The next morning is Saturday, Diego’s day off. He’s at the breakfast table, chomping his way through Shay’s homemade granola, when I stop in front of him. I put the book down on the table.
“It says that psychics can get flashes from touching things that a missing person owned,” I say. “I’ve never actually tried to get the visions. I’ve always tried to avoid them.”
He nods slowly, still chewing, his liquid eyes on my face.
“I was wondering if you’d give me a ride to Emily’s house,” I say really fast, before I lose my nerve.
He stands up, still shoveling the last of his cereal in his mouth. The spoon hits his bowl with a loud clang. “Let’s go.”
Diego must have taken a page from Shay’s rule book, because he doesn’t say anything on the drive to Emily’s. He’s probably waiting for me to say something. I’m sure an apology is in order, for example, but I’m too nervous to give one, and I’m not sure what I’d be apologizing for, anyway. For hitting him with a book? For moving into his house in the first place?
We don’t have to knock on the door. It opens immediately, and Mrs. Carbonel practically grabs us by our collars.
“Do you know anything?” she asks.
Quickly, we shake our heads. The disappointment on her face is so painful to see that I actually take a step back. Her eyes have purple smudges under them, and her hair is completely matted on one side. Mrs. Carbonel always looked a little sad to me. Now she looks insane. She was always thin, but her khaki shorts are hanging off her hips. I think she’s wearing the T-shirt she slept in. It looks creased, and there’s a stain on it that looks like coffee.
She steps away from the door listlessly, as if it doesn’t matter why we’re here now. She goes right to the sofa and sits. The phone still lies on the cushion next to her.
“I was wondering if I could see Emily’s room,” I say. I’ve been trying to think of a reason the whole way over. I don’t want to tell Mrs. Carbonel why I want to. I can’t imagine what she’d think if I told her the truth. I can’t imagine how furious she’d be at me. I would be furious at me, if I were her.
“Why?” Mrs. Carbonel asks. I’m not sure if she really is interested in the answer. Even though we’re in the room, she’s busy listening to something else going on in her head. I know that look. The world isn’t real to her now. It won’t be real to her until her daughter walks through the door.
I’d thought on the way over to say that I wanted to borrow something of Emily’s, something to remember her, but suddenly, that seems really stupid. It would seem like I was thinking she was dead.
Then I thought I’d say I’d left something of mine in her room. But suddenly that seems awful, too. How could I be thinking about a missing T-shirt or a CD when Emily is gone?
So instead I just stand there like an idiot.
That’s when Diego steps in. “Gracie misses Emily,” he says. “Would you mind if she just spent a little time in Emily’s room?”
Mrs. Carbonel’s eyes fill with tears. “Oh, sweetheart.” She leaps up from the sofa and hugs me. She rocks me back and forth. “Oh, sweetheart,” she says again, this time into my hair. “Of course you miss her, too.”
Mrs. Carbonel hugs me really hard, so hard I can feel her breastbone. It almost hurts, but I don’t move. I hug her back, swallowing against a huge lump in my throat. The only thing that keeps me from crying along with her is not wanting Diego to see it. I wish I could pass just a little relief from my body into hers, but I don’t have any to give.
Mrs. Carbonel turns away, rubbing at her eyes with a tissue. “Go ahead,” she says.
“Can I make you some tea?” Diego asks. His mother’s son, that’s for sure. If I leave him in the kitchen too long, he’ll be baking muffins.
I walk into Emily’s room. I’ve been here plenty of times. Without Emily, it’s just a room. A bed with a pink quilt. A dresser, a chair, a bookcase.
What should I pick? I’m not sure it matters. I pick up her hairbrush and put it down. I open the closet, but nothing seems right. I run my fingers along her clothes.
I move to her dresser and pick up a bracelet. I don’t think I’ve ever seen her wear it. Then I see a framed photograph. It is of Emily at the beach, probably taken just this past winter, because she’s wearing a jacket and a bright striped wool scarf that I recognize. She’s grinning at whoever is behind the camera, and somehow I know it’s her father, on one of the weekends they spend together, because there is something a little too giddy about her smile. The light is just perfect. It’s one of those shots, one out of twenty-six on the roll, that you just get right. The light in Emily’s eyes, the light on the water, the striped scarf against the gray sky and rocks on the beach.
I pick it up and run my finger along Emily’s cheek.
The images come at first in pieces that shimmer. Somehow this time I can remain outside of the fear I feel. I know what I’m seeing, and I can concentrate enough so I can see it clearly, or as clearly as I can.
Emily. Emily and water.
Emily is moving, up and down. A boat. The boat is hitting waves, hard, ramming down in a trough of a wave and then grinding up a curl.
Emily is not afraid. She is laughing at the bucking boat.
Then the water changes.
It is a waterfall I see now, a beautiful blue waterfall with sunlight glinting on the spray. It is the biggest waterfall I’ve ever seen, but oddly, there is no sound now, where before I could hear the slam of the boat and hear Emily’s laughter.
Then I see something I don’t understand. Quick flashes of an object. It is cubelike, white, and flames shoot out of it. It frightens me. Fear settles in my bones and I feel it grow. It expands to fill the space between my ribs and my stomach and my throat. I feel the scream in my throat.
“Gracie!”
Diego is kneeling in front of me, and I’m sitting on the floor. It takes what feels like long seconds to focus on his face.
“What is it?” he asks. “What did you see?”
“What?” I croak.
“We heard you yell,” he says.
Mrs. Carbonel is holding a mug of tea. “What’s going on?” she asks, frowning.
I drop my head in my hands. I need to make sense of this before I say anything. But Mrs. Carbonel drops down on the rug and leans toward me. “Gracie, tell me what’s happening this instant.”
I hear the panic in her voice, and the fear, and I say in a voice that doesn’t sound like me, “Sometimes I see things.”
I lift my head. Mrs. Carbonel looks at Diego.
“Gracie has psychic abilities,” he says. “We thought maybe she could help. I’m sorry, we didn’t—”
Mrs. Carbonel’s eyes widen as she takes this in. Then she leans forward. Her gaze is burning with hunger.
“Tell me.” Mrs. Carbonel grabs my knee with her free hand. “Tell me what you saw.”
I tell her the best news I can. “She’s alive,” I say.
Mrs. Carbonel jerks and cries out. The tea spills on her bare knee. She begins to sob. Her face is so open, so naked. She sits perfectly still, but her whole body shakes with each violent sob.
Diego disappears, running. He comes back in a few seconds with a washcloth. He takes the mug of tea out of Mrs. Carbonel’s hand and presses the cold washcloth on her leg where the hot tea had spilled. Mrs. Carbonel doesn’t even notice.
“Tell me,” she says.
“She left with someone she trusts,” I say. “She wasn’t afraid. She was in a boat. Then I saw a waterfall.”
“What else?” Mrs. Carbonel asks, her voice urgent now.
I can’t tell her about the white cube and the flames. I know it would be too much. I just can’t do it.
“That’s all,” I say.
Rocky Carbonel is suddenly in the doorway. “What’s going on?”
Mrs. Carbonel stands up. Her skin is so tight against her bones. It’s the oddest smile I’ve ever seen, ecstatic, delivered. “She’s alive, Rocky.”
She walks across the room and grabs his hands. “She’s alive. Gracie saw her…in a vision…Gracie saw her in a boat. She saw her! And she isn’t afraid! That’s what broke me, Rocky, the thought of her being afraid.…”
I feel cold inside. Emily is afraid. I remember back to the first vision. However she left, things are different now.
Slowly, Rocky Carbonel’s face changes. Hardens. He looks at me with such anger it feels as though he’s shoved me up against a wall.
“What are you doing to her?” he says to me. “Get out.”
I reach out a hand to Diego. “Mr. Carbonel, Gracie is just trying to help,” Diego says.
“Get her out of here,” Mr. Carbonel says, each word a rock thrown at my head. He looks at his ex-wife. “What’s the matter with you?”
“She’s alive,” Mrs. Carbonel says, her face set in the same smiling grimace, tears running down her face. “She’s alive.”
Gently, as though I’m a newborn colt, Diego helps me up from the floor. My legs don’t work right. He leads me out of Emily’s bedroom, Rocky Carbonel’s furious gaze following us.
The front door shuts quietly behind us. I remember why I hate having what some people call a gift. It is not a gift and never has been. It is ten tons of concrete on my back. It is every misery in the world. It’s inside of me, and I can never get rid of it.
It will never go away.