought he just had some electrical thing going on, not telepathy. Of course, I would’ve known about his abilities if I’d actually spent time in the Dungeon with the others.

  Still, his barbs hadn’t been enough to make me that mad. Certainly, at the park I was tense. Seeing my aunt—or maybe her ghost—the night before had taken a toll, leaving me with more questions than ever before. More than once on the bus ride home, I wondered whether I was really going crazy, losing my mind, like Grandfather always claimed Aunt Sabrina had.

  The mystery of my aunt had haunted me, and the loss of her in my life had left a gaping hole in my heart for years. I remembered asking our housekeeper Florence about it while eating pancakes, and she fussed around me, watering plants and refilling my orange juice. “What happened to her?” I had asked.

  I was thirteen at the time, and I had found my voice when it came to Florence, who had become such a constant in my life—more so than my parents.

  She had sat down across from me at the table, her dark hair streaked gray. She looked like a flower that was losing its petals. “Julia, my sweet girl, you must know. Your family has long said that your Aunt Sabrina went crazy. Your grandfather always says he sent her to a mental ward. But…” She paused.

  “What? What?”

  “You can’t go telling anybody I said this, honey, or I will lose my job.” She pursed her thin lips.

  “I promise! I would hate to lose you. You and Victoria are the best things about this place.”

  “I think something else went on. Something dark.”

  She hadn’t said Aunt Sabrina had been killed. But that was what I assumed. My throat had gone dry, and the next word stuck in my throat, seeping out only in a small breath. “Why?”

  The air in the room shifted, and she leaned in and whispered. “She had a gift. A powerful one. And people got scared.”

  The next week, Florence, my sunshine in such a big lonesome house, died. No one told me how.

  I must have dozed off because I awoke to screaming in the ink-black air. I shot up straight, my heart pounding. It was a boy’s voice. I scrambled to the door and flung it open to find Minnie, Cord, and Charley in the hallway.

  “It’s Sammy,” Minnie said, pounding on his door with her fist. She yelled at the door. “Open up, you hear?”

  Cord, Char
ley, and I looked at each other, lost.

  “Where’s Henry?” Charley asked. His door was still closed. Clearly, he could sleep through anything.

  Cord called out to Samuel, who then flung open the door and shot like a cannonball from the room. He swerved and hid behind Charley and me as the door bounced back into its frame.

  “What’s going on in there?” Charley asked.

  Samuel simply panted, his face stretched and contorted. It was as if he hid from an invisible animal. It was so odd seeing him hunched like that. He usually looked inflexible, bones rigid and the crown of the head reaching tall.

  “A nightmare?” Charley asked.

  “No!”

  “Sure it was a nightmare,” Charley said again, rubbing the arms of her long-sleeved nightgown.

  “I was sleeping…” Samuel said.

  “Yeah,” I mumbled.

  “I woke up. A spinning blade was … over my bed.” He moved his hands in a circular motion.

  “A blade,” Minnie said. “If you’re lyin’ to me, I’m gonna jerk a knot in your tail.”

  Samuel shook his head frantically. “It’s all—everything. It’s still in there.”

  Curious, the four of us left him and crept closer, huddled together, and peeked through the door, which was open just a crack. Inside the room, the overhead light flickered. When my eyes adjusted, it became clear: a strange glowing orb the size of a basketball settled in the corner of the room and pulsed as if it were alive. My heart leapt into my throat. I didn’t back away immediately but gaped at the light as horrific heat filled my cheeks. I’d nearly killed Kristi and Steve and I’d caused trees to uproot in the park, but this froze the blood in my veins. A terrifying reality had slowly slid into view since we arrived there—bit by bit—and now, clearly it threatened to devour us all. My muscles turned to stone.

  Another glowing sphere zipped across the bedroom floor like a thundering, glowing bowling ball. We screamed, stumbling backward a couple steps. My heart caught in my throat.

  “See?” Samuel yelled. He rubbed his long-sleeved pajamas.

  Minnie reached to slam the door shut and we raced away. “Oh my Lord!”

  Cord’s voice cracked. “Is it a spirit?” He looked at me. Asked me. As if I would know.

  I shrugged. I had no idea what was happening. I wasn’t the one who saw ghosts. Or did I? What was Aunt Sabrina? A ghost? A hallucination? A strange, disappearing girl?

  Breathless, we reached Samuel and huddled together. “That weren’t no ghost,” Minnie said. “I can tell. I’ve spotted thousands of ’em.”

  “Thousands?” I asked.

  “Well, what exactly do you consider balls of light rolling across the floor?” Charley asked with hands on her hips. My mind fluttered like a flag flapping in the wind. Will we need to do an exorcism? Does this mean we can call it quits? Go home, finally? Where will we go tonight?

  “Somethin’ else. Ain’t no ghost,” Minnie said.

  “I… I…” Samuel couldn’t spit out the words. Minnie pulled him into a hug, and over his shoulder, she eyed me suspiciously.

  Had Minnie thought I made all that happen? They had already witnessed my power earlier at the park, and I was the only one there, outside of Samuel, who knew how to manipulate matter with their mind. Clearly, he didn’t cause this. So, she assumed I did.

  Minnie shushed Samuel, trying to squeeze away his fear, and Cord and Charley jerked, jittered, and muttered around them.

  “What about Henry?” I asked, pointing at his closed door.

  “He’s sleeping, gotta be.” Charley rolled her eyes and turned to Minnie. “You sure no ghost? Not Carol?” Her voice ran on double speed. “You saw that Carol earlier. You sure she didn’t stick around? She might be jealous or something.”

  I covered my lips with my fingertips.

  “Nope,” Minnie said. “I done heard the scientists yappin’ yesterday in the Dungeon. Carol’s parents are pitchin’ a hissy fit. They showed up with lawyers, wantin’ answers.”

  “Of course,” I said. Would my parents do the same? Or would they wipe their hands of me?

  “What’d the scientists do to her?” Charley asked.

  “Dr. Carrillo says that sometimes, heart attacks just happen.”

  “Hmmm,” I said, suspicious.

  Minnie nodded. “It’s some delayed response to being too tired from psychokinesis and out-of-body experiences.” Goosebumps. Everything gave me goosebumps.

  “Well, I’m staying in my body, then,” Charley said.

  Minnie leaned in with her arms crossed over her chest. She whispered, though I didn’t understand why exactly. “They were sayin’ that they were ‘studying the factors at play.’ But there ain’t many people who can do these things, folks like us, so they got no real answers.”

  We stood there, huddled together, frozen, starting and stopping conversation. Talking over each other. “You … think them scientists are…” Cord started.

  “Trying to kill us?” Charley asked.

  Samuel’s face looked ashen.

  I still felt stung from his outrage in the park, my own loss of control, and now this—I couldn’t wrap my head around the situation. This was unlike anything I’d ever seen before—outside of my own little psychokinesis experiences—but at least during those I wasn’t the one being threatened.

  I pointed with a shaky finger at the haunted room. “Samuel, are you going to sleep in there?”

  Samuel stared at the hallway, at his haunted room, before answering. “I don’t want…”

  “I wonder if all our rooms are haunted,” Charley said.

  We stood there in a circle, everyone with their pajamas on—except me. I had fallen asleep in my clothes.

  Henry’s door creaked open, and I jumped.

  “What’s happening?” Henry yawned and scratched his head of hair, messy from sleep.

  We told him the story, and he leaned in, responding with “whoa,” and “no kidding,” and “holy cow” to each additional detail.

  Finally, he put a hand around Minnie’s shoulder. “This has been nuts, but I think we best get some rest.”

  “With a ball of light rolling around in the next room?” Charley asked. Her voice sounded too loud, like a gong in the dead of the night.

  “Y’all. I gonna tell you now. It was … a ghost,” Minnie said suddenly. The air escaped her body, and she looked like an empty balloon. “Mmmm-hmmm, I can feel it. It’s one of them ghosts. Hmm-hmmm.” Her face looked weird and unnatural, like one of those porcelain clown faces that hung in Grandfather’s study.

  Ohhhkay then. That was weird. Why did she just change her mind?

  “You can just sleep in my room tonight, buddy. I’ve got a double,” Henry said, nodding down the hall.

  “Shouldn’t we call someone?” I asked. Who, though?

  “Yeah,” Samuel said slowly. “Yes. I’ll head to your place, Henry, and sleep there.”

  We watched them walk down the hall. For the next couple seconds, the four of us just stood there, arms crossed over our chests, a slight breeze rippling the hallway. Perhaps from the air conditioner?

  Charley eyed Henry as he and Samuel slipped into his room.

  My heart banged against my ribcage.

  “Come on, chop, chop. Back to your rooms!” Dr. Monson appeared in the hallway in a long white nightgown. I was surprised to see her there, even though we heard she moved into the dorms.

  “But…” I said.

  Charley cut me off. “Sammy here just saw freaking orbs! Glowing light. It sounded crazy.”

  Dr. Monson stood speechless for a moment, mouth dangling open, before clapping her hands together like a teacher scolding schoolchildren. “Back to bed!”

  It was the first bout of oversight we’d had since we’d been at SRI.

  I did not want to go back to my room alone. It was one more thing to keep me awake. Based on the glances of the others, they weren’t ready either. Without a word, we quickly filed into my room and sh
ut the door with a thud to hush any complaints by Dr. Monson.

  I leaned my back against the closed door.

  We kept the lights on and pulled a bunch of pillows and blankets from the closet so the four of us could huddle on the two beds, like little kids too scared to sleep after seeing a horror movie. Except this wasn’t a movie. This was our lives, and despite not knowing what was going on at SRI, it was undeniable that something was happening.

  The spinning orb that had streaked across the floor felt dreamlike. The feeling of it was so similar to my experience in the park earlier. Had we all been possessed? Heck, I was even seeing ghosts. I mean, if what Florence had implied about Aunt Sabrina were true, and someone did kill her … and if I hadn’t just let my imagination go haywire in Chinatown. I had heard the word “witch” before—hot, breathy words uttered about me as I’d passed my classmates in the hallways at school. Or in the movie theatre. Or the grocery store. But only now was I beginning to wonder if their words were closer to the truth than I wanted to believe. What was this ability, anyway? Where had it come from?

  I sat amid the mound of blankets next to Minnie, safety and fear hanging heavy on either side of my ribcage.

  “So, why’d you just lie out there?” Charley was so blunt.

  Minnie’s mouth opened in the shape of surprise. “What?”

  Charley tilted her head and her voice became animated, high- and low-pitched. “It’s not a ghost. Oh, yes, it’s a ghost. No, it wasn’t. Which was it?”

  “I told you, it weren’t no ghost.”

  “Chica, you crazy,” Cord said. “Just a second ago, you was saying it was a ghost.”

  “Well, shut my mouth.”

  “What?” I asked.

  “Do go on, ’cuz I don’t know what in the heck you’re talking about,” she said. “Told you, I seen them all the time, and I ain’t seen nothing ghost-like in this building.”