Excerpt: Shattered

I hadn’t been home long at all. Mom and Dad were driving me absolutely bat-shine. I really needed to get away from them.
Instead, they had Chloe come over and talk to me.
Like that’s gonna help.
I was sleeping most of the time these days, anyway.
So, for awhile today, as a counter-offensive while I was awake, I tried to lock myself in my room so I wouldn’t have to talk to her. Eventually, though, I had to go to the bathroom. I tripped over her legs outside my door. Cool as ice, she just got up and walked into my bedroom to wait.
So I kinda had no choice.

When I came back, she was fiddling with the music on my Mac. Mom and Dad had disconnected the modem line in my room, so my computer was just a computer. At least it could still play music.
“You have some good stuff on here,” she said.
“Don’t sound so surprised,” I said, closing the lid and nearly snagging her index finger. “What do you want, Clo? I know you’re not here on your own. What do they want you to talk to me about?”
Chloe looked at me for a long time without saying anything. I tried hard to hear what she was thinking. I even tried to go all anonymous in front of her, but it was too weird the way she was looking at me.
She turned away quickly and looked out my window at the garden. “You don’t really know me at all, do you,” she said to the window. It was a statement, so I didn’t answer. I sat on my bed and waited. I had a pretty good idea where this was going.
Her shoulders rose and lowered, like she was taking a deep breath. I couldn’t get anything off of her—anger, nerves, nothing. Weird. Then she turned back to me, pulled the chair out from my desk and sat down.
“Mom and Dad didn’t want you to know about me. They were worried…okay, don’t look like that. I don’t have some disease…well…I...” She was really uncomfortable talking to me. I almost laughed. This was the most she’d spoken to me in years. I wasn’t about to make this any easier for her; watching was too much fun. She had no idea that Jazz had told me about her time in Brooklyn.
It isn’t that we hated each other really—though it’s easier to talk about her, or our relationship, like that. It’s that—she was right—we didn’t know each other at all. And she’s all perfect. And I’m so not. You know, she’s the older sister. She’s beautiful. She’s talented. She’s…a pain. Right? You know what I’m saying, Right?
So, anyway, when I was eight or nine, my big sister just disappeared. Really. Mom and dad didn’t know where she was. I sure didn’t. It was totally clueless. No one talked about it. I, of course, imagined the worst. Like you always hear about those bus stop kidnappings. Creepy, right? I tried asking mom and dad to tell me what happened just a couple of years ago. Nothing. They pretended they didn’t hear me.
Yeah, that’s effective.
It’s pretty much the only thing they ever did that I thought was really crappy. Ever. It’s a pretty good track record, I’ll admit, but it’s also pretty lousy when the thing’s about your sister.
Anyway.
So she disappeared and then she was back. No One Said Any Thing. Weird, yeah? Then, without a word, she’s gone again. But this time mom and dad aren’t so frantic. “She’s away at a school!” they said, all happy. Well, I figured out they’d shipped her off to a private school—for undisclosed reasons. I’d read enough Harry Potter to know that this wasn’t such a bad gig. Dorms, dining halls, no parents, cool right? So she’s off having some great time in a castle somewhere—you know, in my mind—and I’m stuck in a-hundred-and-whatever heat in fourth grade in Tucson.
Fun! Where do I sign up?
Then she’s back again—but now it’s all freaky again. This time she was crying—like nonstop crying. Locked in her room. Just wailing for what seemed like weeks and weeks. Then she was gone again.
And that was it. I saw her on holidays. Sometimes she’d be back for a bit in the summer, to get her monsoon fix or something. But mostly I just never saw her. She went out of state for college, and we saw her about the same during that. Then she moved back here to go to nursing school. The University of Arizona’s nursing school rocks, BTW. It’s a big huge honkin’ deal that she got in. Not that the precious angel who goes to really expensive boarding schools wouldn’t get in or anything…not that I’m bitter…
So, yeah. I’m really just kind of getting to know my sister. Which, when you’re eighteen, is a little funky. But, you know…I didn’t seem to have a whole lotta choice in the matter.
To back up a bit, Chloe had just said, “Mom and Dad didn’t want you to know about me. They were worried…okay, don’t look like that. I don’t have some disease…well…I… ” And I probably did look all freaked out. I mean, I myself had just returned from the weirdest almost-three-months that I or anyone else could have imagined—living in a Psychic Teen Boot Camp—so when she starts out by saying mom and dad didn’t want you to know…well, lets just say my mind was capable of going to some mighty odd places.
But the nice part of me couldn’t stand making her suffer like this. Fun as it might have been.
“Clo, I know.”
“You…you what?”
“I know you were in Brooklyn.” I was unshaken.
I’m so brave.
“Riiight…when I came with Dad to pick you up…”
“No…like when you were in high school and stayed with Mina.”
If I had a cake knife with me that had been designed by Martha Stewart, her goddess-like self, I still wouldn’t have been able to cut the air.
“Well,” I asked, “that’s right isn’t it? You were in Brooklyn?”
Chloe nodded, slowly. “Who told you?”
I started to answer her. I really did. I really tried, but I couldn’t say Jasmine’s name out loud. It caught in my throat. Thinking of her made me think of Casey and I wasn’t going to let Chloe see what happened to me when I thought of Casey. She misunderstood my silence.
“It doesn’t matter,” she said. “You probably didn’t hear the whole story.”
“That you saw a vision of me and crashed your car?” My stomach felt empty. I missed Brooklyn. “I’m guessing that’s the first time you disappeared.”
Chloe’s mouth was going to start catching flies.
“Yeah,” I continued, all nonchalant. “I heard. What was it, a fluke?”
Chloe just stared at me, then shrugged. “I guess. I don’t know. I try not to think about it.”
“Huh,” I tried to look uninterested, “different time.”
“More kids when you were there,” she sounded a little defensive.
“True that.” I waited for a while, then I said, “so…what is it that Mom and Dad think you can say to me? They worked on me for a while then gave up. What’s your angle?”
Chloe half smiled. “I don’t have one. I’m here to listen.”
I waited for her to say something else. She didn’t. I burst out laughing. “You have got to be kidding me. They didn’t think I’d find that a little suspicious.”
Chloe chuckled and shrugged, “got me…I’m just following orders.” She just sat there smiling. I considered making her wait there until after the sun went down…just waiting for me to break.
Which I wouldn’t.
And then things got a little more interesting. I heard—or sensed—something outside my bedroom door.
Not something.
Someone.
Lindy.
My best friend from so far back I can’t remember how far back we go.
That far.
She was standing out there listening. Normally that would have really ticked me off. This time, I thought, “good girl.”
“So, Chloe,” I started, “what was it like to go the boot camp for psychics way back in the nineties?”
“Is that what you called it?” Her eyebrows went up, “Boot camp?”
“Yeah, I think Izzy called it that.”
“She the one with blue hair?”
“Yep, she’s the one.”
“I liked her,” Chloe said.
“We all did,” this was the longest back-and-forth I could ever remember having with my sister. That’s kind of sad. “She’s Casey’s cousin,” I couldn’t help myself.
That was a conversation stopper.
For a really long time.
I let Chloe stew. Lindy really quietly sat down on the floor outside the door.
“I knew him,” Chloe said softly. “Not well and not for long, but I knew him.”
“Yeah?…when he was a kid?”
Chloe nodded. “I imagine he’s changed a bit.”
“Here,” I said. “Think of him.”
“What?”
“Think of him. Think of a memory of him…something that happened back then.”
Chloe hesitated, “I don’t know if I…”
“Oh come on. Don’t be chicken,” I said. “It’s only a little mind-reading. You can handle it. Don’t glare. You can take it. Man up, Clo.”
She sighed. “Okay, give me a minute.” She closed her eyes, thought for a moment, then nodded, “allllllright.”
I watched her face while I looked at her memory. And there he was. He took my breath away even without touching me. He was so adorable. His teeth looked a little too big for him, still. He wasn’t very tall yet. And he looked…frightened…
I lingered there as long as I could, watching him. Watching how he was.
How he was.
I shook it off.
“Thanks, Clo.” I whispered.
“He was just a kid,” she said.
I nodded.
“I didn’t know him very well,” she said. “Sorry.”
“Naw…that was…that was good.”
“You miss him?” She asked.
I couldn’t talk. I nodded.
“What’re you going to do?”
I shrugged.
“That’s why Mom and Dad wanted me to talk to you. To find out what you were going to do.”
“Well,” I cleared my throat, “they can relax because I have no idea. I’m not doing anything. I’m staying in my room, not talking to or emailing my friends in Brooklyn because they won’t let me and… I have no idea what I’m doing.”
“Well, I do,” said a voiced from the doorway, “you’re gonna fill me in on all that weird stuff you guys just said then we’re gonna hit the road and go rescue this hot, broken guy of yours, Rosie, y’know?”
Lindy entered, hands on hips, eyes excited. “I want details. Now.”