by Kelli Kimble
Later, the sounds returned again. Occasionally, I heard a voice. It wasn’t a voice I knew well, though it pricked at the corners of my mind. It didn’t say much: Yes. No. Why are you doing this?
Doing what?
This time, I was determined to open my eyes. Again, someone came over and jammed a light in my face, peeling my resistant eye open. I didn’t mind, though. I needed the help. I tried to look beyond the light. My eye darted around, and the disembodied hand grunted. No, it had to be a person grunting, not the hand. The hand belonged to a telepath.
I twisted and tried to bite the hand. It jerked away, and the light moved. Now, I could see. I was in a big room. There were other people drifting around, all wearing white kimonos. The man I’d tried to bite was leaning over me, glaring. He smacked my cheek, hard, then shook his finger in my face. I wondered why he didn’t just broadcast what he was trying to say, but he didn’t.
Someone else came over, and together, they held my head still so that they could pry open my other eye and shine the light into it. This time, the light didn’t make me feel sick, which I was grateful for. They began to poke and examine me in much the same way I’d been examined during childhood visits to the doctor. But, awareness of my situation was slowly taking hold. I was on an exam table. Not just on it, strapped to it. Others milled around the room, looking at various screens and printouts. One was writing calculations on a large, glass wall. Another stood near the door with a mop in hand. In case I threw up again? Nobody was speaking. There weren’t any other exam tables.
Where was Elton?
Talika! She’d talked to me earlier, in my head. Like a telepath. Where was she now? I looked around the room as best I could. The way I was strapped, I really couldn’t see what was above my head, but Talika was nowhere in sight.
I began to blink my left eye rapidly, remembering how she’d asked me to use our old, pretend-telepath game. But, nothing happened.
The two who were checking my vital signs moved to the foot of my table and conferred over a clipboard. They each scribbled a few things onto it, and then they hung it at the end of the bed. One of them was nodding with vague satisfaction. They walked away without speaking or broadcasting to me. Nobody else approached.
Eventually, I couldn’t stand it anymore. “Hello? Can someone tell me what’s happening? Where’s my mom?” I asked.
The woman at the glass wall noticed me talking. She capped the marker she was using to write what looked like scribbles on the wall and tucked it into her kimono pocket as she walked over to my bedside.
“Has there been some mistake?” I said. “I just want to go home.”
The telepath nodded, her face placid. She mimed eating, then gave me a thumbs-up.
“No, I don’t want food. I want to go home. Why am I strapped to this table? Where is Elton?”
She smiled again and stepped back from me before turning around and walking away.
“Wait!” I called after her. “Where’s Elton?”
Everyone else in the room acted as if they hadn’t heard me. They continued to go about their business, not even glancing my way. I was nothing more than a furnishing in the room.
I pulled against the bindings on my hands. Frustration was welling inside me, and I wanted to release it. I needed to release it. I started to shake, and the motion got more and more violent, until I was thrashing my entire body against the bindings. I could feel them slicing into the skin around my ankles and wrists, but the shaking felt like more than me. It didn’t care if I wanted to stop. The shaking would stop when it was time.
A particularly violent pull against the binding of my right hand bit hard into my skin. I was sure it was meeting bone. I let out a startled scream, and then the screaming became more than me, too. I was screaming and shaking and flailing around as much as my bindings would permit, and still, nobody in the room paid a single bit of attention to me.
As quickly as it started, it stopped. I collapsed against the exam table, sweaty and in pain. Tears slid down the sides of my face and into my hair and ears. I shut my eyes against their indifference. It was too much to be ignored while I was in this state. I wanted my mom.
I either fell asleep or they drugged me. But, when I woke up, Talika was standing over me.
“Tal,” I said. I tried to lift my hand to touch her. I grimaced as the binding cut into my injured wrist. “What’s happening? Why am I tied down?”
“Shh,” she said. “Everything will make sense soon. Just try to relax.” She gestured for one of the white-kimonoed women to come over. She doesn’t need bindings. Remove them and take care of her cuts, please.
The woman nodded and began to unbuckle the bindings. Even though I’d railed against them, their sudden release made me feel like I’d lose control and fly from the table. I gripped the thin mattress and concentrated on sitting still. The woman finished and went away.
“Everything is okay,” Talika said. “We just have to do what they say, and everything will be fine.”
“Who is ‘they’?” I asked. I glanced nervously around the room. I didn’t feel safe from whoever ‘they’ were.
She patted my arm. “They’re the ones who gave you the ability,” she said. You can hear me now, right? She smiled, but it didn’t quite reach her eyes.
I nodded. I wasn’t ready to demonstrate my ability. “Where’s Elton?” I asked.
“In the next room. He put up an even bigger fuss than you, if you can believe it.”
“I want to see him,” I said. I sat up and swung my legs off the table. The room swirled around me in a tempest. “But, maybe not now.” I curled up on my side instead. “Can I have some blankets? A pillow? Why do they pretend like they can’t hear me?”
“They aren’t pretending. They can’t,” she said. “They’re all deaf.”
That explained the miming. I looked around the room again. The woman who’d removed my bindings was returning with a tray of bandages. She set it on the bed, then gently lifted my hand, raising her eyebrows as she did, as if asking my permission.
I nodded, and she began to clean and bandage the cuts on my wrist. I winced when she touched a particularly painful cut. She pointed to it and apparently spoke to Talika about it, before walking away again.
“She says you need some stitches,” she said. “She’s going to get the glue.”
“Why didn’t she say it so that I could hear her?” I asked.
She shrugged. “They aren’t supposed to talk to you.”
The woman came back and held out her hand. I put my hand in hers, and she went about gluing my cut shut. It made me lightheaded, and I closed my eyes.
“You look pale,” Talika said. “When did you eat last?”
“At Mrs. Darit’s house,” I said, “where she apparently poisoned me.”
“Mrs. Darit, our teacher?”
“Yeah. My aunt took us there, and Mrs. Darit said she’d called our parents, and she made us a sandwich. But, our parents didn’t come. It was one of these kimono people.”
“Who were you with at Mrs. Darit’s?”
“Elton,” I said.
“So, are you two a thing now?” Her nostrils flared. “A couple?”
“No. We were looking for you. What happened to you? We went to your house, and it was empty, just like Marve’s.”
“They brought me here. For the research. Didn’t anyone explain this to you?”
I opened my eyes and stared at her. “Does it seem like anything has been explained to me?” She grunted, and I realized I’d overstepped. “Look, I’m sorry. I’m hungry; I’ve got cuts all over me; I was strapped to a table up until a few minutes ago, for Pete’s sake. But, nobody except you has talked to me. Nobody.”
“Well, it’s a lot to explain. I can’t really do it right now; my time is up. Someone is going to bring you some food, and then you’re supposed to just rest for a while. Okay? Nothing bad is gonna happen. It’ll be okay.” She put a hand on my shoulder. It was steady and warm, like our friendsh
ip had always been.
“Okay,” I said. “You’ll come back later to tell me about it? Or someone else will?”
“Of course,” she said. She gave me a quick, fierce hug and left the room.
The woman fixing up my cuts finished. She gave me a thumbs-up, which I returned—though I was still in a lot of pain. She gathered up her things and wandered away. I sat on the table, looking around. Food didn’t seem to be forthcoming, so I hopped down from the table. I expected a reaction to that, but they went about their business, as if I were still screaming and thrashing. I went to the glass wall to look at what was being written there. It was just a jumble of symbols that looked vaguely like math. I didn’t know what it meant, so I continued around the room.
There was a man sitting at an old-fashioned computer station, the kind that had a flexible monitor instead of a holopic. I watched what he was doing over his shoulder. He seemed to be monitoring somebody’s heartrate, and maybe their temperature and stuff. I leaned in much closer than a polite person would think was acceptable. He glanced at me and smiled but made no other attempt to communicate. I wondered if the person they were monitoring was me. I stood behind him and did a dozen jumping jacks, then looked to see if the heartrate went up. It did. Maybe it was me.
I didn’t wander any farther because a man with a square beard brought me a tray of food. He walked up to me, handed it to me, then turned and walked away. This non-communication was starting to get weird.
I went back to my table and climbed onto it to eat my meal. It felt so good to see a plate of food, I didn’t even stop to wonder if it was drugged, like my last meal had been. I’m not sure it would’ve stopped me from eating it if I thought it was. It was spaghetti and meatballs, with a side of salad, three rolls, a glass of milk, and a glass of water. I ate it all and would have licked the plate if I’d been alone. I might as well have been alone, for all the attention they were paying me. But, I still refrained.
The food gave me that too-full, sleepy feeling. I put the tray on the floor and curled up on the table, pleased to see a blanket had materialized—though there was still no pillow. I pulled the blanket over my head to shield my eyes from the lights, and I fell asleep.
◆◆◆
It’s not what you think.
I sat bolt upright, my breathing fast, and my hands clammy. Was that in my dream? Or had someone just spoken to me? It gave me a feeling like something bad was going to happen.
I looked around. None of the kimono people were paying attention. It could have been one of them, but I doubted it. I tried to think about the sound of the voice. It wasn’t Talika or Elton. I didn’t know what any of these others sounded like, and I didn’t know who else was here.
There was a crash in the corner. The woman with the glass wall had pushed it to the side, and in doing so, had knocked over a garbage can. I went to help her pick up the trash now littering the floor. She didn’t notice me approach, and when I reached out to pick something up, she must not have realized it was me.
Thanks. I’m such a klutz. She looked up at me, and her eyes widened.
I wasn’t confident in my ability to return the comment, so I shrugged and smiled.
She gasped. I wasn’t supposed to talk to you. Forget I said anything. She stood up and walked away, leaving me to clean up the rest of the mess. I was used to that sort of treatment from a telepath, though.
While I was picking up the trash, I noticed a shelf of books in the corner. So, when I was done, I went over and picked through them. They were mostly scientific in nature: Neuroscience and electromagnetism. A few technical manuals were sprinkled in. But, it was the dictionary that interested me. I took it from the shelf and went back to the exam table to sit. I flipped through the pages, reading random definitions.
I’d just started to grow bored with it, when Talika returned. “What did you say to that telepath?” she asked.
“What telepath?”
“The one that is outside, crying in the hallway because she broke the rules for you.”
“Oh. Her.”
“Yeah, her. What did you say to her?”
“Nothing. She knocked over a garbage can. I went over and helped her pick it up. I didn’t say anything. I just picked up garbage.”
“You can’t interact with them, Nim. She’s out there, thinking she’s going to lose her job because of you.”
“But, I didn’t do anything,” I said.
She wasn’t listening. “This is going to put a major kink in your progress. Now, I can’t start your orientation until it’s all squared away. They’re gonna be mad.”
I bit my tongue. If I said anything, it was not going to be nice.
She noticed the dictionary. “What’s that?”
“A dictionary,” I said.
She huffed, “I can see that. Why do you have it?”
“I was bored,” I said, shrugging. “I took it off the shelf over there. I was just flipping through it.”
She took it from the table and handed it to me. “Put it back.” Her eyes darted around, like she was nervous. “You can’t have it. You aren’t allowed to have anything like that.”
“You’ve only been here a day longer than I have,” I said. “How come you seem to know all these rules?”
Sighing, she pushed me aside so that she could sit next to me. “You’ve actually been here a week already. But, the rules are simple.” She held up her pointer finger. “One: Nobody can talk to you. Two. . .” She extended another finger. “You can’t have outside communication of any kind: No reading, writing, talking, listening, nothing.”
“They communicate with me,” I said.
“Only through hand gestures,” she said.
“That’s still communication.”
She rolled her eyes. “Fine. They can communicate to you via hand gestures. Other than that, only I can talk to you. Only I can listen to you. Got it?”
“Can I leave?”
“Of course. You’re always free to go. But, I hope you’ll stay. It would mean a lot to me.”
“Where are your parents?”
“They packed them up and moved them crosstown. To a nice neighborhood.” Her lip curled slightly. She didn’t like the thought of them there without her. “They got better job assignments, too. I’m not worried, though. When I leave here, they’ll be right back where they were. They’ll find a-million-and-one ways to screw this up.”
“I don’t understand. How did they get better jobs and a better house?” I knew just as well as Talika that her parents were not ambitious or responsible people. They couldn’t have gotten themselves together enough to accomplish that sort of thing all by themselves.
“I did it for them,” she said. Then, she frowned. “Not really. I shouldn’t say it that way. I did it for me. To get away from them. To try and have a normal life.”
“How? You’re just a kid.”
“Last summer, when I was in the hospital, Mrs. Darit came to see me. She helped me make a plan. She worked it all out with them.” She nodded towards the people moving around the room. “She set things up so that I could get what I wanted.”
I toyed with the dictionary I was still holding, ruffling its pages. “What was it you wanted?”
Silence stretched out between us. I was about to apologize, when she finally responded, “I just wanted to not be afraid. To not be hollered at or beat on for some stupid thing. To feel like a real person.” She paused and shrugged. “I just wanted things to be better. I don’t expect you to understand. Your family is nothing like mine.”
But, I did understand. I loved my family and didn’t want to be rid of them. But, the depth of the pain caused by my parents’ inability to keep us fed wasn’t shallow, by any means.
Smiling, I leaned against her and put my arm around her. “I can’t pretend to know how you feel, Tal. But, I understand you were hurting. That, I can understand.”
She sniffled and swiped away a stray tear. “Thanks,” she said. “It really means a lot
.” She tipped her head to lean against my shoulder. We sat that way, until my arm started to cramp. I shifted, and she sat upright. “I’d, you know, appreciate it if you kept that stuff to yourself,” she said.
I nodded—though how Talika thought nobody noticed how her parents treated her was beyond me. “Can you tell me about this place?” I said, trying to relieve her discomfort by changing the subject. “Why am I here? Who are these people? What did they do to us?”
“Right. That stuff. So, Mrs. Darit came to see me in the hospital. After my accident. You remember?”
The “accident” she meant was when her father hit her in the face with the broad side of a shovel so hard that he broke her cheekbone and knocked out three of her teeth. It was in no way an accident; I’d been hiding under the bed in Talika’s room when it happened, and it was only after he’d staggered off in a drunken stupor when I’d begged her mother to take her to a doctor. If I hadn’t, nobody would have done anything other than leave her to suffer.
“I remember,” I said.
“She said that she could help me get away from my parents. That she’d adopt me, and all I had to do was help her with an experiment, and if the experiment worked, I’d get to live and work somewhere nice, too, and I wouldn’t have to be a second-class kid to my parents, and I wouldn’t have to be a second-class person, either. I’d be a telepath, just like everyone else.” She turned to me. “Isn’t it your greatest wish to be normal? To be just like everyone else? To have the same ability and potential?”
I nodded. It wasn’t exactly right; I wanted to be a telepath just like everyone else, but I wasn’t sure I was interested in being an experiment.
“This is why we’re best friends,” she said, patting my knee. “We understand each other. I knew you’d want this, too. I knew it.”
“Did you pick me to do this?”
“With Mrs. Darit’s help. Yeah.” She smiled.
“Oh.” I had the sense that I should keep my disappointment to myself. She was proud to be in the position she was in, and she thought I should share her excitement and interest.
If my true emotions were visible, she didn’t notice. “Just so you know,” she continued, “we aren’t the first they’ve tried these things on. I wouldn’t have just let them do whatever they wanted, without some evidence that it would work.”