Deadly Little Lessons Read online

  It’s like we’re speaking two different languages, which makes my heart clench tighter and the air in my lungs feel so much sharper.

  “Camelia,” he repeats. He sits me down on the corner stool and gets a cold compress for my face. “What is it? Do you still have that headache? Maybe we should call the doctor.”

  “I don’t need a doctor!” I shout.

  Dad scoots down in front of me and takes my hands. At first I let him. Because Dad’s the one who soothes, who makes everything better, the one person I can always trust.

  But then I push him away. Because this time, his touch makes everything colder.

  “How could you do this?” I manage to ask. Tears bubble up in my throat, constricting my breath, making me feel like I’m drowning.

  “Do what? Camelia, what are you talking about?”

  “I mean, who am I?” I ask him again. “Who was I before Camelia?”

  “Okay, now, slow down.” His voice goes powdery soft. “Take a deep breath and try to help me understand.”

  “Why are there no pictures of Mom when she was pregnant?” I blurt out. “And where is my birth certificate?”

  Dad’s lips part and his expression changes, morphing from concerned to horrified.

  And suddenly I don’t even need to look at a birth certificate. The look on his face is the only truth I need.

  I LEAVE THE BATHROOM, pulling the door shut behind me. Dad emerges not two seconds later. But instead of following me, he heads into the kitchen. I hear him from the door of my bedroom, leaving Mom a voice mail begging her to come home early.

  Meanwhile, home is exactly where I don’t want to be.

  I phone Adam, even though I know he’s at work. I leave him a message, and then stop myself from dialing Kimmie. I know she’d drop everything in a heartbeat for me, but I don’t want to ruin her moment, so I call Wes on his cell instead.

  “Pizza Rita’s,” he answers. “Are you interested in hearing about our cheesy bread special?”

  His chipper voice almost makes me regret the call. It’s not that I don’t want him to be upbeat. It’s just that I’m on a completely different emotional page right now, and I’m not sure I have the patience to catch him up.

  “Camelia?”

  I glance over at my desk. The emergency number for Dr. Tylyn is just inside the top drawer.

  “Are you there?” he continues.

  “Sorry,” I say, resisting the urge to slip into old patterns—to keep things a secret instead of asking for a little help. “I’m here.”

  “And how are you?”

  “Honestly,” I say, still staring at my desk, “I feel like jumping off a ledge.”

  “Trust me, it doesn’t work.” He sighs. “You’ll only end up breaking something, which will confine you to bed with your mom’s raw-inspired vegan cuisine, and seriously, when you really stop and think about it, does it get any more torturous than her Italian rawsage or her sprouted bean porridge?”

  I bite my lip, feeling it quiver, knowing there’s no way I’ll be able to say the words aloud. To him. To Adam. To Kimmie.

  “Tough day?” he asks.

  “I think I just need some fresh air. Can I call you later?”

  “Will it make you feel any better to know that my day has sucked, too? I feel like I wait around all week for the weekend, but then, once it’s here, I’d rather cheese-grate my face than endure another Friday night dinner with the fam. So, what’s your cheese-grating gripe?”

  “Is your father being a bully again?” I ask, much more comfortable focusing on him.

  “My father was born to bully. He even had that phrase tattooed to his ass. I’m not joking, by the way. Next time you come over, I’m sure he’d be more than tickled to bend over for you.”

  “Thanks, but I think I’ll pass,” I say, reminded of Wes’s journal. A few months back, he let me read it. It was basically a series of poems that documented his struggles at home, struggles that revolved around his father’s disappointment in him.

  In a nutshell, Wes’s dad has always wanted him to be more masculine, less in touch with his feelings. He threatens Wes by saying he’ll enroll him in the Girl Scouts and have his car painted pink. The truth is, as I learned from his poetry, that Wes is gay. Only, aside from me, he hasn’t shared the news—or his personal poems—with anyone. Nor has he wanted to discuss it.

  “Are you sure?” Wes asks. “It’d probably make his decade to have a pretty girl take a peek.”

  “Well, if that’s the truth, your dad has serious issues.”

  “And apparently, so do you, my little ledge-jumper. So, let’s hear it: what’s your motivation for taking the plunge?”

  “Would you believe that I’m just PMS-ing?”

  “If you’d believe that I’m the sexiest stud in Freetown.”

  “I’ll have to get back to you on that one.”

  “Don’t tease me, Camelia,” he growls.

  “I’ll call you later.” I hang up before he can argue and gaze out my bedroom window, thinking about my ex-boyfriend, Ben, of how he used to be able to sense what I was feeling without my ever having to say it. Right now, that would be a blessing.

  Like me, Ben has the power of psychometry—the ability to sense the past or future through touch. Ben’s power works best when he touches people—when there’s skin-to-skin contact. But my power works differently, sort of like what happens when my aunt does her finger painting. When I do my pottery, images come rushing through my mind. I sculpt the images in hopes they’ll make sense. And over the past year, since this power emerged, some of the images have indeed made sense—at least they have eventually. With Ben’s help, I’ve been able to save a couple of lives, including my own.

  But my power doesn’t work the same way every time. Sometimes when I’m sculpting, I’ll envision something significant. Other times, I won’t envision anything at all. And still other times, the premonition will be so intense that I’ll hear actual voices pertaining to whatever it is I’m sculpting.

  “Camelia?” Dad calls from the other room.

  Instead of answering, I pocket my cell phone, pull on some shoes, and open my window wide. I know that I should probably call Wes back. He probably suspects there’s something seriously wrong. But right now, I just need to get away. And so I climb out the window and run as fast as I can.

  I TURN ONTO A STREET that leads to Regino’s, the restaurant I went to on one of my very first dates with Adam. We sat at a table in the back, and I remember at one point during dinner looking out the window just as a tree branch broke outside, exposing two limbs that stretched out at sharp angles. The image reminded me of Ben—of the scar that runs along his forearm.

  I push the door open, surprised to discover that it’s no longer an Italian restaurant. A sign above the front counter says, WELCOME TO HALEY’S TV DINER.

  I turn back to gaze at the entrance to see if the exterior has changed as well. Maybe I was too distracted to notice it.

  “You can take a seat anywhere,” a waitress tells me.

  “Thanks,” I say, looking around. The interior is decorated with posters of new and old TV shows—I Love Lucy, Happy Days, Seinfeld, and Family Guy—and there are flat-screen TVs throughout the place, though only one is currently on. It hangs down over the front counter. A group of older people sit huddled below it.

  The waitress hands me a menu; it’s made up to look like a TV Guide with a caricature of Steve Carell on the front. “Is this your first time at TV Diner?”

  “Sort of,” I say, noticing that the rest of the place is pretty empty, that the old photographs of Florence, Rome, and Milan are gone, along with the red-and-white-checkered tablecloths.

  Despite these changes, the table at the back is still there. I head toward it, as if cosmically (and perhaps pathetically) drawn to the infamous tree branch outside the window. But the leaves are at their peak now—lush, vibrant, green—and so I can barely see it.

  I wonder where Ben is right now and what
he might be doing. After coming to my rescue a few months ago, he decided to go away for a while. He joined a homeschooling group, with the principal’s approval, only he hasn’t been home in months.

  I slide into the booth, suddenly feeling stupid for coming here. Why didn’t I go to Adam’s office? I open the vinyl menu, thinking back to that first date. After the tree branch broke, I remember how distracted I was, despite how sweet Adam was being. I couldn’t seem to stay in the moment, wondering if nature was trying to send me some message.

  “What can I get you?” the waitress asks.

  I feel a chill, wishing that I had grabbed a sweater on my way out of the house. It may be June, but the air conditioner overhead makes things feel more like late November. I order some food by pointing to the first things I see on the menu: a raspberry muffin, along with a strawberry milk shake, despite knowing I won’t be able to stomach them.

  I look up at the front counter. The old people are taking notes as they watch TV, as if keeping score or solving puzzles, and yet it looks to be a news show. A forty-something-year-old woman appears on the screen and starts sobbing into the camera.

  “Here we are,” the waitress says as she places my order in front of me, along with a couple of containers each of butter and strawberry jam.

  “Thank you,” I say, noticing a man on the TV screen now. The woman’s husband? Her older brother? He’s crying as well, which upsets the woman more. She tries to say something, but I’m too far away to hear.

  “Hello; hello,” the waitress says in a singsongy voice.

  “What?” I ask. Has she been talking to me?

  “You’re addicted, too, aren’t you?” She laughs.

  “Addicted?”

  “To Open Cases?” Her pixie haircut reminds me of Kimmie’s, as does her plum purple eye shadow. “It’s one of those unsolved-mystery shows—the kind where they ask the viewers for help. The difference with this show is that the stories are all fairly current, which means that the regulars here are totally obsessed with solving the cases before the police do.” She gestures to the row of note-takers. “Check them out. They come in here daily to watch the show. You’re welcome to join if you like. Just don’t be too insightful, or else you’re apt to piss Rudy off. He likes to think he’s the smartest one of the bunch.”

  I recognize the girl from news reports: Sasha Beckerman, a fifteen-year-old girl from Peachtree, Rhode Island. She’s been missing for six weeks. The photo was taken at the end of Sasha’s eighth grade year and shows her with a fishtail braid and full-lipped smile.

  I grab my food and head up to the counter, eager for distraction.

  “It’s the parents’ fault,” says the guy at the end of the counter to the woman sitting beside him.

  The woman pauses in dunking a butter-slathered cracker into her mug of tea. “Don’t tell me you think they’re the ones behind the kidnapping.”

  “Who says it was a kidnapping?” another guy says, glaring at her over the rims of his bifocals. “I’m telling you: that girl ran away.”

  “Well, I still think people need to cut the parents some slack,” the woman says.

  The guy with bifocals shushes her as the host of the show details what the authorities know about the case. Apparently, Sasha told her parents that she was going to a poetry slam with some new friends. But it turned out to be an underground party with no adults present to speak of—except for the one adult she was last seen with: a good-looking guy with a brown leather jacket.

  My stomach rumbles; I feel hungry and nauseated at the same time. I take a bite of my muffin, trying to tame the thick lead taste in my mouth. A moment later, my cell phone rings. It’s Dad, but I don’t want to pick up.

  “Your phone’s ringing,” the guy with the bifocals says, as if I’d suddenly lost my hearing.

  I reluctantly click my phone on and mutter, “Hello.”

  “Your mother just got home from work,” Dad says. “Where are you? And since when do you leave the house without checking with me first?”

  Since I just found out that for the past seventeen years, you and Mom have been lying to me, I want to tell him. Since I learned that Mom’s long-winded lectures about peace, love, and honesty are all just a pile of BS.

  “Look, your mother and I would really like to sit down and talk this out,” he continues. “Now, just tell me where you are.”

  He still isn’t denying it. The tightening sensation returns to my chest.

  “Camelia?” he asks.

  I drop my cell phone. It lands on the floor with a clank. The case breaks. The clip holder goes flying.

  “Is she all right?” I hear one of the regulars ask.

  I’m breathing hard. The room starts to spin.

  “Do you need help?” a female voice asks me.

  “Get her a glass of water,” someone else says.

  Their voices only make me dizzier, so I cover my ears and do my best to remain composed, wishing this were all a dream, that I could wake up and be the girl I thought I was, rather than this person I no longer know. This person who will never be the same.

  I SPEND THE NEXT fifteen minutes in the bathroom, regaining my breath and praying for the spinning to stop. Once I’ve managed to get a grip, I step out of the handicapped stall and return to the dining area.

  To my complete and utter shock, Dad is at the front counter, paying my check.

  “How did you know where to find me?” I ask him.

  “Don’t forget your cell phone,” he says, sliding it down the counter toward me.

  I glance at the row of regulars, assuming that one of them must’ve picked my cell up from the floor, answered it, and told my dad where I was. They’re all focused on me rather than the television now, as if I were every bit as intriguing as the girl on Open Cases.

  “Let’s go,” Dad says.

  I follow him out to the car, both surprised and disappointed that Mom isn’t in the front seat.

  Once inside, Dad locks the doors and turns to me. “We have a lot to talk about,” he says.

  “Just tell me,” I mutter. “I need to know if it’s true.”

  “If what’s true?”

  I squeeze my eyes shut, resenting him for making me be the first to say the words. Then I open my eyes and gaze out the window, wishing that I could jump out, and that it was a whole lot further down.

  “Camelia?”

  I look at him again. “Are you and Mom my real parents?” The question comes out in a whimper.

  But still he understands. I can tell by the flare of his nostrils and by how firmly he presses his lips together. “We have a lot to talk about,” he repeats; these seem to be the only words he can currently say.

  Meanwhile, I have no words left.

  I get out of the car to give myself a moment. It isn’t long before Dad steps out, too. He takes me in his arms, and I reluctantly feel myself melt. Tears run down my cheeks, onto his shoulder, dampening his shirt. I want to be angry at him, but right now I just need for things to be the way they used to.

  I’m not sure how long he holds me—if it’s for two hours or two minutes—but we eventually get back inside the car and head for home.

  Mom is waiting in the living room. She embraces me as well. They both hold on to me as if I were some long-lost treasure that they don’t ever want to lose again. But I feel like it’s already too late.

  Eventually, Mom sits me down on the sofa and gives me some dandelion tea. Her eyes look brighter than normal, as if she might have recently popped a pill.

  “Is it true?” I ask, still waiting to hear them say it, part of me hoping that they might somehow even deny it.

  “How did you hear about this?” Mom asks, kneeling down in front of me.

  I look at her—at her red, corkscrew curls and her angular face—and suddenly feel so stupid. Because what I once thought of as a mother-daughter resemblance—our almond-shaped eyes, our high cheekbones, our pointed chins—I now know is a resemblance between aunt and niece.

>   “We were going to tell you,” she continues, “but our lives have been complicated lately.” She starts to prattle on about how fearful she’s been for me, because I’ve been involved with all things lethal (avoiding being murdered, rescuing others, getting saved by Adam and Ben).

  “You’ve reminded me so much of Alexia this past year,” Dad says. “I think you’ve sensed that, too. And I didn’t want you to worry.”

  Worry because Aunt Alexia has a record of attempting suicide.

  Worry because she’s been labeled by doctors as mentally disturbed and possibly schizophrenic.

  Worry because she hears voices, and because now I’m able to hear them, too.

  “We were going to tell you when you turned twelve,” he continues, “but you just seemed so darned young. And so we waited until sixteen came around, but there was such a rough start to the school year, including your aunt’s suicide attempt.…”

  “Your mother told me,” I say, focusing on Mom, finally revealing the missing piece. “She called here.”

  “Did she call just to tell you that?” Dad asks.

  “Did she tell you anything else?” Mom jumps in.

  I shake my head, feeling the urge to scream, because this isn’t about my grandmother. This isn’t about what she wanted or what I said in response. “This is about how you lied to me,” I tell them. “How I have no idea who I am right now.”

  “I may not have given birth to you,” Mom says, “but you’ll always be my daughter.”

  “Our daughter.” Dad sits beside me and takes my hand.

  “So, is Aunt Alexia really my mother?” I ask, thinking how it was only a few months ago now that Dad looked me in the eye and said that Aunt Alexia and I were kindred spirits.

  “She is,” he says, squeezing my hand.

  I nod, fighting the urge to tear up again and thinking how it all makes sense. My touch powers, for one; both Alexia and I have the ability to sense things through our art. She and I also look a lot alike—blond hair, pale skin, emerald green eyes—even the nurse at the mental facility in Detroit said so. Did the nurse know the truth all along? Did Aunt Alexia tell her? Am I the last person to know?