Truths Unspoken

by K. J. McPike

  Still, I did my best to keep my face from giving away my concerns. “You don’t know for sure that they’re fighting,” I said in the most convincing voice I could muster. “They could be—”

  Salaxia peeked up at me through the black fringe of her bangs with guilt written all over her doll-like features, and I knew I was wasting my breath.

  “Sal,” I scolded, pulling away from her. “What did Mom tell you about using your ability on us? Snooping into people’s minds is an invasion of privacy. Not to mention, it only causes trouble.”

  She sniffed and stuck her nose in the air. “Well, what was I supposed to do, Lali? They don’t tell us anything. I have to read their minds to know what’s going on.”

  Ugh. Even though Mom used crystals to create an astral energy block around our house to keep unwanted visitors from projecting inside, it couldn’t stop Salaxia from using her power within the house. She could project into people’s minds as long as they were on the same side of the energy barrier as she was, which meant her nosiness ran unchecked.

  Honestly, the block wasn’t going to do much to keep us safe either, since there were other crystals that could be used to penetrate it. But I understood it was the best Mom could do.

  At least it can keep Kai out. I winced. Though I hadn’t seen that lying jerk for weeks, he had a way of barging into my thoughts—and admittedly, my dreams—no matter how hard I fought it. Why I couldn’t put him out of my mind, I would never understand. He was pretty much the cause of all my problems, and I wanted nothing to do with him. If he hadn’t kidnapped Mom in the first place, I would still have the happy, loving family I’d grown up with. All I wanted was for things to go back to the way they were before Kai had shown up, but the effects of his actions lingered.

  And that just made me hate him even more.

  “See.” Salaxia’s voice pulled me out of my stewing. “You know I’m right.”

  I snorted. “Hardly. Mom and Dad don’t tell us anything because it’s none of our business.”

  “What’s none of our business?” Ulyxses, the younger of my twelve-year-old twin brothers, came into the kitchen with a stack of textbooks. He dropped them onto the table with a thud and looked between Salaxia and me expectantly.

  “Yeah, spill.” Dixon, the older twin, entered a second later with his math book and binder. Setting down his school stuff, he grabbed a handful of kettle corn from the open bag in the center of the table. “Secrets are overrated.”

  “It’s nothing.” I shot Dixon a look that said to drop it, still taken aback by the sight of him with short hair. Mom had finally put her foot down about his overgrown waves last week, so now he and Ulyxses had matching buzz cuts to go along with their identical long faces and bushy brows. Thankfully, Dixon’s typical oversized black t-shirt was a stark contrast to Ulyxses’ usual plaid button-up, so their teachers had a chance of telling them apart.

  “Mom and Dad are fighting again,” Salaxia informed our brothers, making me cringe.

  Ulyxses plopped into the chair across from me and dropped his chin into one hand. “I’m not surprised. Communication problems are the top reason that marriages fail.”

  “Lyx!” I cried. “No one said their marriage is failing.” My eyes twitched toward Salaxia, who already had a tear streaking down one of her cheeks. “They just have some stuff to work out.”

  “Like helping Dad cope with the fact that his kids are half Astralis and have crazy astral projection abilities?” Dixon took the seat next to Ulyxses and grabbed another handful of popcorn. “And the fact that his wife grew up in another realm and didn’t tell him for the first eighteen years of their marriage? Gee, I wonder why they’re having problems.” He scoffed. “Mom should have seen this coming.”

  “They’ll work it out,” I insisted, doing everything I could to stay positive. As the oldest, I had to set the example. But it was hard when our parents’ “drives” were getting longer and longer every time. I couldn’t help but worry Dad would decide he couldn’t deal with this family anymore and drive away on his own one day. Permanently.

  Sometimes, I wished we hadn’t told him the truth. We could have come up with something else to explain Mom’s three-month disappearance. Maybe if we’d given him the same explanation we gave my friends, we could have avoided this whole mess.

  Or if Kai hadn’t kidnapped her in the first place. I pressed my teeth together. If he hadn’t shown up, I might have had a chance at a normal life. Well, as normal as it could be considering that I could astral project and couldn’t tell anyone outside my family the truth. More than once, I had considered using Dixon’s ability to project into the past to warn myself about Kai. But my brother could only travel back in time in his invisible astral form, which meant he would have no way to communicate with my past-self. It would have been nice, though, to go back and nip the problem in the bud.

  Just then, my fourteen-year-old sister, Oxanna, opened the door with our beagle Gottfried all but dragging her into the house. She fought to unhook his leash, and as soon as she did, he bolted for the table. It only took two seconds for Salaxia to slip him some popcorn.

  Oxanna huffed, straightening her long dark waves as she stood up again. “It is so not fair that I get stuck walking Gotty. He wants to chase everything.” Gottfried wasn’t exactly a big dog, but the deep olive of my sister’s cheeks had an extra pinch of color and her breathing was labored, so I guessed there was some merit to her claim. “I’m going to talk to Mom and Dad about chore reassignments.”

  “Good luck with that,” Dixon said. “They have bigger things to worry about than chores. Like if they’re gonna stay married.”

  I let my head fall back. “Dix, they’re fine.”

  Oxanna hung up Gottfried’s leash on one of the key hooks by the door and shook her head. “They went for another ‘drive,’ didn’t they?” She put the word in air quotes and rolled her eyes. “This is exactly what happened with Lynn’s parents. They started fighting all the time, and a few months later, her dad moved out. Now she and her brother have to go back and forth between their houses every other weekend.”

  I sighed. “Don’t you think you’re getting a little carried away?”

  Four sets of matching eyes pinned me with looks that said get real. Even the dog seemed to be staring at me like I was an idiot.

  “You know what?” I straightened up in my chair. “We need a distraction.”

  “Movie?” Dixon offered. “There’s nothing like watching The Hunger Games to make you feel better about your own problems.”

  I breathed a laugh. “Sure. Maybe Nelson’s up for a movie night at his house.” Nelson, our neighbor and one of my best friends, was always happy to hang out with my family. His mom worked two jobs to support them, and Nelson didn’t have any brothers or sisters, so he lived vicariously through me.

  Grabbing my worn-out flip phone from the table, I sent him a quick text. Are you home?

  The reply came within seconds. Would I sound cool if I said no?

  I felt my mouth twitch. Nelson was one of the few people who could make me laugh these days. It would take a lot more than that to make you cool.

  You’re probably right. What’s up?

  Can we come over?

  Of course.

  “Okay.” I pushed out of my chair. “Let’s go.”

  “What about our homework?” Ulyxses frowned, forming a series of ripples between his thick brows. “You know Dad’s rule.”

  “The world won’t end if a Friday night passes before we’ve finished our assignments,” I said. “If Mom and Dad get mad, I’ll take the blame so they can yell at me.”

  “That’ll give ’em a nice break from yelling at each other,” Oxanna muttered.

  I inhaled slowly and held my breath. If my brothers and sisters wouldn’t believe our parents were going to be okay, at least I could try and distract them for awhile.

  Tucking my phone into my pocket, I started for the door. The sun was beginning to set, but I didn’t bo
ther grabbing a jacket. The April air was warm enough, and Nelson only lived a couple of blocks away.

  My siblings and I walked in a horizontal line that took up most of the width of the worn street. Not that it mattered—few cars came through here, and the ones that did moved slowly enough that we could drop to our hands and knees and crawl out of the way with plenty of time to spare. One of the perks of living in Browshire, Virginia, where my family of seven made up nearly one percent of the town’s entire population.

  We passed the handful of pastel houses between ours and Nelson’s within a few minutes. When we turned into his driveway, he was already standing on his front porch wearing his ever-present smile and trademark tie-dyed shirt with khaki shorts. As always, his brown hair stuck up just above his left eyebrow and at the crown of his head.

  “Come on in.” He pushed open the door as we made our way up the porch steps, giving me a knowing look as my brothers and sisters paraded into his house. I nodded once, confirming his silent question before following them into the living room.

  “Nelson, wanna answer some questions from the Salaxia Quiz?” my baby sister asked with a hopeful smile. The rest of my siblings groaned, and I couldn’t blame them. Salaxia had invented a “game” where she asked people trivia about herself, but our family had grown tired of it over the last year. Nelson was the only person who would oblige her now, and she made a point to harass him about it at every opportunity.

  I shook my head. “Sal, let him breathe for a minute.”

  “I’d love to answer some questions.” Nelson stopped beside the sectional sofa where my brothers and sisters were already making themselves comfortable and winked at Salaxia. “Just give us a minute to make some popcorn. You all can pick the movie. We have Netflix.”

  Thankful for the excuse to regroup, I headed toward the kitchen. Nelson and I had barely stepped onto the linoleum when he pulled me into a hug. He smelled like freshly applied cologne, all peppery musk.

  “I’m sorry, Lollipop,” he whispered.

  “Thanks,” I whispered back, fighting the sting of tears. I moved away before I could let myself break down and sank into a chair at the tiny table for two.

  Nelson tossed a bag of popcorn into the microwave and hit the button to start it. The low hum kicked on as he dragged the second chair next to mine and sat down to put an arm around me. “Anything I can do?”

  “Letting us invade your house is a great start. Thanks for having us over with no notice.”

  “You know I’m always here for you.” He gave me a squeeze. “Literally here. At my house. Because I have no life.”

  I laughed and leaned my head on his shoulder. “Thanks.”

  “Your parents will work through it,” he said. “It’s gotta be hard for your dad to reconcile everything. Your mom was gone for three months. He probably assumed he’d never see her again, and then boom. She’s back.” He sighed. “I’m not saying it’s a bad thing she’s back. I’m just saying he has to adjust to it. That was a long, convoluted ransom case, and I’m sure the trauma is taking a toll.”

  He continued spouting out theories, and I didn’t negate any of them. Though I wanted to be as honest as possible with my friends, there was so much I couldn’t tell them. Not that the ransom story I gave them had been that far from what really happened. Mom had been kidnapped and held hostage; I just had to leave out the thing about her being from another realm. And the part where she teamed up with her friends to steal her enemy’s astral energy, only to lose her own ability in the process and then suffer the consequences of her actions twenty years later. And the small matter of my siblings and I discovering we were semmies—meaning half Astralis—and developing different variations of astral projection abilities.

  But other than that, my explanation was essentially the truth.

  I dragged the toe of my black and white checkered Converse shoe across the floor, studying the shiny streak it left across the tile. I didn’t bother to move the dark layer of hair that slipped over my cheek. I needed all the protection I could get from Nelson’s gaze. Even after months of hiding things from him and my other best friend, Paisley, I felt a rush of heat in my face whenever I was less than honest.

  Still, I had to keep our secret for my family’s safety. We couldn’t share the truth without risking word getting back to the Eyes and Ears, a tyrannical, vicious group that hunted semmies and killed their parents. In Alea, the Astralis realm, Astralii weren’t allowed to have children with regular people. Interbreeding, as they called it, was punishable by death, and the resulting semmies were kidnapped and used for experiments. No matter how much I hated lying, I couldn’t take any chances with my family’s safety.

  The microwave dinged, startling me out of my thoughts. Nelson hopped up to dig a plastic bowl from the cabinet and pour the popcorn into it while I put the chairs into place under the table. We headed to the living room and found my brothers and sisters bickering.

  “Does this mean you haven’t decided on a movie?” I asked.

  Before they could answer, the doorbell rang.

  I cringed. “Crap. That’s probably Mom and Dad.” If they’d realized we weren’t home, Nelson’s was the first place they would look. I walked over to the door and pulled it open, ready to plead my we-needed-a-break case.

  But it wasn’t my parents.

  It was Kai.

  My stomach plummeted into my feet. I stared at him, stunned into silence. What was he doing here? He must have used his ability to find me—there was no other way he would have known where I was. But why now, after he’d stayed away from me for nearly a month? And what could possibly make him think I would want to see him? I’d made it clear the last time that I wanted him out of my life forever.

  “Lali.” His voice quivered, and panic read in his green eyes. “I need to talk to you.” Even in the dimming light of the evening, I could tell his tawny skin had a sickly pallor to it. His shaggy hair looked wild, as if he’d been pulling at it for hours. And…was he shaking?

  All the times I’d envisioned telling Kai off, I pictured him strolling up to me with his usual cocky demeanor. I wasn’t prepared for this broken, disheveled version of him.

  “Please,” he said. “It’s about Kala.”

  I flinched. As much as I hated Kai for deceiving me and putting my family through hell for his own selfish reasons, I couldn’t help the guilt that came with the mention of his sister. The Eyes and Ears had abducted Kala when she was a baby and taken her to Alea. Even after everything Kai and I went through to get there, we hadn’t been able to rescue her. I knew it wasn’t my fault, but my conscience plagued me with an irrational feeling of responsibility—a feeling I fought as best I could. I had already done everything in my power to help him.

  Besides, Kai kidnapped my mother. He’d caused nothing but anguish for my family and me, and he put all of us in danger. I didn’t owe him anything.

  So why couldn’t I find my voice to tell him that?

  “Hey, Kai.” Nelson walked up behind me. “What are you doing here?” The tension in his shoulders was obvious as he looked at our unwelcome visitor. Despite my mother and me teaming up to convince my friends that Kai was a young detective on her kidnapping case, it was obvious Nelson still hadn’t warmed up to him.

  Not that it mattered; Kai didn’t bother acknowledging Nelson at all. He honed in on me like there was no one else around for miles.

  “Please,” he repeated. The tremor in his voice was noticeable even with that single word.

  I dropped my gaze to the wooden planks of the porch, hoping it would help me focus. “Now’s not a good time.”

  “It’s an emergency!” Kai’s shout made Nelson and me jump.

  “Whoa.” Nelson stepped in front of me, shielding me with his arms. “Take it easy.”

  “I can’t take it easy,” Kai said, though his tone came out softer this time. “It’s an emergency.” He leaned around Nelson and tried to penetrate my mind with his stare.

  “Dude
, she said now’s not a good time,” Nelson reminded him. “You need to respect that.”

  I grabbed Nelson’s elbow, urging him back toward the door. At six-foot-one, he wasn’t short, but Kai still had a good four inches on him. Not to mention, Kai’s muscular build meant he had a decent amount of weight over Nelson’s lean and lanky frame. If things got physical, I wasn’t confident my friend would come out the victor.

  “Lali.” Kai’s angular features twisted. “Please.”

  “You need to go.” Nelson stepped backward, guiding me into the house. “Good night.” He closed the door and locked it before turning to face me.

  “Please!” Kai pounded on the door, startling both of us. “It’s an emergency, Lali. And it involves your family, too.”

  I sucked in a breath. Was he just saying that to get me to agree to talk to him? He knew better than anyone that I would do anything to keep my loved ones safe, and he was manipulative enough to use it against me.

  “Does this have to do with the ransom case?” Nelson asked, frowning at the door. “Do we need to call the police?”

  “No!” I bit my lip. Even if Kai was bluffing, I had to hear him out just to be sure. I would never forgive myself if something happened to one of my family members because I was too stubborn to give Kai the time of day.

  Oxanna turned around on the sofa to look at Nelson and me. “What’s going on?”

  “Just give me a minute,” I said, starting for the door.

  “Are you sure?” Nelson’s eyes darted toward the window like Kai might come crashing through the glass at any minute. “He seems a little off.”

  “I’ll just go see what the big deal is,” I insisted. “I’ll only be a minute.” Bracing myself, I opened the door and stepped out onto the porch.