She didn’t waste all her time that morning, though, thinking about the new sitter. She went into Monica’s bedroom and began to go through her desk drawers. If she could only find some of the correspondence Monica had had from the women who worked with her at the drug company.
For someone who kept a reasonably tidy apartment, Monica sure had a messy desk. There were all kinds of old bills, cancelled checks, and odds and ends. Monica didn’t have any real family—her parents had both died when she was a teenager—and she didn’t like the aunt who had reared her, so they only wrote once or twice a year. She had some cousins, and though she’d never talked about them, Katie guessed she wasn’t good friends with them, either. There was so much junk that for a while Katie was sure Monica was the kind of person who saved all her letters, but at the end of the top drawer she hadn’t found any. She closed that drawer and started on the next one.
Ah, might be something here. There was a photograph album and what looked like keepsakes. Katie laid the album on top of the desk and began to read through it.
There was Monica in a cap and gown, graduating from high school. She was smiling, and very pretty. There were lots of other snapshots of people who didn’t look familiar, and then one that did. Katie didn’t need the handwritten caption beneath the picture of the dark-haired, laughing young man.
Joe. That was her father. She wondered where he was, and if he even knew yet that Grandma Welker had died. He wasn’t much of a one for writing letters, although he usually sent a card for his mother’s birthday, and one for Katie’s. They were usually late, as if Joe didn’t remember until the actual day. And at Christmas he sent a box for them both; Katie still had the teddy bear he’d given her when she was seven. She’d slept with it for almost two years. Last Christmas, though, he’d only sent a card and a check, and told Grandma to buy Katie something.
The “something” had been a new winter coat and a pair of boots, and while she loved the cherry red coat with its matching hood, Katie wished he’d picked out something especially for her, himself, like the teddy bear.
Of course, she was way too old for teddy bears now. She wished she could let him know how much she’d like to have books, but he didn’t stay in one place long enough for her to write to him very much. And when she did write, he didn’t write back, although sometimes he’d call on the phone. Katie always felt excited when he called, and shy, too; ahead of time, she’d think of what she wanted to say the next time she got the chance, and then when he was talking long distance from Texas or Montana or wherever he was, her mind would go blank. Last time, he’d said to her, “Remember, I love you, baby,” and after she’d hung up Katie went out in the back yard with the chickens and avoided everybody for a while. She wasn’t sure why that had made her sad, to be told that her father loved her, but it had.
She forgot what she’d come looking for, slowly turning the pages of the album. There were her parents on their wedding day, looking young and skinny and happy. And there was a picture of herself as an infant, chubby and stupid-looking, sitting on a blanket.
Katie found a lot of pictures of herself when she was very small. After she got to be about two years old—she could tell by the number of candles on the cake that the picture was taken on her second birthday—they didn’t seem to take so many any longer. Was that because they had lost interest, or because she wasn’t cute any more, or what? Maybe by that time they all knew she was peculiar, and so they didn’t care about pictures any more.
She leafed onward and saw herself beside a Christmas tree when she was three. It must have been when she was three, because by the time she was four, Katie had been with Grandma Welker.
Katie studied her own small face. She’d looked happy, then. She hadn’t found out for sure yet that she was peculiar.
After that there weren’t any more pictures of Joe Welker. There were Katie’s school pictures, always solemn and sometimes with the light reflecting off her glasses, and she usually looked scared. Never happy.
There were more snapshots of Monica with people Katie didn’t know, and Katie almost overlooked the important one because it was just a bunch of young women smiling into a too-bright sun. Nothing was written underneath it, but on impulse Katie slipped it out of the little corner things that held it in the book, and turned it over.
The gang at Curtis—Gloria Haglund, Monica Welker, Stephanie Donohue, Sandra Casey, Fern Lamont, and Paula VanAllsburg.
Katie turned it back over with more interest, to re-study the snapshot. Gloria, Monica had said, Gloria was one of the women who worked next to her.
She tried to see if any of them had their stomachs bulging out, as if they were pregnant, but the photographer had stood too close to them. He didn’t get their stomachs in the picture.
Still, she knew their names now. If only there would be something in Monica’s things to indicate where they were, and which of them had had the babies. The babies who would now be almost ten years old, and who might be like herself.
Katie kept on going through the rest of the album, but it didn’t have anything interesting in it. Some snapshots of Nathan at the beach, his muscles bulging, and some of Monica in a bikini. Grandma Welker would have made disapproving noises over that one. She thought bathing suits ought to cover up your belly button.
The album had taken enough time so that Katie’s breakfast had worn off. She went out to get something to eat, and Mrs. G. didn’t even notice. She was eating a Danish that Katie thought was intended for Monica’s breakfast tomorrow, her eyes glued to the screen where a man and a woman were having a heated argument.
Mrs. G. had eaten all the bananas except one overripe one. Katie looked at it and decided she didn’t want it, either. She made herself a peanut butter sandwich and decided she might as well eat the last orange in the bowl before Mrs. G. got to that.
Back at the desk, she was careful not to get either juice or peanut butter on the things she sorted through. And this time she had a little luck, or at least she thought it was.
Monica had a box of things like old Christmas cards and valentines and one of the first things that showed up when Katie emptied the box onto the desk was a birth announcement.
She snatched it up eagerly, looking at the date before she read the names. September, ten years ago. The baby had been born seventeen days after Katie’s birthday on the tenth.
A girl. Kerrie Louise Lamont, born to Fern and Charles.
Katie was so excited she nearly choked on the peanut butter sandwich. That girl was one of them; and now she, Katie, knew the father’s name, too. Was there any chance they still lived here in the city?
She had to go out into the living room to find a phone book. Mrs. G. was chewing away like crazy, and she’d poured herself some more coffee. The cup had left rings on the coffee table, and there were crumbs inside the rings. Mrs. G. had had a peanut butter sandwich, too. She didn’t pay any attention to Katie. The quarrel on the screen had ended, and the man and woman were kissing each other passionately.
Katie averted her eyes from both the TV and from the sitter, and opened the phone book. Lamont, Charles Lamont. Lambert, Lambeth, Lamme, Lamon, Lamoreaux—no Lamonts at all.
Disappointment stabbed at her. It had seemed an ordinary name, one that she’d find half a dozen of, anyway, so she’d have to call them all. Of course, the Lamonts could have moved anywhere.
She wondered what Monica would do if she asked about them. She’d certainly realize that Katie had been listening to her conversation with Nathan, and she probably wouldn’t like that. And if she knew Katie had heard it all—that they thought she was strange and they were uncomfortable being around her—it wouldn’t exactly be a step toward having a good family relationship. On the other hand, Katie didn’t think she could actually come right out and admit to Monica just how different she was and ask for her help in finding the other kids who might be like her. And it was possible that those kids had never said anything about what they could do either, especially if thei
r parents were worried and frightened the way Monica was.
She put the phone book aside and stood up. There was a commercial on, and Mrs. G. turned her head away from the screen for a minute. “As long as you’re up, bring me the salt shaker, will you?” She had an apple, polishing it against her enormous belly.
Mrs. G. had only been here for a few hours, and already the living room looked like a garbage dump. Katie stared at her in disgust and decided to bring the salt without going after it. It was a fairly heavy shaker, and Katie didn’t do too good a job of steering it; it bumped the wall, coming through the doorway, and spilled a little when it landed in Mrs. G.’s lap.
The sitter didn’t even notice. Her attention was back on the screen, where a bunch of people in white uniforms were pretending they were doctors and nurses. “Thanks, kid,” was all the woman said.
Later Katie wondered if, for just a minute, she hadn’t been really crazy. Because she had an impulse to do something to shake the stupid woman out of her eating and TV-watching rut. If she’d known how to make herself bleed (without hurting) she’d have tried that, just to see if Mrs. G. noticed.
Instead, she created a terrific wind, the best one she’d ever done, and sent things swirling around the living room. The curtains swayed, the newspapers slithered off the coffee table onto the floor, the pages of an open book flipped rapidly. And then, when Katie gritted her teeth and closed her eyes and used the final ounce of power left within her, she swooshed the wind across Mrs. G so that it blew her hair off.
Well, after a few horrified seconds Katie realized it was a wig; the mop of hair fell off and dangled over the arm of the chair. Mrs. G. wasn’t bald, she just had thin hair, and the hairpiece was to make it look as if there was more of it.
At least that got her attention. The sitter looked around, clutched at her denuded head, and watched as the TV Guide fluttered to a stop on the rug.
“Shut the doors! The wind’s blowing everything to pieces!” she yelled. She picked up the wiglet, which looked like some strange little dead creature, and settled it back on her head. “While you’re up, switch over to Channel Four, will you?”
Katie gave up. Let Monica deal with her. She went back into the bedroom and began going through more of the things from Monica’s box. She was looking for birth announcements, personal letters from any of the people in the picture of the drug company employees, that sort of thing.
By the time she had finished, Katie had found two more announcements of births within a month of her own: Dale John Casey, and Eric Arnold VanAllsburg.
Four of them, all born in September, almost ten years ago, to women who had worked with the drug that was so dangerous the company had stopped making it.
Katie kept out the three birth announcements and shoved everything else back into the box and replaced it in the desk drawer. A new tremor of excitement ran through her.
Somehow, she thought, she had to find the other three kids and see if they were like her.
6
SHE WOULD HAVE GONE THROUGH the telephone book immediately, looking for the other names, if it hadn’t been for the sitter. Mrs. G. had turned down the volume on the TV and was now talking on the telephone. To get the phone book, Katie would have had to approach within inches of her, and she didn’t feel like doing that.
“Little skinny kid with glasses,” Mrs. G. was saying. She paused and held one hand over the receiver to speak to Katie. “Talking to my sister. Why don’t you go outside and play or something.” She lifted her hand and continued the conversation. “It’s a long way over here on the bus. I don’t know if it’s worth it, for babysitter money. And I liked to starved, no more’n they keep in the ice box.”
Indignant, Katie turned away. Fortunately, she’d just remembered that she had Mrs. M.’s receipt for the paper, and she decided to take it over and see how Lobo was.
Mrs. M. opened the door wearing a muumuu with lavender and white flowers against a deep purple background. “Well, come on in,” she said, opening the door wide. “You back for more books already?”
“No. I mean, yes, I read both of them, and they were good, but I forgot to bring them back. I just wanted to get away from that sitter and give you this.” She handed over the receipt, then noticed Lobo lying on a red velvet cushion on one end of the couch. “How are you, Lobo?”
It happened again. She knew, as certainly as anything.
Katie turned to Mrs. M. “He feels better, and he’d like some chopped liver.”
Mrs. M. laughed. “Oh, you can talk to cats, eh? Well, maybe you can. He sure had a bladder infection, just like you said. And he ought to be better, taking medicine that cost twelve fifty for a little bitty bottle. All right, lover,” she said to the cat, “I’ll get your liver.”
While she was getting it, she talked to Katie over the top of the refrigerator door. “Why do you need to get away from the sitter?”
“She’s a pig,” Katie said. She almost added, she’s big and fat, but decided against it. Mrs. M. was pretty big, too, but she wasn’t a pig like Mrs. G. “She’s got a whole pile of banana skins and apple cores on the floor beside her chair, and her coffee cup made marks on the table, and all she does is watch TV, except now she’s talking to her sister on the phone. Probably long distance, on our bill.”
“Sounds like a good one,” Mrs. M. agreed. “You like a cookie?”
The cookies were oatmeal and raisin, and homemade. Katie chewed appreciatively. She wondered if Mrs. M. would have any ideas about how to find out where those other kids born in September almost ten years ago had gone.
She knew she was taking a chance. But she had to find those kids. And if Mrs. M. didn’t get excited about Katie being able to talk to cats, why, maybe she would understand about the other things, too.
Before she knew it, she was telling Mrs. M. the whole thing. How the other kids didn’t like it when she made the ball move away from her face, or whisked back a dropped pencil without touching it, or retrieved her shoe when two boys were tossing it back and forth between them by just mentally pulling it down from above their heads.
Mrs. M. seemed very interested. She poured Katie a glass of milk and made herself some tea, and put a plate of cookies between them on the table.
“It isn’t just that I can move things, though,” Katie said, reaching for her third cookie. “It’s something in my looks, because lots of times I haven’t done anything, and they just look at me and back away.”
“It’s your eyes,” Mrs. M. said, nodding. “Very different. People don’t like people who are different.”
“But why not? Having silvery colored eyes doesn’t hurt anybody, does it?”
“No, not really. Any more than having one blue eye and one green one does, but the other kids tease Jackson Jones about that. Make stupid remarks. My brother had a birthmark, right here,” she touched the side of her face. “It was shaped sort of like an insect, so the kids called him Spider Face. After he got grown up, he had it taken off, but people who’ve known him a long time still call him Spider.”
“You can’t have your eyes taken out,” Katie said.
“No. I think maybe you can get contact lenses, when you grow up, though. They can make it seem as if your eyes are a different color, if that’s what you want.”
“Really? But it’ll be a long time before I’m grown up. And even with contact lenses I’ll still be different, won’t I?”
“Seems to me you’re better than most folks. And maybe that’s it; they don’t want anyone to be better, or smarter, or more powerful in any way. They’re afraid of people who are different, so they make fun of them. Attack them. It’s foolish, but it’s the way people are. What else can you do, besides make things float around in the air?”
Katie shrugged. “Nothing. And that isn’t very useful. I mean, it’s easy to make the pages of my book turn without touching them, but it doesn’t save enough energy so I can use it to do something else really important. And it’s easy to bring myself a banana from
the kitchen without getting up and going after it, but it would only take a minute to get it the regular way.”
Mrs. M. thought about that. “Well, you said it’s getting stronger. You can move heavier things now than when you first started. So maybe there’ll be a use for it, one of these days.”
“But do I have to wait until I’m grown up? And won’t I still be a freak? Won’t people still be afraid of me and hate me because I’m different? I don’t know any grownups who can make things move just by thinking about it.”
Mrs. M. nodded her uncombed head. “It’s a problem all right. Let’s see you move something. Can you put sugar in my tea?”
“I don’t know. Sometimes I spill things that aren’t in a package or something,” Katie warned.
“We can clean it up. Go ahead, put some sugar in my tea,” Mrs. M. urged.
So Katie lifted the spoon from the sugar bowl, floated it unsteadily across the table, and dumped it triumphantly into the teacup. She only spilled a little into the saucer.
“Hey, that’s very good! I wish I could do that. Seems like it would come in very handy, especially when you get old and stiff, or when you’re sick. I can see, though, that it might cause trouble if people see you doing it, when they don’t understand it.”
“I think my grandma thought I was a witch, or something. It scared her. And I didn’t even do very many things in front of her.”
“Well, maybe all you can do is just be careful. Not do it when anyone’s looking.”
“Yeah. That’s what I do, mostly, now. But maybe, if there are other kids like me, I could find them. It would be nice to know someone else like me.”
So she went on and told Mrs. M. about Nathan’s theory of how something happened to the women who were pregnant when they worked with the drug that was so dangerous the company stopped making it.
“Do you think that’s possible?” Katie asked when she’d finished.
Mrs. M. considered. “Well, I’ve read about such things. Of course, I thought it was science fiction. But twenty years ago men going to the moon was science fiction, and now they can really do it. And if it happened to you, seems like it could happen to somebody else, too. Not going to the moon, I mean making things move by themselves. So maybe there’s a lot of people out there like you. Only they’ve all been treated like freaks, so they’ve gone underground. You know, they pretend to be the same as everyone else.”