Whisper (17 page)

“Whoa, scary Waves coming out of that one,” Jamie said, stepping backward.

I poked my head in to Listen, then regretted it as the storm crashed down on me:

I just want to be an artist, I just have to make it work.

Wish I wasn’t wasting Saturday nights slinging coffee in this dive….

I hope she realizes Lisa’s never going to love her like I do.

We hurried past.

In front of Pearl Street Lofts, the modern-art fountain
sculpture put on its nightly light show in purple, blue, green, red, and orange.

“My aunt designed that,” I said, waiting for him to say it was “odd” or “unusual,” which is what Mom and Dad always said about it.

But he just said, “That looks amazing,” and Whispered,
Wish
I
had a talent.

I scanned the list of residents’ names:
JANE ROWAN
, 4
C
. Before I could push the buzzer, though, a high, insinuating voice called out, “My my, is that Janey’s
other
niece? With a boyfriend?”

A five-foot-tall middle-aged woman in a turquoise jogging suit was dragging a leashed basset. Doris, Aunt Jane’s downstairs neighbor.

“Oh, hi, Doris! And Henry.” I bent down to stroke the dog’s velvety ears while Jamie sized up Doris. She was the same as I remembered her: still bitterly wishing she wasn’t single.

Doris’s trembling, peach-manicured fingers turned her key in the lock. “Well, come on in, Romeo and Juliet!” She motioned for us to follow her into the elevator, and after I’d ascertained her Wave-acceptability from Jamie’s slight nod, we did. “So, what are you doing here?” She pushed her own floor-three button as well as floor four for us. “Introducing Aunt J to your boyfriend?”
Wish I had a handsome man to show off.

“Actually—yeah!” It was a way better explanation than what I was really doing.

Jamie slipped his arm around me. I could almost hear him smirking.

“Well, you look good together,” she said grudgingly. “Lucky he’s tall. I can’t abide short men. Just between you and me, I could never put up with a shrimpy Stuart!”

Jamie caught my eye, his face a question mark. I had to look away not to laugh. When she’d dragged Henry off, the moment the third-floor doors closed, we both exploded.

“What the fug is a shrimpy Stuart?” I gasped.

“Is that old people slang for—”

“I don’t know!”

“I don’t
want
to know.”

We were still snickering when the elevator doors opened again.

Jamie stood there frozen in front of the door.

“What’s wrong?”

“I can’t be here.” He punched the top floor, eight, and the doors closed.

“What are you doing, we have to—”

“Can’t, can’t, can’t go there. Too strong.” He was sounding like he did talking to Ben in the bathroom. “You were right about your aunt being a wreck.”

“You mean, you can feel—Waves?”

He nodded, shivered. “Scared, angry, confused…I can’t, can’t, can’t—”

“It’s okay, it’s okay,” I said.

He was like a kid. I had this urge to comfort him, like smooth his hair or squeeze his shoulder. Until he
slammed his hand against the elevator wall. “God fucking damn it!”

I shrank back, and he shrank away from me, mirroring me.

“I’m sorry,” he said, sounding about five years old. He gave me a guilty look.
I wish I could stay with you and help. I wish I wasn’t so damn weak….

“It’s all right. Just head back to the car…I’ll meet you there.”

I left him on the eighth-floor hallway and stepped out of the elevator on floor four, alone. I started to walk down the hall to Aunt Jane’s front door, then remembered Jamie’s reaction and thought better of it. My Hearing was getting stronger. Maybe if I just tried to Listen from here…

Instantly I picked up a wrenched, choking voice:

If only Jane had talked her out of it somehow….

Mom. That sobbing voice was Mom?

If only I knew where to look…where to start…

Mom’s
Waves were what Jamie was feeling. God, no wonder he ran.

My heart thundered against my ribs. So Icka was really gone; my gut feeling was right. I kept thinking I should go, I should run after Jamie. Before Mom catches me Listening. But I couldn’t stop, like how I couldn’t stop staring at Ben’s swollen face. Was this the real Mom?

I don’t ever want to see her again…Oh, god, I just want
my baby to come home safe! Let her be safe, safe and happy, somewhere.

How could this quavering, hysterical person be my mother, my rock?

I never want them to know what I did. I just want them to be happy, I have to make them happy…get her back before they know she’s gone.

We were the ones she didn’t want to know, me and Dad. She wasn’t even planning to tell us that Icka was missing, because it wouldn’t make us happy?

If only it hadn’t been Joy’s birthday. I wish I could have canceled the party to go out and look for Jess….

A chill ran down my spine. I remembered the calls from Aunt Jane that went to voice mail. Mom had known about Icka being AWOL yesterday afternoon. Did that mean Mom had valued my birthday celebration over searching for her missing older daughter? I knew one thing it meant: Icka had been gone over twenty-four hours. Where could she be? Not at Pendleton. She’d never been at Pendleton. She’d certainly never made friends there.

Mom had lied.

Lied to
us
, me and Dad. Her family.

I felt weak and leaned back against the wall, but the toe of my boot slid on the slippery floor and I found myself dancing to keep from falling flat on my butt. My boots were as loud as tap shoes in the echoey hallway.

“Please let that be Jess at the door!”
Mom Whispered, and
suddenly a familiar sharp pain rocked me.

My face jerked backward as the bright red pain washed over my crown, scraping as it spread down to my forehead. Holding my head in both hands—as if to keep it from breaking apart—I threw myself at the stairwell door, pushed it open with my hip, and raced down the steps. The pain started to lift quickly. By the time I reached the ground floor my head was fine.

It was Mom, Mom who caused my headache.

How? And why? If Icka were here, we could figure it out together. That’s what she’d wanted, for us to solve mysteries together. But now Icka was missing, a mystery herself.

I didn’t stop running till I was outside.

A dark-colored Subaru was parked in the place of Ben’s Land Rover.

My stomach felt like someone had kicked me with cowboy boots. Where the hell was Jamie? Was he so spooked that he’d fled? But I couldn’t believe he’d just abandon me here…. Maybe the police picked him up for driving a stolen car. Maybe he ran into some really angry person packing a knife. Or a gun.

I’d only been standing there catastrophizing for about thirty seconds when I realized Mom could still be trailing me. I slipped into the café where I’d be less obvious to spot, and immediately I was enveloped in a fog of Whispers.

I’d be loving life if I could see
that
pretty smile across the breakfast table for the rest of my days.

I wish this pseudo-progressive coffee shop bothered to compost.

I was scanning the tables in vain for Jamie when I heard someone call my name. The barista, a slim, androgynous blond woman, was at my side. “You Joy?” Numbly, I nodded. She handed me a napkin with some writing on it:
Too many Waves in here. I’ll be circling the block till you come out.—J

I felt my shoulders drop and my breathing return to normal. “
Thank
you,” I said, but the woman was already wandering back to her station, Whispering:
I wish Lisa could see how good we were together.

I watched her amble away, thinking I should duck out of here myself before the Whispers got to me. But then something made me look just
past
her. To the right. At the fifties-style booths near the back of the shop. A middle-aged dude with a ponytail was sitting close to a woman with pouffy mouse brown hair much like my own, but running to silver. As the woman tipped her head back to laugh, I saw a button nose exactly like my mother’s. Aunt Jane?

The fingers on Aunt Jane’s left hand were intertwined with the man’s, and she was so caught up in their eye contact she didn’t even notice me till I was blocking her view of Purple Hair.

“Joy! What are you doing here, kiddo?” Aunt Jane jumped out of her chair, nearly tripping on her crinkly gypsy skirt.
Please, not another family crisis.
But she opened strong, patchouli-smelling arms to hug me anyway. Purple Hair finished her earsplitting rendition of Tori Amos’s “Silent All These Years.” “Stu!” Aunt Jane yelled over the applause to her date. “Meet my other favorite niece.”

Stu? So the ponytailed guy was…Shrimpy Stuart?

He crumpled his napkin, stood to his full height of five and a half feet, and smiled at me. “Heard so much about you, Joy!”
I hope she likes me.
His T-shirt read
CHILD-FREE: DEEDS NOT SEEDS
.

I didn’t smile back. Who
was
this guy? Aunt Jane wasn’t depressed
or
alone. Did Mom ever tell me the truth about anything?

“So where’s Robert?” Aunt Jane glanced around for my father.

“Dad’s not with me,” I said. “I came with a friend.”

Her eyes went as saucer-wide as if I’d said I flew here in my Learjet.
I hope she’s not on the same path as Jessica.

More like hot on the trail, I thought. Purple Hair was starting to get worked up again with “Cornflake Girl,” so I grabbed Aunt Jane’s hand. “We need to talk,” I said. “Outside.”

She gave me another look of astonishment. Then she nodded at Stuart, snagged her oversized purse (which appeared to be made out of burlap), and motioned for me to follow her out the back door. It led into a cold—but thankfully empty—screened courtyard with black iron patio furniture and a carpet of Astroturf. On the two walls that weren’t screens, a mural depicted sunny blue skies and sandy beaches, a whimsical protest against Portland’s constant rain.

“Well, here we are!” Aunt Jane picked up one of the heavy wrought-iron chairs and settled her wiry body into it. “I guess you’ve got some questions for me, about your
Hearing?” She gave me a knowing smile, the sort of look Yoda might have given Luke Skywalker before their first lesson. “You came to me as an adult, without your parents in tow, that means you’re ready for the truth. Go ahead, ask me anything.”

My heart quickened at the thought of all the things I
could
ask. Like, had she ever Heard a Whisper from thirty miles away? Did she really lose her power on purpose? (How?) Was there a way to stop another Hearer from picking up your Whispers…and did it cause headaches? Did she know others with gifts?

But there was only one question I cared about right now. “Where’s my sister?”

Aunt Jane’s brow wrinkled, and suddenly she didn’t look so much like Yoda anymore. She looked like Mom, a weathered, hippie version of her both older and younger at the same time. “So
that’s
why you’re here,” she said, sighing. “Well, I suppose you’re mad at me too for not holding her back, but how could I? I know firsthand how it feels to be ready. Ready to move on. Be free.”

“She didn’t just move
on
.” I wasn’t about to let her use her hippie lingo on me. “She ran away, Aunt Jane! We have to bring her back home.”

“No.” Aunt Jane shook her head emphatically, making her crystal earrings chime. “I’m not sure that’s such a good idea, it could hold back her spiritual growth. Separation is a healthy stage of development,” she went on. “Your sister’s in a very exciting place, at the true beginning of her
life, metaphorically speaking—”

I cut into her psychobabble. “What place is she in,
physically
speaking?”

Aunt Jane frowned.
I do wish I’d pressed more about her plans.
“Well, she left my condo last night, around ten,” she admitted, “so, at this point….”

“She could be anywhere.” I swallowed, felt nauseous. She’d been my last hope. “Have you and Mom even called the police?”

“Oh, the pigs.” Aunt Jane rolled her eyes. I didn’t even know adults did that. “Just between you and me, Officer Friendly and his crew, they wouldn’t search too hard for a runaway who’ll be eighteen in spring.”

I shook my head, not wanting to hear this.

“She might choose to return someday.” Aunt Jane was obviously trying to cheer me up. “When she’s learned what it is she wants to learn on this journey. Of course I hate seeing poor Kelli in a tailspin. She’s praying your sister turns around and comes straight home, but I think—”

“Mom’s just sitting around, hoping and praying?” I was so angry I felt light-headed. “Why isn’t anyone
doing something
to find Icka? She is
out
there somewhere and no one knows where, and you think it’s fabulous. Mom’s lying that she’s in college. And Dad doesn’t even know his own daughter’s missing! What kind of family is this?”

“Wait a minute, Kelli
lied
?” Aunt Jane looked startled. “Your father…has no idea?”

I plopped into a chair, breathless from my tirade.

“But then how did
you
know…” She pushed up her glasses. “Why’d you come to me?”

“Because
you’re
the one who told her to destroy her Hearing!”

“Destroy?” Her head snapped backward as if I’d slapped her. “No, we talked about healing, clearing up childhood patterns, a gentle process. Years of growth—”

“Icka’s not patient enough to wait years,” I said. “If she wants to kill her Hearing, she’ll do it this weekend. She even found someone to help her, some
guys
somewhere….”

“What?” She blinked. “How do
you
know all this? She called you?”

Maybe it was wrong of me, but part of me felt gratified to be shocking her with how much I knew. She wasn’t the only one with the answers.

“No she didn’t call me. She Whispered to me.”

Aunt Jane stared at me. “Are you saying…?”

“I’ve been Hearing her all afternoon. In my dreams, when I’m awake…just like in that old story you told us when we were kids. Hope and—”

“Faith. Oh, dear.” Aunt Jane stood and her chair groaned as she pushed it away. She began to circle the table. “Oh, dear, oh, dear.”
I hope I haven’t made a horrible mistake. Please let Jessica find her way out of this danger she’s in!

“This is real, isn’t it?” Now I was no longer enjoying shocking Aunt Jane. Now I was just plain terrified. “She’s really in danger. How do we find her?”

“Not we,
you
. Joy, do you understand how rare this
is, how significant? Somehow you’ve opened up a deep connection with your sister. One that transcends distance. Your great-grandmother said it could happen when extraordinary need meets extraordinary understanding. Compassion.”

I thought about that moment in the Starbucks bathroom when I’d wished away my Hearing, when I’d first understood what it must feel like to be Icka. The moment I’d first Heard her.

“She is reaching out to you for help,” she said, and now I could see the fear in her eyes. “You’re the one she wants to find her. And there’s no time to lose.”

“All right, but what can
I
do?” I felt around in my pocket for my phone. “I’m calling Dad for help.”

“The hell you are!” She knocked the phone from my clammy grasp. It thudded weakly on the Astroturf. “Joy, think. The first thing he’d do is ground you and hire a private detective who’ll waste two weeks poking around online, lurking in parked cars and digging through trash bins. Your sister’s leaving a red-hot trail just for you. Follow it!”

The butterflies in my stomach turned to bees. “But…where do I follow it
to
?”

“Ask her.”

“You mean…I can talk to her directly?”

“She can Hear your Whispers,” she said, like it was obvious. Which I guess it was. It was just a whole new way of looking at Whispers. “Your minds are connected. You should be able
to see what she sees, remember what she’s remembering.”

“Seriously?”

“You can’t be thinking about other things, though,” she added. “You have to focus entirely on connecting with her. Try it now.”

Icka,
I said silently,
I wish I could find you.

All I Heard at first was Aunt Jane beside me:
I pray nothing happens to that girl because of me.
Me, me, me. Why was it so hard to think about other people without thinking about yourself too?

I closed my eyes and gathered up thoughts of Icka. The small purple figure disappearing into the woods. The mermaid on the rock. The lone plate of Tofurky on Thanksgiving. Icka. Jess. My sister. Have to find you, get you back.

Almost immediately, my body lurched forward as a warm orange light bathed my vision. My mind’s eye flashed on two little girls toiling over a moated, turreted sandcastle, a sepia-toned photo that could just as well have been Mom and Aunt Jane as me and my sister. Queasiness like a wreath of cigarette smoke drifted up toward my head, and
blink:
I saw Jess’s grip on my hand as we ran toward the shimmering waves. Blink: the zoo at age seven, trembling behind Jess, hiding from the play-fighting grizzly bears. Blink: arms around each other at the Space Needle. Then I was staring at the café courtyard’s painted sky wall once more.

“What’d she say? Where is she?”

I was dazed. “I just…saw all these images. Memories, or something.”

“No words at all,” Aunt Jane said grimly. “Suggests she might not be fully conscious. Why don’t you ask her to
show
you where she is now?”

I swallowed. “We can
do
that?”

Aunt Jane bit her lip. “You can do a lot more than fetch people what they want, Joy.”

I closed my eyes again, concentrated:
Jessica, I wish you could show me where to find you.

As if in reply, I got arms-around-each-other-at-the-Space-Needle a second time. The Space Needle again…wait. “The Space Needle’s in Seattle!” I blurted out. Seattle, with its direct-trade coffee on every block, its weird art and green politics. Seattle, the birthplace of grunge music. “That’s where she’d be! That’s where she is.” I took a deep breath. “I guess that’s where I have to go.”

I’d been the one to push her away. Crazy as it was, dangerous as it was, I had to be the one to bring her back. Because even though I’d shut her out of my life, I was the only one in the family she was still talking to. Besides, Aunt Jane, unlike my parents, had faith in me. Of course Aunt Jane just might be crazy. But when it came down to it, who in our family was totally sane?

“Call in every hour, you hear me?” Aunt Jane swept her burlap purse off the table and turned toward the main room.
I just hope I’m not making another big mistake…. I hope
this makes everything better, not worse.
“I’m going upstairs to talk to your mother.”

“Good luck sorting through the lies.”

She turned around and smoothed my hair. “I don’t blame you for being disappointed in her, Joy,” she said softly. “God knows Kelli and I have had our differences. She doesn’t get why I felt I’d be happier without my Hearing. And I don’t get how she can go through life never looking below the surface.” Or Hearing below the surface? I thought. “Then again, who am I to judge her?” Aunt Jane went on. “I chose not to have children myself because deep down, I knew
I
wasn’t up to the challenge of raising girls who could Hear.”

“I guess Mom wasn’t up to it either.”

“I wouldn’t say that.” Aunt Jane’s eyes were shiny. “All I have to do is look across the table at my niece, and I know she did a damn fine job. Now we have to help her, because she’s fallen down under the weight of supporting everyone.”

Her words didn’t penetrate my anger. Still, I nodded. It was the first time her hippie-therapy talk had ever made sense.

“And I’m going to help her with tough love,” she added. “I’ll tell her she has fifteen minutes to enlighten your father, or I’m calling him myself.”

“Wait!” I grabbed her arm. “But what if they call the police?”

“I’m pretty sure you don’t need to worry about that,”
Aunt Jane said. “Your mother would sooner run a PTSA meeting naked than explain to the authorities how she lost
two
teenagers.” She frowned. “You dad might put a detective on your trail, though, or try to follow you himself. Don’t worry, I’ll give you a big head start before I tell them where you’re headed.”

“Wait, how could you give me a head start?” I was confused. “As soon as Mom Hears you, she’ll know everything!”

“Oh, please.” Aunt Jane dismissed Mom’s power with a wave of her hand. “Even I can block out Kelli.”

“
Block
her?” I blinked. “Are you saying…you can stop her from Hearing you?” Realization started to dawn on me. “How would someone do that?”

She hesitated, and I could see the wheels turning. Whatever it was, she’d assumed I knew already. If I didn’t, should she be the one to tell me? “Well. A couple ways,” she said finally. “Anyone—even a non-Hearer—can learn to control her own mind. By letting go of a desire, you change the subject in your brain. Meditation helps,” she added. “Or training yourself to think of something else. Something harmless.”

I leaned forward. “Is that what Mom and Icka do, they let go of desires they don’t want me to Hear?”

Again she hesitated. I hated putting her on the spot like this, but I had to know the truth. “There is another way,” she said, “but I don’t recommend it. It can damage your emotional health.” She sighed. “An adept like you can build
a mental barrier and hide her Whispers behind that Wall, so no one knows what’s going on inside.”

“A Wall?” So my family had Walls too, like Ben and his dad? I asked the question I was pretty sure I knew the answer to. “Can those Walls cause headaches?”

“Can they ever. On both sides. When I was eighteen and my power was growing stronger every day, your grandma and I used to give each other
splitting
—” Suddenly Aunt Jane stopped and stared at me. “Wait a minute, are
you
getting headaches? Already?”

I nodded. “Getting them and giving them, I guess.” Our house was a psychic war zone, and I’d never noticed.