Whisper by Phoebe Kitanidis

tell that driver lady we were going to the beach?” I said quietly.
    “Oh, that,” she said, “that’s just the password code to get on this school bus. It’s a pretty long ride,” she added. “Why don’t we play I Spy?”
    I knew she was trying to distract me, so I just folded my arms.
    “I Spy with my little eye, something that is pink.”
    “My overalls!” I blurted out, engrossed despite myself. We played until the bus driver said, “End of the line!”
    It was a weekday in September, so when the bus dropped us off right across from the beach, the sand was deserted.Haystack Rock rose up ahead of us like a small mountain, reaching for the sky.
    I remembered this place. Earlier that summer, Mom and Jess and I had come here at dawn to meet Aunt Jane, who was taking a one-day break from being a hermit to sell some mushrooms she’d foraged. But Aunt Jane never showed, and pretty soon the beach filled up with strangers. The drone of Whispers I couldn’t understand surrounded me, and I curled into Mom’s lap, covering my ears as if that would help drown out the noise. When Mom said we had to go home, Jess protested, and Mom had snapped at her to be more considerate, not so selfish. Which was what Mom said a lot to my sister back then.
    At the beach Jess let out a whoop, dropped her tote bag, and ran across the sand shrieking. Then she ran back and lay down with her head resting on a perfectly round boulder. Had she lost her mind? “We did it!” she crowed. “We did it.”
    Worried, I peered over her. “Why are we here? Where’s the school? Why’d you say we were meeting Aunt Jane?”
    She turned to me. “Because we are. She’s going to come and get us and take us to her forest to live with her and her pet wolf.” My stomach felt like I’d swallowed a stone. “And then neither of us will ever have to go to school again.”
    I sank down onto the sand and started to cry. “But I want to go to school.” Up until that moment I hadn’t been so sure of this—I knew I was supposed to go, and I wanted to be good and do what Mom said, but I was also scaredof school. Part of me had been wishing I wouldn’t have to go after all. Now, on this white, deserted beach alone with Jess, I felt a sudden longing for all the things Mom and I had talked about: cubbies and backpacks. Sitting in a circle and raising your hand to talk. Juice in a plastic cup. “I miss Mom,” I whimpered. I’d never been away from home without her. “I want Mom to come take me to school.”
    “Joy.” She knelt down to squeeze my hand, and what I Heard confused me, a mixture of hopes and regrets bouncing off one another. “Trust me, you don’t want to go to school. I couldn’t stand to see you go there and be…be like I am. That’s why we’re going to go live with Aunt Jane.”
    Weird, how until she’d mentioned it again I’d sort of tricked myself into forgetting her scary plan. “Mom’s going to worry about us.”
    “I doubt it. She doesn’t worry about Aunt Jane being so far away.” Her voice had taken on that icy shell it got when she was arguing. “You just go play. I’m going to concentrate on Whispering to Aunt Jane that I want her to come find us. Jane has the most powerful Hearing of anyone in the world!” She closed her eyes and mouthed wishes I couldn’t Hear. Each time she opened them, her eyebrows drooped with disappointment that Aunt Jane had not yet appeared.
    My new white school sneakers were gray with sand dust. Slowly I pulled the Velcro tab off one, then the other, took them off, and shook them out, concentrating on removing every pebble and grain of sand. I could have cried. But Iwanted to be brave because I was a big kid now, ready for school. So instead I decided to pretend we were on vacation. While Jess Whispered to Aunt Jane, I played quietly in the waves.
    A few minutes later, Jess dug into her tote and unwrapped peanut butter and honey sandwiches with the crusts cut off. She’d prepared them