Underneath (23 page)

twenty-five

By the time I get home, I've stopped crying, but my face is damp and sore and my throat is raw. I really thought I knew Cody. How stupid I was. I only saw one side of him. I only
wanted
to see one side of him. I wanted him to be the Cody who encouraged me to accept my underhearing, the Cody who helped me get control over it, who held me when I was scared and shaking. I didn't want to see the rest of it.

I have no idea where I stand with Mikaela now, either. She's got to be thinking I'm cold and heartless for not trying to help him. Then again, maybe she's glad to have Cody all to herself. I dash away a few more angry tears. Either way, I don't belong in the picture. I don't even know if I want to be in the picture. For all I know, she was aware of the blog as soon as he wrote it and just didn't bother to tell me about it. The thought makes me furious all over again.

When I walk inside, the house is quiet. My parents aren't home yet. I go into the kitchen, splash my face in the sink, and pat it dry with a dish towel. There's a small mess of breakfast dishes in the sink and the compost bowl smells like banana peel, but I think of Cody's sterile house and I'm profoundly relieved to be home.

On my way upstairs, I almost crash into Auntie Mina.

She looks at me with a startled half-smile. Then she gets a good look at my face and the smile falls away.

Maybe I should have taken the time to put cucumber slices on my eyes, make it a little less obvious that I've been weepy. But Auntie Mina doesn't ask questions. She just gathers me close into a warm, tight hug and holds me there for a minute.

At first I resist. I'm tired of my problems and I'm sick of everybody else's issues, too. And I don't want to cry anymore.

But for a second, I do.

“Sit with me for a minute, okay?” Auntie Mina says gently. “I'll make you a cup of hot tea with honey, and then you can escape.”

I swallow, my throat dry and swollen. Tea and honey might not be a bad idea. Just for a minute.

I sit at the kitchen table, leaning my chin in my left hand as Auntie Mina fills the electric teakettle with water. I know she wants to talk, or she would have just put a cup of water in the microwave.

Correction: she wants
me
to talk.

But there's too much to say.

We sit in silence for a while, me clenching my teeth, Auntie Mina grading a stack of quizzes from the computer science class she's now teaching at the college extension. Every so often she looks up at me with a sympathetic smile, pushing one graying lock of dark hair back behind her ear.

Eventually, sitting and waiting for the kettle to whistle, I do say something. It sounds like a question. But it really isn't, because I think I already know the answer.

“What do you do if you're disappointed by somebody you really thought you cared about? Like maybe they're not the person you thought they were. And the person they are … isn't someone you want to be around.” It sounds stupid, childish, when I say it out loud. But it's true.

Auntie Mina is quiet for a minute, thinking, but looking at me seriously. Then I'm horrified, because I wonder if she thinks I'm talking about her and Uncle Randall.

“I mean—” I start to try to backpedal.

“It's okay,” she says with a small smile. “I know. It's hard at your age, when everybody's figuring out who they are and who they really want to be. Trying one thing out or another. Even new friends.” She looks at me intently. “It can happen at any age.”

“It's not just them who's different, though,” I say. I look down, stare at a faint stain on the surface of the table. “It's me.”

She gets up, pours the hot water into two mugs, and brings them to the table with a basket of tea bags. For a moment she just sits there pensively, dunking a tea bag in and out of her mug.

“It's always like that, I suppose,” she finally says, sighing. “Yes, sometimes the person you thought you knew turns out to be very different after all. But sometimes—sometimes you figure something out about your own needs, too, your own goals and dreams, and those might not be the same as everybody else's. They
shouldn't
be, because you're your own person.”

She puts one hand over mine. I look down at her neatly trimmed fingernails, the wiry strength in her slender fingers that I never seemed to notice before.

My own person. I think about Cody, about how I'd always thought he was so individualistic and determined. I thought he really wanted more out of his life than he was getting, like maybe he'd graduate and go on to be some kind of artistic mastermind or form his own startup company or something else that misunderstood geniuses do.

Oh, he wants things to be different. He wants everything to revolve around
him
.

And then I think about Uncle Randall, and how Aunt­ie Mina must have felt over the years, slowly finding out with every argument that he wasn't the fairy-tale prince she thought he was. I feel like crying again, but instead I just let out a long, shaky breath.

“You have to be strong,” Auntie Mina says, her voice thick with emotion, squeezing my hand once more before releasing it. I'm not quite sure whether she's talking to me or to both of us.

Later that night, lying in bed, I'm thinking again about what she said. About being strong. I assumed Cody was strong. Then I realized how easily cracked that icy shell really was. That isn't real strength. Clinging to your own petty little wants at any cost, even when they're impossible or hurtful.

Letting go, maybe, is what takes real strength.

Sometimes, though, you can't just let go. Sometimes you have to learn to live with things.

I wonder if I can be strong enough to learn to live with my underhearing, to really figure out how to use it, and how not to. I don't know if I'm capable of it. But I have more control over it now than I ever did. Nobody else can do it for me. I have to try.

I pull my knees in to my chest and huddle under the sheets. It seems so difficult. There are so many things I
can't
do. I can't go back in time and make Shiri not want to die. I can't force Uncle Randall to be the person Auntie Mina wants him to be. I can't help Cody, not the way he wants me to, because I'm not that kind of person.

It's hard enough to live with my ability to underhear. If I did help Cody, I wouldn't be able to live with myself.

During my library period the next day, I check my school email. Click on the link that takes me to
Voice of the Underground
. I read it all again, this time in its entirety. I check for references to me, to my underhearing. I have to know for sure if Cody said anything about me. Not because I can do anything about it. I just need to know what kind of person he really is; no illusions. I scour it twice; three times.

All I find are vague references to the Psychic Friends Network. To “mysterious sources” and “secret information.” And that stupid JV swim hottie thing. My name isn't anywhere. Not even my initials.

I'm surprised, and a little relieved. But I don't really feel better. All it does is drive home the point that I never really mattered to him; didn't really exist as a person in his eyes. Just a tool to be used.

At lunchtime, I go to my car to eat, sitting on the driver's side with my food on the seat next to me. I put my earbuds in and blast the Beatles' “Nowhere Man.” For the first time in a long time, I think about Shiri and don't feel like I'm being stabbed in the gut. But I'm not happy.

The rest of the day passes uneventfully, and by some miracle, I pull a B+ on a history pop quiz despite being a chapter behind on reading. After school, I sit on my bed dangling a toy mouse in front of Pixie. Should I call Mikaela? I don't know what I would say, but I want to make sure we're okay at least. Maybe she's not even mad at me. I should have called earlier. Yesterday, maybe.

I'm just digging my cell phone out of my backpack when the home phone rings. Auntie Mina comes out of the guest room and shouts down the stairs, “I'll get it. Don't pick it up! I'm on my way down.” Her muffled footsteps recede.

How could I have forgotten? It's Uncle Randall. Right on schedule, and brought to you by the home phone. The only difference this time is that they've had their first marriage counseling appointment, but Auntie Mina refused to tell us how it went. All she told us was that they're supposed to talk more about the trial separation.

The ringing stops abruptly as Auntie Mina picks up. My stomach flip-flops and I decide to head downstairs. When I get there, I notice that the study door is closed. I can't hear anything. Mom's not home from work but Dad is sitting stiffly at the kitchen table, so I sink into one of the empty chairs and nervously start fiddling with the salt shaker. My hands are trembling and I drop it, scattering grains of salt.

“Sorry.”

My dad glances up from the Sudoku puzzle he's pretending to do. He's sitting there with his pencil poised, but he's not actually filling in numbers. The pencil is shaking ever so slightly. My heart twists.

I sweep the grains of spilled salt into my hand, get up, and dump them into the sink. On the way back to the table, I stop behind my dad's chair and give him a hug, squeezing his neck the way I used to when I was little. His hair smells like tea-tree shampoo. “Love you, Dad.”

“I love you, too, Sun.” He sounds quiet, forlorn. He reaches up and squeezes my arm. “I'm glad you're here.”

I sit back down. A few more minutes pass. My dad finally fills in a couple of numbers on his Sudoku puzzle.

I lean back in my chair and sigh loudly. “This is ridiculous. I'm sick of just waiting around like
he's
the one in control.
Can't we—”

“Shh,” my dad says. “I want to be able to hear if she needs us.”

Hear. If she needs us. Now there's an idea. There
is
something I can do.

Something only I can do.

After what happened with Cody, I'm not sure if I can. I don't know if can stay calm enough, if I can bear to reach out again. But it's Auntie Mina, it's my
family
this time, so I have to try.

I sit back against the wooden slats of the chair and close my eyes. My dad is right across the table from me, but he might as well be in a different city. He's lost in his own little world.

And I'm in mine. But I'm not lost.

In fact, it's getting easier. This time I almost settle into it, like leaning back into space and trusting somebody is going to be there to catch me.

But I have to be focused. If something goes wrong, I might not be able to try again. Not in time to help; not with how depleted it makes me. I concentrate on letting go, on letting my attention leave the room and find Auntie Mina. I can hear my dad tapping his pencil point on the newspaper. He lets out a sigh, but the sound is far away.

And then I'm sort of spinning through my mind, my head aching like I'm being flung through space on a roller coaster. I take a slow breath; then another.

Gradually the spinning stops and I feel normal again. I tentatively reach out.

I find Auntie Mina. And I find something else. Someone else.

Something about this feels different. It feels like my consciousness is ping-ponging between two places, like I'm hearing a different voice in each ear. I don't like it; it scares me. And what I realize about it scares me even more.

It's not just Auntie Mina, but Uncle Randall, too. Somehow I'm hearing them both, as if he's in the house with her. It makes me want to clap my hands over my ears. But I can't move. There is a smell, almost a taste, of iron, of horseradish, and I suppress the urge to cough. I fight to hold on, and I—

—
this is NOT what we agreed to when we got married

—counselor said she said I'm—

—know what the counselor said, and that counselor is
full of—

—she was right, he doesn't listen to me he just—

I find myself thinking urgently, almost praying,
Auntie Mina, just be strong, be strong like you told me
, and I know it isn't going to work but I can't help thinking it, every fiber in me is straining toward her, and—

—always trying to tell you something's wrong with you, nothing's wrong with ME—

—how can I go back if he doesn't listen

—you owe me
—listen to me!

—face-to-face, at least give me the courtesy of—

—owe me

—don't you dare tell me what to—

—talk face-to-face? why not now? yes, NOW—

The metallic smell intensifies and this time I do cough and sit up, opening my eyes abruptly. My dad slides his water glass toward me with an expression of concern, but I ignore it. Waves of fury, of frustration and defensiveness and desperation, threaten to drown me. I feel them pour through me, meld with my own desperate need to do something, to change things somehow; to keep Uncle Randall, who has to be nearby, from bullying Auntie Mina or any of us. I stumble out of my seat and into a half-run. When I get to the living room, I part the sheer curtains on the front window and peek out. Nothing. I peer down one side of the street, then the other, as far as I can from where I'm standing.

There it is, parked halfway down the street. Uncle Randall's white Mercedes. And the driver's side door is opening. My heart thuds.