Extraordinary Lies

by Jennifer Alsever

  Minnie sat in the corner alone, eating fries with two dainty fingers. We strode toward her.

  “Hey Minnie, how’d you do in that remote viewing?” Cord asked.

  Anxiety flickered across Minnie’s face, a light switch being turned on and off. “Dr. Carrillo got her knickers in a knot. She tells me that y’all can do it with a bit of trainin’. But I sit there, and … nothin’. Nothin’! Couldn’t go nowhere at all in that damn metal cage. Dr. Carrillo was meaner than a wet panther. She hollered and said she’d be sending me home with no plane ticket.”

  I shook my head. “She’s told me that too.”

  She swirled her hand in the air, still holding a limp fry. “I reckon that to be someone who can go outside your body and all, you gotta be the type who moves things with your mind. Psychokinesis.”

  She paused, then pointed at me. “I’m betting you’d be right for it, Julia. A kind of advanced sort of movin’ them objects with your mind.”

  Charley agreed. “You’ll never know unless you try.”

  The suggestion danced in my mind. I could go to the library and find out more about Mandaree, North Dakota. Or maybe I could travel there myself. Or maybe, I realized, I could find Sabrina with remote viewing.

  21

  Charley

  Dr. Monson’s voice made her sound like a witch. Nasal and whiny, it rang through the Dungeon hallway. “Your capabilities extend far beyond what you’re demonstrating in the lab, Henry.”

  She and Henry stood maybe a hundred yards away from me in the dark, narrow hall. A sliver of light from a single bulb lit one side of her face. I couldn’t hear much, just the murmur of Henry’s voice. He ran a finger down her arm. Ewww. She was at least a decade older than him. Was he sleeping with her?

  His voice spread like butter, and her body shifted from ruler straight to a C-shape, as if the string that held her upright had been clipped. Watching this, revulsion slipped away and instead, I was now fascinated. He was doing something to her—more than sensual, though there was plenty of that going on too.

  There was no way that guy was as clueless as he claimed. I’d bet he was a walking supernatural phenomenon, and that kind of power was always irresistible to girls like me.

  “It’s time, Charley,” Dr. Carrillo said.

  I jumped and turned around to see the scientist standing there, sniffling and patting her dark hair.

  Not counting this brief break, I had been at the experiments with Dr. Carrillo for hours already.

  I turned away and followed her into the lab. I tried to tell Dr. Carrillo again about what happened in Samuel’s room the night before. She looked right through me. “I’ve heard this. We’re dealing with it.”

  Inside the room sat a woman at the table. Her features were plain and relatively unmemorable, because all I could see was that pile of red hair sprayed into a beehive on her head. She oozed a spicy perfume.

  Her eyes traced me up and down. The energy of the room felt like jumping into a cold bath.

  “Okay, this time is different, Charlotte,” Dr. Carrillo said. The use of my formal name cinched my shoulders tight. “Annie is a professional and does not want personal information disclosed. Instead, you are to tell us what sits on her desk in her office.”

  Down to business.

  “Her office? Like, who cares? Anyway, isn’t that, like, remote viewing?” I asked.

  “No. You should see it through her.”

  “Are you really studying me? Or are you just using me?” I popped my gum against my teeth, folded my arms, and slumped in the chair.

  “We’re a top-notch university. I’m a laser physicist. Dr. Monson is a former NASA engineer.” Dr. Carrillo swatted her hand at me and waddled across the room to stand with the PhD students. “I don’t need to justify anything to you. Just do what you’re told, please.”

  Please. I bet she’d never used that word before. I sank deeper into the chair. I was so over this routine; I just wanted to be done.

  Outside the viewing window in the hallway, Katerina stood with a hand on her hip, a cigarette dangling between her fingers, her lips parted. I yearned to be her. She didn’t look like a woman who would ever be used. She made it all the way to this country, she was making her own way, sinking her teeth into life. I wanted to do that, too.

  She appeared oblivious to Henry, who stood just behind her, examining her and then me.

  I took the woman’s hand, cold and clammy like raw chicken breasts from the diner. A stream of images ripped past me like a gust of dusty air. This woman had some serious demons, even if she was a so-called “professional.” She had night terrors—not the kind where she was running from something, but where she was stabbing people. Stabbing them over and over, and for a second, it was as if I was in her dream, standing next to her as she raised her knife and plunged it into some guy’s chest, her red hair flying wildly from that beehive. Nausea shook me like an earthquake. I let go of her hand.

  “I can’t,” I said. My lips parted, sucking in air. I looked at the woman differently then. She looked regular, like someone who might’ve been friends with Mom. But it was a mask, hiding a warped kind of beehive beast. She didn’t actually stab people, Charley, she dreams that she stabs people. Your dreams don’t represent your desire.

  “Your program appears flawed,” she said, swiveling her tall head to address Dr. Carrillo. Oh, she speaks!

  Her hand looked so normal. Thick purple veins snaked over her bony knuckles. Why did Dr. Carrillo keep making me do this? Part the curtains to these windows of horror?

  “I suppose you could call this one a failure,” this Annie lady said, flicking her fingertips to me before scooting her chair back to stand.

  Angry, I slammed my hand down on hers, and then grasped hold of her palm tight. After a gasp and a couple fruitless tugs to break free, Annie sat back down. The nausea hit me again, and I saw sand. It blew wildly and stung my eyes, clogged my nostrils. Each grain of sand represented a tiny lie, and after a few moments, a huge sand pile appeared. It towered above me—her lies. In my mind’s eye, I moved closer, and realized it wasn’t sand, but bones. Piles of bones. Some whole, some in pieces, others crushed to pebbles.

  She started out murdering in her dreams, but now she did it in real life. Professionally. Bit by bit, secretly. She worked for the government and studied microbiology. She ran tests on monkeys and soon, soldiers. People became her tools. I knew all this.

  “The desk, Charley,” Dr. Carrillo said. “Don’t pry.”

  How could I not pry? Her hands had opened the door to a field of horror, and it was hard not to take it in.

  Silently, in my second sight, I asked permission from the universe to see her office, her desk, to see inside her head … what she last saw. No more horror. Just please show me your stupid desk.

  I got what I wanted: her desk by a window, cluttered, piled high with folders, papers, and a thick booklet, which sat open on top. I read the words I saw on the page: Classified study. Neurological effects of bioweapons on the human brain. The book contained medical illustrations of the human nervous system and a cross-section of the human brain. Above the illustration, someone had written the words Architecture of a viral infection in thick black ink.

  Like a robot, like instructed, I told Dr. Carrillo what I saw. Annie jerked her hand away, and I blinked. We held each other’s gaze, her beady eyes like holes in her head. Abruptly, she turned away.

  “She’ll be no use to us,” Annie said. Her heels clicked on the floor.

  “You’re free to go,” Dr. Carrillo said.

  I stood up quickly. “Was I right?”

  Dr. Carrillo tossed a Polaroid photo on the table in front of me. The image depicted the scene I had just envisioned. Pride and disgust tangled in my chest.

  A door slammed shut, and I jumped. Outside the window, Bone-Collector Annie breezed past Henry and Katerina in the hall. She glanced at Henry, who scratched his head and looked away.

  Dr. Carrillo hunched over a clipbo
ard with her back to me. “You’re done today.”

  Reeling from what I’d seen, I felt like invisible cobwebs draped over my skin. I shuddered. At the doorway, I stopped and rotated to look at Dr. Carrillo. “Why’d she say that?”

  “I don’t know.” Her attention only on a stack of papers in front of her.

  “Just so you know, she’s a liar. It’s like demons are imprinted on her soul.”

  Dr. Carrillo turned around and looked at me. She blinked quickly, taken aback by my comment.

  I spun around, tugged on my damp T-shirt, giving my skin a breath of fresh air. Katerina and Henry were gone, and I felt a flash of disappointment.

  That night, smoke hung in the air and my white boots stuck to the floor as I made my way through the crowded club.

  I knew the smell all too well. The whiff of day-old booze spilled on furniture and stuck to the floor. Since I was a kid, I had spent countless weekends watching my parents party with their friends. Day-drinking at barbecues and brunches, then continuing into evening cocktail hours. Sometimes at those late-night parties, I’d walk into the kitchen and they’d be doing shots. One night, I watched them snort coke off the glass tabletop.

  Hell, I used to snatch half-empty bottles off the counter after they passed out and hide them in my room for me and whatever boy I found later. I even tried to inhale the leftovers of that coke one time, though it wasn’t enough to do anything.

  So really, considering where I came from, this club was my scene, right? I should have felt comfortable there.

  I spotted an olive-green sofa and took a seat, waiting for Katerina to finish in the dressing room. I’d missed her magic performance, but maybe if I spent more time with her, I would be more like her. Glamorous, worldly, independent, squeezing the juice out of life.

  I ran my hand over the glossy pleather of my white knee-high platform boots, which, I had to say, looked pretty fabulous with the plaid miniskirt and halter top. The boots had cost me two days of my stipend, but I figured the Twiggy look was in.

  A man with a handlebar mustache and a mustard-orange leisure suit strolled up to me, then sat way too close. “Hey, cat,” he said.

  “Uh, hey.” I scooted away.

  “What’s your sign, babe? I’m Cancer. Maybe we align.”

  “I’m just here to wait for a friend.”

  “Ah, yeah.” He put his arm on the back of the sofa. “I wasn’t into astrology either. But then, I started digging it. I found out that I’m a Cancer. Which means I’m a crab. A moon child. I’m ruled by the moon. I’m responsive to others, and my lucky day is Monday.”

  “Oh.” I looked through him, sorting through throngs of bodies, arms, hands with martinis and pina coladas with umbrellas. Maybe I shouldn’t have slipped past the bouncer as he checked the time. Maybe this wasn’t my scene.

  “Guess what day it is? Monday.” His fingers grazed my back and his pupils floated in the iris of his eyes—he was high on something.

  “Mister, I’m only eighteen.”

  With that, his face lit up like a flashlight. He scooted closer. “I can be your teacher.”

  I felt sick, as if ants crawled across my neck. I jumped up, ready to get the hell out of that place, when I spotted Katerina across the dark club.

  Dressed in flowing chiffon, Katerina looked even more exotic, her full lips and high cheekbones standing out in the dim light. She spoke to two men who actually respected her space. God, I just wanted to jump into Katerina’s life.

  “Hey!” I stumbled forward, pushing through sharp elbows and splashing drinks. When I grabbed her arm, Katerina jumped, surprised.

  “Oh, why hello, Charley! What a surprise to see you here.”

  She gently rubbed my arm, surely detecting some of the nervous anxiety that stirred inside my stomach. “Charley, my dear, this is Viktor and Ivan.” I turned my attention to the two men dressed in suits with thick, ugly ties. Victor had a high forehead and bulbous nose. The other, Ivan, stood tall and thin, with droopy jowls.

  “Hey, sorry to, um, interrupt. But I was hoping we could hang out?”

  Katerina flashed a smile at the two men. They were clearly interested in Katerina and most definitely not interested in me, despite my immensely sexy boots.

  “Charley, sweet,” she said, patting my arm again like I was a dog. She pulled us away from the men and whispered in my ear. “What are you doing here?” She didn’t wait for my response. “I’m so sorry, but I cannot meet tonight. I have, uh, plans with these men.” Her voice faltered for a moment.

  I looked up from the floor at the men. Eyes the color of black licorice.

  “Who are they?”

  She didn’t reply immediately, but ushered me by the elbow through the crowd toward the door. “They watched my performance.”

  “Are they American? They don’t seem American.” It was a strange thing to ask, I knew, but somehow it seemed important.

  “Silly Charley.”

  Outside on the sidewalk, I felt lost. I stood there a few minutes, listening to the thumping sound of the Beatles’ song “Come Together” just inside the door. I didn’t want to board a bus back to campus, so I set out to walk the fifteen blocks back to Katerina’s apartment.

  Weaving through a crowd of bodies, past the stench of a sewer, I tottered up steep hills in boots that killed. The city was alive. Bellows, laughter, and music blared from bars and open apartment windows, and freedom and fear swam through me. A handful of guys leaned against a Volkswagen van, watching me pass, puffing on cigarettes. My heart hammered as galaxies of smoke collected and vanished in the light of the streetlamp.

  I took wrong turns at least four times, and my blood ran cold when a shape slunk across a dark alley to my left. I paused, sure someone was following me, before continuing my brisk pace. After a few yards, I realized it was my own shadow.

  Finally, I rounded the corner to Lombard Street before recognizing the familiar two-story row-house apartment. Katerina wasn’t home, of course, so I slumped onto the sidewalk outside her building, amid cigarette butts and the stench of urine. Eventually I must’ve dozed off.

  “Oh, Charley!”

  I woke with a start, a jolt sweeping through me. Above me stood Katerina, her nose crinkled in surprise. The horizon to the east glowed a muddy yellow. “I thought you were a homeless person.” Katerina laughed, and the sound was high-pitched and airy.

  It took a moment for me to get oriented, to remember where I was. “Sorry. Can I spend the night here? I’m kind of…”

  “Tired?”

  “No,” I lied. “I’m just not ready to … go back to campus.”

  I slowly rose to my feet. Despite the late hour, Katerina looked just as dashing as she had earlier in the evening—rosy cheeks and fresh red lipstick, body erect and on guard. She bent to touch my wrist with her thin fingers.

  “Are you fine?”

  “Yeah, yeah.” I yawned and smoothed my hair with my fingers. She said I looked like a homeless person.

  “Well, come in, come in.”

  Inside the apartment, a purple lamp lit up the room like a womb. The walls groaned and floorboards creaked.

  “I get you cup of tea?” Katerina moved past me, and the scent of tangy perfume swept the air.

  “That sounds good.” I collapsed onto the couch.

  We curled our feet up and talked before sleep. I told her stories about Indiana, trying to edit my parents’ shitshow to seem cool. Back home, I didn’t do girl talk with fringy pillows on our laps—unless you count girl talk as smoking a joint with Ruby next door while my parents threw lamps at each other. This was sophisticated. Very adult.

  I looked at the pillow. “This is fun, you know?”

  She nodded.

  “Most people back home are afraid to talk to me,” I said, “because they think I’m going to see all their secrets or something.” I snorted a laugh and then, embarrassed, covered my mouth.

  Katerina’s laugh tinkled like a bell. “I do understand this. Yes, b
eing psychic can be very difficult.”

  I took in the apartment, admiring the velvet paintings on the wall. “This place is really far out.”

  She looked around the room, examining her place for a moment, practically beaming. But her face shifted and for a second, it was like her expression almost melted. It did something to me. Kind of broke my heart. I really wanted to touch her hand to find out, to look into her heart and mind, to get a glimpse of her past and future. But I’d be breaking and entering. Like Julia said.

  Katerina told me just that when she tucked her hands beneath a fringed pillow on her lap. Everyone seemed to do that around me. Secrets tucked into laps, stuffed under blankets and pillows.

  On the coffee table, a handful of red and white strings sat tangled together; some braided and tied into bracelets and others in the form of little yarn dolls. I reached out to hold them.

  “What are these?”

  “Oh, those are for Martenitsa. We celebrate our Bulgarian culture each March—the whole country—by wearing these. Martenitsa are worn from Baba Marta Day until you see a stork, swallow, or blossoming tree—or until late March.” She paused. “So why did you come here tonight, Charley? Besides girl talk.”

  My fingers twirled the string while I considered her question. Why had I come here? SRI’s remote viewing gave me the creeps. The lab was an underwater tank filled with sharks. Then there was the smothering Cindy guilt and the pinching reality that I would have to go home.

  I looked at her. “I want to live with you.”

  “Wha?”

  “I mean. After I’m done this summer. Can I move in? It’d be cool city.”

  Katerina flashed a quick smile and coughed out a puff of air. “Oh, I would enjoy that so very much, Charley.”

  She looked at thin hands, holding secrets in her lap. “But unfortunately…” Emotion caught in her throat. “I am afraid my time at SRI may be coming to a close.”

  “Why?”

  “It is very so complicated. You may collect my stipend. You and the others.”