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say!” Fish yelled. He finally managed to get the telephone away from the preacher’s wife and scrambled over the top of Pastor Meeks’s desk, knocking picture frames and paperweights onto the floor as he went. Fish stood next to Grandpa Bomba, where he sat still hunched over in the leather chair. My brother raised the phone high above his head like he was daring Miss Rosemary to come and get it. “Tell her, Grandpa,” said Fish.
    Unfortunately, Grandpa Bomba, being as old as he was, had fallen asleep and was snoring softly. Miss Rosemary cocked her head triumphantly resting her hands on her hips.
    “Roger! I need your help!” The woman’s voice was growing shrill. I could tell things were going to get far worse for us Beaumont kids than they’d been that time that Fish and Rocket had spilled red punch all over the carpet in the fellowship hall.
    I sat up on the sofa, still feeling dazed.
    Then, as if two squabbles weren’t enough, a third ruckus overlapped the others from out of nowhere. From where I sat on the blue plaid sofa, I couldn’t see where these other voices were coming from. But to my distress and dismay, the voices sounded pretty surely like they might be coming from inside my head. It felt like I had two cross and cranky gals trapped behind my eyeballs.
    “This is all your fault, Carlene, you know that, don’t you?”
said the first whining, nasal voice.
    “It’s not my fault your son’s dim-witted, Rhonda—you old bat,”
the second voice sniped back. This voice was lower, huskier, and younger-sounding than the first. I looked around the room. I couldn’t see anyone else there. The voices bounced like pinballs inside my skull.
    “No, you’re just the one who got him delivering Bibles for your cousin Larry instead of taking that job selling coffee at the bus station. Coffee’s something people will buy.”
    “And Bibles ain’t?”
    “Not pink ones!”
    My head swam with the voices that seemed to belong to no one. Still sitting on the sofa, I held my head in my hands, wondering what was wrong with me. I remembered going into the church kitchen and seeing Bobbi’s tattoo. Seeing Bobbi’s tattoo
move
. Hearing Bobbi’s tattoo speak. What had it said?
    “She’s really very lonely you know …”
    I tried to think over the noise of so many bickering voices both inside and outside of my head. I couldn’t understand any of it. Nothing about what was happening felt right. What had happened to my savvy? Grandpa was asleep and I was hearing voices. With rising panic, I stared hard at Grandpa Bomba dozing in the preacher’s chair. With every ounce of concentration I willed my grandpa to wake up. But the noise in the room was too much for me and I couldn’t focus. I couldn’t concentrate. I couldn’t think. Maybe if everyone would just shut up, I might be able to make my savvy work.
    I covered my ears, trying uselessly to block out all the noise. I needed to get away. I needed to get to Salina Hope Hospital. I needed to go find my poppa so that my savvy would clock in and start working right. Poppa needed me.
    No one in the room had noticed that I was awake. Pastor Meeks had his back to me. He was throwing pink Bibles into cardboard boxes and shoving them across the floor toward the deliveryman. Miss Rosemary and Fish were going round and round the preacher’s desk, still fighting over the telephone. And the women’s voices in my head were playing an endless tennis match of blame, blame, blame that pounded like blood in my ears.
    Will Junior peeked through the crack in the door. When he saw that I was awake, he smiled, looking relieved. All I wanted to do was to get out of that room. To run away.
    I waited for just the right moment for my escape, waited until I was positive no one would see me jump up quick and duck out of the pastor’s office, leaving all of the arguing behind me. As I fled the room, I was thankful to find the voices of Carlene and Rhonda, the two invisible ladies,