Maybe that’s enough.
The plan was to try to hear Mikaela, though, not Auntie Mina. Mikaela would induce intense emotions. Then I’d calm myself and try to hear … something. That’s how it seems to work.
Come on, Sunny, I tell myself. Ocean waves. Whale songs. Sunsets. My mind wanders. Then everything gradually morphs into Shiri’s face the way it looked the last time I saw her alive. A little too thin; sharp-featured, smiling, but with eyes full of something deep and unfathomable.
That’s when I do get angry. Angry at how hard it is to move on with my life. Angry at myself for not being able to control the underhearing. Angry at Shiri for leaving me, for giving up on herself and on us. Rage condenses into a hard little ball inside my stomach, like a bubble of tar.
I squeeze my eyelids closed tightly and breathe in, out, in, out, until the knot in my gut slowly begins to ease. Then I feel it. That moment, the calm inside the storm. My stomach leaps in anticipation, and in that second I feel it slipping away again.
I sit as motionless as possible, trying to calm myself.
I don’t hear anything.
I open my eyes. The sun is setting and a ray of orange light reaches a finger through the gap in the curtains. Mikaela is looking at me expectantly, searchingly. I shake my head and draw an uneven breath, resting my head in my hands for a moment. My eyes fill with tears of frustration.
“For a second—Mikaela, it was happening. I’m positive it was. But I lost concentration.” I quickly look down at the floor, but not before I see a flash of disappointment cross her face. My jaw tenses. Without looking up, I say halfheartedly, “We can try again tomorrow. Maybe at your house?”
“It’s okay. We don’t have to.” There’s a short, uncomfortable silence.
She really doesn’t believe me. As sympathetic as she’s been, she just can’t understand. I stare at the carpet some more, the frustration building again.
“Anyway,” she says after a minute, “my mom will never leave us in peace.”
I feel like arguing. “Your mom’s sweet. She offered me and Becca soda like eighty times yesterday.”
“Yeah, but she worries all the time. God. I hate it.” Mikaela grabs her black purse with the elaborate silver buckles from the top of the bed and fishes out a bottle of nail polish so dark red it’s almost black. I sigh loudly, get up to switch on the CD player, grab some silvery blue polish, and start painting my toes.
“When is she going to get it through her head? I don’t care if she only makes a third of what Dad makes,” Mikaela continues. “She’s a nurse and she actually helps people. Meanwhile, Dad’s a collections lawyer and feeds off people’s broken dreams.” She shakes her head. “I’d rather be here, with her. Even if it is suburban hell. Sorry.”
Some friend I am. I never even knew until now what her dad does for a living. I want to be a better friend; better than Cassie was to me. I want to do something to help Auntie Mina. I want to underhear at will because I’m tired of feeling like a victim of some weird fluke of fate. But when it comes to any of those things, I’m a failure.
I breathe raggedly, trying to keep my face composed. Finally I settle down and just sit there, painting my toenails and not thinking about anything for once.
And then:
—no Mina it can’t be true this can’t be happening
this is the kind of thing that happens to other people, not to us, not to YOU
I can’t believe he—
not again—
A wave of exhaustion, of despair and anger, washes over me with the words, and the smell of burning autumn leaves sears my nostrils. The energy seems to drain out of my body. For a moment, I can’t breathe, and then my stomach does a slow flip-turn.
It’s happening. But it’s not who I expected to hear. It’s my mom.
I draw in a sharp breath, coughing on imaginary smoke, and brush silver-blue lacquer across the top of my foot.
“Whoops,” Mikaela says, holding out a tissue and the nail polish remover. I don’t take it from her; instead, I strain to hear something more, anything. But my mind is silent. All that’s left are sticky wisps of my mother’s shock and horror. I squirm uncomfortably. I don’t like having such an intimate glimpse into somebody’s head. I feel invaded, like I’m the one who’s exposed.
I have to get some kind of control over this.
“Hey, what’s going on?” Mikaela waves the tissue at me. “Are you okay?”
I manage a nod and lean back weakly against the bed.
“You look pale.” She looks at me in concern. “Like really pale.”
Mikaela puts her hand on my forehead. “You know, some people spend an hour trying to get their faces that white. Becca did it for a party where she wanted to hit on this one mega-goth chick. Hey, you’re all clammy!” She brushes my hair out of my face.
“Yeah.” I slowly lever myself to a standing position. “It finally worked.” I grab the glass of soda I left on the dresser an hour ago and gulp down the flat, warm liquid in fast swallows.
“What worked?” Mikaela looks at me blankly for a second. Then it dawns on her. “Oh! Oh, my God! Are you kidding?” She sounds like she thinks I am kidding. But I’d never joke about this. I tell her so.
“Wow,” she says, over and over. “No way. Wow. What did you hear?” She carefully caps her nail polish and slips it back into her purse, looking back at me with large, intense eyes.
I hesitate. But I can’t keep it inside. I’ll burst. I start getting that sick, stomach-flipping feeling again.
I have to trust someone. Shiri didn’t trust anyone. She didn’t even trust me.
Mikaela says, “You know, if you don’t want to tell me, that’s okay.” I can hear the skepticism in her tone.
“It was my mom,” I say heavily. “It was something about Auntie Mina, something really bad.” The memory of that awful burnt smell twines into my nostrils and I start trembling.
“What’s really bad?” Mikaela scoots closer. She reaches one hand out, then pulls it back, watching me as I sit there and shake. “If you hold it in, you’ll just feel worse.”
“I don’t know what happened.” I let out a frustrated noise. “I felt all this shock and disbelief and—it just felt wrong.” I tell her how I heard Auntie Mina’s name, how my mother said something about a “he.”
“‘He’? Like who?” For a second, her eyes widen and she looks scared. Then her face relaxes. She leans in and hugs me. “It could be nothing. She’s probably fine.”
I sit there stiffly. What if she’s just humoring me? I want to prove that I’m not making it up, that I’m not crazy. But even more than that, I have to know what happened.
“Let’s go downstairs,” I tell her. I slip out from under her arm and stand up, still a little shaky. “I have to know. I need to ask my mom.”
“Okay,” Mikaela says, eyeing me.
She follows me down the stairs and into the kitchen, where my mom is sitting at the table in semi-darkness. I flip on the kitchen light. In the sudden brightness, I can see the tracks of tears on her face. She glances at me but doesn’t say anything.
I start to get a creeping feeling of dread, and I stop in the doorway, Mikaela lurking in the hall behind me. Stay here, I mouth to her, and walk in.
“Mom, what’s wrong?”
“Oh … ” For a minute it looks like she’s going to tell me, but then her face closes off and an unconvincing smile appears. “No, I’m fine, baby. I was just thinking.” She trails off, getting up to refill her water glass at the sink.