Lie to Me (A Touched Trilogy) (3 page)

BOOK: Lie to Me (A Touched Trilogy)
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I picked up the paper and then swiveled back around to face
Tonya. “When did she start coming to this class?”

“This is the first time. Maybe she’s stalking you.”

Shaking my head in denial, or maybe in defeat, I smoothed
out the crumpled paper.

Leave Nathan alone.

I looked back at Vivian and she made some kind of ugly face
that I guessed was supposed to be threatening, then grabbed her things and
stomped out of class. Mrs. Schaffer harrumphed and someone giggled, probably
Bianca.

Vivian was such a drama queen. What did Nathan ever see in
her? I rolled my eyes, then slid the note over to Tonya. Her soaring eyebrows
made me wish I hadn’t. No way now would she believe me about the first note. My
best chance against her questioning was a quick escape after class, before she
started the interrogation.

Luck, however, deserted me. The bell rang and Tonya grabbed
my bag, holding it hostage behind her as she stood with the table between us.
That was the problem with having a best friend; they always knew what you were
going to do. She was almost as bad, or good depending on your point of view, as
Chloe sometimes, though I’d never say that to Chloe. Doing that would just open
Chloe’s vision floodgates and I’d be constantly bombarded with every detail of
every soon to be minute of my life.

I refused to struggle for my bag. Tonya would only take it
as confirmation that I was hiding something from her. Instead, I screwed my
face up in confusion and hoped she’d buy it.

“What’s wrong?” I sank back further in my chair, tipping it
up on its back legs again as Mrs. Schaeffer went out the door, following the
rest of the students. Owen and Bianca stopped behind Tonya, waiting, Owen
looking mildly disinterested, while Bianca was completely confused.

“What are you hiding?” Tonya asked, her head tilting to the
side.

“Noth-”

“Cut the crap, Phoebs. Vivian is pissed and you’ve been
looking guilty all class, well at least the part where you were awake.” Her
eyes narrowed, and she crossed her arms over her chest, ignoring my bag as it
swung around and bumped her hip. There was no way to get out of this, but if I
told her now it’d be all over campus within an hour.

“Fine, but not at school. I’ll tell you when you come over
tomorrow.”

“I can’t tomorrow.” Her face shuttered and she turned
around, tossing my bag to me in a quick motion. I caught it as it slammed into
my chest.

“Why? I thought we were gonna go Christmas shopping? You
already ditched me last weekend.” There were only six days left to shop and I
needed to get, well, everything, and Tonya was one of those people that managed
to find the best things the instant she walked into a store.

She shrugged and twisted a strand of her straightened hair.

“I’ve gotta go see my mom.”

Liar
. It whispered through me, my stomach churning to
the point I thought I’d puke. There was a moment when my brain tried to make
sense of what I was hearing, what I was feeling, then it came again.
Liar
.

“Liar.” The word slipped out, unrestrained in its harshness,
and almost instantly, my stomach settled. Until I saw the expression on Tonya’s
face.

“What did you call me?” Her back stiffened and her head
reared back. Shit. Owen and Bianca went bug-eyed behind her. Tonya’s lips
pursed and her eyes narrowed, darkening from brown to black.

“I...I...” My voice faded, unsure if I should call her on it
again, or try and fib my way out of it. This wasn’t the first time I’d called
her a liar and she’d always laughed it off before. Her reaction and the flush
coloring the soft brown of her cheeks told me I’d actually caught her.

“Screw you,” she snapped as I stood there with my mouth
moving like a gasping fish. “I don’t need to tell you every move I make, and I
don’t need my best friend calling me a liar.” She spun, shoved Owen out of her
way, and took off out of the room, slamming the door behind her.

My bag thudded to the floor. Owen and Bianca stared at me,
the question in their faces a reflection I was sure of my own. What the hell
had just happened?

 

 

 

Chapter 2

 

I pulled up in front of the house after school and groaned,
every hope of evading Nanna vanished. Her old blue Plymouth was parked in the
driveway. I hesitated before putting my Sunfire into park. The urge to simply
drive away overwhelmed me, pushing me to switch gears and press my foot back on
the gas, but her head had already peeked out the screen door. I turned the car
off and grabbed my bag. Sliding out of the front seat, I barely controlled the
urge to get back in and speed off.

There’d been a time when I loved Nanna’s visits, before I
realized she was using me. Every hug and smile she gave wasn’t really for me,
but for who I reminded her of. Oh sure, a part of her loved me for me, but
mostly I was her favorite because I was the living image of my mother.

“Phoebe dear, I missed you this afternoon.” She smiled
sweetly and came out onto the front porch, as if she didn’t know how much I
wanted to avoid her, which of course she did know. I tried to shake off the
guilt flooding me. She hadn’t really missed me. She’d missed seeing Mom.

“Hey, Nanna,” I said, walking up the path to the house.
There was a chance that if I could ignore her suffocating presence, she might
just leave me alone. I didn’t need her trying to analyze me, especially when I
was still confused about what had happened with Tonya.

“You really shouldn’t be out without your jacket.” She
reached for me as I made it to the top of the steps, enfolding me in a hug that
felt like the warm fuzzies we practiced giving in kindergarten. It was always
like that with Nanna. No matter how crappy I felt seeing her or talking to her,
her hugs were like magic. I used to wonder if she had a bit of Lily’s gift to
make people feel better, then I’d learned she could give some nasty cold
pricklies on the side, something I didn’t think Lily could ever do. “You’re
shivering. Have you told your father about the heater in your car not working?
What would happen if you were caught in some bad weather? You’d freeze.”

“Nanna, we live in southern California. I don’t think we
really need to worry about snowstorms. Besides I’m pretty sure Chloe would see
it coming.”

I pulled out of the comforting hug and then, following her
through the front door, glanced around the living room for my sisters. Not
surprisingly, they were nowhere around. The two of them were determined to get
me to talk to Nanna. Lily probably thought it would make me feel better about
‘things’, even if she wasn’t sure what those ‘things’ were. Chloe would just
want me to do it because she had to make sure her vision was still right.

Nothing about our house had changed in the seventeen years
since Mom and Dad bought the place. Dad repainted every few years the exact
shade of green Mom had picked out, despite it being a vile lima bean color and
completely out of step with anything remotely resembling good taste by today’s
standards. Even the porch swing was identical to the one Mom bought, although
Dad had replaced it after I broke it doing one of my gymnastics routines back
before I’d realized gymnastics actually required some discipline and just a
hint of athleticism.

“I’d like to speak with you,” Nanna said, turning to face me
with her business face. Her hands propped on her hips, and there was a slight
tap to her right foot.

“I’m really not in the mood. Tonya and I had a fight.” I
walked around her, intent on going down to my room.

“Well, what can you expect? You called her a liar,” she
said, exasperated.

My head dropped back in defeat. No way would she let this
slide. As annoying as it was for Chloe to always tell you your future, Nanna
could always make it worse by bringing up the past.

I went to the kitchen table, pulled out a chair, and sat, my
eyes following my fingers as they began tracing the intricate lace flower
pattern of the tablecloth.

“Phoebe, what happened?” she asked, sitting across from me,
the chair creaking in protest under her heavy frame.

Gnarled hands stretched across the table to grasp mine. The
warmth of her grip was soothing, reminding me of when I was little and she
would come and read my past, making me feel just a bit more secure in the
knowledge that even if I didn’t know what the future held for me, I knew what
the past did. I’d always loved that until she’d started calling me on things I
didn’t want brought back up, like the time I stole Chloe’s favorite Barbie and
tested out my hairstyling skills.

Nanna needed a connection in order for her gift to work.
Touching a person could let her see all of the memories they left open, even
those little forgotten ones. When she’d moved to the old folks’ home five years
ago, I’d thought I was a bit safer, until I found out she’d taken one of my
hairbrushes. It was far enough removed from me that it didn’t let her see
everything, but what I couldn’t contain hidden behind a mental wall was enough
for her to get an idea of what I was usually up to. I always felt like someone
was watching over my shoulder.

She waited for an answer, but I didn’t give her one. She
would see everything anyways. At my lack of response, she sighed and let my
fingers slip from hers, obviously finished with my memory. She shook her head
and said, “You’re just like your mother.”

I stiffened in my seat. That was not what I wanted to hear.
Not because I didn’t love my mother, or at least the idea of her, or even that
I didn’t want to be like her. I just didn’t want to be a replacement for her,
which is exactly what Nanna wanted.

“Before she met your father she didn’t want to accept her
gift either. Once she met Michael, she realized the benefits of giving hope.
She never listened to her heart, how it wanted her to help the people around
her, but Michael’s problems went beyond what she’d seen before. That was when
she started -”

“It’s not the same, Nanna.” I pushed my chair back, intent
on ending the conversation. “Mom made a choice not to use her gift. Mine hasn’t
appeared.”

“It’s there, Phoebe, otherwise, why would you call Tonya a
liar?”

Defeated, I sank back onto the hard seat. She wouldn’t leave
me alone until I told her and if I tried not telling her she’d just watch me
harder. Sometimes I wish that along with seeing the past she could hear and
feel everything I did at that time as well, so I wouldn’t have to go through
the process of explaining myself.

“I don’t know,” I said. “I mean, one second she’s telling me
she’s going to see her mom and the next I called her a liar.”

“There must have been something. What were you feeling?”

“My stomach cramped,” I said, and her head nodded.

“Your Aunt Ava had similar symptoms when she suspected
someone was lying. But you sounded so sure when you said it, as if you really
knew she was lying, not simply suspected she was.”

“I wasn’t sure. I mean, I wasn’t really calling her a liar,
I was just repeating it.”

“Repeating who?” She leaned forward, the creases scoring her
forehead deepening.

“I don’t know. Just some voice in my head.” My words seemed
to echo through the room and I watched her eyes widen impossibly. “Is that
wrong?”

I had no idea how these gifts worked, especially since Lily
and Chloe both had different experiences. Chloe explained her visions as a blurry
still-frame movie playing over top of what she saw in front of her, while Lily
said she would get a tingling in her hands when she felt someone in pain.
Neither of them had talked about voices. In fact, none of my mom’s relatives
had ever mentioned voices, and considering the look Nanna was giving me,
hearing them wasn’t a good sign.

“I...I’m not sure, dear. Honestly, you’re the first truth
teller we’ve had in the family since before my time.”

“What about Aunt Ava?”

“Oh, she wasn’t a truth teller. She was more of an empath.
She’d feel the guilt people experienced when they lied.”

“Great. So first I’m the family freak with no gift, and now
I’m going to be the freak that hears voices.”

The basement door opened behind me and I spun around to see
Chloe coming up. “Oh, please,” she said, and levered herself up on to the
counter. “You really think anyone in this family is going to judge you because
your gift is unusual?”

“Yeah, well, it’s not like I can actually do anything with
it anyways. What good does it do to know that someone’s lying?” I gave her the
evil eye. “You could have at least warned me I was going to get into it with
Tonya.”

“You know my visions don’t work that way, Phoebs. Besides,
it’s not like I want to see everything you’re going to do. I’m just glad you’re
not planning on having sex anytime soon.” She shuddered and made a gagging
sound. And that was the perfect example of why I could hate her so much.

“Shut up,” I snapped, turning back to Nanna. “So, what now?
I’m supposed to listen to this voice and do what?”

“It not that simple, dear,” Nanna said, finally recovered
from her shock. “Let me do a bit of thinking on it. We need to know how to
approach this and we need to move quickly. Controlling your gift is essential.”

Chloe snorted and I spun back to her. She had a smirk on her
face.

“Is that a problem?” I asked while every nerve inside of me
itched to yank her long brown hair.

“For the rest of us, no. For you, yeah. I don’t think I’ve
ever seen you have much control.” Chloe slid off the counter and bent her arms
back to rest along the edge.

“Oh, you have no idea how much control I’m exerting right
now.”

She rolled her eyes. “Phoebs, I love you, but when have you
ever kept your mouth shut?”

“I can keep a frickin’ secret.” Hadn’t I kept my mouth shut
about Charlie Schmidt being her first kiss way back in fourth grade? I didn’t
tell anyone, well except Tonya and maybe Bianca a couple years ago.

BOOK: Lie to Me (A Touched Trilogy)
6.76Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

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