I Can Not Tell a Lie But I Kind Of Have To
The Salt Shaker
All in all, it was a good date. Of course, using a little bit of mind reading did have some part in it. If I hadn’t of said what each of her siblings was going to be, that kiss never would have happened. Right now, we’re sitting in her driveway in my car, staring at her front door.
“I don’t want to go in,” she said, turning to me. “I want to stay with you.”
“You’re going to have to go in there eventually,” I said, “Because I told Andrew I’d have you home by nine, and it’s 8:57. And I am extremely against him beating the tar out of me.”
“Yeah, I wouldn’t want him to wreck your adorable face,” she said. I blushed and quickly got out of the car to let her out. I walked her up to the doorstep and stopped. I leaned in and –
“Hello sis,” Andrew said, opening the door just as I kissed her. I pulled away.
“Hey Andrew,” she said. “Have you been waiting for me to come home?”
“It’s better than what Michael’s doing,” he said, pointing to the window. We looked at it to see a boy a few years younger than us smushing his face against the window.
“He’s been watching us kiss, hasn’t he?” I asked Andrew.
“That’s little brothers for you,” he said, shrugging and walking away.
“I had a great time,” Leah said to me. “Sorry about my brothers.”
“Don’t be,” I said. She walked in to the house and looked back at me.
“Good night,” she said, closing the door. I calmly walked back to the car and closed the door. Once inside, I cheered.
“Yes!” I shouted, turning the car on and pulling out of the driveway. “That couldn’t have gone any better!” I continued talking happily to myself the entire ride home. I took the keys out of the ignition and sighed. I walked into the quiet house, closed the door, and stood there, fingering my keys.
“How was it son?” Dad said mockingly, sitting on the couch and reading the newspaper. “Did you kiss her?” I ignored him and walked up the stairs to my room.
___________________________
“Honestly, I thought I was going to barf when you two started making out,” Eric said the next morning at breakfast. Eric and Daniel had broken into my house at eight that morning, kidnapped me, and drove to Westbury Diner for breakfast. They had shanghaied Kyle into coming too.
“They weren’t making out, Eric,” Kyle said, trying to balance the salt shaker on one of its edges. “They just kissed. Once.”
“Thank you,” I said graciously.
“I say you two were making out,” Eric said again. “Any form of PDA-”
“Is more than you will ever get in your entire lifetime,” Kyle interrupted him. Daniel and I laughed. Eric knocked the salt shaker over, sending salt all over the table.
“What the hell?” Kyle said to Eric. “I almost had it balanced!”
“You’ll get over it,” Eric shrugged. Our food arrived and Eric immediately forgot his anger at Kyle as he dug into his eight (yes, eight) pancakes.
“That’s sick,” I said to him, as he finished his third pancake seconds later. “You should go on a diet or something.”
“No way, don’t try getting off topic,” Daniel said, taking some salt from the table and sprinkling it on his eggs. “So, what was it like?”
“What?” I asked. “I’m not answering that.”
“Well, you’re the first one of us to get kissed,” he said.
“No I’m not,” I said. “Kyle’s gotten kissed like a thousand times.”
“But he won’t tell us what it’s like,” Eric said.
“You guys have officially reached a new level of desperate,” I said, picking up my bacon. “You’ll have to wait.”
“Come on,” Eric pleaded. “Don’t keep it all to yourself.”
“Give it up,” Kyle said, finished with his waffles. He pushed his plate aside and started balancing the salt shaker again.
“Says you,” Daniel said. “You’ve been trying to balance that salt shaker since the 4th grade. It has yet to happen.”
“It will,” he said quietly, focusing on the salt shaker.
“Well, back to the kiss,” Eric said, looking to me. “How exactly did that happen? We kept looking up and saw it was obviously awkward.”
“Leah said that we both knew it was awkward and then it just became less awkward,” I shrugged.
“So let me get this straight,” Daniel said. “Saying something’s awkward makes it less awkward.”
“Not when you do it,” I told him. “You always wait until it gets really quiet and yell ‘awkward’ at the top of your lungs. That just makes it more awkward.”
“So yelling awkward when something’s awkward makes it more awkward but saying it’s awkward makes it less awkward?” he said confused.
“Okay, now this is getting awkward,” I said. “Anyway, we started talking about her family and my family.”
“Oh boy,” Daniel said rolling his eyes. “She probably realized that she can never marry you for fear of being related to your sister.”
“Or worse,” Eric said, “Your dad.” They shuddered at the thought of being related to him.
“No, she didn’t care that my family’s crazy,” I said. “She said her family was crazy. Then we talked about what her parents expect her to be. Leah thinks that they want her to be perfect and-” I stopped talking.
“Go on,” Eric said eagerly.
“No, it’s between me and Leah,” I said, sipping my orange juice.
“I give up,” Daniel said. “You’re exactly like Kyle.”
“No, not really,” I said. “We’re just the sane ones in this little clique of ours.”
“I can’t do it,” Kyle suddenly shouted, slamming his hands on the table and making the salt shaker fall.
“Well, at least I’m still sane,” I said.
“You finally realized you can’t balance a salt shaker,” Daniel said. “The final step of acceptance is…” He trailed off.
“Acceptance?” I offered. Daniel nodded.
“Just try it one more time,” I said, picking up the salt shaker and handing it to him. He sighed heavily and it teetered back and forth between his fingers on its edge. Once it stopped teetering, he let go, and we all stared at it in amazement as it stood completely still, finally balanced.
“I did it!” Kyle cheered, jumping up. “I told you I could!”
“Yes, good for you,” Daniel said unenthusiastically. He stood up and walked past the dancing Kyle and out the door.
“Come on,” I said, clapping Kyle on the back. “Let’s go celebrate with Neil’s mom’s milkshakes.”
“Sounds good to me!” he said happily. I stayed behind to pay and looked back at the salt shaker perfectly balanced. A little telepathy never hurt anyone.
¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬____________________________________
Okay, so I was wrong. A little telepathy can hurt someone. Me. Millie was once more standing next to me in my backyard at two in the morning, watching as I stood blindfolded, trying to turn on the lights in my room.
“Come on, Neil,” she said. “We’ve been at this for an hour and you have yet to make a single bulb even flicker.”
“Well, it would be easier if I could see it,” I said, starting to take my blind fold off. She ran speedily over and slapped my hand.
“Ow!” I said shaking it.
“If you want to be a good telepathic, then you need to be able to move things without having to see them,” she said. “Take Harry Potter for example.”
“Harry Potter is a wizard in a fictional book,” I said.
“He was able to call his broom while fighting a dragon,” she said, ignoring me. “You should be able to do the same.” I gave up and slipped the blindfold off my eyes, letting it hang loosely around my neck.
“Once again, he isn’t real,” I said. She shrugged.
“It’s the same basic idea,” she said. “He would have been killed by that dragon if he couldn’t get his broom to come to him.”
“So you’re telling me that if I can’t turn on a light without looking at it, I’ll get killed by a dragon,” I said.
“You are such a smart aleck,” she said, sliding the blindfold back over my eyes. “Now, try again.”
“Picture the light switch in your head,” she said. “It’s in the off position. You are entering your room and switching the light on. Now, take yourself out of the picture. Watch as the light switch goes on.” I did as she said over and over but she never once let me stop, making me think I still hadn’t accomplished the task.
“Okay Neil,” she said, about ten minutes later, “you can take your blindfold off.” I took it off and looked up at my room in amazement. The lights were on.
“You’ve been flickering the lights on and off for the past ten minutes,” she said smiling. “Congrats.”
“So can I go?” I asked hopefully. She gave me her look.
“I’ll take that as a no,” I murmured.
“Now, you’re going to try and turn on your neighbor’s porch lights,” she said.
“But I’ve never been inside their house before,” I said. “I don’t know what the light switches look like or anything.”
“You won’t always be in a situation where you’ll know what the object of your desire looks like,” she said. “This is where our trusty friend Potter goes wrong. For example, he doesn’t know what the horcrux in the cave looks like, tries summoning it, and it doesn’t come.”
“That’s because there are tons of charms and spells protecting it,” I said.
“Once again, here comes a smart remark,” she said throwing her hands up in the air. “My point is, he doesn’t know what it looks like and therefore, can’t get it to come to him. You will try to do this. It’s a lot harder than moving something that you’ve seen before.” I slipped the blindfold back on.
“You don’t have to keep the blindfold on this time,” she told me. “You can’t see the inside of their house.” I pulled it off and sat down on the ground, staring at the house across the street.
“You’re thinking too hard,” Millie immediately said. “You have to open up your mind. Relax it.” I closed my eyes and took a deep breath. I opened them again to see the porch lights on.
“Good job,” she said. “But I think that was accidental. I don’t know how you turned them on, but I don’t think you meant to. Now, try turning them off.” I looked back at the house, concentrating on the lights. I pictured them turning off at a moment’s notice. And that’s exactly what they did.
“Good,” Millie said calmly. “Now do that about a thousand more times.” After flickering the lights on and off for about twenty minutes, I begged Millie to move on to something else.
“Okay,” she said reluctantly. “Here’s what’s going to happen. I’m going to run over to the playground and sit on the little pirate ship. I want you to try and move the steering wheel on it back and forth. When you do move it, I’ll run back over here and tell you. If you don’t, I’ll just stay there until you can. You are not allowed to leave this spot or give up. If you do, well, use your imagination on what I’ll do.” I silently nodded and she was gone in a flash.
I closed my eyes and took a deep breath. I opened my eyes and picture the steering wheel moving. After Millie didn’t come back for five minutes, I tried harder and harder until my head started hurting. I quickly flew over to the pirate ship at the playground and landed next to Millie.
“What am I doing wrong?” I asked her.
“You’re not moving it, that’s what you’re doing wrong,” she said. “Go back to your house and imagine it in its natural environment.” I nodded and flew back home. I landed and picture it on the first day of summer. Little kids ran all around the playground, jumping on anything and everything. A little boy with a cherry Ring Pop on his chubby finger walked over to the steering wheel and laid his sticky, little hands on it. I heard a familiar whoosh and opened my eyes to see Millie staring back at me.
“Well done, squirt,” she said nodding in approval. “You’ve pretty much mastered telepathy.”
“Thank you,” I said gratefully. “Can I go now?”
“No,” she said shortly. “Time for your night vision.”
“My night vision’s perfect,” I said proudly.
“Good,” she said. “Then turn off all the lights around us.” I did so quickly and we were engulfed in darkness.
“I’m impressed,” Millie said through the darkness. “You really are a good telepathic. Okay, now how many fingers am I holding up?” I closed my eyes and opened them, now seeing everything as clear as day. I saw Millie holding up four fingers.
“Four,” I said.
“Good,” she said, putting them behind her back. “Now for something a little more difficult.” She picked up a branch off the ground.
“How many twigs are on this?” she asked. I counted them to myself.
“Twenty-one,” I said finally.
“Okay,” she said, throwing the branch into the neighbor’s yard.
“Fetch,” she said.
“What?”
“You’re not deaf,” she said. “Fetch. Go find it.” I rolled my eyes and flew to the neighbor’s yard. I landed in a pile of leaves and searched the yard for what seemed like hours before finally finding the branch. I flew back to my yard and found Millie sitting up against the tree, sleeping. I whacked her on the head with the branch and woke her up. She looked around confused.
“Neil? Is that you?” she asked, looking around.
“No, it’s a ghost,” I said sarcastically.
“You can turn on the lights now.” I turned them all on and squinted as my eyes adjusted to the light. She looked around for the branch, found it, and picked it up.
“Night vision, accomplished,” she said, snapping the branch and throwing the pieces at random.
“Now can I-” I started saying but she stopped me.
“What do you think I’m going to say?” she asked me, cocking her head to the side.
“What’s next?” I asked wearily.
“Mind reading,” she said. “Go ahead, read my mind.” I hesitated.
“Don’t worry,” she said. “I won’t hurt you.”
“Yeah right,” I muttered skeptically. I reluctantly read her thoughts.
Okay, Neil. Welcome to my mind. Right now, I can tell that you are in my mind and if I were an enemy of you, I’d do this. I felt a heavy blow to my head and staggered back.
“What the heck?” I said, rubbing my head.
“Most supers can tell if their minds are being read,” she said, ignoring my pain, “And then attack like that, or worse.”
“Or worse?” I said.
“Let’s put it this way,” she said. “There’s a kid, Grant, who’s our age and, like you, can read minds. He was a moron and tried reading one of the teacher’s minds at the school. The teacher didn’t know who was reading her mind and involuntarily attacked Grant. Now, he’s been in the psychiatric ward in HQ’s hospital for about two years. Every day, they have to convince him he’s not an alien.”
“Yikes,” I said.
“Yeah,” she said. “So I’m going to attempt to teach you how to read people’s minds without them knowing.”
“Attempt?” I said, taking my hand off my head. “I’m going to end up getting hurt, aren’t I?”
“No,” she said quickly. “Well, I hope not. Okay, so when you just read my mind, it was like you were stomping around in my head. Try it again.”
See, right now, it’s like my mind is a house, and you’re the burglar. You’ve got to sneak around quietly so I don’t know you’re stealing something. Right now, you’re making loud noises, and I’m calling the police. They’re pulling up in my driveway, pulling out their guns-
I cut off the communication before I could get hit again.
“Good choice,” she said. “Okay, now let’s try a different approach. Go ahead, try it again. And don’t worry, I won’t attack.” I looked skeptically at her and burrowed into her mind,
You’ve already set of the alarm, squirt. You started out too strong. You’ve got to ease your way into my mind. Get of here and re-enter. I left her mind and slowly climbed into her head again.
Much better. Okay, now here’s what you’re going to try. Imagine you’re tip-toeing through a house. Good. Okay, here’s where things get messy. I’ve never done this before to someone so we’re going to try a few different things. I stand by what I said earlier, squirt. I won’t attack you, okay?
Tactic number one; to get to the really juicy stuff in my mind, you have to pace yourself. If you start off wanting to find out if I like someone, you’ll probably get another kick in the head.
She must have seen the worried expression on my face because she thought Of course, it’s not an actual kick. So here we go. I’m going to let my mind wander. You start off looking for what homework I have due tomorrow, then why I think your neighbors are tacky, then the most recent conversation I had with Trent, then… well, you get the point. Here we go.
Just as she said, her mind started wandering. She sat down leaning against the tree and closed her eyes. I did as she said, finding out that she had a book report due Tuesday. She thought that the lawn gnomes in my neighbor’s yard were not only tacky but red-neck too. It was going smoothly until I started into her more personal thoughts.
Suddenly, I felt another blow to my head, but this one was sharp. It felt as if someone had taken a knife and stuck in my head. It lasted much longer than before too.
“Neil! Neil!” I heard Millie shouting. “Are you okay?” The pain had stopped. I was sitting on my knees, my head in my hands. I slowly looked up to her.
“Yeah, sure you won’t hurt me,” I said harshly.
“I didn’t do that,” she said, going to help me up. “It’s what happens whenever you go too deep into some people’s minds. That’s what I’m going to try and teach you. To go that deep without getting hurt.”
“Well, it obviously isn’t working,” I said, rubbing my temples. “I thought I was learning to get into your mind without you knowing.”
“You did well on that part,” she said. “It’s just that there’s a certain… how can I put this. Okay, it’s like my mind is a city.”
“Before you said your mind was a house,” I retorted.
“Shut up,” she said. “It’s a city now. You just crossed the moat but when you tried climbing the walls around it, well, that happened. It’s the same with everyone else’s minds. Each person has their own specific moat and wall. Some people, you can go really deep before you get kicked out. Others, well, you can barely get in.”
“I’ve never had any trouble with this stuff before,” I said.
“That’s because you’ve only done it on mortals,” she said. “They’re the ones that don’t know what mind reading feels like and will let you go as deep as you want. Supers have some idea of what it’s like. Supers who have powers opposite of telepathy-”
“What’s opposite of telepathy?” I interrupted.
“Well, telepathy is brains,” she said, “So bronze. That would be the super speed, super strength department. The supers with those kinds of powers are the ones that have the smallest idea of what mind reading is and will let you go the farthest. Other telepathic supers, like you, wouldn’t even let you get to the edge of the moat.”
“So I’m fine when it comes to sneaking around the mind, but…” I trailed off, looking to her.
“But you need to learn to get past that wall,” she said, “Without this happening every time. I think we’ve done enough tonight.”
“Yeah, you think?” I said.
“I’m going to try and think of different tactics for you. Keep practicing your telepathy or else the skills you developed tonight will go away,” she said. “Night.” Just like that, she ran in the opposite direction, whooshing past the bushes.
“I don’t want to go in,” she said, turning to me. “I want to stay with you.”
“You’re going to have to go in there eventually,” I said, “Because I told Andrew I’d have you home by nine, and it’s 8:57. And I am extremely against him beating the tar out of me.”
“Yeah, I wouldn’t want him to wreck your adorable face,” she said. I blushed and quickly got out of the car to let her out. I walked her up to the doorstep and stopped. I leaned in and –
“Hello sis,” Andrew said, opening the door just as I kissed her. I pulled away.
“Hey Andrew,” she said. “Have you been waiting for me to come home?”
“It’s better than what Michael’s doing,” he said, pointing to the window. We looked at it to see a boy a few years younger than us smushing his face against the window.
“He’s been watching us kiss, hasn’t he?” I asked Andrew.
“That’s little brothers for you,” he said, shrugging and walking away.
“I had a great time,” Leah said to me. “Sorry about my brothers.”
“Don’t be,” I said. She walked in to the house and looked back at me.
“Good night,” she said, closing the door. I calmly walked back to the car and closed the door. Once inside, I cheered.
“Yes!” I shouted, turning the car on and pulling out of the driveway. “That couldn’t have gone any better!” I continued talking happily to myself the entire ride home. I took the keys out of the ignition and sighed. I walked into the quiet house, closed the door, and stood there, fingering my keys.
“How was it son?” Dad said mockingly, sitting on the couch and reading the newspaper. “Did you kiss her?” I ignored him and walked up the stairs to my room.
___________________________
“Honestly, I thought I was going to barf when you two started making out,” Eric said the next morning at breakfast. Eric and Daniel had broken into my house at eight that morning, kidnapped me, and drove to Westbury Diner for breakfast. They had shanghaied Kyle into coming too.
“They weren’t making out, Eric,” Kyle said, trying to balance the salt shaker on one of its edges. “They just kissed. Once.”
“Thank you,” I said graciously.
“I say you two were making out,” Eric said again. “Any form of PDA-”
“Is more than you will ever get in your entire lifetime,” Kyle interrupted him. Daniel and I laughed. Eric knocked the salt shaker over, sending salt all over the table.
“What the hell?” Kyle said to Eric. “I almost had it balanced!”
“You’ll get over it,” Eric shrugged. Our food arrived and Eric immediately forgot his anger at Kyle as he dug into his eight (yes, eight) pancakes.
“That’s sick,” I said to him, as he finished his third pancake seconds later. “You should go on a diet or something.”
“No way, don’t try getting off topic,” Daniel said, taking some salt from the table and sprinkling it on his eggs. “So, what was it like?”
“What?” I asked. “I’m not answering that.”
“Well, you’re the first one of us to get kissed,” he said.
“No I’m not,” I said. “Kyle’s gotten kissed like a thousand times.”
“But he won’t tell us what it’s like,” Eric said.
“You guys have officially reached a new level of desperate,” I said, picking up my bacon. “You’ll have to wait.”
“Come on,” Eric pleaded. “Don’t keep it all to yourself.”
“Give it up,” Kyle said, finished with his waffles. He pushed his plate aside and started balancing the salt shaker again.
“Says you,” Daniel said. “You’ve been trying to balance that salt shaker since the 4th grade. It has yet to happen.”
“It will,” he said quietly, focusing on the salt shaker.
“Well, back to the kiss,” Eric said, looking to me. “How exactly did that happen? We kept looking up and saw it was obviously awkward.”
“Leah said that we both knew it was awkward and then it just became less awkward,” I shrugged.
“So let me get this straight,” Daniel said. “Saying something’s awkward makes it less awkward.”
“Not when you do it,” I told him. “You always wait until it gets really quiet and yell ‘awkward’ at the top of your lungs. That just makes it more awkward.”
“So yelling awkward when something’s awkward makes it more awkward but saying it’s awkward makes it less awkward?” he said confused.
“Okay, now this is getting awkward,” I said. “Anyway, we started talking about her family and my family.”
“Oh boy,” Daniel said rolling his eyes. “She probably realized that she can never marry you for fear of being related to your sister.”
“Or worse,” Eric said, “Your dad.” They shuddered at the thought of being related to him.
“No, she didn’t care that my family’s crazy,” I said. “She said her family was crazy. Then we talked about what her parents expect her to be. Leah thinks that they want her to be perfect and-” I stopped talking.
“Go on,” Eric said eagerly.
“No, it’s between me and Leah,” I said, sipping my orange juice.
“I give up,” Daniel said. “You’re exactly like Kyle.”
“No, not really,” I said. “We’re just the sane ones in this little clique of ours.”
“I can’t do it,” Kyle suddenly shouted, slamming his hands on the table and making the salt shaker fall.
“Well, at least I’m still sane,” I said.
“You finally realized you can’t balance a salt shaker,” Daniel said. “The final step of acceptance is…” He trailed off.
“Acceptance?” I offered. Daniel nodded.
“Just try it one more time,” I said, picking up the salt shaker and handing it to him. He sighed heavily and it teetered back and forth between his fingers on its edge. Once it stopped teetering, he let go, and we all stared at it in amazement as it stood completely still, finally balanced.
“I did it!” Kyle cheered, jumping up. “I told you I could!”
“Yes, good for you,” Daniel said unenthusiastically. He stood up and walked past the dancing Kyle and out the door.
“Come on,” I said, clapping Kyle on the back. “Let’s go celebrate with Neil’s mom’s milkshakes.”
“Sounds good to me!” he said happily. I stayed behind to pay and looked back at the salt shaker perfectly balanced. A little telepathy never hurt anyone.
¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬____________________________________
Okay, so I was wrong. A little telepathy can hurt someone. Me. Millie was once more standing next to me in my backyard at two in the morning, watching as I stood blindfolded, trying to turn on the lights in my room.
“Come on, Neil,” she said. “We’ve been at this for an hour and you have yet to make a single bulb even flicker.”
“Well, it would be easier if I could see it,” I said, starting to take my blind fold off. She ran speedily over and slapped my hand.
“Ow!” I said shaking it.
“If you want to be a good telepathic, then you need to be able to move things without having to see them,” she said. “Take Harry Potter for example.”
“Harry Potter is a wizard in a fictional book,” I said.
“He was able to call his broom while fighting a dragon,” she said, ignoring me. “You should be able to do the same.” I gave up and slipped the blindfold off my eyes, letting it hang loosely around my neck.
“Once again, he isn’t real,” I said. She shrugged.
“It’s the same basic idea,” she said. “He would have been killed by that dragon if he couldn’t get his broom to come to him.”
“So you’re telling me that if I can’t turn on a light without looking at it, I’ll get killed by a dragon,” I said.
“You are such a smart aleck,” she said, sliding the blindfold back over my eyes. “Now, try again.”
“Picture the light switch in your head,” she said. “It’s in the off position. You are entering your room and switching the light on. Now, take yourself out of the picture. Watch as the light switch goes on.” I did as she said over and over but she never once let me stop, making me think I still hadn’t accomplished the task.
“Okay Neil,” she said, about ten minutes later, “you can take your blindfold off.” I took it off and looked up at my room in amazement. The lights were on.
“You’ve been flickering the lights on and off for the past ten minutes,” she said smiling. “Congrats.”
“So can I go?” I asked hopefully. She gave me her look.
“I’ll take that as a no,” I murmured.
“Now, you’re going to try and turn on your neighbor’s porch lights,” she said.
“But I’ve never been inside their house before,” I said. “I don’t know what the light switches look like or anything.”
“You won’t always be in a situation where you’ll know what the object of your desire looks like,” she said. “This is where our trusty friend Potter goes wrong. For example, he doesn’t know what the horcrux in the cave looks like, tries summoning it, and it doesn’t come.”
“That’s because there are tons of charms and spells protecting it,” I said.
“Once again, here comes a smart remark,” she said throwing her hands up in the air. “My point is, he doesn’t know what it looks like and therefore, can’t get it to come to him. You will try to do this. It’s a lot harder than moving something that you’ve seen before.” I slipped the blindfold back on.
“You don’t have to keep the blindfold on this time,” she told me. “You can’t see the inside of their house.” I pulled it off and sat down on the ground, staring at the house across the street.
“You’re thinking too hard,” Millie immediately said. “You have to open up your mind. Relax it.” I closed my eyes and took a deep breath. I opened them again to see the porch lights on.
“Good job,” she said. “But I think that was accidental. I don’t know how you turned them on, but I don’t think you meant to. Now, try turning them off.” I looked back at the house, concentrating on the lights. I pictured them turning off at a moment’s notice. And that’s exactly what they did.
“Good,” Millie said calmly. “Now do that about a thousand more times.” After flickering the lights on and off for about twenty minutes, I begged Millie to move on to something else.
“Okay,” she said reluctantly. “Here’s what’s going to happen. I’m going to run over to the playground and sit on the little pirate ship. I want you to try and move the steering wheel on it back and forth. When you do move it, I’ll run back over here and tell you. If you don’t, I’ll just stay there until you can. You are not allowed to leave this spot or give up. If you do, well, use your imagination on what I’ll do.” I silently nodded and she was gone in a flash.
I closed my eyes and took a deep breath. I opened my eyes and picture the steering wheel moving. After Millie didn’t come back for five minutes, I tried harder and harder until my head started hurting. I quickly flew over to the pirate ship at the playground and landed next to Millie.
“What am I doing wrong?” I asked her.
“You’re not moving it, that’s what you’re doing wrong,” she said. “Go back to your house and imagine it in its natural environment.” I nodded and flew back home. I landed and picture it on the first day of summer. Little kids ran all around the playground, jumping on anything and everything. A little boy with a cherry Ring Pop on his chubby finger walked over to the steering wheel and laid his sticky, little hands on it. I heard a familiar whoosh and opened my eyes to see Millie staring back at me.
“Well done, squirt,” she said nodding in approval. “You’ve pretty much mastered telepathy.”
“Thank you,” I said gratefully. “Can I go now?”
“No,” she said shortly. “Time for your night vision.”
“My night vision’s perfect,” I said proudly.
“Good,” she said. “Then turn off all the lights around us.” I did so quickly and we were engulfed in darkness.
“I’m impressed,” Millie said through the darkness. “You really are a good telepathic. Okay, now how many fingers am I holding up?” I closed my eyes and opened them, now seeing everything as clear as day. I saw Millie holding up four fingers.
“Four,” I said.
“Good,” she said, putting them behind her back. “Now for something a little more difficult.” She picked up a branch off the ground.
“How many twigs are on this?” she asked. I counted them to myself.
“Twenty-one,” I said finally.
“Okay,” she said, throwing the branch into the neighbor’s yard.
“Fetch,” she said.
“What?”
“You’re not deaf,” she said. “Fetch. Go find it.” I rolled my eyes and flew to the neighbor’s yard. I landed in a pile of leaves and searched the yard for what seemed like hours before finally finding the branch. I flew back to my yard and found Millie sitting up against the tree, sleeping. I whacked her on the head with the branch and woke her up. She looked around confused.
“Neil? Is that you?” she asked, looking around.
“No, it’s a ghost,” I said sarcastically.
“You can turn on the lights now.” I turned them all on and squinted as my eyes adjusted to the light. She looked around for the branch, found it, and picked it up.
“Night vision, accomplished,” she said, snapping the branch and throwing the pieces at random.
“Now can I-” I started saying but she stopped me.
“What do you think I’m going to say?” she asked me, cocking her head to the side.
“What’s next?” I asked wearily.
“Mind reading,” she said. “Go ahead, read my mind.” I hesitated.
“Don’t worry,” she said. “I won’t hurt you.”
“Yeah right,” I muttered skeptically. I reluctantly read her thoughts.
Okay, Neil. Welcome to my mind. Right now, I can tell that you are in my mind and if I were an enemy of you, I’d do this. I felt a heavy blow to my head and staggered back.
“What the heck?” I said, rubbing my head.
“Most supers can tell if their minds are being read,” she said, ignoring my pain, “And then attack like that, or worse.”
“Or worse?” I said.
“Let’s put it this way,” she said. “There’s a kid, Grant, who’s our age and, like you, can read minds. He was a moron and tried reading one of the teacher’s minds at the school. The teacher didn’t know who was reading her mind and involuntarily attacked Grant. Now, he’s been in the psychiatric ward in HQ’s hospital for about two years. Every day, they have to convince him he’s not an alien.”
“Yikes,” I said.
“Yeah,” she said. “So I’m going to attempt to teach you how to read people’s minds without them knowing.”
“Attempt?” I said, taking my hand off my head. “I’m going to end up getting hurt, aren’t I?”
“No,” she said quickly. “Well, I hope not. Okay, so when you just read my mind, it was like you were stomping around in my head. Try it again.”
See, right now, it’s like my mind is a house, and you’re the burglar. You’ve got to sneak around quietly so I don’t know you’re stealing something. Right now, you’re making loud noises, and I’m calling the police. They’re pulling up in my driveway, pulling out their guns-
I cut off the communication before I could get hit again.
“Good choice,” she said. “Okay, now let’s try a different approach. Go ahead, try it again. And don’t worry, I won’t attack.” I looked skeptically at her and burrowed into her mind,
You’ve already set of the alarm, squirt. You started out too strong. You’ve got to ease your way into my mind. Get of here and re-enter. I left her mind and slowly climbed into her head again.
Much better. Okay, now here’s what you’re going to try. Imagine you’re tip-toeing through a house. Good. Okay, here’s where things get messy. I’ve never done this before to someone so we’re going to try a few different things. I stand by what I said earlier, squirt. I won’t attack you, okay?
Tactic number one; to get to the really juicy stuff in my mind, you have to pace yourself. If you start off wanting to find out if I like someone, you’ll probably get another kick in the head.
She must have seen the worried expression on my face because she thought Of course, it’s not an actual kick. So here we go. I’m going to let my mind wander. You start off looking for what homework I have due tomorrow, then why I think your neighbors are tacky, then the most recent conversation I had with Trent, then… well, you get the point. Here we go.
Just as she said, her mind started wandering. She sat down leaning against the tree and closed her eyes. I did as she said, finding out that she had a book report due Tuesday. She thought that the lawn gnomes in my neighbor’s yard were not only tacky but red-neck too. It was going smoothly until I started into her more personal thoughts.
Suddenly, I felt another blow to my head, but this one was sharp. It felt as if someone had taken a knife and stuck in my head. It lasted much longer than before too.
“Neil! Neil!” I heard Millie shouting. “Are you okay?” The pain had stopped. I was sitting on my knees, my head in my hands. I slowly looked up to her.
“Yeah, sure you won’t hurt me,” I said harshly.
“I didn’t do that,” she said, going to help me up. “It’s what happens whenever you go too deep into some people’s minds. That’s what I’m going to try and teach you. To go that deep without getting hurt.”
“Well, it obviously isn’t working,” I said, rubbing my temples. “I thought I was learning to get into your mind without you knowing.”
“You did well on that part,” she said. “It’s just that there’s a certain… how can I put this. Okay, it’s like my mind is a city.”
“Before you said your mind was a house,” I retorted.
“Shut up,” she said. “It’s a city now. You just crossed the moat but when you tried climbing the walls around it, well, that happened. It’s the same with everyone else’s minds. Each person has their own specific moat and wall. Some people, you can go really deep before you get kicked out. Others, well, you can barely get in.”
“I’ve never had any trouble with this stuff before,” I said.
“That’s because you’ve only done it on mortals,” she said. “They’re the ones that don’t know what mind reading feels like and will let you go as deep as you want. Supers have some idea of what it’s like. Supers who have powers opposite of telepathy-”
“What’s opposite of telepathy?” I interrupted.
“Well, telepathy is brains,” she said, “So bronze. That would be the super speed, super strength department. The supers with those kinds of powers are the ones that have the smallest idea of what mind reading is and will let you go the farthest. Other telepathic supers, like you, wouldn’t even let you get to the edge of the moat.”
“So I’m fine when it comes to sneaking around the mind, but…” I trailed off, looking to her.
“But you need to learn to get past that wall,” she said, “Without this happening every time. I think we’ve done enough tonight.”
“Yeah, you think?” I said.
“I’m going to try and think of different tactics for you. Keep practicing your telepathy or else the skills you developed tonight will go away,” she said. “Night.” Just like that, she ran in the opposite direction, whooshing past the bushes.
♠ ♠ ♠
i'm sorry, i couldn't resist referencing Harry Potter. i just sort of happened... sorry. i'm a harry potter junkie. and i've tried to balance a salt shaker and it's hard. one of my friends did it and it took her forever. and please, please, PLEASE tell as many people as possible about this story. not that many people are reading it. so PLEASE spread the word