Underneath (5 page)

I move on. The grass next to the auditorium is too wet for sitting. Inside the auditorium is where the drama geeks hang out. I peek in the side door and see a few people from my history class, two guys and three girls I don't like because they're always all over each other in public and oozing fake friendliness all over everyone else. Fake friendliness is the last thing I want right now. Instead, I try some of the open classrooms, but they're mostly full of students taking shelter from the light rain.

One of the science classrooms is nearly empty: just a group of guys playing Dungeons and Dragons. By now I'm kind of hungry, so I'm fully prepared to ignore them and sit down for lunch, but one of them leers at me through a shaggy fringe of hair and says, “
I'm
a seventh-level elf wizard” and looks at me expectantly. I beat a hasty retreat. I know it's a game, but I don't want to pretend I'm someone I'm not any more.

I'm about to give up and go eat in my car when I remember there's an awning at the back of campus, sandwiched between the decrepit little art building and the portable classrooms. I think there's even a lone picnic table back there.

The table is empty. I feel an amazing rush of relief, and I sit down. It's quiet back here. I can faintly hear some football players yelling out by the bleachers, and the strains of innocuous, principal-approved pop music drift over from the lunch area. But mostly I just hear the steady dripping of rain from
the gutter onto the awning, and the hum of traffic on the street behind the school. It's nice. The orange paint on the bench is peeling and there's some black-marker graffiti on the table, but I think I could get used to eating here.

The rest of the day drags, though, and it's hard to pay attention in class. Images of Cassie and her mean laugh, of Spike walking away and not even bothering to defend me, keep floating into my mind. A vindictive little part of me wishes something bad would happen to one of them so they'd know how I feel. In sixth-period physics there's a pop quiz. I know I'm going to bomb it; I leave a fourth of the questions blank, but I can't bring myself to care. When I hand it in, Ms. Rabb takes one look at it and glances at me with concern—a watered-down version of the Stare of Pity—but I just give her a vague, fake smile and go back to my desk.

Finally, the day is over and I'm home. It's quiet, and no-
body is here to laugh at me, or quiz me, or even talk to me. I toss my baseball cap and backpack onto the faded old Persian carpet on our living room floor, and switch on the TV. I try halfheartedly to do some history reading, but give up partway through and lose myself in a reality show in which people's friends set them up for tasteless pranks involving public humiliation.

The next day, fourth period, I'm staring out the grimy window of the library at the empty lunch area. Cassie and Marc ignored me in class today; even Elisa looked the other way when we passed each other between periods. Some friends they turned out to be. Maybe it's just as well. But there's a part of me that wishes nothing had changed
.

Nobody shows up for chemistry tutoring. The clock over the librarian's desk ticks away the minutes way too slowly.

After stewing over everything a while, I get kind of mad. I'm not the one who needs to apologize, to make excuses. I'm not going to whine at them or beg them to take me back into the group. They're the ones with the attitude, not me.

At lunch, when I pass by their table on my way to buy a soda, I see their little identical-zombie clique and feel … less bad, anyway, than I did yesterday. At least today I'm not ready to run to the bathroom and barf. Spike even smiles at me tentatively, but I'm not quite prepared to smile back. Let them stress for a change.

After getting a cola, I quicken my pace on the way to my new table, far away from Cassie and the Zombie Squad. I set down my lunch bag and drink and plop down in the middle of the bench.

I'm about three bites into my turkey pita sandwich when I hear people approaching from the parking lot. The conversation grows closer. I can pick out a couple of female voices, a few male; none of them recognizable. Then a group of artsy goth types turns the corner of the art building and heads for the table.
My
table. My heart sinks.

“Hey,” says one girl. “What are you doing at our table?” She looks at me disdainfully, pouting from a mouth lipsticked a dark maroon color. It strikes me that Cassie probably would have said the same thing if I'd tried sitting at my old lunch spot. My heart starts pounding and my ears get hot as I try to think of something to say.

Another one of the girls stares at me closely for a moment, and I realize she's recognized me as The Girl Whose Cousin Committed Suicide. Just what I need. I duck my head a little, trying to hide under my untrimmed bangs while I peer up at her surreptitiously. She looks familiar, and I realize I had English class with her freshman year. Back then she had really long brown hair, though; now she has short, spiky two-inch-long purple braids that poke out from her head like little coiled springs. I also remember her being quiet in class. Now she speaks up.

“No big deal,” she says, flashing a look at her comrades. “It's cool. If she wants to, she can stay.” I give her an uneasy smile. She doesn't smile back, but she takes the lead in sitting down next to me at the table.

The rest of the group starts filling in the bench around and across from me, haphazardly tossing an array of army-surplus messenger bags and black patent leather purses next to my baby-blue backpack. I stand out like a sore thumb in my s
wim team sweatshirt. My legs tense with the urge to bolt.

Mikaela Ramirez. I remember her name all of a sudden, randomly, along with the subject of her ninth grade oral report on
A Midsummer Night's Dream
: something about tricksters and fairies. Even that thin thread of connection helps me relax a little, and I sneak another look at her. Other than the new fashion statement, she's pretty much as I remember: short and sturdy, with light-brown skin a few shades darker than mine. Then one of the guys stares over at me, coldly enough to make me look down.

“Nice. We ditch one day of school and the Attack of the Clones moves in.” He says it in a low voice, offhandedly, but with a hint of a snarl. For a minute I can't even bring myself to look up. My ears are hot, my eyeballs are prickling, and I wish I'd worn anything other than swim team sweats and my Citrus Valley Vikings hat.

I haven't been sitting with these people five minutes, and they're already judging me. How unfair is that? I guess it's karma coming back to bite me, after everything I used to say. A song lyric pops into my head, the one about instant karma. John Lennon.

Shiri loved that song.

“So, what's a clone like you doing slumming it back here?” the guy adds.

“Ex
cuse
me?” I look up at him. He'd almost be cute, in a goth sort of way, if he hadn't just annoyed the crap out of me: tall, a little skinny, but with a strong jaw and profile. His eyes are blue, he's got a silver eyebrow ring, and his hair is jet black, obviously dyed. His lips twist into a sneer. I shoot my fiercest glare back at him.

It doesn't seem to matter where I go; all anyone ever does is judge me by the way I look. I might as well still be five years old wearing my purple kindergarten dress.

I don't need this. I swallow my bite of sandwich and start gathering my stuff together.

“Hey, don't go anywhere,” Mikaela says. “You can't take him seriously. He doesn't have a filter between his brain and his mouth.” She turns to the guy. “God, can you stop being a bitch for one day? This is that girl Sunny;
you
know.” She glares at him across the table, then lowers her voice. “The
assembly
, Les. Remember?”

I let out my breath as silently as possible in a long sigh and sit back down, mortified. This is going about as badly as I could have imagined.

“Quit calling me Les. It's Cody now,” he corrects her, turning the sneer on her. She seems to wilt a little, momentarily, but then her face hardens to a glower again. “And yeah,” Cody continues, “I remember the assembly. So what?”

“So nothing. So, shut the fuck up,” she says almost good-naturedly, like she says it a dozen times a day. The group laughs and Cody flips her off, but he's smiling as he does it. Meanwhile, I'm just sitting there like an idiot without a single intelligent thought running through my head. And then

—
jerk you always act like such a jerk,
god just get a life and leave
the poor girl alone.
jesus I can't believe she's taking this so well,
I'd be bawling already I'd be crying
still from what happened—

My body shakes a little, and I feel her anger almost as intensely as if it's my own. The anger hums through me along with a mixture of frustration and—not pity, but a feeling I can't quite put my finger on, something complicated like the flavor of spice cookies or the smell of anise. It takes a moment to regain my composure, but my eyes finally focus again and I drop the squished remains of my sandwich, blinking stupidly.

I have no idea what to think. All I know is, she defended me to her friends and she absolutely, positively meant it, too.

I inhale sharply, trying to calm down, then immediately regret drawing attention to myself.

“What, Little-Miss-Preppy-Pants is traumatized by the F-word? Do you want to wash her mouth out with soap—what's your name—Sunny? Is that for real?” He directs a mildly amused glance in my general direction, briefly making eye contact. Is he trying to flirt now? What a freak. I tilt my head, strain to pick up something, anything, but my brief moment of underhearing has stopped and I'm left confused as ever, without a clue what's going on behind his eyes.

“I had her in a class freshman year. It's for real,
Lester
Cody Anderson,” Mikaela says scornfully. She turns toward me and, all of a sudden, her face lights up with a huge grin. Not another glare, not even the dreaded Stare of Pity. She has a truly gorgeous, thousand-watt smile, and sitting there basking in it, I can't help feeling a little better.

From Shiri Langford's journal, February 22nd

Dad said if I don't “shape up” he's going to have to “seriously reconsider his decision to send me so far away to such an exclusive college.” I'm not even sure what that means. Is he going to make me move back home, just because he's paying for my housing? I can't let that happen. I'd run away first. He can't stop me. My tuition, at least, is paid for with my tennis scholarship, as long as I get my grades back up.

It's so unfair. Randall gets everything and I get nothing, I never even asked for anything, and what little I get is contingent on doing exactly what HE wants.

I hope Mom's holding up.

Some good news, though. Brendan. Every time I think about him, I think that maybe if things get bad … maybe we could run away together. The first time I met him, THAT happened and I knew he was the kind of guy who would understand how my family is, because he's had his own struggles. I admire him so much.

If I could just never go home again, I think I might be able to stay happy.

six

Breathe.
In past my nostrils and filling my lungs; hold. Feel the breath leave my body and puff out of my mouth. Again.
Breathe
.

Again.

Breathe
—there's another knock at the front door, and my eyes fly open.

It's Saturday, and I'm spending it on an unsuccessful attempt to meditate in my room while my parents lead the neighbors in their weekly session of Yoga for Aging Suburbanites.

Normally the last thing I'd do would be to follow one of my mother's wacky suggestions. She thinks meditation is the solution to everything except maybe actual broken bones. But I can't keep from hoping that somehow it'll help me. It's worth a shot. I don't know what else to do. Once or twice a day, without fail, I'm hearing somebody's thoughts in my head, feeling someone else's emotions sweep me away like the tide. And I don't have anyone to talk to about it.

I never asked for this … ability. My life was fine.

I never even asked for anything
. It's almost like an echo, and I shiver. Shiri's journal. She said nearly the same thing. Only she said it about her own life. Her sad story, all the little hurts we never suspected but which added up somehow. The mysterious THAT. Shiri's life was anything but fine. And now mine feels like it's spiraling out of control, too.

I sit cross-legged on the floor next to my bed with my hands folded in my lap. What a joke. I'm supposed to be focusing on my breathing, clearing my mind. Instead, I keep
thinking
, nonstop. Shiri. Auntie Mina. Cassie. Spike. Even Cody and Mikaela. All of them going around and around my skull like animated bluebirds when a cartoon character gets whacked on the head.

This isn't working. I open my eyes and try a different strategy: I grab my journal. I might as well make it good for something, so I write down every incident of underhearing that I can remember.

I start with the very first time, the time I was in the pool during the swim meet and thought I heard screaming.

The day that Shiri died.

The first time it happened, it was during the phone call to my mom. THE Phone Call. Then I write the rest down: the incident during dinner at home, the one with Spike, the Cassie debacle, and everything else. I try to remember every detail I can. What I was initially doing. What the other person was doing. What I was thinking and what they were thinking. I make a chart, I draw arrows, I sort and re-sort the information. I make one more list, writing down what both parties were feeling at the time.

That's when it all starts to fall into place.

Emotions. Each time I underheard someone's thoughts, the other person was having strong emotions that I was able to sense,
feel
, at the same time that I heard their thoughts. And I was completely caught up in their feelings, my own emotions drowned out. If the moment of strong emotion was just a flash, all I heard was a few words. If the feeling was surging through, then I might catch as much as a few thoughts. It's as if their thoughts are the notes from a musical instrument, their feelings an amplifier. And the other person is always nearby; if not next to me, then somewhere in the vicinity.

But it's connected to
my
emotions, too. Like when I was sitting there with my old friends from the Zombie Squad, feeling guilty about not going to Spike's party. It was the minute I cleared my head, like I'd hit pause on my feelings, that I heard Cassie. Or my first day in Emo­ville with Mikaela and friends, earlier this week, when I got pissed at Cody. I tried to maintain composure, swallowing down my gut reaction, and suddenly I heard Mikaela's angry thoughts. It's a moment of clarity, but I've still got those emotions pushing at me below the surface. Something about that state of mind makes the impossible possible. At least for me.

I close the journal, put my pen down and massage my tired hand. Then I get up and stare into the mirror on my closet door. It seems as if I should look different. Have sparkles around my head or weird shimmery eyes like a character in a TV show. But I look the same as I always did. Just with worse hair.

Is my life going to change now? I can't imagine it changing more than it already has. I don't even know if my underhearing is going to stay forever or just disappear one day. But I've figured something out about it, figured out
when
it happens, and that makes me feel a little less out of control. Less scared.

The next morning, I'm lying on my stomach across the bed, Pixie purring next to me and my journal open to the page with the charts, when my mom opens the door without knocking. I turn my head, startled, and she breezes in, wearing one of her trademark long Indian-print skirts. She takes one look at the diary and a grin appears on her face.

“Oh, baby Sunshine, I am so happy to see—” I glare at her pointedly and she cuts her sentence short. “Anyway. Well. If there's ever anything—”

“I
know
, Mom,” I say, hurriedly, and slam the diary shut. “Thanks,” I add. I don't want her to get nosy, start asking questions I don't know how to answer. I mean, my mom is a little bit out there, but it's not like she believes in magic or ghosts or anything supernatural. At least, I don't think so. Not like some of her crazy dippy friends.

Mom paces over to the window and opens the curtains, flooding the room with painfully bright light. I squint. “Don't forget Auntie Mina's coming over this afternoon,” she says, leaning against my desk and smiling a little. “We need to get her out of
that house
for a while
.
And I bought a vanilla chai tea blend I think she's going to love.”

That house. I can't even remember when we first started to call it that. But when I got older, I could see for myself how Uncle Randall was when he'd get into his “moods.” He'd have everybody walking on eggshells, hoping not to say the wrong thing. And it seemed like it got worse after Number Two moved out and Shiri started high school.

Maybe that's why she was such an overachiever back then, going out for tennis team and spending time in after-school study hall on days when she didn't have tennis practice. Going to as many SAT and AP prep classes as she could. Was she trying to make her dad happy, or just trying to stay out of the way?

“Sunny?” Mom says, looking at me. I shake myself a little. I know she asked me a question, but I have no idea what it was.

“Sorry. Guess I'm a little distracted.” I sit up and try to look attentive.

“I asked if you'd like to sit with me later this evening and go through some family photos,” Mom says, picking at a loose thread on her skirt. “I was hoping to make a scrapbook for Mina that we can give her, later, when she's ready, to help her preserve the good memories of—everything.” Her eyes are shining. I can't deal with my mom crying, so I nod, just so we can end this conversation. But I don't know how I can bear to go through photos.

“Oh, good. I'm so glad you said yes. I've been feeling like I need some moral support these days,” she continues, “with you and your father keeping everything so bottled up. You're like two peas in a pod.”

I scowl and stow the journal safely in my desk drawer, on top of Shiri's journal. I love my mom, but she takes the touchy-feely thing a little too far sometimes.

She smiles a little and straightens up, wandering back toward the door. “Oh! And I invited Antonia to come over later tonight to help us with the scrapbooking. She's got such a fabulous collection of supplies—rubber stamps, glitter, rickrack, stickers … I thought it would cheer us up.” Mom's voice fades as she cruises out of the room, and I slam the door behind her.

Antonia lives down the street and is even more touchy-feely than Mom. She comes to the weekend yoga sessions and has every corny new-agey hobby on the face of the earth—tarot cards, aromatherapy, crystals, you name it—and she's just so disgustingly nice. TOO nice, if you ask me. Spike's theory is that she was lobotomized. I think she probably just smoked too much pot in the '70s.

I can't deal with her right now.

“Dad, you have to get me out of it,” I complain, tugging on his arm as he tries to grade Intro to Film term papers. He's slouching in the swivel chair in his home office with a stack of papers in his lap, his hairy bare feet propped up on a file box. Blues music is playing quietly through the speakers of his computer. “Antonia is coming over tonight and I'm supposed to help with scrapbooking!” I whine this last word right in his ear.

“Sunny, please,” Dad says, sighing. He puts a finger in the book to hold his place and frowns up at me. “I know how you feel, but—”

“
Pleeeeease.
” I know it's no use, but I try anyway. “I'll do chores. I don't care.”

“Sunny, be nice,” Dad says, his tone sharper now. “This isn't a bargaining situation. If your mom wants to make a scrapbook, then I don't think it's too much to ask for you to help her. We need to be supportive of your Auntie Mina right now.”

“We meaning
me
, you mean.” I stomp out of the den, exasperated. I can hear Dad grumbling to himself, but I don't care. I go to my room, shut the door, and study with my earbuds in until the doorbell rings, when Dad comes up and marches me down to the dining room for our afternoon of vanilla chai tea blend with Auntie Mina. I'm ashamed to admit that I'm dreading it almost as much as the scrapbooking. My guts twist.

Mom is sitting next to Auntie Mina at one end of the dining room table. She frowns at my outfit. I'm wearing a light-yellow tracksuit that Grandma and Grandpa gave me for my last birthday; it's hideous, but it was the first thing I grabbed that was clean.

I walk in and try to put on a smile for my aunt, who is sitting at the dining room table looking small and lost. Her normally shiny dark-brown hair hangs limply down her back, more gray in it than before. She's staring at her full teacup, still and silent.

I feel horrible. And I don't know what to do.

When I approach the table, she looks up briefly with a wan smile. “Hi, Sunny. I'm glad you're here.”

“Hi, Auntie,” I say uncertainly. She doesn't look glad; rather, the moment I walked in, it was as if her face crumpled just a little more under the weight of memories. I want to hug her, like I usually do, but I'm afraid to.

Dad walks in behind me and sits on Auntie Mina's other side, leaning over to give her a quick, awkward kiss on the cheek. I sit across from her, feeling queasy and awful. Her eyes are shadowed and hollow, her lips dry and cracked. I can't imagine Uncle Randall and Number Two have been much comfort; Dad told me that Uncle Randall's been working late every day. Number Two, as usual, is doing his plastic surgeon thing out in Palm Springs, in the Condo That Dad Bought.

“We're all so happy to see you,” my mother says, a little too cheerfully, putting a gentle hand on Auntie Mina's shoulder. I fidget in my chair and force another smile.

“Oh, pooh,” my aunt says, her voice slightly tremulous. “You make it sound like I've been in seclusion.”

“Really, Mina. We are,” Mom says. “It feels like it's been weeks since we've really talked. I'm concerned that you've been too … alone with your feelings.”

Way to be subtle. Mom tries to draw Auntie Mina out
of her shell, encouraging her to vent if she needs to and not hold any emotions inside where they'll “fester.” Despite my mother's well-meaning attempts, Auntie Mina stays quiet and listless, putting in a soft word now and then but nothing significant. Nothing that tells us how lost she must feel. Not that she needs to tell us.

At some point, after our tea has long gotten cold and Dad and I have reduced the zucchini bread to a pile of crumbs on the plate, the conversation turns to Shiri. It happens by accident. I'm finally telling my parents about how I've stopped going to swim practice, how I think I want to quit the team, and it just slips out of my mouth: how Shiri would have wheedled, badgered me, whatever it took to get me back on track because it would be a major plus on my college applications.

And after that, it's like an invisible barrier has suddenly disappeared. Auntie Mina starts to talk. And then we're all talking, remembering weird random things like how much Shiri hated mustard and how inordinately happy she got whenever she was able to find a cute pair of shoes in her tiny shoe size.

Dad says, “Remember that time the newspaper wrote about the Mock Trial case against Vista Hills?” Mom nods, a sad smile on her face.

“That's
right
,” I said. “The reporter got her name wrong. He wrote ‘Sherry.'” I snort.

“Sherry,” Auntie Mina says with a shaky laugh. “I'd al-
most forgotten about that.” One minute she's smiling; the next minute, tears begin to roll down her face. Abruptly, she dashes them away and apologizes, eyes downcast with—what? Embarrassment? I'm not sure. I pass the napkins. She dabs at her face with one and then crumples it into a ball. My mom fusses, putting an arm around Auntie Mina's shoulders and pulling the cup of cold tea closer, telling her she has nothing to apologize for.

Auntie Mina lets out a shaky sigh. “But I
am
sorry, because you've been so nice to do all this,” she says, her voice thick. “I know I should be coping better, but I just—” She breaks off, looking down at the table, not meeting anyone's eyes.

I exchange a look with Mom. Auntie Mina lost her only daughter, for crying out loud, and it's like she's afraid we'll be angry at her. But I just feel bad. We all do.