Oh God, if there was a word she didn't want to see this afternoon, it was responsibilities. She went into the bathroom for another glass of water because her mouth still tasted blick and found herself staring at her own freckles in the mirror. There were exactly three, one on her left cheek and two on her schnozz. Not bad. She had lucked out in the freckles department. Nor did she have a birthmark, like Bethany Stevens, or a cocked eye like Norman McGinley, or a stutter like Ginny Whitlaw, or a horrible name like poor picked-on Pence Effersham. Abra was a little strange, of course, but Abra was fine, people thought it was interesting instead of just weird, like Pence, who was known among the boys (but girls always somehow found these things out) as Pence the Penis.
And the biggie, I didn't get cut apart by crazy people who paid no attention when I screamed and begged them to stop. I didn't have to see some of the crazy people licking my blood off the palms of their hands before I died. Abba-Doo is one lucky ducky.
But maybe not such a lucky ducky after all. Lucky duckies didn't know things they had no business knowing.
She closed the lid of the toilet, sat on it, and cried quietly with her hands over her face. Being forced to think of Bradley Trevor again and how he died was bad enough, but it wasn't just him. There were all those other kids to think about, so many pictures that they were crammed together on the last page of the Shopper like the school assembly from hell. All those gap-toothed smiles and all those eyes that knew even less of the world than Abra did herself, and what did she know? Not even "How Our Government Works."
What did the parents of those missing children think? How did they go on with their lives? Was Cynthia or Merton or Angel the first thing they thought about in the morning and the last thing they thought about at night? Did they keep their rooms ready for them in case they came home, or did they give all their clothes and toys away to the Goodwill? Abra had heard that was what Lennie O'Meara's parents did after Lennie fell out of a tree and hit his head on a rock and died. Lennie O'Meara, who got as far as the fifth grade and then just . . . stopped. But of course Lennie's parents knew he was dead, there was a grave where they could go and put flowers, and maybe that made it different. Maybe not, but Abra thought it would. Because otherwise you'd pretty much have to wonder, wouldn't you? Like when you were eating breakfast, you'd wonder if your missing
(Cynthia Merton Angel )
was also eating breakfast somewhere, or flying a kite, or picking oranges with a bunch of migrants, or whatever. In the back of your mind you'd have to be pretty sure he or she was dead, that's what happened to most of them (you only had to watch Action News at Six to know), but you couldn't be sure.
There was nothing she could do about that uncertainty for the parents of Cynthia Abelard or Merton Askew or Angel Barbera, she had no idea what had happened to them, but that wasn't true of Bradley Trevor.
She had almost forgotten him, then that stupid newspaper . . . those stupid pictures . . . and the stuff that had come back to her, stuff she didn't even know she knew, as if the pictures had been startled out of her subconscious . . .
And those things she could do. Things she had never told her parents about because it would worry them, the way she guessed it would worry them if they knew she had made out with Bobby Flannagan--just a little, no sucking face or anything gross like that--one day after school. That was something they wouldn't want to know. Abra guessed (and about this she wasn't entirely wrong, although there was no telepathy involved) that in her parents' minds, she was sort of frozen at eight and would probably stay that way at least until she got boobs, which she sure hadn't yet--not that you'd notice, anyway.
So far they hadn't even had THE TALK with her. Julie Vandover said it was almost always your mom who gave you the lowdown, but the only lowdown Abra had gotten lately was on how important it was for her to get the trash out on Thursday mornings before the bus came. "We don't ask you to do many chores," Lucy had said, "and this fall it's especially important for all of us to pitch in."
Momo had at least approached THE TALK. In the spring, she had taken Abra aside one day and said, "Do you know what boys want from girls, once boys and girls get to be about your age?"
"Sex, I guess," Abra had said . . . although all that humble, scurrying Pence Effersham ever seemed to want was one of her cookies, or to borrow a quarter for the vending machines, or to tell her how many times he'd seen The Avengers.
Momo had nodded. "You can't blame human nature, it is what it is, but don't give it to them. Period. End of discussion. You can rethink things when you're nineteen, if you want."
That had been a little embarrassing, but at least it was straight and clear. There was nothing clear about the thing in her head. That was her birthmark, invisible but real. Her parents no longer talked about the crazy shit that had happened when she was little. Maybe they thought the thing that had caused that stuff was almost gone. Sure, she'd known Momo was sick, but that wasn't the same as the crazy piano music, or turning on the water in the bathroom, or the birthday party (which she barely remembered) when she had hung spoons all over the kitchen ceiling. She had just learned to control it. Not completely, but mostly.
And it had changed. Now she rarely saw things before they happened. Or take moving stuff around. When she was six or seven, she could have concentrated on her pile of schoolbooks and lifted them all the way to the ceiling. Nothing to it. Easy as knitting kitten-britches, as Momo liked to say. Now, even if it was only a single book, she could concentrate until it felt like her brains were going to come splooshing out her ears, and she might only be able to shove it a few inches across her desk. That was on a good day. On many, she couldn't even flutter the pages.
But there were other things she could do, and in many cases far better than she'd been able to as a little kid. Looking into people's heads, for instance. She couldn't do it with everyone--some people were entirely enclosed, others only gave off intermittent flashes--but many people were like windows with the curtains pulled back. She could look in anytime she felt like it. Mostly she didn't want to, because the things she discovered were sometimes sad and often shocking. Finding out that Mrs. Moran, her beloved sixth-grade teacher, was having AN AFFAIR had been the biggest mind-blower so far, and not in a good way.
These days she mostly kept the seeing part of her mind shut down. Learning to do that had been difficult at first, like learning to skate backwards or print with her left hand, but she had learned. Practice didn't make perfect (not yet, at least), but it sure helped. She still sometimes looked, but always tentatively, ready to pull back at the first sign of something weird or disgusting. And she never peeked into her parents' minds, or into Momo's. It would have been wrong. Probably it was wrong with everyone, but it was like Momo herself had said: You can't blame human nature, and there was nothing more human than curiosity.
Sometimes she could make people do things. Not everyone, not even half of everyone, but a lot of people were very open to suggestions. (Probably they were the same ones who thought the stuff they sold on TV really would take away their wrinkles or make their hair grow back.) Abra knew this was a talent that could grow if she exercised it like a muscle, but she didn't. It scared her.
There were other things, too, some for which she had no name, but the one she was thinking about now did have one. She called it far-seeing. Like the other aspects of her special talent, it came and went, but if she really wanted it--and if she had an object to fix upon--she could usually summon it.
I could do that now.
"Shut up, Abba-Doo," she said in a low, strained voice. "Shut up, Abba-Doo-Doo."
She opened Early Algebra to tonight's homework page, which she had bookmarked with a sheet on which she had written the names Boyd, Steve, Cam, and Pete at least twenty times each. Collectively they were 'Round Here, her favorite boy band. So hot, especially Cam. Her best friend, Emma Deane, thought so, too. Those blue eyes, that careless tumble of blond hair.
Maybe I could help. His parents would be sad, bu
t at least they'd know.
"Shut up, Abba-Doo. Shut up, Abba-Doo-Doo-For-Brains."
If 5x - 4 = 26, what does x equal?
"Sixty zillion!" she said. "Who cares?"
Her eyes fell on the names of the cute boys in 'Round Here, written in the pudgy cursive she and Emma affected ("Writing looks more romantic that way," Emma had decreed), and all at once they looked stupid and babyish and all wrong. They cut him up and licked his blood and then they did something even worse to him. In a world where something like that could happen, mooning over a boy band seemed worse than wrong.
Abra slammed her book shut, went downstairs (the click-click-click from her dad's study continued unabated) and out to the garage. She retrieved the Shopper from the trash, brought it up to her room, and smoothed it flat on her desk.
All those faces, but right now she cared about only one.
7
Her heart was thumping hard-hard-hard. She had been scared before when she consciously tried to far-see or thought-read, but never scared like this. Never even close.
What are you going to do if you find out?
That was a question for later, because she might not be able to. A sneaking, cowardly part of her mind hoped for that.
Abra put the first two fingers of her left hand on the picture of Bradley Trevor because her left hand was the one that saw better. She would have liked to get all her fingers on it (and if it had been an object, she would have held it), but the picture was too small. Once her fingers were on it she couldn't even see it anymore. Except she could. She saw it very well.
Blue eyes, like Cam Knowles's in 'Round Here. You couldn't tell from the picture, but they were that same deep shade. She knew.
Right-handed, like me. But left-handed like me, too. It was the left hand that knew what pitch was coming next, fastball or curveb--
Abra gave a little gasp. The baseball boy had known things.
The baseball boy really had been like her.
Yes, that's right. That's why they took him.
She closed her eyes and saw his face. Bradley Trevor. Brad, to his friends. The baseball boy. Sometimes he turned his cap around because that way it was a rally cap. His father was a farmer. His mother cooked pies and sold them at a local restaurant, also at the family farmstand. When his big brother went away to college, Brad took all his AC/DC discs. He and his best friend, Al, especially liked the song "Big Balls." They'd sit on Brad's bed and sing it together and laugh and laugh.
He walked through the corn and a man was waiting for him. Brad thought he was a nice man, one of the good guys, because the man--
"Barry," Abra whispered in a low voice. Behind her closed lids, her eyes moved rapidly back and forth like those of a sleeper in the grip of a vivid dream. "His name was Barry the Chunk. He fooled you, Brad. Didn't he?"
But not just Barry. If it had been just him, Brad might have known. It had to be all of the Flashlight People working together, sending the same thought: that it would be okay to get into Barry the Chunk's truck or camper-van or whatever it was, because Barry was good. One of the good guys. A friend.
And they took him . . .
Abra went deeper. She didn't bother with what Brad had seen because he hadn't seen anything but a gray rug. He was tied up with tape and lying facedown on the floor of whatever Barry the Chunk was driving. That was okay, though. Now that she was tuned in, she could see wider than him. She could see--
His glove. A Wilson baseball glove. And Barry the Chunk--
Then that part flew away. It might swoop back or it might not.
It was night. She could smell manure. There was a factory. Some kind of
(it's busted )
factory. There was a whole line of vehicles going there, some small, most big, a couple of them enormous. The headlights were off in case someone was looking, but there was a three-quarters moon in the sky. Enough light to see by. They went down a potholed and bumpy tar road, they went past a water tower, they went past a shed with a broken roof, they went through a rusty gate that was standing open, they went past a sign. It went by so fast she couldn't read it. Then the factory. A busted factory with busted smokestacks and busted windows. There was another sign and thanks to the moonlight this one she could read: NO TRESPASSING BY ORDER OF THE CANTON COUNTY SHERIFF'S DEPT.
They were going around the back, and when they got there they were going to hurt Brad the baseball boy and go on hurting him until he was dead. Abra didn't want to see that part so she made everything go backwards. That was a little hard, like opening a jar with a really tight cap, but she could do it. When she got back where she wanted, she let go.
Barry the Chunk liked that glove because it reminded him of when he was a little boy. That's why he tried it on. Tried it on and smelled the oil Brad used to keep it from getting stiff and bopped his fist in the pocket a few ti--
But now things were reeling forward and she forgot about Brad's baseball glove again.
Water tower. Shed with broken roof. Rusty gate. And then the first sign. What did it say?
Nope. Still too quick, even with the moonlight. She rewound again (now beads of sweat were standing out on her forehead) and let go. Water tower. Shed with broken roof. Get ready, here it comes. Rusty gate. Then the sign. This time she could read it, although she wasn't sure she understood it.
Abra grabbed the sheet of notepaper on which she had curlicued all those stupid boy names and turned it over. Quickly, before she forgot, she scrawled down everything she had seen on that sign: ORGANIC INDUSTRIES and ETHANOL PLANT #4 and FREEMAN, IOWA and CLOSED UNTIL FURTHER NOTICE.
Okay, now she knew where they had killed him, and where--she was sure--they had buried him, baseball glove and all. What next? If she called the number for Missing and Exploited Children, they would hear a little kid's voice and pay no attention . . . except maybe to give her telephone number to the police, who would probably have her arrested for trying to prank on people who were already sad and unhappy. She thought of her mother next, but with Momo sick and getting ready to die, it was out of the question. Mom had enough to worry about without this.
Abra got up, went to the window, and stared out at her street, at the Lickety-Split convenience store on the corner (which the older kids called the Lickety-Spliff, because of all the dope that got smoked behind it, where the Dumpsters were), and the White Mountains poking up at a clear blue late summer sky. She had begun to rub her mouth, an anxiety tic her parents were trying to break her of, but they weren't here, so boo on that. Boo all over that.
Dad's right downstairs.
She didn't want to tell him, either. Not because he had to finish his book, but because he wouldn't want to get involved in something like this even if he believed her. Abra didn't have to read his mind to know that.
So who?
Before she could think of the logical answer, the world beyond her window began to turn, as if it were mounted on a gigantic disc. A low cry escaped her and she clutched at the sides of the window, bunching the curtains in her fists. This had happened before, always without warning, and she was terrified each time it did, because it was like having a seizure. She was no longer in her own body, she was far-being instead of far-seeing, and what if she couldn't get back?
The turntable slowed, then stopped. Now instead of being in her bedroom, she was in a supermarket. She knew because ahead of her was the meat counter. Over it (this sign easy to read, thanks to bright fluorescents) was a promise: AT SAM'S, EVERY CUT IS A BLUE RIBBON COWBOY CUT! For a moment or two the meat counter drew closer because the turntable had slid her into someone who was walking. Walking and shopping. Barry the Chunk? No, not him, although Barry was near; Barry was how she had gotten here. Only she had been drawn away from him by someone much more powerful. Abra could see a cart loaded with groceries at the bottom of her vision. Then the forward movement stopped and there was this sensation, this
(rummaging prying)
crazy feeling of someone INSIDE HER, and Abra suddenly unders
tood that for once she wasn't alone on the turntable. She was looking toward a meat counter at the end of a supermarket aisle, and the other person was looking out her window at Richland Court and the White Mountains beyond.
Panic exploded inside her; it was as if gasoline had been poured on a fire. Not a sound escaped her lips, which were pressed together so tightly that her mouth was only a stitch, but inside her head she produced a scream louder than anything of which she would ever have believed herself capable:
(NO! GET OUT OF MY HEAD!)
8
When David felt the house rumble and saw the overhead light fixture in his study swaying on its chain, his first thought was
(Abra)
that his daughter had had one of her psychic outbursts, though there hadn't been any of that telekinetic crap in years, and never anything like this. As things settled back to normal, his second--and, to his mind, far more reasonable--thought was that he had just experienced his first New Hampshire earthquake. He knew they happened from time to time, but . . . wow!
He got up from his desk (not neglecting to hit SAVE before he did), and ran into the hall. From the foot of the stairs he called, "Abra! Did you feel that?"
She came out of her room, looking pale and a little scared. "Yeah, sorta. I . . . I think I . . ."
"It was an earthquake!" David told her, beaming. "Your first earthquake! Isn't that neat?"
"Yes," Abra said, not sounding very thrilled. "Neat."
He looked out the living room window and saw people standing on their stoops and lawns. His good friend Matt Renfrew was among them. "I'm gonna go across the street and talk to Matt, hon. You want to come with?"
"I guess I better finish my math."
David started toward the front door, then turned to look up at her. "You're not scared, are you? You don't have to be. It's over."
Abra only wished it was.
9
Rose the Hat was doing a double shop, because Grampa Flick was feeling poorly again. She saw a few other members of the True in Sam's, and nodded to them. She stopped awhile in canned goods to talk to Barry the Chink, who had his wife's list in one hand. Barry was concerned about Flick.