Underneath (9 page)

“Sorry about your parents getting divorced,” I blurt, in lieu of something intelligent. At the same time, Mikaela says wryly, “Nice Volvo; is it yours?”

“Kind of. My dad bikes to work most of the time, so my parents are letting me use it,” I say, blushing furiously. Now I
really
don't know what to say, so I just sit there for a minute, clutching the wheel tightly.

“Uh, anyway, sorry about your parents,” I finally manage.

“It's cool,” Mikaela says. “My parents used to argue all the time, and my mom was sick of my dad being such a tightwad asshole, so it's definitely a good thing.”

“Oh.” I fidget uncomfortably. The extent of my knowledge about divorce comes from people like James, whose parents seem to be in a constant competition to buy his love. I'm starting to feel hopelessly sheltered. “Do you, like, have to visit him on weekends, or what?” It's probably a stupid question, but she doesn't treat it like one.

“Nah, not anymore. Right after the divorce, I was supposed to visit every other weekend, but since we moved here I only see him once every couple of months or so.”

“Oh,” I say again. “Where did you live before?”

“Near San Francisco.”

“Wow,” I say, stupidly. I can't seem to give her anything but robot answers. My nervousness starts to come back, and I fiddle with the rearview mirror unnecessarily.

“It was pretty cool,” she says. “But my dad's there, and he bugs me, so I'm glad I'm down here, hundreds of miles away.” She turns to me and smiles. “So where do you want to go first?”

“Uh … ” I haven't really thought about it. “You're the guru for the day. You tell me—where do I get my preppy dweeb makeover? I'm ready for anything.”

“Well, why don't we start with Thumbscrew and then go to the vintage place? If there's anything else we need after that, we can try the Orangewood Mall on the way back. I know this little shop there that has cheap Manic Panic hair dye and stuff.”

Manic Panic hair dye? I gulp nervously, wondering what I'm in for.

It turns out I have very little to worry about. Mikaela doesn't try to tell me what I should or shouldn't wear—unlike some people—but instead just pulls a bunch of clothes off racks and lets me accept or veto items for the dressing room. At first I'm a little weirded out by Thumbscrew, whose patrons all seem to be of the nose-ring-and-tattoo persuasion, but very few of them give me attitude. When they do, Mikaela is quick to glare at them from her full five-feet-one-inch height, and amazingly, they back off.

I look at her. “Good thing you're
here. Otherwise they'd probably bite my ear off.”

“It's all in the way you carry yourself,” she says, looking me up and down critically. “Your new wardrobe will help—trust me. Although you should keep that head scarf around; it's very retro.”

By the late afternoon, I have three new T-shirts and a pair of black jeans from Thumbscrew; a gauzy black top, a long silk skirt, and a pair of slightly worn black Converse hi-tops from the vintage place; some shoelaces from a mall store, which are printed with Japanese cartoon characters; and hair dye that matches my natural dark-brown color. And I still have twelve dollars left from the money my mom gave me.

“These Afro Ken shoelaces are
so you
,” Mikaela says, examining our hoard as I pilot us back to my house.

“Yeah?” I feel a surge of happiness. “I really like that crocheted sweater you got from Vintage Alley. And all the stuff you helped me pick out is … I love it.” I concentrate on turning the corner onto our street. I can't help seeing it as though I've never really looked at it before, wondering what it looks like to Mikaela.

To me, now, the houses seem huge and ostentatious, like giant stucco boxes with identically trimmed lawns and squeaky-clean cars parked in front. It's dusk, so they look even more identical than usual. Of course, there's
our
house. Mom painted a huge rock in our front yard with our house number in bizarre colors. You can't miss it. She had a huge fight with the neighborhood association about it, but she didn't back down, and, as usual, somehow she got her way.

“This is you, huh?” Mikaela looks at the place appraisingly but doesn't say anything. I know she must be thinking about what a homogenous McNeighborhood I live in. Maybe she even thinks I'm spoiled. But I'm glad she doesn't say it.

“Nice rock.”

“Uh, yeah. My mom did that,” I mumble as we carry our haul up the front walk.

“Cool. My mom just knits crap.” Mikaela follows me through the front door. Clinging to my shopping bags like a shield, I introduce her to my parents.

Dad actually manages to act pretty normal, considering he wasn't too pleased about me putting dibs on the car at the last minute. He asks her how our shopping went, what we bought, and whether she thinks a film professor like him needs to make a dramatic fashion statement. I should have guessed that Mom would fawn all over Mikaela, and she does, exclaiming over her “adorable little braids” and offering her every nonalcoholic beverage under the sun. Mikaela seems to be okay with it. I'm surprised. I'd have expected her to be—I don't know. Uncomfortable, or disdainful. Instead, she grins at my mom and sits down at the kitchen table like she's been here a million times.

I drop into a chair next to her, letting Mom's chatter wash over me. My breathing slows a little and I start to relax. At the same time, I feel something open in my mind, like a sliding door, or like a television turning on, and I realize this is the first time I've known beforehand that my underhearing is about to happen.

What I hear almost makes me drop my bottle of orange soda. This time, it's not my mom. It's Mikaela.

—this THIS is what we deserve mom I wish we could
have this a house a new life something better

because we should have it and it wasn't right of
dad to take it away but I guess we have to deal—
but—still—I want this—

for us—

The words—barely coherent—are accompanied by a wave of profound sadness tinged with a whole array of other emotions. Regret, frustration, anger, determination. And, shockingly, nervousness. My own stomach does a slow somersault in response; my forehead breaks out in angry sweat.

It's dizzying, and I put a hand to my head involuntarily.

Mikaela glances at me. My face gets hot.

I shouldn't have heard that. It's not something I should ever know, unless she chooses to tell me. But I
do
know.

I shift uncomfortably in my chair and force a smile. She smiles back wryly, as if nothing strange happened. As far as she knows, nothing did. As the lingering emotions subside, I steal another glance at her. She isn't showing any of what she feels on the outside.

Dinner goes quickly. Mom and Dad serve spinach lasagna, salad, and garlic bread, and Mikaela tells them how great everything is and thanks them for having her over, just like my parents are always reminding me to do, so I know they'll be pleased. They're all smiles, actually. They don't even blink when Mikaela asks if she can stay for another hour or two.

After dinner, we go upstairs to my room. She looks app-raisingly at my posters of the Olympic swim team and the sun and moon pillows that I got for my thirteenth birthday, but she doesn't say anything about them.

“Ready to go brown again?” she asks, shaking the bag with the hair dye in it.

“Yeah, I think I am,” I say. “It's been a while.” I try to remember the last time my hair was its natural color. Probably freshman year, like Mikaela. “It's going to feel weird.”

“Are you kidding? Your natural hair color is gorgeous.” She rips open the cardboard container and pulls out the plastic squeeze bottle of dye. “It's just sad that we have to approximate it with this crap.”

Funny; I never thought my hair was that exciting. And Cassie never really had any suggestions other than to highlight it. I assumed that meant it was hopeless.

It takes us about half an hour to work the dye through my hair. Once it's finished and goopy with brownish crud, we stuff it into a shower cap and go into my room to wait for the dye to set. I debate whether to turn on some music, and if so, what kind of music Mikaela would want to listen to.

“This is cool,” Mikaela exclaims, picking up an incense burner sitting on my bookshelf. It's a small brass cone burner in the shape of a genie lamp that my grandparents brought back from Pakistan.

“Yeah, I guess so,” I say. “But the incense kind of makes me sneeze.”

“Oh, that's too bad. Hey, we should light this candle.” She points at my black-cherry meditation candle. She pulls a plastic cigarette lighter out of her purse and sets the wick alight. “Smells good. Where'd you get this?”

“I found it at the drugstore.” I avoid meeting her eyes. “I, uh, use it when I'm trying to meditate.”

“You meditate?” She sounds genuinely interested. “Is it hard?”

“I don't think I'm very good at it,” I admit, sitting on the floor next to the bed. Mikaela sits down next to me, leaning back and staring at the ceiling.

“I wish I could meditate,” she says. “I heard you can really reach a different state of mind.”

I let out a sigh. “I don't think I'm there yet. I just spend the whole time obsessing about lame stuff.”

“It can't hurt,” she points out. “Trying is better than nothing. More than I'm doing, anyway,” she adds under her breath, like an afterthought.

I'm not sure what to say to this, so I just sit there and let the hair-dye fumes and the cherry-candle smoke have a little war in my nostrils. It's making me lightheaded.

“Why do you meditate?” she asks suddenly. “If you don't mind me asking.” She still looks curious.

I hesitate. “I started after my cousin … died. My mom suggested it. I guess it's helping with the—with being depressed.” I stumble over my words awkwardly, my stomach increasingly queasy. I feel so stupid. “I mean, I'm not
that
depressed, not like my cousin was—she was on medication and … but it's been so hard, I … ” I suck in a breath, but I can't seem to stop babbling. “I haven't had anyone to really talk to and I'm tired of holding it all in, and tired of these stupid thoughts in my head and of being scared all the time.” I look down at my lap, my breath trembling in and out.

“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.