Gifted Touch (16 page)

She opened her eyes, and he could see a film of tears on them. Don’t let her start bawling, he thought.

“So I’m not crazy,” Rae said, her voice trembling.

“No way. You’re amazing,” Anthony answered.

“You’re a . . . a fingerprint reader. No one’s going to be able to keep a secret from you—not without wearing gloves all the time.”

“Fingerprints,” Rae whispered. “God, fingerprints.”

She reached out and grabbed Anthony’s hand.

Then she matched her fingertips to his. He felt a sizzle, like a current had gone from her to him or him to her.

His fingers began to burn with a cold fire as if his skin were pressed against dry ice instead of warm flesh.

Rae dropped his hand. “Did you get something?” Anthony asked.

“I . . . I have to go,” Rae said, backing toward the door.

“What? Why?” Anthony asked. He could see that she was shaking. “What did you get? What’s wrong?”

“Nothing. I just have to go.” Rae turned and bolted.

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Chapter 10

Rae slowly walked home from the bus stop, her hands jammed in the front pockets of her jeans. She didn’t want her fingertips to accidentally brush up against anything. Not now. Her brain felt raw. Tender. When she’d touched Anthony, it was almost like she’d become him, like every thought she had was his thought. Like there was no Rae anymore for that one instant.

It had been overwhelming. She didn’t just get a few clear thoughts and some static. She got hundreds of thoughts, layers and layers of them, but somehow she’d been able to take them all in, although most of them had faded now. All she had left were a few impressions and feelings. Longing for his father. Fear of what could happen to him at his trial. Triumph in 175

figuring out what was really going on with Rae. Deep appreciation about what she was doing for him.

Concern for her. It had been so intimate. So intense.

Rae shook her head as she turned onto her block, remembering back to the time when rolling around on a bed with Marcus had been the most powerful thing she’d ever experienced. It felt so long ago.

She cut across her front lawn, the too long blades of grass flicking around her ankles. When she got to the front door, she hesitated. Then she slowly pulled her hands out of her pockets. “Not going to be able to get in the house without touching something,” she muttered. Her fingers shook as she reached into her purse and pulled out her key.

/hope that guy Nunan/

It was one of the not-her thoughts that felt like her, with some of the static in the background. So if Anthony was right—which seemed pretty damn likely, freaky as it was—she’d just touched a fingerprint on the key and gotten a thought from the person who left the fingerprint. The thought they were having when they left a print.

Rae’s heart gave a double-quick beat. That’s why it felt like her. The key was hers. The fingerprint on the key was hers. So she was picking up the thought she had when she locked the door this morning.

Oh God. It was really true. It wasn’t that she 176

hadn’t believed Anthony. How could she not when he gave her proof? But it was like she’d only believed it with her mind, and now she was starting to accept it in her gut, in her bones.

She used the key to unlock the door, then reached for the doorknob. Her hand froze half an inch away from it. Just do it, she told herself, then she lightly ran her fingers over the metal.

/that bitch, Rae/ she should be home / yummy Jeffy/

meeting at three / back alive from the hell mouth/

make her pay / bald spot

She felt tears sting her eyes, just like they had when she was with Anthony. “I’m not insane,” she whispered. “I. Am. Not. Insane.” Because it all made sense now. The “yummy Jeffy” and “back alive from the hell mouth” thoughts felt like her because they were her. And it wasn’t hard to figure out who had left the other fingerprint thoughts, even with the static buzzing behind them. “That bitch, Rae” and “make her pay”—those were from Jesse. Those were exactly the kind of thoughts he’d be having when he was getting ready to trash her room. And the other ones—

dear old starting-to-go-bald Dad.

Anthony had nailed it. Rae felt like letting out a whoop of pure relief and pleasure. She felt like dancing down the street, telling everyone she saw that she was not a squirrel girl. But that kind of 177

behavior was much too weird for Rae Voight, perfectly sane girl.

Instead Rae played the doorknob like a piano, touching the fingerprints like keys.

/that bitch, Rae/make her pay/ bald spot / bald spot/ bald spot/yummy Jeffy/yummy Jeffy/

She noticed that each thought got a little fuzzier every time she accessed it. Which made sense. Every time she touched a fingerprint, she probably smudged it a little. Rae reached up as high as she could. I’m not crazy, she thought as she touched the top of the door. She pulled her finger away, then immediately pressed it back in the same spot. The thought came right back at her —I’m not crazy—strong and clear with no static.

Rae added an I’m-not-crazy thought to the doorknob. She wanted them everywhere. That way every time she touched something, she could hear the amazing news. She pressed one finger onto the new fingerprint on the doorknob. It was clear, but there was static underneath it. Maybe the static comes if there are a lot of old fingerprints already on, Rae decided.

The doorknob has tons of fingerprints, but the top of the door probably only has that one. She promised herself she’d check out the theory later. She’d probably figure out tons more stuff now that she knew what was going on. Now that she wasn’t cuckoo!

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Rae opened the door and rushed inside. She tossed her backpack—

/Jeff/

—on the sofa. Everything around her looked a little brighter somehow. She was okay. She was really okay.

No, she was more than okay; she was, she was . . .

freakin’ gifted. That’s what you called someone who was psychic . . . gifted.

Rae hurried down the hall to her dad’s cramped little study. She wanted to play with her gift some more. This is so amazing, she thought as she sat down in her father’s ergonomically correct chair and scanned the desk. What should she try first? Pencil, she decided. Her dad was a compulsive pencil tapper.

Whenever he was thinking hard—tap, tap, tap. She picked up the closest one by the little pink eraser and ran the fingers of her free hand down the shiny yellow surface.

/ not sure Rae’s better/ Arthur as Christ/ she’s keeping something from me/ Melissa/

He’s so anxious when he thinks about me, Rae realized. The thoughts carried a little of the emotion with them, and the muscles of her shoulders had tightened painfully with her father’s worries. And when he thought about her mother, Melissa, the grief was still so raw, it was as if she’d died last week instead of years and years ago.

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How can he still care about her so much after what she did? Rae thought. How can he still love her? Rae dropped the pencil. She decided not to try another one.

It was as if her dad decided to read her diary—if she kept a diary. It didn’t feel right to go rooting around in his head. And anyway, she’d probably just get more worries about her, more thoughts about his King Arthur junk, and—gag—more thoughts about how much he loved his perfect dead wife.

Rae stood up and wandered back into the living room. I’ll have to make sure that Dad knows I’m okay, she thought. I don’t want him to have a stroke worry-ing about me. But she definitely wasn’t going to tell him the truth. A person who had been hospitalized for

“paranoiac delusions” should not go around spouting off about how all she really had was this amazing ESP

talent.

She flopped down on the couch and rested her head on the padded arm. Her thoughts kept returning to her dad, like a fly that kept landing on a doughnut no matter how many times you tried to shoo it away.

The past months had clearly been almost as hellish for him as they had for her. And she hated that.

Back when she was a little girl —Be honest, Rae told herself. It wasn’t just back when you were a little girl. You did it until you were well into your twelfth year as a walking, talking example of the word dork.

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Anyway, back then, whenever she and her dad had a fight or it was his birthday or Father’s Day or whatever, she’d make these little drawings and leave them in the pocket of his robe. She had a sudden urge to do that now.

“So what if it’s dorky,” she muttered as she stood back up and headed to her room. “He’ll like it. And maybe it will make him relax about me a little.” She went over to her desk and grabbed her drawing pad and a handful of markers, letting her old thoughts and the static wash through her. She studied the sheet of blank white paper for a moment, then she smiled and started to work, the markers squeaking away.

A few minutes later she had a caricature of her dad done up as King Arthur. Hi, Dad, she scribbled at the bottom. Then she ripped the sheet off the pad, folded it into quarters, and made her way to her father’s room before she freaked out about exactly how geeky she was being.

“I’m not going to make a habit of this or anything,” she mumbled as she walked over to her father’s closet and slid open the door. She jammed the drawing in the pocket of his old plaid bathrobe, then started to turn away.

But her eyes locked on the cardboard box on the shelf above the clothes rod. It had some of her mother’s stuff in it. Rae’s dad had told her, well, actually he’d 181

urged her, to look at it whenever she wanted to. She’d never even pulled the box off the shelf.

Fingerprints last a long time, Rae thought, a tickle of anticipation running down her spine, anticipation mixed with fear. I might be able to get some of her thoughts. I could see for myself what she was really like. ’Cause I’m never going to get anything but the fairy tale from Dad.

She shifted from one foot to the other, debating. Should she? Did she really want to know? Whatever she found out was going to stay in her memory forever.

But she couldn’t remember her mother’s touch or her voice or the way she smelled. This was her chance to know a thought, actually feel one of her mother’s feelings.

How could she pass that up? Rae snatched the box—

/love you, Melissa/miss you/sweet/

— down and opened it before she could lose her nerve. She sat down cross-legged on the floor with the box in front of her and studied the contents.

Gently she pulled out one of those old-fashioned perfume bottles with the little squeezy bulb on top.

Rae gasped as the first thought hit her.

/
going to be a mother
/

Her body felt light. Her blood felt . . . fizzy. Joy.

She’d gotten an infusion of absolute joy. Rae closed her eyes, the feeling so intense, she felt like the floor was spinning beneath her.

Tears filled her eyes as the mother-flavored 182

emotion faded. I was just a little speck, and she already loved me that much, Rae thought.

But she was crazy. Remember that, Rae? She was crazy. And not just crazy in a nice I-see-leprechauns-and-unicorns way. Crazy in a horrible, vicious way.

Except what if she wasn’t? What if she was just like Rae, but she never understood what was happening to her? The thought was like the blow of a ham-mer. It could be true. Rae’d been thinking she inherited some kind of mental disorder from her mom. But what if what she’d really gotten from her mother was her . . . psychic ability?

Poor Mom. Rae remembered how terrified she’d felt the first day she’d started getting the alien thoughts in her head. Of course people would have thought her mother was insane. Of course her mother would have thought the same thing.

Rae felt a burst of sympathy for her mother. Her heart actually ached. It was a stupid expression, but it was true. I wish I could have told her, Rae thought. I wish I could have—

And then it hit her. How could she have forgotten for even a few moments? Her mother—the woman who Rae’s heart was getting all mushy and achy over—had done something too horrible to imagine.

And even if she did have Rae’s fingerprint power, that was no excuse. There was no excuse.

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The pleasure—the joy—she’d felt when she’d touched her mother’s fingerprint drained out of her, like dirty water going down the drain. She went all numb inside. Which was just as well. Because if she wasn’t numb, she’d hurt so bad, she might never be able to stop crying.

Rae dropped the perfume bottle back in the box and closed the lid as quickly as she could, then she jammed the box back onto its shelf and closed the closet door.

Rae didn’t even consider going to the caf when the bell rang for lunch the next day. She went straight to the stairwell. She needed her Jeff fix—and right now.

Her gift, the gift she’d been so thrilled about yesterday, wasn’t feeling quite so much like a gift today.

Because now she knew that there were people—people right here in her school—who thought of her as a complete freak or at least some kind of damaged girl interrupted. It had been bad when those thoughts were flying around in her head unexplained. But the explanation, well, it wasn’t exactly comforting. At least you’re not insane, Rae reminded herself. But you’re not normal, either, she couldn’t help adding.