Fathom (4 page)

She smiled now as she pushed a small box, wrapped in pink tissue paper, toward me.

“Gram, you didn’t have to get me any more presents,” I said. “The iPad and the iTunes gift card from you and Dad were—”

“Go ahead and open it,” she told me, her mouth pressing into a firm line.

You can’t say no to Gram. It just doesn’t work.

I ripped the paper and opened the box. Nestled in velvet and satin was a wooden cross on a silver chain. Celtic, I think. I had a feeling it was made from hawthorn wood, but it was beautiful, nonetheless. “I
love
it.”

“I had one just like this when I was your age,” she answered. “Put it on.”

I fastened the clasp and the cross hung down on top of my T-shirt. “Thanks, Gram, really.” I got up and hugged her, noticing how small and frail her body seemed, completely different from the woman inside.

She patted my hand and whispered, “Your mother would have gotten you one just like this, Kira. If she was here today.”

Tears stung my eyes.

“Who’s hungry?” Sean called just then. My uncles and all four of my cousins wandered outside to join us. My cousin, Celia, sat beside me, a big grin on her face. She was the closest thing I had to a girl friend, since Katie died. Meanwhile, Dad set a large platter on the table, piled high with grilled mahi mahi and thick lime wedges. Sean followed him, juggling bowls of grilled corn and vegetable shish-ka-bobs and potato salad.

My dad’s a great cook, but I had never smelled anything as good as that fish. Before I realized what I was doing, I heaped my plate with thick chunks of grilled mahi mahi and ahi tuna and Chilean sea bass. I didn’t notice that the conversation around me suddenly stopped or that everyone was watching me as I ate.

Then I looked up. Saw everyone staring at me.

Even my father.

“I guess I should put some more fish on the grill,” he said. He got up, grabbed another beer from the cooler, then glanced back at Gram. She shook her head, so slight you could barely see it.

They were talking about me again, this time without words.

That was when I realized that there had been a strange undercurrent flowing throughout the party, right from the beginning, from the moment my cousins had walked in the front door. All the gifts had been more extravagant than usual, all the hugs had been longer, and every now and then an unnatural quiet had enveloped them all—my uncles, my father, my cousins and Gram—and I would catch them staring at me.

Almost as if they were afraid.

Or as if they were all saying goodbye.

Sean was the only one who acted normal. He raised his eyebrows and laughed. “This is the first time you’ve eaten more than me,” he said.

“Yeah, well, you don’t swim halfway to Hawaii and back every morning like I do.”

“Maybe I should get you a couple more slices of cake. And a bucket of potato salad.”

“Bite me.”

“Kira.” Gram gave me that look of hers. She hated slang. Cursing in Gaelic was fine, but slang, not so much.

“Sorry, Gram,” I said. “But he asked for it.

Dad glanced at me again. He was finishing up the last batch of mahi mahi, the charcoal glowing, flames tickling the grill. Suddenly my dad was the brightest thing in the world, brighter than the moon or the stars, his face illuminated with orange light. He smiled at me, as if he was trying to make it look like everything was fine. Just like he had for as long as I could remember.

He was always there when I needed him.

Then the coals fired up, even hotter than before, and I realized that his eyes were glistening. He turned away from me, reached down, opened the cooler and pulled out another Budweiser.

He twisted off the cap, took a long slug.

When half the bottle had been drained, he wiped his eyes with his other hand, and focused all his attention on the fish.

•

The nights were all the same. Didn’t matter if I was six or sixteen, I never wanted to go to bed and I definitely didn’t want to go to sleep. As soon as the sun disappeared and twilight slipped into the house, my chest would tighten and monsters would hide in the shadows. They would crouch beneath my bed, in my closet, in the corner of the hall where the light didn’t shine.

Dad knew that I got edgy, so as far back as I could remember, he always tucked me into bed. Neither one of us would ever say, “Aren’t you getting too big for this?”

We both knew the answer.

Tonight, the twinkle lights still draped the yard, a glistening spider web. The glow touched my window and I liked it.

Bad things can’t happen when the lights are on.

My birthday guests had gone home long ago. Sean had been the last to leave. He knew how I felt about the night. I’ve never been good at keeping secrets from him.

So, I was sitting on my bed, a book on my lap, when Dad came in. He sat beside me, smelling of beer and cilantro and lime.

“Gonna stay up and read for awhile?” he asked.

I nodded. I hadn’t said anything about it, but I’d been worrying about him lately. He had dark circles under his eyes and I had a feeling he wasn’t getting enough sleep. I hoped his depression wasn’t back. It got really bad after Mom and Katie died, then finally, about a year after that he had managed to get it under control.

He sat beside me now, another Budweiser in his hand.

“Don’t stay up too late, okay? You’ve got school tomorrow.”

“I won’t.”

“I love you, baby girl,” he said. “Always and forever.”

I smiled. He said that every night.

“Love you too, Dad.”

And then, when our words faded away to silence, the world seemed right again. All the monsters had disappeared. Love had chased them away. Tonight our house had been swept clean, all the goblins and bogeymen had been kicked out. My breathing slowed and my eyelids felt heavy.

Dad paused in the doorway, leaving the door ajar just a bit so the hall light could pour in like liquid gold. I was safe now.

So, I closed my eyes. And I fell asleep.

Kira:

The whispers began every day at 7:30 in the morning. They were louder in September but by the time June rolled around, they faded in intensity to little more than a hum. Right now I could hear the last residual murmurs of the year.

“Do you know what her mother did?”

“Keep an eye on her.”

“They should have seen it coming—”

“Well, her mother always was a bit different.”

“She’s probably crazy, just like her mom.”

As always, Lucy MacElroy led the group of whispering girls as they moved through the halls in perfect battle formation. She cocked her head and gave me a sweet grin as she passed me, just before disappearing behind her hand to whisper again. Laughter followed. She acted like she didn’t remember, like she was trying to erase me from her memory banks. But I never forgot.

We were best friends once. A long time ago.

We played at the park together and slept over at each other’s houses. The only whispered secrets back then were the ones we shared with each other during kindergarten. Then came first grade and I was all alone. My sister was gone and my next door neighbor, Sean, was the only one who didn’t get caught up in Lucy’s sudden campaign to prove how awful I was. First, she stopped talking to me, then she wouldn’t play with me after school. Then she made up stories about me stealing and lying.

Almost overnight I became the Other. A permanent outcast.

On the best days, Sean was here with me when the whispers started. He would walk beside me like a shield, buffering the stares and near-silent words. But he wasn’t here now. He came in early today to finish his science project.

My cheeks started to burn, so I walked with my head down, my long hair hiding everyone from view. I looked at my black converse high tops and the frayed ends of my blue jeans as they shuffled across the tile hallway—and before I knew it, I started writing in my head.

It drowns out the whispers.

Twenty-six words and I was at the turn in the hallway. Another fifty-three and I stood at the door to chemistry. Sixteen more, I was in my seat. I opened my backpack, got out my notebook and my pen, then let the words flow from my heart to the paper.

Finally the bell rang and I lifted my head. I was a different person now. I stared into the teacher’s eyes, nodded when he told us what to do. My hands folded over my notebook, every gesture precise, even the fake smile on my face.

These were the moments when I hated my mother for what she had done, although I’ve never told that to anyone. These were the times when I wished I was a Paper Doll, just like Lucy and all the others, with no face and no ears and no heart.

•

The classroom filled and the teacher started flashing transparencies on an overhead projector, faster than I could keep up. All this should have been review, but none of it was making sense. Chemistry was pure evil, created by Satan to keep me from going to college. Still, I did my best to take notes, chewing on the tip of my pen when Mr. B asked if we had any questions.

Lucy sat across from me, watching me from the corner of her eye.

This was the one class where she always scored better than I did.

She raised her hand, but didn’t wait to be called on. As usual.

“Mr. B? I think Kira’s confused, poor thing.” She faked a look of concern. “She almost failed her midterm—”

Not true. I got a C.

“—I think maybe,” she paused to look at me with raised eyebrows, “did you need someone to tutor you for the final?”

Everyone else in the class probably thought she was offering to help me. I knew better. This was one of those
Carrie
moments, when I was about to get my prom dress splashed with a bucket of blood.

“Is that true, Kira? Do you need a tutor?” Mr. B asked.

I shook my head.

“She’s just being shy, you know how she is.” Another shining grin from Miss Paper Doll. Every teacher in the school treated her like a princess. “What about Rodney? He’s doing so good and I bet he’d just love to—”

Rodney. Two hundred pounds of sweating flesh, all of him five feet tall. And as creepy as he was, he didn’t seem all that excited about spending his afternoons with me. He looked at me, frowned and pushed his glasses up on his nose.

“Rodney?” Mr. B asked.

“I’m already tutoring three people right now, fifty bucks an hour.” He shrugged, then glanced at me again. “But if you flunk, I might be able to help you during summer school.”

“Thanks,” I mumbled.

Lucy cocked her head, flashed me one of those million-dollar smiles that said, see how easy it is for me to put you in your place? Something deep inside me flinched and snapped.

Then the class bell rang and I was one hour closer to summer. And the beach.

•

“Hey, wait up.”

It was Sean. He was pushing his way through the lunch crowd to catch up with me. I had a tuna melt and an apple and I was heading outside to sit under one of the few trees in the quad.

“You missed geometry.”

“I know,” he said as we sat across from each other on a pair of benches. He pulled a peanut butter sandwich from his backpack, supplemented it with a Coke from the machine in the cafeteria. “Mr. D asked me to stay and help set up the science fair.” He shielded his eyes from the sun with one hand when he looked at me. His hair was getting long and it curled at the base of his collar. “Did you hear about the party this Friday?”

I shook my head. I was completely out of the loop when it came to social events.

“Brianna’s parents are going to San Francisco for the weekend.”

Besides Sean, Brianna was my only friend in the entire school. Probably because she just moved here last year. She didn’t treat me like everyone else.

“You wanna go?” He popped open his Coke and slugged down half of it, then belched. I laughed.

“Gimme some of that.” He handed me the can and I took a long drink. “You sure she won’t care if I come?”

“She told me to ask you. Said she was gonna ask you herself, but something about you walked past her this morning and didn’t hear her talking to you.”

I vaguely remembered somebody trying to get my attention right after chemistry, when I was trying my best to look invisible.

I shrugged and sipped some more Coke.

“I’m taking that as a yes. I think I can get my dad’s car.”

The wind picked up, carrying the salty fragrance of the ocean and an unexpected excitement raced through me. Sean and I had hung out together on bikes, skateboards, surfboards and rollerblades, but we’d never gone anywhere together when one of us was driving. I tried to act nonchalant, but he could see it in my eyes and he grinned.

“I thought that would get your attention,” he said. “Hey, give me that Coke before it’s all gone.”

“Stingy.” My fingers accidentally brushed against his when I handed the near-empty can back to him. My heartbeat sped up and I wanted to look at him again, to see if he had noticed my touch. Instead, I nervously glanced away, wondering if we were still just friends.

Or if maybe, in a couple of days, we would be going out on our first date.

“Seven o’clock on Friday, okay?”

I nodded. My eyes down. Hoping he didn’t see the flush on my cheeks.

Caleb:

An ache centered in my chest, a jarring pain that thrashed with every step I took. Ethan was gone. I would never see him again, would never laugh at his antics as he continually tried to prove he was stronger, faster, smarter than me. We were all numb with silence today, walking through the village of Crescent Moon Bay as if our tongues had been cut out. The streets curved away from the shore, white pavement reflecting the sun and making me blink. Lynn had refused to come with us today. She wouldn’t even sleep in the house provided by our familiar last night. Instead, she had curled up on the beach, as if Ethan could come back to her somehow.

The rest of us knew that was impossible.

The town continued to unwind before us as we walked, our steps wooden. All the shops were made of white stucco, topped with roofs of clay tile—so different from the wooden houses back in Thorne Bay. Still these streets were filled with the familiar smell of fresh fish and my nostrils flared with hunger. I hadn’t eaten today.