The Gifting Read online

  Missy sets her cup on the coffee table. “I think we should hold hands.”

  “Jeez, Miss, if you wanted to hold my hand so badly, you should have just said so from the beginning.” Dustin gives her a lighthearted thwack with a pillow. “We don’t need a séance for that.”

  Missy flicks her hair. “You wish.”

  Sydney puts her fingers on the pointer, the planchette. Whatever it’s called. And I have the same feeling I had in Mr. Greeley’s Current Events class, when that monster stared up at me from my folder—a coldness that won’t go away. A coldness so deep I can feel it in my bones. I fist my hands in my lap.

  Dustin and Missy put their fingers on the planchette too.

  “I cannot believe we’re doing this,” Rose mutters.

  “Shhh!” Sydney sits up straighter and closes her eyes. The room fills with laughter and … something else. A presence that makes my breath come so quick and so shallow, I worry I might be having a panic attack. I glance at Pete and Elliana flirting, at Rose sticking her tongue out at J.R., and I can’t figure out how they don’t feel it.

  Sydney wears the kind of expression that says she’s trying hard to act serious, but a smile makes the corners of her lips twitch. She clears her throat and waits for the giggling and whispering to cease. “Who is with us in this house?” she asks in a low, spooky voice. Dustin and Missy giggle. “We’d like to speak with you.”

  I tell my heart to calm down. I tell myself I’m being a spaz. I tell myself I will never, ever fit in if I can’t do a stupid séance with a group of teenagers on a Parker Brothers Ouija board. But then something moves in the corner of the room, near the hallway, and I squeeze my eyelids shut.

  It was just my imagination. It was just my imagination …

  “We invite you in.” Sydney’s voice has turned into an exaggerated moan. I peek at her through squinted eyes. “Tell us who you are.”

  The planchette moves across the board. Missy takes her fingers away.

  Elliana nudges Dustin with her foot. “Very funny, O’Malley.”

  He holds up his hands. “It wasn’t me.”

  The room plunges into ice. I wrap my fingers around my throat and squeeze my eyes tight. This isn’t real. None of this is real. But then the whispers come. Ghost-like voices that turn my blood cold. Visions slam through me—horrible, awful, terrible images—worse than any nightmare I’ve ever had. Visions of death and decay and gnashing teeth and man-made pits filled with cold, lifeless bodies. Visions of skinny, pale people wrapped in straitjackets, black mouths splitting their faces with silent, anguished screams.

  Something brushes against my leg. I slap my shin. Something tickles my cheek. I slap at my face. But I do not—cannot—open my eyes. I refuse to face whatever is on the other side of my eyelids. The whispers turn into screams. Blood-curdling, heart-stopping screams. Like whatever is out there wants me to look. Demands me to look. As hard as I try, I can’t make them stop. I can’t make me stop.

  The screams are coming from me.

  Chapter Three

  Tess the Freak

  I wake up to the hushed voices of Mom and Dad and another I don’t recognize. My head pounds as I open my eyes to a blinding white box—white walls, white floors, white sheets, white bed. The brightness is so sterile and shocking, I throw my arm over my face.

  Where am I? What happened?

  “Her tests came back clean,” the unfamiliar voice says. “We didn’t find any traces of drugs or alcohol in her system.”

  “None?” My mom sounds deflated, like the no drugs or alcohol is bad news.

  “No, I’m sorry.”

  He’s sorry?

  My temples throb around the response. Why would he be sorry? I slide my arm away and this time, I understand why the whiteness is so bright. Sunlight filters inside an open window. I turn my head on the pillow and spy my parents and a man in a white coat huddled together in the corner, near the door. My mom presses her fingers against her lips and shakes her head. “I don’t understand.”

  “We’ll know more when your daughter wakes up. We can hear what she has to say about …” the doctor frowns, “the episode.”

  “My daughter is not crazy.” Mom’s words come out sharp and vehement. And with them, comes clarity. It floods back into place with a vengeance. The party at Sydney’s. The Ouija board and the voices and the screams. My stomach churns. I should be afraid, maybe even terrified. But all I can feel is humiliation. Abject humiliation. Because what must I have done to end up in a hospital? The churning turns my stomach to rot.

  “I’m merely following protocol, Mrs. Ekhart.”

  The doctor leaves and I close my eyes, feigning sleep. I cannot face my parents or their worry. I cannot face anybody ever again. I want to hide behind my closed eyelids forever. I want to avoid whatever repercussions lay beyond this bed. The seconds tick into minutes. The silence in the room crackles with tension.

  “What are you thinking?” It’s my father’s voice.

  “You know exactly what I’m thinking.”

  “I’m sure there is a perfectly logical explanation for what happened.” These are classic my dad-isms. According to him, logic explains everything. And if it can’t, he dismisses it altogether. His world makes no room for the unexplainable. “Tess is sensitive. We’ve always known that. She probably got spooked and the other kids exaggerated.”

  “You think Pete is exaggerating?” Mom’s voice wobbles. “James, our son said she was hitting and scratching herself. He said she was screaming for something to get off her.”

  I sink further into the bed, fear expanding inside my lungs. Never mind the humiliation I will face upon returning to school, I could be committed for this. I could be locked up in a cell and never let out again.

  “What do you want me to say?” Dad asks.

  “I want you to promise me she’ll be okay. I want you to promise that we won’t lose her. I want you to promise that our daughter won’t end up like your mom.”

  My heart pounds into the silence, joined with the erratic breaths escaping my lips. My grandmother is dead. She died of a heart attack years ago, when I was too young to remember. So what is my mother talking about? Why is she afraid I’ll end up dead?

  “Tess is not my mother,” Dad says in a voice so low I have to strain to hear it.

  “But we’ve always suspected—”

  “That’s enough, Miranda.” The sharpness of his words slice through the air. “We can’t talk about this. Not here.”

  I open one of my eyes. Dad has ahold of Mom’s arm, their panicked expressions mirrored on each other’s faces.

  “It’s not safe.”

  A chill ripples through my bones.

  “She’s going to have to speak with a government-mandated psychiatrist,” Mom whispers. “Nothing about this is safe.”

  *

  News about my freak-out spreads like pink eye. Another disadvantage of these small towns my mom is so fond of. At school, Pete is guilty by association. No matter how cute the girls think he is, there’s only so much high school students will tolerate. Apparently, having a whacked-out older sister isn’t one of them.

  So everyone except Elliana ignores Pete. She must have it bad to risk being ostracized by the entire student body. The two of them stick to each other like double sided tape.

  Me? I’m not so much ignored as overtly avoided. Students hurry to the other side of the hall when they pass by, as if I have leprosy instead of an overactive imagination (this is the story I spun for the psychiatrist and I’m sticking to it). Part of me wants to run around touching people, just to see how they’ll react. Instead, I hide behind my veil of dark hair and try to make myself as small as possible, which isn’t very hard, considering my build.

  None of this would be so bad if my nightmares weren’t getting worse. Sleep offers no escape. Neither does home. As soon as I returned from the hospital, my parents sat me down at the kitchen table and asked me the same questions as the psychiatrist, only this ti
me, they wanted the truth. My attempt at an explanation turned their faces to the color of ash. They don’t bring it up again. Instead, they tiptoe around me like I’m made out of glass. Like the wrong word or the wrong volume will shatter me to pieces. Or maybe they’re the ones who will break. Maybe I’m the one who’s dangerous.

  Their whispered conversation from the hospital clings to my thoughts like a stubborn dryer sheet. Jude High has its first football game tonight and Mom hasn’t even tried talking me into going. She lets me hide in my room. I lie in bed, trying to make sense of my growing confusion. I understand their concerns about the psychiatrist. I understand why they warned me to be careful about what I shared. What I don’t understand is why they’re worried I’ll end up like my dead grandma.

  When my brain tires from trying to tease it all apart, I grab my worn copy of I Know This Much is True by Wally Lamb—one of the many banned books I’ve come to own—and thumb to the place I earmarked the night before. The book’s about this dude with a schizophrenic brother. It’s not good for me. It makes me wonder. But I can’t stop reading. It’s nice to lose myself in somebody else’s messed up problems for a change, even if those problems are fictional.

  I’m about to start another chapter when Pete pokes his head inside my room. For a kid whose life has been ruined all because I’m a freak, he doesn’t hold a grudge. He doesn’t walk around me like I’m made of glass. Instead, he’s grown curious. Like all of a sudden, I’m the most fascinating person on the face of the planet. Apart from Elliana anyway.

  “Hey,” he says.

  “Is dinner ready?” My family has had dinner together since the dawn of time. It doesn’t matter if Dad has a late meeting at work. We will eat dinner at nine o’clock at night if it means eating together.

  “Dad just got home.”

  “You going to the football game after?” I ask.

  “Ellie’s picking me up.”

  “Ellie, huh?”

  He tosses a pillow at me. “Shut up.”

  “What? I think it’s cute.”

  Pete plops on my bed. I close my book. It isn’t normal. This. Us. Hanging out. We’ve never been close siblings. I love him. I’d do anything for him. He’s the only kid close to my age who I can talk to without breaking into hives. But we’re too different. And those differences have always created a wall between us.

  “You can tag along if you want.”

  “No, I can’t.”

  “Why not?”

  “C’mon, Pete. You know exactly why not.”

  “So people think you’re weird. Who cares?” This is why Pete has always been popular. He really doesn’t care. He has this laid back way about him that doesn’t fit the average fifteen-year-old. He can be in a room full of super popular seniors and his heart rate will remain completely steady. At times, it makes me want to judo chop him in the liver.

  I hold up my book. “I’d rather spend the evening with Wally.”

  Pete rolls his eyes, then picks at my comforter. “You know, Ellie and I were talking …”

  “About?”

  “That night.”

  “Why?” The word comes out with jagged edges.

  “We’re intrigued.” He continues his picking, then looks up with Dad’s dark brown eyes. I inherited Mom’s navy blue ones. “We Googled Ouija boards.”

  “Pete …” His name escapes on a sigh.

  “No, listen, Tess. We found some really crazy stuff. Elliana thinks what you saw could’ve been real.”

  Now it’s my turn for the eye-rolling. “Do you have any idea what Dad would say if he could hear you?”

  “Who cares what Dad would say.”

  “I was tired, Pete, and I have an overactive imagination. That’s all.” Lately, I’ve been contemplating the possibility that somehow, I fell asleep during the séance. That would make the most sense. Especially considering my nightmares. It’s a better option than being crazy. And it’s definitely better than Elliana’s theory. The thought makes me shudder. I don’t want any of what I saw to be real. “Just forget about it.”

  The curious gleam in his eye doesn’t bode well. But before I can convince him to drop it, the door opens and our parents walk in. Mom wears that false, familiar smile she dons every year or two, whenever she and Dad sit us down in the living room to tell us the news. I know what they’re going to say before either utter a word. So does Pete. Because he flops back on my bed and groans.

  We are moving.

  Chapter Four

  A Not So Fresh Start

  “You want me to go where?” I can’t help it. My eyes bug out of my head. I can feel them straining in their sockets as I stand among half-empty boxes in my brand new bedroom.

  “It’s called the Edward Brooks Facility,” Dad says.

  Beside him, Mom’s hands engage in a wrestling match.

  I pick up a box filled with books and set it onto my bed. Movers packed up all our stuff and in a matter of two weeks, we jettisoned across the country to Thornsdale—a small coastal town on the northern tip of California. I remove a stack of paperbacks and look out the window. We live in a gated community called Forest Grove. All the houses are ridiculous, including our own. The view from my bedroom is unreal. A panorama of rocky beach and towering redwoods and miles upon miles of misty ocean and cliffs. As I stare at a seagull gliding over the tide, a realization hits me right between my buggy eyes. “Is this why we moved?”

  They don’t have to answer my question. It’s written all over their concerned faces. Yes, this is exactly why we moved.

  I plop on the mattress, bouncing my box of books up and down. “I can’t believe this.”

  We didn’t move because Dad finished his work in Jude. We moved because of me and the Edward Brooks Facility and that thing that happened three weeks ago. My determination to fit in—to have a fresh start and make friends—fractures. It’s kind of hard to act normal when your own parents doubt your sanity. “How do you know it’s safe?”

  Mom sits beside me on the bed and places her hand on my knee. “Because it’s a private facility, sweet pea. One of the only ones left in the country. They are not required to report anything to the government.”

  Dad steps forward. “What your mother’s trying to say, kiddo, is that you can be honest. You don’t have to hide anything.”

  I stare down at the carpet. “You think I’m crazy.”

  “No, we don’t.” Mom squeezes my knee. “We just want to make sure you’re okay. This facility is the best of the best. We think it’ll help you … fit in.”

  Right. Fit in. Like that will ever happen.

  “Maybe even get rid of those nightmares you keep having.”

  I look up into Mom’s eyes. My eyes. We have all the same features. But somehow, the pale skin and the spray of dark freckles and the pointy chin and the upturned nose and round eyes that give us both a look of perpetual surprise are pretty on her face, mismatched on mine. “How do you know about my nightmares?”

  She cups my chin and runs the pad of her thumb over the dark circles beneath my eyes. I try to cover them with makeup, but I don’t do a great job. Makeup has never been my forte. “We hear you at night.”

  I release a puff of air. Maybe my parents are right. Maybe Edward Brooks—whoever he is—can help me be normal.

  *

  For as I long as I can remember I’ve had a small patch of eczema on the inside of my left wrist. I hardly noticed in Florida, thanks to the humidity. California weather isn’t as kind. I scratch at it as I stand in front of my full-length mirror. Today is my first day at a new school. Mom thought going on Friday would make Monday easier. All I can think is that it makes Friday worse. I’d much rather stay behind and explore the beach and the forest and the cliffs that are my new backyard.

  But my mother is adamant, so I push the wishful thinking away and check my reflection in the mirror. No dreams haunted me last night, which means my dark circles are faint. Yesterday, Mom took me for a mini makeover. I now have shoulder-
length hair and—for the first time since kindergarten—bangs. The effect makes my navy blue eyes much less buggy. I wear a new pair of skinny jeans with a new pale pink camisole and a new champagne cardigan. I even have a new backpack. Basically, I am new. I am fresh. And for once in my life, I look ordinary.

  I look like somebody who could blend in.

  I take a deep breath, as if the key to confidence is an extra dose of oxygen. Nobody has to know about the séance or my nightmares or that I sometimes see and sense and hear things nobody else can see or sense or hear. Nobody has to know that I’m seventeen and still afraid of the dark. Nobody has to know that starting next week, I will have counseling sessions at the Edward Brooks Facility with a psychiatrist named Dr. Roth.

  I can walk into Thornsdale High School and simply be Tess Ekhart, the very unextraordinary new girl. Who knows. Maybe I will find a way to fit in. I scratch the inside of my wrist until my eczema burns bright red.

  Anything is possible.

  Chapter Five

  The New Kid

  Majestic. There is no other way to describe the drive to school. Seriously. It’s nothing at all like the flat, ho-hum commute in Jude. We are winding down a road with the ocean on one side and gigantic trees on the other. Briny air ruffles my hair. Everything is so green and beautiful.

  Pete and I don’t talk. Our momentary closeness in Florida vanished once he found out we were moving. He spent our final two weeks in Jude brooding or in his room with Elliana. I still can’t believe Mom let him get away with it. I’m more convinced than ever that we do not have a normal mother. I mean, who does that? Who lets their hormonally-charged fifteen-year-old son spend unsupervised hours in his room with an older, more experienced girl?

  Since coming to California, he’s spent every waking minute talking to her on his cell phone. I can’t believe Mom lets him get away with that either. It’s not like Pete. But then, he’s never left behind a girlfriend before and I’m pretty sure that’s what Elliana was … or is.