“Remote viewing.”
“Come on, Jules. This could be a total delusion.”
“It’s not.” I rested my chin on my bent knees. Shut my eyes, wishing I could see Aunt Sabrina without the stupid cage, make sure she was okay.
“Oh, come on,” she said. “Oh my God.” The radio played in the background. Carole King’s song, “I Feel the Earth Move.”
“It’s—”
She was on a tirade. “No police? You’re giving me a heart attack.”
“Right.” Because her life was so stressful, sitting in her bathing suit by the pool and then getting a manicure that afternoon.
“Jules…”
“I have a real chance here. I mean, she’s our aunt.”
She didn’t respond.
“At least I’d have answers. I’ll be close enough to help her.”
A long pause.
“You know what I can do, Vic. You’ve witnessed it.”
Another long pause.
She finally responded. “You don’t even know it’s her. That she’s really alive,” she said.
I didn’t have time to answer again.
Because there she went again. “And I still don’t get how you visit her with your mind. That’s some weird shit.”
I murmured agreement. It was. Weeks earlier, if you’d told me this was what I’d being doing this summer, I’d have thought it was complete b.s. But I’d changed somehow.
“No way I can get the plane without asking Gramps directly,” she said. “And he won’t say yes.”
“So.”
“He made you ride a goddamn train across the country. You’re not exactly his favorite granddaughter right now. He thinks you’re psycho.”
Psycho. A word uttered all the time to me. Crazy witch. Devil’s touch. Rich bitch. It was kind of a catchall, if you thought about it. I was a woman who had the audacity to wield not only money, but power. Power that didn’t come from inheritance or clothes or makeup. Power that was all my own. And, I was beginning to realize, the world had a way of taking care of women who had too much power.
I gazed at the wall and gripped the phone in my hand. I didn’t care what Grandfather thought of me. What anyone thought of me. And for me, that was a first. It felt like fresh air rinsing my lungs.
“This is our aunt. She was just like me. Just. Like. Me. And now we know where she is.”
“You don’t know know.”
“I do.”
“He won’t say yes.”
“He might.” I paused for another second. “What if you asked your father? Tell him it’s for some ridiculous thing. He’ll indulge you, like always. Let him take the heat from Grandfather.”
I waited several beats for her to answer. Finally she let out an irritated sigh. “Fiiiine. I’ll try.”
“Tell him you want to help a girl who is dying, and you need the plane to take her from San Francisco to North Dakota?”
“Please.”
“It’s kind of true. Aunt Sabrina could die.”
“Says who?” I could imagine her sitting up straight, maybe even standing up.
“She’s in danger. This is serious, Vic.” I bit my lip and ran my finger through the coiled telephone cord. “I may have psychic abilities, but you have your own skills you can use.”
That was true. Vic knew her father’s soft spots.
Victoria’s voice sounded tight. “I’ll shoot for the plane to be ready Thursday at eight in the morning. Be there at the airport. Ready and packed.”
“And if the plane doesn’t show up?”
“Well, it means for the first time ever that Father said no. And for the first time ever, you’ll have to fly commercial.”
I smiled. “You’re the best.”
“You don’t have to do this. You could just stay there, finish up the summer, and come home.”
I knew I could do that. Drop it. I knew it was the safe option. I would put on my long stockings and school uniform again, study Latin and English literature and practice piano. I’d ignore Steve, never date again. I’d sit by the pond and talk about college entrance exams with Victoria and listen to music on her record player in her massive room. We’d go shopping in downtown Chicago and sit quietly, wearing long dresses, at my parents’ political fundraising dinners. I’d just be the same old Julia.
But I wouldn’t be.
After telling her that, I hung up the phone and satisfaction soared through me, knowing I was going to do what I thought was right in my heart. If Victoria was successful, then I had a significant chance. Aunt Sabrina was alive, and I had found her! My whole body buzzed with excitement.
I gazed out the window, thinking about what was next. What would it feel like to know she was whole, to know that she was okay and hadn’t really died because of her psychic abilities?
Out the window, I spotted two people walking across the Oval, in the campus’ main quad. Kids played Frisbee and studied beneath palm trees.
Immediately I recognized the two of them, and my hackles went up. I pressed two palms on the glass, and my heart pounded. It was Henry, walking toward the parking lot with his hand on Minnie’s shoulder. Just like when I saw him with Samuel. There was no way that she would let him get that close to her, or even let him touch her. She thought about as much of him as I did.
Everything in me shook like an earthquake. I unlocked the window and threw it up, and then stuck my head out the opening. “Minnie!” I called, before swallowing and then clearing the rocks in my throat. I yelled her name louder.
She didn’t flinch or look up, but Henry’s face darted my way and the side of his mouth turned up. Tiny, and perhaps I imagined it, but it looked like a smile.
Panic and fury spun inside me. I had no hard evidence, nothing to confirm something was up with him. Maybe it was my own paranoia about my missing aunt. Maybe it was my own fears about being a witch, that inescapable madness that reverberated inside me, a helplessness I’d always felt for being different, for being psychic, for being female. But whatever it was, it exploded in a terrified rage.
I hung my head out the window, grasped the windowsill, and screamed her name until my voice grew hoarse. Then the little sparkly fireflies fluttered in my peripheral vision. A sledgehammer banged inside my head. It was happening.
I gazed at the back of Henry’s head and shuddered. The sound of something ripping tore through the air, followed by a thud. A large tree crashed to the ground. Wham! Henry looked my way, and then, with a hand on Minnie’s shoulder, began running with her to the parking lot.
No!
Lights atop of a lamppost burst. A brand-new Plymouth Hemi ’Cuda convertible lifted off the ground. First the front wheels, then the back, and it spun wildly. A spinner on a board game. People screamed, and Henry and Minnie ducked out of sight.
I recalled Steve’s face, pale and awash in fear, ducking to avoid the invisible claw that tore apart Kristi’s vehicle. The bongos crashing against the tree at the park. No. I couldn’t hurt Minnie and anyone else. I squeezed my eyes shut and pressed my palms together and willed it to end. “Please!” I whispered.
I slammed the window shut and rushed out of the room. I’d do things the old-fashioned way. I’d find Minnie and rip her from his grip, get her to stay put. SRI was the safest place she could be.
I paused briefly on the stairs, just long enough to process that thought. Was SRI truly the safest place she could be?
Downstairs, I rammed the front door with my shoulder and ran on numb legs out of the building, across the lawn, and into the parking lot. My breath thudded in a rhythm in my chest as I searched for them amid chaos. What is the deal with me and cars and trees?
I had no other true abilities. I had nothing to offer anyone. Just fury that destroyed cars.
In the parking lot, I stopped and scanned the area, hands on my hips, breathing wildly. A siren wailed in the distance. Great. Just like last time.
Peering through the window of each car, I searched for Henry and Minnie
. Until finally, after several minutes, after searching nearly every car in the lot, I knew they’d escaped. To where, I had no idea.
I trotted back across the lawn, determined to figure out what happened to them, to find out how to reach her, to do something.
“You.”
It took a moment before I recognized the voice and understood the comment had been directed at me. Dr. Carrillo stood in front of me with her fingers splayed. “You … did that.”
Unlike the other onlookers, her voice didn’t reveal fear, but rather excitement.
“Henry. You can’t let him take her,” I said. My voice sounded as if I had swallowed bubbles, but it was louder than I expected.
“Why wouldn’t you show me that in the lab?”
She ignored my concern. Her thoughts wholly centered on her own scientific discoveries. She hadn’t discovered anything. It had been there all along inside me, a delicate dam ready to break if I didn’t keep control. Witch. Psycho. Gypsy. Voodoo doctor. Fortune-telling scam artist. We weren’t any of those things. We were human beings used and threatened and taken. And she didn’t care.
I turned away and ran up the stairs.
34
Charley
I paced the hallway, talking to myself. Practicing.
It was not at all easy with Minnie. There was a smart, perceptive mind behind the Southern tongue. She knew how to put people in their place, and she was fuming mad about Sammy. Despite a very real fear of her telling me off, I went to her room with the intent of convincing her to go with Henry.
We wound up talking for awhile first. Well, she did the talking, which was rare for me. I usually did all the talking. She said her dad wanted to be a scientist but didn’t have the money to go to college. Instead he took a job unloading cargo in the shipping industry. That’s why she believed so much in this program. She wanted to do what her dad couldn’t. She meandered into some conversation about Einstein, and how he spent years trying to do something like merge fields of electromagnetism and gravity— something like that. It made no sense, so I moved the conversation to food.
We laid on our backs on the bed. I talked about pies and hamburgers. She talked of collard greens and fat back, of white bread. I told her about the best donut I’d ever eaten. (A maple one from Indianapolis.) Lots and lots of talk of food. Then she talked about the hymns she sang in church on Sundays, and revealed that she’d probably fallen in love with that stick-straight Samuel.
Minnie wasn’t just one thing, and I liked her. So it wasn’t exactly easy to tell her the semi-lie that SRI was falling apart and invite her to come to my room with the intent of letting Henry talk to her privately. I had the same slimy feeling that I had when Dr. Carrillo called me a manipulator.
But it worked. Surprisingly. Maybe I caught her at a vulnerable moment. Still, it made me feel a little queasy.
My next target was Cord. Hopeful, pure, naïve Cord. I wrung my hands in the hallway. Henry had promised me big money if I sent those two packing to this new facility. I could use that money to maybe move Cindy out to San Francisco with me. Money that could solve all of Mom and Dad’s financial woes. Money that could let me explore California with no worries.
I couldn’t stop thinking about Cord, feeling so tormented by the idea of him leaving SRI and never seeing him again. I didn’t want that. But I wanted this money. I mumbled the words out loud that I was supposed to say to him: You need to get out of SRI, Cord. Go to this new facility that pays way better and will let you be a psychic soldier.
I tried to rationalize it to myself. Henry told me that Cord would be a psychic soldier at this new place. It was what he wanted, right?
But it felt wrong after all that I’d shared with Cord, all that I had actually felt when I was around him. He was different. Different from any other boy I’d met before. He was a sweet dessert that didn’t make you feel sick, didn’t make you fat. Just good. I genuinely wanted the best for him, even if he was too good for me.
Shit, I wanted the best for all of us. What was I doing?
The sound of footsteps and labored breath pulled me out of my own head. A couple doors down, Julia practically vibrated.
“What happened?” I asked, walking toward her. She turned to look at me, wild-eyed, like I was a grizzly bear and she was dinner. Her hair was damp with sweat, not styled in its usual coiffed look of a little princess.
She ran her hands through her hair and ducked inside her room. I followed her.
“Hey, don’t run away,” I said in the most soothing voice I could muster. I knew from Cindy that I could be too abrupt and just shut down all conversation.
I managed to squeeze through the door after she finally released her grip and allowed me inside. It smelled like rose perfume, like Julia. For a fraction of second, I wondered what my room smelled like. Sweat and sex and dirty laundry?
“What’s going on?” I asked again, and Julia finally looked at me, her chest heaving.
“I made bad stuff happen out there again,” she said, thumbing at the window. Her voice was small.
Outside, police cars surrounded a mangled car in the parking lot and a massive tree laid across the grass. Man. This was huge. How had I not even heard this going on?
I tried to downplay it. “Well, so, that stuff happens.” As if I’d uprooted trees before, too. She had one scary ability, and it seemed as though she had absolutely no control over it. A great reminder to stay on her good side.
“Dr. Carrillo saw it.”
“Good,” I said reflexively. “Now she’ll get off your back. She saw it all firsthand.”
She sank onto the bed. It squeaked despite the fact that she weighed about as much as my sister.
“And even though she wants answers to our spooky abilities, there are none. We don’t know why we’re different.” I paused. “What made you so mad?”
“Henry,” she said.
“Oh?” Hearing his name felt as if I just sat down on spikes.
“He took Minnie. Just like he took Samuel. I know he took them to a bad place.”
I sat down slowly on the bed across from her.
“You don’t know that.”
“I do. And I know you were with him.”
My face felt hot. How did she know?
“He’s bad, Charley. I feel it in my bones, like a cancer.”
So am I, Julia.
“It’s real, and it’s happening, and I don’t know why. And the worst part is, I’m leaving in two days to get my aunt in North Dakota. I may never be back here to fix this, to stop it.”
“You’re gonna see her?” The same place where Henry wants everyone to go?
“Yeah.”
I asked her if she knew any more about what happened to Sabrina or where she was being held, but she had no answers. The whole thing unnerved me. At least the others were going to a facility for testing. Julia was just going on some wild goose chase.
I stood up, ready to leave. Julia looked up at me with those big gray eyes.
“Will you find out what happened to Minnie? Check up on her?” she asked. “I feel terrible leaving with all this happening.”
I promised I’d check on Minnie. Lies. Lies. Lies. I gave her a hug, eager to leave her room and step away from the guilt that smoldered in my chest.
I needed to find Henry, get answers before I did anything else for him.
That night I sat alone in the cafeteria, picking at a cupcake. I hadn’t been able to eat dinner.
Cord appeared at the table, holding a tray of food. “It’s like a ghost town in the Dungeon. No one around.” His food didn’t look appetizing: Slabs of gelatinous turkey. Wobbly orange Jell-O with little chunks of pineapple. A rich garlic and onion smell wafted from the tray, and my stomach squeezed tighter.
If Julia knew about Henry, did Cord know too? His face looked relaxed, so I figured he didn’t hate me.
“Yeah?” I asked, trying to play like I was fine, that I wasn’t being twisted with guilt.
“Where
you been? I miss seeing you.”
If he knew me, he wouldn’t miss me. “What’d you do for the Dungeon today?” I asked.
He sat down next to me with his tray and dug in, telling me about his day. I didn’t really listen, gazing at the cupcake and nodding when instinct told me it was appropriate. A pause. An inflection in the voice. A comment like you know what I mean?
Cord grinned, and it was different than the smile Henry had worn several hours earlier. This guy saw the best in me. The best in everyone. He’d lay down in the middle of the street for his friends. For anyone.
And me? I’d be the girl who’d push you in the street just to save herself.
My mind hovered on Henry as I started to worry that I had betrayed people I liked because I had a fleeting thought that it was a good idea. And I also worried that Henry was betraying me, lying and taking off with our money.
He said he’d be back by six, and I wanted to see him. When he was open, I’d tell him to give me the money he owed me and I’d suggested to him that Cord should just stay at SRI.
“Have you seen Henry? He said he’d be back by now.” I glanced at my watch. A fake gold thing that never worked. Thrift-store gem.
The light in Cord’s face faded, and his mood was a chilly breeze. “Why d’you even care about him?”
Did he know?
“I just want to talk to him.” I studied the cupcake, avoiding his judgment and the conflicted feelings of sincere affection I felt for Cord. With two fingers, I lifted the cake to my mouth and licked off the frosting.
“I heard him talking on that pay phone, saying he was leaving town.”
I shook my head. Henry’s a liar, but he wouldn’t leave without me. “He probably just had stuff to do.” Yet I had called his room a dozen times before I came to the cafeteria, and he hadn’t answered.
“Maybe he just disappears, like Katerina and Samuel do,” he said. His tone implied it wouldn’t be the worst thing to ever happen. His face became animated with his next theory: “Or maybe… him and Katerina fell in love and ran away.”
Maybe he left me? Ran off with our potential money? Part of me didn’t care. Part of me wanted him to run away. Cord kept talking: “You know, we should call the cops about them guys. Talk to Missus Carrillo? No … Maybe just the cops.”
Extraordinary Lies Page 22
