Club Mutant

Four out of five readers preferred a good night's sleep.

2007-10-29T23:01:00.001-07:00

When is a story worth telling?

When it's you that's lived it? That can't be enough. That's inviting the whole world to become nothing but babble.

It's so hard to put words together into any shape worth the trouble.

I want this to be more than I-did-this. I-lived-that. I-was-here.

I want it to be a story worth hearing.

If it's really bleeding, will we feel it down here?

2007-08-28T23:05:00.000-07:00

"You should see this," Dog said.

He came over yesterday to lure me and Cam out to see an eclipse of the moon that night. Cam looked interested, if a little dubious.

"Isn't that at two-thirty in the morning or something?"

"Past your bedtime?" Dog asked.

"Some of us have to get up in the morning," Cam said.

Dog looked at me. I was in my usual spot -- wrapped up in everything I could find in the middle of the bed. I had on the jacket Dog left the last time he was here, and he smiled just a little when he saw it.

"It's really worth seeing," he said to me.

I shook my head. I've seen eclipses before.

"This isn't just any eclipse," Dog coaxed, as if I'd said it. "This one's going to be blood red. It'll be like having Mars up close and personal."

"I'm up for it if you are," Cam said to me. He looked at the jacket I was wearing as if he hadn't seen it before, and glanced at Dog. But he just added, "It's not like we have to travel or anything."

I don't think so, I said.

Cam looked at me again, surprised, and I felt vaguely guilty. I haven't been talking; I haven't been able to. But somehow Dog coming over like this, asking us to go out not to see a new group or a club but the night sky loosened me up. It made me feel like I was ten years old again, a bad girl sneaking out of my room in the middle of the night with that book about the stars someone gave me.

I didn't know what anything was about back then. I didn't know I was a catastrophe. I was just my family's child. Waiting until my parents were asleep, hiding in the dark under a sycamore tree too skinny to give me shelter by day, looking at my star book by the glow of a tiny flashlight I bought at the drug store for a couple of dollars, was the worst I could be accused of at that point.

It felt bad enough. It felt great. I was easy to please in the bad girl department. And they must have had even lower expectations, since they never caught me. One summer I went out almost every night, and still they never caught on.

I'd painted the lens of the flashlight pink with my mother's nail polish. The book said that a white flashlight was too glaring. You had to color it pink. They even suggested nail polish, and it wasn’t like I ever used that kind of thing. So I'd waited until my mother went to the store, and I'd used her really good polish -- the stuff she saved for weddings and funerals. Another betrayal of my parents' trust by their dastardly daughter.

"All we have to do is go outside," Dog said. "Nice of it to fall in the middle of the week like this. No crowds. All the losers with jobs will be asleep."

"Thanks," Cam said.

"Almost all of them."

"Again, much appreciated."

Dog looked at me expectantly. I shook my head again, but he didn't back off.

"You could use the air," he said.

Cold air. No, thanks.

"We'll bundle up. Bring a flask."

I don't drink, dummy.

"Maybe you should start."

Cam looked like he didn't know whose side he was on. "Fine," Dog said. "We'll bring cocoa."

"Look, if she doesn't want to -- " Cam began.

"Your government needs you," Dog talked right over him.

I gave him the look that deserved, and he smiled sardonically. "It's true," he said. "NASA wants the volunteer nerd squad looking for meteors hitting the moon. It's the kind of thing you can only spot during an eclipse."

Now Cam looked skeptical, too. "Since when are you an astronomy geek?"

Dog shrugged. "What can I say? When the universe starts acting up, I like to watch."

He smiled at me like we were alone in the room. "A blood red moon," he said. "When are you going to see that again?"

Verdict: The Angel in the House needs a party

2007-08-24T20:54:00.001-07:00

Dog came to see me today. He just came over. Cam wasn't even home. I guess he has a key. That's all right if it's only him. I don't think Cam would give one to anyone else anyway.

"Hey," he said. I like the way his voice rumbles just a little, even when he's speaking softly.

I nodded.

"I hear you've been holed up pretty tight back here," he said. "Thought you might like some company."

I smiled a little and nodded again.

He sat down at the foot of the bed. I was kind of wrapped up in the middle. I had taken everything off but the fitted sheet and just kind of fluffed it all around me. It was like a nest.

He looked at me. Dog doesn't ever seem like he's staring, even though he tends to keep a pretty long steady gaze on whoever he's with. Staring is uncomfortable. Dog's just paying attention.

"Not feeling too chatty," he said rather than asked.

I looked away.

"Cam's worried about you," he said.

I fiddled with the threadbare edge of a blanket and tried to imagine what Dog does all day. He doesn't seem like someone who has ordinary days.

He sat back and watched me for a while. I waited a bit, but Dog was obviously comfortable where he was. He wasn't going anywhere, and he'd already done the talking he was going to do for the moment.

I picked up the little notebook Cam got for me, and the pen I keep latched on to it. I don't want him to worry, I wrote.

Dog looked over at what I'd written. He cocked an eyebrow at me. "What's with the new medium?"

I can't exactly remember how to talk just now, I wrote.

Dog is about the only person in the world who could take a statement like that and just accept it for what it was: the truth. "That why you shut yourself up in here?" he asked.

I don't know, I wrote.

My hands started to shake. I put the pen and paper down quickly, but he noticed.

"Hey," he said. He got up and shrugged out of the jacket he was wearing and wrapped it around me. More of a shirt than a jacket. Heavy black corduroy. It felt warm from him.

"Come on," he said. He was still kind of holding it around me. Then he touched my face and I wondered why his fingers felt wet.

"You're in a bad way," he said.

I hate it when I don't know I'm crying. It's supposed to be about feeling bad enough to do it, and for me it doesn't seem to have anything to do with me. Like my hands shaking. I can sit and watch them and not feel a thing.

They took my body away when all that happened. It doesn't feel like mine any more.

"Okay," Dog said. His hands were on my shoulders. I could feel that, anyway. Dog knows how to make himself felt when he wants to be.

"We need to get you out of here," he said.

I shook my head. I knew he wanted to help, but out really wasn't what I was looking for.

Even when I lived with my parents, I liked my room best. The worse things got at home, the more I clung to it. Which doesn't make any sense, unless I was thinking maybe if things did get any better, I didn't want to miss it. But I just wanted to be where I felt safe.

Now that I have somewhere I really am safe, you couldn't knock me out of here with a cannon.

Cam's fine with that; I'm fine with it. Dog would just have to deal.

I didn't think I was saying anything, but maybe something came across. "Hey," he said. "I mean it. This isn't good for you, burying yourself alive back here. You're in need of a just plain good time."

I don't even know what that would be, I blurted out, and he smiled.

"Guess we'd better find out," he said.

Counting crows

2007-08-22T22:26:00.000-07:00

From where I'm sitting, I can see outside a bit, though no one could see in. The curtain isn't open, but one bit of it slipped to one side in kind of a fold.

Some birds are going crazy out there. Crows.

I read somewhere that crows are very intelligent, they can talk to each other. If you listen, they don't all sound alike at all. Even the same bird can sound completely different, depending on the situation.

They really do have different word-calls.

I think I could know what they were saying if I listened in just the right way, but it's kind of nice not to know.

For some reason, it used to really bother me that once I'd learned to read -- and I don't remember ever not knowing how -- I could never see words in print as just the lines and shapes they are. They would always tell me what they were saying before I had time to think about it.

I wanted to be able to choose to read or not to read. But it wasn't up to me any more.

I like looking at words in a language I don't know. They don't tell me anything. I have to go find out about them, or ask.

At least I can keep my eyes shut. Then all the books in the world could be around me and they wouldn't say a thing.

It must be terrible not to be able to shut things out.

I knew some people like that.

People who couldn't stop hearing.

It's terrible to hear things other people can't.

I like listening to the crows and not knowing what they're shouting to one another. Their voices carry. Anyone could hear them. Lots of people probably do right now.

I'm not any different from anyone else.

Warning: patient's parents may experience vast relief

2007-08-19T11:17:00.001-07:00

My mother sobbed and hitched about it. My father was more serious and silent even then before. They were both so terribly upset by what I'd done.

And so relieved.

So glad when I did something normal like "acting out," as they called it. That's the kind of thing teenagers do all the time. So ordinary.

And so sad, of course. If you're a perfectly normal middle-class couple who've always tried to be good parents -- gone to PTA meetings, baked cookies, lived in a good neighborhood -- then you get a year's free membership to the sympathy club (renewable annually) when your kid flips out and shatters all the breakables in your bedroom and threatens to do a lot worse than that.

Especially when you respond by getting her the help she needs. Get some really good doctors, and the hell with the expense. Put her somewhere where she can't hurt herself or anyone else.

They visited me for a while, until I made it really clear that it didn't matter how many drugs they pumped into me -- I was going to scream about what liars they were until they either admitted I was right or cleared out. And the way I screamed, I could make it hurt.

Not that they ever said that was the reason they stopped coming. They would go through any amount of pain for me, their only child. (And not that they would admit that there was any pain involved in getting near me when I didn't want them to, since that might get a little too close to the truth. Psycho-child was acceptable in their reasonably enlightened and liberal circle of friends; psychic was something else.)

No, they got a doctor to agree that their presence might be having a painfully agitating impact on me.

Which is the polite way of dumping your kid at the loony bin and going back to your normal lives.

Three roses, locked away

2007-08-15T23:56:00.000-07:00

I went into my parents' bedroom. My mother was on the phone downstairs, and there was one up here next to their bed.

I waited until I could hear my mother talking before I picked up. I wanted her to be concentrating on what she was saying, rather than listening to what was coming from the other end.

Just to throw her further off the scent, I tossed a little ambient noise her way. A tree branch snapping. The distant sound of a car. A phoebe singing just outside her window.

I was thinking too much about that to hear what she was saying for a minute. Then she stopped talking and my father started.

For a minute, I thought I'd made a mistake about who she was calling. His voice sounded so different. I thought it must be because I didn't usually hear it over the phone.

But it wasn't the sound quality. It was the tone, the whole feel of it.

I realized that he hadn't been using his real voice around me for so long that I didn't know it when I heard it.

"Christ, I don't know," he said, and it was nothing like his usual hail-fellow-well-met tones. "I just don't know if I can ignore this."

"Excuse me?" My mother's voice ranging high with disbelief and anger. "Did I ask you to ignore anything?"

"I mean, I don't know if I can just dismiss what he's saying if -- "

"Our daughter," my mother said, enunciating icily, "is not a freak."

I dropped the phone as if it had just started bleeding.

I didn't know why that was the worst thing she could have said.

It should be good news, right?

I mean, wouldn't it have been pretty horrible if she'd called my father and said just the opposite? "Our daughter is a -- "

A voice outside the door.

I heard my name.

"Are you in there?"

She couldn't get in. I hadn't noticed I'd pushed the little lock on their door. Theirs was the only door in this house that had a lock, other than the front.

Why was that?

The doorknob rattled.

"Open this door!"

Go away.

Quiet for a moment. Hesitation.

"Look, I know you're in there -- "

Nobody in here but us freaks.

"Let me in!"

You don't want to come in here. You just want me out.

I looked around. My mother's room.

I think it's always that way. One room can never belong to two people. It can't look like both of them, anyway. It should have been both of theirs, but really it was hers. He was an afterthought in here.

The mirror on one wall -- large, and shaped like a harp. The small tables at either side of the bed, and the delicate writing desk near the window. She used to watch for me to come home from school, sitting in that chair like wooden lace.

Three roses on the desk: china, crystal, brass. Buds, not blossoms.

I threw the first two at the mirror to see which would break.

The glass held up pretty well. One rose smashed; the other disintegrated.

"Stop it! What are you doing? Damn it, let me in!"

I told you, nobody's in here.

"Stop saying that!"

I picked up the brass rose. It was heavier than I expected.

My mother never let me touch any of these.

I'm not saying anything. My lips aren't moving. Just ask the doctor.

I waited.

If she'd wept, I'd have wept, too, and at least we'd be together. If she'd screamed, I'd have opened the door just to make her stop. Anything to make that stop.

She was quiet.

And then, "Show me," she said in a quieter voice. Negotiating. "Let's talk about this. Open the door so I can see what you mean."

Treating me like I was crazy.

She wanted me to be crazy.

Anything but that other thing.

You only see what you want to see, so what's the point?

"We need to talk about this, sweetheart."

She hadn't called me that since I was seven. The time I was drowning. Damaged, maybe, beyond repair.

I CAN'T TALK!

And just not to have to hear her answer to that, I threw the brass rose at the mirror.

It shattered the glass quite nicely, splintering it right down the middle.

The drowning girl is thrown overboard

2007-08-08T22:01:00.001-07:00

My mother drove us home from the doctor's office, coldly furious. "All these years," she said. "Here I thought we had a competent medical practitioner, and he turns out to be some -- some ideological crank.

"Where the hell did he get his medical degree, anyway?" she asked no one in particular. "Doctors 'R' Us?"

"UCLA," I said, but she didn't notice because she didn't want to know.

"Go upstairs," she said the second we got in the door. Not looking at me, walking away from me.

She didn't drink often, but I knew she was going to get something now. A glass of wine, at least. Didn't take any superpowers to figure that one out.

I was angry. What if I'd wanted something to drink, or eat? We'd been there a long time. It was almost dinnertime and I hadn't eaten since lunch, and not much of that because I'd been too clenched up about this appointment.

But I didn't say anything. I knew it wasn't any use.

I went up to my room, but didn't shut the door all the way. I sat on my bed and picked up a pillow just to have something to dig my fingers into.

The doctor believed me.

My mother didn't believe the doctor.

If he'd said what she wanted to hear -- that there was nothing going on, it was all a silly dream, nope, no mutants here -- then she'd have believed him. She wouldn't have called it belief, even. She would have called it facts. She'd have said that it wasn't just her opinion; she had scientific backup here. This guy was a doctor. A man of science. He had a degree. He had logic and evidence and facts.

Which was all exactly what she wanted, right up until they added up to something that she'd already decided wasn't true.

I lifted my head. Her voice, downstairs. She was on the phone.

Calling my father, probably. Telling him what a quack we'd been relying on all these years.

When I was little and my left lung collapsed and I thought I'd never be able to breathe again, that doctor was the one who helped me. I hadn't always enjoyed his attitude today, but at that early time there was something vastly reassuring about his looking and sounding so composed and slightly amused at any fuss about something that, after all, wasn't anything to be frightened of. I just needed a little repair job, and he'd be happy to give it to me. And I'd stopped being frightened even while I still felt like I was drowning on dry land.

I put the pillow down, wiggled my fingers to get some life back in them, and quietly pushed the door open. My mother's voice got a little more audible, still too far for me to make out words.

They thought I was listening in on them even when they weren't talking.

Might as well do a little old-fashioned eavesdropping.

We become what we're accused of.

A dragon doesn't care whose lamp he shatters

2007-08-06T22:54:00.001-07:00

"She gets headaches," my mother said.

I went ahead and let her talk for me. It had been so long since I'd spoken the old-fashioned lips-and-voice way, I wasn't sure I knew how anymore. And I was nervous now about talking the other way in front of her.

The doctor looked politely concerned. "I think they may be migraines," my mother added.

The doctor looked at me. "Is there anything in particular that seems to trigger them?" he said. To me, not her.

"She spends too much time shut up alone up in her room," my mother said. "Reading. I think maybe the combination of no fresh air and too much studying -- "

"Yes, I see," the doctor said. "I wonder if I might talk to your daughter alone for a minute."

It wasn't a question. My mother looked alarmed and slightly insulted. One glance at her face and then I kept my gaze nailed to the floor. This wasn't my idea; she had to know that.

"We won't be long," the doctor added, and my mother turned on her heel and stalked out.

I hadn't realized how hard I'd been hunching my shoulders until she was gone and they relaxed, like letting out a breath. The doctor didn't say anything, but I could see him biting back a smile.

"Anything you'd care to tell me?" he asked.

I'd known him for years. Never thought about him much one way or another. He was a nice doctor, he wasn't scary, and he always apologized when he had to give me a shot or prescribe some medicine. But he wasn't anyone I considered a big part of my life. Once we saw him at the supermarket, and it wasn't until my mother said hello to him that I knew who he was. I'd never even bothered to look all that closely at his face.

I did now, and I knew I could talk to him. Even if he noticed what kind of talking I did these days. (How long had it been? Had I ever known how to really talk? I must have. My parents had videos of me when I was little, and my voice was in them.)

It hurts my head when I don't talk, I said, watching him carefully.

He seemed fine with it. Either didn't notice anything amiss, or didn't care. "Can you tell me more about that?"

My parents are -- I stopped, trying to think of how to say it. They don't like the way I am. The way they think I might be. They're afraid I'm --

I broke off again, hoping he'd interrupt and make this easier for me. He was listening very seriously, but he wasn't going to help me. Not like that.

I don't talk like other people, I said. I talk with my head. And it scares them. They don't want me to be like that. One of -- you know. That kind of --

"A mutant," the doctor said, and I jumped a little. I hadn't used that word even to myself.

I guess.

"There's nothing wrong with that," he said. "It's a simple scientific fact."

They don't feel comfortable around me anymore.

Every door and keyhole in our house was one I could be listening at, no matter where I was. They thought.

"Is that why you haven't been talking?"

I nodded. And then I get these headaches. It feels like pressure. Like something's trying to get out.

"That's probably stress," he said. "I don't think that keeping your thoughts to yourself is doing you any physical harm, if that's what's worrying you."

I didn't like the slightly amused tone under the I'm The Doctor voice, but still it felt so good to be saying any of this. Scary as hell, but better than anything had in a while.

"Have you and your parents talked about this?"

I shook my head. It was just like that old saying about the elephant in the living room that everyone pretends isn't there. Except this was more like a dragon they were afraid to wake up.

We all knew it was there, and I at least wanted to touch the beautiful red scales, see the wings unfurl, look right into its glowing jeweled eyes. But it wasn't allowed.

"Do you mind if I try something?"

The doctor was still slightly amused. "If you'll excuse me," he went on. "Can you say your name?"

I stared at him. "Or anything you want," he said. "Just something you can say again exactly the same way. The first line of a poem, if you like."

The only thing I could think of was the one I loved from Alice in Wonderland. The Jabberwocky. I'd memorized it for English class one year. 'Twas brillig, and the slithy toves --

The doctor smiled. "Okay," he said. "Now, if it's all right -- " He put his hand out, slowly, until it covered my mouth. "Not very high-tech, but good enough for a government job," he said. "Can you breathe?"

I nodded.

"Is this okay?"

Nodded again.

"Keep your lips shut, all right? Now say it again."

I wasn't sure I could. I felt like I was suffocating, though I knew I could breathe just fine.

Then I thought of the dragon, turning its elegant head to look right at me. Unfolding its wings, not caring if it destroyed everything in the room when it took off.

It was so beautiful.

All I wanted was to go along for the ride.

'Twas brillig, and the slithy toves --

Loud and clear.

The doctor's hand pressed a little harder as I said it.

"Well, I'll be damned," he said, and he was smiling again. This time I didn't mind.

The ghost is afraid of the house she haunts

2007-08-04T00:41:00.001-07:00

It's frightening to realize that your parents are frightened. Especially when you find out that you're what's scaring them.

Here's what I can't understand: They always said not to worry about what other people thought. Don't dress or act or be like everyone else. My father kept saying that he didn't want a cookie-cutter kid. He said he'd rather I failed in school by being myself than got straight A's by just blindly repeating what was told to me. My mother the lawyer said she wanted me to set precedent, not follow it.

They wanted me to be something new and different until they started figuring out that maybe I really was something new and different.

Here's the other thing. When the evidence started rolling in that there were people who could do things that used to be the kind of thing that only happened in science fiction stories, my parents were interested. They read the articles. They talked about them.

They listened when James Randi started giving the specs about what telepathy really was, and how it was the only psychic power out there that had any evidence to support it. Thoughts have a tangible existence of their own, and the possibilities that opens up are interesting, but not endless.

My parents started being able to use the m-word, and talked about how glad they were that that nice young man who could touch things and tell something about the people who'd owned them was working with the police and not against them.

As long as the miracles and the mysteries were happening at a safe distance, my parents were fine with them.

Which wasn't at all the same thing as being able to cope with the idea of a real live telepath under their own roof.

They'd wanted me to be different, but not that different.

They started being less and less comfortable having me around.

I wanted to tell them that the thing they were most afraid of was exactly what they didn't have to worry about. I was a sender, not a receiver. I guess if I'd really tried, I might have been able to get into their heads, but it wasn't what I was good at and I wouldn't want to anyway.

But I couldn't tell them, because they kept making excuses not to be in the same room with me, and they certainly weren't going to have anything like a real conversation with me. If they talked about this, it might make it real. As long as we were all just kind of separately wondering and worrying, they were safe. They'd rather have all the doubt in the world than the wrong kind of certainty.

They finally took me to the doctor, and that’s when it all started to fall apart.

My mother the rose turns the music down

2007-07-31T22:42:00.000-07:00

Trying just to tell the story.

This is the story that came before I came here. This is the book I wanted to close.

It's easier for me to write sometimes when I have music on. It's like the sound drowns out everything I don't want to think about and lets me just write what I need to. I'm listening to some strange stuff right now that Cam brought home from work. A local group, women's voices. Very pretty and very angry.

I listen to music with headphones on even when nobody's around to not want to hear it. I always have.

When I hear that one song that just clicks for me, I want to get to know it. I listen to it again and again, and really loudly. I know you're not supposed to, especially with headphones on. You could damage your hearing, you'll be deaf by the time you're thirty, okay, okay; but if it's not going right through you, it's not music. It's just background noise.

I could be dead by the time I'm thirty, too, and then what good will all that pristinely preserved hearing do me?

The first few times I listen to a song, I can barely understand the words. I'm just listening to how the whole thing sounds. Then I start hearing, bit by bit, what's being said.

That must be what it's like before we learn to talk -- before we learn what language is at all. All those spoken sounds falling at us gently like balloons, and we just smile and reach up our hands for more.

Music has colors and shapes, but each note moves so quickly that it's gone almost before you can see it. That's another reason I need to relisten to one song so much. I want to see what it looks like. It ripples by like water and all I know is that something was there and I want it back again.

I wouldn't want to be able to stop it long enough to really get a clear look. That would be like killing a butterfly so I could stare at the pattern on its wings.

I don't remember what music I was listening to that afternoon. I remember the song seemed like a lot of tiny arcs caught inside one great one, all silver and crimson.

Whoever was singing was saying exactly what needed to be said, and I was happy to hear it. It was one of those songs that feels like it'll never wear out no matter how many times you play it.

The sun was piercing through a gap between my bedroom curtains at that angle that always looked like a celebration. Probably because it only looked that way in the late afternoon, when I was safely home from school and wouldn't have to think about going back until the next day at least.

I sort of knew my mother had come home, but it wasn't something I was particularly thinking about. I knew she was downstairs, just as I figured she knew I was upstairs.

When I was younger, when my mother or father or I came home, we'd check in with whoever was already there. If you were the first one home, you were supposed to leave a note.

Sometimes my mother would pick a rose instead and leave it on the table. That was her name, so she got to use it as her signature. You could tell how long she'd been waiting for you by how much it had wilted.

I used to save those roses. I dried them so they wouldn't rot. I'd never pick the roses from the garden -- she didn't like anyone else to touch them -- but I could keep one if she'd already taken it.

On the rare occasions that my father got home before either of us, he would leave one of his business cards. I never knew if we were supposed to be his clients, or if it was some quaint Victorian leave-your-card-for-the-ladies-of-the-house gesture.

I usually drew a picture, of something from whatever I was reading or something we'd learned about in school. Food, if I was hungry. Something I really wished they'd buy me, if there was a holiday coming up.

Whoever got home and found a note was supposed to go and find the person who'd left it; check in with them, talk to them for a minute. My mother said that was how civilized people behaved. You could even just say hello, but you had to say something.

Lately, we hadn't been doing that any more. My mother would get home from work and just go about her business, like she had roommates rather than a family. My father had been staying later and later at work; a lot of the time I'd be in bed by the time he got home.

They still talked to each other, but they talked at me rather than with me.

I was too afraid to ask what had changed and why, so I waited and hoped for it to change back.

That day I had some reading I was supposed to do, and some reading I wanted to do. I was putting it off just a little longer.

Sometimes I read while I'm listening to music. It makes it more intense. But it has to be a book I've read a million times before, and the song has to be just the right one.

Today I was just listening. It was all I could do to soak in the sound.

There's plenty of music I like; but there are some songs that make me fly. I don't even know why one song will strike me as that much better than another. Maybe it's not even the music itself, or all by itself. I was happy that day, I know that. No reason; I just was. And I was ready to be made happier. So maybe the song had stopped by at just the right time.

Every time I played it I turned it up a little. I really wouldn't have been surprised to open my eyes and find myself nose to nose with the ceiling.

There was a banging noise that didn't have anything to do with drums. Jagged and angry. And my name being shouted.

"Will you please turn that damned music down!"

My mother at the door. Which was still closed, fortunately.

I pushed "stop" and sat frozen, holding my breath.

"Thank you." A pause, as if for an answer. I didn't say anything, and she went on. "Please try to remember that you aren't the only person who lives here. Not all of us share your taste in music." That last word pronounced very sarcastically, as if music was the last word she'd use to describe what I listened to.

I didn't answer, and there was the sound of her footsteps moving deliberately down the stairs.

When I could move again, I pulled my headphones off and looked at them.

They'd been on the whole time. Plugged in. There was no other way for sound to get out of the player.

No one else should have been able to hear it at all, unless they were standing in the same room and heard that horrible hissing sound that other people's headphones playing other people's music give off. And even that wouldn't be so loud that somebody downstairs would come storming up demanding not to have to hear that hideous din any more.

I knew the answer, of course, and it had to do with why they'd been avoiding me so much.

It was coming from me. It was me.

The music had been pouring through me, and I let it. I sent it.

I should have kept it to myself, but I didn't. Because if I sat and concentrated on making sure that no one else could hear it, that was admitting that there was something I could do that I shouldn't have been able to.

I didn't need speakers to make the world hear music. I didn't even have to open my mouth to talk.

I wondered how long it had been since I really had talked.

No more styrofoam strawberries

2007-07-28T22:06:00.001-07:00

Cam has all this great music, groups I never would have even heard of. He knows how to put himself in the way of it. He brings a lot home from his work.

Once a few days after I came here, Cam went out early and brought back some strawberries, fresh, from the farmers' market. I didn't like strawberries much, but I wasn't going to say that to someone who went out first thing in the morning to buy me food. So I tried one.

I hadn't realized until right then that the reason I didn't like strawberries was that I'd never been given one worth eating before. These were like a whole different species.

"They're called Brown Sugar," Cam said, pleased at my expression. "All the farmers have different names for their fruit."

I'd been eating plastic all my life, and after that I couldn't go back to it. Once you have a piece of good bread or real fruit, you can't go back to bubble wrap.

It was the same with the music he brought to me. I thought I'd listened to pretty decent stuff, and some of it still sounded all right. I'm not a snob or a purist or anything. I don't know enough about music to be able to judge like that, and I don't want to judge anyway. Music is hard enough to make, and if a piece gives someone pleasure, I'm not going to try to talk him out of it.

But now I just can't stand anything that sounds canned. It sounds like that ravioli in a tin tastes. A little off. Fake. Too smooth -- there's no body to it.

Cam's got an even lower tolerance. If something comes on the radio that sounds just a little too pop for him, he'll get this pained look on his face, like he needs to go to the dentist or something. "Oh, my favorite," he says. "Boys In The Sync."

The story ends, the story begins

2007-07-27T22:30:00.001-07:00

That night we met, Cam asked me if I needed a place to stay. "I've got plenty of room," he said.

"No strings attached," he said when I looked at him.

I was so tired, and that was why I didn't say yes right away. I didn't know if I was thinking straight. I felt like there must be something I wasn't seeing.

I felt like Cam was safe and kind and his offer was exactly what he said it was.

I guess it sounds crazy to say you'll go and live with someone you've just met.

But the fact that I needed somewhere to go so badly, and why, wasn't exactly a scene from Planet Sanity either.

Do you live by yourself?

"Yes."

I'm allergic to dogs. Also afraid of them, but he didn't need to know that.

"No pets, no smoking, no loud music after 10:00 PM."

I like loud music.

He laughed. "I made that one up, actually. I only have one neighbor, and she's partly deaf." He looked at me. "Will you come and see my place?"

He always phrased things like that, in the least threatening way possible.

Okay.

A box of one's own

2007-07-26T23:55:00.001-07:00

Today I didn't leave the bedroom. Even after Cam left, I stayed in here. I kept the door shut.

I just want the world to be as small as possible.

Actually, the world can be as big as it wants. I just want to be in this little room, far far away from it.

Cam's room is small, but it has everything you need. The bed, and a desk and the computer and a lot of books and music.

It reminds me of the houses I used to make when I was lucky enough to get a really big cardboard box. I'd bring a blanket and a flashlight and my favorite book and a box of crackers. There's a way of folding box lids so that you're closed right in and the flaps won't open. It's hard to do by yourself from the inside, but then there you are, in your own home. Nobody can tell anything from the outside. It's like you're not even there.

I don't have any food in here, but I'm not hungry. Cam brought me something to eat when he got home this afternoon. He's mad at me for not coming out of here. He says he isn't, but I don't know what else you'd call it. Upset.

I hate it when he's unhappy. I wish we could just be quiet together and not have so much to worry about.

When he leaves, everything goes blank. Not bad, but empty. It's all right. I sit in here and read stories or make up my own. Watch time passing.

I'm not hurting anything or anybody. If this is my version of happiness, I don't know why he can't just leave me to it and be glad I have one.

The $300,000 funeral

2007-07-25T22:36:00.001-07:00

Last night I dreamed that my parents threw a very expensive funeral for me. It wasn't in a church; I couldn't tell quite where it was. A bright white room, white everywhere with no decoration or break. There were a lot of people there, and everyone held flowers because it was too crowded to put them down anywhere. They'd get stepped on.

I saw a beautiful coffin, glossy and dark. I knew I was supposed to be in it. I tried to remember why I wasn't. I'd done something wrong, I knew that much. Everything was thrown off schedule now. But my parents are diligent, organized people. They were doing the best they could to keep things in the proper order.

There was a black marble angel for a headstone. It should have been outside; maybe it was in here so everyone could see it without getting their shoes dirty. The angel's hair fell in long ringlets and it held a sword half-raised. I couldn't tell if it was a man or a woman. Its face had a mischievous, indulgent smile I recognized from somewhere.

I heard someone say that the whole thing cost 300,000 dollars, and that didn't even include the food they were serving after.

I thought I was out of the way. I was behind a glass wall, off to one side. That was it -- the place was like a hospital, with those windowpane doors you try to peer through to see what they're doing. No one else seemed to notice or care that I was there, but my parents saw me watching and were furious. If I didn't leave, they were going to be humiliated in front of everyone, they said.

I told them I'd apologize if that would help, but they didn't listen. They didn't exactly talk right to me, either. They just kind of hissed me out of there, as if they were embarrassed to be seen near the likes of me.

Thou shalt not steal (unless thou art really, really hungry)

2007-07-24T22:59:00.001-07:00

I don't know if I was afraid when Cam looked at me in the club and I realized that I couldn't dodge him the way I could everyone else. I think I was, but only in the way that I was always afraid.

I guess I was more curious than anything else.

It's hard to be afraid of Cam.

"That was you, right?" he asked, as I stood there not knowing where to go or what to do. "Doing that to the music?"

I don't know, I said, and he smiled.

"I think it was," he said. "I think it was great."

I didn't mean to.

"But that's what's so great about it," he said. "It's just the music sounding better because we get to hear how it sounds to someone who thinks it's fantastic." He nodded toward the band. "Those guys ought to hire you."

I sat down because I was feeling shaky. I don't think they need the help.

"I hope they don't," he said. "They're really good. But there's so much competition out there. I've seen a lot of terrific bands go nowhere because they couldn't stick it out. It's so hard to keep going when you don't know if it's going to get you anywhere."

Are you a musician?

He smiled and started telling me about his job at the radio station where he goes to school. He does play music -- he knows how to, anyway, piano and guitar -- but that's not where his passion lies. He wants to work in the music industry. Helping, not playing.

Cam learned about music before he realized that he didn't want to play professionally, but it's good because after he finishes with school, he can teach if he has to. And he just likes knowing what goes into making music.

He told me all this without asking me anything.

He was watching me as he talked. Someone came a bit too close and I kind of ducked out of sight. I can't disappear like Lacy can, but if I try hard, I can make people just notice something else. Look somewhere else. Not be the thing they want to see.

I was able to get into the clubs by making whoever took the money see what he wanted to see: that I was paying what it cost to get in.

I was able to get a little money for food by making them see that I paid too much and needed change.

It was stealing. I know that. I know it was wrong. If it had been somebody's own money, I never would have done it.

I know it's just as wrong to steal from a place as from a person, but it doesn't feel as wrong. Three or five or ten dollars to a person, just one person, is a lot. To a business, it's nothing.

And I was hungry.

And if I asked -- for help, for money -- they might have asked me questions I couldn't answer. Like why I needed money so badly. Where I lived. Why my parents weren't taking care of me.

I don't want to write about this any more.

Twenty-four hours can't be that strong

2007-07-23T21:44:00.001-07:00

"You knew it was out there," Dog said. "That was the whole point."

Cam had invited him over. Lacy, too. And a friend of Lacy's, but I don't remember her name because I left before he could tell it to me.

Cam's bedroom has a door and I shut it. I didn't lock it because it is his room, and anyway if he wants to come in I guess I'd rather he just did than banged on the door or tried to talk through it.

It's his apartment, but he said I could stay here and I get to choose the room I want to be in at any given time.

I chose the one with nobody else in it.

I didn't feel like sitting with a bunch of other people arguing over whether we should watch a movie or go out, and then arguing some more over which movie or which club. I felt like seeing how far into the bed I could burrow and still be able to breathe.

I was hoping they'd go out, but they stayed. I think Cam was hoping I'd get bored and come out and play nice.

He drives me crazy.

Sometimes I feel like he knows me straight through, like I'm a crystal shell he can pick up and look all the way into any time he wants, and I don't even mind because I know he'd never break me; and sometimes I can't believe how he can't figure out the most basic ordinary obvious things about me.

Like that the last thing I'd want was to be reminded right then that there were plenty of other people on the planet.

Like I haven't had enough forcible reminders of that.

Why would he invite a stranger over?

They decided to watch a movie after all. I heard the kind of hollow booming that even his neighbor can hear sometimes. That's about the only frequency she's got left, I think. She'd be banging on the wall soon if things didn't stop blowing up.

A knock on my door.

I'm not here. Go away.

I heard the door slip open and then shut again. There's a chair next to Cam's computer, and someone sat down in it.

"Me," Dog said, and I cleared the covers back away over my head.

"Hey," he said when I looked at him.

Here's the thing: if it had been Cam that had come in, knowing how much I didn't want him right then, knowing I wanted to be alone, knowing why, I would have started screaming. I would have thrown something. Thrown him, if I could. Clawed until there was blood on the wall, and not cared much which of us it came from.

That never occurred to me with Dog. Not just because I don't think I could get anywhere near hurting him, unless he let me or I fought dirty and snapped out a real keeper of a headache at him. Dog just sat and took my measure, and everything along those lines was completely irrelevant.

"Heard you weren't in the mood for company," he said.

So you came in.

He smiled, just a little. His face never moves much. His eyes always stay locked on you whether it's you talking or him. Most people tend to look around a bit, especially when they're trying to find the right words. Like they think they'll see them on the shelf, or hanging just outside the window.

"I don't think of myself as company," Dog said.

His voice is so deep it's distracting. Sometimes it takes me a minute to know what he's saying. He doesn't mind. He just waits.
I didn't have an answer for him, so I piled up some pillows to lie on. I'm a pillow hog. Cam had to buy some more just to make sure he had a chance at getting one on any given night.

"Cam told me what was bothering you," he said. "I'm not sure I understand the problem, though."

Then go talk to him some more. Maybe he can explain a little better.

"No need to get nasty," he said. "You have to admit, it's kind of a contradiction."

I don't see why.

"If you didn't want anyone to see what you wrote, you shouldn't have put it out there."

I glared at him. He just took it. It wasn't for "anyone" to see. Cam's out a lot, and he likes to be able to see what I've been doing.

"What you've been writing, you mean."

So?

"So," Dog said, "he could have just had you email him, or put it in a document he could get to and no one else could. There are plenty of options for keeping that kind of thing private."

I slammed myself back, rattling the headboard. I felt Cam worrying from the other room, and I was glad.

I don't know about computers. He set this up. This is how he wanted it. It wasn't MY idea.

"Stop acting so powerless," Dog said. "You knew what he was doing. You could have said no."

Right. Say no to the one person who's standing between me and the street or worse. He's paying the rent and everything else and the way he never breathes a word about it you'd think that kind of thing just happens. He keeps me safe. I step on him when I walk in my sleep because he takes the floor at night so he'll be between me and the door just in case I start really heading somewhere. He brings me books and music and the way he looks at me you'd never think he knows I have a body.

All that, and he acts like he's grateful I'm here.

So of course if he asks if I'll please do something, one thing, I'm going to say no.

"You knew people could read whatever you wrote," Dog said. "You knew it was out there. That was the whole point."

Not for me.

"You're not the only one dealing with this kind of thing. The more that's out there about it, the better. People are just starting to face the fact that we're real. Sure, the science is adding up, but it's pretty abstract. We need more stories."

I think that was the most Dog has ever said to me in one big block.

I wished he'd keep talking. His voice is like a purr.

I didn't answer, and he asked, "Does it bother you that I've read what you wrote?"

Surprised, but not bothered. I shook my head. That's different. I know you.

"And those people -- the ones who left the messages -- are total strangers. They don't know you from Eve. For all they know, you're some forty-year-old guy with a goatee."

I smiled. "So why care?" he asked. "Especially if they like what you say, but even if they don't. What does it matter?"

I shook my head again. "So you don't mind friends, and you don't mind strangers," he said. "Who does that leave?"

I looked down at my hands. They burned a little after I got out, but when Cam took me in they paled right back up again.

"You afraid somebody's going to find you?" Dog asked.

"Quit curling up like that," he added. "I can't even see who I'm talking to."

He looked at me more curiously than usual. "Is it the police?" he asked.

I don't know, I said. I hadn't really thought about that. They might be looking for me. You're not supposed to leave that kind of place until they say you can.

"Your family?"

I wanted another blanket, but I was too cold to go get one.

"You're an adult, right? Legally? They can't do anything to you."

That might be true. It is true, I guess, if he says it is.

It doesn't feel true.

How can two people have all the power in the world over you one day and none at all the next?

I don't want to be your pillar of salt

2007-07-18T22:55:00.000-07:00

Fight with Cam today. I hate that. It's like an earthquake. He's my safe place.

I pointed out to him that this marathon sleepwalking I've been doing really started up when I started writing more about the past. Which I was only doing because he wanted me to.

If it's supposed to be so wonderfully healthy and important to take a good hard unwavering uncomfortable look at things that have already happened and are over and done with, why do we have phrases like let sleeping dogs lie? Why do people say things like stop living in the past? You never hear anyone say I really wish you'd live in the past more.

Why would we have a myth about a woman who was turned into a pillar of salt for taking a glance over her shoulder at a place of ruin and destruction she was safely out of? Punishment for peeking back when she should have been living in the now and just happy to be alive.

That used to make me laugh — a pillar of salt, who even thought of that? Why salt? And if salt, why a pillar? It just didn't make sense.

Now I think it's horrible. To be alive and moving and warm, and then feel yourself hardening into a component element.

Did she feel it happening? See her own hands — too white, too beautiful — one last time before her eyes crystallized into solid tears?

Cam pointed out that I was sleepwalking before I started writing about the past, and also having nightmares. Which I haven't been having at all lately. The sleepwalking may be keeping him on his toes, but I haven't noticed a thing. And (he says) even I have to admit that I'm a lot calmer lately.

Am I?

"Aren't you?"

I guess it doesn't sound so bad when I write it out here, but I was really angry and he was really serious. And then I was almost crying, which made me even angrier.

"Maybe you need to be angry more often," Cam said. "It beats being afraid."

Not feeling like a good cause

2007-07-16T22:34:00.000-07:00

Threw out the keys again last night. This time down the drain and Cam, against his usual policy of not touching me when I'm asleep, took my hand when I tried to turn on the garbage disposal. I didn't insist, and after a minute I seemed to forget what I'd gotten up to do in the first place, so since he was still holding my hand he led me back to the bedroom. I slept peacefully the rest of the night.

He doesn't want to tell me these things because he's afraid of upsetting me, but I make him. It's more upsetting not to know what my body is up to when I'm not looking.

Is this worse than nightmares?

Absolutely not. For me, anyway. Cam's the one who has to be on guard duty. He says he doesn't mind, but I think it's starting to wear him out. He's tired all the time now.

He doesn't want me to worry about that.

"I was tired all the time before, dummy," Cam said. "I'm a student. That's my job."

This is different.

"Not so much."

Anyway, being tired all the time before was for a good cause. Doing work you like. Getting a degree. Staying up nights to babysit somebody who doesn't know enough to stay in bed after she falls asleep is just stupid.

"Yeah, well, call me weird," Cam said. "I like it."

Stop it.

"It's true. I don't mean I won’t be glad when you start feeling happier, more peaceful. But I like being there when you need me."

I didn't know what to say to that.

"Try finishing what you were trying to tell about before," Cam said. "In your journal. Finish up with when we met. And maybe a little more about why. Maybe we'll both be able to sleep a little better if you do."

Or maybe I could just never ever think about anything that's happened to me ever again. I bet I'd be happy and peaceful then.

But he won't believe that.

Can't trust me even when I'm sleeping

2007-07-15T01:04:00.001-07:00

Cam had another set of keys made today. He wants to have extras around, just in case.

Just in case of me, to be exact. Last night while I was asleep, I threw his key ring away. Only in the trash, but he's worried about next time.

He's Mr. Adamant Gentleman now. I have to sleep in the bed. Sometimes he does, too. Very modestly and properly. Keeping between me and the door, which is always shut. Sometimes he camps out on the floor in his sleeping bag.

What if I step on you?

"Then I know where you are," he said. "Anyway, you're little."

ing is max and john

2007-07-11T22:17:00.001-07:00

Sitting, listening to ing.

The computer hates it when I type that. Keeps objecting to ing. Spell checking ing. What -ing? Put something in front of it!

Sorry.

The music sounds like I feel. Kind of far away and close all at once.

I'm not sure where I am, and I'm not going to move an inch until I find out.

darn, some ing fell off my plate.

Missing club ing

2007-07-06T21:24:00.000-07:00

Cam is nagging at me about going out. Tonight it was a concert. A couple of guys called ing. That’s the name of their group, anyway.

"It's not like a club scene," Cam said. "Some of the music is really pretty. Some of it's just kind of, I don't know, odd."

I didn't say anything.

"I think you'd like them," Cam said. "Not just their music, but the whole feel of it."

He found some of their music for me to listen to. It was really whole and clear and sweet. When I thought of just being there and getting to hear them play, I wanted it.

But when I thought of everything between where I am now and where they are, playing, I just couldn't.

It was more than I could imagine doing.

Sometimes I wonder if I'll ever have to go outside again. I wish I didn't.

I want to just stay here.

Voyage in the dark

2007-07-04T23:42:00.000-07:00

I don't want to see anybody right now. I don't want to talk.

I'm tired and I'm nervous and nothing feels right.

God hates me and my eyes don't work. I read that somewhere, I think. Some crazy novel.

I’m a crazy novel, and I’d like to be able to shut myself and put me on the shelf and pick up something funny instead.

The almost-official freak doesn't want her own show

2007-07-03T23:12:00.001-07:00

I don't know what they think they're proving. I don't know why they think it matters.

It doesn't feel any different to me to be an almost-official freak.

I really don't care if I could get the Randi seal of approval, assuming he has one.

2007-07-01T22:33:00.001-07:00

Dog didn't say there couldn't be words. Just not only words.

I thought about the night we went to see his band play. I remembered the song he told us he wrote.

I can't remember faces, or even names; but music stays with me.

I shut my eyes and really went there.

I felt the music going through me the way it did that night. That's what I like best about being in the same room with the music: it’s like you can touch it and see it as well as hear it.

I thought about how Dog and the rest of the group looked while they were playing. I thought about the light and the mostly darkness, and the scent of the drinks, and the people dancing and listening and talking.

I gathered all that up as best I could and I sent it to Dog.

"Damn," Dog said.

"Jesus," Cam said.

"Ouch," Lacy said.

I jumped. Someone was pounding furiously on the other side of Cam's wall. It sounded like they were using a broom.

Cam's deaf neighbor.

Dog smiled in her direction.

"Throw the cards away, Lacy," he said. "I think we've got ourselves a telepath."

2007-06-30T17:43:00.001-07:00

I set the deck down. Maybe another time, I said.

"Oh, come on," Lacy said.

"Leave her alone, Lacy." Cam sat down next to me. "You know you don't have to do anything you don't want to."

Dog stretched and sat up. "Do you think you can do pictures, Echo?" he asked. "Have you ever tried?"

I shook my head.

"Why don't you try on me," he said. "Forget the stupid cards.”

(“Hey,” Lacy said.)

“Just send me whatever you feel like,” he went on. “An image. An idea. Anything that isn't just words."

That sounded all right. It even sounded like fun.

I thought for a minute.

I thought about music.