Writers of the Future Volume 31

  I sat back on my stool. “My parents disowned her. Literally.”

  “Ooh … harsh.”

  “Yeah,” I agreed. Megan was about the same age, wasn’t she? “They were hard-asses. And Jessica wasn’t the most mature sixteen-year-old, believe me. Not like you. But they didn’t care, they kicked her out of the house anyway, forced her to fend for herself and her kid. We stayed in touch, barely, for about a year, and then she dropped off the face of the earth. My nephew along with her.”

  “Wow.”

  “And that was the last I knew until about six months ago. First my mother was hit by a car—a hit and run—and then my father … he was never healthy to begin with. He basically just gave up on living after Mom died. Their money—and they did have money—it all went to me. Obviously, because they disowned my sister, and she was nowhere to be found anyway. And then, well, you can piece together what happened.”

  “Your sister …”

  I considered for a moment, then stood up and leaned against the counter to support my weight. “Just in case,” I explained. “She pushed me off the cliff. I understand why, too. She had to have been living below the poverty level. She needed that money for her kid, and she came to the whacked-up conclusion that she had to kill me in order to get it. I hadn’t disowned her, and she was my only kin. She did what she thought she needed to do.”

  “Oh.”

  “No, not ‘oh,’ that doesn’t excuse it. She was my little sister.” I leaned harder against the counter. “I would have given her the money, if she’d asked. I’m not my parents.”

  Megan opened her mouth, but just then there was a scream from the back of the house. “Get out!” came a girl’s voice. “He was spying on me—pervert!”

  “Was not! Was not! Was not!”

  A flood of people spilled into the common room—Nate and Dave and that girl in black, Sarah.

  Sarah pointed a shaking finger at one of the twins. “He spied on me. Megan, I was changing when this twerp appears out of thin air. He’d been invisible. In my room.”

  “Hellooo,” said the boy. “I’m wearing clothes. If you couldn’t see me, it was your own complex, not mine.”

  Megan threw up her hands. “Okay! I can’t deal with this right now. We’re in the middle of a session and you’re all interrupting.”

  Sarah turned her blue eyes on me, making me feel like that speck on the wall again. “Who’s this?”

  “Jason,” I answered, more curtly than I intended. “And actually, I think I’m good for today, Megan.” I ran my hand against the stubble on my cheek. What was I doing here? How messed up was I? “I’m supposed to be the …” Adult, I was going to say. “Let’s continue tomorrow.”

  At least this time I walked—not stomped—back to my room.

  That night, I startled awake. What had been Jessica’s muffled sobs bubbled out of my dream, into reality.

  I sat up. Someone really was crying. Nave, I thought sympathetically. Only, was it coming from the common room?

  My feet touched the carpet before I knew what I was doing. I opened the door and found the Nave boys, creeping down the hall like two soldiers on a mission. One of them put his finger to his lips.

  “Who is it?” I whispered. That Asian boy who’d turned to smoke, I thought, but then I turned and saw him loitering down the hallway in green monster pajamas, standing with one bare foot atop the other. And there was Sarah, an enigmatic silhouette in her doorway. Megan was gone for the night, so who did that leave?

  “You heard it, too?” whispered Nate or Dave. I could barely tell them apart during the daytime, so it was almost impossible to with the lights out. I mimed confusion, and he breathed, “Weird, right?”

  They stalked to the end of the hallway and peeked around the corner, shoving each other to get a better look. This was silly. I was the adult and there was a child out there, crying. It could be serious.

  “Who’s there?” I said aloud. The twins jumped, knocking heads, and the sobbing broke off with a surprised and juicy sniff. “Hello?”

  I patted the wall for a light switch.

  Someone else found the switch first. The lights flickered on and I saw the couch rock back and then fall heavily on its feet. There was a scurry of footsteps, but I looked around and couldn’t find anyone.

  “He’s invisible!” shouted the Nave boys, and they jumped into the room screaming wordlessly.

  “Wait!” one of them called as his brother began to helicopter around the floor, reaching this way and that, lunging at real or imagined footfalls. “What are you doing? You know he has to be naked!”

  “So?” huffed the spinning boy.

  Jenga blocks scattered spontaneously and both twins screamed again. I heard a door shut and looked back to find Sarah gone. The Asian kid had his butt planted on the hallway floor, and behind me the Nave boy was yelling, “You’re gonna touch his junk! You’re gonna touch his junk!”

  “Stop!” I shouted. The other Nave just looked at me as he sprinted across the room, hitting the wall bodily with a grunt and then turning and swinging his arms wildly as he regained momentum. “Stop!” I yelled again, even louder. “Stop! Stop! What are you thinking? That’s a boy just like you. He’s obviously very lost and afraid, and you just chased him around the room. What do you think about that? Huh?”

  The Nave boy scuttled upright on the couch and hunched there, wide-eyed, like a jackrabbit who’d just watched me grow a wolf’s fangs.

  “I heard a door close,” said the other twin, looking at the front entrance.

  “That was Sarah,” I told him. We all froze for a space, listening to each other breathe.

  “Maybe he can walk through walls.”

  I stared at the Jenga blocks scattered all over the floor. “Maybe,” I said. “Or maybe he’s a new patient Megan forgot to tell us about. Or … I don’t know.” I considered calling out for him, but it was so incredibly silent. If he was there, he didn’t want to be found. “We’ll ask Megan in the morning. Let’s just get back to sleep.”

  Megan twirled the cord of the phone around her index finger. The Jenga blocks lay strewn around her feet, preserved like a crime scene. “Really? Nothing? I should do nothing?”

  “I heard the toilet flush last night,” said one of the twins. “I think probably it was the Ghost.”

  “Wicked,” said the other.

  Megan put her hand over the receiver and practiced one of her motherly looks. “Guys! I’ve got the agency on the—yes, hello, I’m still here. No, I told you, I wasn’t there, but … But that’s just the problem, we can’t see him. Yes, but what should I do? For all I know, he might still be here!”

  “Wicked,” echoed the twin.

  I was chopping string beans on a cutting board in the kitchen and trying to remember if I had used the bathroom myself last night. I scraped the beans into the wok and gave it a splash of soy sauce.

  Megan hung up the phone. “I give up. I can’t talk to them. They said to call again if I see him, and I said that’s exactly the problem: we can’t see him.”

  “We heard,” said Dave.

  “Wisteria,” said someone else.

  We all turned. Sarah glided into the common room and collapsed onto the couch, head lolling tragically as she read from a book.

  “Drama queen’s reciting poetry again,” Dave groaned, clearly used to this. Nate tiptoed over and sat next to her, put his hands on his knees and puffed up as if he were about to perform. Sarah didn’t even flick an eyelash. I wondered how someone could disdain other people’s company so much that she literally turned them off.

  “Strangled by wisteria,” Sarah muttered to no one—to an empty room, as far as she was aware, or cared. Nate wrapped his hands around his throat dramatically, as if he were being strangled.

  “My heart, too, blossoms,” she recited.

  He clutched
his heart and staggered to his feet.

  “Heavy purple flowers.”

  He sank to the ground.

  “Melting to mist.”

  “Melting, melting!”

  “I am gripped by.”

  “I am gripped!”

  “A wisteria melancholy.”

  “A wis-steamy melody.”

  “I can hear you,” Sarah drawled.

  “I can—wait, really?”

  Dave fell over, laughing. I glanced at Megan, who shrugged helplessly. “Did you write that yourself, Sarah?” I asked, making an effort, but she just sank deeper into the cranberry cushions, black gown and black hair claiming their territory.

  “See,” complained Nate, “she’s faking. I told you she fakes.” He waved his arms in front of her face.

  “Dinner’s almost ready,” I said. “Does Sarah block out smells, too?”

  I nudged Dave, who was still laughing so hard he was going to give himself a belly-ache. “Come on.”

  “Wait,” he gasped. “I have to get something.” He stamped into the hall, shouldering the corner as he rounded it.

  “Get Eric,” I called after him—that shy Asian boy who blew up into smoke when I first arrived.

  Sarah did eventually meander over, and we each claimed our own stool around the counter. We didn’t have a spare stool for me to break if I got heavy again. Dave showed up last, toting that hefty hardcover on psychomorphism—from my room. He dropped it with a thud on the counter and flipped through it.

  “Wisteria,” he read between mouthfuls of stir fry.

  “Wisteamia,” corrected Nate.

  “Wisteria,” Dave repeated. “Stupid. ‘Wisteria is the only known plant to display caliginous properties.’”

  Eric made a sound into his bowl. He was a caligino: “misty.”

  “‘The blossoms of most varieties explode in a pinkish-purple, intensely fragrant mist. As psychomorphic,’” Dave enunciated the word, “‘disorders typically stem from psychological causes, the wisteria vine has provoked waves of controversy within the scientific community.’”

  “I want to visit the Lady of Wisteria,” muttered Eric. We all looked at him. Those were among the first dozen words I’d ever heard Eric speak. He looked surprised himself to have said them.

  “Yeah,” covered Dave, “I’ve heard of her. Caligino to the extreme. She, like, turns to mist herself and spreads out across the whole garden every year when the wisteria blooms.”

  “I want to go,” repeated Eric as he shoveled sticky rice into his mouth.

  I can tell you,” I explained slowly to Megan, “exactly why my sister went invisible, and why she appeared when she did.” Megan just raised a sympathetic eyebrow and waited for me to go on. I did all the talking during these sessions.

  “Jessica turned invisible,” I said, “out of guilt. Happened constantly, ever since she discovered she was pregnant. Before we even knew what she was feeling guilty about. It was a real problem, on top of everything else. When she got the boot for good, kicked out, she was invisible then, too. I just watched a canary top and blue jeans walk out of my life. Anyway, the point is, when she was getting ready to push me off the cliff, I’m sure she felt plenty guilty.” My vision blurred a bit; I envisioned Jessica’s empty hazel eyes.

  “And why she appeared?” Megan prompted.

  “Yeah. She appeared in that moment, just before she pushed me, her big brother, too late to turn back … I think, because she died inside. Everything, her guilt too, just … died.” I shook my head, picturing those eyes. “Dead.”

  Megan maintained a respectful silence for a moment. Then, out of nowhere, she smiled and patted my shoulder. “Listen,” she said.

  “Why? For what?”

  “Nothing,” was her enigmatic response. Then she clapped her hands together. “The sound of your stool not creaking! You’re doing so much better than when you started, what, three weeks ago?”

  I managed to smile a bit. “Yeah. I guess so.”

  When the letter came, it was deceptively light in my hands. Its disarmingly loopy script read: “Jason Fuller. Urgent! Open immediately.”

  I felt a twinge of trepidation as I slid my finger into the slit and worked it open. The letter inside was pink. Why pink? Who sends a pink letter? I pulled it out, shook it flat. Only a few typed lines graced the page.

  After I read it the letter fluttered out of my hand, and I followed it a moment later to the ground. I fell to my knees with enough force to dislodge a framed picture off the wall. Then I slowly keeled to the side, until I landed with another thud.

  The whole townhouse was instantly around me. “What happened?” demanded Megan.

  But my teeth were clenched shut.

  Jason,

  I’m sorry to write to you under these circumstances, but Jessica has passed away. Her body was found floating in the Tennyrill River on Tuesday. For some reason the constable showed up on my doorstep. I know you have your own issues right now, but please take responsibility for your sister’s funeral. I jotted down the phone numbers you’ll need below.

  I would have told you in person, but your institution is stingy with information.

  With Love,

  Aunt Patricia

  Jessica …

  My eyes had become slits: too heavy to open, too much bother to close. The world passed in a blur through my eyelashes. People walked around me, stepped over me. Sarah tripped on my head. The twins sat on me once before Megan shooed them away. Then I felt hands on my back, legs, shoulder, heaving, heaving, but I budged less than a foot before they gave up, huffing and panting and leaning against me for support.

  The odd thing was, I had felt closer to my kid sister after she was banished from my life than when we were squabbling over who got the TV. She became my imaginary friend: I held lengthy conversations with her in my studio apartment. She needed me, but I didn’t know how to help her. I needed her, too. Just knowing she was out there, with her kid, I felt an incredible bond that didn’t deteriorate with the years.

  Jessica …

  People sat/crouched/lay in front of me, speaking words that sounded like waves crashing against a faraway cape. Bowls of food were placed before my nose, cutting off my view of the couch. They smelled disgusting, like rotten eggs. I groaned, and they took them away.

  I thought of my nephew belatedly, guiltily. Kevin, she had named him. Aunt Patricia hadn’t mentioned him in her letter. A narrative began to form in my mind: after years of my sister eking out a living, Kevin had finally succumbed to illness or accident or hunger. I had to believe that Jessica would have found a way to survive as long as her son needed her. But without him, she killed herself. My parents had been wrong about her. She loved her son enough to push me off a cliff.

  Jessica …

  Sarah sat on the couch. I stared at her legs. Pale legs under a black skirt. “String my heart up by the stars,” she recited quietly to herself, not knowing or caring that I was there. Or maybe this poem was actually for me. “Stretch it. Zap it with light. What constellation does it form?”

  Somewhere out of the mists of memory, I heard my sister’s voice: “It’s Cassiopeia, moron.” I remembered: I was maybe twelve, and my best friend and I were trying out my new telescope. We were puzzling out a certain constellation when Jessica, being the brat kid sister she was, stuck her chin out and said, “It’s Cassiopeia, moron.” I’m pretty sure she had a crush on my friend and was showing off. After some obligatory yelling and chasing around the house, Jessica sat with us and pointed out all the constellations she had just learned in Earth and Space Science. Mom and Dad somehow forgot that we were up, and before we knew it we were out there until midnight.

  I lifted my head; I could feel the tendons sticking out on my neck. I needed to get away—needed to escape Sarah’s poetry. Didn’t want to hear it. Didn’t want to remem
ber Jessica’s face before it became a mask. I rolled onto my elbows and army-crawled all the way across the rug. Sarah, oblivious to me and my struggle, chased me out with poetry. “Pierced by moonlight. Sizzling, incandescent. The color of bleached bones.”

  I dragged myself past the threshold of my room and collapsed there, a beached whale, my feet still sticking out of the doorway. I thought: I will never move from this spot again. I’ll die here.

  Jessica …

  I stared at Megan’s feet as she sat on my bed. Yellow-and-purple-striped toe socks. “You’re depressed because you’ll never get the chance to forgive your sister,” she said. Never before had I heard her sound so sure of herself. I waited for her to go on, but the bed springs creaked, and the purple-and-yellow toe socks stepped over me and away.

  That same night I was visited by “Ghost”—the invisible boy who had become something of a legend in the household. The boy who had the twins counting toilet flushes at night and then quizzing us in the morning, plus keeping track of missing food items in the fridge. He hugged me and cried into my cement leg. I knew it was him because I recognized the sound of his sniffling sobs. His tears must have been lubricant, because I found the strength to curl my knee to give him a better pillow.

  Then, one morning, I simply awoke with a pounding headache and ravishing appetite. Food, I thought groggily, and pushed myself up by the edge of the bed. It groaned, but held my weight. I hobbled as far as the door before I realized what I was doing and thunked back down to the ground. I wrapped my arms around myself and sat there, staring at my door.

  One of the Nave boys stepped through it. He gaped and scrambled out of the room, announcing, “He got up! That was the crash! He’s up—was up!” A minute later, the whole townhouse filed in and milled around me. Megan was there. Even Sarah and the chronically shy Asian boy, Eric.

  “We’ve come to a decision,” announced Nate (or Dave), bouncing with excitement. “We are going to …” he drew it out, “leave the townhouse and … visit the Lady of Wisteria!”

  “It’s blooming right now,” enthused the other twin. “And Eric really wants to go.”