The Possible Read online

  Also by Tara Altebrando

  The Leaving

  For Catherine

  Never do anything by halves if you want to get away with it. Be outrageous. Go the whole hog. Make sure everything you do is so completely crazy it’s unbelievable.

  —Roald Dahl, Matilda

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Acknowledgements

  eCopyright

  I REALIZED IN THE FOURTH inning that I hadn’t given up a hit yet. The whispers about the possibility of a no-hitter started when I headed for the mound to pitch the sixth.

  You think she can do it? I bet she’s gonna do it.

  Has anyone at school ever done that? No, not ever.

  I shut down three batters no problem.

  Now it was the top of the seventh.

  The last inning.

  Two batters had already tried their hardest to break my streak and failed, and the whispers were louder than ever.

  If I struck out one more batter, I’d have our school’s first ever perfect game.

  And if we won—the score was 1–0—we’d be on our way to regional championship play-offs.

  It was down to me.

  Me and their best player, number 14.

  I drew the strike zone in my mind’s eye as 14 positioned herself at the plate and took a few arm-loosening swings.

  I picked the top-right corner of the zone.

  I stared at my chosen spot as I set my fingers on the ball.

  When I had my grip right and the batter was ready, I stepped forward hard with my left foot and threw, and the world got so very slow as I watched the ball curve up and out and over and up a notch, heading for that corner I’d carved out of the air.

  A smile stole its way onto my face maybe a second too soon, dirt dancing on my tongue.

  But I knew the ball would sneak past and go exactly where I’d put it.

  She swung.

  And it did.

  She missed.

  The smack of the ball hitting the catcher’s mitt.

  Cheers.

  Whistles.

  High-fives as my teammates rushed the mound.

  Nice job, Kaylees and Holy cow that was amazing s.

  I’d done it, like I’d known I would.

  •••

  Bennett Laurie said, “Nice job” as I walked off the field. He wasn’t actually talking to me but there was no question that he was into me. And I hadn’t been so crazy for anyone ever before. Just the sight of him made me carnival-ride woozy. The sight of her—his girlfriend, whose sister, Evelyn, had scored our one run—made me burn.

  She didn’t deserve him.

  He’d realize it.

  I simply had to be patient.

  Because this was what was going to happen:

  Junior prom tickets were going on sale soon. And when they did, he’d realize he didn’t want to take Princess Bubblegum. So he’d dump her. He’d take me.

  If that didn’t happen, no worries. He belonged to the swim club where I’d be lifeguarding all summer. He’d watch me twirling my whistle in my tall white chair. He’d see me up there in my swimsuit, limbs long and strong, and he’d want me the way I wanted him.

  “That was off the hook,” Chiara said as she came to sit next to me in the dugout. It always took a second for her dark-brown curls to stop moving after the rest of her had.

  Aiden appeared from the bleachers, which were emptying of the small crowd who’d come to watch. “Seriously,” he said. “That was amazing.”

  “Thanks,” I said, ready to talk about something else. It was just a game. I watched Bennett and Princess Bubblegum talking to Evelyn. Then for some no doubt ridiculous reason, Princess Bubblegum did one of those trust falls, and Bennett caught her under the arms.

  “They’re so gross,” I said.

  “Open your eyes, Kaylee.” He handed me a bottle of water. “They’re happy. I saw them all lovey-dovey over the weekend actually. In the bookstore of all places.”

  “Why do you sound surprised?” I asked, half laughing, then drank some water.

  “I guess I didn’t think he could read.” Aiden’s smile was crooked, but the rest of him was all right angles. It was seriously like he’d been built with flesh on LEGOs and not bones.

  “Nice,” I said. “Real nice. Anyway, it’s only a matter of time before he realizes he’s in love with me.”

  “You can’t make someone like you,” Aiden said, and he brushed his bangs off to the side. They’d gotten long recently, and they made his head look permanently pensive, perpetually pondering something. Which he pretty much was.

  “Just you wait,” I said.

  Then we all three watched Bennett and Princess Bubblegum walk away from the field, attached at the lips, arms around each other’s waist.

  Princess Bubblegum’s actual name was Aubrey Hazelton, but she had this impossibly high-pitched voice—like she ate animated kids’ shows for breakfast—and was always chewing gum. Thus my nickname for her. She was all Monster High–ed up today, with black knee socks and chunky shoes and fishnet tights and a black-leather miniskirt. Her shirt was purple and orange lollipop swirls, and she’d recently had lavender streaks put in her hair.

  “Those shoes.” I shook my head. “How can she even walk in those shoes? I mean, seriously.” I faked a falling motion, circling my arms and making a scared face.

  Chiara laughed. Aiden smiled reluctantly. I grabbed my bag, thinking about how Princess Bubblegum really ought to fall flat on her face. The laws of physics practically demanded it.

  “You guys need rides?” I asked, and Aiden and Chiara both said yep.

  A high-pitched aaaaaaah rose from the parking lot.

  I turned. Princess Bubblegum had totally wiped out. Bennett was helping her to her feet as she brushed asphalt dust off her palms.

  “Oh my god.” I covered my mouth to hide my laugh and Chiara covered hers, too.

  “You guys are awful,” Aiden said.

  Chiara and I looped arms.

  Maybe it was true.

  •••

  After softball games and even just after school, I’d gotten into a sort of gross habit of laying out a full baking sheet of tortilla chips covered with shredded cheddar cheese, I’d pop it in the oven, then stand there, peering in and wishing the cheese would melt faster. Then I’d pull out the tray, let it cool some, and eat every single chip while standing by the stovetop, starting with the cheesiest first.

  A minute on the lips, people say, a lifetime on the hips.

  But I didn’t care. Nothing much stuck to me.

  When the doorbell rang that day—that seemingly completely ordinary Tuesday—I figured it was UPS with an Amazon package for my dad. Probably a new router or thermostat or remote-control LED bulbs or some Sonos contraption or anything else that would make our house smarter, though at this point I was pretty sure the house was smarter than any of the three of us that lived there.

  I opened the door.

  Guess again.

  A compact woman—maybe in her forties?—wearing a casual denim summer dress stood on the front porch with an orange tote bag looped over her right shoulder. She
took off sunglasses with pale blue frames to reveal eyes that matched.

  “Can I help you?” I’d noticed her at the game. Thought maybe she was a softball scout for a local college. When the time came I was sure I’d be enticed by at least two or three.

  “It depends,” she said.

  “Is this is a recruiting thing?”

  She looked confused and that made me confused, so I said, “Oh, well, there’s no one home over the age of eighteen or whatever. Like if you’re selling something or taking a poll.”

  “Oh, it’s nothing like that.” She held out a business card from our big public radio station. “You’re Kaylee Bryar, right?”

  “Um.” I had cheese stuck in one of my molars. “I used to be.”

  “I was hoping we could talk about your birth mother.”

  •••

  She was producing a podcast, it turned out.

  About Crystal.

  Who had been in prison since I was four.

  But she didn’t ask me about the murder, or about my mother’s persistent claims of innocence over the years, despite her plea agreement. No, this radio person—her name was Liana—wanted to talk about the first time Crystal had been famous, when she was only fourteen.

  She asked, “Do you have telekinetic powers?”

  I snorted. “Do you?”

  •••

  Let’s define ordinary.

  Ordinary was late May, end of junior year.

  Ordinary was driving around, newly licensed, with Aiden and Chiara in a town in Rockland County, New York, where the men had long commutes to the city that they complained about and the women mostly stayed home to raise the kids even after the kids were already raised.

  Ordinary was softball and homework and test prep and violin lessons and yearbook committee and college visits and GPA freak-outs and everything-you-do-from-now-on-affects-where-you’ll-go-to-college and daydreaming about Bennett Laurie and waiting for life to become something real and not something that parents and teachers and admissions boards and coaches were in charge of.

  I could finally drive a car—so yay—but I was not remotely in the driver’s seat in any other way. None of us were.

  Ordinary was life with Christine and Robert Novell—my parents—who’d adopted me when I was four and helped me basically forget everything that had come before. Everything that had been, well, extraordinary.

  Over time, my memories of Crystal and the murder of my younger brother, Jack, had faded like denim, taking on soft-white fuzzy edges. The Novells had liked it that way, and I guess I had, too. But then a bunch of years ago, when I was around twelve and got a phone, I’d started Googling more and asking questions. So they told me everything.

  Like how Crystal had first become famous as a teen because of a photo that supposedly proved she was the focal point of some kind of poltergeist activity or telekinetic power. How the story had been picked up by the Associated Press and gone national. How she’d eventually been outed as a fake even though there were some people that still insisted it had all been real, that they’d seen some strange phenomena with their own eyes.

  They told me how Crystal had had a sort of shit life after that, though not in those words. How it involved her getting knocked up by my father (again, not in those words) when she was twenty-one and then again (by Jack’s father, who was not my father) when she was twenty-three. A few years later, Jack ended up dead—blunt force trauma—and Crystal, while claiming innocence, had taken a plea deal to avoid the death penalty when things weren’t going her way during the trial.

  She was sentenced to life in prison.

  I reacted to all this the way I imagined most people would:

  I shook my head in horrified disbelief.

  I decided that my birth mother was either certifiably insane or somehow irreparably damaged by life in ways I probably didn’t want to know about.

  I felt bad for her.

  I felt bad for me, too—I’d had a brother and he was dead; and my father had never been in the picture at all—but mostly I felt grateful that the Novells had rescued me. I boxed up the rest and put it away.

  Of course I also started staring at objects for hours on end—marbles, feathers, the Monopoly dog, the Operation funny bone—willing them to move. But nothing ever did, and after a while I outgrew such childish notions. Telekinesis was the stuff of movies and books and dreamers. It wasn’t even real, let alone genetic or inheritable.

  That was my story and I stuck to it.

  •••

  “How did you find me?” I asked Liana, when she just stood there staring at me.

  “You didn’t answer my question.” She put her hands on her hips.

  “You first,” I said.

  “I found you because I’m resourceful and I’d like to interview you for the podcast.” She looked at her watch as if she had better places to be. “Will your parents be home soon?”

  Neither of them was due home for a few hours, no. So I told her I’d have them call her, and she left.

  I stared at her card—her show was called The Possible—and my knee-jerk response was to call Chiara, who knew everything about me. Or, at least, everything else.

  My parents had gently suggested, when I’d been twelve and asking all those questions, that I not tell anyone about my connection to Crystal, and I’d promised I wouldn’t and had stayed true to that promise.

  It had seemed like a good secret to keep.

  But now?

  With a podcast in the works?

  •••

  “You have got to be shitting me,” Chiara said.

  To which I said, “I shit you not.”

  “Prove it,” she said.

  I did some quick Googling and sent her a link.

  •••

  STRANGE HAPPENINGS PLAGUE LOCAL FAMILY

  by Paul Schmidt

  Columnist, The PA Star

  March 6, 1993

  A house in an otherwise sleepy neighborhood has become the center of some kind of unexplained phenomena—the sort of things more likely to happen in movies or books than in reality. At the home of the Bryar family, small objects have been flying across the room. Paintings and photos are falling off the walls. Lights and appliances are turning on and off on their own.

  “I just want everyone to go away,” said the family’s teenage daughter, Crystal, when we visited.

  But the phenomena seemed to follow her in particular. Right then, a telephone nearby leaped through the air. Again and again. Witnesses were understandably disturbed, especially when a glass vase flew off a shelf and shattered at the girl’s feet. The family hopes that this report will help to attract the right kind of investigator to find an explanation.

  •••

  “Un. Real,” Chiara said. “And here I was thinking you were too boring to be my best friend.”

  “Nice,” I said.

  “Joking,” she said. “Sort of. Now we just have to cure your RBF and we’ll be in business.”

  Chiara was convinced that my “resting bitch face” was the reason we didn’t have guys hanging on us all the time. Maybe she was right. I didn’t care. Bennett Laurie was the only guy that mattered.

  “So the podcast woman wants to interview me,” I said as I typed Liana’s name into a search field.

  “You, my dear,” Chiara said, “are about to become famous.”

  •••

  My search led me to the Free Public Radio website, where I learned that Liana Fatone was a graduate of Harvard University who lived in Queens with her husband and two young daughters. According to the radio station’s page, she’d had an incredibly successful first podcast about a murder on a small college campus and now had selected Crystal as her season two topic.

  A short bio on the preview page for the upcoming season said that she was born the same year as Crystal and had grown up in Connecticut. Below a photo of her holding a pen and notepad and looking investigative, her brow furrowed, she’s quoted: “I never forgo
t about Crystal and how strange the whole story was. Then when I discovered that her life had taken this tragic turn many years later, I felt there was a story there. Did she fake the telekinesis? Will she cop to that now? Did she actually kill her own son? I want answers.”

  A short Q&A revealed that she collected spoons and that her favorite book was, no joke, Matilda.

  “HOW DID SHE FIND YOU?” asked my mother when I explained about my visitor.

  “She said she’s resourceful.”

  Mom shook her head and sank into a chair at the kitchen table, looking tired. “I don’t know, Kay. This doesn’t seem like a thing to get involved in.”

  My mother was pretty much the opposite of Crystal. She had also grown up pretty poor—mostly in New Jersey with some time in Pennsylvania—but had made it her life’s goal to be different, aka better. She’d gone away to a good college, where she met my dad, who’d grown up upper-middle class, and she ditched her accent and bad grammar and pretty much never looked back. Some of her cousins had gotten into a fight at her wedding, and she basically cut her family off and built a totally different kind of life with my father. She’d said there’d been a little bit of “look who decided to turn up” when her mother died, and then, a few years later, her father, but she didn’t really care what they thought. She looked down on people who weren’t the sort of achiever she’d become, so of course she wouldn’t want to have anything at all to do with Crystal, who’d achieved notoriety but nothing more.

  “Maybe,” I said. “Maybe not. I don’t know.”

  Because now maybe I wanted answers, too. Maybe I’d been hiding from the past—and from myself—for long enough. Just talking about it all with Chiara had felt like this big yoga kind of exhale. I’d been denying so much for so long, writing it all off as childish. Maybe it was time to face reality. Because if someone thought enough of Crystal’s whole experience to talk to scientists and experts about it, maybe there was something to it?

  •••

  Seriously.

  What if?

  •••

  Mom said, “Let’s discuss it with your father when he gets home, m’k?”

  That’s how things were in our family, so there was no getting around it. I couldn’t think of a single decision that had been made in our household without both parents having signed off on it. Mom ran everything by Dad, and vice versa.