Into the Deep (5 page)

5

Going Against the Current

O
n Saturday I wore the blue dress. I didn’t care if Christy only thought it looked
okay
on me. I liked it. It was a dark royal blue, short with spaghetti straps. It was simple but it fit well. I had spent the earlier part of Saturday in my room avoiding the voices that I knew I’d hear if I went around my family. I called Tiana and helped her with her math homework then finished the rest of the reading I had for Lit. By eight, I was dressed and waiting for Christy to arrive. She had called around seven saying that she, Steve and Alex would be there in an hour to pick me up. I was nervous, not so much for being around
the boys and having Christy push Steve onto me as a potential love interest, but because I was unsure of what I would hear. Since coming downstairs I hadn’t heard a single voice, but I wasn’t optimistic enough to think that I wouldn’t hear any that night.
     A short while later, Alex’s Mercedes pulled up and I got in the back seat. It smelled of leather and cologne, thick and musty, like ginger and fresh cut wood. Steve was sitting in back with me and Christy was in the passenger seat. We were headed to the beach to have a small bonfire and watch the waves roll in. I was expecting a relaxing, fun night. I wouldn’t get one.
     “So, what do you like to do for fun?” Steve asked me on our way there.
     He, not so smoothly, reached his hand across the back of the seat behind my back. I wanted to roll my eyes, but was glad that it was only his outward cheesy moves that had my attention and that I hadn’t, at least not yet, heard his inner intentions.
     “I mean other than hitting up house parties and going to the beach with handsome guys like us.”
     I laughed, “Handsome, huh?”
     “Oh most definitely. So what do you like? Play any sports?”
     “Not so much. I got into volleyball for a while. It was fun, but I never was good enough to make varsity so I gave it up.”
     “Volleyball, well maybe we’ll have to get a game going the four of us.”
     I smiled genuinely when he said that. I had really liked playing volleyball my freshman and sophomore years, but I liked to play the sport for fun and after a while the long practices and heavy competitiveness that was known of all Alta Ladera sports started to make the game less of a game to me and more of a chore. My friends had never understood why I quit. To them it was important to be involved in school activities; to me it was about doing what I enjoyed. It was nice to think about playing again just to play. I was starting to feel like maybe it would be a good night.
     Once we reached our destination, the four of us made our way toward the fire pit. The dry sand slowed me down as I tried to run along the beach. Christy and Alex were up ahead of Steve and me, working on getting a fire going. Steve was carrying a six pack of Coors Light and I had a bottle of White Zin courtesy of Christy’s mom’s wine rack. We looked on at Christy and Alex in the distance as they struggled to get a flame going.
     “Looks like Alex has forgotten how to work a lighter,” Steve said.
     “Yeah, they’re not doing so good over there.” I smiled.
    
I think we need to get everything heating up a little more around here
, I heard him think and my smile faded a little. “By the way, you look really good in that dress,” he said.
     “Thanks,” I replied and couldn’t help but smile again, until I heard something else.
    
It’ll look better when I get it on the floor though.
     I started to walk with a greater distance between us after that. I barely knew Steve. We’d only met a few weeks earlier at Nicolette’s party and he already thought he could… what? Get somewhere with me? It was starting to be obvious exactly what these two USULB college freshmen wanted with two high school juniors.
     Christy and Alex had just gotten the bonfire going when Steve and I reached them. Its flames clawed their way up to the sky and cast their faces in orange light. Christy was sitting beside Alex in the sand and he had his arm around her. I hovered uncomfortably for a moment as Steve set down the beer. He plopped down in the sand and I hesitated not wanting to sit beside him. I was out for a fun night with friends and he seemed to want something more and so did Alex.
    
God this girl has great legs
, Alex thought as he eyed my friend.
     “Come on, Ivy, sit down,” Christy said, glaring at me.
Don’t be antisocial, you’re going to embarrass me
, I heard her think.
     “Right, yeah,” I mumbled and sat down between her and Steve.
     She snatched the bottle of wine out of my hands with a smile and pulled out the already loosened cork. I heard it pop then watched her take a long sip. Steve leaned across me to hand Alex a beer, and Christy handed me the bottle once she was done. I stared at it for a moment then looked to Christy. Her eyebrows rose and she looked at me with expectation. I took a sip from the bottle.
     “So,” Alex said, “how about we get some kind of game going?”
     “Drinking game?” Christy asked. She beamed a smile at him.
     “Oh, Flip, Sip or Strip,” Steve said.
     “Strip?” I asked in a suspicious tone and shifted my weight in the sand to pull my dress down over my knees.
     “Yeah, well you don’t have to strip,”
at least not right away,
he added in his mind. “It’s easy, you just…” he pulled a quarter out of his pocket. “Flip, call out heads or tails before it hits the ground and if you’re right, just pass the coin.”
     “What if you’re wrong?”
     “Then you either take off a piece of clothing or take a pull of your girly wine there.”
     I looked down at the wine bottle in my hand and thought that it might be alright. I had never had problems playing drinking games in the past. I was quite good at beer pong actually.
     “But,” Alex added, “You can’t do the same thing more than twice in a row.”
     I watched Christy read the look on my face, “Come on, it’ll be fun,” she said before I could object.
     “Alright.”
     Steve smiled and flipped the coin first. He called out tails and I leaned in to look at where the coin had hit in the sand. It was heads. I watched then as he took a long sip of his beer. He handed me the coin. I tossed it up into the air and called heads. I bit my lip as it tumbled back down to the ground.
    
God, I hope it’s tails.
 I heard Steve think. It distracted me for a moment.
Damn,
he then thought and I looked down at the coin to see that it was as I had called it.
     Christy went next and ended up having to take a pull of the wine which she seemed happy to do. When Alex was up, he guessed wrong as well but opted to lose his shirt instead. Christy flashed me a pleased look.
    
Older guys are so much better looking
, I heard her think, and then the coin was passed back to Steve.
     He guessed right. Then it was back to me.
    
I hope she starts losing
, I heard him think as he handed me the coin
, I’ve got four girls back on campus that I can get naked in half this time
.
     I froze. My hand gripped the quarter as the heat from the fire licked my knuckles. I didn’t flip the coin. I didn’t want to. Everyone stared at me as I sat there unmoving.
     “Ivy,” Christy said. “Flip it.”
    
She’s not even as hot as Rachel
, Steve then thought,
but hopefully she’ll be a good lay.
     “I can’t,” I said and stood up. “I have to go.”
     Christy’s eyes were huge and she flushed bright red with humiliation. I walked away from them and started to make my way back to the parking lot. My feet dug into the soft sand and I clenched my fists so tightly that my nails were digging into my palms. I was hurt and angry, mad at what I’d heard Steve think about me and mad for the fact that I knew what he was thinking.
     “Ivy!” Christy called and I turned around to see her catching up behind me. “What the hell are you doing?”
     The guys were still sitting around the fire down the beach.
     “Christy you don’t know… these guys don’t care about us… they just…”
     “Oh come on Ivy, just ‘cause our parents tell us that ‘
guys only want one thing’
doesn’t make it true about all guys. Alex and Steve are really cool, and hot, and if you mess this up for me I’m gonna be so mad at you.”
     “I’m sorry Christy, I don’t feel comfortable with these guys. I’m going home. You can either come with me or stay here, but I’m not staying.”
     Her face grew rosy again, making her look like a spoiled child being told ‘no’ for the first time.
     “Fine, be lame. I’m going back to the bonfire to do damage control and try to salvage my date. Don’t expect me to
ever
ask you out with me again.” She turned away from me with a flip of her hair and stormed off back down the beach.
     I walked home alone.

A
t home, I went straight to my room and pulled out my laptop. I needed to know more about why I could hear people’s thoughts. Knowing what people were thinking wasn’t just interesting or annoying anymore; it was starting to interfere with my life. I wondered on my walk home if my night would have gone better if I couldn’t read minds. If I didn’t know what Steve had been thinking, would I have found him charming? Would I have stayed and had a fun time? Would I have ended up getting drunk and doing something I would have regretted? I shook my head. I didn’t want to be grateful for my newfound gift. I was mad and frustrated at being able to know what people were thinking, but more so I hated that I couldn’t just have told Christy exactly what I’d heard. I hated that I couldn’t explain why I left the beach.
     I sat on my bed; my yellow comforter wrapped around my waist, with my laptop before me and pulled up a browser window. I went to the search bar and typed in
telepathy
. I scrolled through the generated list of web pages and read through a definition as given by
Wikipedia
.  I concluded that what I was experiencing was in fact transference of thoughts from other people to me, but that didn’t explain why. I went back to the search engine and glossed past links to various superheroes and comic books. There were links to movies and books, entries for New Age self-help books dedicated to ‘discovering the inner you’ and listings for psychic hotlines. After a few pages of finding nothing to offer me any real answers, my shoulders dropped and I let out a huff of defeat.
     I felt like I had been cursed. I didn’t know how to control what I was doing, didn’t know how to escape it. I had the ability to see into people’s private thoughts and yet I felt like I was the one being violated. I felt like I could never again have mystery in my life; never again let people tell me things when they were ready. Everyone around me would be wearing their hearts on their sleeves, they’d be entrusting me with secrets they never told me, they’d be letting me in to their deepest desires and worst fears just by thinking them around me. The ability to judge people not only for who they are on the outside but for the things they think, for the things they keep to themselves, was frightening. I found myself with an ability and a responsibility I’d never wanted and the worst thing about it was that I didn’t even know why.
     I went back to the search engine and typed in the only other thing I could think to type-
swimming pool accident
. At first I found nothing that really related to what I wanted to know, but I wasn’t expecting much. There were a number of news articles about various accidents. Small children drowning when left unattended, a woman becoming paralyzed during a party, but nothing related to acquiring strange abilities after an accident. I tried a different search term.
Hit head on bottom of pool
, I typed. Then I found one article that I thought might help me understand. I clicked on the link and began to read the article. It was about a man who hit his head at the bottom of a swimming pool and woke up with astounding piano skills. Before his accident he’d never even played the piano, but after he was an instant concert pianist. He still can’t read music, but he can play it.
     I kept reading, feeling for the first time like I wasn’t alone. I hadn’t discovered another person exactly like me. He couldn’t hear other people’s thoughts, but he did develop an ability that he didn’t have previously, and after an accident nearly exact to my own. I at least felt confident that what had caused my ability to know what people were thinking was my falling into the pool at Lakefall Country Club. I didn’t have all the answers, but I had something.

6

Into the Deep

O
n Monday I was the first of my friends to arrive at school. I made my way across the open courtyard to wait for them by the fountain. Leaning against the cold stony ledge, I listened to the flow of the water behind me and exhaled a deep breath. After how Saturday night ended, I wasn’t expecting Christy to have forgiven me yet, but I knew she would eventually. With the sun warming my face, I closed my eyes and soaked up a moment of peace. I imagined that I was out in the woods, sitting beside a babbling creek. I envisioned camping in Big Sur, where my father liked to vacation. I could even smell the willowy, earthy aroma of the forest. Then my tranquility was shattered.
    
Well, if it isn’t Miss Mind Reader from Psych class,
I heard and opened my eyes, except I thought that someone had said it out loud.
Probably a bitch just like Tiana.
    
 I spun around enraged, and then the words were tumbling out of my mouth before I even had a chance to think about what I was saying.
     “I’m not a bitch, and neither is Ti,” I said to Brant who sat on the edge of a tabletop a few feet behind me.
     His eyes went wide and, then as his blue orbs narrowed on me, I realized my mistake. He stood up and took a step toward me. He wore a dark jacket with a plain black t-shirt underneath and he looked at me with a creased brow and inquisitive expression.
     “What?” he asked.
     “Nothing,” I quickly said, but he wouldn’t let it go.
     “No, you just said that you weren’t a bitch and that neither is Ti… I never called you a bitch,”
not out loud
.
     “I must have just heard someone else say something… sorry.” I tried to walk away from him then but he grabbed me by the arm and spun me back around to face him.
    
Did you hear me think that
?
     My lips parted and I almost responded to his thoughts again, but it was at that moment that Tiana arrived.
     “Ivy, what’s going on?” she asked and I saw her standing only a few feet from us.
     Brant let go of my arm then.
     “Nothing, was just leaving,” Brant said.
     He turned and walked away before either of us could say another word. I watched for a moment as he walked across the courtyard to where I could see his friends Skyler and Jason standing. I turned back to Ti.
     “He’s a dick,” I said.
     “Warned you. What’d he say anyway?”
Probably was trying to hit on her, that guy has no shame.
     “I just heard him say something rude. Don’t worry about it, I told him off.”
     “Told who off?” Eliza asked.
     Tiana and I turned to see her approach. She had her long black hair pulled up into a high ponytail today and it swayed as she walked.
     “Steve? I heard you ditched out on Christy on Sat.”
And boy was she pissed about it.
     “Oh God, what did she tell you?”
     “Christy didn’t tell me much, but like half the school is talking about it. Some friends of Steve and Alex said you ditched out on the date, stormed off across the beach.”
     My cheeks flushed and I felt like my skin must have resembled a ripe cranberry.
      “Don’t worry, from the sound of it, she wishes she would have left with you.”
     “Guys were dicks?” Tiana asked.
     “Big time,” I replied. “Is she mad at me?” I asked Eliza.
     “Well you know Christy, she’ll act pissed that you ditched for a couple days, probably be embarrassed that the whole school knows you left her alone on a double date… and then forget all about it.”
     I nodded. Christy giving me a hard time was not something I was looking forward to, but I had other, more important, concerns at the moment. Brant Everett was on to my secret and I didn’t know what to do about it.