Free Whisper by Phoebe Kitanidis Page A

but her tone stopped me. If Aunt Jane or something else had managed to upset my super-calm mother, I sure didn’t want to add to her stress level.
    Then it occurred to me. People who were upset almost always Whispered. They wanted things to be different from how they were; that was practically the definition of “upset.” I watched Mom’s knife spreading pink frosting with a surgeon’s steady hand. Her eyes stayed glued to her task, as if the cupcakes were a matter of life and death, yet her mind expressed no desires. In fact, I hadn’t picked up asingle Whisper from her since I got home. So she couldn’t be upset, right? She must just be tired, too tired to think.
    Ow, ow, ow. My head felt like someone was probing it with a skewer. “Okay,” I agreed, deflated. “I’ll stop by Dad’s office and then I’ll go lie down.”
    When I was in the doorway, she called after me, “And I do not look tired!”
    I laughed, which hurt my head enough to make me cringe. “Sorry!”
    Some people might think it’s weird to apologize for your thoughts, but in our house it was a normal part of life.
     
    I let the back door swing behind me as I ran across the dewy lawn.
    Dad’s home office was a blue cottage in our backyard, half hidden behind Mom’s apple trees. Years ago, when we first moved to Rainbow Street, Grammy and Grandpa Stefani had started Whispering that they’d like to move into the “in-law apartment” and be closer to us. I was in favor; the senior Stefanis were energetic and funny, and loved spoiling us girls with oatmeal cookies and zoo trips. But Dad wasted no time installing his cherry corner desk in the main room and spreading his collection of boring, leather-covered law tomes all over it, and Grammy and Grandpa stayed in their duplex in Salem after all, and only came to visit for birthdays and holidays. In fact, after it was finished, they never set foot in Dad’s office. I think they felt hurt.
    Then again, Mom and I rarely found ourselves hangingout here either. Only Icka made a habit of spending time in Dad’s space. She claimed to enjoy their lengthy debates on construction defect law, a topic that always made my brain vaporize.
    No one answered my three polite knocks, so—as usual—I sighed and went in. I almost tripped over the treadmill.
    Dad was at his computer, slumped statue still in his four-zillion-dollar director’s chair, staring at a ceiling beam. (No doubt brooding over a defect in its construction.) “Hi, pumpkin.” He gave a listless wave in my direction. He’d changed into jeans and a U of O sweatshirt, his second uniform after Armani. I caught a Whisper: Sure would be nice to have a BMW.
    A BMW? It was all I could do not to groan at some of my dad’s Whispers. Despite owning a perfectly nice Mercedes, he was forever desiring some other kind of luxury car. Why couldn’t he just be happy with what we had? Or better yet, take TriMet to work, like Mom often did? I just didn’t get his car obsession.
    Then I remembered why I was here and lifted my hair to show off my bejeweled neck. “Dad, thank you so much for the necklace! It’s gorgeous.”
    Finally he looked at me. A shy smile. “Oh, it’s no big deal.” He ducked his head and sipped from a glass of wine barely balanced on a mountain of stiff tan folders. “It’s nothing.”
    Nothing? I blinked. How could it be nothing that he’d remembered my birthstone? That he picked out a special, beautiful present just for me?
    “I’m just saying, I don’t want you to feel any pressure over it,” he said.
    “Pressure?”
    “Like if it’s not your thing, if you don’t actually like it, don’t feel bad.”
    I was mystified. “But I do like it!”
    It was as if he hadn’t heard me. “See, my idea was to give you money,” he said, shrugging helplessly. “So you could choose what you liked best. But your mom, she didn’t think cash was a very warm gesture. What do you think, Joy?”
    I held back a sigh. All our