Truths Unspoken

by K. J. McPike

  I rolled my eyes. “Fine. Let’s just get it done.” Then I can see if your daughter’s diary mentions seeing you with us last night.

  The two of us moved the coffee table aside, and Xiomara went to work. She spread out a round, white cloth covered with an angular black pattern on the floor and lit a bunch of candles to go around it. I turned off the light as she lined up stones of various colors along the intersecting lines. She seemed to second-guess herself over which rocks went where every ten seconds, but finally, she got everything set up in what she called a sacred space, whatever that meant.

  “We have to program each one individually,” she said, picking up one of the little black stones from the pile in front of her. “It shouldn’t take long. Just repeat after me, and do as I do.”

  With that, the ritual began. Xiomara held up the shiny chunk of rock and began chanting. “Reject the energy of astral forms. Keep us safe and close the doors.” She pricked her finger with the dagger we bought at the shop and held the wound to the stone as she said the chant again. Her blood made a sound like bacon frying in a pan with extra grease.

  I fought back a shudder and followed suit, repeating the chant, stabbing my finger, and letting my blood sizzle against the stone, too. We then spoke the chant together, and the crystal lit up as if a floodlight were inside. The glow died down almost as quickly as it began. If it hadn’t been bright enough to hurt my eyes, I might have thought I imagined it.

  We repeated the chant-and-give-blood process with four more stones, which Xiomara then placed in the corners of the room, with a final one in the light fixture hanging from the center of the ceiling. Once the rocks were in place, we spoke the intention again, and I couldn’t help but notice the candles were flickering as if there were a breeze in the room that I couldn’t feel. A glow came from all the stones and connected into one final shock wave of light.

  Then everything went dark.

  “So I guess it worked,” I said, standing up to hit the light switch. I wasn’t sure how all the candles had gone out, but I assumed it was a good sign.

  Xiomara smirked up at me from where she sat with her back against the bottom of the couch. “Only one way to find out.”

  “What?”

  “You have to test it. I can’t project, remember?”

  Oh. That was why she was fighting laughter—I was going to have to project into a block. I groaned. Hitting Delta’s block once was enough for my lifetime.

  “It will only take a second,” Xiomara insisted, still annoyingly amused. “Just try to project upstairs.” She bit her lip. “But you might want to sit down. If it works, you don’t want to go flying into a wall or anything.”

  Glowering, I headed for the armchair, plopped into the seat, and shut my eyes. I tried to project upstairs and felt an invisible kick in the gut. I grunted and doubled over, gasping.

  “Looks like it worked,” Xiomara chirped, all perky and irritating. “I guess you’re going to have to walk down the stairs like a normal person now.”

  I wanted to glare at her, but I was too busy trying to breathe. As much as hitting the block sucked, I was glad it would keep Lali out if she ended up with an ability that could somehow get her here. I couldn’t help but wonder what Cade and I would have done if all of the members of XODUS had set up blocks around themselves. Not that it would’ve mattered. Just having one around Delta had already screwed up all our plans.

  But maybe Lali would be the key to getting around that.

  Speaking of…

  I pulled my phone out of my pocket and checked the time. There was still about an hour before I needed to go back for her school’s lunch period. That gave me just enough time to do a quick search of her room and see about her diary.

  Chapter 25

  Diary

  Lali’s room didn’t give anything away. I scanned the space for the second time, racking my brain for typical diary hiding places. I started under her pillows before moving to under the mattress. When neither turned up any results, I tried under the bed itself. The entire space beneath the bed frame was packed with plastic storage containers.

  I hauled one out, bending down to pull off the lid. It made a cracking sound, and loud bark rang out, followed by claws clattering across the wood floor. Within seconds, sniffs came from under the door, and the dog howled so loudly I was sure he was going to alert everyone within a five-mile radius.

  If I was going to calm the animal down, I knew I had to let it do the sniff-and-approve routine. Letting out a sigh, I stood up and pulled open the door. The dog saw me, and the hair along his spine stood on end in some sort of weird mohawk as he barked like crazy.

  “Shh,” I urged. “It’s okay.”

  The dog wasn’t convinced.

  “It’s okay,” I repeated over another earsplitting howl. “I’m not going to hurt you.” Realizing my towering over the dog probably wasn’t helping, I slowly lowered myself to the floor and held out my hand as a sniff offering. That at least stopped the barking.

  I kept my arm steady, my fingers just shy of the dog’s nose. He moved forward to sniff my skin, his tail lowering, and then twitching from side to side.

  “See, I’m not so bad, right?” I slowly reached out my other hand to pet him. The next second, he jumped at me, and his tongue connected with my cheek.

  A laugh came out before I could stop it. Growing up, I’d always wanted a dog. Grandma Naida only had a cat that rarely came out from under the bed. Hardly counted as a pet if you asked me.

  Now that Lali’s dog wasn’t on a rampage, he was kind of cute, all droopy ears and short legs. “Do you know if Lali saw me with her mom?” I asked, scratching the top of his head. He blinked at me. “You probably do. I wouldn’t be surprised if you knew how Lali’s power worked, too.”

  I peeked over the side of the bin I’d pulled out from under her bed. It was filled with clothes—shorts, tank tops, and t-shirts she clearly wouldn’t need for a while. With the dog by my side, I snapped the lid back on and tried the second tub. This one held a bunch of papers and yearbooks. Written across the top of each assignment was Xitlali Marie Yavari.

  Huh. I hadn’t realized “Lali” was a nickname for…however her full name was pronounced. Between that crazy moniker and Lalisaurus, I was starting to wonder if the girl’s parents secretly enjoyed making her suffer.

  I shuffled through the papers, all of them marked with perfect scores. I knew Lali probably wouldn’t want to keep things she didn’t do well on, but geez. There were so many of them. I’d been lucky to pull off a single A in all my years of public school. Yet another reason I was glad Cade decided to homeschool me.

  Accepting that there was nothing useful in this bin, I arranged everything into to some semblance of order, put the lid back on, and shoved it into place under the bed.

  Next stop, the nightstand. Unfortunately, the lone drawer only housed a couple of books and some ChapStick.

  The dog followed me over to Lali’s desk. Papers were thrown haphazardly across the top, so I didn’t bother trying to memorize how to put them back. Most of them were study guides and half-finished worksheets. Digging through the drawers, I found a few small notebooks.

  The first one turned out to be a sketch pad. Not surprising.

  I opened the second one and found a date scribbled in the top corner of the page. The first line explaining that the day had been hectic told me what I needed to know: it was a diary. Sucking in an excited breath, I quickly flipped to the back, turning the blank pages until I found the most recent entry. My heart sank as I saw it was dated Christmas Day of last year.

  Why was I even surprised? I’d already seen time and time again that I shouldn’t expect anything to be easy. Shaking my head, I started to close the notebook, but my eyes caught on the first line. From there, I couldn’t help reading.

  I hate you, Mom.

  * * *

  I hate you so much for doing this to us. You ruined Christmas this year, on top of everything else. Sal is so upset she�
��s slept in my room every night since you left. Dix looks like he’s on the brink of breaking. Lyx hardly ever smiles, and all Oxie does is snap at everyone now.

  * * *

  I hope you’re happy. What was so important that you could leave us like this? Didn’t we matter to you at all?

  A puckered spot blurred the words just after the question mark, and I swallowed hard. Lali’s tears must’ve hit the paper. A quick skim over the page, and I could see the writing increased in size and illegibility with each line, like a meter of her emotions.

  You did this to her.

  I dropped the notebook. My legs folded beneath me until I was sitting on the floor. No matter how much I could justify holding Xiomara captive, I couldn’t justify what it was doing to her kids. If anyone should understand the pain of losing a parent, it was me. Yet, here I was keeping a mother away from her children.

  Something cold and wet nudged my hand. The dog wagged his tail, his eyes looking at me like he understood that I felt like a monster. He nuzzled against my palm, and something heavy settled onto my chest. I wondered how many times he’d tried to comfort Lali and the rest of her family in their moments of sadness.

  Moments I’d created.

  Shoving the thought to a dark corner in my mind, I forced myself to my feet and dropped the diary back into the drawer. I couldn’t do this to myself. I had to remember why I’d taken Xiomara, what was really important here. I hadn’t done it to hurt Lali, but maybe I could make it up to her.

  If anything, she needed me to help her sort out her ability—her mom had even asked me to guide her. I hadn’t delivered Xiomara’s note, but an in-person trainer was better than a piece of paper any day. At least that would balance out some of what I’d done. And finding Lali during her school’s lunch period was the perfect way to start.

  …Yeah, sorry about reading your diary. If it’s any consolation, I stopped after that one entry. But in truth, that was probably the best thing I could have done at that point. It made it harder for me to ignore how all this was affecting you, and it made me more determined than ever to keep things moral and civil.

  I told myself I would approach you peacefully to explain. That day, you weren’t there for lunch, but I planned to go back the next morning and fill you in on everything calmly and rationally. But, well, we both know how that went…

  Chapter 26

  Approach

  I took a long breath of briny air and looked out at the ocean. The moon glowed overhead, flooding the beach with enough light that I could see the waves as they broke a few feet from where I sat. The water looked black now, but I knew the gorgeous crystal blue that sparkled when the sun came out. Usually this spot and the smell of the sea soothed me, but not today. Even my favorite beach in Lanai couldn’t make me feel better.

  My subconscious had spent the night trying to make me crazy again with more dreams of a devastated family. Reading Lali’s diary only gave my conscience more ammunition, and it was having a field day tormenting me.

  I sighed and leaned back onto the book bag propped up behind me in the sand. Looking up at the night sky, I told myself that no matter how bad I felt, it didn’t change that I needed to get to my sister. Even though I was playing the waiting game with Lali, she was the only option I had any faith in right now.

  She hadn’t been in the cafeteria when I’d gone back for her lunch period yesterday, so I was sitting around waiting for school to start again this morning—well, later morning in Virginia. It was still the wee hours in Hawaii, but I’d set my phone’s alarm to go off when it would be time for me to head to the school.

  Cade was planning to stay at Delta’s all day, but I still thought the odds of her showing up were slim to none. I lied and told my uncle that Solstice and Xiomara were still trying to get the block around the in-law to work. I didn’t feel like dealing with Solstice’s hysteria if I took her to Delta’s house. I hoped she had calmed down, but I didn’t have the energy to handle her if she hadn’t. Everything felt so hectic; I just needed a minute to clear my head.

  Watching the movement of the ocean, I imagined outrunning the waves with my dad like I did when I was a little boy. Whenever I was too slow, he would grab me and pull me into the air before the water could catch me. At least, that’s what Grandma Naida told me.

  My memories of my life before the raid were hazy and scattered, but my grandmother recognized how much I longed to know my parents. She saved up her money so she could bring me to this island—to this particular secluded beach—for my thirteenth birthday. That day, she told me story after story about how my mom discovered this hidden spot when she was young and came out here when she wanted to think, how my parents used to picnic here, how it was the first place my dad told my mom he loved her, how my parents brought Kala and me the first chance they got.

  I’d memorized every detail of this place that day. It felt like my only connection to my parents, and I’d revisited it in my mind every night before going to sleep. I was sure that was why it was the first place I ever projected.

  My phone buzzed in my pocket, and I reached to silence it. Time to find Lali at school. I closed my eyes, and a second later I saw her standing outside the office talking to two blonde girls.

  Good. I could stroll by the office and pretend I had some new-student stuff to take care of. Getting to my feet, I slipped my backpack over my shoulders to make myself look more legitimate and projected to the boys’ bathroom stall from the previous day. Thankfully, there was no one around.

  Handfuls of students stood clustered along the hallway, but hardly anyone noticed me as I moved toward the office. Keeping my head low, I let my mind run through how to approach starting up a conversation with Lali.

  Hey, good to see a familiar face.

  No. That sounded too eager. Girls hated eager guys.

  Maybe I could make a comment about her hair and overdone eyeliner. “Why so blue?” I tried aloud as I passed a water fountain. No, that was even worse.

  “Good golly, Miss Lali.” I cringed as soon as the words were out. I was getting cornier by the minute. Besides, Lali probably wouldn’t get the reference. Grandma Naida had played Little Richard songs all the time, but I doubted anyone at this school even knew the name.

  Maybe it was better to skip the greeting. A firm we need to talk would at least intrigue her enough to come with me. Well, if it didn’t terrify her.

  I turned the corner just in time to see Lali shove something into her backpack and walk into the office.

  Crap. I didn’t want Mrs. Moubrey to overhear me demanding to speak to Lali. I stayed back, debating. Should I linger and wait for Lali to come out? I could fall into step with her when she came back this way.

  If she came this way. I didn’t want to have to chase her if she went in the opposite direction.

  Screw it. I was going in. I’d just have to wing it with small talk until I could get her out of earshot of any staff members. Dodging the group of skinny freshman-looking guys, I made my way to the office and slowly turned the door’s handle. It barely clicked as I pushed it open.

  “I, uh, forgot what he said his last name was,” Lali was saying to Mrs. Moubrey. “Writing Kai and family just doesn’t sound as personal, you know?”

  My ears perked up. Why did she want to know my last name? Before I could decide how to play it, Mrs. Moubrey moved a hand in my direction and said, “Why don’t you ask him yourself?”

  I grabbed the straps of my book bag and forced the corner of my mouth up, doing my best not to look suspicious.

  Lali turned around a centimeter at a time, as if she were expecting to find a flesh-eating zombie behind her. She paled as soon as we made eye contact. She had definitely figured out something to do with me. Had she seen me with her mother before we set up the block yesterday?

  “Awana,” I said, hoping Lali’s reaction to my last name might give me a clue. No luck. She just gaped at me like I was holding a machete.

  “My last name is Awana,” I clarifie
d.

  “Oh.” Her eyes shifted.

  “Why do you ask?” I tried to sound casual, but I knew I fell short. Then the bell rang, and it looked like Lali had a small heart attack.

  “Okay, you two. Get to class,” Mrs. Moubrey ordered.

  Lali was off like a shot, the blue streaks in her hair like flashes of light as she shoved past me with a shrill, “Bye.”

  “Hey, Lali.” The words were out before I could think. She stopped so abruptly that a skinny girl with frizzy hair bumped into her and threw out some choice words.

  Lali turned around slowly. “Yeah?”

  I couldn’t let her run away. If she knew something, she was only going to keep avoiding me. “Can I walk you to class?” I asked, remembering that the office staff might still overhear us.

  Lali’s face went blank. “Why?”

  “Because I’m a nice guy?” It came out sounding like a question. At this point, it kind of was.

  “I—” she stammered. “I mean, didn’t you have to do something in the office?”

  “Just needed to get a form signed. No big deal. It can wait.” I read panic all over her face. She wasn’t buying it for a second.

  “Actually, I, um…” Her eyes darted around like she was looking for an excuse to get as far away from me as possible. “I have to pee.”

  I exhaled a combination between a scoff and a laugh. “Glad you’re so open about that.” I scanned the hall, noting the sign for the girls’ restroom not a hundred yards away. I knew she’d meant it as a way to deter me, but if she insisted on running, the bathroom would make it easier for me to corner her. Everyone was heading off to class, so there wouldn’t be anyone around to notice me go in after her. That was, if there was no one else in there.

  I’d take my chances. I might not have another opportunity to catch Lali somewhere that would keep her from bolting.