Underneath (11 page)

At lunchtime the next day, I pull Mikaela away from the group, hustling her around the corner from the picnic table where Cody and everyone else is gathered. We sit side-by-side against the wall and, once again, I tell her about everything. The embarrassing Shirley Temple. The scrapbook. The underhearing and my strange conversation with Auntie Mina. I even tell her about my growing suspicions that Shiri might have had some kind of ability too.

“Man.” Mikaela makes idle marks on the back of her hand with a blue ballpoint pen—a teacher saw her black marker and confiscated it. Now she's drawing angry little blue faces over and over. “That is really intense. I'm glad I wasn't there. But … ”

“What?” I say, after she's quiet for a minute.

“I keep thinking about how you said you tried to listen to your aunt. ‘Underhear.' Whatever. And nothing happened?” She peers at me sidelong, her expression unreadable.

“I
wanted
to,” I say miserably. “I wanted to help her somehow. But I couldn't do anything. I tried so hard, Mikaela!”

“If you actually could have seen into her thoughts,” she says, “maybe it would just be something you didn't want to know.” She looks down again. It's a good point, but today, she sounds like she's not sure if she believes me. Not that I blame her.

I feel a stab of intense loneliness. Shiri might have understood, at least if her journal entries are anything to go by, but journal entries are a poor substitute for the real thing.

Mikaela gets up, gives my ponytail a tug, and walks back to the picnic table. I spend a minute composing myself before I stroll back to rejoin the group. When I arrive, Mikaela is saying something to Cody with an impish smile, giving his cheek an affectionate, granny-like pinch. Then she heads to the other side of the table to chat with Becca.

Cody looks up at me intently. I feel warmth flood my cheeks and travel down to my stomach. I've tried to be aloof, but my physical reaction to him catches me off guard.

“Hey, Cody,” I say, trying to sound casual.

“Hey. Did you see what Mik did to me? So uncalled-for.” He rubs his cheek. I try not to smile, but I can't seem to help it.

“At least she didn't try to give you a makeover this time.”

“Like you forcing your Banana Republic hat on me. Again, uncalled-for,” he says, grinning for a second. “At least I relieved you of that nasty piece of bland, sweatshop-produced, corporate …
clone-itude
.”

“Yeah, I got rid of all the rest of that stuff, too,” I lie—I shoved it all into the back of my closet, including the hat, which he eventually gave back to me. I gesture vaguely at what I'm wearing today: black jeans and a burgundy T-shirt I got from Thumbscrew printed with a Brian Froud painting of evil-looking fairies. My hair, now dark brown again, hangs down in two sleek braids on either side of my head.

He'll have to say something. I don't look like the old me at all.

But Cody just smiles a little and turns abruptly to Andy, saying exactly nothing else to me. I'm surprised at how disappointed I am, but I try not to let on. I just grab my lunch out of my backpack and sit down as if nothing happened, as if I hadn't said anything to him or expected him to respond. But my cheeks burn.

From Shiri Langford's journal, April 13th

Friday the 13th! Lucky me. Because of course THAT happened again. It always seems to come when I least expect it, when I'm thinking about something else or nothing at all. It made me angry this time because I was with Brendan and spaced out in the middle of our date. What I heard—it seemed like he was irritated, but I couldn't be sure if he was annoyed with me or someone else. I was so scared he was angry at me, but I couldn't figure out why, and although I kept trying and trying, I couldn't hear anything else.

I just wish I could understand why it happens. And why me.

I was little, maybe nine, the first time it happened. My brother was home visiting from college. He told me he'd brought me a present, but it was up in the oak tree in the backyard. I climbed up there—higher, he said—and then suddenly I was so high I was too scared to climb back down. I clung to the trunk as tightly as I could and screamed, but he just thought I was joking. He must have been drunk or on something, because he just laughed and laughed. I stopped panicking and clenched my teeth, trying to steady myself enough to figure out how to get down, and that was when I heard it.

Not out loud. Not anywhere but in my head.

“Stupid kid.”

ten

“Okay,” says Mikaela, facing me cross-legged on my bedroom floor. “Let's try it without the candle this time.”

I open my eyes, sigh, and blow out the tiny flame. My right foot is falling asleep. I flex it a few times and re­arrange my legs into a more comfortable position.

“We've been trying for half an hour,” I say. “I think it's hopeless.”

“Come on. One more time, for shits and giggles.” Mi-kaela smiles at me coaxingly.

“
Fine
,” I say, and sigh again. Just once more. I close my eyes.

“Relax, and clear your mind,” she says in a smooth, drawn-
out voice. She sounds like an easy-listening radio DJ or my mom when she's leading weekend yoga. Somehow, I suppress a snort of laughter. “Focus on your breathing … in … and out … ”

I keep the sound of Mikaela's voice in the back of my mind as I inhale and exhale as calmly as possible. I hear a bird trill suddenly, flying past the window, and my parents moving around downstairs. I can even smell remnants of the candle smoke. The carpet fibers are making my ankles itch. I'm extra-aware of my five senses. But it's not those senses that I'm trying to tap into.

“Okay. Now, remember your Uncle Randall and how
angry
you are at him,” Mikaela says, in a flat and hard tone. “How sexist he is, how insensitive.”

My nostrils flare and my breathing quickens.

“He never understood Shiri. He probably makes your Auntie Mina cry. Poor Auntie Mina.”

I inhale sharply, thinking of Auntie Mina, of her bruised shoulder and her bruised feelings. I'm angry, but mostly I just feel sorry for Auntie Mina, and sad.

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.

I
have
to know. I take a deep, shaky breath.

“Mom, can I ask you something?”

“Of course,” she says, but she won't stop staring out the window at the darkness outside. I swallow hard.

“Is everything okay with Auntie Mina?” I hesitate, then continue. “After Thanksgiving, and … that dinner. And the time when she came over to have tea. She looks awful.”

My mother stands in front of the sink, as still as a stone, her face unreadable. I can hear Mikaela fidgeting around the other side of the doorjamb. I wish I'd told her to stay upstairs.

“Mom!” I say insistently. “If something was wrong, you'd tell me, right? Is she—did something happen?” I
know
she's hiding something. I stare at her hard. Finally, she turns back toward me.

“Sunny, I need you to listen to me now,” she says in a low, tense voice. “I don't want you to mention this to your dad. Not yet. Mina says everything's fine, that this is all just going to blow over. She says it's really not a big deal. She doesn't want your father worried.”

“Um, okay,” I say. “But what—?”

My mother rolls her now-empty water glass around and around in her hands, then puts it back on the counter. “Well, I don't know how to sugarcoat this, so let me tell you. Your Auntie Mina and Uncle Randall got into a big fight last night. She wants to quit her job, wants a change of pace—teaching instead of working in the corporate world.”

“That sounds okay.” I shift uncomfortably from one foot to the other.

“Well, Randall hasn't been in favor of that. He wants her to keep working at Jones & Gonzalez. They've been arguing about it for weeks. I don't know if you've noticed, but things haven't been going so well in their relationship since … ”

Mom clears her throat, her eyes troubled. “Anyway, she just called me on my cell phone and was nearly incoherent. She told Randall today that she thought they should go to a marriage counselor. Apparently he really lost his temper and … ” She lowers her voice to nearly a whisper. “He grabbed her.”

“Grabbed?” I feel like the wind has been knocked out of me. “What do you mean, grabbed?”

“She's fine, Sunny. She just left the house for a little while so he could cool off.”

I pace across the kitchen angrily, thinking about the bruise on Auntie Mina's shoulder. That word “grabbed” is utterly inadequate and wrong. Words bubble up to the surface of my mind, furious words that I stuff back down. I stop in front of my mother, my fists clenched at my sides. “This has happened before, hasn't it? And you didn't tell me.”

“Sunny, I'm sorry,” she says miserably. “But you were so young. We thought they worked it all out. Randall had lost his job, and he just wasn't himself back then.” She pauses, and I stop breathing for a moment. “He had a breakdown. He pulled every dish out of the cabinet and slammed them to the floor one by one.”

“I don't remember that.” I glare at her, even though I'm not really angry with my mother.

“Like I said, you were just too young. You were only six. Mina calmed him down, though. They talked it all out. He found his new job, he found her a job there, too … they were so happy.” She reaches a hand toward my shoulder but I duck. I start pacing again.

“So now what? I'm just supposed to pretend nothing happened? Pretend he didn't hit her?”

“Nobody said anything about hitting,” Mom says, but she looks uneasy. “Mina doesn't want to tell Dad because she's worried he'll do something drastic. You know how he feels about Uncle Randall.”

“Yeah, but—”

“I wanted her to let me tell him,” she continues, “but she insisted Randall just needs to cool off, that's all.” She smiles at me worriedly. “I hope she's right.”

“I—okay.” My shoulders slump, and all of a sudden I'm exhausted. “I guess I'll go upstairs and finish studying with Mikaela.” I peer at my mom, but she seems to be pulling herself together.

“She's still here? You should probably take her home be-
fore it gets late.” Mom starts loading the dirty dinner dishes into the dishwasher with a clatter.