The Possible

by Tara Altebrando

“Oh.”

  Freaking Aiden.

  “You’re going to make me guess? Because if it has to do with the podcast . . .”

  “There’s a guy,” I blurted.

  Her shoulders collapsed with relief. Hanging out with some guy she didn’t know was better than anything having to do with the podcast.

  “Does he have a name?”

  “Bennett.”

  “Does he have a last name?”

  “Laurie.”

  “Never heard of him.”

  “I guess we run in different circles. Or did.”

  “What changed?” she asked.

  “I don’t know,” I said, not wanting to admit it had at least a little bit to do with the podcast, with Crystal. “Just did.

  “Anyway,” I said, seeing an opportunity. “I don’t like lying. I don’t want to feel like I have to.”

  “Oh, so it’s my fault that you lied?”

  “There’s a party in the city on Friday,” I said. “Liana invited me. I want to go. It’s for the podcast launch.”

  “I guess my invitation got lost in the mail,” she said.

  “Can I go?” I pressed.

  “Can I stop you?”

  “Probably. I mean, you could lock me in my room.”

  She rolled her eyes at me. “We both know you’d climb out the window.”

  “There’s an article in the paper about it.” She nodded at the paper on the table and turned on the burner under the skillet.

  •••

  Crystal Clear

  By TODD HAMISH

  Suspense has been building for season two of the popular podcast The Possible, but the palpable excitement among listeners of last season’s podcast shares an armrest with a bit of trepidation as well. Inquiring minds want to know, why, when the podcast producer, Liana Fatone, could have chosen from a likely endless number of possible criminal cases steeped in quagmires, did she choose a case that brushes up again the paranormal? Her subject, Crystal Bryar, is at the center of a murder trial that suffered from all sorts of dysfunction, but Crystal has also claimed over the years to have telekinetic powers, or to be the victim of some kind of force acting around her without her approval or direction.

  “Listen,” Fatone said, in a telephone interview. This reporter couldn’t help but note she seemed a bit weary from the publicity demands of the launch of the second season, if not exasperated. “A lot of people are into doing the same thing over and over again. There was a formula to season one that could totally work for other criminal cases that touch on hot-button issues. I’m sure other people working in radio are going to use that formula for themselves and do well with it. But I need to go where my heart leads me. Meaning that I need to be personally intrigued and invested. I’m not a criminal or legal expert. I’m a human being and a reporter and now, I guess, a storyteller. And this story—Crystal’s story—is one that intrigued me. Will I lose some of last season’s listenership? Probably? Will I gain new listeners? Absolutely. If we weren’t, as a culture, interested in the powers Crystal claims to have, we wouldn’t be so fascinated with things like Luke Skywalker and the Force and Eleven from Stranger Things.”

  Fatone says she’s been fascinated with Crystal’s case since she was a teenager, and that the story has always haunted her. She wanted to dig deeper as an adult, to understand the story better and also to understand her own fascination with it.

  Crystal Bryar is serving a life sentence at a prison outside Pittsburgh and has been since 2004. She is up for parole for the first time this summer.

  •••

  “Parole?” I said.

  “I told you we shouldn’t have gotten involved.”

  The sliders were burning. The smoke alarm went off.

  •••

  “Well, I think she’s fabulous,” my grandmother said at the dinner table, once we were all pretty much done eating our blackened burgers.

  I was as surprised as my parents clearly were that my grandmother had listened to season one of The Possible.

  “I didn’t think you would know how to . . . ,” I said. “I mean, how did you listen?” I tried to picture her with an iPhone and earbuds and laughed.

  “Oh, we made a thing of it, on the block. Agnes’s husband had it on the laptop and we’d get together every week to listen. She’s a tough cookie, Liana. I like her. I’d like to meet her, actually.”

  “I seriously can’t believe this,” my mom said, reading my mind, looking to my dad for some kind of support.

  “If anybody can get to the bottom of the whole thing, it’s her. Trust me.”

  “Please tell me this isn’t happening,” my mother said to my father.

  “Oh, it’s happening,” my grandmother said. “Capisce?” She turned to me. “So when’s this party, then?”

  “Friday,” I said.

  She wiped her mouth with her napkin, put it down, and stood. “Well, come on. Let’s go figure out what you’re going to wear.”

  •••

  I couldn’t think of the last time I’d been alone with my grandmother. She picked through my closet with purpose while I thought back to the sleepovers I’d had at her house all those years ago, when my parents had gone globetrotting and brought me back snow globes.

  “This is all very exciting, don’t you think?” she said.

  “I don’t know.” I sat on the bed. “Mom’s mad at me.”

  “She’ll get over it.”

  “She adopted me. She knew I had a birth mother. She knew that birth mother was Crystal, right?”

  “Of course.”

  “So why would she adopt me if she couldn’t handle how messed up I was?”

  She turned from the closet. “I’m sure she had her reasons and I’m sure the biggest one was love. And she still loves you. Of course. And you’re not messed up.” She came over to me and grabbed me by both arms. “You do, however, need a new dress.”

  •••

  But . . .

  •••

  But . . .

  •••

  What if I was? What if it were true that the pages of Mike Neumeyer’s notebook had all been slashed in half one time in third grade? What if it was true I’d sort of hated him?

  •••

  I told Chiara about the party, about the need for a new dress, about my plan to ask Bennett.

  “Take me!” she said.

  “Seriously?”

  “Nah,” she said, “I have to work on my novel.”

  “On a Friday night?” I said.

  “Yes. On a Friday night,” she said sharply. “You should take Aiden. He’ll keep you out of trouble.”

  “But Bennett’s more interested in the whole TK thing than Aiden.”

  “TK?”

  “Telekinesis?”

  She sighed. “I don’t know, Kay.”

  “Chiara, it’s happening. We hooked up. I mean, made out. Whatever.”

  “Why didn’t you say so? Tell me everything.”

  “We went to his house. We were trying to move this little ninja thing using our minds.”

  “Whoa-whoa-whoa,” Chiara said. “Are you leading him on with this? Making him think you have powers you don’t have? Because you don’t. Right? You told me you don’t.”

  “It’s complicated . . . I mean.” Who else could I be honest with? Apparently not Aiden.

  “Kay,” she said, all serious. “Spill it.”

  •••

  I told her.

  Frisbee.

  Kitchen lightbulb shattering.

  Princess Bubblegum tripping.

  Kali River Rapids ride? Who knows?

  •••

  “It could be nothing,” she said.

  “That’s what I’ve tried to tell myself for years. Now I’m not so sure.”

  “This is a lot to process,” she said.

  “There’s another thing,” I said.

  “At this point nothing would surprise me.”

  “Crystal’s up for parole s
oon.”

  “Okay, I take it back,” Chiara said. “That surprises me.”

  We were quiet for a moment, just breathing.

  Then she said, “You don’t think she’s like . . . pissed at you, do you?”

  •••

  I texted Bennett that night: I can bring someone to that party for the podcast on Friday. Interested?

  He wrote back one long and torturous hour later.

  •••

  •••

  I texted Chiara to tell her and she wasn’t impressed.

  •••

  •••

  I was disappointed, too. But on the other hand, “sure” meant “yes.”

  •••

  I drifted off, reliving the kissing in the hallway.

  Him against me.

  Him wanting me.

  Again and again and again.

  BENNETT WAS ABSENT ON WEDNESDAY, and so the whole day was drudgery and torture, with the only highlight being the daydreaming. I relived the kissing, dreamed of future kissing; I imagined us older, in LA, walking in the sun with sunglasses on, driving a convertible on the Pacific Coast Highway and stopping for lunch in some cute coastal town. I heard he was sick so texted him, “Heard you’re sick. Feel better soon!” but he didn’t write back.

  Had I given him some awful illness? Had he given it to me? Was it only a matter of hours before some plague felled me, too?

  He’d be better by Friday.

  He had to be.

  •••

  I threw myself into softball that afternoon, trying to switch off my brain. I’d lied to Helen about doing drills in the backyard, but now it didn’t seem like the worst idea. So even after practice, I took my ball and glove out back and ran through the motions, miming various pitches again and again, imagining them going perfectly in my mind and trying not to think about that stone, that bird.

  When I tired of that I did some research on TK. That way, when Bennett and I tried to bend spoons at the party, I’d have more to say, more tips. More tricks. More . . . powers?

  •••

  I watched a TK tutorial that was painfully slow and badly made but had over a million views. The guy suggested moving the object repeatedly with your hand first, then stopping and imagining your brain doing it instead.

  I got out another Dixie cup and moved it back and forth on the table, then let go and tried to do it with my mind.

  Still as still can be.

  •••

  I watched another video that started with a whole thing about how bad TK videos were and how he was going to make a better one than the crap ones but it still ended up being crap. He blew out a candle using TK. But there could be a fan offscreen. Who even knew?

  He talked about a lucid dream where a dream catcher made of feathers whispers to him that the key to TK is “communicating” with objects, how the key to TK is empathy.

  You have to feel the feather.

  Be the feather.

  •••

  It was hard to feel or be a Dixie cup.

  •••

  Thursday, still no Bennett, still torture.

  •••

  And another overheard conversation:

  “I heard she’s always thought she had powers but just never used them.”

  “I’d totally use them if I had them.”

  “Like to do what?”

  “To do everything. I’d be the laziest person ever if I could. I’d have all my food float on out of the fridge and over to me. I’d seriously never lift a finger.”

  “In other words the powers would be totally wasted on you.”

  Some giggling. “Ohmygod, totally.”

  “It starts Monday?”

  A pause.

  “You think she’s going to be, like, famous?”

  “Probably. Right?”

  •••

  After school, Chiara and I went dress shopping: junior prom for her; spoon bending for me.

  “Your mom didn’t want to take you?” I asked her, over the walls of our dressing rooms.

  “Oh, she did. But we’d probably fight. It’s better this way.”

  I came out of the dressing room wearing a black sleeveless dress with a cowl neck.

  “It’s perfect,” she said.

  The same could not be said of the blue taffeta poof dress she was wearing, and by the look on her face, she knew it.

  I studied myself in the mirror, thinking I approved, yes. “But is it, you know, hot?”

  “It’s better than that,” she said as she disappeared back into her changing room. “It’s brainy-public-radio hot.”

  •••

  •••

  “Crystal’s agreed to see me if I get approved,” I told Chiara, after I’d changed back into my clothes. I sat on a pouf stool by the main mirrors and waited for her, studying my skin in the mirror, looking for signs of age or sun damage or the other kind of damage caused by the fact that my birth mother was a telekinetic murderer and that I was soon to be face-to-face with her for the first time in years.

  “Is there any reason why you wouldn’t get approved?” she asked from behind her dressing room door.

  “I doubt it,” I said.

  “That’s good then,” she said, “as long as she’s not going to like stab you. Or wait. Will she be behind glass? And you’ll be like on a phone?”

  “I honestly have no idea.”

  She came out wearing a burnt-orange dress cut on a funky angle, looking like a rock star.

  “That’s the one,” I said.

  “Yeah?” She smiled at herself in the mirror and twirled once.

  “You think you’ll like be girlfriend and boyfriend after this? You and David?”

  “Definitely,” she said. She went back into her room to change and said, “If it works out with you and Bennett, we can double-date.”

  I was looking at myself in the mirror when I sort of snorted. “I don’t really see that happening.”

  She came out, holding her dress. “Why not?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “Bennett and David? I don’t see it.”

  “Why?”

  “I can’t explain it.”

  “David’s not cool enough, is that it?”

  “No,” I said. “They’re just different.”

  “Whatever, Kaylee.” She marched off toward the cashier. I followed with my dress and stopped to look at earrings.

  •••

  Finally, it was Friday. I texted Bennett when it became clear he still wasn’t back at school.

  •••

  •••

  Tears formed faster than I thought possible.

  I couldn’t go alone!

  In a panic I texted Aiden.

  •••

  •••

  I looked up and turned. He was pocketing his phone and walking down the hall, smiling.

  “I have a huge favor to ask,” I said.

  “Um, okay?”

  “There’s this launch party for the podcast at some swanky club in Manhattan. And I need someone to go with me. It’s tonight. Can you come?”

  “Tonight?”

  I nodded.

  He scratched his head. “I sort of have plans.”

  “Please.” I grabbed his bare arm, then took my hand back, regretting it somehow. “I’ll owe you big-time.”

  “You just found out about this?”

  “Will you come with me or not?”

  “Yes,” he said.

  Which was way better than “sure.”

  •••

  I checked the mail at home, even though it was still too soon.

  My mother’s Country Living magazine had arrived.

  Sometimes it was hard to tell the difference between disappointment and relief.

  •••

  “I expect you home by midnight,” my mother said. “And no drinking.”

  “Mom,” I said. “I know. Anyway, Aiden’s coming.”

  “Really?�
�� Her eyebrows went up.

  “It’s not like that, Mom.”

  She sighed. “Please be careful, okay?”

  “Okay.”

  My dad said, “And have fun.”

  My mother gave him a look she usually reserved for me.

  •••

  Aiden arrived at the station close enough to the scheduled train departure time that I’d been about to panic—I’d driven and offered him a ride, but he’d said he’d just walk—so I was sort of mad at him. He looked way too much like he was going on a date for my liking. Way too handsome. He was wearing a pale-gray shirt and dark seersucker sports coat that I’d never seen before.

  “Looking sharp,” I said, then felt funny about it. “I bought your ticket,” I said, and the train pulled in.

  We found seats and the train pulled out and then he stood and took his jacket off and sat again with the jacket folded on his lap. “So what is this shindig exactly anyway?”

  I pulled up the invitation and handed him my phone.

  He rolled his eyes and handed it back.

  “What?” I said.

  “Spoon bending?”

  •••

  The last time Aiden and I had gone into Manhattan together had been with Chiara and some other friends from school, to see The Breakfast Club in a movie theater. It was all Aiden’s idea and I hadn’t been that enthused. The movie was so old. What was the point?

  But in the end, I’d loved it.

  Afterward we’d gone to an Applebee’s and tried to order drinks but got carded. So we went to the top of a hotel where there was a revolving bar and ordered a bunch of overpriced appetizers as we took a turn around the building in our seats.

  “You know they’re all going to end up going back to exactly how things were before,” I’d said, about the characters in the movie. “Like this bar. You go around and see all these sights and all but you still end up back at the same point in the end.”

  “You, my dear,” Aiden had said, “are a pessimist.”

  But maybe he was the pessimistic one.

  •••

  “I’m supposed to talk to Liana as soon as I get here,” I said as we got into an elevator at the Rosewood Club. “She wants to talk about what I can or can’t say to people or something.”

  “Do you see her?” Aiden asked when the elevators opened on a gorgeous library: Walls of books. Men in suits and women in glittery dresses, some kind of swing music playing.