I never asked for this … ability. My life was fine.
I never even asked for anything. It’s almost like an echo, and I shiver. Shiri’s journal. She said nearly the same thing. Only she said it about her own life. Her sad story, all the little hurts we never suspected but which added up somehow. The mysterious THAT. Shiri’s life was anything but fine. And now mine feels like it’s spiraling out of control, too.
I sit cross-legged on the floor next to my bed with my hands folded in my lap. What a joke. I’m supposed to be focusing on my breathing, clearing my mind. Instead, I keep thinking, nonstop. Shiri. Auntie Mina. Cassie. Spike. Even Cody and Mikaela. All of them going around and around my skull like animated bluebirds when a cartoon character gets whacked on the head.
This isn’t working. I open my eyes and try a different strategy: I grab my journal. I might as well make it good for something, so I write down every incident of underhearing that I can remember.
I start with the very first time, the time I was in the pool during the swim meet and thought I heard screaming.
The day that Shiri died.
The first time it happened, it was during the phone call to my mom. THE Phone Call. Then I write the rest down: the incident during dinner at home, the one with Spike, the Cassie debacle, and everything else. I try to remember every detail I can. What I was initially doing. What the other person was doing. What I was thinking and what they were thinking. I make a chart, I draw arrows, I sort and re-sort the information. I make one more list, writing down what both parties were feeling at the time.
That’s when it all starts to fall into place.
Emotions. Each time I underheard someone’s thoughts, the other person was having strong emotions that I was able to sense, feel, at the same time that I heard their thoughts. And I was completely caught up in their feelings, my own emotions drowned out. If the moment of strong emotion was just a flash, all I heard was a few words. If the feeling was surging through, then I might catch as much as a few thoughts. It’s as if their thoughts are the notes from a musical instrument, their feelings an amplifier. And the other person is always nearby; if not next to me, then somewhere in the vicinity.
But it’s connected to my emotions, too. Like when I was sitting there with my old friends from the Zombie Squad, feeling guilty about not going to Spike’s party. It was the minute I cleared my head, like I’d hit pause on my feelings, that I heard Cassie. Or my first day in Emoville with Mikaela and friends, earlier this week, when I got pissed at Cody. I tried to maintain composure, swallowing down my gut reaction, and suddenly I heard Mikaela’s angry thoughts. It’s a moment of clarity, but I’ve still got those emotions pushing at me below the surface. Something about that state of mind makes the impossible possible. At least for me.
I close the journal, put my pen down and massage my tired hand. Then I get up and stare into the mirror on my closet door. It seems as if I should look different. Have sparkles around my head or weird shimmery eyes like a character in a TV show. But I look the same as I always did. Just with worse hair.
Is my life going to change now? I can’t imagine it changing more than it already has. I don’t even know if my underhearing is going to stay forever or just disappear one day. But I’ve figured something out about it, figured out when it happens, and that makes me feel a little less out of control. Less scared.
The next morning, I’m lying on my stomach across the bed, Pixie purring next to me and my journal open to the page with the charts, when my mom opens the door without knocking. I turn my head, startled, and she breezes in, wearing one of her trademark long Indian-print skirts. She takes one look at the diary and a grin appears on her face.
“Oh, baby Sunshine, I am so happy to see—” I glare at her pointedly and she cuts her sentence short. “Anyway. Well. If there’s ever anything—”
“I know, Mom,” I say, hurriedly, and slam the diary shut. “Thanks,” I add. I don’t want her to get nosy, start asking questions I don’t know how to answer. I mean, my mom is a little bit out there, but it’s not like she believes in magic or ghosts or anything supernatural. At least, I don’t think so. Not like some of her crazy dippy friends.
Mom paces over to the window and opens the curtains, flooding the room with painfully bright light. I squint. “Don’t forget Auntie Mina’s coming over this afternoon,” she says, leaning against my desk and smiling a little. “We need to get her out of that house for a while. And I bought a vanilla chai tea blend I think she’s going to love.”
That house. I can’t even remember when we first started to call it that. But when I got older, I could see for myself how Uncle Randall was when he’d get into his “moods.” He’d have everybody walking on eggshells, hoping not to say the wrong thing. And it seemed like it got worse after Number Two moved out and Shiri started high school.
Maybe that’s why she was such an overachiever back then, going out for tennis team and spending time in after-school study hall on days when she didn’t have tennis practice. Going to as many SAT and AP prep classes as she could. Was she trying to make her dad happy, or just trying to stay out of the way?
“Sunny?” Mom says, looking at me. I shake myself a little. I know she asked me a question, but I have no idea what it was.
“Sorry. Guess I’m a little distracted.” I sit up and try to look attentive.
“I asked if you’d like to sit with me later this evening and go through some family photos,” Mom says, picking at a loose thread on her skirt. “I was hoping to make a scrapbook for Mina that we can give her, later, when she’s ready, to help her preserve the good memories of—everything.” Her eyes are shining. I can’t deal with my mom crying, so I nod, just so we can end this conversation. But I don’t know how I can bear to go through photos.
“Oh, good. I’m so glad you said yes. I’ve been feeling like I need some moral support these days,” she continues, “with you and your father keeping everything so bottled up. You’re like two peas in a pod.”
I scowl and stow the journal safely in my desk drawer, on top of Shiri’s journal. I love my mom, but she takes the touchy-feely thing a little too far sometimes.
She smiles a little and straightens up, wandering back toward the door. “Oh! And I invited Antonia to come over later tonight to help us with the scrapbooking. She’s got such a fabulous collection of supplies—rubber stamps, glitter, rickrack, stickers … I thought it would cheer us up.” Mom’s voice fades as she cruises out of the room, and I slam the door behind her.
Antonia lives down the street and is even more touchy-feely than Mom. She comes to the weekend yoga sessions and has every corny new-agey hobby on the face of the earth—tarot cards, aromatherapy, crystals, you name it—and she’s just so disgustingly nice. TOO nice, if you ask me. Spike’s theory is that she was lobotomized. I think she probably just smoked too much pot in the ’70s.
I can’t deal with her right now.
“Dad, you have to get me out of it,” I complain, tugging on his arm as he tries to grade Intro to Film term papers. He’s slouching in the swivel chair in his home office with a stack of papers in his lap, his hairy bare feet propped up on a file box. Blues music is playing quietly through the speakers of his computer. “Antonia is coming over tonight and I’m supposed to help with scrapbooking!” I whine this last word right in his ear.