There’s a thump that might
be my arm hitting
the hallway wall,
a shush of covers
pulling over my head.
The icy lake keeps on
sucking me
down
down
down
numbing
me
saving
me.
MISSING
Mom frowns at me,
one hand on the vacuum handle, her other pulling the chair away from my desk.
Why isn’t Furball in her cage?
I don’t say anything.
My Voice
My Brain
My Self
are still
Missing
MISSING, ROUND TWO
I push mashed potatoes
round and round with my fork,
Taylor’s sobbing
filling my ears.
Furball, she moans.
I miss he-e-er, she wails.
I don’t say that Tay
never
even
played with her, I just
smash and
squash peas.
Pressure on my shoulder—
Mom looms—
but I don’t look up.
I know it’s not the same,
she says, but if we don’t
find her, maybe we can
get another hamster.
Maybe even a—
Dog? Taylor cuts in,
suddenly bright-eyed
and breathless.
Rabbit, Mom finishes.
She’s not looking at Tay.
She’s staring at me
like she’s waiting
for some answer.
So I shrug
and start stabbing
the tofu.
MY VOICE
Ms. Radtke frowns
at me because
I’m not singing.
Everyone can tell
when she’s angry.
Her voice gets all
strained and shrieky,
like she swallowed
a mad cat.
Ms. Radtke is Madtke,
whispers into my ear.
It’s Tilda, a popular girl
from Class 5S who likes
to giggle with me sometimes.
But I don’t smile
at this old joke I made up
so long it seems like
forever ago.
I move my lips a little,
mumble-mouthing
random words.
Okay, everyone grab an instrument!
Out come:
the hand drums
some of the kids
start beating the
life out of, and
those tinkly things whose
chiming grates on me
like Taylor’s nonstop babble
when I’m in a super bad mood.
Ms. Radtke tries
to hand me
a tambourine,
this scraped-up
tambourine,
but my arms are
anchored to my sides,
and it’s all I can do
not to snatch away
Josh Lin’s maracas
so he will just Shut Up!
and Ms. Radtke keeps
trying to give me
that tambourine,
shoving it at me
as she looks away to
tell off a drum-banger.
And then
right when
all the music
stops
My Voice bursts out
zero to a
THOUSAND
in a split second:
I DONT WANT
THAT
DUMB
TAMBOURINE!
Tori! yells Ms. Radtke.
Yikes, says Tilda.
But My Voice has gone
back into hiding.
LIAR
I’m hidden under covers
and no one can get me out.
Not Mom.
Not breakfast.
Not Taylor.
Not lunch.
But Mom slips into my room
so quick and quiet
I can’t even pretend
to be invisible,
and she and Dad were
screaming at each other.
Tori, her voice whispers
close, her warm breath
wafting over my ear.
But something’s different
about her presence,
something heavy
and focused on me,
a planet whose
gravity pulls me
up to sitting.
Tori, she says again,
her voice cracking,
urgent.
Uncle Andy called today
to say
that he’s worried about you
because—
I’m frozen solid,
can’t cover my ears
—he says you’ve been lying
about things,
that you took a dollar from his wallet,
then told him you didn’t when he asked.
My stomach lurches, and the room
tilts along with it.
Mom puts a cool hand,
gentle,
on my chin,
turns my face toward her.
But I know you wouldn’t do that,
and—a muscle twitches in her jaw—
I’ve always been able to tell
when Andrew’s lying.
You’ve been so withdrawn lately,
looking sad, not liking
Halloween and choir…
Will you tell me
again
what happened?
TELLING, AGAIN
My throat closes up
and I can’t speak,
can’t say—
can’t say—
IT—
all over again.
And then—
oh then—
she looks right into
my eyes,
and she—
my Mom, Mommy, Mama—
she sees the words
written there.
She finally SEES.
And she makes a noise,
a gulped sob,
like she’s the one
strangling
instead of me.
ALIEN
Even when I don’t see
Her anymore,
That Face from right after,
I still don’t look
the same.
I look
in the mirror
and I think,
Who’s That?
Now I look at
my arm—
not in the mirror,
right on me,
right at it.
And I still think,
Who’s That?
And it’s like a night
a few years ago.
I’d walked into my
parents’ room
(back when Dad
still lived with us)
because I’d had a
nightmare.
But then I didn’t
wake them up.
They looked so different
lying there,
not like themselves.
All waxy and still,
not smiling or frowning,
just blank-faced.
And then I got all freaked out
and remembered
a body-snatcher movie
and figured
that might have happened
to Mom and Dad.
So I scooted on back
to my room
real fast
because the monsters
in there
were less scary
than my alien parents.
So yeah,
my arm’s like that.
And I keep pinching it,
but it’s like the pain’s
not connected to
the pinch.
Like my arm’s not
connected to my
body.
Or maybe,
my whole body
is taken over,
and my mind has the
hurt on Earth,
but my body’s
back on the home planet
with the alien
who’s taken it over.
NOO!!!
Nononononononononono-
-nononononononononono!
I don’t want my teacher to know.
I don’t want anyone to know.
Mr. Jenkins left a message, Tori.
You should have told me
you were having trouble
at school, honey.
I need to call him back right away.
Outbursts, failing tests:
he wants to know
What
is going on.
Mom, no!
No way!
No meeting!
I’m not going!
Fine, Mom snaps.
Then her lips relax.
I’ll just tell him, Tori.
You don’t have to be there.
She comes toward me,
arms open,
but I leap away.
No!
What? What are you talking about?
Tay pipes up,
eyes still glued to
her Pokémon movie.
Shut up! I shout.
Tay, go to your room, says Mom.
What’d I do? asks Taylor.
I need to talk to Tori, says Mom.
But Taylor’s already gone
SLAMMING
her way out
of the kitchen (like she does
so we know how mad she is).
Well, so what? She has
NOTHING
to be mad about.
Mom!!!!! I screech. Mommy!
And I stomp wild all over—
You can’t-can’t-can’t-can’t!—
like that little two-year-old
from across the street
who Mom always calls
a real handful.
But she says we have
to tell Mr. Jenkins.
What do you want me to do, Tori?
Her eyes plead with me.
But I refuse to answer.
And her eyes shift,
determined now.
She goes into her bedroom and
I can hear her voice low in there,
Telling him.
Telling him
all about me.
So now I can’t go to school tomorrow.
THE NEXT MORNING
Wake up, sweetie, c’mon.
The sheet strips off from the
bare skin of my arms and legs and I
wrap my arms tight around my chest.
He doesn’t know much, Tori.
Just the very basics, no details.
He was very nice about it.
And he knows you’re embarrassed,
so he won’t talk to you about it
unless you bring it up.
What?! She told him I’m embarrassed?!
Mom tries to roll me over but I
stick my face in the pillow instead,
smother myself in its mushy
sweatiness from the night.
Tori, you can’t let this
ruin your education.
You have your whole life
ahead of you, sweetie.
With every wheedling
word,
I stuff my face farther
down,
down into the soft damp.
You don’t want to end up like me, right?
(Stuff)
Stuck with Mr. Hadley for a boss,
(Stuff)
and no way to get a better job?
Her tone’s light
but this is
NOT FUNNY.
Then—
You don’t want the bad stuff to win, right, sweetie?
I bolt upright.
I just mean—Mom looks a little scared.
She tucks her head back, blinks a lot.
I mean you can’t
let it win—
you won’t!
She says this last
part like a cheerleader:
Go-get-’em, Tori!
But I glare at her, fierce,
so she knows.
Knows how much I hate her.
Laser-beam it from my eyes
so she can
feel it, not just see it.
Yank my robe off my desk chair.
Make for the bathroom.
SLAM!
the door good and hard
so she knows she is
Shut
Out.
SCHOOL
I slip into Class 5J
shoot straight
past a smiling Rhea
to my cubby
shove my things in
spear my jacket
on its big fat hook.
And there’s Mr. Jenkins.
Hello, Tori. Welcome to class,
he says,
which is what he always
says, but
it’s still hard to look up at him,
so I stare down at his scuffed black
dress shoes,
his face
there in my mind
staring at me
as if he knows.
Because he does.
And later when Ms. Radtke
comes to get us for music,
I hear them whisper and
I’m sure it’s me
they’re glancing over at
while we get our notebooks,
while we line up.
And in the hall
as my class
jumbles its way
to music,
Ms. Radtke has
a word with
the gym teacher
right next door.
Their eyes go all
directions at once,
but I can tell they are
looking only at
Me.
And I’m sure they all
Know.
LITTLE FISH
We went to Oakdale Pond today
to feed the fish.
Because it is Sunday,
and that’s what we do on Sundays
ever since Dad left.
In the summer and early fall,
it’s our special family time.
Even now.
I crumpled my baggie
of crumbs, squeezed
it, rolled it, first in one
palm, then the other.
The plastic slipped and
slid against itself until my crumbs
were little grains of nothing.
I held the baggie up to my eye.
I could see through my crumbs,
now too tiny to feed even
the smallest hungry little fish.
And there were Mom and Taylor
on the other side of the plastic.
Wavy and unreal,
like they were underwater.
Tori! You ruined your crumbs! Mom said.
Then she bit her lip.
Have some of mine.
Hey, no fair. Give me some too, said my sister
in her most irritating Taylor whine.
But Mom didn’t even hear her.
I was already staring into the water,
and it took too much effort to
lift my head back up.
I threw some of Mom’s bread crumbs down
into a group of the little white fish
who never gobble them fast enough.
But, of course,
one of the giant orange ones
barreled through and
the crumb-dots disappeared
before I could blink.
It’s not like I could do anything about it.
I was up here, and they were way down there.
THE FIRST TIME
Mom asks me
her voice stum-
bling, Did he
do this—did he
touch you
before?
I shake my head.
No.
Her chest collapses
back to normal,
her shoulders unhunch.
She is relieved.
I don’t tell her that
I got a funny feeling
sometimes,
maybe the whole
last year.
A feeling like
something was
different
in how he looked
at me,
in the way
his touch
felt.
I don’t tell her that
I kinda liked it.
That difference.
Like I was fun to be around.
Like I was growing up.
And now
that grown-up feeling
in my tummy
twists and turns
and wrings out
my insides.
And I feel like
a stupid kid.
Who should have known.
THE PHONE CALL
I walk into the kitchen and
Mom’s yelling and
pacing around.
No, you can’t talk to her!
Mom screams into her phone.
Who was THAT? Tay asks when
Mom’s done with the call,
still holding her phone,
staring at it like
she doesn’t know what
to do with it.
Grandma, Mom says.
She finally sets the phone
down on the counter.
Tay and I look at each other.
Grandma?
GRANDMA
Mom sits me down later
and explains
something that can’t really
be explained.