Listening for Lucca (3 page)

Things weren’t the same after that. Not with the other kids, or Kelsey, or even just with myself.

Before then, I’d always had these vivid dreams. More
than just about the house. About sinking ships. Plane crashes. Wars. Speeches. I used to wake up and talk about my dreams, thinking they were like everyone else’s, and then Mom and Dad would ask how I
knew
about such and such, it’d happened so long ago. I’d say I didn’t
know
about it, I’d just
dreamed
it. Sometimes they would catch each other’s eyes and then Dad would shrug and say, “Odder coincidences have happened.”

But when it started happening during the daytime … well, it was just scary. It was scary to be awake and suddenly have the world
change
, to see things that weren’t there now. Had I fallen asleep? Or did I really have as little control over my thoughts during the day as when I was sleeping?

For our first dinner in the new house, we had a picnic of sandwiches on the kitchen floor. I was sure Mom would never let us do that again. She’s very into cleanliness, routine, and order. It was well after dark, so it was very late for dinner in July.

I opened my ham sandwich and inspected it. Just mustard, no mayo. Good, Dad had remembered. I put the bread back on and took a bite. It tasted dry and boring and stuck in my throat.

Lucca had opened his, too, and was eating the ham out by itself. After the meat was gone, he started tearing his bread into little squares. Every once in a while he’d eat one.

“How was the beach?” Mom asked.

“Oh, good,” I said.

“Yeah?” Dad asked. “Wish I’d gotten a chance to get out there. Maybe I will tomorrow, after I swing by the school and see how things look for camp.”

Dad’s a science teacher and sports coach. This summer he was going to be running a soccer camp. He and Mom had this idea that I should be his assistant a couple of days a week. I’d reminded them that I don’t
like
soccer, but Dad said I’d be helping with attendance and equipment more than anything else.

We were all quiet again for a few minutes.

I looked around the kitchen. It wasn’t familiar to me from my dream, though most of the house
did
seem similar.

I felt a chill pass through me again. These dreams were really starting to affect me during the day, when I was supposed to be awake and safe from them. I filtered back in my memory through the worst ones. Could any of them come true?

“What if something bad happens to you on an airplane?” I asked.

My parents didn’t answer right away.

Then Dad, more used to kids asking questions because of his jobs, spoke first. “You mean like being in a plane crash? It would probably happen so fast that it would be over before you even knew about it. Before you could feel a thing.”

Maybe he’s right and maybe he isn’t. It’s not like you can ask people who died in a plane crash if it was quick.
What if the plane dropped suddenly and you got that sickening swoop in your stomach?

Mom took her turn. “Are you worried about terrorists, honey? Statistics show that you’re more likely to win the lottery than to die in a terrorist attack.”

I almost bought that as comfort. Winning the lottery is rare, so that seemed like good odds. But … “I’m not even old enough to
buy
a lottery ticket, so there’s
no
chance of me winning the lottery. But if I ride trains and buses and fly in planes and go to public places, then there is
some
chance of being in a terrorist attack.”

Lucca didn’t say anything. As usual.

My parents didn’t really understand what I was asking. I wasn’t just talking about what if something went wrong with the jet engines or if your plane was hijacked.

I’m not really afraid of flying. Flying is kind of fun. You get to drink soda and look at the clouds from the top side and, most importantly, that’s how we get to Florida to visit Grandma since she moved there. I even flew to visit her without my parents, proudly in charge of Lucca, when Mom and Dad went to go house- and job-hunting in the spring.

And flying is how I’ll get to all those faraway places I want to see one day.

What I meant was more about how you go out in the world and continue being you when something terrifying and unexpected could happen.

I decided to try a different route. “Let’s say you’re in Europe
in the nineteen thirties or forties and the Nazis might invade your country any day now.… How do you calmly sit on the toilet to go to the bathroom?”

Dad actually put down his sandwich.

“Siena, this is the oddest dinner conversation we have ever had,” Mom said, her sandwich hovering an inch from her mouth. “I don’t even know what you’re talking about anymore.”

I sighed.

“Oddest or most odd?” Dad muttered to himself.

“Nobody cares about that right now,” Mom snapped at him. “Our thirteen-year-old seems to be having some kind of mental breakdown.”

“I am not,” I insisted. “I just want to know something.”

“I think,” Dad said, “that her breakdown is philosophical, not mental.”

“Meaning?” Mom asked.

“I think she’s trying to … pry apart the essence of being in our world.”

“It seems to me more like she has some kind of anxiety.”

Oh, my favorite. Now they were talking about me as if I weren’t there.

“Children might just be more anxious these days than ever before,” Dad said.

Mom, Dad, and I all looked at Lucca.

He didn’t look anxious. He was carefully stacking those little squares of bread into a tower on his paper plate.

Lucca is three years old, almost four now. There’s
nothing wrong with his ears or his mouth or his throat that any doctor can find. He did really well on the intelligence tests they could give him, the ones where he pointed to pictures and played with blocks, so he understood what people said. He just wouldn’t talk. The doctor said that sometimes anxiety might make a kid not talk. We don’t really know what Lucca has to be anxious about, but that was one reason we moved—Mom and Dad thought maybe he’d be less anxious someplace less hectic and busy.

The other reason was me. The weird dreams, the lack of friends. I’d refused to see a therapist, which Mom suggested over and over. That would only
confirm
that I was crazy: no thanks. I didn’t tell them about the daytime visions. I couldn’t add that to Mom’s worries.

So Dad looked for new jobs someplace quiet.

“Listen.” Both of my parents resumed eating but kept their eyes on me. “All I’m trying to say is, this world is crazy.”

“You’re being too dramatic,” Mom said.

“No,” Dad countered. “I think she’s got it.”

Mom came by at bedtime.

“You have everything you need?” she asked. “You have sheets, a toothbrush?”

“Yeah, Mom, I’m fine.”

She sat down on my bed with me and looked around my room, which was not quite my room yet. “This will be nice for you when it’s all set up.” She smoothed her hand over my ponytail, and then she pulled out my hair tie and ran her fingers through my loose hair. She had tucked me in this way every night a long time ago, but she hadn’t checked on me at bedtime in ages. I liked her fingers in my hair, so I lay down, even though I felt far from sleepy.

“Good night,” she said after a few minutes, and she left me alone.

It was strange going to sleep in the new house.

It seemed extra dark. There were no lights on outside the house at all.

I thought I could hear the ocean, just a little. There were no voices, no cars, no buzzers or elevators or air conditioners. No rumble of the subway underneath. No neighbors stomping around above. There were just the creepy sounds of the old house, of water in the pipes as Mom and Dad used the bathroom before bed, of squeaky hinges as they opened and shut doors, of floorboards. Constant noise used to lull me to sleep; these sounds stood out and kept waking me up.

The salty breeze coming in my window distracted me, too. It was unsteady and somehow damp and cool, despite the warm night air.

Would I still dream of this house now that I was here?

I sat bolt upright in my bed, looking around.

I’d heard someone, I was sure. A voice. Had there been movement in my room?

I must have imagined it.

I dropped back onto my bed, trying to catch my breath.

Then my door actually creaked open, not in my imagination. But it was just Lucca. I guess he was having trouble sleeping in a new place, too.

The morning was bright, and because there were no curtains or shades on my windows yet, all the bright got right in my eyes and woke me up.

I hadn’t dreamed at all.

Lucca seemed to be still asleep, his sandy-haired head on my chest.

I listened to the morning, to birds calling. And because it was early and quiet, the faint sound of the waves still carried up to the house. The air was sweet with all the plants and the water. It didn’t smell like pee or garbage or traffic or greasy food cooking, like Brooklyn did. Not that I’d ever left my window open. Air-conditioning was the only choice in the summer. Here, even though it was already starting out to be a pretty warm day, a nice breeze rolled in my window.

I lay there for just a while. Was it the breeze gently lifting the hairs on my arm, making me wish I had blankets to pull over me rather than just a sheet?

Lucca stirred.

“Do you feel that? Like someone’s here?”

His head moved up and down against my T-shirt, saying yes.

“Mom, do you think this house is haunted?” I asked as I headed into the wide, square hallway of our upstairs.

“These are your boxes,” she said, gesturing to a stack.
“Make them disappear.” Then she picked up a misplaced box marked
KITCHEN
and carried it away.

Had she even heard me? Maybe she couldn’t handle the idea of her lunatic daughter sensing ghosts in the house she’d bought so everyone would feel better.

I carried my boxes into my room one at a time. Then I got one of Lucca’s and dumped out toys for him on his bedroom floor. His favorites: plastic cars and trucks, Duplo, baby Playmobil. He’d play with them for hours. He always built the most intricate things.