Happy Birthday to You (Birthday Trilogy, Book 3) (11 page)

“That kid was right,” she said out loud.
“I
am
starting to look ninety.”

Mrs. Gordon turned her face to the left
and right. She had started to notice it as early as Saturday morning, but
something was happening to her face. It wasn’t so much that she was developing
more wrinkles and lines; her skin was literally sinking into itself, as if she
was suffering a late life bout of anorexia. With each passing day she was
starting to look more and more like a skeleton, and today, upon waking up, she
realized she had never felt so weak in her long, uneventful life. She was
slowly shrinking away, and she knew the pain in her back and upper bowels was
signaling to her that something was really, really wrong.

Mrs. Gordon didn’t want to suffer
anymore, so she made her arrangements.

She just had one thing left to do. She
had gone by the house earlier and rung the doorbell, but to no avail. So she
sat down in her office chair, the same one that had occupied this
claustrophobic space for the last seventeen years.

She clicked on the office phone and
dialed the number. She waited. She assumed nobody would answer. But after four
rings, somebody did.

“Hello?” a female voice said on the other
line.

“Jill?”

“Yes. Who’s calling?”

“It’s your mother, Jill. It’s Mom. I was
just calling because I have—”

Mrs. Gordon wasn’t able to finish her
sentence. Her daughter had hung up on her. Again.
For the
hundredth time.
Even in this time of worldwide crisis,
her own
daughter wouldn’t allow for a final five-minute
conversation.

She tried again. This time, after five
rings, the call went to voice-mail. Mrs. Gordon tried again.
A
third time.
A fourth time.
By the time she
started dialing her daughter for the fifth time, Mrs. Gordon had started
crying. Two tears fell down her cheeks, and she tried to compose herself,
knowing this time, she was going to have to do the unthinkable—tell her
daughter good-bye over a goddamn answering machine.

“You know what to do,” was all Jill’s
answering machine said.

“Hi Jill. It’s Mom. I know you don’t want
to talk to me. I know you want to forget I exist. But I just wanted to call you
to tell you… good-bye…” She had to stop for a second, unable to speak amid all
her sobs. “I know we had our ups and downs over the years, but I just want you
to know I love you, have loved you, and will always love you. You’re my one and
only. You’re my baby girl…” Mrs. Gordon licked a tear off her upper lip and
took a deep breath before continuing. “I can say sorry forever, but forever
isn’t very long to me anymore. I’m sorry, for the last time, for all the pain I
caused you, for breaking up your first engagement, for sleeping with that hunky
fiancée of yours. I guess I was just jealous, honey. But you have to know, he
came onto me—”

Another beeping noise blasted through the
phone. Mrs. Gordon sat there quiet and completely still, not knowing whether or
not to continue. She decided not to embarrass herself any further. She’d done
enough for one lifetime.

Mrs. Gordon stood up, wiped the tears
from her cheeks, and brought her hands to her sides.

“OK,” she said out loud. “This is it.”

She looked through her window to see the
library, and she nodded, as if all the books could nod back to her.

Mrs. Gordon moved her desk to the back
corner of the room and then stood on her office chair. She fastened the rope
around her neck and tilted her head back to make sure it was tight enough to
keep her from crashing to the carpet.

“OK,” she said. “Here goes.”

It took her close to three minutes to
kick the chair out from under her, but when she did, she instantly regretted
her decision. She thought the movement would snap her neck and kill her
instantly, but that wasn’t really the case. She just hung there, for a minute
or more, slowly losing all of her oxygen. The worst way Mrs. Gordon thought it
would be to die was to drown, because there was nothing sudden about it. But
here she was, gasping for her final breaths, sad that her life hadn’t ended
quicker.

“It’s… taking… so long…”

But finally, her vision, and all the
pain, started fading away.

Most surprising, she didn’t see her life
flash before her eyes.

Instead, Mrs. Gordon saw only one
image—her daughter, age two, dressed all in yellow, laughing and playing
in a large, open field, whispering to her mommy, “I love you.”

7.

Liesel pulled off the main highway, not even
onto pavement, but onto a slim dirt road that traveled behind the giant,
eye-popping structures of Red Rock Canyon, a few miles of land that lined the
CA-14 freeway north of Los Angeles. Driving through it felt like we were
entering the Grand Canyon, or coming close to Batman’s secret, off-the-grid
Batcave.

The drive got more treacherous with each
minute. Soon we were climbing a giant hill, then heading nearly straight down
another.

“Are you sure you know where you’re
going?” I asked.

“I’m sure.”

“OK. This is pretty wild.”

“I haven’t been here in four and a half
years,” Liesel said. “It better still
be
here. Hannah
better not
have
blown it up.”

“Blow what up?”

Liesel didn’t look at me. She knew there
would be lots of explaining to do once she found the cave or structure or
landfill or hole to the center of the Earth—whatever this thing we were
looking for was supposed to be—so she shut her mouth and let me just
admire the surroundings.

We passed a few more rock formations, and
then she departed from the dirt road, taking us behind the largest rock
structure of all.

“Here we go,” she said.

“Here we… what…”

Liesel drove the car to the back of the
structure, where a small entryway appeared.

“What the—” It was so mysterious,
this black hole to nowhere… right in the middle of nowhere. “Are we going in
there?”

“Yep.”

“Are we walking?”

Liesel shook her head. “Driving.”

“
What
?”

Before I could ask another question,
Liesel drove my car straight into the rock structure, and we started descending
down a steep dirt hill, inside the actual rock! I had my eyes closed for the
first few seconds as the car started bouncing all around, but I opened them to
discover Liesel shining the bright lights. At first this pathway looked to be a
descent into Hell, but soon, I realized, there was actually a finish line.

Still, though, I had to close my eyes
again. “Leese? Oh my God, Leese…
are
we going to die?”

“Not today,” she said, and I bounced out
of my chair as we hit the bottom of the large slide and Liesel swerved the car
to the right. When she slammed on the brakes, I slammed my head against the
glove compartment.

“Oww,” I said, softly and sadly.

“Are you OK?”

I opened my eyes and sighed. “Perfect.”

“Come on,” she said. “There’s somebody
here I want you to meet.”

“Huh?”

I turned to my left to watch Liesel
unbuckle her seatbelt and step out of the car. She had a huge, infectious smile
on her face, like she was locking eyes with a dear, old friend.

I heard a girl shout, “Alicia!” from far
away.

This
must be the famous sister Yolanda. Oh boy, a reunion. Won’t this be nice and…
awkward.

I swallowed some saliva, unbuckled my
seatbelt, and stepped out of the car.

After slamming the door and taking two
steps forward, I started darting my eyes every which way, taking in this majestic
underground oasis. If Hannah’s creepy basement had been the bleak version of an
underground area, this was the polar opposite. Lights of all colors bounced
against the rock walls from small slits in the lining up top, and a thin blue
creek split the cavern into two parts. It took me a good thirty seconds to
notice Liesel across the way hugging somebody beside a Jeep Wrangler.

“Cameron!” she shouted at me. “Come over
here!”

I thought Liesel and this mysterious new
sister of hers would start getting down to business right away, but as I
approached them, all I could hear was giggling and inane banter that two high
school girls would partake in at lunchtime.

“Yolanda,” Liesel said, pointing at me, “
this
is my husband—”

“Cameron!” she shouted, finishing her
sister’s sentence. “My God, you’re even cuter than I expected!”

I shook the girl’s hand. She was as tall
as Liesel, with long, curly black hair. She looked younger, maybe sixteen or
so. She was also African American.

“So you two are sisters?” I asked.

“Yup,” they both said in unison.

I planted my hands on my sides and bit
down on my bottom lip. I tried to put my thoughts into words, but I kept
opening and closing my mouth.

“Let me guess,” Yolanda said, taking a
step closer to me. “You wanna know how I’m related to your wife, since we don’t
exactly share a resemblance.” She smiled and looked at Liesel. “And by the way,
calling you someone’s ‘wife’ kind of creeps me out.”

“It creeps me out too sometimes,” Liesel
said with a high-pitched chuckle. I gave her the evil eye.

“I was curious,” I said. “Yes.”

“She’s adopted, Cam,” Liesel said. “Mom
got her three years after having me. By the time I was three, and Hannah was
six, she knew that we would both develop into witches. She wanted to adopt a
little girl and see if she could somehow morph her into a witch as well.”

“OK…”
Boy,
this Mom of theirs was weird.
“Did it work?”

“Nope,” Yolanda said. “Thank God! I
wouldn’t be able to handle that kind of pressure!”

“Do you know for sure?”

“I’m pretty sure.”

Liesel stepped forward and gave her
sister a hug from behind. “My mom tried everything. Yolanda’s proof that you’re
born with it.”

My eyes were drawn to the stream up
ahead. It looked so serene, with the soft light hitting it from up top. “So
what is this place? How did you find it?”

Liesel unhooked herself from her sister
and backed up against the Jeep. “This was where our mother took us to train
when we were younger. We obviously couldn’t perform spells and utilize our
telepathy powers in the center of L.A. We had to find a hideout where we could
be loud and train for hours, without interruption, without anyone finding us.
This is where my mom used to train when she was younger. It’s a real hidden hot
spot. Nobody knows about it.”

“But does your sister know about it?” I
asked.

Liesel looked at me like my IQ had just
dropped a hundred points. “Yes, Cam, she’s standing right beside me.”

I glared at her. “Your other sister. The
evil
one.”

Yolanda laughed. “I like how we’re being
typecast.
The good one.
The evil
one.
The black one.”

I shook my head. “No, I would
never—”

“No, he’s right,”
Liesel
said. “She is the evil one.”

“I don’t think
evil
is strong enough of a word,” Yolanda added.

I turned to Yolanda, then to Liesel, then
to Yolanda again. “So how come I’ve never heard of you? You two seem to get
along OK. How come you weren’t at our wedding?”

Yolanda and Liesel both stared at me for
a moment, neither of them knowing what to say. Finally, Liesel said, “When I
left over five years ago for Reno, I didn’t tell my mother or Hannah where I
was going, and I didn’t tell Yolanda either. I needed a clean start, and I knew
that to make it happen I not only needed to change my name and appearance but
also make sure nobody knew where I was. It wasn’t until three weeks ago when I
found Yolanda, now living and working in San Diego.”

“Oh,” I said. “How’d you find her?”

“Facebook.”

“Facebook?”

“It’s lame, I know. But I didn’t know any
other way. I told her everything that was happening, and even though she was
mad at me, she decided it was in her best interest to meet us here today and
discuss how we’re going to take Hannah down. Because Yolanda has friends down
in San Diego she cares about. And she doesn’t want them going anywhere.”

“For the first time in my life, I’m doing
well,”
Yolanda
said. “I’ve got a good Foster home, a
good school, friends, a boyfriend. I’m not
gonna
have
Hannah destroy that for me. I’m not
gonna
let her
destroy that for everybody else. I was mad at Alicia, I was. But at the end of
the day, we have to do what’s right.”

Part of me wanted to clap for Yolanda’s
little speech, but all I could think about, again, was how odd it was for one
of Liesel’s acquaintances to call her Alicia, apparently her real name. She was
just Leese to me. Always would be.