And This Is Laura Read online

  I cleared my throat self-consciously.

  “It seems,” I began, “that I’m psychic.”

  My father’s fork stopped en route to his mouth.

  Jill looked startled, but only for a second. “I knew it,” she said. She smacked her palm against the table. “I knew it.”

  My mother frowned. Douglas just shot me a look of impatient disbelief.

  Dennis said, “I need somebody to cut my meat.”

  Jill reached for his plate, briskly dismantled his meat and pancake tower and began cutting up the pot roast.

  “All together!” Dennis yelled. “Cut it all together.”

  “Hush!” ordered Jill. “Didn’t I know you were seeing things? Didn’t I say that?”

  “What makes you think you’re psychic?” asked my father. “The thing with Hacker and my problem?”

  “That was the first,” I said.

  “You mean there were others?” my mother asked. “You had other—hunches?”

  “Yes. A couple.”

  “I knew it,” Jill repeated. “I just knew it.”

  “A couple,” mused my father. “How many?”

  I told them. From the beginning, with the one about my father’s lab, right up to the prediction about Jamie and Mark Temple. But I left out the vision of my mother and the dolls. I couldn’t bring myself to make her any more worried than she already looked. In fact, my parents’ and Douglas’s reactions were not what I’d expected at all. Instead of gazing at me with awe and admiration, my mother and father looked as if they feared for my health. Douglas appeared utterly skeptical.

  “So it’s only three times actually that you’ve had these—whatever you want to call them,” my father summed up.

  “Yeah, right.” Maybe three times wasn’t so impressive after all. Maybe I should have waited until I had a whole string of predictions to tell them about.

  “And of those three only two were even remotely accurate,” Douglas pointed out.

  “Two out of three ain’t bad,” Jill retorted.

  “Insufficient evidence. Right, Dad?”

  “I don’t know. Let’s see if we can find a rational explanation for these phenomena.”

  “You have a rational explanation,” insisted Jill. “Laura is psychic.”

  “I meant an explanation that didn’t depend on supernatural beliefs. For instance, Laura, did you know that Jamie and Mark were interested in each other?”

  “No. I hardly know Mark Temple at all and I really don’t even know Jamie that well.”

  “And she never talked to you about him? Never gave you the idea that she’d like him to take her to this dance?”

  “No, Dad, I told you, I hardly ever talked to her until today.”

  “Well, let’s see. You know Beth is a good actress, so seeing her on a stage is not so strange.”

  “You don’t have to explain that one,” Douglas reminded him. “It didn’t happen.”

  “It might,” Jill said. “Just because it didn’t happen immediately doesn’t mean it won’t ever happen.”

  “That’s true,” my father agreed, “if you accept any of this.”

  “Do you?” my mother asked. She looked intently at him. “Do you accept it?”

  He shrugged. “I accept that it occurred. I accept that Laura saw—pictures, images, whatever—I just don’t necessarily accept her interpretation of them as psychic phenomena.”

  “I do,” said Jill. “It’s not only Laura’s interpretation. I interpret them that way too.”

  “If we’re lining up sides,” Douglas commented, “I’m with Dad.”

  “Don’t you think,” Jill demanded, “that even seeing visions is a little unusual, Douglas? I mean, leaving out the prediction part entirely, just for the sake of argument, it is not an ordinary thing to have visions.”

  “Daydreams,” he scoffed. “Fantasies. Imagination. People do it all the time.”

  “They were not daydreams!” I cried, clanging my fork on my plate. Everyone was astonished at my outburst. Even Dennis looked up from the little tower of sliced carrots he was erecting.

  Nothing was turning out as I’d expected. I was at last the center of attention, but instead of having all eyes focussed on me, instead of having five pairs of ears straining to absorb every word I said, they were practically dissecting me as if I weren’t even in the room. (Well, that sounds ridiculous, but you know what I mean.)

  Instead of marveling over me, instead of ooh-ing and ah-ing and begging me to use my Gift for the good of mankind, instead of trying to help me cope with my incredible supernatural powers, they were bickering over whether or not I actually had them.

  No, it was not at all the way I’d pictured it.

  If my family’s reaction left something to be desired, the reaction of the kids at school made up for it. Jamie had lost no time, it seemed, in telephoning eighty of her most intimate friends and telling them they had a Genuine Psychic in their midst. Then, each of the eighty must have telephoned eighty more, and so on, and all this was apparently accomplished by seven-thirty the next morning.

  At first it was downright scary.

  I barely walked into school and started down the hall to my locker when someone cried, “There she is!” and I was surrounded by a mob of kids all shouting at once.

  “Hey,” I whimpered. “Hey.” I began to panic. Jamie’s face emerged from among the throng. “Come on, you guys, give her room, she can’t breathe, for heaven’s sake!”

  The crowd parted like the Red Sea. Dazed, I walked between two lines of people all clamoring for something or other and plucking at my jacket sleeves.

  “What is this?” I gasped as Jamie led me toward our homeroom. “What are they after me for?”

  “They’re not after you,” she corrected. “They just want you to give them readings. But I don’t want you to do a thing until we have a chance to talk about it.”

  “Do a thing? About what? What readings? How did they—”

  “Well, I was so excited about the reading you gave me, I told a couple of people. I guess word just got around.”

  “It sure got around fast. Jamie, I really wish you hadn’t—”

  I sank into my seat. They were still milling about in front of the door like a swarm of bees discussing a rich new source of pollen.

  “Don’t get excited,” said Jamie. “I’ll handle everything.”

  She patted my shoulder reassuringly and strode to the door.

  “Disperse, ye rebels,” she commanded, with an imperious wave of her hand. It didn’t work at Concord and it didn’t work here, either. But I don’t know what she did next, because at that very moment a small mob began to form around my desk and my view was blocked by another group of eager faces.

  “Is it true?” Barry Cohen demanded.

  “Do you really have ESP?” Steve Freeman asked.

  “Laura, Laura!” Katie Quinn shook my shoulder urgently. “Laura, will I pass English?”

  They all chattered away at me, ignoring or interrupting one another, everyone trying to be heard over the din everyone else was making. I could only pick out a question here and there and even when I did I couldn’t answer. I hadn’t had this much of a fuss made over me since my birthday in the first grade, when my father brought in cupcakes and did some juggling for the class.

  “All right, all right,” Jamie said, “break it up.” She elbowed her way through the group to stand beside my chair. “This is ridiculous. You can’t hassle Laura like this. She’s sensitive.”

  I am?

  “You’ll all get a chance to talk with her.”

  They will?

  “Just see me after school and I’ll arrange it.”

  Arrange it? I looked questioningly at Jamie. She patted my shoulder again. I was not reassured.

  “Take your seats, please!” Mrs. Ramirez had to practically scream to make herself heard, but finally the area around my desk was cleared of people.

  I threw Jamie a desperate, pleading look as the
bell rang.

  “Don’t worry,” she hissed. “Leave everything to me.”

  Lunch was the first chance I got to talk to her. Beth was saving a seat for me and Jamie squeezed in on my right side as I sat down.

  “Laura, you’re famous!” Beth exclaimed. “The whole school knows about you. I’m even famous because I’m your friend.”

  “And this is just the beginning,” Jamie declared.

  “The beginning of what?” I twisted around to face her. “Jamie, what is all this you’re planning for me? Don’t I have a right to know?”

  Before she could reply, the inevitable happened.

  “Laura, you just have to tell me—” Katie Quinn again. And behind her, around her, swarming all over us, another mob.

  “Good grief,” Beth murmured.

  “You can say that again,” I wailed. I clapped my hands over my ears.

  A lunchroom aide was bearing down on us, intent on discovering the cause of the disturbance.

  “Now look!” Jamie yelled. “You’re going to get us all in trouble. Will you please get out of here and see me after school. Laura can’t do a thing for you now. All you’re doing is draining her psychic energy.”

  The aide muscled her way to our table.

  “What’s going on here?”

  Everyone scattered. The aide stared down at us. We looked back at her, our faces innocent. Her eyes scanned the whole table. Not finding a copy of Playgirl or bits of stray marijuana or anything else that might explain the commotion, she just shot us a menacing glare and barked, “Well, don’t let it happen again!”

  She marched away, seeking out more promising troublemakers.

  Beth exhaled a long sigh of relief.

  “Now, Jamie,” I said, “you’d better tell me what you have in mind.”

  “Okay. I have it all figured out. You’re going to give readings. Every day from four to five.”

  “She has play rehearsals,” objected Beth.

  “Well, okay, on the days she doesn’t have rehearsals, then. I figure about a dollar a reading ought to be right—”

  “Wait a minute! Wait a minute!” I was too astounded to know which part of Jamie’s wild scheme to protest first.

  “You mean I’m going to charge money for this?”

  “Of course. You have to. Otherwise you’ll be just—overwhelmed. Now, figuring on the time you took to do mine, I think you ought to be able to squeeze in about ten people a day—”

  “Ten people a day! I can’t—”

  “Eight then. We don’t want to strain your powers.”

  “Hold it,” I said firmly. “Hold it right there. Jamie, I never said I’d be able to give people predictions, let alone open a fortune-telling parlor.”

  “But you can, can’t you?”

  “Well, I don’t know—maybe—I guess—”

  “All right, then, we’ll tell them maybe. I won’t promise anything except that you’ll try. And we won’t guarantee accuracy. That way,” she went on knowledgeably, “we can’t be sued.”

  “Sued!”

  “I said, can’t be sued. Now, I’ll make the appointments—”

  “Maybe it would be easier,” Beth said, “if you just did it on a first-come-first-served basis. You know, let everyone know that Laura will be reading from four to five and she can only take eight people and they can line up, and—”

  “Beth!” I groaned.

  “I don’t know about that.” Jamie wrinkled her forehead. “Her parents might not be too thrilled about that kind of mob scene every day.”

  “They wouldn’t!” I cried. “They wouldn’t be thrilled at all. They would be very un-thrilled.”

  “Well, all right,” Beth conceded. “Appointments, then. You could keep a little notebook,” she suggested to Jamie.

  It was all moving much too fast for me. Like Alice in Through the Looking Glass, I felt I had to run as fast as I could just to stay in the same place. Only yesterday I had been plain old normal Laura and today I was a celebrity, with half the school practically clamoring to touch the hem of my garment. I was so confused I couldn’t think straight, which was probably why Jamie was able to push me around like a Tonka toy.

  “Jamie.” I made a feeble attempt at objecting. “Beth. I don’t think I want to do this. The whole idea makes me kind of nervous.”

  “Nervous about what?” Jamie demanded.

  “I don’t know—about charging money for it I guess—or maybe having to do it on demand—” I struggled to explain, but since I couldn’t even explain my confused feelings to myself, I guess I didn’t have much success making them clear to Beth and Jamie.

  “I told you,” Jamie said patiently, “that you have to charge money. That way you won’t be hassled by thousands of kids with dumb questions that really aren’t worth answering. If it costs money they’ll only come to you for important things and there won’t be as many people using up your time and energy.”

  “But I don’t feel right charging for it.”

  “So give the money to charity,” advised Beth. “You don’t have to keep it if you don’t want to.”

  “But you’d be crazy not to,” said Jamie. “After all, you’re performing a service. Doctors don’t heal people for free. Ministers don’t marry people for free. You have a great Gift—a talent—and you’re entitled to cash in on it. Just like an artist sells his talent, or a piano player, or a—”

  “All right, all right, I get the point!” Jamie could probably go on forever, reeling off examples of people who peddled their aptitude for profit. “But what if it doesn’t work? What if I can’t do it just like that every time someone asks for a reading?”

  Jamie shrugged. “So you tried. What have you got to lose? Besides, with this kind of thing the more you use it the more highly developed it becomes. See, right now you’re just a beginner, but as your psychic powers are exercised, they become stronger and stronger. Like muscles.” She looked delighted at her comparison. “Just like muscles. The more you exercise them, the better they get. Which is another good reason for doing this. You don’t want your Gift wasting away to nothing because you never use it, do you?”

  “Well—no—I guess not.” How could I want that? After longing for something that would make me special, something that would make my family proud of me, I couldn’t just turn my back on my talent and let it dribble away—or whatever it was it would do if I didn’t use it.

  “Great,” Jamie said, clapping her hands together briskly. “Leave everything to me.”

  “Laura,” Beth breathed, “isn’t this exciting? To think, when I first met you I had no idea you were going to be famous!”

  “You think she’s famous now? Huh, this is nothing. Stick with me, kid”—Jamie sounded like she was only half-joking—“and I’ll get you on the Johnny Carson show.”

  “Jamie!” I shrieked. I was exhausted trying to keep up with all those big plans she had for me. “I don’t want to be on the Johnny Carson show!”

  “Okay.” She shrugged. “Mike Douglas, then.”

  8

  “ALL RIGHT, ALL right, keep it down!” Jamie’s voice boomed over the excited chatter of the crowd on the staircase. “How do you expect Laura to concentrate with all this noise?”

  I stuck my head out my bedroom door, just in time to see my mother struggling down the stairs with her typewriter.

  “How do you expect Laura to concentrate?” she snarled. “How do you expect Laura to concentrate?” She squirmed through the “clients” who stood three deep all the way up the flight of steps. That is, some were standing. Others were sitting, sprawling or leaning. I hoped the banister wouldn’t break.

  “Gangway,” she warned sullenly. “I said, gangway, dammit!”

  Jamie and I exchanged nervous glances. I’d never seen my mother so surly before. Angry, yes. Upset, yes. But not like this.

  “Sorry, Mrs. H,” apologized Jamie. “Hope we didn’t disturb you.”

  My mother, having reached the bottom of the stairs,
turned to look up at us.

  “Now what makes you think three hundred kids screaming in front of my door when I’m trying to write this damn book would disturb me?” She almost shrieked those last two words.

  “And take that damn sign off the wall!” She charged out of sight.

  A piece of paper was taped on the staircase wall. Someone—Douglas no doubt—had scrawled an arrow with Magic Marker and printed: “THIS WAY TO THE DOOM ROOM.”

  Jamie managed to work her way over to the sign and ripped it off the wall. She rolled her eyes at me. “Are you ready?”

  “Yeah. Send the next one in.”

  I went back into my room and sat down on the bed. After a week and a half I had grown accustomed to the routine. In fact, I kind of enjoyed it.

  The first day had been the worst. I was scared that nothing would happen. I was almost as scared that something would happen. But miraculously, I was able to see things for each of the five people Jamie brought to me. And none of the things I saw was that hard to figure out. Like, I saw a teacher hand Katie something, and Katie cried. So I knew she was going to fail English.

  And I saw Barry Cohen in a big room, running back and forth in a pair of shorts, so I knew he’d make the basketball team. Things like that. There was only one really mysterious one the first day, and with that I did just what Jamie had told me to. I told Sue Ellen Priddy, whose reading it was, exactly what I had seen, and that I didn’t know what it meant. She wasn’t dissatisfied at all. In fact, although she was puzzled by what I told her, she was thrilled that I’d seen something, and swore she wouldn’t rest till she figured out what it was.

  And Jamie had been right. The more readings I gave, the easier it became and the faster I was able to “see” things. It was tiring, but not hard, if you know what I mean. And of course, the better I got, the more people marveled over my talent and the more confident I became. Now, a mere ten days after my first “client” I found that not only was I handling everything quite smoothly (with Jamie’s help) but I had become very fond of all the fame and attention and popularity I’d suddenly attracted.

  Not to mention the money. I’d decided to give half of it to charity and keep half for myself. Jamie had finally persuaded me to charge a fee and the sight of all that money piling up in my desk drawer helped to convince me she’d been right.