Others See Us

by William Sleator

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  Others See Us

  William Sleator

  Oh wad some power the giftie gie us

  To see oursels as others see us!

  —ROBERT BURNS

  one

  I fell in the swamp on the Fourth of July.

  All winter I’d been thinking about my cousin Annelise and looking forward to the summer, when I’d see her again at the family compound on the shore. Then Mom and Dad had to drag me to Europe for the month of June. Castles and restaurants, and all I could think about was Annelise on the beach. We arrived at the compound weeks later than everybody else. The one good thing was that we had to get there on the Fourth of July, since Grandma’s holiday cookout is the most important event of the summer. We pulled up at our cottage late on the afternoon of the Fourth.

  The first thing I always do at the cottage is to hide my journal in its secret place. Then I hop on my old bike and take a ride around the back roads. The bike ride is kind of a ritual with me. I like to get a feel for the place on my own, right away. Even this summer, impatient as I was to see Annelise, I didn’t skip the bike ride. There was something delicious about stretching out the wonderful moment just before seeing her for the first time in a year.

  I was sixteen and had grown a lot since last summer. My legs were longer and stronger, too, from going out for track. Thinking about Annelise, I kind of got carried away. Pumping up the hills was so effortless that I kept pumping on the way down, too, really working up some speed.

  It was too much for the old bike. The brakes went at the bottom of the hill, where the road makes that sharp turn around the swamp, and before I knew it, I was in the swamp, up to my ears, gasping and choking at the poisonous chemical stink. It wasn’t that long ago that the summer people had finally managed to stop the mill from dumping toxic waste in there, but so far nobody had gotten around to cleaning out all the industrial gunk that had been accumulating in the swamp for years.

  It took me awhile to get home, wheeling the clogged bike. Back at the cottage it was embarrassing to admit to Mom and Dad that I had fallen into the swamp. But the stuff was all over me. And anyway I just can’t lie, and Mom and Dad and everybody else in the family know it.

  Mom didn’t want the rest of the family—especially Grandma—to think I was a klutz, so she told me not to mention the swamp accident to anyone else. To be sure no one would notice anything, I had to scrub myself over and over again in the shower in order to get the stink off. Mom and Dad didn’t really have to wait for me—it’s a short walk over to Grandma’s house, the main house right on the beach where all the parties happen—but Mom insisted on hanging around until I was through cleaning up, so she could make sure I got rid of the odor and no one would put me on the spot by asking about it. I was in the shower for a long time.

  “You smell like you took a bath in baby oil,” Mom commented when I was finally through.

  “It helped to dissolve the gunk.”

  “Well, I guess you’re presentable enough now,” she said, shaking her head and clucking in amusement at my stupidity. She moved toward the door.

  That’s when it hit me.

  A moment later Mom turned back. “Aren’t you coming with us, Jared? You’re just standing there.”

  I was just standing there because while Mom had been calmly saying, “Well, I guess you’re presentable enough now,” I heard a kind of ringing in my ears, and my brain was grabbed and shaken by an alien sensation of worry about being late. I had never felt anything like it.

  I shook my head. “Uh, I guess I just had some kind of weird déjà vu,” I said, blinking.

  “Let’s go,” Mom said.

  She and Dad and I strolled together under the big old trees across the lawn, which was dappled with late-afternoon light. The summer estate has been in the family ever since Grandma and Grandpa bought it years and years ago. Mom and her brother and two sisters each have what we call a cottage, though they’re more like comfortable houses than cottages, scattered across the property at discrete distances from one another. But none of them is as big as Grandma’s old gabled three-story house, with its widow’s walk overlooking the sea, which was originally the only building on the place. The big house was impressive but shabby, since Grandma couldn’t afford to keep fixing it up. Grandpa died when I was a baby, and Grandma talked a lot about her financial struggles since his death; she was always worrying she might have to sell the place.

  “Beautiful day for the party,” Dad was saying smoothly. Again I was jabbed in the head by a foreign spasm of anxiety, this time about getting enough booze to drink. But I never drank alcohol! The sensation was so intense that I had to make an effort to keep walking and not just freeze again. What was going on? This was getting a little scary.

  “Mother gets so much pleasure at having all of us together on these occasions,” Mom said. “She’s really sentimental at heart.” And I was punched by a vivid mental picture of Grandma’s face, her bright red mouth twisted in fury as she screamed something extremely nasty at Mom.

  “Phew!” I couldn’t keep from saying.

  Mom and Dad both looked at me.

  “My head feels funny,” I said uncomfortably, though it wasn’t a lie.

  “You’re sure you didn’t swallow any of that swamp stuff?” Mom asked me, for the fifth time. And Grandma’s face was replaced by a fearful image of myself lying in a hospital bed covered with pink greasy cancerous lesions.

  “I’m sure,” I gulped, fighting nausea.

  The horrible mental image vanished the instant Grandma’s house came into view. The building was a completely different, much lighter color; the entire house had been freshly shingled for the first time in my memory.

  Dad raised his eyebrows, and he and Mom exchanged a glance, and somehow I knew they were thinking, How’s the old lady going to keep crying poor after this? I had never heard them refer to Grandma as “the old lady.”

  Directly to the right of the house the stone jetty, where boats are moored, extends a hundred yards or so into the water; to the right of the jetty is our private beach. There they all were, amid colorful lawn chairs and umbrellas: Mom’s siblings, Maggie and Grace and George, and their spouses and kids, some romping and chasing, others standing and chatting like adults. But it was Grandma who dominated the scene in her oversize Victorian wicker chair, her face brown and leathery, her long white hair streaming down her back, smoke drifting from the cigarette in her hand.

  I searched the beach for my first glimpse of Annelise, hoping I wasn’t being too obvious about it. Where was she? I remembered she had spent a lot of time with a boy named Bruce last summer.

  Waves of heat and delicious smells emanated from the large stone barbecue. Dad—whose name is really Bob, but whom everybody in the family refers to as Bobo—was already moving toward the table beside the barbecue, with its bottles and glasses and ice buckets.

  “Elspeth, darling, it’s so wonderful to see you!” Aunt Maggie cried, embracing Mom. Mom hugged her back, and then they stood gazing fondly at each other, arms on shoulders.

  “What an adorable dress!” Aunt Maggie said. “You look absolutely marvelous!”

  Wal-Mart, that dress just screams it.

  It felt as though some invisible person had whispered the words into my ear, and I jumped. They were all too preoccupied to notice.

  “Don’t be silly. You’re the one who’s never looked better,” Mom was saying.

  All those new wrinkles. Hasn’t she heard of Retin-A?

  “Bobo, you’re handsomer than ever, with that distinguished touch of gray,” Aunt Maggie gushed. “And Jared,
you’re the picture of your father.”

  Bobo is so fat! It must be his drinking. And Jared! Who would have believed the little shrimp—always so small for his age—would turn out to be so tall and good-looking?

  I managed to mumble appropriate greetings, fighting confusion. What was happening in my brain? Was I going crazy? Trying to appear casual, I shaded my eyes and looked away. And then, briefly, my head cleared. There she was down by the water—Annelise, Uncle George’s daughter, only a few months younger than I was. She was playing with Amy, the youngest cousin. It was always someone’s responsibility to be with Amy, who had to be watched every minute she was near the water, and Annelise and Amy were especially close.

  Annelise turned toward me, shaking back her long, gleaming black hair. Our eyes met. She regarded me blankly for a moment, as though she didn’t know who I was. Then her delicate features opened into a smile of amazed recognition. I beamed back at her, glowing inside, automatically starting toward her.

  But Mom took my arm. “Come on, Jared,” she prompted me, and I was smacked by a jangling, ragged turbulence. “Grandma’s waiting.”

  two

  What am I going to tell her about being late? the silent voice was now desperately repeating. It had a nagging quality that was beginning to seem oddly familiar, but I still struggled to push it away.

  Grandma looked scrawnier than ever in her loose, peasanty blouse. She didn’t get up, of course. She lifted the corners of her lipstick-smeared mouth—its outline jagged because of all her wrinkles—and extended one dark brown arm to touch Mom’s cheek and poke Dad in the stomach. Then she looked me up and down appraisingly and finally rested her eyes on mine, her narrow face a relief map of wrinkles. Her smile was still fixed in place, but her expression was unreadable.

  “Sorry we’re a little late, Mother,” Mom began. I almost jumped again. It was startling the way she immediately started talking about what this voice had been whispering into my brain; she had not uttered a word about being late until this moment. “We had some car trouble and just couldn’t find—”

  Grandma waved her cigarette at her to shush her. “Gee, don’t you look swell, boy,” she told me in her deep, rasping voice. “Now where did I put my glasses?” She scrabbled around in her bag, found the glasses, slipped them on and studied me again, then nodded knowingly. “I always knew Jared would shoot up overnight,” Grandma continued. “I never paid any attention to what Maggie was always saying about what a shrimp he was.” She inclined her head toward the drinks table. “Go get yourself some refreshment, Jared. Bobo hasn’t hesitated, I see, despite the price of gin. Get something for Elspeth, too.” She thrust her plastic glass at me. “And while you’re at it, freshen up my G and T, like the dutiful grandson you are.”

  I took her glass and moved away, thinking about how much I was going to have to write in my journal that night.

  Dad was already back at the table, making himself another drink while listening to Uncle George, who was talking about trouble in the neighborhood. “Nothing like this has ever happened before,” Uncle George was saying. “Money’s been disappearing from the ATM in town—lots and lots of it.”

  Five-nine-one-eight, said a voice rather automatically.

  Two-six-three-four, said a distinctly different voice.

  I finished making Grandma’s drink and looked around. Annelise was still playing with Amy, but she noticed as soon as I glanced over there and smiled at me again. How was I going to act cool around Annelise with these voices reciting numbers in my head? I tried not to panic, urging the voices to go away.

  “There’s no evidence the machine’s been tampered with,” Uncle George said. “Somehow the thief gets people’s cards away from them without their realizing it, and he also seems to know the numbers that go with their cards. Money’s been vanishing in staggering amounts. There’s so much of an outcry, the bank’s about to close the thing down. What a pain that’s going to be.”

  I fumbled as I squeezed lime into Mom’s drink, wondering about Annelise.

  “There was also a really peculiar break-in right next door at the Winstons’,” Uncle George droned on. “Whoever did it got through the security system without a hitch. The system was apparently in perfect condition, not jimmied with at all. But the alarm didn’t go off.”

  Nine-eight-three-two, said one voice—the same voice that earlier had been worrying about getting enough to drink.

  Six-six-eight-one, said the other voice.

  “And the crooks didn’t take the obvious things like VCRs and PCs,” Uncle George continued. “They got into a safe—again, no breakage or tampering—and took personal stuff. The Winstons refuse to say what’s missing, like they’re afraid to mention anything specific. And since they won’t say what was stolen, there isn’t much the cops can do.”

  I was now getting the feeling that there was something about the voices that made sense, something that was eluding me. But I was too frazzled to be able to figure it out. I just wanted the voices to stop.

  “And then there was that terrible boating accident,” Uncle George said, suddenly sounding very somber.

  “Yeah?” Dad said.

  I was curious, too. But I knew Mom and Grandma wanted their drinks, and I was eager to get to Annelise, and I could find out about this accident later. I made my way back to Mom and Grandma, who thanked me perfunctorily for their drinks and went on with their animated conversation. Grandma had taken up knitting this summer, and she was clicking away with her needles, making something gray and weblike—and doing most of the talking. Mom and Aunt Maggie and Aunt Beatrice, who was Annelise’s mother, mostly listened. For once Grandma was not going on and on about how poor she was and how she’d have to sell the place, a topic that usually dominated her conversation. Instead she was expressing her relief that there was no loud music coming from the Winstons’ next door; we could usually hear it all day on the Fourth of July.

  The mental voices and images around Grandma had a different quality from the ones I had picked up when I was with Dad and Uncle George. There was one rather gloating picture of me and how handsome I was, accompanied by an eagerness to bring me back into the conversation. A second voice was concentrating on Lindie, Aunt Maggie’s daughter; this voice was itching to switch the subject around to Lindie’s acceptance at Harvard. Was one of these voices coming from Mom’s brain and the other one from Aunt Maggie’s? I didn’t want to think about it.

  I walked away, stopping briefly to chat with Lindie, noticing, as I always did, her funny New Jersey accent. Lindie grinned at me and seemed pleased when I said something about Harvard. As usual, her manner was bright and jovial. But at the same time I was gripped by a strange and very unpleasant tension. Was I picking up the emotions caused by some secret worry of Lindie’s? The idea made me really uncomfortable. I got away from her as soon as I politely could.

  But I couldn’t get away from what was happening to me. No matter whom I was with, unfamiliar images and emotions kept pouncing into my head. I had to be going crazy, imagining I was picking up other people’s thoughts.

  And yet … some of the stuff I was getting seemed to make a certain sense, to fall into a pattern. But it was too complicated for me to be able to organize the information while it was actually jumping into me. Tonight, when I was alone, I would write it all down in my journal and try to make sense out of it that way. Until then all I could do was grit my teeth and try to act normal.

  But if I was picking up other people’s thoughts, then what would Annelise’s brain hit me with? I was apprehensive. I wanted to know what Annelise was thinking only if what she was thinking was what I wanted her to think.

  But I was still drawn to her. Greeting other people, I worked my way over to Annelise and Amy, who were building something near the water. Amy was a cute little kid with white blond hair. As I approached them, everything began to get very much weirder. The world was turning into a lush animated cartoon. The sea was too blue to be real, and infinitely inviting.
The sand castle they were building was fantastically elaborate, with impeccably detailed turrets and balconies. It was perfect, and it would last forever.

  Was this what a five-year-old’s brain was like? The sand castle was really just a blobby wet mess, but Amy was so enchanted by the structure that it kind of bothered me to think about how upset she’d be when the tide rose and wiped the thing out.

  “Hi, Jared,” Amy said brightly. “Look at our beautiful castle.”

  Annelise turned and gazed up at me. I steeled myself.

  And I was splashed by a jubilant heady rush. Was that how she felt about me? Or was I reading my own feelings into hers? The sensation was too diffuse for me to be sure. Still, I wasn’t getting even a hint of anything negative. That was encouraging. Suddenly I wanted to believe this fantastic mental ability was real.

  Annelise started to get up, and I felt a thrill of excitement from Amy. She longed to run into the magical forbidden ocean by herself; she would head for it as soon as she was left unattended. “Can I help, too?” I said, and quickly knelt beside them. Amy deferred her escape plan, focusing on the castle again, enjoying the attention of two grown-up cousins. Annelise and I patted at the sand as we talked.

  We live in Boston; Annelise’s family is in San Diego. We never got together during the year. One of the things I enjoyed the most last summer was talking with Annelise. She’s very charming and witty, the family favorite. But what I discovered last summer was that we have something special in common. We both want to be writers. She had dropped enough hints to lead me to understand that she kept a secret journal. Though she never directly admitted it, I somehow knew I could trust her and had told her that I myself had a journal that nobody else in the world knew about.

  But last summer we had only been friends. Over the year, as I thought about her, my feelings had changed. Even though we hadn’t written to each other, knowing our parents would wonder about it, I had been hoping that this summer we could get beyond friendship.