Try Not to Breathe (17 page)

I pressed on the dispenser so she could pull a wad of napkins free, keeping my mouth shut. I’d fucked up enough as it was. I could only guess how many years I’d chopped off my mother’s life already; anything I said now might bite away more.

Wiping her mouth, she blinked wearily at me. “Are you ever going to forgive me?”

“Forgive
you
?” I said, startled because that wasn’t the question. That wasn’t the question at all.

• • • • •

The check came, interrupting us, and then she went to the ladies’ room. When she returned, neither of us had an appetite for answering the questions we’d asked.

While we walked back to the car, she put her arm around me for a stiff hug. I stumbled and didn’t hug her back. My feet on the sidewalk were silent. Car horns beeped faintly through the layers that muffled me. I couldn’t hear my mother’s voice.

• • • • •

Mom and I avoided each other the rest of the day.

I went for a run and stood over the edge of the quarry. I leaned over the rusted remnants of the wire fence, panting, not sure the wire would hold. I willed my mind to go blank, because no matter who I thought of—Val, Jake, my parents—I hit a sharp edge that threatened to slice me.

• • • • •

I went to bed early, but I hadn’t fallen asleep yet when my phone beeped: Val.

“Yeah,” I said, lying in the dark with the phone at my ear.

“You didn’t get to see Jake? Do you know how he is?”

“No. All we could do was leave him some cards.”

“God, I was afraid he would do something like this. Just yesterday—”

“I know. I remember.”

A long pause; I pressed the phone closer to my ear.

“How about you, Ryan? Are you okay?”

“Yes.”

“Are you sure? Because I know things got kind of—awkward—between us. I don’t want you to be hurt. Especially now.”

I closed my eyes, because that way I could see her clearly, clearly enough to touch—

Almost.

There was that
almost
again, the one inch that separated me from her, the maddening space that kept everything I wanted just out of reach. My voice came out rough, raw. “Come on, Val, what do you think? I’m going to kill myself over you?”

“No, I—”

“Worry about Jake, not me.”

“I do worry about Jake.
And
you. Worrying is what I do, remember?” Her voice had gone brittle, reminding me of the worst days I’d seen her have at Patterson, reminding me she had fragile spots, too.

“Yeah,” I said, the anger fading. “I know. How are you doing?”

“I think I’m okay. Sometimes I’m scared to death and sometimes I’m so upset with Jake I want to
cram
hope into his brain, but underneath . . . I’m all right. I’m writing music; that helps.”

We stayed on the phone even though we didn’t say much more—the way we used to sit together on the ugly couch in the Patterson dayroom. We always drew strength from each other, and it drove me crazy that she didn’t want to take that feeling as far and deep as it could go. I hated that what we had was enough for her, that she didn’t have the same hunger I had to make it more. But she’d been the one to step back, to put this space between us, and I wasn’t going to push her. This time I was the one who said, “I should go.”

“Good night, Ryan,” she said.

And the click when I turned off my phone was like a thread breaking.

• • • • •

I awoke the next day with everything sitting in my stomach like a meal that wouldn’t digest. But I got up, ignoring the heaviness in my gut.

I couldn’t worry about my mother or Jake or Val or anything else right now. I would take a run and have lunch, and then I had an appointment to talk to a dead guy.

SIXTEEN

Nicki met me
in her driveway wearing a suit: a jacket and matching skirt. She’d even pulled her hair up into a bun. I almost said, “You’re dressed like my mother,” but bit that back. Instead I said, “Why are you dressed that way?”

“I want to look older. That last psychic didn’t respect me because she thought I was a kid.”

I looked at the truck and down at my own jeans and T-shirt. The truck and I were definitely going to spoil the image—even if there wasn’t already something off about the way Nicki looked. “But it’s like—you’re trying too hard. It makes you look even younger.”

She glared at me, opened the truck door, and began tossing out old paper cups and food wrappers. I came around to her side and pulled the clip out of her hair.

“Hey!” She grabbed at her head, while her curls fell around her neck.

“You look better this way. Older, too, if that’s what you’re after.”

She peered in the side mirror. “Well, maybe so.” She pointed at me. “Get over on the other side and clean the trash out of there. I can’t believe Matt piled so much crap in here in just two days.”

We finished cleaning and got on the road. “Where are we going?” I asked as she swung the truck onto the highway.

“Somerton.” She handed me a sheet of paper. “When we get to Exit 23, start reading me the directions.”

• • • • •

Gas stations and minimarts rolled past the windows. I realized the last thing I wanted to do on an August afternoon was sit in some psychic’s house trying—and failing—to raise the dead.

And then I asked myself: Why
couldn’t
we do something else? The sun was out, Nicki and I had the truck, nobody knew where we were.

“It’s too hot today,” I said. “Why don’t we go to the beach instead?” The ocean was a good two hours away, and if I’d thought about it for half a second I would’ve realized nothing could distract Nicki from her great psychic quest, but for a moment I actually felt a salt breeze on my face. I saw us far away from here, with nothing better to do than dig our toes in wet sand and listen to the rise and fall of the waves.

“The beach! Where’d you come up with that?”

“I don’t know. I told you, it’s hot.”

“It’s hot every day. That’s why they call this time of year ‘summer.’” She paused to change lanes. “I really hope this psychic knows what she’s doing.”

“Don’t hold your breath.”

“Look, Ryan, there has to be something to all this psychic stuff, right?”

“Why?”

“I mean, lots of people believe in it and have experiences with it. They can’t all be wrong.”

“Yeah, they can.”

She sighed. “Then why are you even here?”

“Because I don’t think you should do this alone.”

A mile of fast-food restaurants and banks and gas stations whizzed by our windows. At last she said, “Don’t you want to know what happens after we die?” When I didn’t answer, she said, “What did you think was going to happen to you, anyway?”

“What?”

“When you—you know, when you tried it. What were you expecting?”

I pressed my fingers against the car window. They left sweaty prints. “To tell you the truth, I didn’t think much about it.”

“How could you not think about it?”

“Well—” I smelled the garage again, the gasoline and musty cement, felt the key under my hand. “I thought it would be like sleep.”

“Forever?” She shook her head. “God, I hope it’s more than that.”

• • • • •

Somerton was the blandest place I’d ever seen: a suburb like the one I lived in before my mother got the yearning to build her forest retreat. It was rectangle after rectangle of identical lots, identical houses, every last one of them a split-level ranch. I told Nicki where to turn, and we pulled up in front of a yellow house where close-sheared grass burned in the sun.

“She’s supposed to be very good,” Nicki said, staring at the house, making no move to open her door.

“According to who? The American Academy of Psychics?”

“According to people who’ve used her.” Nicki’s back snapped to straightness. “Come on, let’s go in.”

• • • • •

The psychic, Paula, was at least six feet tall. Her face reminded me of a chainsaw carving in a tree trunk. She examined each of us as if she could x-ray our brains. Nicki paled and seemed to shrink. I figured that if Paula was psychic, at least she had the eyes for it. And then I reminded myself I didn’t believe in psychics.

She had us turn off our phones (interference with the spirit world?) and brought us into an office with dark paneling and a red carpet. Nicki and I took chairs facing Paula, who sat and studied us. I scratched my chin, and her eyes followed my hand. I put my hand back in my lap, and her eyes followed that. Nicki coughed, and Paula’s eyes shifted to her.

“You wish to speak with someone important to you, someone with great meaning in your life,” Paula said, her voice as deep as a man’s. Her wrist bones jutted as she folded her hands.

“Yes,” Nicki said.

Paula’s eyes fixed on hers. Nicki stared back. Was this hypnosis? Maybe that’s how Paula would make Nicki believe she’d contacted her father.

“He hears you,” Paula said.

“Um, what?” Nicki said.

“He hears you. The person you seek.”

Nicki rubbed her feet against the red carpet. “What—what does he have to say to me?”

Their eyes never wavered from each other. I began to feel invisible, to melt into the pattern on the chair fabric. The air in this room was heavy and brown, as if it had been hanging in here for decades. It didn’t smell bad, exactly—just old.

Paula sighed and spread a broad hand over her thigh. “There are many unanswered questions.”

Yeah, no kidding,
I thought.
That’s why we’re here
.

Paula swung her head over to me. My skin prickled as her eyes pinned me to the chair. “You are blocking.”

“Excuse me?”

“Your negative energy is blocking the spirit.” She raised her hand to illustrate. “He cannot come through.”

She turned back to Nicki. “Your friend must leave. He must wait outside.”

Nicki glanced at me.

I didn’t want to leave her alone in this place. What did we know about Psychic Paula, anyway? But I knew how badly Nicki wanted to talk to her father. Maybe I could sit right outside the door. Like the watchdog I was supposed to be.

Nicki rubbed her mouth. Paula sat there like a monument, heavy and still.

I was about to get up when Nicki said, “No. He stays.”

“He is interfering with the connection,” Paula growled.

“He
is
the connection.”

What?

Paula and Nicki stared at each other so long I thought their eyeballs would dry out. Paula said, “I cannot make the connection if you insist upon blocking it. I have done my best; you stand in your own way.”

Nicki stood. “That’s it, then.”

“As you wish.”

Nicki and I were at the doorway when Paula said, “You are forgetting the payment.”

Nicki whirled. “For what? You didn’t do the reading.”

“That is not my fault. You scheduled my time, and your own decision kept you from receiving a reading. If your friend will leave, you may still receive it, but in either case, you owe me payment.”

Nicki clutched the purse she’d brought with her—I couldn’t get used to seeing her with a purse—as if Paula might wrestle it away, and she marched into the hall. Paula was out of her chair and had clamped her hand on my shoulder before I could take two steps.

“Let go,” I said. “You’ll get your money.”

She released my shoulder but stood over me while I dug out the money. “I’m paying for your
time
,” I said, “because I don’t believe anything else you offer is worth a crap.”

“I am aware of that. I pity you and your closed mind.” She aimed her giant chin at the door. “Leave my house.”

“Glad to.” I kept my back straight as I walked outside to where Nicki waited, but a weird quivering traveled from my stomach down my legs. An aftereffect of the adrenaline jolt, I guessed. I’d never had an allegedly psychic giant grab me and demand money before.

Nicki scowled at me. “Did you pay her?”

“Forget about it.”

“I didn’t want you to give her money!”

“She never would’ve left you alone until she got her money. Anyway, she had a point. Not that her reading would’ve been worth anything if we had gotten it.”

“I’ll pay you, then.”

“Forget it.”

“I don’t want you to—”

“Nicki, forget it. Let’s say it was my fault you didn’t get your reading, and now we’re even.”

I followed her to the truck. It wasn’t until we were back on the streets of the development, with me trying to unravel the directions in reverse, that Nicki spoke again.

“I can’t believe she did it.”

“Did what? Turn left here.”

“Tried to kick you out.”

“Well, obviously she could tell I didn’t believe in this whole thing. She wanted me out of there so she could try to scam you.”

Nicki’s mouth curled. “Why do you think I’m so dumb? You think she could con me if you weren’t there?”

“
She
thought so. Did you think she was conning you, or did you believe she was really in touch with your dad?”

“I don’t know.” I gave her a few more directions, and then Nicki said, “But if it
was
my dad, I think he would want you there.”

“Yeah, that’s what you said. What did you mean?”

She focused on the road the way she’d focused on Paula’s eyes. “Because—it’s going to sound weird, but—it’s like my dad led me to you in the first place. I’ve always thought you have something to tell me about him.” She heaved the wheel to the right, brought us to a stop at the curb. “And if you would just tell me, I wouldn’t have to go to all these psychics.” She turned to me.

“Nicki, I don’t know whatever it is you think I know. I don’t have the answers you—”

“You do. You’ve been to the same place as him. It’s like—if someone went to China, and I asked them what it was like, and they wouldn’t tell me.” She swallowed, her face pink. “I know it’s probably hard for you, and you don’t want to talk about it, so, fine—that’s why I’m trying the psychics. But I think you’re part of this for a reason. I mean, when I first talked to you at the waterfall, you could’ve told me to fuck off, but you didn’t. You’ve stuck around ever since. And that’s why I don’t trust any psychic who tells me to send you out of the room.”