Deadly Little Voices (16 page)

“It’s actually because of me,” I confess. “I’m going through some pretty tough stuff right now.”

“Anything I can help you with?”

I shake my head, at first assuming that I shouldn’t tell him. But on second thought, I change my mind, because Adam and I have been through a lot together these past few months.

He might actually be able to understand.

“I have reason to believe that a girl in my school is in danger,” I say.

“You have reason to believe?”

“I’m sure of it.” I take a nervous bite of my burger.

“Sort of like the way you knew that I was in danger?”

I hurry to finish what’s left in my mouth, ready to object—to make up yet another excuse as to why I suspected something was going wrong with him two months ago—but instead I decide to be honest. “Can you keep a secret?” I ask him.

“Sure.” He sets his milkshake down, sensing how serious this is.

“Okay, well, this is going to sound a little nuts,” I begin. “But I’ve been having premonitions.”

“Premonitions…as in, crystal-ball, tarot-card, scrying-mirror stuff?” he asks, surprisingly up on his New Age lingo.

“Right, but without the cards, the ball, or the mirror.”

“Commando,” he says, once again getting me to laugh.

“Not exactly,” I say, still feeling a smile on my face. “Images about the future come to me when I’m doing my art…when I’m sculpting, I mean.”

“And have those images ever included a certain tall, dark, and incredibly good-looking college guy whose name just happens to rhyme with
madam
, being victimized by a fellow classmate who is sending him creepy crossword puzzles that spell out clues?”

“How come you don’t sound so surprised?” I ask.

“Because I’m not,” he confesses, looking down at his shake. “I always knew there was something very different about you.”

“Definitely different,” I say, feeling like a virtual alien.

I spend the next several minutes giving him the CliffsNotes version of what happens whenever I sculpt something—minus the voices, the instances of zoning out, and any info about Ben or my aunt.

“Seriously?” he asks, looking at me like maybe I
am
from out of this world.

“I know,” I say, feeling completely self-conscious. “Which is why I’ve become a Tylyn Project. Hence the two-hour appointment. I’ve been working on a sculpture of a figure skater, and all this stuff’s been happening ever since.”

“That must be pretty intense,” he says. “I mean, to be able to know what’s going to happen before it actually does.…That’s obviously why you contacted me after everything I’d put you through,” he says.

I nod, unable to deny the fact that I had an ulterior motive when I first called him this past winter, and that it wasn’t of the love-stricken kind.

Adam sits back in his seat looking off into the night. The light from the moon illuminates the tension in his jaw. “And all along I thought it was because you were missing me.”

“I did miss you.”

“But you were scared for me. You were doing the right thing. That’s the real reason you reached out to me.”

“Does it even matter?” I ask, wondering if maybe I should’ve kept my secret.

But Adam finally turns to me again and tells me that it doesn’t at all. “What matters is that you cared enough to want to help me despite what an absolute tool I’d been.”

“Well, you’ve come a long way since then.”

“I’m glad you think so,” he says, glancing at my salty lips. “But now
I
want to help
you
.”

“What do you mean?”

“How can I help you with this girl who’s in trouble?”

“Danica.”

“Is she a friend of yours?”

“Not really.”

“Then why are you having premonitions about her? You realize how sci-fi that sounds, don’t you?” He smirks.

“I guess I’m a sci-fi kind of girl.”

“You’re a magical kind of girl,” he says; his face gets serious again. “At the risk of sounding cheesy, that is.”

“I like cheese,” I say, feeling my cheeks go pink. I look down at the mound of cheddar fries, trying to find a distraction.

Adam reaches out to take my hand, clearly sensing the heat between us. His fingers weave through mine, which makes me think of Ben.

I do my best to block out my Ben-thoughts by focusing on how thoughtful Adam is, and how he’s always so willing to tell me how he feels.

“Do you want to talk about Danica?” he asks me.

I shake my head, but not because I want to keep anything from him. “I’m just feeling really exhausted,” I say. “Another time?”

“Definitely.”

We spend several minutes just holding hands, snuggled together in his Bronco, not quite ready for the moment to be over. I gaze out of the fog-covered window, reminding myself of what Ben said the other day—that there’s no reason I shouldn’t be seeing Adam.

“I’d better get you home,” Adam says, checking the dashboard clock. It’s quarter to ten, and he promised to have me home by the hour. “I want to keep on your parents’ good side. I have a feeling that we’ll be seeing each other a whole lot more often. Can I call you tomorrow?”

I nod, wishing that we had more time. Still, Adam hurries to clean up our snacks and then puts the car in drive, leaving me hungry for more.

Dear Jill,

You were so nervous-even more than I was used to-and it was making me nervous, too.

You may not believe this, but after only about five minutes on the bench with you, I actually considered calling the whole thing off. But then I asked if you’d told your boss about us meeting, and you shook your head and mumbled that he thought a friend was picking you up.

There it was: already you were lying for the sake of our relationship. And so who was I to cave under pressure?

I needed to fight for our relationship too.

I tried to boost your confidence with compliments. I even bumped my knee against yours as a way to soften you up. But you kept fidgeting in your seat, looking over your shoulder, and clenching your jaw.

Do you remember how concerned I was, how I kept asking you what was wrong? I wondered if part of your anxiety might’ve had something to do with the girl who’d been scoping you out. I’d spotted her a couple times: at your house and at your work. I hadn’t liked the looks of her, and I suspected the feeling was mutual.

“Well?” I asked.

You may not want to hear this, but my distaste for your parents was growing stronger by the moment. I blamed them for your inability to see what was truly best for you. And I vowed to make them pay.

…

Dear Jack:

You looked so nice, sitting on the bench in front of Muster’s Bakery. The streetlamp shined right over you, making you look like one of those artful ads for designer jeans or musk cologne.

“I’m so glad you came,” you said, standing as I approached. You saw that I was shivering, and took off your sweatshirt, wrapped it around my shoulders, and motioned for me to sit. The sweatshirt smelled sickly sweet, like rotted fruit, making my stomach churn. But still I didn’t want to take it off.

You sat beside me, and your leg bumped against mine. “Sorry,” you said. A smile crept across your lips, like maybe you weren’t that sorry at all.

You looked older up close—at least 25, with wrinkles in the corners of your eyes, and a bit of stubble on your chin. I wondered if you knew I was only in high school and that being with me probably violated at least ten different laws. It was exciting to imagine that you did indeed know, but that you still didn’t care, as if your desire to be with me trumped any risk.

“You’re so pretty, you know that?” you said, catching me off guard. “I’m sorry, did I just say that out loud?”

I clenched my jaw, suddenly fearing the worst: that someone would jump out from behind a bush, put an end to the moment by exposing the joke that it was.

“What’s wrong?” you asked.

It was so much easier to talk to you on the computer, to fantasize about you at my leisure, and to watch you doing homework at the back of the coffee shop.

“Well?” you asked, still waiting for me to speak.

“It’s just that no one’s ever talked to me the way you do,” I said. Before my mother had left, and before my sister had turned into a virtual stranger in our home, we’d had a running joke in my family that I’d been abandoned on my parents’ doorstep at birth, because I was nothing like them—not half as confident and nowhere near as talented.

“Nobody ever talks to you like what?” You reached out to stroke the side of my face.

Your fingers were warm but rough.

A stray tear trickled down my cheek. You wiped it with your thumb, saying that you couldn’t possibly imagine what I was talking about. “I’d love to get to spend more time with you,” you said.

I wanted to ask you why, but I couldn’t, because more tears dripped down my face. “I’m sorry,” I whispered, feeling like such a freak, disappointed to be letting you down.

“Don’t be. Just let me be here for you.” You slipped an arm around my shoulders. The embrace was awkward and stiff. Like me.

“Just let me be your friend,” you said.

I continued to let you hold me, even though my gut told me to pull away.

…

IN MY ROOM, I change into a pair of sweats and then lie back on my bed. My bedroom window is open a crack, and the cool March air filters into the room, making me feel more alive than I have in a long time, despite all the drama in my life.

I draw the covers up, still able to feel Adam’s arms around me. I close my eyes, imagining him here beside me, and thinking how comforting it is to always know exactly what’s on his mind.

A second later, my cell phone rings. I pick it up, hoping it’s Kimmie and that she’s feeling every bit as horrible as I am that we haven’t talked.

But it’s actually Ben.

“Is everything okay?” he asks as soon as I say hello.

I sit up in bed, suspicious of his seemingly perfect timing. “Why wouldn’t it be?” I ask him.

“Just making sure. We kind of left things weird the other day,” he says.

“Is that the only reason?”

“Should there be another?”

I look out my window, remembering the nights when he used to linger outside, waiting for me to come home. “You aren’t outside my house, are you?” I ask, almost feeling paranoid.

But the street looks fairly empty tonight. I don’t see his motorcycle parked anywhere.

“Ben?” I say, when he doesn’t answer. There’s a tense silence on both ends of the line.

“I’m still here,” he says. “And I still want to discuss the whole Danica issue.”

“Yes, but that doesn’t answer my question.”

“First try answering mine: have you talked to Danica?”

I clutch my pillow, wondering if he might’ve followed me to her house the other day.

“Yes, but we didn’t really get too far.”

“Will you call me after you’ve spoken to her again?”

“What do you know about her?” I ask him.

“Not so much more than you.”

“Is there something that I should know?” I ask, fairly confident that he’s lying, but still giving him one more chance to open up.

“Only that I’m trying to help you, so I’d appreciate it if you could keep me in the loop.”

“Is that all?” I ask, tired of talking in circles and still suspecting that he might have some other reason for calling me.

“Isn’t that enough, Chameleon?”

I continue to gaze out the window, surprised to hear him call me that, and curious to know if he might be trying to tell me something. I close my eyes again, picturing the chameleon tattoo on his upper thigh. He got it before he came to Freetown, before he ever met me. He’d recently touched his mother’s wedding band—something that reminded him of soul mates—and then couldn’t get the image of a chameleon out of his mind. And so he had it tattooed on his thigh, hoping its permanence might help him understand it more—might help him understand his own future soul mate more.

“Were you waiting for me to come home tonight?” I ask him.

“Would that be such a bad thing?”

“I’ll take that as a yes,” I say, my heart beating fast. I search the street for shadows, eager to find any trace of him.

“I’m just looking out for you,” he explains.

“What for?” I ask. “I mean, you said it yourself: there’s no reason why I shouldn’t be seeing Adam.”

“Yes, but there’s no reason you
should
be seeing him, either.”

“How about the fact that he’s straight with me, that he doesn’t play mind games, and that he tells me how he truly feels?”

“And how do
you
feel?” he asks. “How do you really feel spending time with him?”

“I should go,” I say, unwilling to indulge his probing for another second. I tell him good night and snap the phone shut.

At the same moment, there’s a knock at my bedroom door. “Camelia?” Dad asks, stepping inside before I invite him in. He comes and sits at the foot of my bed. “How did things go today with the therapist?”

“They went well,” I say, curious as to whether he heard any of my conversation with Ben.

“Are you sure? Because just say the word and we’ll switch you to somebody more helpful.”

“Dr. Tylyn
is
helpful. We’ve talked a lot about choices. And, I don’t know, as obvious as it may sound, the idea of having choices over what could possibly happen in my future feels really empowering.” More than any superpower could.