Others See Us

by William Sleator

  “But Annelise, I didn’t take it!” I said, finally speaking because I just couldn’t stand listening to her for another instant.

  “Oh, Jared! Nobody but you knows I want to be a writer—or that I might have a notebook with, uh, fictional material in it. And now you’re acting like you’re afraid I’m going to bite you.” There was contempt in her voice. “You think I don’t know you, Jared? You can’t lie. Guilt’s written all over you. You must have done it early this morning when I was helping my parents with the boat. Just go get it now and—”

  Suddenly I was angry. “If you’re so sure I took your notebook, then maybe you can tell me who stole mine,” I interrupted her.

  “Huh?”

  “My journal was gone when I got home last night. And nobody but you knows about my journal. Not to mention, I just got here yesterday. You’ve been around for the last month, while somebody sneaked into the Winstons’ house and took their personal papers.” I sat back in my chair, staring hard at her. “And you never actually told me you had a journal until just now. Think about it. I have a lot more reason to be suspicious of you than you have to be suspicious of me.”

  Now she was frightened in a completely different way. Until this moment she had been too upset by the possible exposure of the ugly behavior in her journal to think beyond herself; it had not occurred to her to connect its absence with what was going on in the neighborhood. But she wasn’t stupid; she knew that I couldn’t lie and that what I was saying made sense.

  “It’s not you? Somebody else has it? And your notebook, too?”

  I nodded.

  “Oh.” She paused, thinking for a moment, changing her tactics. “Er, I’m sorry I, uh, got so upset with you, Jared,” she apologized. “But I was scared. You don’t know what kind of experimental stories I’ve been writing in that notebook. Fictional stuff. Nobody would understand.” She sighed. “Well, at least it’s not somebody in the family who has it,” she said hopefully. “I mean, if it’s the same person who broke into the Winstons’, like you said.”

  “I said maybe. But maybe not.” I didn’t tell her I knew it had to be somebody at the family cookout who had taken my journal because I didn’t want to tell her how I knew. It was a very good thing I had found out what Annelise was really like before making the mistake of telling her about my new mental abilities.

  “Oh,” Annelise said again. Then she noticed, for the first time, the plastic bottle of baby oil I still had in my hands. She smiled, feeling it was the right moment to start being charming to me again. She was masterful, able to pull off this act even though she was still overflowing with anxiety about her journal. “Good old baby oil. Grandma’s idea, right?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  She chuckled. “Grandma has this fixation about baby oil,” she said.

  Her next remark flashed into my mind before she said it in words, but it took me a little longer to begin to grasp its full implication.

  “Grandma told me baby oil was the only thing that finally got the gunk off her after she fell in the swamp.”

  six

  I had part of the answer now.

  I had begun to pick up people’s thoughts—including their security codes—soon after falling into the toxic swamp. Grandma had fallen into the swamp, too. She was always wandering all over the property; no one would think it was odd to see her near either of our cottages.

  I now remembered that I had been thinking about my journal—as well as its hiding place—while talking with Grandma yesterday. And today Grandma had made that remark to Eric about words. “Nothing carries more expression than the right word; Jared can tell you that,” she had said to him. How else could she have known that I did think about words if she hadn’t peeked into my mind, found out I wanted to be a writer, and also read my journal?

  Had Grandma also stolen money from the ATM and broken into the Winstons’ house? That was hard to believe. Was there a third mind reader around who was the criminal? I still had a lot of questions.

  My immediate impulse was to get to Grandma fast.

  I cautioned myself to wait a minute, not rush off blindly, construct some kind of strategy first. With Grandma I would have to be very, very careful. If she knew I could read minds, I might never learn anything from her.

  Annelise was being outwardly nice to me now, though her worries about her journal continued to dirty the atmosphere, like flies around rotting meat. “What’s the matter, Jared? Say something.”

  I didn’t bother to respond, though a corner of my mind registered with pleasure how nonplussed she was that any boy could dismiss her with such casual aloofness. I just went on concentrating hard, making an effort to ignore the sharp, painful pinching of her anxiety. I was getting better at shielding my brain from other people’s thoughts.

  But could I also hide my own thoughts from another mind reader? I now knew it must be possible, since Grandma had obviously concealed her real thoughts from me today. But I had no practice at that. How had Grandma done it?

  I remembered with a sinking feeling the impossible paradox of the alchemists’ formula for turning lead into gold; all you had to do was stir the molten lead while not thinking the word rhinoceros. What I would have to do to hide my thoughts from Grandma would be a lot harder than that.

  Being alone with Grandma would guarantee failure. But filling her mind with distractions from other people might give me somewhere to hide.

  What I needed was a diversion so electrifying and magnetic that it would drag the entire focus of Grandma’s attention away from me. Knowing Grandma, what would be most irresistible to her would be some deliciously sordid secret.

  I was buzzed again by Annelise’s swarming insect bites of distress about her journal.

  I wasn’t as uncontrollably worried about my journal as Annelise was about hers. My emotions had subsided since I’d had more time to adjust to its disappearance. And most of the stuff in my journal was bland and boring compared with the brutal nastiness that dominated Annelise’s.

  Grandma would certainly consider Annelise’s journal a far more toothsome morsel than mine. She had just stolen it this morning and probably hadn’t had time to read all of it yet. And Annelise’s powerful emotions about her journal were impossible to ignore.

  I stood up and looked at my watch. “Meet me at Grandma’s in five minutes,” I told her with all the authority I could muster.

  “What good will that do?”

  “If anybody’s read them, don’t you think we’ll be able to tell? Whoever has them will act different, guilty, something that might give it away.” It wasn’t a lie; I just wasn’t telling her everything.

  “But if it is that thief in the neighborhood, he won’t be at Grandma’s.”

  I wanted her to be as frightened as possible, to attract Grandma’s curiosity. “I never said it couldn’t be somebody in the family who took the journals. Maybe it is. Wouldn’t we have noticed somebody else sneaking around here? Anyway, don’t you want to eliminate the family as soon as we can? Nothing would be worse than one of them finding the notebooks.” I paused, and then spoke with grim emphasis. “Until we’re sure, we have to consider all our relatives as enemies; we can’t stop worrying about any of them for an instant. Don’t forget that. Five minutes. Be there.”

  The first thing I did at the beach was to check on Amy. She was being safely kept away from the water by Eric; Lindie had instructed him not to let her out of his sight for an instant. Not only was Lindie more responsible about Amy than Aunt Grace was, she had been the only one to see through Annelise. Until today, I had been too stupid to notice how unusual Lindie was. Now, eager to find out what other surprises might be in her mind, I was drawn to her.

  She was sitting under an umbrella reading War and Peace, so it was easy to start a conversation with her about Anna Karenina. Annelise’s parents were still out sailing, but everyone else was nearby on the beach—except Grandma. I quickly learned from Lindie’s mind that Grandma had just returned from some errand
; she hadn’t said where she had been. Now she was in her study, having mentioned vaguely that she had some kind of business to attend to. While talking to Lindie, I hopped from one mind to another, looking for more information about Grandma. I knew by now that trying to read several minds at once was confusing, like trying to listen to two different radio stations. You learned a lot more by focusing on only one mind at a time.

  No one knew what Grandma’s errand had been. And many people were curious about what she was doing inside, since Grandma’s usual pattern was to inflict upon her skin the sunlight of midday, when the rays were most dangerous. Getting the deepest possible tan as quickly as possible was not her only motivation; everyone knew Grandma enjoyed flaunting her utter disregard of the family’s disapproval, since the more they begged her to be careful about the sun, the darker she got.

  And now Grandma probably also got a tremendous charge out of looking into the minds of her children and their spouses and learning which of them were genuinely concerned about her health and which were hoping she would die of skin cancer, the sooner the better.

  Grandma had always claimed that she had serious money problems, constantly threatening that she was going to have to sell off portions of the estate, if not the whole thing. But despite what Grandma said, it was no secret that all her offspring and their spouses believed her death would result in inheritances for them. That was probably the main reason Grandma had always relished going on and on about how she really had no money at all.

  But this year, for the first time in all my memories of her, Grandma had not said one word about how poor she was.

  I forgot about it as soon as Annelise arrived. Her dark hair was brushed and gleaming again, as straight and perfect and boring as a wig on a department store dummy. She was calm and poised, despite the specific thoughts about her journal that were stinging me like hungry flies, accompanied by her feverish plotting of potential defense strategies. She squatted down beside me and Lindie as casually as if nothing were the matter at all.

  It was interesting to see them together, reading Lindie’s distaste for Annelise’s falseness, her envy at Annelise’s beauty. Sure, Lindie needed to lose a little weight. But her curly, tousled hair was actually much prettier than Annelise’s. I was more curious than ever about the terrible worry that gnawed at Lindie, which was now just inches beyond my reach.

  But I had no time to think about that now. I had to get Annelise and Grandma and me together. “I’m going in to get something to drink.” I tilted my head at Annelise and stood up.

  “Me too,” Annelise said. “You want anything, Lindie?”

  Lindie shook her head silently, not thanking Annelise, and turned back to her book.

  Annelise didn’t know why I wanted to go inside, but she felt so self-conscious about confronting anybody who might have seen her journal that she was grateful for the chance to avoid the relatives for as long as possible.

  We went in through the side door, which leads into the kitchen; the ancient patched screen had been replaced by a sturdy new one. It was cool and dark inside, and there was a faint garbagy smell, with dirty dishes and old newspapers all over the place. I knew where Grandma’s study was, at the opposite end of the house from the kitchen, but I stalled in front of the shiny new refrigerator.

  I was very nervous about facing Grandma. It seemed of utmost importance to me that Grandma mustn’t know yet that I could read minds, too. If she knew, she’d keep everything important from me; I’d never find out about the journals or be able to use my abilities to get them back.

  Grandma had to know that the thief in the neighborhood had fallen into the swamp and could read minds. That was why she had set up the barrier yesterday, in front of all the others, that gave the impression there was nothing in her mind but what she was verbalizing. But Grandma had no reason to be suspicious of my being a mind reader, since the crimes had taken place before my arrival. My hope was that with only Annelise and me around she would let down her guard, distracted by Annelise’s stinging thoughts, and give me a chance to peek inside hers.

  But she would never do this if she had an inkling of what I could do and what I knew about her. So how was I going to not think about those things?

  One strategy might be simply to focus my attention on the objective world—the spiderwebs in the corners, the linoleum on the floor, the views through the dusty windows—giving Grandma nothing interesting but Annelise’s mind to pick up. I was pretty sure she’d be hooked by Annelise’s insidious intensity, her fears, and her plotting as soon as she got a sniff of them. And I knew you picked up more if you concentrated only on one mind at a time, meaning Annelise’s thoughts might keep Grandma away from mine.

  “Let’s go tease Grandma about her tan fading,” I said.

  “Huh?” Annelise wasn’t suspicious of Grandma.

  “Lindie told me she was in her study. Maybe she’s reading something,” I said in a significant whisper, staring hard at Annelise.

  Annelise’s eyes widened as for the first time she connected Grandma with the journals. Annelise knew very well how much Grandma adored gossip and relished speaking her mind. Her horror boomed and ignited with the fury of an incendiary bomb. I ducked away from the raging bonfire, actually breaking into a sweat from the intense heat.

  “But—but what will we do if she has them?” Annelise had no idea that to a mind reader, her uncontrollable speculation about exactly what Grandma might have read was exactly like searchlight beacons splaying the contents of her journal across the night sky.

  “If she’s read them, that’s all the more reason to stop her—now.”

  Annelise couldn’t argue with that. She reluctantly followed me out of the kitchen, past the stairway piled with objects that were never carried upstairs, down the dark, narrow hallway. I paused outside the closed study door.

  How much power did Grandma really have? What if I couldn’t hide from her? What would she do to me if she found out what I knew about her?

  My worries were interrupted—again—by Annelise’s hot, glaring klieg lights of distress. I held my breath and knocked on the door of Grandma’s study.

  “Who’s there?” Grandma called out, and I heard papers rustling, a drawer slamming shut.

  “Jared and Annelise,” I answered. “We missed you outside. Are you OK?”

  “Well, aren’t you sweet, worrying about your poor old grandma!” More hurried shuffling. “Come in, come in.”

  Her study was a small dark room that reeked of cigarette smoke. As I stepped inside, I concentrated on the old library table piled sloppily with magazines and papers, the cobwebs on the green-shaded lamp, the yellowed photographs glued haphazardly to the dirty walls. I did what I could to keep away from Annelise’s mind-scorching conflagration.

  Grandma actually flinched, not prepared for anything of such violence, her blotchy red mouth twitching in an odd sort of way, her eyes instantly riveted on Annelise.

  “Aren’t … you … afraid … your … tan … will … fade?” I managed to utter, my voice flat and unconvincing as I struggled to concentrate on a decades-old photograph of Grandma and Grandpa. I was pretty sure that Annelise’s adrenaline rush was beating through Grandma with the force of an amplifier at a rock concert. Unaware of the possibility of mind readers, Annelise was doing nothing to censor the contents of her mind.

  Grandma was good, all right. She quickly covered her reaction, putting down her knitting, forcing a smile, pushing her glasses up on her nose, her ironic tone convincingly normal. “You should talk, still pale as a jellyfish, ignoring your grandmother’s instructions,” she chastised me.

  But Grandma’s hand trembled as she lit a cigarette, oblivious of the one still burning in an ashtray on her permanently disorganized desk. Did I dare hope she was so bowled over by Annelise’s emotions that she might have become forgetful and dropped her guard? It wouldn’t be for long. I had to act, and it had to be now.

  I was tense as a shoplifter entering a crowded department s
tore; I was cowering with the vulnerability of a dream in which you are naked in a public place and know that in the next instant you’ll be caught. But I didn’t hesitate. Hoping no alarms would go off, I stepped carefully into Grandma’s mind.

  seven

  A whirling tunnel of dark, abstract shapes almost knocked me off my feet. I staggered to maintain my balance against the pitch and yaw, a passenger on a storm-racked ship. There was no barrier, no wall of superficial thoughts that had shut me out before.

  Compared with this, reading an ordinary person was like a muffled phone conversation with a few pictures and noises in the background. Grandma’s mind seemed to be an entire world. I was scared, because it was so hard to interpret the shifting kaleidoscopic images in this crazy place. Yet somehow I did know there was no awareness of my presence. I had made it inside!

  I tried to stifle my elation; an emotional outburst like that could instantly expose me. Remaining hidden here required rigid discipline, a quelling of all feeling, a cloak of numbness and silence. The slightest misstep in this mine field would detonate a bomb, revealing my presence.

  And at the same time I had to pay attention to what Grandma and Annelise were saying.

  “If Jared tried to get a tan on the first day, he’d just get horribly burned, you know that, Grandma.” Annelise was trying to convey concern for my welfare. “It can really be dangerous.”

  I began to see that there were already bombs going off in Grandma’s mind—apparently her perceptions of Annelise’s mental fireworks and planned verbal defenses—which were probably what was keeping me hidden. My strategy seemed to be working, at least for now: Grandma was ignoring my mind and focusing her full attention on Annelise. I hoped Annelise’s violent thoughts would continue to camouflage me for a long time. It was going to take awhile to learn anything in here.