Whisper (18 page)

“That means you’re breaking through.” Her tone was surprised, almost awed. “Joy. Your Hearing must be very strong if you can already do that. Of course,” she added, “living in a house full of both kinds of blockers, you’ve clearly had opportunities to hone your power.”

I almost had to sit down again. My head was spinning with terms I just barely understood. Blockers. Adepts. Hone your power. Breaking through. What else did Aunt Jane know that Mom couldn’t, or wouldn’t, pass on to us? And why had I never tried to talk to her before?

Then it hit me. Both kinds of blockers? My hand felt the smooth stone of my topaz pendant. “Dad,” I whispered. It wasn’t that he never thought about us, he just didn’t want to burden us with his hopes and expectations. The way his own parents had done to him. “Did you teach him how—”

“When I was in the forest,” Aunt Jane said, “your father filed my taxes for ten years. As far as favors go, I’d say we’re even.”

Outside the café, I barely had time to zip my jacket before the Land Rover rolled up.

I jumped into the passenger side.

“Whoa.” Jamie reeled to the left, as if a magnet had pinned him to the inside of the car door. “You okay? Where’d you get all this energy?”

“Get back on the freeway,” I told him. “We have to go to Seattle.”

“Ah…no can do, Nancy Drew.” He was slowly peeling himself off the door. His voice hit me back with my own resolve and urgency. “See, the thing is, Seattle is the opposite direction from home, and we
have
to return this here coach before my brother comes back from his date and turns me into a pumpkin. Which is technically Cinderella, not Nancy Drew, but—”

“This is more important, I swear!” I said. “I’ll explain everything on the way, but we have to
go
.”

He stopped. “Everything?” he said softly.

I took a deep breath.
“Everything,”
I said, and I meant it.

Confessing my secret to Jamie felt like flying down a roller-coaster track, my vision blurred, my stomach weightless as exit signs whizzed past. Halfway through, when I got to the part about how hard it is for me to
not
grant a wish, Jamie’s right hand quit the steering wheel. It found my left hand, resting on my knee, and covered it, his long fingers flexing underneath to compress my palm. And he didn’t let go for the rest of the story, and I didn’t let go of his hand either, so he was sort of flying down the hill with me. When I got to the end—when he knew why I was throwing up and crying in the Starbucks bathroom, when he knew about my dream, and Mom’s lie about Icka being okay, and Aunt Jane
telling me
I
had to be the one to find her—he looked at me. Just looked. A brief glance too, because he was driving, but it was enough. I felt
understood
.

He didn’t speak for seven exits. Then he said, quietly, “I always wondered why everybody around you was so happy.”

“Were they? I’m glad…sort of.” I smiled at the moon that seemed to follow us through the otherwise black night. “Mom always said our gift could make the world a happier place. I’m glad it wasn’t
all
lies.” I was almost afraid to ask my next question. “What about me? Was I happy?”

“Sometimes.” He signaled to pass a Pepsi truck. “You just never stayed like that for long. You’d be smiling, but then you’d send out these Waves…out of nowhere you’d be scared, or uneasy. Couldn’t figure you out. Thought you might even have the same thing I did, but in reverse or something.” He shook his head. “Instead you have this totally amazing power.”

I snorted. “Yeah, it’s pretty awesome being me.”

Chopin played on my phone just then.
MOM’S CELL
flashed on the screen. “Augh,” I said. For the tenth time since Aunt Jane had spilled the beans to my parents, I screened her out by punching Ignore.

“I’m not saying your life’s a picnic,” Jamie said. “But look at
me
. I just wish…well, hell, you can probably Hear it.”
I wish I wasn’t broken like this.

My limbs felt squirmy. The closer I was to another person, the harder it was to ignore their Whispers. Without
thinking I suggested, “Maybe one day you can learn how to control it.”

“Uh, don’t go there.” His tone had a dark, sharp edge to it suddenly. “You sound like my dad or Ben.”

“No,” I said, hurt, “I was just saying—”

“You think I haven’t
tried
?” He chuckled, a sound of pain. “Trust me, I have tried so hard, so many times…. I can’t put up a Wall, I’m just defective. It is what it is.”

“But what if a Wall’s not the only way?” I was reaching. “I mean, if they’re Waves, can’t you, like…dive underneath, or surf them, or something?”

“What the hell does that mean?” The edge was back.

“I don’t know, okay?” I was starting to feel attacked. “I’m just trying to help.”

“I’ve been dealing with this shit my whole life.” He stared at the dark road ahead, his posture stiff, hunched. “Don’t you think if there was some way out I’d have found it? Or maybe I’m just stupid and lazy, and I
like
being a freak.” It broke my heart the way he recited this list of insults, like it was a mantra he’d been forced to memorize. Who had told him those things?

“Of course I don’t think that!” I brushed his bicep, and felt his shoulder relax a little. “I just don’t think you should give up hope. I didn’t know half of what I could do till this weekend. Maybe you’re still discovering your potential.”

“Maybe.” He shrugged. “Look, I know you’re trying to
help. I’m just not used to…never mind.”

“What?”

“Someone still having faith in me.” He said the words quickly, sounding embarrassed now.

“Well,
get
used to it,” I said. “I’m not giving up on you. Trying to solve other people’s problems is in my blood.” I paused. “Also, you may be the only friend I have left.”

“Trying to solve people’s problems for them…having no friends,” he deadpanned. “Ever thought about how those two things might relate?”

I rolled my eyes and grinned. “Shut up.”

Before I could attempt a better zinger, we were interrupted by my cell. For once it wasn’t Mom’s ring.

“Please be Icka!” I wished aloud, and scrambled to fish the phone from my jacket pocket. It was Dad.

I didn’t want to talk to him, but it wasn’t fair to keep him in the dark.

I sighed and flipped it open.

“Pumpkin?” I could hear the wind whipping of engine sounds in the background. “I’m driving to Seattle. To sync up with you.”

“You what?” I held the phone at arm’s length and gave it a sidelong glare, as if I suspected it of lying. Dad wanted to “sync up” with me? Not call the police? Not hire a detective? But join my search party? “So does this mean you believe me?” I ventured. “That I’m Hearing her?”

Dad was quiet for a moment. “I’m not sure
what
to believe
anymore,” he admitted. “It seems I’ve been going on some faulty intelligence.”

Faulty intelligence. I cringed, thinking about the lying note I’d left, the tense conversation he’d likely just had with Mom. Then again, Dad’s being so out of the loop was partly his own doing—he’d always kept the rest of us at a distance; understandable, perhaps, but now he was paying the price. A gloomy thought popped into my head: What if my parents ended up divorcing over Mom’s not being honest with us, or Dad’s not being there for us? I couldn’t help but notice he said, “
I’m
driving to Seattle,” not “we.” As if reading my mind, he added, “You know, our family has some things we need to talk about, later.” He sounded almost stern, for him. “What matters now,” he went on, “is both my girls coming home safe. I want you—and your friend—to check into the W Hotel downtown the moment you get to Seattle. I’ve booked a room for each of you. Wait for me there, understand? Do not go anywhere till I arrive.”

I had no intention of waiting in my room. But I wasn’t going to lie to him again. “Dad, I don’t know how much longer I’ll be able to Hear her. I’m sorry, but I just have to keep looking. With you or without you.”

He exhaled noisily. “Well, I don’t like this,” he said.

I held my breath. Was he going to call the police on us?

“But I can see nothing’s going to stop you, so there’s
no point in arguing.” A pause. “Promise to keep your phone on?”

“I will.”

“And keep your wits about you.”

“I will, Dad.”

I hung up feeling like, for once, Dad’s Vulcan-like ability to bury his emotions was a good thing.

Three
A.M
. found us in South Seattle, at an all-night Shell station. We were the only customers. At the register, a pretty Indian girl in charcoal sweats had spread her textbook on the counter and was praying she’d pass her microbiology midterm.

Jamie had been Whispering about food for the past hour, so we headed straight for the glass case that housed gas-station cuisine: the standard nukeable breakfast bagels, energy drinks, frozen treats.

I just want a turkey sandwich,
he Whispered.

“Second row,” I replied, not feeling the slightest bit self-conscious for responding to his thought.

When the cashier didn’t glance up from her cram session, I rang the bell and for once in my life didn’t mind getting glared at. While I counted out cash for food and gas, Jamie ran outside to start the pump. Draining my wallet down to the last ten bucks made me nervous, but we needed fuel
now,
to keep going. And we had to keep going.

The images I had picked up from Icka since leaving
Portland had disturbed me—so much so that several times, Jamie had had to pull over and leap out of the car. He’d stand by the side of the road panting, catching his breath, praying for calm. A trip that should have taken under three hours had taken four.

In that time, I’d gotten a bit better at Whispering directly to Icka, but her responses had grown more jumbled: a mishmash of our shared memories, past wishes, and random sights and sounds and sometimes even sensations. As we’d driven through Olympia, I had flashed for several seconds on a gray courtyard swarming with young people who looked much like Icka: ripped jeans, dark jackets, silver-studded chins and eyebrows. I’d Heard no words but felt a sense of reaching out to the crowd. Searching. Was she yearning to belong? Had Icka come to Seattle hoping to find friends? Or was she searching the crowd for someone specific? The guys who were going to help her kill her Hearing.

It had been the last clear picture for a while. Soon after, I’d begun to see disjointed images. A spinning pink elephant. An IM chat window filled with endless repetitions of the letter “O.” A stack of chemistry textbooks dancing. I saw a chorus of little kids hiss and spit like demons. Felt myself falling down a well; I hit the water and kept falling. Heard a young guy’s braying laughter on a loop. Smelled the sweet, sickening, outdoor-concert reek of pot. Was the person she was searching for…a drug dealer? If so, whatever they’d hooked her up with had to be a thousand times stronger
than weed. Sitting in the car next to Jamie, I’d worried that Icka’s next dispatch of brain shit would set him careening off the road. Around the time we’d passed Tacoma, I got a crystal-like set of flashes. A dank ceiling peopled with lecherous gray shadow hands. I—or Icka—floated on a moldy mattress. My lungs screamed for oxygen. I wished desperately to turn on my side but couldn’t. I understood these were Icka’s wishes, Icka’s experiences. What the hell was happening to her?

And then, after that, nothing. Not even static.

Behind the gas-station register, a laminated neighborhood map caught my eye. “Over half a million people call Seattle home,” its cover boasted. I pulled it off the rack and plunked down my last ten bucks.

“Which one of these is the alternative neighborhood?” I asked the cashier. “Like, where would you see tats and piercings?”

She rolled her eyes.
I wish these kids would run along so I could study.
“Try Capitol Hill,” she said aloud.

“Thank you.”

“Or the U District,” she added. “Maybe even Ballard and West Seattle.”

I stared at the map, disheartened. I’d been expecting to comb one little neighborhood. The four districts she named looked enormous, each practically a town in its own right. For Jamie’s sake, at least, I tried to think positive, but the universe had suddenly grown big and cold again. Icka was a speck of dust hidden in the Milky Way;
we’d never find her. It was hopeless.

Outside, I listlessly took over pumping gas while beside me Jamie used my phone to call his brother. Our original plan to sneak the Benmobile back before daylight was shot, so we were at the mercy of its owner’s kindness. I wasn’t holding my breath.

“You fucker!” Ben’s tinny voice yelled into the phone. “How could you just take my fucking car?” On speaker, he sounded like an enraged mosquito.

“Dude, I’m really sorry!” Jamie said. “It was an emergency and—”

“Why didn’t you give me a heads-up, asshole?”

Jamie blinked. It was a fair enough question. “You—you said you’d never cover for me again.”

“I was pissed, okay? Jesus…bring it back already.”

“Can’t.”

“What? You have to. It’s been reported stolen.”

“Oh, shit.” Jamie covered the right side of his face with his hand. “Shit shit shit.”

“Dad was spying from the window,” Ben went on, “when Senior Number One dropped me off after our date. He asked why the car was missing. I had
no
clue what to tell him.”

A squad car was cruising toward the gas station. I felt like I couldn’t breathe. Jamie backed away from me, pale. I could no longer catch all Ben’s words, though I still caught the gist of it.

“Thanks to you…Gina…I fell…playing basketball!”
Ben chortled. “…thinks I’m…and abused. Thanks a lot!”

I wish it would pass us, just pass us and go,
Jamie whispered.

The squad car passed. I inhaled fresh air but couldn’t seem to get enough of it.

“Where are you anyway, you little shit? No, wait, don’t tell me. You finally got yourself so deep in it I can’t cover for you. Free advice? Beg for solitary.”

Jamie closed the phone and turned to me, his face an ashy gray. “We have to ditch this car, we have to
get it off the street
.”

“Right. Okay.” I bobbed my head, numb. Without a car, we were even less likely to find Icka. Hopeless.

I felt my body sinking, my knees dragged down to the cold concrete as if commanded by the gravity of Jupiter.

And blink: Suddenly I was no longer outside the gas station. There was an orange light and I was back in the dark bedroom. The musty mattress. Silent panic. The shadow hands breathing over me, stealing my air. My heart raced and skipped wildly. Then my breath stopped. My heart stopped.

“Joy.”

I could dimly hear Jamie’s voice.

“Joy? What are you seeing?”

The gas-station light seemed very far away, a soft fuzzy red sun, as if I were glimpsing it from inside a long tunnel.

At the same time, I felt myself—my other, Icka self—being hoisted and carried. I was breathing again, but slow
and shallow. I could no longer see. I was bumped and bounced down stairs, many stairs, then pushed against a cold metal door into the outside air. Where was I?
I wish you’d open your eyes, Jess,
I begged.
I wish you’d show me where you are.
For a moment my vision fluttered open and I caught sight of dirty pavement, brownstones, and brick apartment buildings, a faded green store sign whose remaining letters read:
P
^**
EST
^****
GRO
^****
. Then the eyes closed, and I was shoved into a narrow space that smelled like gasoline and mold and crackers, and from then on I saw and heard and felt nothing. I wished nothing. I was nothing.

I’d found oblivion.

“Hel-
lo
.” Parker’s voice was quiet and groggy but clipped, halfway between asleep and pissed off.

“It’s me,” I said quickly. “Sorry if I woke
you
this time, but I need your help, fast.”