Manipulation.

For about twenty minutes, nothing was wrong. I sat in the diner and I waited for my greasy burger, sipping whatever off-brand soda they served in this place. I got the burger, and I ate, and still, nothing was wrong. Then, I decided that I would stay and order a milkshake.

Mistake number two.

The diner had been steadily rising in occupation since I had arrived, and it was putting me on edge. There was a lot of closeness there - people were pushing tables together, the servers were sitting down and talking to customers, and chatter filled the air. It was overwhelming, but it was a comfortable kind of overwhelming. It didn’t make me want to run away - not like New York had, anyway.

An angry couple with a rowdy child came in, and the entire atmosphere changed. The people tensed, the chatter silenced, and I teetered on the tightrope. I sat there with my eyes closed, not noticing that my milkshake had arrived as I hoped and hoped and wished and begged that everything would settle back down because I was so uncomfortable and so was everyone else. I couldn’t handle it.

I left a twenty next to my untouched shake and went to leave when a hand grabbed my arm and twisted me around. There was no malicious intent in the gesture, but it pushed me even closer to the edge. I hated when people touched me, especially people that I didn’t know and didn’t trust. Not that I really trusted much of anyone.

“Focus, breathe. It’s alright,” the old man said as he stared right into my eyes. To be honest, it creeped me out a lot less than it helped me calm down. I focused all of my energy on the source of my discomfort and the child finally stopped yelling, which made the parents relax, and consequently, the entire diner. I felt relieved as I let out a breath I didn’t know that I had been holding.

“Don’t leave quite yet. We need to talk about what just happened - what you just did.”
I stared in honest-to-goodness confusion. What I just did? All I did was calm down, which isn’t exactly anything special. “What are you talking about?”

My words came out harsher than I intended, but they always did, so I wasn’t particularly perturbed. “Sit down for a minute. My name’s Ray; what’s yours?”

“Charlie,” I said, as I purposefully ignored his outstretched hand.

He simply chucked. “Short for Charlotte, I assume?” I decided not to respond. “Anyway, you know what I’m talking about. You just calmed those people down without saying a word to them, and you don’t think that’s anything special?”

Calmed those people down? “Look, Ray, I don’t know what you’re talking about, and frankly, I don’t want to be here any longer. Have a good night, okay?”

“You know exactly what I’m talking about. You’ve done it before. I could see the change in you every time the atmosphere in here shifted. You feel it. You feel all of it,” he paused to cough, “and you change what you don’t like about it.”

What the hell was this guy on? I got that it wasn’t as weird to talk to strangers in a town like this, but I had never been spoken to like this in my life. I mean, some of what he said made sense, but most of it was crazy. It wasn’t like I could actually feel other people’s emotions. I was just a people person. I understood how they worked. That was all. I couldn’t manipulate anyone’s feelings.

I got up and walked out without another word. He was a lunatic - nothing more, nothing less.