Whisper (20 page)

We stepped into the clean, crisp air outside just in time to see a yellow ABC tow truck pull away, dragging behind it Ben’s Land Rover.

“Goddamn it!” Now it was my turn to lose it. We were so damn close. Now how were we going to get to the hospital? “The fucking car’s gone, and we’re out of money.”

Jamie squinted after the car and shrugged. “At least we’re not getting arrested for stealing it.” They were the first words he’d spoken since riding the Wave. He banged on Ray and Keith’s door. “Cab money,” he demanded when Keith answered, looking none too pleased to see Jamie’s face again. “Our car got towed. Either the police give us a
ride to Harborview, or you fork over.”

Keith fished a twenty from his pocket, shoved it in our direction, and slammed the door.

Just a couple blocks down, an orange cab stopped for us. I called Dad from its backseat to tell him I knew where Icka was…but that I didn’t know what would be waiting for us there.

“You found her!” A quavering sigh—it sounded suspiciously like a sob—rose from his throat. “I’m half an hour out.” His voice was still choked up. “I’ll make it in twenty minutes.”

Calling Aunt Jane wasn’t as simple. I’d expected just to give her a (much overdue) update on the situation and promise to call later. She shocked me by saying she and Mom were on the way to Seattle.

“Didn’t you get any of our messages?” Aunt Jane said. “Here, you need to talk to your mother—”

I hung up quickly. The thought of facing Mom stressed me out almost as much as the sight of a gun had. Funny how, of all the things that drove me batty about Icka in the old days, her seemingly gleeful contempt for our mother ranked number one. Now I knew differently; there was no joy in hating Mom, only a tender ache, and some bluster to cover the loneliness.

Our cab pulled into Harborview’s ER parking lot. We paid its driver the drug money, and he let us out in front of the sliding automatic doors.

The waiting room was nearly empty, a blessing for Jamie and me. He parked himself on the couch looking drained, like he’d run a marathon, while I ran up to the front desk.

“Do you have a patient named Allison Monroe?” Icka’s booze-buying alter ego.

The receptionist narrowed her eyes at me. “Are you a relative?”

“I’m her sister. Just tell me if she’s alive…please!”

A nurse led me into a cubiclelike room with sea green walls. Its single occupant was still, waxen, her head like the plumage of a neurotic bird, stray locks hanging here and there from a pale, fuzzy scalp. She was bristling with wires: hooked up to a heart monitor, a blood-pressure monitor. An IV stuck out of her arm. Then I noticed the steady rhythm of her heartbeat on the monitor. Alive, she was alive, I told myself, that’s what mattered. Icka opened her eyes and looked off into space, blinking over and over. Someone, probably a nurse, had washed her face clean of mascara, yet smudges of kohl eyeliner still clung to her lids. I couldn’t stop staring at her shorn head.

“Is this your sister?” the nurse said.

Tears came to my eyes. “Yes!”

Icka shivered and hugged herself, then, as if sensing me for the first time, peered up at me with round blue eyes. “Joy?”

“I’m here.” I stepped forward, wanting to hug her but unable to remember the last time I’d done such a thing. It might freak her out. It might freak
me
out. “Is she going to
be okay?” I asked the nurse. “What’s the IV for?”

“Your sister’s lucky to be alive,” she said sternly. “Considering the volume of drugs she took, I’m surprised she’s conscious.”

“Are you real?” Icka asked me.

“I’m real,” I said, my voice choking up. “I’m really here, I’ve been searching for you all night. I don’t know what I would have—I’m so relieved I finally found you!”

“Me too,” she said softly.

I listened as, in a blur, the nurse explained to me that Icka’s vital signs were good, and that she’d been brought in by “Good Samaritans.” Apparently, I’d need to fill out forms with her correct information. Real name and date of birth, a working phone number, insurance provider if I had it. “And we can’t release her to a minor, of course,” she added, “so you’ll have to have a parent come get her.”

I assured her that our parents were on the way, and she left the room, promising to return in two minutes with the forms.

“I can Hear you,” Icka said. Her eyes filled with tears. “I can still Hear. It didn’t work. I’m the same. Everything’s just…the same.”

Gingerly I eased onto the side of the bed, careful not to joggle any of her equipment. “Jessica, nothing’s the same,” I told her. “I just crossed a state line in a stolen car looking for you.”

Her eyebrows went up. “Serious?”

“Yes. And I started Hearing more, like you. Like you said.”

“I’m sorry.” She picked at the thin white sheet. “I never wanted it to happen to you. But I thought if I warned you, it would be easier….”

“I know, but you couldn’t stop this from being hard for me,” I said. “No one could, not even Mom.”

Icka froze. “Is
she
here?”

“No. Well, not yet.”

“Great.” She settled back on her thin pillows. “Mommy Stepford’s on her way, the last person I want to see when I’m completely powerless. Or, really, anytime.”

I hesitated. This was the part where I normally defended Mom. “Has she really been lying to us,” I said, “about everything?”

“Her cookies have real chocolate chips,” Icka said. “Otherwise—hey.” She broke into a tearful grin. “I told you that old story was true. The only thing I can’t figure out is why it finally worked this time, and not all the times I
tried
to make it work, when we were kids.”

“Um. I think maybe it’s because I was identifying with you strongly at the time.”

“What do you mean, identifying with me?”

“I…wished away my Hearing.”

“No way!”

“This afternoon. I think that’s how I first got connected to you.”

“Wow.” It took her a moment to take that in. “You
know, I Heard you calling to me,” she said quietly, “when I was at Keith and Ray’s. I was lying on the futon, staring at the ceiling, out of my mind, and there you were. Whispering to me. Sometimes I could even see what you were seeing, or wishing for. I was so glad, even though I figured you were just another hallucination.”

Spontaneously I reached out and grabbed her hand. “Don’t ever disappear again, okay?”

She blinked, looked at my hand like she didn’t know what it was, then squeezed it back. “I didn’t want to be dead, dummy,” she said. “I just wanted to get rid of my Hearing. Aunt Jane said it was the key. To freeing myself.”

“Yeah, but she didn’t tell you to take all the drugs in the world.”

Icka looked down at her blood pressure monitor, which was tightening around her right bicep. “Drugs always kill my Hearing while I’m high,” she said, shrugging. “He said there was a drug that could cure me forever. I wanted to believe it so bad…. Then I thought, if I just took enough stuff all at once, maybe the effect would last.” She took her hand back. “I don’t even know why I’m still alive.”

“Because you’re strong,” I said. “You’re the toughest person I know.”

She shook her head, her shorn head. “You just want me to be tough,” she said. “That’s, like, your image of me. But you don’t know how weak I am really. I’m pathetic.” She whispered the word. “The truth is, I
didn’t
want to stop you
from Hearing the badness. For years now I’ve wished you could Hear things the way I do. Because I wanted you to suffer, just like me. So at least you’d be where I was.” Her red-rimmed eyes leaked tears.
I hope you can forgive me.

“Aw, Jessica…this isn’t your fault. I grew up and changed, but not because you wished it. You don’t have that kind of power. We haven’t even been that close, since…since we were kids.” Since I shut her out of my life. I wish I hadn’t done that.

“I don’t really blame you for dumping me.” She must have Heard me Whisper. “It was like, there was no chance for me, but there
was
a chance for you…you could make yourself blend in, you could have
friends
.”

“Yeah, well, about those friends…they weren’t the greatest.”

“Major understatement.”

“You could have broken it to me in a nicer way, or let me figure it out myself.”

She shrugged. “I was never good at holding back my feelings.”

“Major understatement!” I rolled my eyes. “Wait…” I’d remembered something. “Have you been blocking your Whispers from me, when we’re at home? “

“I didn’t know if I could trust you.” She sounded embarrassed. “I wanted to, but I was afraid you’d tell Mom everything I was trying to hide. If it’s any consolation, blocking you was giving me killer headaches too.”

“I probably
would
have told Mom everything,” I admitted. “I really was a little too close to her. But from now on, I promise not to pass on anything you tell me unless you say it’s okay. We need to be able to share information.”

“Huh.” Icka’s eyes widened. “Are we going to be able to
keep
from sharing, as long as we have this connection open?”

“I don’t know.” I hadn’t even thought about that.

“We should ask Aunt Jane if Hope and Faith had the ability to link for the rest of their lives.”

“Speaking of Aunt Jane,” I said, “did you know she has a
boyfriend
?”

“Shrimpy Stuart’s great,” she said. “He makes a kick-ass tofu scramble.”

I laughed, and my elbow accidentally knocked against her IV drip. I looked at the IV in my sister’s arm.

“You’re wishing for me to be okay,” she said. “I don’t know how to give you that.”

“You don’t have to know everything right now, Jess,” I said. “We can figure it all out later, together.”

Her lips twisted up into a weird expression. A smile. “Jess,” she said softly, as if to herself. Then her eyes closed.

“Jessica? Nurse!” I yelled, and pushed the call button madly.

But the nurse who dashed in informed me that Icka’s vitals were fine. “She’s unconscious from exhaustion,” she explained. “I think she was just waiting up for you.”

Dad was filling out paperwork on the waiting-room couch when I came out. “I saw you two talking in there,” he said shyly. “Figured I’d get out of the way.”

“She just fell asleep,” I said.

He held up his hand. “We’ll let her rest a while. I can wait till your Mom gets here.”

I hugged him tight. Then I hugged Jamie. “Have you two met?”

“
Oh
yes,” Dad said. “This is the boy who convinced my younger daughter to go tearing off into the night after my older daughter. Every father’s dream.”

“It’s a good thing he did too,” I said.

“I would not argue against that point.” His eyebrows sagged. “I’m just sorry it had to come to that.”
I wish I could have stopped all this from happening. If I hadn’t been so focused on myself, on my work….

“Actually, Dad?” I said. “We could really use your advice. As an attorney.”

Reluctantly, Jamie explained about the car.

“As far as I see it,” Dad said, “you’re not in any legal trouble. There are no charges against you, no witnesses who saw you drive it. I don’t see how it’s your fault if some jackal whisked your brother’s car to Seattle and got it impounded…while you were busy studying for a history test at our house.” He winked.

“I appreciate the thought, sir,” Jamie said, smiling a
little. “But the thing is, I can’t lie to my father. I really just…
can’t
.”

“What an incredibly principled young man,” Dad said to me. “I approve.”

I bit the inside of my lip to keep from laughing. Jamie pretended to cough.

Dad, in classic Dad fashion, didn’t seem to notice. Earnestly he turned to Jamie. “Well, then, I guess the only thing to do is for me to tell your family the truth. That their son generously reached out to help both my daughters, risking his own freedom.”

Jamie and I stole a glance at each other. Dad would never know all the things that we’d both risked in getting here.

“I’ll of course pay to spring the car out,” Dad went on.

“Thank you for that too,” Jamie said, sighing. “But no matter what you say or do, this is probably going to get me kicked out of my house permanently.”

“Kicked out?” Dad’s head pulled back in surprise. “You don’t mean your parents would literally throw you out on the street?”

Jamie crossed his arms, clearly defensive of them. “They just don’t know how to handle…some stuff about me.”

“Well,” Dad said slowly, “I’ll have to talk to my wife, but I think we may be converting our home office into a guest suite.” Huh? We were? “We just might have room this winter,” he went on, ignoring my dropped jaw, “for a guest who does chores. Down the road,” he added, “when you’re sixteen, if things
still
don’t improve back home,
I’d be willing to help you get declared an emancipated minor.”

Jamie leaned forward. “What does that mean, exactly?”

“It’s a lot like being an adult a couple years early,” Dad explained. “It means you can live independently of your parents: hold a job, pay your bills, rent an apartment. It means you’re not subject to most of the legal restrictions other kids are.”

Jamie not subject to normal restrictions. That, I thought, sounded right.

“On the other hand.” Dad looked Jamie in the eye. “An emancipated minor can be tried as an adult. That means you can’t go borrowing cars anymore. You’ll need to start learning new ways to deal with problems.”

Jamie looked at me and slowly nodded. “That’s the plan.”

As Dad turned back to his plastic clipboard, a rumpled carload of twenty-somethings in club clothes bounded through the front doors. Three girls and an ashen-faced, bleary-eyed guy.

Please God, don’t let this be permanent!

Hope they can just pump his stomach and get it out.

As their anxious Whispers flooded my mind, I spun to face Jamie. He was already on his feet. “Getting a drink from the vending machines,” he said through clenched teeth.

I leaped up too. “Good idea, I’ll walk with you!”

Dad, still bent over his forms, didn’t even look up as we slipped into the hallway.