Sarah Stevenson - Underneath (Sarah Jamila Stevenson)

At first I resist. I’m tired of my problems and I’m sick of everybody else’s issues, too. And I don’t want to cry anymore.

But for a second, I do.

“Sit with me for a minute, okay?” Auntie Mina says gently. “I’ll make you a cup of hot tea with honey, and then you can escape.”

I swallow, my throat dry and swollen. Tea and honey might not be a bad idea. Just for a minute.

I sit at the kitchen table, leaning my chin in my left hand as Auntie Mina fills the electric teakettle with water. I know she wants to talk, or she would have just put a cup of water in the microwave.

Correction: she wants me to talk.

But there’s too much to say.

We sit in silence for a while, me clenching my teeth, Auntie Mina grading a stack of quizzes from the computer science class she’s now teaching at the college extension. Every so often she looks up at me with a sympathetic smile, pushing one graying lock of dark hair back behind her ear.

Eventually, sitting and waiting for the kettle to whistle, I do say something. It sounds like a question. But it really isn’t, because I think I already know the answer.

“What do you do if you’re disappointed by somebody you really thought you cared about? Like maybe they’re not the person you thought they were. And the person they are … isn’t someone you want to be around.” It sounds stupid, childish, when I say it out loud. But it’s true.

Auntie Mina is quiet for a minute, thinking, but looking at me seriously. Then I’m horrified, because I wonder if she thinks I’m talking about her and Uncle Randall.

“I mean—” I start to try to backpedal.

“It’s okay,” she says with a small smile. “I know. It’s hard at your age, when everybody’s figuring out who they are and who they really want to be. Trying one thing out or another. Even new friends.” She looks at me intently. “It can happen at any age.”

“It’s not just them who’s different, though,” I say. I look down, stare at a faint stain on the surface of the table. “It’s me.”

She gets up, pours the hot water into two mugs, and brings them to the table with a basket of tea bags. For a moment she just sits there pensively, dunking a tea bag in and out of her mug.

“It’s always like that, I suppose,” she finally says, sighing. “Yes, sometimes the person you thought you knew turns out to be very different after all. But sometimes—sometimes you figure something out about your own needs, too, your own goals and dreams, and those might not be the same as everybody else’s. They shouldn’t be, because you’re your own person.”

She puts one hand over mine. I look down at her neatly trimmed fingernails, the wiry strength in her slender fingers that I never seemed to notice before.

My own person. I think about Cody, about how I’d always thought he was so individualistic and determined. I thought he really wanted more out of his life than he was getting, like maybe he’d graduate and go on to be some kind of artistic mastermind or form his own startup company or something else that misunderstood geniuses do.

Oh, he wants things to be different. He wants everything to revolve around him .

And then I think about Uncle Randall, and how Auntie Mina must have felt over the years, slowly finding out with every argument that he wasn’t the fairy-tale prince she thought he was. I feel like crying again, but instead I just let out a long, shaky breath.

“You have to be strong,” Auntie Mina says, her voice thick with emotion, squeezing my hand once more before releasing it. I’m not quite sure whether she’s talking to me or to both of us.

Later that night, lying in bed, I’m thinking again about what she said. About being strong. I assumed Cody was strong. Then I realized how easily cracked that icy shell really was. That isn’t real strength. Clinging to your own petty little wants at any cost, even when they’re impossible or hurtful.

Letting go, maybe, is what takes real strength.

Sometimes, though, you can’t just let go. Sometimes you have to learn to live with things.

I wonder if I can be strong enough to learn to live with my underhearing, to really figure out how to use it, and how not to. I don’t know if I’m capable of it. But I have more control over it now than I ever did. Nobody else can do it for me. I have to try.

I pull my knees in to my chest and huddle under the sheets. It seems so difficult. There are so many things I can’t do. I can’t go back in time and make Shiri not want to die. I can’t force Uncle Randall to be the person Auntie Mina wants him to be. I can’t help Cody, not the way he wants me to, because I’m not that kind of person.

It’s hard enough to live with my ability to underhear. If I did help Cody, I wouldn’t be able to live with myself.

During my library period the next day, I check my school email. Click on the link that takes me to Voice of the Underground . I read it all again, this time in its entirety. I check for references to me, to my underhearing. I have to know for sure if Cody said anything about me. Not because I can do anything about it. I just need to know what kind of person he really is; no illusions. I scour it twice; three times.

All I find are vague references to the Psychic Friends Network. To “mysterious sources” and “secret information.” And that stupid JV swim hottie thing. My name isn’t anywhere. Not even my initials.

I’m surprised, and a little relieved. But I don’t really feel better. All it does is drive home the point that I never really mattered to him; didn’t really exist as a person in his eyes. Just a tool to be used.

At lunchtime, I go to my car to eat, sitting on the driver’s side with my food on the seat next to me. I put my earbuds in and blast the Beatles’ “Nowhere Man.” For the first time in a long time, I think about Shiri and don’t feel like I’m being stabbed in the gut. But I’m not happy.

The rest of the day passes uneventfully, and by some miracle, I pull a B+ on a history pop quiz despite being a chapter behind on reading. After school, I sit on my bed dangling a toy mouse in front of Pixie. Should I call Mikaela? I don’t know what I would say, but I want to make sure we’re okay at least. Maybe she’s not even mad at me. I should have called earlier. Yesterday, maybe.

I’m just digging my cell phone out of my backpack when the home phone rings. Auntie Mina comes out of the guest room and shouts down the stairs, “I’ll get it. Don’t pick it up! I’m on my way down.” Her muffled footsteps recede.

How could I have forgotten? It’s Uncle Randall. Right on schedule, and brought to you by the home phone. The only difference this time is that they’ve had their first marriage counseling appointment, but Auntie Mina refused to tell us how it went. All she told us was that they’re supposed to talk more about the trial separation.

The ringing stops abruptly as Auntie Mina picks up. My stomach flip-flops and I decide to head downstairs. When I get there, I notice that the study door is closed. I can’t hear anything. Mom’s not home from work but Dad is sitting stiffly at the kitchen table, so I sink into one of the empty chairs and nervously start fiddling with the salt shaker. My hands are trembling and I drop it, scattering grains of salt.

“Sorry.”

My dad glances up from the Sudoku puzzle he’s pretending to do. He’s sitting there with his pencil poised, but he’s not actually filling in numbers. The pencil is shaking ever so slightly. My heart twists.

I sweep the grains of spilled salt into my hand, get up, and dump them into the sink. On the way back to the table, I stop behind my dad’s chair and give him a hug, squeezing his neck the way I used to when I was little. His hair smells like tea-tree shampoo. “Love you, Dad.”