“Mother, I am quite capable of making brownies without your input,” Emily’s mom retorted from the sofa. That’s what she said with her out loud words. Inside her head, her mother wondered if she should check on them, just to be sure.
She didn’t.
I know full well how to set a timer, Emily heard her say silently. I am an excellent baker. Her mother’s unspoken words were accompanied by a wave of emotion, which Emily also sensed. Emily’s mom didn’t want Grandma Elnora to “win.” She didn’t want Grandma Elnora to be right.
Emily’s mom checked her watch. She tapped her foot. She rose the moment the timer beeped, but it was too late. The unmistakable smell of burnt brownies wafted into the den, and Emily’s mom cried out and stamped her foot.
Grandma Elnora caught Emily’s gaze and lifted her eyebrows. I tell her and tell her, she said to Emily with silent words. Is it my fault if she doesn’t listen?
At school, Emily gathered more clues that told her she was different from others. In third grade, she heard a girl named Sophie silently wishing she had hair like Klara Kosrov’s. Klara was another girl in their class. Emily looked at Klara’s hair, which was long and straight and shiny. She looked at Sophie’s hair, which was blondish and cut very short.
“Klara’s hair is pretty,” Emily told Sophie. “But yours is, too.”
Sophie’s eyes widened. She felt embarrassed and ashamed—those were the emotions that washed over Emily—and she scurried away even as Emily cried, “No, wait! Come back!”
Something similar happened with her third-grade teacher, Mrs. Robinson. In February, Mrs. Robinson had started growing distracted during lesson time, losing her train of thought and standing at the chalkboard looking dazed. While Mrs. Robinson was grading papers, she worried about her father, who was in the hospital. Sometimes she pictured him in his hospital bed, which made Mrs. Robinson sad. Other times she imagined him in his garden, which made her sad in a different way. When Mrs. Robinson thought of her father in his garden, Emily saw what she saw: a stooped man with big ears and a kind face, scattering mulch around a bed of flowers.
Please let him get better, Mrs. Robinson thought. Please let this new medication work.
Emily made a get-well card for Mrs. Robinson’s father, drawing a bouquet of flowers exactly like the flowers in Mrs. Robinson’s father’s garden. Emily was good at art.
“For your father,” she explained when Mrs. Robinson drew in a sharp breath. She tried to hold on to her smile, but Mrs. Robinson’s expression made Emily scurry away, just as Emily, without meaning to, had made Sophie scurry away by complimenting Sophie’s hair.
From that point on, Mrs. Robinson treated Emily the way she might treat an unfamiliar dog, a creature that might or might not bite. Emily felt confused and . . . and scolded, although Mrs. Robinson didn’t scold Emily out loud.
One day, not long after Emily had given Mrs. Robinson the card, the third graders had recess in the gymnasium because it was raining outside. Pouring, really, the sky a dark, bruised color.
Emily spotted Mrs. Robinson talking to the other third-grade teacher by a stack of foam mats, and warning bells pealed in Emily’s head.
She strolled in a wide loop around the gym, making certain her path took her by the two teachers. She tried to be invisible, la la la, just walking around the gym. When Emily passed Mrs. Robinson and Mrs. Singh, they stopped talking. She continued several feet farther, then knelt and pretended to tie her shoe. The teachers returned to their conversation, their voices low.
“She told me the card was for my father,” Mrs. Robinson murmured. “It was sweet, I suppose. But how did she know my father was sick?”
“Did you mention it to the students?” Mrs. Singh asked.
“I didn’t.”
“Perhaps something slipped out,” Mrs. Singh suggested. “It happens, you know.”
“Maybe you’re right,” Mrs. Robinson fretted. “Of course you’re right. And I like Emily. She’s bright, creative, polite . . .” She fingered the cross she wore around her neck. “But tell me this, Louise. Have you ever sensed something unnatural about her?”
Face burning, Emily straightened up and strode away.
She’d learned something, however. She’d been given an important piece of the puzzle. Mrs. Robinson didn’t understand how Emily knew about her father’s illness, because Mrs. Robinson hadn’t mentioned it out loud.
Emily thought back to the day with Sophie. Emily had complimented Sophie’s hair to make Sophie feel better, because Sophie had wished she had hair like Klara Kosrov’s instead. Only, like Mrs. Robinson, Sophie hadn’t said what she’d been thinking out loud.
Was it as simple as that? Were you only supposed to talk to people when the conversation was out loud?
She tested her theory, holding back from responding when people thought something but didn’t say it. One day Emily noticed a frail girl named Lucy crouched over her saddle oxfords, coloring in the black bits with black Magic Marker. Emily felt Lucy’s anxiety, and she saw what Lucy saw: other kids laughing and pointing, making fun of her for being too poor to buy new shoes. Emily wanted to tell Lucy that no one was thinking about her shoes at all, but she kept her mouth shut.
Likewise, Emily almost exclaimed over how awesome it was that Maggie Stanton’s parents gave Maggie a kitten for her birthday. A super-cute kitten, which Emily knew because Maggie couldn’t stop thinking about her. Black with white paws, like little white mittens. Emily smiled, wanting to tell Maggie that yes, Mittens was a great name for her kitten.
She stopped herself in time, just barely.
Emily messed up with a boy named John Blasingame, though. John had always been grumpy, standoffish, the kind of boy whose body language told other kids to stay away. One morning, Emily found out why. She stood behind him, waiting to use the pencil sharpener, and his