The Gifting (Book 1 in The Gifting Series) Read online

  Chapter Fourteen

  Interrogation

  It’s the first time I’ve fought in a dream. You’d think I’d wake up empowered. Instead, I feel jittery and weak, like a diabetic in need of sugar. I saw Dr. Roth on Monday. He hypnotized me. And now I have had nightmares two nights in a row. It can’t be a coincidence.

  A faint throb pulses in my temples—the beginnings of a headache—as I shuffle into the kitchen, wearing the same ratty jeans from yesterday and a slightly more respectable purplish gray sweater.

  “Your eyes look stunning in that color,” Mom says.

  I grab a bagel from the toaster.

  She cups my chin and rubs her thumb beneath my eyes. “Still having bad dreams?”

  My throat tightens. I’m so ready for this to be over. To outgrow these nightmares, if they are something I can outgrow. I pull away from Mom and pick up the butter knife next to the opened container of cream cheese while Dad crosses his ankle over his knee and holds the paper open wide. “Hard to believe it’s been sixteen years since Newport.”

  Mom pours me a glass of juice and shakes her head, like she doesn’t even have words. Dad reads snippets of the article out loud. For some reason, it settles me. Puts things in perspective. I was only one when the attack happened, when a terrorist group bombed the Naval Underwater Warfare Center in Newport, Rhode Island, completely decimating an entire city. More people died than in Pearl Harbor and 9-11 combined.

  Dad mumbles something about learning our lesson, then turns a page. “Looks like there was a close call last night on the Golden Gate Bridge.”

  A glob of white falls off my knife.

  He clucks his tongue. “What can be so bad in this world that would prompt a fourteen-year-old girl to try and kill herself?”

  I grab the paper out of Dad’s hand.

  Both of his feet come to the floor. “Tess!”

  But I am not apologetic. I’m too busy ravishing the paper, looking for a picture. And there she is. April Yodel. Fourteen years old. The same girl from last night’s dream. The same girl being taunted by the man I wrestled off the bridge. Apparently, authorities reached her before she could jump.

  “Honey?” Mom pulls down the paper and looks me in the face. “Are you okay?”

  Dad stands from his chair. “You’re as white as a sheet, kiddo.”

  I hand the paper back to Dad with icy fingers, my body trembling like an earthquake.

  “Tess, you’re scaring us.” Mom cups my forehead like she used to do when I was little, and the worst life had to offer was a fever. “Sweetie, you’re as clammy as can be.”

  First Dr. Chang and that nurse at a fetal modification clinic and now this girl—April Yodel. What is going on? What is happening to me? I clap my hand over my mouth, then turn around and run up the stairs. I am going to be sick.

  Mom tries to convince me stay home from school, but I insist on going. I do not want to sit at home by myself. I cannot give myself too much time to think about any of this. The more I can keep my brain occupied, the better. And despite my slipping sanity, I want to see Luka. I want to work with him today in History.

  So I take two Excedrin and I force myself to eat some crackers. Still, my hands shake like I have Parkinson’s. Pete stares at them the entire drive to school, like he doesn’t trust me behind the wheel. He turned sixteen last week. Maybe he should drive. As soon as I get to my locker, Leela descends with a bagful of questions. Someone told her the news.

  You are partners with Luka?

  You were talking outside the main locker bay?

  What were you talking about?

  How are you not more excited?

  When I don’t answer coherently, she asks if I’m okay. I nod, focusing all my attention on getting to class and sitting down. Sitting down will be good.

  We arrive before Luka. I rest my head in the crook of my arm and take deep, calming breaths. I don’t let myself think about the dream or that girl. Instead, I focus on breathing. I tell myself I am a normal teenager with a normal crush on the cute boy in school. Then I smell fabric softener and wintergreen and any hope for calming breaths swooshes away. Luka has taken the seat to my left, his hair so messy it looks as if he spent the morning raking his hands through it. Only he’s Luka, so he pulls it off. He glances at me, his jaw tight, something intense flashing in his eyes when ours connect. He looks like he’s going to say something or ask something, but I curl my fingers around the back of my neck and let my hair fall like a curtain between us.

  The bell rings.

  Mr. Lotsam writes on the white board, the tip of his dry erase marker squeak, squeak, squeaking as he does. Newport. 16 Years. And that’s when I see it. Darkness at first, like a mysterious shadow in the middle of the room, expanding and blackening, until all of a sudden, it’s the same figure from last night’s dream. The skeletal, frightening man with white, unseeing eyes. His mouth stretches into a sinister smile and without warning, he lunges at me.

  I suck in a sharp, loud breath, close my eyes, and rear back in my chair—so forcefully I slam into the wall behind me. When my eyes pop open, the man is gone. My heart flutters like the wings of a hummingbird.

  Leela stares. Luka stares. I’m pretty sure every single person in the classroom stares.

  Did I fall asleep? Did I have a nightmare in class?

  Without asking to be excused, I grab my backpack and hurry out of the room. I sprint down the hall. I don’t wait to see if Mr. Lotsam or Leela come after me. I run out of the building and I get into my car and I drive to the Edward Brooks Facility.

  I need to speak with Dr. Roth.

  “What did you do to me?”

  Dr. Roth looks up from whatever he’s working on at his desk.

  I walk over to him, plant my palms flat on his desk, and glare. “I want to know what you did to me during hypnosis.”

  “I didn’t do anything except bring you through a few relaxation exercises.”

  “That’s it?”

  Dr. Roth looks at me sympathetically and motions to the chair on the other side of his desk, not the red cushy ones we usually sit in. I wonder how many insane people he has diagnosed throughout the years.

  “Why don’t you have a seat, Tess. You can tell me what’s going on.”

  I sit down and clutch my bag in my lap while he removes my manila folder from the file cabinet behind him and begins scanning the papers.

  “Is there anything in there about my grandmother?”

  His attention snaps up. “I wasn’t aware you knew about your grandmother.”

  “I overheard my parents talking.”

  Dr. Roth doesn’t say anything for a while. The silence gives me too much time to think. A thousand questions somersault through my brain. No matter how hard I try to make them sit still, they keep hurtling over each other. I don’t know where to start. “You obviously know about her.”

  He nods.

  “Do I have what she had?”

  He scratches his goatee. “I’m not sure.”

  “My parents say she suffered from psychosis.”

  He stares, unblinking.

  “Are they right?”

  Dr. Roth takes off his glasses, rubs the corners of his eyes, then puts them back on.

  “Do you trust me, Tess?”

  I clutch my backpack in my lap, unsure. “I don’t know.”

  “I need you to believe that everything we talk about here is confidential. I won’t report anything to the authorities. I won’t tell your parents. I won’t even plug anything into the computer.” He holds up the folder, a reminder of his archaic filing system. And its necessity. “If I’m going to help you, you have to let me. And the only way I can is if you’re honest.”

  I rake my teeth over my bottom lip. “I think maybe … I might be experiencing psychosis.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I’m having hallucinations.” Surely, that is what they are. They can’t be real if nobody else sees them. “And delusions.” Prophetic dreams?
A cute boy keeping tabs on me? Really? Talk about false beliefs if ever there were any. I wipe my palms against my jeans and hug my backpack tighter. “The things I saw at that séance?”

  He leans forward. “Yes?”

  “I don’t think I fell asleep.” I scratch my patch of eczema and look down at my fidgeting feet. One Converse All Star rests on top of the other. Then they switch. And switch again. It’s like they are somebody else’s feet. “I also have dreams …”

  “Yes?”

  “They come true.”

  A spark of excitement flashes in his pupils, but disappears so quickly I immediately doubt myself. He pulls at his goatee. “Could you elaborate?”

  “I dreamt about an explosion at a fetal modification clinic and there was the next morning.”

  “There has been a lot of violence around those clinics lately. I’m sure many people are dreaming about clinic explosions.”

  “The two people who died were in my dream. I’ve never seen them before in my life. But the next morning, they were on the news.”

  Dr. Roth’s face remains neutral.

  “And last night, I dreamt this girl was about to jump off the Golden Gate Bridge and I … I stopped it from happening. She was in the paper this morning. Still alive.”

  I see the spark again, but he looks down at my file and jots something in his notes.

  “Are you going to give me medicine now?”

  He continues his scrawling. “How would you feel about a dream journal?”

  “A dream journal?”

  He sets down his pen, reaches inside one of his desk drawers, and pulls out a composition notebook—the kind we use in Chemistry and Physics. “When you wake up in the morning, I want you to record your dreams. Make sure to date each one.”

  I look at it skeptically. “And you think this will help?”

  “Perhaps.”

  Pressing my lips together, I take the journal. I don’t tell the doctor about what I saw in Mr. Lotsam’s class. I’m not ready to divulge that yet. Dreams can be explained. Frightening creature-like humans that lunge at me in my waking hours? Logic cannot handle that. I thank him for listening. He tells me he will see me on Monday. I put the notebook in my backpack and shuffle out of the creepy, drafty facility.

  When I open the heavy door, I run into someone.

  That someone is Luka.