She Heard Nothing novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: Two Lemon Drops
Abby drops to the parade field before Sabina can accuse her, but Sabina names the candy in her pocket anyway. A dawn test is set, and Sabina's mother stares at Abby from the gate.
The drill instructor was still yelling at the girl in row three when I dropped to the parade field on purpose.
I let my knees go and kept my arms at my sides.
My head hit the dry ground hard enough to turn the sky white.
I didn't move.
Four hundred freshmen stood in rows under the noon sun, and every one of them went quiet.
"Someone fainted!" a boy shouted. "Sir, somebody's down!"
I kept my eyes open to the thinnest slits and breathed slowly.
Twelve minutes earlier I had woken up in that line, twenty years old again, remembering how I died.
In my first life, the girl in row three, Lottie, had turned the wrong way in a drill, and the instructor had screamed at her for a full minute.
When he finished, Sabina had passed Lottie her own water bottle, the same way she had passed out her spare hair ties all morning.
Then she raised her hand and told him, gently, that she could hear my thoughts.
That was the day the whole school started believing her, and the day I stopped being believed about anything.
This time I had cut in first.
Footsteps ran up and a knee hit the dirt beside my head.
"Abby?" Sabina said. "Abby, can you hear me?"
Her hand settled on my shoulder, cool and smelling of sunscreen.
That morning she had pushed her own sunscreen into my hands and retied my cap strap because mine was twisted.
Her gift from registration day, a little silver star on a chain, still lay against my collarbone, because it was the only present anyone had given me in a year.
Everyone in my bunk room liked her for things like that.
"Is she breathing?" the instructor barked.
"She's breathing, sir," Sabina said. "She's okay."
Then she went quiet for a moment, and I felt her thinking about what to do with me.
When she spoke again, her voice had a small crack in it.
"Sir, I don't want to get her in trouble. But I have to say something."
"Say it, Pelham."
"I can hear what she thinks. I don't know why. It started this week."
A murmur went through the rows.
"Right now she's thinking that this is working," Sabina said. "She fell on purpose, so she wouldn't have to stand the whole afternoon."
I kept my face slack and my eyes on nothing.
"That's a serious thing to say about a classmate," the instructor said.
"I know, sir. I'm sorry. There's more, and it's silly, so you'll know I'm not guessing."
She took a breath.
"She has two lemon drops in her left chest pocket. She was going to eat them during the long stand."
Nobody spoke.
Then the whispers started, and they were not on my side.
"Two lemon drops? Who knows that?"
"She's never lied before, though."
"Check it."
My stomach turned over.
Nobody knew about the candy.
I had said it out loud exactly once, at five that morning, alone in the bunk room in the dark, to calm myself down.
I was sure I was alone.
I was just as sure it had happened the same way the last time.
The instructor crouched, and I heard the snap of my pocket button.
He held up two lemon drops in yellow cellophane.
They came from Gran's tin, the only thing I had kept from her house after she died.
The field groaned.
"She really did hear it."
"That's creepy."
"I'm so sorry, Abby," Sabina said softly. "I can't turn it off."
She sounded sincere, and that was the worst part.
Last time I had lain right here and let them decide who I was.
So I opened my eyes.
The sun was right above me, white and hot.
I sat up slowly with one hand on the ground and looked at Sabina.
Her sympathetic face had stopped moving.
"Wrenfield," the instructor said. "Did you fall on purpose?"
"I went down, sir, and now I'm up," I said. "I'd like to ask a question."
"Ask."
"Sabina can hear me. So ask her what I'm thinking right now."
Sabina's smile came back, soft and patient.
"Abby, you don't have to do this."
"I want to," I said.
I made my mind as empty as I could, focusing only on my breathing, and looked straight at her.
The field waited.
"You're thinking you're sorry," Sabina said. "And that you wish everyone would stop staring."
"I wasn't thinking either of those things."
"You're lying."
"Then say the number I'm counting."
She opened her mouth and closed it again.
Nobody in the rows made a sound.
The instructor looked from her to me and rubbed his jaw.
"Fine," he said. "Tomorrow at dawn, in front of this whole company. You two sit back to back. Wrenfield writes one sentence on paper. Pelham tells me what it says."
Sabina's eyes flicked down, and then up again, bright.
"Of course, sir."
"And until then, Wrenfield, you run laps. Falling out of formation costs a lap each, and you took everyone's time."
"Yes, sir."
I got up and ran.
The track went along the iron fence at the far edge of the field, and by the third lap my legs were shaking.
At the gate a silver SUV sat parked in the shade with its window down.
I had seen it at dawn, when Sabina's mother dropped her off.
She was still there.
She hadn't left to find a seat or go to the parent tent.
She sat very still with one earbud in, and she was not looking at her daughter.
She was looking at me.
Her face had no color in it at all.
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