“Camelia, your father and I really need to talk to you,” Mom says, acknowledging Adam with a polite nod.
Dad’s acting no-nonsense as well. He gives Adam a terse hello, rather than taking him hostage in the living room as he usually does so the two of them can discuss soccer.
“What happened?” I ask, suspecting that it must have something to do with Aunt Alexia.
“Maybe you can call Adam later,” Mom suggests, ignoring the question.
“No,” I say, taking Adam’s hand again. “Adam can hear whatever it is you have to tell me.”
Mom turns her back, clearly frustrated, but she doesn’t argue. Instead, she gets herself a shiny green pill and chases it down with a full glass of iced dandelion tea. She sits beside me at the island, somehow already a little less lucid. “So, we spoke with Alexia’s doctor about what happened last night,” she begins. “He kept her overnight at the hospital for some tests, and then we met with him again this morning.”
“And?” I ask.
“And he thinks it best if she stays there for now.”
“Meaning, she’s locked up again?” I can hear the alarm in my voice.
“Not locked up. It’s only temporary, until we decide our next steps.”
“No,” I say, feeling my blood run cold.
“Look, it’s important for me that you don’t blame yourself,” Mom continues, as if reading my mind. “This was ultimately my decision. I just didn’t think it was the healthiest thing for her to be here—not healthy for me, not healthy for you, not healthy for things between your dad and me, and especially not healthy for her.”
“It was fine,” I say, nearly coughing up my brownie. “She was doing well here, talking to me, starting to really come around.…”
“What were you two talking about last night?” Dad folds his arms, slightly confrontational.
“What do you think?” I ask, challenging him to come clean.
He looks at Mom and then turns away, backing right down.
“It’s only temporary,” Mom says again.
“Prison’s only temporary for some people, too.”
“This isn’t prison, Camelia. It’s the local hospital. They have a mental health unit with qualified staff. Alexia’s even allowed to walk around outside.” Mom gets up from the kitchen island and fills her glass with more tea.
I shake my head, thinking about how much Aunt Alexia’s helped me. Not just with her power, but also simply with herself—with how much she’s opened up to me. “You’ve got it all wrong about her,” I snap, feeling a lump forming in my throat. “This wasn’t the way things were supposed to happen.”
Still holding my hand, Adam gives it another squeeze, trying his best to make me feel at ease. But I can’t help feeling that this is my fault. If I hadn’t gone into her room last night, she’d never have gotten so upset.
“You can visit her,” Mom says. “I’ll even take you there myself. Now, how about something to eat?”
“Does she have her doll with her, at least?” I ask, ignoring her offer.
“What doll?” Mom turns to me, reliably clueless. Dad’s face scrunches up in confusion as
well.
“Forget it,” I say, getting up from the island. I tell Adam it’s time for both of us to go, and then I lead him out the door.
A DAM DRIVES US AROUND for a while, working feverishly to cheer me up. He asks if I’m hungry; offers to take me to the movie of my choice; and tells me that as hard as it is to accept or understand, my parents did what they thought was best for everyone.
“Did my dad slip you a twenty to say that?” I ask.
“A fifty.” He grins.
“My aunt doesn’t belong in there,” I say, getting emotional all over again. “People don’t understand her the way I do.”
“Care to try to make me understand?” He pulls over to the side of the road.
“What do you mean?” I ask, noticing how warm it is in his car. I try to angle the heat vent away from me, but it doesn’t seem to move.
“I mean, tell me about your aunt,” he says. “What is it about her? What makes her so misunderstood?”
I feel a smile cross my lips, never ceasing to be amazed by him. “You’re very sweet, you know that?”
“Except, ‘sweet’ wasn’t exactly what I was going for.”
I wait for him to make a joke, but his face stays completely serious, showing me how much he truly cares.
“I’d love to be able to tell you everything,” I say. “And I will. In time. It’s just that right now I need to talk to Dr. Tylyn.”
“I seriously can’t win.” Adam leans back against his seat, running his fingers through his hair in frustration.
“Don’t be upset,” I tell him.
“Then, how should I be? Because I feel like you keep pushing me away.”
I bite my lip, thinking how “pushed away” is exactly how I feel most of the time with Ben. “I’m so grateful to have you in my life, but there’s some major stuff going on in my life right now—stuff that Dr. Tylyn already knows about. Believe me when I say that it isn’t personal.” I lean over to kiss his cheek.
Adam forces a tiny smile, but then starts driving again.
“I’m sorry,” hey kept telling me the same thing, but Adam doesn’t respond.
And so I call Dr. Tylyn on her cell and tell her that I need an emergency appointment.
“Can you drop me off at her office?” I ask Adam, once I hang up.
“Sure thing,” he says; they’re the last words I hear from him before he pulls up in front of her building.
“I’ll call you later, okay?”
“Sure thing,” he repeats, and he drives away as soon as I shut the car door.
* * *
I wait a few minutes outside Dr. Tylyn’s office until she finally arrives. “I’m sorry to bother you,” I tell her.
“Don’t be,” she says, unlocking her door. “I gave you my emergency number for a reason. I’m glad that you actually used it.”
“Well, thanks,” I say, noticing that she’s dressed in her weekend wear (a T-shirt and jeans), rather than her usual skirt and blouse, reminding me that I’ve interrupted her weekend—as if I couldn’t possibly feel worse.
I enter her office; it smells like day-old vanilla incense.
Dr. Tylyn switches on some lights and takes a seat across from me on the talk sofa. Her expression is as neutral as Switzerland.
“My aunt’s back in the hospital,” I say, before she can ask me anything.
“I see,” she says, studying my face. “And that makes you feel…”
“Scared, sad, guilty.”
“Why guilty?”
“Because I was supposed to help her,” I say. There’s a crumbling sensation inside my heart.
“Were you good to her? Did you talk to her? Did you make her feel that she was welcome in your home?”
“I think so.”
“Did you treat her any differently than you would someone else? Someone who wasn’t undergoing psychological care, I mean?”
I shake my head, thinking about the conversation Aunt Alexia and I had in my room—when we talked about my star-themed birthday party. “I felt like we were getting closer than ever.”
“Then you probably helped a lot more than you know.”
“So, then, why do I feel like I failed her?” I ask, hearing the dryness in my voice.
Tylyn must hear it, too, because she gets up to fetch me a bottle of water from her minifridge.
“Thank you.” I take a sip. The rush of coldness down my throat is almost sweet to the taste. “I just wish I could’ve done more.”
“Like what, specifically?”
I shrug, reluctant to get into it—to get into the fact that I’d hoped to save my aunt from psychosis by bonding with her over psychometry. As if I were suddenly some expert.
“Camelia?”
I’m eager to change the subject, and so I proceed to tell her about all the clues that A
unt Alexia predicted.
“Were they clues? Or might they just have been random premonitions? Like with what happened in the locker room with those girls…with the lipstick and the broken mirror? I guess what I should really be asking is: how are you so sure there’s something bigger going on?”
“Because I feel it,” I say, fully aware of how weak the answer sounds.
“Just a feeling? There’s no concrete reason?”
My jaw tenses and I take another sip, wondering if maybe I’m wasting my time.
“I’m just playing devil’s advocate here, Camelia…just making sure that your actions are in line with your thoughts. I’m not denying anything. It’s important for you to know that.”
“Okay,” I say, feeling a tinge better.
“So then, tell me why you think your aunt is giving you clues to something bigger,” she says, “to some grand puzzle that needs a solution.”
“It’s hard to explain, but in that moment, when I zone out—when the voices tell me how worthless I am, and that I’d be better off dead—I almost believe it. I almost believe what the voices are saying.”
“Have you ever thought about hurting yourself, Camelia?”
I shake my head, surprised that she’d think so. “As soon as I snap out of it, everything goes back to normal.”
“As soon as you wake up or come out of the hallucination, you mean.”
I nod and take a deep breath, suddenly feeling as if there’s a lack of air in the room and in my lungs.
“So, then I’ll ask you again: what makes you think there’s a bigger picture here?”
“Because there have been bigger pictures before. In the past, I mean.” When Adam was in trouble and I helped save him. When I was in trouble and what I sensed and sculpted turned out to be clues that helped save me.
“Have you talked to the girl you think might be in trouble?”
“A few times.”
“And has she given you any reason to believe that her life’s in any sort of danger?”
“No.” I sigh, feeling more self-conscious by the moment. “But I don’t believe her. She’s hiding something.”
“Do you know that for a fact?”
“I think that the voices in my head telling me I’m worthless and that I’d be better off dead are a pretty good tip-off, don’t you?”
“They could be,” she says, ever the devil’s advocate. “But we shouldn’t ignore other possibilities, either, especially when the writing on the locker-room mirror had more to do with harassment than with actual death.”
I shift uneasily in my seat, suddenly wishing that I’d stayed with Adam.
“What do you think?” she asks, when I don’t say anything. “Again, I’m merely raising questions. It may take a bit of work to find the answers. I’ve worked with people whose premonitions add up to one all-encompassing event, and others whose premonitions are more about predicting unrelated incidents. Let’s be open to both possibilities until we have reason to believe otherwise. Sound okay?”
I take another sip, feeling the bottle shake, thinking about some of the unanswered clues so far: the camera, the initials DM, the player piano, and the thing my aunt said about a skating competition. Is it possible that those things don’t have anything to do with Danica?
But then what about Aunt Alexia’s sketch? Or the fact that Danica got so upset when Kimmie and I mentioned skating?
“Well?” Dr. Tylyn asks.
But by now I’ve forgotten the question. “I think that my aunt and I are truly connected,” I say.
“And you two share the same power,” she agrees. “But that doesn’t mean that you have to share the same destiny.”
I look away, but out of the corner of my eye, I can see Dr. Tylyn staring at me, studying my every blink, swallow, and twitch.
“That’s what this is really about, isn’t it?” she asks. “If your aunt is out of the hospital, it means that she isn’t mentally ill. And if she isn’t mentally ill, it means that you won’t one day become mentally ill, either. Well, guess what? I can’t promise you a life of sanity. I can’t promise it to you, or for anyone else.”
“How do you know that I’m not already crazy?” I ask, staring right at her now, feeling tears course down my face.
“Simple,” she says, handing me a tissue. “Because what you predict comes true. Don’t ever lose sight of that. And don’t ever forget that you have choices here, Camelia. What is it that you want?”
“To not end up like my aunt,” I say, looking down at my wrists.
“Be more specific.”
“To not handle my power the way she handled hers.” I wipe my tears, feeling guilty for passing judgment on Alexia.
“Better,” she says, finally showing a hint of emotion; a subtle smile sits on her lips.
“Don’t become a victim of someone else’s choices.”
“What if I don’t have a choice?” I ask, hearing a quaver in my voice.
“There’s always a choice. Even in the face of tragedy, you can choose to overcome, to gain wisdom, to practice compassion.”
“But my aunt doesn’t have those choices,” I say.
“Maybe she doesn’t anymore, but I’d be willing to bet that at one point she did. She tried to suppress her powers, and in the end they overcame her.”
“So, what does that mean for me?”
“What do you think it means?” She narrows her eyes.
“That I shouldn’t be afraid of my power?” I ask, feeling a grin form on my face, knowing that I’ve gotten the answer right.
“It’s a part of who you are,” she says. “So, why not embrace it?”
I nod, feeling the proverbial hairs standing up on the back of my neck. Because at last, I finally get it.
Dear Jill,
We arrived at my apartment, and you were still acting resistant. I knew you didn’t like it, but I had no choice other than to tell you how to act. Imagine if someone saw how troubled you looked and thought that something was wrong?
“You can trust me, remember?” I reminded you, taking hold of your arm despite all your squirming to be let go.
You started to cry harder, stumbling as you walked, making things so much more difficult than they needed to be.
We entered through the back of the building, behind the surveillance cameras, to give us more privacy. I thought that’d make you more comfortable, but you screamed once we got inside, like something serious was wrong. Luckily my father’s music drowned out your voice.
We didn’t need any extra attention. In time you’d understand that.
I’m sorry that I accidentally pushed you-and that you fell down hard on your back. But you really gave me no other choice.
“What do you want with me?” you asked, still on the ground, scooting away as I approached. Tears rolled down your cheeks. You were the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen.
“I’m your friend, remember?” I knelt down beside you and wiped your tears with my thumb. “And if you let me, I’ll take all your pain away.”
“What pain?”
“All of it, Jill. From grade school until now. You’ll feel like a brand-new person.”
“But my name isn’t Jill.”
“It is now,” I said, taking your hand and leading you inside my apartment.
…
Dear Jack:
Why did you keep calling me Jill and insisting that I call you Jack? Why did you sing me nursery rhymes and ask that I join in? When I didn’t, you set the tune to “Yankee Doodle Dandy” on your player piano, so that it played over and over again while you filled in your own lyrics. I hadn’t known that Jack and Jill had more than one stanza, but you knew at least four by heart.
Your apartment was huge, with high ceilings, almost like a city loft. You had the entire floor to yourself.
“I’ve got a surprise for you,” you said, crossing the living room like it was Christmas morning; there was an extra skip in your step.
It looked like you really
were a photographer. There was a tripod set up and some overhead spotlights with a white backdrop. From behind an L-shaped sofa, you pulled out a large box with a red ribbon.
“I’ve been counting the days till I could give this to you.” You seemed so happy, but then you forced the box into my hands, shoving me back, showing me who was boss.
I knelt down on the floor. With jittery fingers, I untied the bow and removed the lid, surprised to see what was inside: a short white dress with gold trim.
“For skating,” you said, squatting down beside me. “You used to love to skate. You said so yourself.”
I nodded, remembering having told you that during our chat.
“Go try it on,” you insisted. “The bathroom’s over there”
“It’s too small,” I said, checking the size on the dress label.
“Try it,” you demanded. “Don’t be ungrateful.”
Do you remember how I clutched the uniform against my stomach? How more tears rolled down my face?
“I also got you some skates,” you continued, wiping my tears with your thumb again.
“Eventually I’d like to take some photos of you skating. I want to show you the way I see you: beautiful.” You got up and removed your camera from the tripod. You took one, two…nine, ten…twenty-seven, twenty-eight photos of me.
From different angles.
From various points of the room.
Close-ups and long shots.
As more tears ran down my face. And the skating uniform still balled up against my stomach.
“It might be hard now,” you said, click, click, click. “But soon you’ll see how beautiful you really are”
“And you’ll take my pain away,” I whispered, hearing the sobs in my voice.
“All of it,” you said, finally pausing from snapping photos, relieved to see that I was finally coming to my senses.
…
BEFORE I LEAVE DR. TYLYN’S OFFICE, I ask her if she’d be willing to visit my aunt at the hospital—to see if she might be able to help her. Thankfully, she agrees.
I exit the main campus building and try giving Kimmie a call, as promised, but the phone goes straight to voice mail. I leave her a message and then head for the bus stop. To my complete and utter shock, Wes is there. I spot his Where’s Waldo scarf from a block away.