Will couldn’t sleep. Did she really hear his vox or was it coincidence? Vox or coincidence? Vox or coincidence? God, he couldn’t stop his head from see-sawing back and forth. He drifted off into a weird half-asleep dream. In the dream, he discovered that she was some long-lost sister and that she had inherited millions of dollars and she was going to share it with her rediscovered brother and sister. That somehow morphed into an angry pack of O’Days all wearing animal skins and chasing him through a field of boulders calling him a perv and throwing stones at him. His legs flailed away trying to run but his feet couldn’t seem to get any traction. And he was naked.
He woke up in a sweat, completely entangled in a pile of twisted bedding. He looked at the clock. It was only one o’clock. Jesus! Was this night ever going to get through? He just wanted it to be over so he could get up and go talk to Wu and figure out some way of meeting this girl face-to-face. That made it even harder to get to sleep. By about 2 a.m. he was despairing that this night would ever end, and then the next thing he knew someone was banging on his bedroom door. Will looked at the clock. 9 a.m.! The banging on the door started again. “Who is it?” he said.
Wu didn’t answer, he just opened the door and bounced in. “Man, you lazy bum!” said Wu. “Some people live in luxury, being able to sleep in all the time. Do you know what time it is?”
“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” said Will, “I just couldn’t get to sleep last night.”
“Well maybe you shouldn’t be up partying all night,” said Wu. “But hey, it seems my new little sister is suddenly interested in you. She taped this to my door last night.” He handed Will a folded piece of paper. On the outside, it said “Wu.” Inside it said simply—
“I assumed she meant you, but maybe she meant it as an existential question?”
Will rolled back on his bed and tried to act surprised. “Huh, she must have seen us when we got back from the park.” Will knew very well that “who” was him, but he didn’t tell Wu as much. “Well, it looks like she at least knows English and can write.”
Wu sat on the floor and said “Yeah, and that’s not all. She also left a note for Ma Beth in the kitchen. She said she was sorry for breaking the remote and wanted to know what she could do to make up for it.”
“And she seems to have a sense of right and wrong,” said Will.
“Yeah,” said Wu, “And at least she is communicating now. She still waited until after breakfast to sneak down for leftovers, though,” “And she did clean up after herself which is more than can be said of me.”
Will picked up on Wu’s chiss. Wu was a “leaker.” That’s what his family called normal people whose chiss was easy to pick up. Of course, most normal people leaked chiss, but some people’s chiss was so quiet you couldn’t make out the words. It was more like a murmur. Others were like loud whispers that you could pick up clearly if there wasn’t a lot of other noise around. Wu’s were easy to pick up. Sometimes too easy.
“So did you reply to her?” Will asked.
“I put a note under her door. That seems to be how she likes to communicate. I just wrote one word—‘Will.’ I figured she likes short and sweet, and that is about as short as it gets.” Then Wu snorted. “Who. Will. Who, will, what, when, where? Maybe that will be her answer ‘what?’” He started chuckling.
“So this is how she communicates with everyone? Even Ma Beth?” Will asked, ignoring Wu’s chuckling. “Why doesn’t she text or email?”
“She doesn’t have a computer yet, and you know we don’t have phones except the two prepaid phones we share. Pa Bill lives in the Stone Age. God, it’s 2011, you’d think we’d at least get to have our own phones. We’re lucky we even have laptops, and the state helps pay for those. So just notes for now, except Ma Beth actually talked to her through the door after smashing the remote.”
“Well that’s a start, I guess,” said Will.
So now at least she knew his name. He wasn’t quite sure what should come next. Since she showed some curiosity about him, maybe he would just wait and see what she did next.
He didn’t have to wait long. That very afternoon when Wu stopped by to meet Will for a game of basketball down at the park, he handed Will an envelope. On the outside was written,
“I’m impressed,” said Wu. “She is here only four days, sees you from her window only once or twice and boom! you are part of her inner circle. She needs to work on her etiquette, though. I almost gave it back to her, asking for the ‘magic word’, but Ma Beth said to go easy on her these early days. So here you go. In a sealed envelope no less.”
Will opened the note. There was one word,
The word flashed through him like a wave of hot flame. He couldn’t believe it. All the doubts evaporated with just that one word. She was real. Will suddenly felt very light and alive. He wanted to shout and pump his fists but Wu was standing right there. Wu knew nothing about his family’s particular talent, no one did, but Wu was his best friend, and he couldn’t just blow him off.
“It just says ‘hey’,” said Will and he showed Wu the note. He barely kept a quiver out of his voice. He did his best to sound honestly puzzled, “What do you suppose that means?”
Wu shrugged. “I don’t know. Weird. Just ‘hey’, huh?” He looked thoughtful for a moment and then said with conviction, “Head-hard case. She’s one of the family.”
Will did his best to hide his sigh of relief. Wu had just taken it in stride. It struck Will how brilliant the note was. Blue must have known that Wu might see it, but it gave nothing away, and yet it told Will everything.
Will knew he should say something. “How about I just write her a note and say ‘hey’ back, and see where it goes? It seems that she wants to communicate with notes. The only question is—can she put more than two words in one note?”
“Hah hah. The question is, can you? It’s a wonder you even made it to high school. Maybe you could write ‘hey hey.’”
“Very funny.” Will gave Wu a shove.
What Will actually wrote that evening was this:
He would give it to Wu in the morning to slip under Blue’s door. In a sealed envelope.