The Murmurings (7 page)

And then it hits me. The way he’s fidgeting, the way he won’t look at me—it’s as if I’m two seconds from betraying him or uncovering what a freak he is. He has a secret too. One that he isn’t sure he can share with me. With anybody.

So I take a chance.

“Hey, it’s okay, you know. You can tell me.”

I reach for my Gatorade, and he lets it go like he’s ready to forfeit it to me, but I take his hand instead. Its wet chill from the condensation quickly warms in my hand. I have no idea where this boldness is coming from, but I don’t fight it. And he doesn’t either. In fact, a little smile creeps back to his lips, and his eyes finally meet mine again. I’m liking that more and more—when he looks at me.

“I wanted to find someone,” he says. “In Jerome.”

I’m not sure what I was expecting, but this definitely wasn’t it.

“Who?”

He drops his gaze to the table again.

“This is kind of hard to explain.”

I laugh. “That’s usually my territory.”

He crinkles his brow like he’s about to ask me something, then shakes his head and continues. “I had this cousin—
have
this cousin,” he starts. “Deb. We were pretty tight growing up. Neither of us has siblings, and our families lived right around the corner from each other, and we might as well have been brother and sister.”

Hearing the word “sister” from his mouth distracts me, but I try to stay focused. I can tell that whatever he’s trying to say means as much to him as what happened to Nell means to me.

“We grew up going to private school together. We were the only kids in my neighborhood who did, so we relied on each other. She’s a couple of years younger than me, but still, she and I were sort of a team, you know?”

“Yeah, I know,” Nell and I and my mom and Aunt Becca were the same way. We may have gone to public school, and Nell might have been popular, but when she came home, it
was just the two of us. Plus, she and I were the only people I knew our age who actually read books for fun—she with her poetry, me with my fiction.

“So anyway, we used to tell each other things. And she told me some . . . some pretty strange stuff.”

I keep quiet. Evan starts squirming around again.

“When we were really little, she used to say that she could see things. Like, things that weren’t there.”

I want to say something but I can’t. This all sounds too familiar, like he’s somehow read a transcript of what Nell used to tell me.

“I’d play along when we were little because I thought we were just pretending. But then we got older, and she didn’t stop. She wasn’t pretending. And when I told her I was, she got scared and told her parents about what she saw.

“So my aunt and uncle started taking her to this doctor. And for a while, we weren’t allowed to hang out together. They made her take medicine. I heard my parents talking about it with her parents. And then I didn’t see her for almost three months straight. They pulled her out of school. I’d ask my aunt and uncle about her, but they wouldn’t tell me anything.”

Evan stops and looks at me as though he’s forgotten I’ve been listening the whole time. “Is this too much?”

I want to ask him which part. It’s felt like life in general has been “too much” for the past six months.

“No, it’s okay. Keep going,” I say instead. He looks relieved.

“Almost two years ago, my aunt and uncle moved away. They just up and left their house and moved east, to Florida I think. I asked my parents where Deb was, but they didn’t even know, just that my aunt and uncle must have taken her with them. How could they not? My parents never heard from them after that.”

He nods toward the candy he bought at the rest-stop vending machine.

“They were Deb’s favorite. After she went away, I don’t know . . . I guess I just sort of picked up the habit. Almost like a tribute to her or something.”

I run my finger over the outside of my silver ring. I know a thing or two about tributes.

We let a few more minutes pass with us just looking at our sandwiches. I hear the flies buzz around the trash can a few feet away, and I wonder how long it’s going to take them to make their way over to our untouched picnic lunch, which Evan so conscientiously packed when he thought this might be a somewhat normal date. And it occurs to me—he still hasn’t told me why he wanted to go to Jerome.

“Sorry, I still don’t really understand.”

“Yeah, I know. It’s a lot of weird,” he says apologetically, but at least now he’s looking me in the eye again.

“No, I mean, what about today? About—”

“Jerome. Right,” he nods, fishing around in the bag of grapes and plucking a few from their stems. But he doesn’t eat them, just juggles them in the palm of his hand like dice.

“When I couldn’t get any answers from my family, I started doing my own digging to try to find out what happened to Deb. The problem was, I didn’t have enough information. I only knew what she said she was, you know, seeing.”

He finally pops one of the grapes into his mouth, but he doesn’t seem to register that he’s eating. As soon as he swallows, he continues.

“I started searching the Internet. I’d type in her symptoms—seeing things out of the corner of her eye; hearing whispers in her ear. Believe it or not, I found lots of information. And not just what you’d expect about schizophrenia and stuff like that. I mean, that came up too. But there was more.”

Up to this point, Evan’s story about Deb had been the same as mine. But this was new. I might actually start to get answers about what happened to Nell. And even though I know this should make me happy, part of me feels like I’m in a speeding car headed toward a cliff. I’m not sure I want to hear it.

“What kinds of stuff?” I can’t keep myself from asking.

He leans in a little closer. “Stuff that makes you think maybe she wasn’t imagining it. Like it wasn’t all in her head.”

A shudder runs through my body so violently that I nearly tip backward off of the picnic bench.

“You mean, like what she was seeing and hearing was . . . ?”

He nods slowly. “Real.”

“Oh God.” I wrap my arms around myself. No one has put words to what I’ve felt ever since they started calling Nell schizophrenic—that there was too much that didn’t add up. Schizophrenia seemed too easy an explanation.

“You wouldn’t believe how much is out there. Blogs and databases and websites, all of them saying the same thing. That these people aren’t crazy—that the voices they’re hearing, the things they’re seeing, are real. There are doctors, psychologists who are studying these so-called sick people. And not all of those doctors are good.”

I’m starting to feel like I might pass out again. All I can hear in my mind is the fake empathy in Dr. Keller’s voice, the unidentifiable threat hiding behind his words.

“Anyway, one site gets updated pretty frequently. The guy calls himself ‘the Insider.’ A lot of the people behind these sites are total nutcases, but this one seems like he’s been there. It’s just a gut feeling, but I think he knows what’s going
on. Nobody knows where the Insider is hiding out, except—well, I think I figured it out. I think he’s in Jerome. I guess I thought that if I could find him and talk to him, maybe—”

I stand up so fast that I bang my knees on the underside of the attached table. I start pacing in the clearing.

Evan’s voice floats to me as if from someplace far away. “What a lame date, right? Here I am, trying to make it sound like I’m taking you someplace original, but I really had this selfish motive. And then it turns out it’s the place where your sister—oh man, I suck.”

“Evan, stop. Okay? Just—just stop for a second.” My voice sounds low and froglike.

My head is spinning so fast it blurs my vision. Evan thinks the Insider is in Jerome. The same place Nell died after she ran off with—

“This guy—the one from the website—doesn’t he have a name?”

Evan shakes his head slowly, his lips pinched into an upside-down crescent. “The Insider.”

“Right,” I say. “Well, I think I’ve got a name for you.”

Evan lifts his chin a little higher.

“Adam Newfeld.” Now I place my hands squarely on the table and lean toward him, making sure I have his full attention. “Otherwise known as the orderly my sister ran away with.”

Evan’s mouth drops open as he connects the dots. “Holy shit.”

“Yeah, holy shit.” I rub my temples against an oncoming headache. “And believe me when I tell you, he might be this ‘Insider’ guy, but there’s no way he’s in Jerome anymore. Not with all those unanswered questions about my sister.”

Evan and I consider the flood of information that’s just passed between us. I try to slow my thoughts by focusing on the landscape. The spindly paloverde tree in the corner. The cluster of stones at the base of its neon-green trunk. The faded green and yellow awning shading the back window of the tiny restaurant. Evan looks like he’s processing something too, though what that might be I couldn’t even begin to guess.

“So,” he says, standing slowly and looking wearily at his cooler full of untouched food. “Want some pie?”

•  •  •

Exhausted in the way that only a mind full of fresh questions and a stomach full of banana cream pie can make you, Evan and I drive home from Black Canyon City in near silence, careful to say only things that have to do with the music selection and the temperature of his car. This has quite possibly been the worst date in history, and yet, for some reason, I don’t want it to end.

After Evan pulls up in front of my house, we sit in his idling car for a moment. Pretty soon, it occurs to me he might be waiting for me to leave, so I reach for my bag at my feet.

“Hey,” he says, going for my hand, hesitating, then closing his long fingers around mine. “Your hands are cold,” he says, pressing my palm between both of his.

“Must be that awesome AC of yours.” I smile a little, then find his eyes, which are already on mine.

“Look, I know this was . . . well, I don’t know what it was.”

I shrug a little, doing my best it’s-cool-this-kind-of-stuff-happens-to-me-all-the-time impression, which in a way is honest.

“So, since we know this much about each other already, what would you say to maybe finding out a little bit more?”

My heart pounds behind my sternum.

“I mean, not like that—not that I wouldn’t want to, but what I meant was—” He starts stammering. “What I’m trying to say is, would you want to come over sometime so I can show you what I’ve been reading about all this stuff?”

On the one hand, I would do just about anything to spend more time with Evan. I’d search sewers for rats if he called it a date. But this is something else altogether. If Evan had any idea that he was dating a girl who sees things from the corner of her eye, just like his cousin did . . . well, he’d probably
have me committed to Oakside. Unless he was crazy too. Which he isn’t.

“I don’t get it,” I say. “Why me?”

I hope he doesn’t think I’m saying no. I’m glad he picked me to be his companion in all this. But nobody ever picks me. Not for anything. He’s the only guy to show me more than a minute’s worth of attention, well, pretty much
ever
.

Evan looks at the dashboard as if the answer might be there, then answers with startling purposefulness. “I figured you’d understand. There’s something quiet about you, like you’ve lived an entire lifetime already.”

I let his words settle into my mind like seeds in soil. I don’t quite know what to make of it.

“Plus you’ve got a rockin’ body,” he says with an enormous smile. I try to jerk my hand away, but he only holds it tighter.

Serious again, he says, “Please, Sophie.” Suddenly I can’t remember any of my reasons for saying no. So I say, “Yeah, okay. Maybe.”

I ease out of the car, already missing the way his hands felt around mine, and watch his white Probe disappear around the corner, leaving me to wonder what it was I’d just agreed to.

Inside the house, there’s no sign of Mom, but her remnants are everywhere—the smell of Jergens body lotion, a TV flickering with its sound turned off in the living room,
a sweating liquor glass in the breakfast nook. I guess she’s not going out with Aunt Becca after all. I know I’ll find her passed out in her bed, but I don’t want to go back there yet. I just want to linger in the feeling of being wanted by Evan a little bit longer.

I sit in front of the TV for a while and watch the characters of some syndicated sitcom silently play out their conflicts. I empty Mom’s glass of its melted ice cubes and swipe away the ring of condensation from the tabletop with a clean dish towel. I pace the floor of the kitchen, retracing my steps over the bubble in the linoleum that’s been beside the refrigerator for as long as I can remember. Nell used to try to scare me by telling me there was a tiny troll who lived under the house, and that was where he’d built his little underground chimney.

With nothing else to do, I’m about to head to my room when I decide I should check the voice mail. I’m sure Aunt Becca’s left a message for Mom scolding her for staying home to drink instead of getting out of the house, and it’ll end with a request to have me please call her so she can quiz me about what Mom’s doing.

I lift the receiver and find the skipping dial tone, telling me there’s a message waiting. I punch the code and wait for Aunt Becca’s voice. Instead, I find a different voice, one I
wasn’t expecting but that’s becoming almost as familiar.

Good afternoon, Ms. David. This is Dr. Jeremy Keller from the Oakside Behavioral Institute. I’m calling—again—to discuss a matter of great importance with you. It’s regarding your daughter, Sophie, whom I had the pleasure of meeting the other day here at our facility. It’s very important that I speak with you about some observations I made while she was here. I apologize for being so cryptic, but I’m sure you understand the, er, sensitivity with which this must be approached, especially given the, well, the family history. Ms. David, please give me a call at my personal extension as soon as you receive this message. The number is—

I hang up so fast I nearly knock the phone off the wall. What does Dr. Keller mean “observations”? What the hell is he doing calling my mom about me? I pick up the receiver and select the option for deleting the message. I stare at the phone for another few minutes as though it’s betrayed me. Whatever he wants to tell Mom can’t be good. And where does he get off calling like that anyway? Like he knows our family?