by Diane Farr
“No.”
“Can you get any closer?”
“No. They’ll see me.”
I could hear the concentration returning to her voice and knew that she was getting a grip. Which was a huge relief to me, because frankly, I rely on Meg. A lot.
“Listen,” she said. “We’ll be okay. If anybody asks you—and I don’t think they will—just be as surprised as everybody else.”
“But I’m not.”
“Zara!”
“Okay. I’ll try. But I’m not very good at this.”
“They’re interviewing him. I can’t believe it. They’re interviewing Donald.” She sounded distraught. “I hope he manages to speak grammatically. I hope he uses complete sentences. I hope—”
“Not! I hope he sounds like an idiot. Or, better yet, high on something.”
Meg sighed. “I see your point. Still ... the honor of the O’Shaughnessies, you know. I can’t believe they’re going to put Donald on the news.”
Meg is definitely the brains of the O’Shaughnessy clan. They’re a fairly brainy lot, in general—except for Donald, and maybe Petey, though it’s probably too early to tell—but Meg outshines them all. I’m sure it would be agony, if I were Meg, to have the brother most likely to disgrace my family thrust into the spotlight. But excuse me, under the circumstances, I thought she had her priorities a teensy bit skewed.
“I can’t do this on the phone,” I told her. “Where are you?”
“I’m by the smoothie shack. Pretending I’m in line.”
“I’m on my way.”
But by the time I got there, she had disappeared. I asked the smoothie shack guy: “Did you see a girl about my age? Short, with curly hair and glasses? She was on the phone.” He pointed. I turned.
Meg was arguing with Donald. The reporter had her mike stuck right under Meg’s chin. And the camera was rolling.
Fear washed over me in waves. What was Meg saying?? Plus Donald was going to spot me any second. When he did, he would sic the news team on me.
I touched my face to make sure I was still wearing those sunglasses. I was, of course. So I turned my back and walked away—controlling an impulse to run.
I walked straight out of the park, mentally counting the change in my pockets. I had enough. So I took the bus back to Cherry Glen.
The bus! I was truly desperate.
Once I had slunk into the rearmost seat and was safely jolting back toward Cherry Glen, I texted Meg: taking bus home call me I didn’t have time to get cute with it.
From that moment on, I held my phone in my lap, staring tensely at it like it was a grenade I expected to explode at any second. Not only did it not explode, it just sat there, lifeless as a stone. My anxiety mounted as the minutes ticked by. My imagination overheated and ran riot, picturing the news team wresting Meg’s phone from her grasp, reading my message, and galloping down the road after the bus. I started glancing nervously behind me, out the rear window, expecting to see the KCHG news van barreling up to the bumper, lights flashing and sirens wailing.
I guess TV news vans don’t have lights and sirens. Okay, I realize that now. I'm just telling you what my imagination was conjuring at the time. I was pretty shook up.
Nonny and I live way the heck out of town, down Chapman Road. There’s not much out there—just our house, Nonny’s nursery across the street, and eventually the Chapman place. Needless to say, the bus doesn’t go anywhere near us. In fact, Cherry Glen being the insignificant little place it is, we’re lucky a bus comes here at all. It only stops at the town square. So at the one and only Cherry Glen stop, I got off the bus, ducked into the drugstore (just in case KCHG showed up after all) and called the nursery.
I didn’t call the office, of course, because Nonny might answer. I called the number that the customers use.
“Norland’s Nursery.”
“Tres? Is that you? It’s Zara, but don’t say my name.”
“Za... wha?” He coughed.
“Nice catch.”
“Thanks. What can I do for you?”
“When’s your next break?”
“Um …”
“If Nonny’s around, pretend I’m a customer.”
“Okay. Well, ma’am, as far as your question goes, that would be, um, whenever.”
“Can you get away now?”
“Pretty close to it, yeah.”
“Brilliant. I’m downtown and I need a ride home. Can you help me?”
“You bet. Anytime. Be glad to.”
He tends to say things three times, which is why everybody calls him Tres (Spanish for “three,” you know). That, and the fact that his dad and grandfather have the same name he does, which makes him Alejandro Something Something Palacios III.
“You’re a peach. I'm inside the drugstore, but I’ll watch for your truck.”
“Okay. Give me five minutes.” Pause. “I'm a what?”
“Peach. See you in five.”
I ended the call, laughing. I swear, sometimes I crack me up.
I think Tres might have a thing for me. But if he does, I’d rather not know. The last thing I need is a boyfriend who works for Nonny. Which is too bad, because Tres really is a peach.
Anyway, Tres got me home and here I am. My phone has been dead as a rock all night. You would THINK that Meg would call. Did I, or did I not, ask her to call me? (Answer: I did.) You would THINK she’d let me know what happened after I left. You would THINK she’d at least tell me how Donald is. You would THINK she’d realize I'm going out of my mind with worry. But I guess you’d be wrong.
The first thing I did when I got home was disconnect the dish so we couldn’t accidentally catch the news. Nonny didn’t figure out what was wrong with the TV until right before bedtime, so it worked. With luck, the stock market will crash tomorrow or we’ll invade Belgium or something, and the Water Park Incident will vanish from the news cycle.
I must try to keep Nonny from finding out about the Water Park Incident. Even if the reporters claim it was all some kind of weird hoax, Nonny will know immediately that I was involved. Because any time there’s a strange and inexplicable occurrence, it turns out to involve her little Zara. And she hates that a lot.
Every family has subjects that are taboo. Most families, the taboo subjects have to do with sex. Or maybe drugs. Nonny’s kind of an old hippie, so sex and drugs don’t faze her. In our little two-person family, the Thing That Cannot Be Named is me. Or, rather, my abilities. My peculiar talent for bending reality.
Come to think of it, I’ve spent so many years suppressing my powers and hiding them from Nonny, I wonder if she thinks I’ve outgrown them??
Too bad I can’t ask her. But I can’t. It’s not only The Thing That Cannot Be Named, it’s The Thing That Cannot Be Referred To Even Obliquely.
She’s totally in denial, and I don’t blame her. People want their kids to be normal. Not average, of course, but normal. Not that I’m her kid, in point of fact, but I may as well be. I'm her sister’s kid. Nonny raised me. She’s responsible for me.
And I’m neither average nor normal.
I do what I can to protect her. Since she obviously doesn’t want to know, I try to keep a lid on my powers. But in my heart of hearts, frankly, it hurts. It shames me, to have to hide stuff from her. Important stuff. Stuff that’s a big part of who I am.
Nonny’s great, in so many ways, and I love her to death. But when it comes to me, she sees what she wants to see. And what she doesn’t want to see? She doesn’t see at all. Even if she has to go out of her way to keep from seeing it.
This is why I’m scribbling my thoughts onto paper. Low-tech has its advantages: paper can be hidden. And I’m going to hide this journal VERY VERY CAREFULLY. And eventually, when I’m done with it ... which is to say, when I’ve sorted my life out ... I’m going to rip it into a million pieces and maybe burn it. And then, unlike a journal foolishly typed on a keyboard, it will NOT EXIST.
Secrets, secrets, secrets. I’m sick to death o
f secrets.
But on the other hand, having my secrets found out? Yeah. That would be worse.
2
I didn’t sleep last night. I couldn’t make my brain shut up. A sleepless night is not the problem for me that it is for most people, because although I like sleep, I don’t need it. (Just another one of my little oddities.) Still, it’s no picnic to lie in bed and watch the moonshadows slowly travel across the floor while the horrors of the day replay in your mind.
There was something else happening, too. I had a Bad Feeling. I don’t know how to describe it ... it was very strange. Maybe it was just the accumulated stress, you know, and the trauma of near-exposure. But I’d never had this feeling before. It was like ... being watched. I felt like people in Godzilla movies should feel, but never do, when the sleeping creature awakens in the deep and starts to stir. The movie people go blithely about their business, never dreaming that they are in danger. But something is coming for them ... and if it finds them, their world will never be the same.
Well, I had a feeling that something was coming for me.
Weird, huh?
Maybe it was just the residue of that feeling I had when I ducked out of the ladies’ room. You know, my old nightmare about the torches and pitchforks. Maybe I just hadn’t had a chance to process that, so I was still jumpy.
But I didn’t think so. This was different.
Real different.
By the pricking of my thumbs, something wicked this way comes.
My thumbs were pricking. I don’t know what else to call it.
As I lay and watched the moon wheel across the sky, I felt like there were eyes in the corners of my room. Man, I’d never had the creeps this bad.
I wondered if Meg was having as bad a night as I was. Probably not. Why should she? Unless she thought I was mad at her. Even so, that wouldn’t give her the creeps. It might keep her awake, but not like this.
I wondered why I wasn’t mad at her. Because, of course, I should be.
But I wasn’t.
The thing is, Meg is truly amazing. There’s just nobody like her. She has never told a single, solitary soul about any of the stuff she’s seen, hanging out with me. And I do, I really do, understand how extraordinary that is.
I bet I couldn’t keep a secret like that. Seriously.
I have to hand it to her: she may well be unique. Most people would tell somebody. Even if it was just one person. For one thing, it’s too good a story to keep to yourself. But for another, it would bother you. Any normal person. You’d wonder if you really saw what you saw, or if you were imagining it. Or you’d wonder if I was scamming you in some way. So you’d confide in somebody—somebody special, somebody you trust. Just to check your own instincts, if for no other reason.
Megan hasn’t even told her priest! And she totally should have, since she’s Catholic and all.
I must have dozed off at about this point in my ruminations. I woke to the sound of the Chapmans’ rooster crowing in the distance and the cool, pearly light of morning. The eyes in the corners of my room had faded with the sunrise. It’s impossible to have the creeps on a summer morning in Cherry Glen.
My bedroom juts out over the front porch like the prow of a ship. It has windows on three sides. I went to the front one, the one that opens over the porch roof, leaned my elbows on the windowsill and drank in the cold, sweet air. And the view. I swear, I live in a Grandma Moses painting.
Nonny inherited this house about ten years ago, plus enough bucks to start a nursery on part of the land that came with the house. So we left the commune and came here. (Yeah, we used to live in a commune. Like I said, she’s an old hippie.) It’s a big old farmhouse, one of those Craftsman bungalows from the turn of the last century. Lots of space, but also lots of nooks and crannies. We rattle around in it like two marbles in a shoebox, but we like it that way.
The house has a big downstairs and a small upstairs. The upstairs used to be three dinky bedrooms at the top of a steep stairwell. That’s why I have three windows; Nonny had the walls knocked out to make one big room for me. She also added a small bath on the other side of the stairwell. So I have the whole upstairs, which I totally love. The front window has a view of Norland’s Nursery across the street, and rolling hills beyond. The window on the north side of my room has a window seat that looks into the depths of a peach tree. I spend a lot of time on that window seat; it’s an excellent spot for thinking. Past the peach tree and our side yard, a meadow slopes down to the wooded area that lines the creek, which is the boundary of the Chapman property—but of course the tree blocks the view except in winter, when the tree is bare. Which is fine with me, because winter is when the Chapmans put up their Christmas lights. My third window, which is smaller, looks down the road toward town.
If you can call Cherry Glen a town.
Well, hey, it has a town square. It must be a town.
The square is actually a postage-stamp sized park. It’s way too small for a public pool or anything remotely kid-friendly. Heck, it doesn’t even have a swing set. But it has grass, shade trees, a few benches, and a gazebo in the center, suitable for a small band to play in on the 4 of July. Facing the square we have a genuine Carnegie library (our claim to fame), a fire station, a drugstore, and a restaurant.
I don’t want to give the impression that Cherry Glen is just a wide place in the highway. So I’ll put down, for the record, that it actually has two restaurants. If you count Foster’s Freeze.
Sigh.
I stick out in Cherry Glen like the proverbial sore thumb. I have often thought that if we lived in, say, Manhattan—or San Francisco—or even Seattle—maybe nobody would look twice at the pale girl with the black hair and violet eyes. Around here, though, it’s tough to blend in. In fact, I happen to know that behind my back the other kids call me Spook Norland.
It’s a good thing I don’t care, or that might totally hurt my feelings.
Well, I don’t care. Who wants to be part of the giggle crowd? I’m stronger than that. I’m better than that.
And besides, I could flatten those morons if I really wanted to.
It’s just so maddening that the giggle crowd doesn’t know it.
I can’t believe how I keep straying from the point. I am trying to write about TODAY.
So. Meg arrived right after breakfast, which is way early for Meg. Nonny had gone across to the nursery and I was putting the last bowl back in the kitchen cupboard when I heard bicycle tires crunching up the gravel drive to our house. I went out to the porch and stood waiting while she wrestled with the kickstand. Meg’s Huffy Surfside is just a tad too big for her.
“Hi,” I said. “You’re sunburned.”
She sure was. Her mop of brown curls was all frizzy, too. The water park is murder on Meg.
“Yeah,” she said glumly. “Check it out.” She took off her glasses.
“Wow,” I said. Her glasses had left tan lines. Sunburn lines, I mean. “It looks like your glasses are on even when they’re off.”
Meg made a kind of growling sound in the back of her throat. She hates her glasses. She’s wanted contacts since the day I met her, at Camp Greenhorn three summers ago. She can’t have them until she’s eighteen. I don’t know whether that’s her doctor saying that, or her mom. Her mom is weird about stuff like that.
“I can’t understand it.” She put her glasses back on—carefully—and stomped up the wide, shallow steps to our porch. “I used sunscreen.”
She glanced at my smooth, unmarked skin, and I thought I saw her heave a tiny sigh. She didn’t say anything, though. What was there to say? We both know I don't sunburn. Never have, probably never will. I don’t tan, either—and believe me, I’ve tried, because magnolia-white hasn’t been in fashion for, oh, a century or two.
“Don’t you dare envy me,” I warned her. “Remember, I look ridiculous in a bathing suit.”
“Yeah, right.” She rolled her eyes. “That’s why the boys all gawk at you. Because you look ridiculou
s.”
She dropped into one of the wicker chairs we have scattered around. It’s a great porch; one of the deep, shady kind they used to build a hundred years ago when our house was new. So we’ve got chairs and little tables and a big ol’ swing. Meg and I spend a lot of time out here in the summer.
I stood where I was, watching her. The sunburn wasn’t the only thing making her uncomfortable. She was having a hard time meeting my gaze.
Well, one of us had to broach the subject. I decided to get it over with. “How come you didn’t call me?”
She shook her head. “Couldn’t. Mom took my phone away for losing you at the park.”
Oops. Now I felt guilty. “Didn’t you get my text? I went home on the bus.”
“I got it. I even showed it to Mom. Didn’t matter. I was supposed to stick with you.”
We fumed at the injustice of it all for a few minutes. Meg’s mother is way too strict, if you ask me. Taking Meg’s phone away succeeded in punishing both of us, and Meg’s mom knew it. After I saved her darling son, too! Not that she knew that, of course.
“Is Donald okay?” I finally asked.
Her face went red again. “He’s fine,” she said. “And I’m so sorry, Zara. I can’t tell you how sorry I am.” She slumped in the chair, morose. “I just went bonkers, there, for a minute. Afterwards.”
Yeah, bonkers would be the word for it, all right.
“He didn’t ... um ... fly back up in the air? You know. Later.”
“Of course not.”
It sounds like a stupid question, but it isn’t. When I put the whammy on things, they tend to not stay whammied. I can rewrite reality, but only in disappearing ink. Generally speaking.
I had to ask, just in case, but I was pretty sure the magic had stuck. I haven’t figured out the rules, but there does seem to be a pattern. If I make a car run even though the engine’s toast? That’ll fade; the car won’t run tomorrow. On the other hand, if you used the car to go somewhere while it was running, you’re still there.
Like I said, I’m still trying to figure out the rules.
“So what happened with the reporter?”
