“Whoa, wait—what do you mean, you’re scared all the time?” Mikaela’s voice is gentle and soothing. She’s been so nice to me, and I desperately want to trust her, and I must be loopy from the hair-dye fumes because my mouth opens and I start to tell her. Everything.
“Okay, this is going to sound crazy,” I begin, my voice shaky, “but after my cousin killed herself, I started being able to—” I swallow, repeatedly, and continue. “To hear other people’s thoughts. Not all the time,” I add hastily. “But every once in a while.” I stare at my bare feet, my long toes with dark-red polish peeling off the nails. It sounds so ludicrous. But just having told someone makes me feel so much better, lighter, that I’m not sure I even care if she believes it. And maybe, if I tell her about this, it’ll make up for the fact that I know something about her—something I really shouldn’t know.
She’s staring at me open-mouthed; I can see it out of the corner of my eye.
“No way ! Are you sure?”
“Um, pretty sure. I thought I was going crazy for a while. But … ” I pause for a minute, trying to choose my words carefully. “Some things happened that convinced me it was real.” I pick at the nail polish on my big toe, scraping it off in little flakes that settle on the beige rug.
Mikaela goggles at me, like she’s not sure what to believe. There’s a long silence where I can hear my uneven breathing and the tiny skritch of my fingernail against my toenail polish. Then, finally, Mikaela takes a sharp breath and seems to come to some kind of decision.
“Are you—I mean—can you really hear what people are thinking?” Her voice is almost a whisper. “Like, could you hear what I’m thinking right now?”
“No, it’s not all the time. Not even that often. I can’t really control it. It just happens.” I explain how it started, during the swim meet; how I heard my mom’s voice at dinner but her mouth wasn’t moving; and all the other times. Except what I heard tonight, from Mikaela herself. I’m not ready to tell her that.
The timer goes off for my hair. We walk to the bathroom in silence. As we rinse the dye out under the bathtub faucet, I tell her about how I’ve been trying to meditate so I can get some kind of control over it. And I tell her how it scares me to death and makes me want to vomit at the same time, and that I never asked for this. That I keep wondering, why me?
I wrap my wet hair in a towel and we leave the bathroom, stopping in the hallway outside my room.
She looks at me gravely. “Have you thought about what it means? Do you think it’s, like, a gift? You could probably really help people.” One corner of her mouth turns up, wickedly. “Or annoy the hell out of them.”
I go into my room, wait until she follows me in, and shut the door.
“Help people?” I say miserably. “How can this help anybody? And it’s not a gift. I didn’t ask for it. I don’t even know how to control it. I don’t even want it! I’m scared,” I say in a hoarse whisper, my nails digging into my palms.
Mikaela doesn’t say anything. I’m still not sure she believes me, but at least she’s sympathetic.
“You’ll figure out what to do,” she says finally, and she gives me a quick, hard hug. “You’ve survived a lot. You can survive this.”
nine
The next morning I stay in bed, in my pajamas, reading, until Mom walks in, opens the curtains, and blinds me with daylight.
“Pretty hair,” she says. She gives me a pointed smile and waves a can of cleanser at me before taking it into the bathroom.
I get the hint and drag myself up to scrub the brown dye splotches out of the tub. The light glooming in through the bathroom window is grayish and the sky is overcast. Only two more weeks until winter break.
I scrub briskly at a dark-brown stain on one of the turquoise shower tiles. Since spilling my guts to Mikaela, I’ve had second thoughts, over and over, wondering if I can expect her to be my friend after what I’ve told her. If it were me, I’d definitely think I was nuts. And she hasn’t even met my extended family.
My family. I sit back on my heels, the sponge in my hand dripping sudsy brownish water into the tub. When I think about the upcoming dinner, I’m filled with a cold queasy dread. What if I hear Uncle Randall’s thoughts again? What if I can’t act normal? I’m not even sure I’ll be able to look him in the eye, let alone allow him to hug me.
If I shrink away when he touches me, I wonder if anyone will notice.
When the time comes to get ready, I flip through hangers in my closet, lingering on the new clothes I bought with Mikaela yesterday. It’s not like anybody at the dinner will care about what I’m wearing. But I pull on my long dark-blue skirt from the vintage store anyway, along with a brown V-neck sweater and sandals.
I’m staring critically at my pores in the mirror on the back of my closet door when my phone rings, a vibrating rattle against my nightstand. I grab for it distractedly.
“Hello?”
“Sun, it’s Mikaela.” She sounds fuzzy and far away, like it’s a bad connection.
“Hey,” I say. “I was just putting on my new skirt.”
“Cool,” she says absently. There’s a long pause. “I just wanted to make sure you were feeling okay after … you know, last night. You seemed kind of upset.”
“No, it was okay.” I swallow nervously. “It felt good to talk to someone.”
“Yeah, but then I was worried I might have said something wrong after you told me about, uh … your power thing. But I wanted to say I had a good time shopping and everything.”
“I had a good time too,” I reassure her. After a pause, I say, “Sorry if I was a bummer. Or if I, you know, freaked you out.”
“Chica, it takes a lot to freak me out.” She laughs, but it sounds a little stiff to me. “But like I told Becca, I like living dangerously.”
“Becca?” I repeat, confused. A suspicion starts gnawing at me. “You didn’t tell her about my underhearing?”
“What? No, of course not. What kind of jerk do you think I am?”
“I don’t. I’m sorry. You guys are friends. I thought maybe—it sounded like—” I clench one hand around the phone, knot the other into a fist.
“Nah. Believe me, I wouldn’t tell Becca about that,” she says with a cynical chuckle. “I can’t tell Becca anything. You know she can’t keep her mouth shut.”
My hands relax. “Okay.” I pause awkwardly. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to jump down your throat. I’m just stressed about this dinner at my aunt and uncle’s house.”
“Oh!” Mikaela says, her tone changing to disgust. “The ones you told me about?”
“Yeah. Uncle Randall and Auntie Mina. My parents are making me go.” I glance out in the hallway to make sure they’re not listening. “I told you about what happened the last time we had dinner with them. God, it makes me nauseated just thinking about it.”
“Well, if you get nauseated enough to puke, make sure you use his bathroom. Or his closet. Ooh, or his shoes.” That brings a small smile to my face.
We say goodbye and hang up. On impulse, I take one of the anime shoelaces we bought yesterday and tie it in a floppy bow around my ponytail. Kind of like a good luck charm. Tonight, I could use a little boost from luck, God, karma, or whatever else regulates the universe.
Uncle Randall ushers Mom, Dad, and me through the tacky white-painted cement columns flanking the front door. Compared to our house, their place is huge, and it feels too quiet. The heels of my sandals click alarmingly loudly on the gray marble tile of the front hallway. My mother fills the silence with some small talk about how nice their yard looks, and Uncle Randall praises their landscaping service. He seems tense and distracted. I manage to avoid his one-armed hug.