In a family of secrets, the most dangerous one belongs to the four-year-old.
Blythe Daye doesn't understand why she sometimes hears voices — strangers begging, pleading, screaming for their lives. She doesn't understand why, when she hears them, her body stops being hers. She only knows that afterward, people get hurt. And that her parents will do anything to make sure no one finds out.
Told through four alternating perspectives — Blythe, her physicist father Johnny, her lawyer mother Chaaya, and their cat — The Outside Voice is a literary thriller about what a family will conceal, and what concealment costs.
Johnny is certain there's a scientific explanation for what's happening to his daughter. Chaaya is certain the explanation doesn't matter as long as Blythe stays safe. Blythe is certain of only one thing: the voices are getting louder, and she is learning — slowly, painfully — to fight back.
When a methodical stranger begins circling their home, the family's carefully maintained secrets begin to collapse inward. What follows is a single night that will cost them everything — and a reckoning that will take years to survive.
Before the outside voice came, the only voice inside Blythe Daye's head was her own.
Blythe stood in the southeast corner of the spacious backyard of her family's home. It was the middle of spring in Ann Arbor, Michigan, and the lawn stretched out like velvet cloth dappled with sun. Blythe bypassed the dry patches, knowing that in the southeast corner the earth would be damp. Her sneaker made a satisfying squelch when it pressed into the ground. She lifted her sneaker, and the vacuum seal that had formed under the sole popped. Schluh-lorp. If a sneaker made this noise, Blythe wondered what her toes would sound like.
Curiosity won. Off with the shoes. Blythe sat on the ground and patted her bare toes in the mud. The sound was disappointing—just soft splashes, nothing as satisfying as the sneaker. But the wet friction on her bare feet was soothing, and she kept pressing her toes deeper. Sitting there, she explored the cool mud hiding beneath the blades of grass to find worms. A juicy one was nearly touching her left foot. Blythe plucked the worm off the ground and watched as it coiled in her palm, her eyes widening as she felt the rhythmic pulse of its body against her skin.
Blythe looked up from the worm. A man and a boy were walking along the sidewalk beyond the yard. For a moment, something warm pressed behind her eyes, like the start of a sneeze that didn't come. Then they were past the yard, and the feeling was gone. Blythe looked back at the worm.
Blythe lifted her toes out of the mud and ran her heels along the blades of grass, and thought about some of her favorite words. Hullabaloo. H-U-L-L-A-B-A-L-O-O. Lollygag. L-O-L-L-Y-G-A-G. Marsupial. M-A-R-S-U-P-I-A-L. Blythe was hyperlexic, meaning she could read and spell like a much older kid. She did not know what all the words meant, and she spoke with a four-year-old’s cadence, but she collected words she thought were fun. The day that it clicked in Blythe’s mind that the letters her mom and dad were teaching her made up the words they were saying made her eyes open wider than ever before, as if she had glimpsed a secret place, one spelled out in bold and exciting letters. She felt as if her parents had revealed a secret to her. They could write the things they wanted to say without saying them.
Words, reading, and spelling seemed like magic to her. A spell cast with every word written on a page. It was like her parents could talk without opening their mouths. Magic. And now they were teaching her this.
"Mommy! Daddy! My inside voice is me, right? It say what I think about." She smiled as she held her long ponytail in one hand, her fingertips threading through the strands.
"What's your inside voice?" Chaaya asked from a dry patch of grass nearby. Chaaya was Blythe's mommy.
"I hear it in my head. Like now. And now. Now." Each now stated as if a new discovery.
"Oh. Yeah, angel. That's called your conscience. It sounds just like you, doesn't it?"
"Yeah, Mommy! Do you hear the inside voice in your head too?".
"Yes, angel."
"Do it sound like me?" Blythe hoped the answer was yes.
"No. I don't hear you. Everyone hears their own voice in their head. My inside voice sounds like me."
"Some people hear five or six of their own voices if they're schizophrenic. Heh." Blythe's dad, Johnny, chimed in as he walked across the yard from the back door.
"Don't joke with her like that!" Chaaya playfully wagged a scolding finger at him.
"Daddy? How do you spell skits-of-frank-us?"
Blythe was pressing her toes deeper into the mud, enjoying the cool friction, when Chaaya's phone rang. The sound of a piano and a blues guitar seeped out of Chaaya's pocket. Blythe didn't know the song was Evil by Howlin' Wolf. She only recognized it as the ringtone for Grandma Manjeet, Mommy's mommy. Grandma didn't call very often, but when she did, Chaaya would be upset afterwards.
"Ugh. This bitch. Sorry, baby." Chaaya said as she registered who was calling.
"B-I-T-C-H. Bi—" Blythe grinned.
"Blythe!"
"Sorry, Mommy." Her apology was quick, knowing that B-I-T-C-H was a bad word.
Blythe could only hear half the conversation, but she listened to see if Chaaya would say any more bad words.
"Hello, Mom. What do you want?" Chaaya's voice held an edge.
The muffled sound of Grandma Manjeet rambled in the background. The more Grandma Manjeet rambled, the more Chaaya's face turned from looking upset to looking sad.
"Thanks, Mom. I'm glad you called me. I'll see you on Saturday."
"What was that about?" Johnny said from the edge of the backyard.
"My aunt Jaswinder died."
"Oh damn, that was Noor's mom. Oh damn." Johnny lowered his head.
"Yeah, the mailman found her in the backyard next to a bag of garbage. Apparently, she had a heart attack taking out the trash, and her body was out there for days. She was decom—" Chaaya stopped mid-sentence, the next word paused on her lips as she caught sight of Blythe's attentive posture.
"I got it, I got it. Blythe's listening." Johnny's hand rested on Chaaya's shoulder.
"Jaswinder's funeral is Saturday."
Blythe didn't know the word died. She knew the word dead from television, but Daddy always said it was pretend. This didn't sound pretend. Mommy's face didn't look like the pretend kind of sad.
Blythe looked down at the worm still curled in her palm. It had stopped moving. She wasn't sure if it was sleeping or something else. She set it gently on the grass and watched to see if it would start again.