The Gifting (24 page)

I write it all down in my journal.

Mean things are written about me in the girls’ bathrooms. Luka can’t see them and I don’t tell him. I have a hard time eating. My parents’ worry turns into bickering. I hear them at night, their voices escalating through my bedroom walls. I am at the root of each argument. Luka grows increasingly protective. Men with empty, white eyes haunt me during the day—appearing at unsuspecting moments, so I make a fool of myself by jumping or gasping for no reason my classmates can understand.

On November 28th, I dream about a teenager dressed in army combat boots, a trench coat, and a ski mask, with a familiar symbol tattooed on the back of his neck, only I can’t remember where I’ve seen it before. He enters a mall in the middle of Black Friday—the biggest shopping day of the year—and as he’s about to open fire with a semi-automatic in a crowded toy store, I jump in front of the gun. Bullets riddle through my body, but I can’t feel them. The next morning, it’s all over the news. A seventeen-year-old boy tried to wreak havoc in a mall in San Francisco, but his black-market gun locked up and a security guard tackled him before any bullets could escape. Not a single person was injured.

I write it all down in my journal.

Someone starts a rumor that Luka is using me. That his attention is all part of some bet. Pete takes the opportunity to reopen our line of communication. Instead of ignoring me, he goes out of his way to assure me the rumor is true. My parents are at each other’s throats, which never happens. Mom wants to move. Dad doesn’t think moving is the answer. Dr. Roth cannot contain his fascination.

And for the first time, I die in Luka’s dream. He is unable to save me.

Then he does something that surprises us both.

In the middle of the locker bay, right before history class, when the skeletal man nobody else can see lunges at me, Luka steps forward and something bright—like visible sound waves—radiates from his body. The skeletal man’s unseeing eyes go wide with shock as the bright, radiating force slams into him. He topples backward and disappears into a shock of brilliant light.

Thankfully, Mr. Lotsam gives us the entire period to work with our partners on our project. Luka and I make a beeline to the library and find a private corner to talk.

“Did you just—?”

“I think so,” he says.

“How?”

“I have no idea.” He looks down at his hands, as if they, and not the radiating waves, had shoved the man back. “I’ve never done anything like that before.”

“Luka, you made him disappear.”

“I know.”

My heart gallops inside my chest. Forget a wave of hope. This is a stampede. “Can you teach me how you did it?”

“I would if I knew. It was like a reflex.”

I scoot closer. “Maybe you should try it again.”

He looks doubtful.

“You had to have done something. Let’s replay it.”

“I saw him coming at you, but you weren’t looking and I … I don’t know. It just happened.”

“Do you remember what you were thinking?”

He turns his hands over and stares at his knuckles, shaking his head. There’s a long stretch of silence. The longer it carries on, the more my stampeding hope dwindles away. I want, more than anything, to learn how to do what Luka did. But how can I if
he
doesn’t even know?

“You have your appointment with Dr. Roth today,” Luka finally says.

I nod.

“It’s been a month.”

I nod again.

“Are you going to ask for medicine?”

“I can’t live like this.” Sure, the medicine will not fix my problem in school with my increasingly hostile classmates. But at least I won’t be fighting two battles.

Luka takes my hand beneath the table. “You shouldn’t have to.”

A book drops. We turn around. Summer picks it up, her eyes bright and frenzied, and hurries away. My mouth goes dry, because I’m pretty sure she heard everything.

*

I plop the journal onto Dr. Roth’s desk and sit in the chair, trying to push away the memory of Summer’s face. He grabs the notebook like it’s a hot meal and he’s a starving man. I wait impatiently while he reads my latest.

“May I make a copy of this?” he asks.

“You can have the entire journal. I did your experiment and now I’m done.”

He pushes his glasses up his nose. “Are you sure you don’t want to continue recording your dreams? We could—”

“No.” I shake my head adamantly, appalled that he’d even suggest it. Can’t he see how close I am to losing it altogether? “I’d like to go on medicine now.”

“What if the dreams are real?”

His question draws me back, because surely he doesn’t think any of this is real. I am obviously crazy. I’ve studied up on schizophrenia. The things I write in that journal—they have to be delusions and I cannot handle any more of them. I’m done with being
Tess the Freak
. Even if it means getting rid of whatever mysterious connection Luka and I share, I have to try if it means a shot at a normal existence. “If the dreams are real, then medicine won’t make any difference.”

He takes out the prescription he wrote last month with a sigh.

I wipe my palms down the thighs of my jeans. “Will there be side effects?”

“Medicine of this nature has come a long way in the last few years. Side effects have all but disappeared. There is a very, very rare chance of nausea and fatigue, but that’s about it.”

“How long will it take to kick in?”

“Another perk of medical breakthroughs. It should take effect as soon as the second dose. If not, we’ll consider this particular medication ineffective and try another.” He holds the prescription in his left hand. I can’t take my eyes off of it. “Of course, I’ll need to speak with your mother about this in the front office. There is a specific pharmacy where you will want to purchase it.”

“A specific pharmacy?”

“They are not required to report to the state department. They are safe.”

Safe. With his own word he has confirmed how vital it is that I get this sickness under control. If the wrong people find out how out of hand it’s become, surely I’ll be removed from society. “What about the rest? I held up my end of the bargain.”

He leans back in his chair.

“A deal’s a deal.”

Dr. Roth folds his hands beneath his chin. “Your grandmother was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia.”

“I already knew that.”

“She suffered from the same symptoms that you are suffering from.”

“Like?”

“Dreams that seemed to come true.” He reaches for the folder on his desk—the one with my name on it—and pulls out a stack of photocopied papers all stapled together.

“What’s that?”

“You aren’t the only person who has kept a journal, Tess.”

My eyes go wide. “You mean that’s …?”

“Your grandmother’s dream journal?” He hands it over. “Yes.”

I take the cool pages slowly, reverently. When Dr. Roth promised to tell me what he knew about her, I never imagined this. “How did you get it?”

“Let’s just say some rules were bent.”

I look up from the pages in my lap. “Where is she?”

“Eugene, Oregon. But I wouldn’t get any ideas about going there. It would be a wasted trip.”

“Why?”

“She’s not allowed visitors. Nobody in that facility is.”

Coldness settles into the pit of my stomach. “Why not?”

“Because the patients there are among the most deranged and delusional in the country. The director doesn’t believe visitors would be safe.”

“Is she really that dangerous?”

“I can’t say. She was never my client.”

I stand from the chair, shoving the stapled papers into my backpack. The thought of being locked away, not allowed any visitors, permanently separated from my parents, my brother, Leela, Luka? The cold lump in my stomach expands. “I can’t end up like her.”

Dr. Roth hands me the prescription, his expression solemn. “Don’t make this decision lightly.”

“There’s nothing light about any of this.”

The Journal

T
he pills rattle inside the see-through orange plastic container as I pace in my room. I push down on the white cap, twist, and shake two into the palm of my hand. My pacing stops.

Why would Dr. Roth caution me against taking medicine? Isn’t it made to help people like me? For all Dr. Roth knows, I could be two seconds away from kidnapping babies because I think they’re in danger, like those kids from my dream—the ones strapped in the back seat of a running car in a closed garage. I shake my head, confused. Dr. Roth is a psychiatrist. Shouldn’t he be encouraging the use of medicine? His counsel makes about as much sense as my dad espousing the many dangers of security systems.

I set the bottle on my desk, squeeze the two pills in my hand, and stare at the stapled papers lying untouched on my bed. Opposing desires dual inside me, splitting me into two distinct halves, one of which is dying to read my grandmother’s words. That half wants nothing more than to lunge at the papers. But the other half is equally resolute and views those pages like a leper. That half is terrified of having access into the inner workings of a madwoman’s brain.

I stand immobilized in the middle of my room, until the curious half manhandles my fear into compliance. I creep slowly to the edge of my bed and sink down onto the mattress. The springs give a soft squeak. I set the two pills on my comforter and pick up the papers. With my heart thudding heavily, I start to read.

Last night I dreamt about a plane. I sat in the cockpit, watching the pilot have some sort of seizure. I watched the flight attendants try to keep the passengers calm, their own fear oozing out from their stricken eyes, and I was moved profoundly. Somehow, with immense concentration, I managed to land the plane. This morning, there is news of a plane crashing. There were no casualties.

I flip several pages.

A bus full of students died because of me. It was my fault. James insisted I get help, but this medicine is making me weak. I couldn’t save them. I wasn’t strong enough.

More pages.

I can’t eat. I can’t sleep. He haunts me at all hours of the day. No matter what I do or how hard I fight, I can’t escape.

My heart beats harder. I flip more pages, noting that the further I go, the larger and messier the handwriting becomes.

Teresa can save me. She can make this stop.

The shock of seeing my name there, on the page, pulls me back. I blink at the two sentences, reading them over and over, then scan the page, looking for more. How could I save her? Is this why she kidnapped me? But I am not mentioned again. There are more dreams and disjointed stories. The handwriting growing more and more into a child’s scrawl. The words become incoherent, as if she’s racing a clock to get it all down. Fear and confusion pulse from every line.

I lay the pages down, unable to read any further, wishing Dr. Roth wouldn’t have given it to me. Wishing I wouldn’t have started to read. Because one thing is clear. Whatever my grandmother had—or has—is the same thing plaguing me. Prophetic dreams. The power to save lives. The belief that what happens in our sleeping hours unfolds in real life. Feeling haunted at all hours of the day.

I shove away from my bed, sit down at my computer, open up my browser, and do what I’m so adept at doing. Googling. Obsessing. Only this time I’m not looking for recent news. I’m looking for news from the past—archived stories. I search for plane crashes and bus accidents until my room darkens around me. My screen glows as I scroll through the different articles, taking meticulous notes.

Finally, I type in
high security mental hospital, Eugene, Oregon
. Dr. Roth didn’t give me a specific name, but I can’t imagine there is more than one in the city. I hit enter just as a gentle rapping sounds at my door. My mom pokes her head inside. I pull away from the computer as if I’ve done something wrong.

“May I come in?”

I click out of the internet. “Sure.”

She walks inside and runs her fingers through my ponytail. I want to cover up the notes I’ve taken, unsettled by how much my handwriting resembles my grandmother’s.

“Honey, this needs to stop.”

“I know.”

She runs her fingers through my hair again, her touch gentle and soothing. I wish I could crawl into her lap like I did as a small child, tell her about my nightmares, and let her soothing presence chase the bad things away. Only I’m not a little girl anymore and the bad things are too big, even for her.

I swivel the chair around and the question that tumbles out surprises even me. “Did grandma ever say why she tried to kidnap me?”

Mom bites her lip.

My attention zips to the journal on my mattress. I don’t want her to see it. I walk over and sit on my bed, careful to position my body so the journal is blocked from view.

Mom sits beside me, her face softening in that way mother’s faces do, as if she would love nothing more than to take my troubles away. She places her cold hand over mine. “Because she wasn’t stable, sweetheart.”

“So you think that’s it—she tried taking me because of psychosis?”

“What other explanation is there?”