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  His expression changes. I can see the patronizing doubt in his eyes. “What are you talking about?”

  “The Trazodone.”

  “What about the Trazodone? Didn’t you confirm the test results with Dr. Zimmerman?” Papa rolls his eyes. “Oh, that’s right. You don’t believe the blood tests. You think she didn’t take a sedative that night.”

  “She didn’t. And she didn’t give herself the insulin either.”

  “Mira, how could you possibly know that?”

  I don’t answer him. He never did understand me. Why should now be any different?

  “Oh, I see,” continues Papa. “You can read your mother’s thoughts, is that it? Her memory reveals that she didn’t take any sleeping pills or insulin, and yet the blood tests confirm, without any doubt, that she did.”

  He takes a deep breath and lets it out slowly. After a minute or so, he speaks again. His voice is subdued, as if the words are difficult to say. “Dr. Zimmerman says she will probably never recover.”

  His words hit me like a boxer’s fist. Of course I already knew it. I, more than anyone, know how much damage Mama suffered that night. But maybe somewhere deep inside, I was hoping for a miracle.

  Papa stares at his hands. If I didn’t know him better, I’d swear his eyes were tearing up. After a moment, he looks up at me, but his eyes are dry. “Mira, we need to discuss our options.”

  “What options?”

  “It’s just a matter of time before she—before your mother’s body stops functioning. Why prolong the inevitable?”

  “What are you talking about?” I point at the papers beneath Papa’s hand. “What are those? They have Mama’s name on them.”

  He hesitates, then lifts the top sheet and hands it to me. I see now what they are, but I can hardly believe it. “Termination of Life Support? No! You can’t!”

  He rises from the chair and faces me, his expression pleading. “This has taken its toll on you, Mira. It’s the humane thing to do.”

  The space between us feels like miles. I see the sadness in his eyes and think of what Dr. Walsh said, that deep down he’s hurting as much as I am. But to terminate life support? If he really cared about Mama, or about me, he could never do something like that. Could he?

  I hold out the paper to him. “You’ve already signed it.”

  He takes it, laying it carefully on top of the others, and then rests his hand there.

  “Don’t,” I say. Grief and anger swell in my throat, constricting my vocal chords. “Don’t kill Mama.”

  Papa stares at me like I am a stranger to him, unrecognizable. I can see that I’ve hurt him, but I don’t care.

  His reply is muted and resigned. “She’s already gone.”

  I’m shaking. He continues talking to me, but his eyes refuse to meet mine. His voice becomes steady, practiced, like one of his political speeches. Whatever trace of emotion was there before has vanished.

  “I know it’s hard to accept,” he says, “but we must—”

  “Please, Papa.”

  “—move on, Mira. Don’t you see?”

  “Papa, listen to me.”

  “Be adult about this.”

  “No—”

  “It’s time to let go.”

  “NO!”

  My outburst takes Papa by surprise. His body stiffens in response, his fists clenching at his sides. But I’m not frightened.

  “She’s still in there! I know you don’t believe me, but it’s true. I’ve felt her, seen her—her mind, I mean.”

  “Mira—”

  “Please, Papa. You have to believe me.” Tears spring from my eyes. I try to fight them, but the battle is already lost. “Just give her more time, please. She wants to live.”

  “That’s enough, Mira!”

  Papa’s fist comes down on the table so hard that the flower vase in the center wobbles precariously until it finally settles back into place. We both notice him in the same moment—Jordan standing in the entryway. How long has he been there? He glances at the papers on the table, but says nothing. He just turns and walks into the living room.

  Jordan’s brief presence somehow quells the tension between Papa and me.

  “I’m sorry,” Papa says, rubbing his temples with his thumbs. “You’re right, of course. All this pressure—your mother—the investigation—those relentless reporters—it’s all just getting to me, I suppose.” He looks at me with an apologetic expression. “I’ll just file these in my office for now. There’s no rush. I won’t do anything until you’re ready.”

  He takes a few steps away from me toward the entryway, but then he stops. “Maybe all we need is a good night’s rest and a day off. Hmm? Why don’t you and I take a drive up the coast tomorrow, like we used to do when you were little? I could clear my schedule.”

  I remember those drives, though they were not always pleasant. What I remember most is Mama and Papa bickering in the front seat.

  Composing myself, I pick up a linen napkin from one of the place settings on the table and wipe the moisture from my cheeks. “I can’t,” I tell him. “I’ve got other plans.”

  “Plans? With who?”

  I have to think for a second. I can’t tell him about the Institute. He’d pepper me with questions and insist on sending Jordan to accompany me.

  “A friend from school,” which isn’t a lie. “We’re going shopping,” which is. “Of course, if you want me to cancel—”

  “No, don’t cancel your excursion on my account, but maybe I should send Jordan with you.”

  I give him the ‘you’ve-got-to-be-kidding’ glare.

  “All right, but at least promise me you’ll take your phone with you. I can’t stand not being able to contact you when I need to.”

  “I promise,” I tell him.

  “And let’s plan to do something together this weekend. I think you and I both would benefit from a little R&R.”

  Papa turns away and joins Jordan in the living room. They start talking in voices too low for me to understand. I head for the kitchen, which is empty this time of night. Its stainless steel appliances gleam, and the marble tile on the floor shines. It’s hard to believe that anyone actually cooks in here.

  Once through the kitchen, I continue down the hall to my father’s office. I don’t know why he calls it that. He hardly ever uses it anymore, not since he resigned from Rawley. Now he spends most of his time at campaign headquarters.

  I flip on the light switch, and the single overhead lamp illuminates the spacious room. Dark wood paneling covers three of the walls, and the fourth is nothing but floor to ceiling book shelves and cabinets. In the center of the room sits Papa’s desk, formidable black mahogany carved with Aztec-like designs. A statue of a bald eagle in flight is perched on one corner while an antique Tiffany lamp sits on the other.

  It’s been at least a year or more since I’ve been in here, and even then it was just to fetch a book from the shelf that my father asked me to find. But even so, it isn’t difficult to locate what I’ve come for.

  I wipe the layer of dust off the record player cover with a paper towel from the kitchen. Then I set it on Papa’s desk and plug it into the wall. I don’t know where his old records are anymore. Probably hidden away and forgotten in a box or drawer somewhere. Slipping the black vinyl disc from the cover and setting it on the turntable, I lower the needle into place and turn it on. As the LP starts to spin, I hear a few faint crackles; the sound is odd, as if I’m calling the artists from their graves to bring back the beauty that’s been gone for too long.

  Then…the opening prelude to Les Misérables begins. Not the brisk, powerful theme I’m used to hearing, but a slow, lilting melody. The richness and depth of the notes thrill me. I close my eyes and imagine myself sitting in the front row beside the orchestra pit. When the voices begin, the poetry of the French lyrics melt into my soul, and I realize that David was right. This is an entirely different experience than anything I’ve ever known before.

  Suddenly i
t hits me all at once—the music, Mama, those forms. I crumple to the floor beside Papa’s desk and let the tears fall until long after the artists have returned to their graves.

  At eight a.m. my cell phone alarm wakes me from a deep sleep. I shower, dress and snatch a yogurt from the kitchen before heading outside to wait for David. He arrives in a bright orange sports car with black racing stripes. Hopping out, he opens the passenger side door.

  “Nice wheels,” I tell him, dropping into the black leather bucket seat.

  “Thanks. ‘77 Celica GT. You don’t see many of these around anymore.”

  Once he’s in beside me, he revs the engine and puts it into gear.

  “David, are you sure about this?” I ask, suddenly doubting myself. “Taking me to this appointment, I mean. If you have something better to do, I can get there on my own.”

  He grins at me in a way that melts me from the inside out. “I can’t think of anything I’d rather do than spend a couple hours with you. Ready?”

  The car jumps forward, quickly gaining momentum. The car is an old stick shift model. Even the windows are manual. I roll mine down and let the wind whip through my hair. David does the same.

  “The car,” he shouts over the wind and engine noise, “is my uncle Ramón’s, but he lets me drive it since he can’t anymore.” Pride is evident on David’s face. Here, in this car, he seems confident and relaxed. I like seeing him this way.

  We jump on the 2 south and then take the 134 west toward Glendale. I printed a map off Google, but David insists on using the GPS app on his phone to locate the clinic instead. We arrive about twenty minutes later, park in back, and walk around to the front door. Inside, we’re greeted by an elderly receptionist with cotton candy hair and bright red lipstick.

  “Do you have an appointment?” she asks, glaring at us over the rims of her bifocals as if we’ve somehow disturbed her bright and shiny day. “Or are you here for the tour?”

  “An appointment, I think.”

  The woman looks over her desk calendar and suddenly she’s all smiles. “Miss Ortiz, is that right?”

  “That must be me.” I laugh nervously, but she doesn’t seem to notice.

  She hands me a clipboard with a blank Patient Information form and a pen clipped to it. “Fill this out,” she says.

  I stand at the desk and scrawl the answers to the questions: name, address, phone number, reason for visit. I’m not exactly sure what to say for the last one, so I leave it blank. When I’m finished, the receptionist asks David to wait in the lobby. She escorts me to a roomy office in the back where she introduces me to Dr. Frank Felton, a lean man in his late thirties sporting a scraggly goatee and a pair of black gages.

  “Nice to meet you, Mira,” he says, standing behind his desk. He extends his hand, but then quickly retracts it. Dr. Walsh must have filled him in on the details beforehand. “Why don’t you take a seat?”

  I sit in a chair in front of his desk and note the chaos; papers are sprawled everywhere, a coffee mug filled with pencils, and an open one pound bag of peanut M&Ms. So different than my father’s uncluttered desk at home. I feel immediately at ease here.

  “So, your therapist set up this interview for you. Trisha Walsh and I go way back. We went to the same high school. Did she tell you that?”

  “No, she didn’t.” She didn’t have to tell me. I recognized him the moment I came in.

  “Yeah, well…I’m glad she thought to contact me about your gift.”

  “It’s not a gift.”

  Dr. Felton leans back in his chair and taps his fingertips together. “Okay. What would you call it then?”

  “A curse. I can’t touch anyone without being deluged with all their mental crap. I hate it.”

  “And you have no idea how this so-called curse developed?”

  “I think I’ve always had it to some extent,” I reply. “I remember as a child I would get impressions or insights into how people were feeling or what they were thinking. It wasn’t a big deal, and it didn’t bother me then. I didn’t even know I was doing anything out of the ordinary. It’s only been the last few months that it’s morphed into what it is now.”

  “Was there any catalyst that may have triggered its development? A physical or psychological trauma of some kind? An illness?”

  “Not that I’m aware of. In fact, I’ve been pretty healthy. Except for my two recent visits to the ER, the only time I saw a doctor in the past decade was when I got immunized.”

  “Right. The new Gaudium law. Wish they had that when I was your age,” he says, smiling. “Would have made adolescence a hell of a lot easier for me. So, you received your Gaudium injection on your birthday then?”

  I nod. “Just like everyone else. But I guess it didn’t take, or maybe it was a bad batch. Because when all this hit, I couldn’t handle it.”

  “You became depressed.” Dr. Felton selects a pen from the container on his desk and tests it on the corner of his notebook. Then he scrawls something inside. “Trisha—I mean, Dr. Walsh, said you’ve attempted suicide twice despite being immunized and being given oral Gaudium as well,” he continues, setting his pen down again.

  At the mention of suicide, I tense up. Exactly how much did Dr. Walsh tell him about me?

  “You know, I think I’ve changed my mind about this,” I say, getting to my feet. “I shouldn’t have come.”

  Dr. Felton holds his hands up, defensively. “Whoa, whoa,” he says. “Did I say something wrong? If I did, Mira, I apologize. Don’t leave. Please.”

  I glance between him and the door, then cautiously sit back down.

  “It must be intense,” he says, tapping his lips with the side of his forefinger, “seeing inside another person’s head.”

  “Intense is a major understatement.”

  “Can you describe it for me?”

  Describe it. I’ve been trying to do that since day one, to put it into words, but somehow words always fall short.

  “It’s like a brainwashing movie, sort of. You know, the ones that flash all those images on the screen so fast you can’t really see all the details but you get the general idea of what you’ve seen. Only for me it’s not just images; it’s emotions, dreams, memories. And all the details are there, everything, except it all comes at me so fast and in no particular order—like a random info dump. Every time it happens, all those other thoughts crowd into my brain threatening to push my thoughts and my memories out. I lose myself for just an instant, and in that instant it’s like I’m someone else. When I wake up the next morning I’m me again, only changed a little. Those thoughts and feelings have become part of me. But I don’t want them. I don’t want any of them.”

  Dr. Felton considers this for a few moments, then he swivels his chair around, takes a book from his bookshelf, and turns back to face me. He opens the book up to a black and white photo of a man and pushes the book toward me. “That’s Edgar Cayce,” he explains. “Dr. Walsh told you about him?”

  “A little.”

  “He made a lot of predictions, which are very interesting, but he also did readings. Do you know what a reading is?”

  “Telling someone something personal that only they would know?”

  He nods. “Something like that, yes. Edgar Cayce defied all logic. He would lie down on a couch and put himself into a trance. In that state he would answer questions about people and things he couldn’t possibly know unless he had some sort of extraordinary gift. Sometimes visitors would need to touch Cayce to help him get the ball rolling, so to speak. And Cayce isn’t the only one. There have been dozens of documented cases like his, though he is the best known. My point is, Mira, that what you’re experiencing is not necessarily unique.”

  He stops talking, letting me absorb everything he’s just said, which seems to be that what I am, what I experience, has happened to other people. But has it really? I looked up a little about Edgar Cayce on the internet before coming here, and a lot of what I read sounded bogus. It reminded me of those p
alm readers at the fair. Plunk down a fiver and she’ll tell you your fortune, usually vague stuff that could apply to anyone. Throw out enough of that garbage, and something is bound to come true.

  I know one thing. I’m no fortune teller. I don’t see the future, and I don’t make wild guesses about people’s lives based on some vague impressions.

  Dr. Felton must sense my skepticism because he closes the book and starts shuffling through the papers on his desk. Finding what he’s looking for, he slides a printed form toward me.

  “This is a preliminary release form,” he tells me. “It gives us permission to study you. Of course, we’ll need parental consent for you to join the program officially.”

  He hands me a black ballpoint, but I don’t pick it up. “I’m not sure I want to be studied.”

  “I understand,” says Dr. Felton, though I doubt he does. “But I would like to know the extent of your abilities. It seems possible that you were born with a latent power. I suspect that something occurred to bring it out, to fully emerge. Perhaps that initial exposure to Gaudium. I realize that providing a reading may be uncomfortable for you, but it would give me a more accurate idea of what we’re dealing with here.”

  I knew this would likely be asked of me when I walked through the door. I mean, that’s why I came, isn’t it? Dr. Walsh seemed to think this guy could help me, or at least point me in the right direction. Even so, the prospect of exposing myself to the psyche of anyone, let alone a stranger, sets me on edge. Despite my own resistance, however, I agree and sign the form.

  Dr. Felton’s face lights up like a little boy who’s seen Santa for the very first time. He can hardly contain his eagerness. He turns around again, reaching for something on a shelf behind him. When he turns back, he’s got a thick wooden board in his hands about two inches deep and a foot square. He puts this down on the desk between us, then slides open a small drawer and starts to remove plastic blocks of varying shapes and sizes.

  “It seems primitive, I know,” he says, apologetically, “but the Zener test is a classic method of evaluating clairvoyant abilities.”