Remember Me by Christopher Pike

information you can get," Jo said. "Now, I know what you're going to say, but go ahead and say it anyway."

    Jeff shrugged. "Beth heard you ask the question. She knows she's a girl. Her body's response could have been subconscious."

    Jo smiled. "What if I told you it doesn't matter if I say the question aloud or if I just think it?"

    "You want me to think about being a girl?" Beth asked, frowning, her eyes still closed.

    "The legs will still shift?" Jeff asked.

    Jo let go of Beth's ankles, climbing to her knees and scooting toward Jeff. "I'll whisper three questions in your ear that we already know the answers to," she said. "Then we'll see if her body responds correctly each time."

    They had a brief huddle, and then Jo got back to Beth's ankles. Since the rest of us didn't know the questions, the demonstration was not exactly overwhelming. When it was done, however, and Jeff had finished comparing Beth's leg lengths, he nodded his approval.

    "You did them in the same order you told me?" he asked Jo.

    "Yes," Jo said.

    "What did you ask?" Daniel asked.

    "First I asked if Beth was pregnant," Jo said. "And the answer was no. Her heels didn't shift."

    "Thank God," Beth said, smiling. It struck me then how cool Beth was playing it for someone who had only a few minutes earlier been sinning in a hot tub with a guy who didn't belong to her.

    "Then I asked if Beth was alive," Jo continued. "And as I raised her feet off the floor, her right leg got an inch longer.

    Right, Jeff?"

    "It did, yeah," he said thoughtfully. I suspected that if he knew about Beth's unfaithfulness, he would have cared less.

    But he did seem to be totally absorbed in what Jo was doing.

    And she knew it. Her cheeks were flushed with pleasure.

    "My third question was if it was Saturday morning," Jo said. "And once again, Beth's legs moved." Jo glanced down at Beth. "Are you comfortable? Can we keep using you to ask our questions?"

    Beth squinted her eyes without opening them. "Yeah, but turn off that lamp.

    The light's bothering me."

    Jo gestured to Daniel to turn the light off, although it was clear Jo still did not understand why Beth should feel any different. The rest of us pulled in a little closer, including Amanda, who finally came and sat on the floor beside me.

    The door to the balcony in the kitchen lay wide open. I could feel the night air on my bare feet; it seemed to hug the carpet like a cool sheet. I wanted to go home. My headache refused to go away.

    "What should we ask?" Daniel asked.

    "Anything," Jo said, a glint in her eyes. She again took hold of Beth's sneakers.

    "Anything at all."

    "Ask if there's going to be another war," Daniel said.

    Jo asked the question out loud, raising Beth's heels a foot or so off the floor and then checking for a shift in leg length.

    Now that I was close enough to see, I realized the shift was genuine. It was clear-cut.

    "Yes," Jo said.

    "Oh, no," Daniel said, distressed. The poor baby, I thought. The bombs would probably catch him in bed with his neighbor's wife. God, how I wanted to grab that magnet and glue it to the back of his head so that every time he lied his left leg would get shorter and he would trip and fall on his face.

    "Of course there's going to be another war," I said.

    "There are small wars going on all the time all over the world. Ask if there is going to be another world war in the next twenty years."

    I noticed that Beth's heels returned to an even keel the moment Jo set Beth's feet back on the floor. At the back of my mind, I wondered if Jo was tugging on Beth's ankle whenever she wanted a yes answer.

    Jo asked about another world war. Beth's legs shifted a tiny bit.

    "What does that mean?" Jeff asked.

    "That there might be," Jo said, obviously taken off guard.

    "Did it say in the book you read that a slight movement means maybe?" Jeff asked, obviously not trusting Jo a hundred percent on this point.

    "Yes," Jo said quickly.

    "Ask if I'm going to be rich,"