chaptersixteen

There was no doubt about it now. Duck had lied to me—and about things he didn’t even HAVE to lie about, like the name of his counselor.

I knew there was only one reason he would do that, and that was to keep me from suspecting he had anything to do with the Mrs. I. situation. He obviously had no idea I already knew, and I thanked God that I had seen him with Gigi. I’d been ready to tell all that night. I had been ready to trust him.

It wasn’t a big leap from there to my next thought: What if Duck made those accusations against Mrs. I.?

Mr. Howitch had said it was somebody the administration couldn’t trace back to Gigi, and Duck was trying pretty hard to distance himself from her.

Besides that, he was a good actor.

He ought to be in this play, I thought later that night while I was sweeping the stage before rehearsal. I moved the broom back and forth so hard I could have peeled the paint right off the floor.

He could get a Tony Award.

After all, I had bought his performance, hadn’t I?

I told myself I was an idiot for having that kicked-in-the-stomach feeling. It was my own fault. I’d known better than to fall for a guy— ANY guy. Not even Ponytail Boy, who wasn’t helping me at all with his oil and his lamps and his wedding invitation.

But if trying to hold back a throat full of tears made me an idiot, then I was a certified case. That was probably why, as I watched K.J.’s last scene from the wings, I couldn’t keep them back any longer.

K.J.’s character, Mary Warren, was being pulled in half over a decision she had to make. On one side she was devoted to John Proctor and to God, but on the other side she was afraid of her BFFs who were asking her to live a lie that was ultimately sending people to their deaths. And if she didn’t lie, then she herself would be hanged as a witch.

The guy playing John Proctor, who had long ago ceased to be a normal high school senior to the rest of us, took K.J.’s—Mary Warren’s—face in his hands and told her to do what was good and right. But the power of her friends was too much for her—they accused her of turning into a bird and coming down to tear their faces. In the midst of the pandemonium, even as John Proctor held onto the weeping Mary Warren to keep her from being torn from the arms of God, she wrenched herself away from him, threw herself into the midst of the scheming girls, and screamed at him not to touch her because he was the devil’s man.

In the wings, with tears pouring down my face, I clutched at a curtain so I wouldn’t run onto the stage and yank Mary Warren to her senses. It wasn’t K.J. out there anymore—it was every kid who was torn between God and a dark world.

She was Joy Beth.

She was Celeste.

She was Stevie.

Maybe she was even Duck.

She was definitely me.

I was still crying when I drove home that night. I can’t give in like Mary Warren did, I told myself. I have to stay on the God side.

But staying there seemed to mean that I had to hang between the two worlds until I found out what I needed to know, and it was tearing me up inside.

“Is it safe here, God?” I said.

I heard the whisper in my thoughts.

One.

“But what does that MEAN?”

I pulled into our driveway and sat there staring at my swollen-eyed self in the rearview mirror like I expected God to show up there and answer me outright.

One.

“What is with the ONE thing?”

I kept looking in the mirror, kept hearing the word over and over until I felt like I couldn’t have another thought until I understood this one.

“Okay—okay,” I said. “One.”

I closed my eyes. Ones. I had to think of ones.

There was obviously only one person in the car right now—me. And it had been just me for what seemed like a long time now.

No, I thought. This One has a capital letter. I can hear it.

And I had seen it. My eyes came open. The Secret Admirer used a capital letter for it when he wrote it in my invitation—Oneness will be celebrated. You are being prepared to be One. Prepare to meet your bridegroom. You will be as One.

But that wasn’t the only time. I had seen it and heard it someplace else—but when? I closed my eyes again, and the image of the eye doctor’s circles coming together was right there.

When I heard the word DUH!, I was pretty sure it didn’t come from God.

I had to be as much like Jesus as I could be—Mrs. Isaacsen had told me—so we would be like One.

The circles moved toward each other in my mind. I couldn’t be One with anybody else. Not when there WASN’T anybody else. How much clearer could it be, for Pete’s sake?

“Okay, God,” I whispered in my pathetic little lost voice. “What am I doing that isn’t like you?”

I was hanging in there when everybody else had run scared. That was a God-thing.

I was praying more than ever—and listening. I was good to go there.

And I was trying to find oil—I was doing everything I could to help Mrs. Isaacsen, using my resources like she said. I was doing it by—

Lying.

The circles stopped moving toward each other, and I squirmed under the seatbelt that was still fastened across my chest. Duck wasn’t the only one who had been going for the Tony. Ever since I’d seen Gigi and him fighting that night, I had been putting on an act for him, letting him think I liked him so he would talk—maybe slip up and give me some information.

I did it for the right reasons, though, God!

But I couldn’t even say it out loud, and he obviously wasn’t going to accept that rationalization. Even the thought felt so un-Jesus-like, I wanted to vurp. Only one thing would bring my circle closer to his—I couldn’t lie anymore.

“Then what AM I supposed to do?” I said.

One, came the whisper.

“So if I try to be like you, I’ll know what to do?”

The whisper turned into a sigh that came out of my own chest.

When I woke up the next morning, the sun was streaming into my bedroom, and the clock blinked a scandalous 8:30 at me.

I started to scramble out of bed when Mom poked her head in my door.

“Get dressed,” she said. “We have a ten o’clock appointment.”

Dr. Sutherland was a tiny woman with a chirpy little voice who took one look down my throat and switched to a tone that was less birdlike. “It isn’t your throat,” she said. “It’s your vocal cords. I want you to see a voice specialist.”

“How soon can we get in?” Mom said.

“We’ll try to get an appointment ASAP.” She frowned. “I see some growths on your cords—could be polyps, or cysts, or something else. In the meantime I’m going to give you a button to wear that says, ‘I’m on voice rest’—and I don’t want you to speak a word unless it’s an emergency. We need to get that swelling down.”

“No school then,” Mom said to me. “You won’t be able to stay quiet around Celeste and them.”

“But—”

Dr. Sutherland got her face sternly close to mine.

“Are you a cheerleader?” she said.

“No,” I said. “I’m a singer.”

“If you want to sing again—period—you’ll do exactly as I say. We’ll give you a letter to take to your teachers.” She flicked a glance at Mom. “Most teachers are happy to get this news.”

I was glad I wasn’t supposed to say a word because I was sure I would have screamed that she had to be out of her mind. I had things to say—important things—to Duck. I needed my voice.

But then there was the whisper—One.

I nodded at the doctor and crossed my heart.

They got me an appointment with the voice specialist for Monday. Mom said since there was only one school day between now and then, plus the play, it would be okay.

“Celeste will make sure you don’t talk,” she said.

I was glad I couldn’t tell her that none of the BFFs were talking to me anyway. She looked sad enough already.

The only thing I could do for the rest of the day was listen and watch. The discoveries I made were very telling.

When I finally got to school, toward the end of lunch, I was at the counter in the main office signing in when I saw Holly—Eve’s former flippy-haired friend—practically holding a press conference at the other end. She was regaling a bunch of freshmen girls with the tale that someone had planted a cross on Gigi’s lawn the night before.

“Guess who?” she said in a sage voice that indicated they all KNEW already.

Interesting. Holly had always come across as kind of a wimp to me. She was definitely holding forth like a politician now. She was on somebody’s payroll.

As I made my way to class, several people looked at my button and said, “How come you’re on voice rest?” They didn’t seem to get why I didn’t answer them.

Eve caught up with me, and once she figured it out, she apparently didn’t mind my silence. She happily chattered away and barely noticed that I wasn’t chattering back. In the short walk to the science building I found out that she was an only child, she used to go to private school until this year, she wished she were taller—and she wished she were more like me.

I had to raise an eyebrow at that one, but she insisted.

“I always wanted somebody I could look up to,” she said. “Older girls have always let me down before—but I know you’re different.” To my surprise she looked like she was about to cry. “I’ll try not to let you down, I promise.”

I was glad I couldn’t answer her. I might have cried myself.

When I got to chemistry, everybody was talking about “those yellow fliers.” Deidre planted one on my desk. GOD WILL GET ME ELECTED, it said.

Deirdre tapped Stevie’s name at the bottom. “That wasn’t very smart of her,” she said.

I rolled my eyes. The fact that her last name was spelled wrong was more than enough to convince me that Stevie had absolutely nothing to do with it.

“Yeah, well, listen to this,” Deirdre said, leaning into me like we were part of some conspiracy. “Somebody burned a cross on Gigi’s lawn last night. You can only guess who did that.”

It wasn’t just a freshman rumor, then. In fact, it was all I heard about for the rest of the day, including after school when Gigi was in the locker area telling an adoring crowd that Stevie’s people had started the rumor, but she was squelching it because she wanted to run a clean campaign.

Please.

I didn’t catch the rest of it—not that I could have stomached it—because Duck was suddenly there, towering over me. Before he could hug me—VURP!—his eyes lit on my button.

“You finally went to the doctor,” he said.

I nodded.

“Okay. We don’t need to talk anyway.”

The look that had once taken my breath away now came at me like a drooling leer. I fastened my eyes on a point above his shoulder. He turned around and seemed to assume I was glaring at Gigi.

“I don’t even listen to that stuff,” he said. “How can anyone believe what they hear from Gigi? She’s always been a liar.”

For the first time that day I had the urge to use my voice.

Always? I wanted to say. You told me you barely knew her.

“She’s got that reputation,” he said—too quickly. “She’ll never get elected. You don’t need to worry about Stevie.”

It was such the perfect time to lay it all out and tell him that I knew he was a lying sack of cow manure. But I couldn’t speak, and I had to be okay with that.

One, I told myself.

One, the Whisper said back to me.

“Look—” Duck’s voice was suddenly soft and husky as he slipped his arm around me. “If you don’t want to go to that cast party at the beach on Sunday, we don’t have to. We can just hang out together. That way you won’t be tempted to talk.”

How did you know there’s a cast party?

“I know you like to go to the beach—but we can go on our own. I still have things I want to talk to you about.” He suddenly looked sheepish, as if he were about to make a confession. Just as quickly he covered it up with the smile that lit up his face. “At least now I’ll be able to get a word in once in a while,” he said.

I shook my head and opened my mouth. No matter what it did to my vocal cords, I had to say no to this date thing—I just couldn’t do it anymore. But he tapped my button with his finger.

“I hope the show goes great tonight,” he said. “I have some stuff I have to do, but I’ll see you Sunday. I’ll pick you up at noon.”

I gaped after him as he disappeared down the hall. I was still shaking my head—but he hadn’t even seen me.