Page 26 of Deja Who
“No!”
“Ah, good, It’s catching on.” Wow, that was going to be a tough one to break. “Nellie Nazir is catching on.”
“At least hear the pitch,” her mother coaxed, spreading her arms wide like a preacher about to give a blessing. The effect, with the robe and feathers, made it look like she had big pink wings: a sentient flamingo obsessed with its comeback. “It’s a hot new series about a mother and daughter who are both prostitutes.”
Leah turned on her heel.
“They’ll get into all sorts of wacky situations together.”
Leah walked faster.
“It’s like a buddy movie, with whores. Think of all the sidesplitting situations the mother-daughter hooker team could get into. Hilarity will ensue! I promise you! It will!”
“Yes,” she replied, “but not for the reason you think. Good-bye, Nellie. We won’t meet again.”
Nellie rolled her beautiful brown eyes, naturally luminous and always emphasized with lots of blue and purple shadow and liner. “Even you can’t hold a grudge that long. Or are you still determined to be murdered?”
Leah bit her tongue, hard. Some things should never be said, because they could never be unsaid. It was a near thing. Her mother had always been ashamed of her daughter’s a) plain looks, b) Insighter ability, and c) indifference to the Oscar race. At age four, Leah had explained to her babysitter that he was afraid ofdogs and water because in the last four hundred years he’d died of rabies half a dozen times and ended his life foaming, shrieking, and thirsty. “Just leave strange dogs alone, how many times do you have to get chomped before you internalize that?” the exasperated kindergartener had asked the astonished teenager. And Nellie had been less than pleased: “A near-genius IQ and this is what you use it for? Stop that and help me figure out how to seduce the new VP at MGM!”
Nellie considered her daughter’s Insight to be at best embarrassing and at worst something Leah did on purpose for attention. Neither were acceptable. And thus, she had no interest in Leah’s predictions of her own murder.
“Being murdered,” she managed as the room doubled, then
don’t cry don’t cry don’t cry don’t cry don’t cry DON’T YOU DARE CRY
“—will come as a great relief.”
She walked out of her house—not a home, it was never a home—determined never to return.
