Underneath (19 page)

nineteen

When I get home from the park, I wrap my fleece moon-and-stars blanket tightly around me and huddle against the side of the bed. I'm sitting on the floor of my room, the door closed and locked, even though I know my mom hates it when I lock the door. But I don't want to talk to anyone right now. I don't want to
hear
anyone right now.

I've tried candles, incense, a hot bath, and right now I'm sipping some of Mom's mossy-tasting herbal tea, but I can't stop my thoughts from marching forward into places I don't want to go. Being able to underhear at will—it scares me. What if I can't fully control it? What if it's more like a dam bursting open and less like a door with a nice little doorknob that I can push closed whenever I feel like it?

What if I've done something I can't ever reverse?

I've always taken it for granted that I can be alone with my thoughts any time I want. In my room. In the pool. At the beach, on the sand, lapping waves the only sound. Maybe it won't be that way ever again.

Feeling completely alone, yet never again being completely alone. How could anybody stand it? For the first time, maybe, I understand Shiri's desperation. Not why she made the choice to die, but why she might have felt so trapped.

I put down the tea, clench my fingers around the blanket. It could be dangerous, deliberately trying to underhear people. What if I do something really weird and give myself brain damage? I don't even know if it's healthy
that I can do this.

At least I have Cody and Mikaela. They didn't know how serious it was at first; they didn't know how to react. But we've gotten past that. Forgive and forget. I have to learn to forgive people, to trust them.

Even if knowing what they're really thinking makes it a whole lot harder sometimes.

Later, lying in bed, I take some deep breaths, trying to envision the top of my head as an impenetrable wall. For the first time since I started underhearing people, I'm scared to sleep. What might happen when I'm dreaming?

After a few hours of tossing and turning, I finally drop off. Thankfully, I don't dream.

The next morning, I don't wake up until almost nine o'clock. I feel a pang, missing the peace and silence of the school pool in the early morning, the feeling of working my muscles until they're tired. We don't have a pool at home, but I could go for a jog.

I yawn and haul myself up, opening the curtains a little to let in the grayish light from the overcast morning. My eyes feel dry and itchy. I rub grit out of the corners and reach down to pull my extra blanket off the floor, and that's when yesterday comes flooding back.

—Elisa wasn't even—

—can't tell can't tell can't tell—

I knot my hands in my hair, yanking at it painfully. I can't think about this now. I get up and start stretching my legs. My parents' yoga group is due to arrive any minute, so it's the perfect time to make an exit. I pull on gray sweats, grab a hoodie, and go.

My feet pound the sidewalk and I'm quickly breathing hard. I'm out of shape, but I push myself a little more, trying to drive everything out of my head except the feeling of my legs pumping. My course takes me on a long loop through the neighborhood, out to the main road, and back around the other side, past the park.

I pass the Dohertys' house. Spike is outside, loading the family's huge red-and-white cooler into his mom's mini­van.

“Hey,” he shouts, and I slow down, jogging across his driveway. I stop in front of him, a little breathless.

“What's up?”

“Nothing's up. You know me. Never need an excuse to celebrate, baby.” He grins.

Ah. Beach party time. “Cool,” I say halfheartedly. I should really leave.

“Listen, you should come out,” Spike says. “My dad's cooking dogs and burgers. He already asked if you were coming. I told him you were.”

“You what?” I put one hand on my hip and glare at him.

“I'm relying on my superhuman powers of persuasion.” He's looking at me innocently, lazily, his eyes half closed.

“I'm not seeing any evidence of these powers,” I say. “Plus—”

“Cassie's not going to be there, if that's what you're worried about,” Spike says. “She's on some kind of spa day with her mom. Putting mud in her hair or something.” He grins wickedly.

Do I even want to go? There's a risk—a risk I might underhear someone. But that's a risk no matter what I do. Whether I'm home, whether I'm at school. At least at the beach, I can wander away. Be alone for a while. And I don't have to stay long.

“Okay. I'll stop by for a while,” I tell him. Just for old times' sake. I haven't done stuff with Spike outside of school since last summer, and I do feel a little guilty about it.

“Sweet,” Spike says. “My dad said he'd bring that nasty mustard you like.”

“There is nothing wrong with Dijon mustard.”

“Nothing except that it's
naaaassssty
.”

I laugh and tell him that I'll see him later. I miss these stupid conversations with Spike, conversations about nothing at all but that leave me feeling better anyway. For a few minutes, I can forget about everything important.

And, for a while there at the beach, it
is
like old times—me and Spike and his dad, James and Elisa and another guy from swim team, Jared, all hanging out and eating hot dogs and chips around the barbecue. It's less awkward than I thought, but I still avoid being alone with James or Elisa. I don't make eye contact with either one, and I keep thinking about what Elisa said; what I heard. What I shouldn't know.

The weather is clear but chilly. January is still too cold to swim, in my opinion, but the water in front of me is crisply blue, little wavelets running almost up to the toes of my sneakers. Something about the sheer scale of the ocean, its power and overwhelming size, puts things into perspective somehow. I feel small, but so do my problems.

“Wanna look for tide pools under the pier?” Spike comes up behind me, making me jump.

“Sure,” I say, grinning back at him. We walk north along the shore for a few minutes. In my head is an image of Spike and me in junior high, me with my dorky haircut, Spike still short and a little doughy, before we started to swim all the time. Back then, we used to clamber around the rocks under the pier looking for starfish and sea anemones, poking the anemones to make them retract their tentacles. Later, we'd come here with the whole swim crew, but it was always different when it was just the two of us. I never felt like I had to put on an act with Spike.

“Remember that time you picked up a sea slug and tried to freak me out with it? And it peed purple ink all over your hands?”

Spike laughs. “I forgot about that. That was classic.”

“It was.” I smile, looking down at our feet making wet footprints in the sand at the water's edge. Finally, we get to the fall of stones that surrounds the base of the pier. After climbing around the rocks for a while, we reach a relatively dry, flat rock and sit on it, looking out at the ocean from just under the overhang of the boardwalk above us. Little waves lap against the rocks below.

“So … ” Spike says. “Having a good time?”

“Yeah, I am,” I say honestly. “I wasn't sure if things would be cool, but I guess it's just Cassie who's still mad at me.”

“You're still mad at her,” Spike points out.

I look away from him, down at the lichen-encrusted rock.

“Forget about it,” he says. “She's doing her thing, you're doing your thing. Don't worry about her.”

“I know.” I sigh. “It's just hard.”

There's a brief silence, and then Spike sort of snorts. I look up at him, startled.

He tries to control himself, and then a smirk spreads across his face. “That's what
she
said.”

I swat him on the arm. “You cannot be serious for even five minutes.”

“Sure I can,” he says. “Check this out.” He leans toward me, closer and closer as if in slow motion. I giggle. Knowing Spike, any minute now he's going to stick his finger up my nose or try to lick my face.

But he doesn't, and the closer he gets—so close I almost go cross-eyed—I'm suddenly paralyzed. It seems unreal, like I'm having an out-of-body experience, like it's not really happening. I feel … dazed and close my eyes. I smell chocolate.

—want this, what if she doesn't, but it's worth a try isn't it, not like she hates you—

I hear it like an urgent litany in my head, and our lips touch. For a moment, I'm frozen in place. I feel the warmth of his breath mingling with mine. I'm caught. My body leans toward his, my hand rises to touch the back of his neck. My arms are covered in goose bumps.

—yes—

But the desire surging through me isn't my own.

My eyes fly open and I scoot frantically back.

It's not just a joke. He meant it this time. And I'm not ready for it. I still have goose bumps but now I'm shivering, hugging my knees, looking everywhere but at him.

He sits back, looking startled and a little crestfallen. To cover my embarrassment, my guilt at recoiling so abruptly, I say, “I've fallen for that one before. No face-licking.” I force a smile. But I feel terrible.

Credit where credit's due; he's quick to save face.

“Face-licking? Please. So juvenile. You'll just have to wonder whether it was going to be nose-picking … or ear-
snorting … or what.” He grins like nothing's wrong. But I know the answer is “or what,” and I know what the “or what” was going to be.

“Well, I'm not sure I want to stick around here and risk invasion of my facial space,” I say casually, picking my way down the rock pile toward the sand. “I think it's time for another hot dog.”

I expect Spike to say “that's what
she
said” again, but he just raises his eyebrows at me as we walk back toward the group in silence.

My breath catches. I can sense Spike glancing at me as we crunch across the wet sand, but I don't turn his way. What's wrong with me? I've known Spike since we were twelve. I've never thought about kissing him, not once. It's not that he's not attractive. He's nice, and he cares about me. And, after everything that's happened, we're still friends. He wants to kiss me. Maybe I've never considered it, but I
like
him. I always have. Why did I flinch?

If I hadn't underheard him, would I have reacted differently? I felt something—it felt
good—
but what if they weren't
my
emotions?

I don't even know how I feel about him, especially not now. But it's not going to be easy to look at our friendship the same way anymore.

Are all of my friendships going to turn weird, one by one?

I cross my arms and hug myself tightly. That's not going to happen. I can make this work. All I have to do is learn to control my underhearing; control when it happens—and when it doesn't. And I'm almost there.

Everything's going to be fine.

When I walk through the door, my mom calls out, “Sunny, honey, can you come in here, please?” in an overly cheerful voice. I walk into the kitchen and glance at the clock. That's when I remember: Tonight is Auntie Mina's scheduled phone call with Uncle Randall. Not just tonight; right now.

I want nothing to do with any of this, so I turn right back around.

Mom's voice stops me. “Sunny. Now.” I look at her and lean against the counter, my arms crossed.

“We're going to have a little talk, now,” she says, sitting at the table. She reaches for a brightly colored ceramic mug, probably some ridiculous tea blend that she thinks is going to solve everyone's problems. She pushes another mug in my general direction. I don't take it. Instead, I just stand there in stony silence, waiting.

“You see, this is exactly what I'm worried about, Sunshine,” she says, as if I've done something wrong just by standing here. “You haven't talked to us lately. You're either out somewhere or you're hiding in your room.” She gesticulates jerkily with her left hand. “You just breeze out of the house to go to school, and on the weekends you're out with your friends.”

“I thought you were happy I've been going out. You kept saying you didn't want me to ‘mope around.'” Who in their right mind would want to stick around here? I stare up at the ceiling.

“Yes, but honey, you need to understand that there's no such thing as a part-time family member. I want you to think about that. This is a difficult time, and we need you to be supportive.”

I draw in a sharp breath. “I
have
been supportive. And if I'm such a full-time family member, how come I don't have the same rights as everyone else? I don't have any privacy around the house. Nobody cares or even asks me how
I
feel. Everything we do revolves around Auntie Mina.”

“This is no time to start picking up an attitude.” Mom's face is grim and her lips are set in a thin line.

My voice comes out in a hoarse croak. “An
attitude
? Mom, you don't know what it's been like for me. If I don't get the chance to get out of here, I'll go crazy.”

“Sunny—”

“And now she's talking to him like he didn't do anything wrong. How can she give him that satisfaction?” I'm stomping back and forth across the kitchen now, agitated.