Marilyn Kaye - Better Late Than Never

"Really? That's what he said?"

Jenna sat up. "You think he's lying?"

"Oh no," Tracey said quickly. "It's just interesting that he's had such a variety of jobs.What did you two do today?"

"We had lunch in a restaurant, and then we played poker. Well, my father played--I just watched. And he won!"

"Lucky him," Tracey said.

"It wasn't luck," Jenna confessed, and she told Tracey about reading the other player's mind.

It probably wasn't the right thing to do--Tracey was big on honesty Jenna wasn't surprised when

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Tracey scolded her.

"That wasn't smart," she said reprovingly. "I'm sure Stuart wouldn't be happy to know you did that."

"He knows," Jenna admitted. "I told him."

Tracey looked at her curiously. "What did he say?"

"He laughed."

Tracey looked appalled. "You're kidding!"

"My father is very cool," Jenna informed her. "He doesn't lecture or give lessons on how to behave."

Tracey murmured something that Jenna couldn't hear.

"What did you say?"

"I just said . . . that doesn't sound very fatherly."

Jenna stared at her. "What's that supposed to mean?"

"Nothing."

But there was an uneasy silence in the air, which Jenna finally broke. "Don't you like my father?"

"He's okay," Tracey said. "It's just that . . ."

"What?"

"Well, he just shows up out of nowhere, says he's your father, and all of a sudden your whole life is going to change. I just don't want you to be too disappointed."

"Why would I be disappointed?" Jenna asked in bewilderment. Then, something else Tracey had said echoed in her ears. "What do you mean, he says he's my father? Don't you believe he's my father?"

"I don't know," Tracey replied. "Maybe. But your mother hasn't seen him yet. And you believe him because you can't read his mind. Which isn't much to go on."

"My mother could have been at home when he came to Brook side Towers," Jenna pointed out.

"But she wasn't," Tracey said. "And maybe he knew that."

"That doesn't make any sense," Jenna argued. "Why would he lie about being my father? To hang out with me? He's not some kind of sicko!"

"Oh no, I didn't mean that," Tracey said hastily "All I'm saying is that you should take it easy. Don't jump to any conclusions."

Jenna glared at her. "I like my conclusions."

Tracey was silent. Then she offered Jenna a half smile. "I'm sorry. I shouldn't talk like that about him--it's none of my business anyway. Let's talk about something else."

"Fine," Jenna said. "What did you do today?"

"Practiced disappearing."

"Oh yeah? How did it go?"

"I'm getting better," Tracey told her. "I was able to go completely invisible for a full minute. At least, I think I was completely invisible. It's hard to tell, looking in a mirror. There might have been an outline of me or something I didn't see."

"Try it now and I'll tell you if you're invisible," Jenna suggested.

Traceys brow puckered, and she gazed at Jenna steadily for a moment. "Okay," she said finally. She went over to Jenna's side of the room, by the door. "If I disappear, time me so I'll know how long I can do it." She handed Jenna her cell phone and showed her the stopwatch feature. Then she stepped back a few paces.

Jenna watched. Tracey stood very still with her eyes closed. She breathed evenly and steadily, in a way that told Jenna she was concentrating.

And she began to fade. At first, it was practically imperceptible. Jenna thought it was her own imagination or wishful thinking that made Tracey seem less solid to her. But then she actually began to see through Tracey. She was translucent, and then she was transparent. Jenna couldn't see her at all.

She started the stopwatch. She was still feeling a little annoyed with Tracey for not being enthusiastic about Stuart. But Tracey hadn't had an easy life until now--she'd been ignored at home and tormented at school--so it was probably hard for her to accept people or believe in them. Stuart would work his charm on her eventually.

How long had Tracey been able to stay invisible earlier? A full minute? She'd been gone longer than that already. It was a minute and 19 seconds . . .

A form started to appear, and Jenna stopped the watch. "One minute and twenty-two seconds," she announced as Tracey became solid again. "Why are you so out of breath?"

Tracey was panting, and her fists were clenched. "You think it doesn't take any energy to vanish?"

"1 didn't think it was like running a marathon," Jenna commented. "Hey, I'm starving. Did your mother put out any of those nibbly things with the cocktails?"

"Go look,"Tracey said. "I'll be down soon." She was still breathing a little heavily, and Jenna caught a glimpse of a strange, sort of sickly expression on her face before she turned away.

Clearly, vanishing required a lot more energy and effort than mind reading, Jenna thought as she ran downstairs. On the other hand, invisibility could be a real benefit in playing poker . . .

A REN'T YOU GOING TO watch the basketball game with me?" Ken's father called to the person he thought was his son.

Amanda paused at the bottom of the stairs. This was sticky. Ken was seriously into sports, and he probably watched all the games on TV with his father. But she'd prefer to be alone in his room and wait for Rick to contact her.

They'd been "talking," or whatever it was, most of the day. Amanda couldn't remember ever having spent an entire Sunday sitting alone in a bedroom doing absolutely nothing, not even leafing through a copy of Teen Vogue. But it was so absolutely fantastic to be able to concentrate completely on communicating with Rick without any distractions.

But now Ken's mother was looking at him-her strangely, too. "You always watch the Sunday-night basketball game with your father," she said in a worried voice.

Now she was going to start talking about taking him to the doctor again. "Sure, I want to watch the game. I just wanted to go to the bathroom first."

"Why are you going upstairs?" his father asked. "Use the one in the hall."

She hadn't even noticed that there was another bathroom downstairs. She really had to get her act together if she wasn't going to raise any suspicions-- especially if she was going to stay inside Ken's body for a while longer. She wasn't in any rush to get out. Not now, not with Rick in her life. She was in love with him.

When she came out of the bathroom, she went into the den and flopped down in the big, fat recliner.

"Hey," Ken's father cried in outrage. "Since when do you take my chair?"

"Just joking around," Amanda said, leaping up.

"What's gotten into you lately, boy?" Ken's father muttered. He picked up the remote control and turned on the TV. Amanda just hoped he wasn't the type who liked to have running commentaries during the game. She was praying that Rick would contact her, and she could pretend to pay attention to the TV It was easy to figure out which team Ken and his father supported, so mostly she just needed to shout when they scored and growl or mutter when the other team sent a ball through the basket. She thought she could do this and talk to Rick at the same time.

But she didn't hear from him. She tried to keep her mind open, empty, welcoming, but she heard nothing. And she started to worry. Could Rick have figured out that she wasn't really Ken? She'd been trying very hard in their conversations not to sound girlie, but something could have crept in. Her feelings were becoming so strong that she might have given herself away. Fear clutched her heart. What if he never came back?

She waited and waited and tried not to let her despair show. She couldn't have been doing a very good job, though. Ken's father kept glancing in her direction worriedly. Then Ken's mother came in with a plate full of chocolate-chip cookies.