Whisper to Me(49)

I held up my hand and looked at the thing. It was trembling, I swear, its long body very stiff. I wanted to stroke it and tell it I wasn’t going to hurt it, but it was an insect; what would the point have been? I turned my hand to get a better look at it.

The stick insect fell—tumbled to the ground.

Dad whirled. “For ****’s sake, Cass!” he shouted. He bent down and picked up the stick insect carefully. He examined it and then reached out with his other hand and gripped my arm, tight enough to hurt.

“How can you be so ******* clumsy?” he said. “How come everything you touch turns to—”

He stopped himself, like he’d been taken over by some possessing spirit and had just gotten control of his mouth again. That was what Dad’s tempers were always like—like he was under the influence of something that needed to be exorcised.

He stared at me.

He saw the tears running down my cheeks.

“Oh Jesus, Cass, oh, I didn’t mean …”

I twisted out of his grip and ran for the stairs.

“Cass, I wasn’t talking about—”

“Wow,” said the voice as my foot hit the first step. “Your dad really hates you, huh?”





So.



A half victory, I guess.





5. FREEDOM. Challenge the power of the voice and establish dominance over it.



This did not work very well.

Actually, you were there for part of this one.

Paris called; she wanted to hang out. We’d spoken on the phone a few times but hadn’t seen much of each other since she took me to meet Dr. Lewis. Dad was going to be home soon so I told her I couldn’t go to her condo, but she could come over to the house.

When she turned up, I was waiting on the porch. Paris was wearing torn fishnet tights with a fifties flowered summer dress. She looked crazy and beautiful. As she walked across the yard, you were just parking your pickup—she turned and looked at you as you went to the apartment stairs.

“Who’s the hot guy?” she asked, when she joined me on the porch.

I glanced at the apartment. “Him?” I had not thought of you as someone who would be conventionally thought of as hot. I also, at this point, was maybe not quite aware of my own interest in you. Although maybe that’s a lie; maybe I was. Because I remember thinking something very strange when Paris asked about you.

I mean, hearing a voice is extreme. But often, even when we’re supposedly sane, our own thoughts can be foreign to us.

The alien, strange thought that went through my mind at that moment, and I wish I could say it was the voice but it wasn’t, was: He’s mine, bitch. Like … like we were shelions or something. Weird how quickly we revert to being animals.

But I waved a hand in what I hoped was a casual manner as we went up the stairs to my room. “He’s one of the summer workers,” I said. “From the piers. Dad rents the apartment over the garage.”

“Sweet,” said Paris. “So you get to check out Mr. Guns there whenever you like.”

I shrugged, trying to appear more relaxed than I really was. “They’re usually working.”

“There’s more than one of them?”

“Two.”

She licked her lips. “Hmm. And is the other one hot too?”

“I guess.”

“Then I shall be a frequent visitor to this abode, methinks.”

“******,” said the voice. “Filthy ******.”

I flushed. “After six p.m.,” I said.

“I can come after six p.m.?” said Paris.

I’d been talking to the voice. “Oh. Uh, yeah. Any day.”

“Cool.”

I sat down on the bed.

Paris was a bit freaked out by my room, I think. She gazed around at the shelves and the walls.

“It’s very … clean,” she said finally.

“Yeah. The voice makes me do that.”

“Really?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Tell the voice my condo could use a good housekeeper.”

“Very funny.”

She picked up a shell from the chest of drawers; it was one that I’d found with Mom, on one of our walks on the beach. “How’s it going with the Doc?”

“Good, I think.”

“You’re reconciling with the voice? Making schedules, all that ****?”

“Yep.”

“And what about the source? Any progress there?” she asked.

“The source?”

“Yeah. The … What did you call it when you asked me? The trauma?”

I knew what she was doing. She was reminding me that she’d told, hinting at reciprocity. Basically saying that I should tell her, in turn.

“No, nothing,” I lied. “There’s nothing.”

“Hmm,” said Paris.

We hung out for a while—I played her some music; we ate some nut-free brownies that Dad had made. “Wow,” said Paris. “These are amazing. Your dad’s single, right?”

“Don’t even think about it.”

“Joking, Cass, joking.”

I showed her Dad’s bug room, and her eyes went wide as she looked at all the brightly colored millipedes and stick insects and beetles. “They’re gross, but they’re kind of beautiful at the same time,” she said.