The Whisper (31 page)

Alistair strained, but he only sank deeper into the body ball-crawl. “Please. I get it. You don't have to do this anymore. Put Polly's soul into the waterfall. Let her go home.”

“Show, don't tell,” Charlie said again. “And I need to
show
you what I did to Fiona.”

The ink dripped leisurely, like the rubber cement Alistair had poured into that wasp hole back when they were both so little. If Alistair could have moved, he might have stopped Charlie. A big, and impossible, if.

The drops finally reached their destination, and when they touched Charlie's colorless skin, his body shimmered for a moment and he howled, “You don't realize how good it feels! To know everything that someone else knows. To feel all the things that someone else feels. To become someone else.”

More struggling. Frantic and pointless, because Alistair only sank deeper—beaks, gills, hooves, poking at his ribs. “You are not Fiona! You could never be her!”

“I
am
Fiona. And I am Polly. I am Chua, I am Boaz, I am every soul that hasn't been sent back to the Solid World. You asked me once where Fiona was and I told you I didn't know. I wasn't lying. Because that's like asking a guy where his soul lives.”

Even without struggling, Alistair sank deeper. His chin rubbed against dinosaur heads, eagle talons, leopard tails. “Then show some kindness and let them go,” he whimpered. “What if you throw yourself into the waterfall? Will they all be released?”

“Possibly, but then I'd be released too, and who would take my place?” Charlie asked. “There always has to be a Whisper.”

“Does there?”

Charlie moved closer and crouched down, his head inches away from Alistair's. “Of course. And if you weren't ready before, then I think I've molded you enough that you're ready now.”

“No. Please, no.”

“I forgive you, Alistair,” Charlie whispered.

“What? That's doesn't make—”

“For all of it. For not having the courage to tell the truth so many, many times. For not having the courage to do what has to be done.”

With that, Charlie took the pen and he plunged it into his own ear, and that wonderfully horrible body of his collapsed. It spilled over everything, a stain on a paisley pile.

The tip of the pen remained lodged in his ear, and the other end was tantalizingly close to Alistair's head. Strain his neck forward a bit and Alistair could get it in his mouth. “Charlie,” he said softly. “Are you…?”

No response.

Alistair had stopped sinking. Like a shipwreck survivor, his head poked up at the surface. Outside, he could hear the yelps and howls of the ciphers, the rush of the waterfall, but those sounds weren't overwhelming. He had the luxury of thought for a moment, the chance for contemplation.

And yet he didn't take that chance. Instead, he used his tongue to pull the pen to his mouth and he treated it like a straw, sucking, yanking at Charlie's soul, or whatever his soul had become. It was instinct, it was anger, it was twenty-five years of not knowing what to do.

When sparkling liquid filled the pen, Charlie disintegrated exactly as Polly had disintegrated, like ash caught in a breeze and melding with the sky. And all those other body parts—the horns, the fins, the trunks—took to the air too, but they didn't break apart. They streamed out of the windows like clouds of bats, so fast that Alistair didn't realize he was sitting on a stone floor until the pile was gone and he was alone. Except for the pen, still poised between his teeth.

He dashed straight to a window and poked his head out to see that the ciphers were gone. Where to, it wasn't clear. There was the void and there was the tower, and at the base, there was the pool and the bottomless waterfall. That was it. Nothing else.

Pen now clutched to his chest, Alistair located some stairs along the edge of the room and he hurried down them until he reached the bottom and the entranceway of the tower. The roar of the waterfall was nearly deafening now, but somehow voices found their way to him. They were the voices of daydreamers.

I need to say goodbye to my creations.

I need my friends to forgive me for the thing I did.

I need love.

I need an end. I need
the
end.

Alistair stood in the arched entrance, at the edge of the pool. He gazed at his reflection, the face of a boy, a kid not even thirteen years old. The reflection wasn't quite a lie, but it was an illusion. That boy didn't exist anymore. He'd hardly existed when he had washed up in Mahaloo so long ago.

Alistair knew what he had to do. There was only one place his story could lead. He lifted the pen and, rather than looking at it, he watched the reflection. As the ink stretched and yearned and finally touched the skin of his face, the face disappeared.

In its place, many faces flashed in the reflection. For a moment, there was a girl with a scar on her cheek, followed by a boy, who looked similar to the girl, as if he could be her brother. Then there was a procession of visages. Boys and girls, different shades and shapes. Werner, Chua, Rodrigo, Boaz, and Polly.

Among them was Fiona. Fiona, her dark eyes staring up from the water, her crooked nose perfectly crooked. Fiona, not a fake one, the one from home, the one from his memories. She mouthed something.

I'm here. We're all here. You can bring us back.

Finally, there was Charlie. The real Charlie, the kid Charlie, not the monster Charlie. He didn't mouth anything, but he looked up with jealousy and admiration, with anger and love.

And when Charlie's face was gone, when all the faces were gone, there was one clear, unchanging reflection. There in the pool was the Riverman. There was the Whisper.

 

November 19 and 20, 1989

A whisper is a story with many endings. Joyful, tragic, inevitable—it depends on who's listening. There are whispers in the water, but only some of the time. There also must be silence.

It was dead quiet in Fiona Loomis's basement when Alistair stood with his hand on the boiler, which was tall and round again, complete. After all he'd been through, he was back where he began.

Climbing the stairs, he tried to find himself, his own memories, within the maelstrom of his mind. A boy's face in the water—that was his anchor. A boy's face looking up at him.

In Fiona's room, he loaded a tape into her tape player, pressed
Record
, and started to talk, because he needed to talk. He needed to remember who he was, who he had been before. When he finished talking, it was the next day, but the sun hadn't risen yet.

So he crept out of the Loomises' back door and snuck all the way home through the darkness of neighbors' lawns. In the swamp behind his house, next to a rock that looked like a frog, by the light of police cars moving up and down the street, he buried the tape recorder with the tape still in it. Then he walked around to the front yard and sat down in the grass. He looked up at the stars.

That's where his parents found him. That's where the police, flashlights head-high and angled down, joined them. Among the barrage of questions, the one they all kept asking was, “Where's Charlie? Where's Charlie?”

They might as well have been asking him where his soul was. Alistair didn't make a sound.

 

Acknowledgments

Second volumes in trilogies are notoriously tricky things. They often feel like they're, for lack of a better term,
all middle
. When I wrote
The Whisper
, however, I focused on the new. My daughter, Hannah, arrived in the world as I was trying to figure out how to make a crazy, unwieldy sequel come together, and her beautiful, babbling presence inspired me to treat it as an origin story—not just of the Riverman and Aquavania, but also of Alistair and Charlie's relationship and of Fiona's reluctant journey into adulthood. I wanted to show why the first volume was told the way it was told, and I wanted readers to anticipate the third volume with a fresh perspective on events. If I achieved that goal, I certainly didn't do it alone. The following people guided and encouraged me along the way:

Joy Peskin was the first person who read
The Whisper
, and she infused it with her brilliance and a healthy dose of confidence and clarity, which is what all books need. Therefore, in my humble opinion, she should edit all books. I'm not sure she has the time, though. Maybe with Angie Chen's help she can do it. Actually, together, they definitely can.

Michael Bourret, the man I'm honored to call my agent, continued to trust me, advise me, and keep me sane through the entire publishing process. Why? It's because he's a sorcerer. Everyone at Dystel & Goderich, including Lauren Abramo, dabbles in sorcery, actually. How else would they understand these byzantine contracts and represent such an awe-inspiring group of authors?

Beth Clark had an even trickier job designing this book than she did with the first volume, considering all the multiple narratives and their unique appearances. Did she pull it off? Come on! Of course she did.

Yelena Bryksenkova created yet another stunning cover that I'm sure people will tell me is stunning, when they really should be telling her. Now they have no excuse. Tell her:
yelenabryksenkova.com

Mary Van Akin has been an advocate like no other. She's tireless and talented and you better watch out, because she will make you read this book. Perhaps she already did, by handing you the copy you're holding right now. If so, thank her and the rest of the gang at Macmillan Kids for me.

Kate Hurley and Karla Reganold have taught me a lot about writing with their essential copyedits. I would look like a fool without them. I really wood (sic).

Some other authors read
The Riverman
and said some amazingly kind things about it. Jack Gantos was the first, and I'm still flabbergasted that his words graced the cover of volume one. Following in his sizable wake were Kurtis Scaletta, Laurel Snyder, Nova Ren Suma, Bryan Bliss, Steve Brezenoff, Kelly Barnhill, Kim Baker, Stephanie Kuehn, Kate Milford, Robin Wasserman, Jeff Kay, Laura Marx Fitzgerald, Stephanie Bodeen, Dan Poblocki, and many others I'm sure I'm forgetting. I hope they read this book too. And I hope you read their books, because they are better books than this one.

All the bloggers, librarians, teachers, journalists, booksellers, festival organizers, and fans who have reached out to me and helped me share my stories, I don't know what I'd do without you. Probably pursue a career in break dancing, which would be unwise.

Thank you to my family. To Jim, Gwenn, Pete, and the extended Wells and Evans clans. To all the Amundsens and Starmers out there. To Tim, Toril, Dave, Jacob, and Will, because this is a story of siblings and kids. And to Mom and Dad, the finest and most caring creators I know.

Finally, Cate and Hannah, you inspire me every day, and I love you dearly. Now put down this book and let's go get into some more adventures together!

 

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Aaron Starmer
was born in northern California, raised in the suburbs of Syracuse, New York, and educated at Drew University in Madison, New Jersey. His novels for young readers include
The Riverman, Dweeb,
and
The Only Ones.
He lives with his wife and daughter in Hoboken, New Jersey.
aaronstarmer.com
. You can sign up for email updates
here
.

 

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