Zion's Fiction: A Treasury of Israeli Speculative Literature

The Perfect Girl ^{Guy Hasson}

The bus is full, but when it stops at the Indianapolis Academy only I get off.

I’m sweating in my bra, and it’s not even hot. My panties are too tight in one place and too baggy in another. My dress is too conservative. They’re going to know.

I watch until the bus disappears behind a turn and a hill. I wait a couple more seconds, take a deep breath, and turn around.

It’s like there’s a huge gate in the middle of nowhere, with a seven-foot wall stretching in both directions, deep into Indiana country. To one side of the gate is a small booth with an armed guard.

“Hi,” I say, coming closer, being cute.

He steps out of the booth. “You’re new.” All business.

“Yes.” I’ll bet he knows everybody’s faces.

“ID, please.”

I shuffle a bit in my purse and then give him my ID. He puts it in some portable computer thing; it bleeps; he pulls out my ID and hands it back to me. His hand accidentally grazes my finger as he does so, and I get a small sense of him. He’s not a telepath. He’s attracted to me. God, I hate myself.

He goes back to the booth, presses a button, and the gate slides open.

The Academy is inhumanly large, a twentieth-century architectural construct, meant to look like it was built in the seventeenth century somewhere in Europe. I feel as if I’ve shrunk to half my size.

“Good luck,” he shouts after me.

“Thanks,” I call back.

I put on my gloves.

The gate shuts behind me. God, I hate myself.

The lecture hall is built for three hundred.

I get there first, which is oh-so-joyful.

I pick a place somewhere in the middle.

One by one, they come in. And as each of them enters, they all sit in the front row. A minute before eight, I pick up my things and join them.

Professor Bendis comes in at eight on the dot.

Ancient. Smart. Godlike.

He takes his time getting to the podium and looking at us.

He can read my mind. I cross my legs.

He lowers his chin, looking down at us. “There are six students,” he begins without preamble, “in the class of ’14. One of you will probably learn that this is too tough, that this isn’t for him or her, and will drop out within the first month. If this does not happen, we will expel one of you after two months.

“After your freshman year, one of you will be dropped out.

“After your sophomore year, one of you will be dropped out.

“After your junior year, one of you will be dropped out.

“Of the two that are left, only one will graduate. Only those who graduate will be free to return to civilian life. All those who are dropped will be sent to our sister institution.” He looks at us all. Yes, we all know what that means. “We do not take our talents lightly. They are new, few, and far between. So far. We must learn to police ourselves and behave responsibly before the government sees fit to step in any more than they have and police us.”

He looks at us all. “Good luck to all of you.” He leans back. “Now, to your first lesson.”

I am way over my head here.

“In this class, in our profession, we deal with truth. The whole truth.” Professor Parks is only ten years older than I am. I’m ten yards away from her and I can sense her strength. Jeez.

“During your first year here,” she continues, “you will become intimate with each of your fellow students. I am not talking about physical intimacy. I am talking about a greater intimacy. You’re going to let each of your fellow students into your head. For an entire year. You will analyze each other to the core. You will bore out the truth. You will touch on complexes, truths, hates, fears, loves, and secrets. And you will have to share everything that’s in your mind or you will be kicked out of the Academy.

“There will be no running from the truth here. There will be no hiding the truth. There will be no secrets.

“It will be the hardest thing you have ever done. It is the most basic act we require of you.

“In being truthful with others, you will be forced to be truthful with yourselves.”

I’ve only known these people for three hours, and I already know one’s a whore, one’s a gasbag, one’s socially inept, and I don’t know anything, yet, about the other two except that they scare the daylights out of me.

They’re going to know this.

They’ve already judged me.

Freshmen get the sleazy duties. Each student, in his or her own turn, went into the office and came out looking as if someone had just pulled their teeth.

I’m the last one. I go in.

A black-haired Adonis sits behind a table. He’s probably a senior. “Alexandra Watson?”

“Yes.”

“You’re….” He looks closely at his list. “Ah.” He raises his eyes from the list and looks at me. “You’re in the morgue.”

I swear my brain freezes for a second. “What? I’m sorry, what?”

He just looks at me. He knows I didn’t mishear. My vision becomes spotty. “The morgue? But this is an academy. It’s an academy for psy—”

“We have a morgue,” he cuts me off quickly. “People have been donating their bodies to science for decades. We’re a new science. People advance scientific knowledge by donating their bodies to us.”

“But what good is a—”

“You can still read a man’s mind after he’s dead.”

“What!”

At least for a while. Doctors autopsy bodies. We autopsy personalities. For our own safety as well as for the safety of innocent bystanders, the Academy is maintained by as few people as possible. We all have to chip in. We all have to pull our shifts at the morgue. I did it. Everyone in your class will do it. Right now, you’re doing it. You will report there now. Three floors down.”

“There are five horizontal refrigerators for five bodies. At the best of times we only get one, so there’s no danger of us being overbooked.”

The woman briefing me hates the way I look, and she doesn’t mind beaming that emotion at me while she talks.

“You get a body, you get it off the gurney, you put it in the fridge. Okay so far? Great. If someone wants to use the body, you pull it out… like so. When people are done with it, you put it back, make sure this door is closed… see? Then you leave the room and lock it. Understood?”

I nod.

“The room temperature must always be kept at ten degrees Celsius or bad things happen to the bodies. It must be kept at that temperature even when the freezers are empty, in case a body comes in. This is the keypad responsible for this.

“You are accountable for this room. You are responsible for anything that happens to it even when there are no bodies in it. Times like right now, when we have no bodies—which is most of the time—you keep the room clean, you keep the temperature steady, and you let no one in. Someone comes in and does something—even if someone breaks in—it’s your responsibility.

“When there’s a body here, this is what you do. If anyone wants use of the body, if a class comes in, they need permission from you. They need you to open the doors for them and to roll the body from the fridge to this room. Only the dean has the other key, and he makes it a point to never use it.

“You watch the class come in, you watch them leave. Anything happens to the body or the room, it’s your responsibility and your ass. There are no set hours in which you’re supposed to be here. Just make sure you maintain this place. Is everything understood?” She smiles at me when she asks, but I clearly hear the word bitch in my head. My god, she’s good. She’s not even near me.

“Yes,” I say. My voice sounds weak.

“I’m going now. You’ll need to stay.”

“Why? I can just lock the—”

“We just got a call thirty minutes ago. A donor’s heading this way. Passed away this morning.”

“What?”

“You will wait here till the ambulance comes. The man will come and give you papers to sign. You will sign all the papers. And I do mean all of them. The man will leave. You will put the body in the fridge, and then you will lock up. Understood?”

I’ve been sitting in the morgue for three hours, now, waiting for the body.

There’s been nothing. There’s no phone here. Even if I used my cell, I wouldn’t know who to call or who to ask. I don’t even know the name of the student who gave me the instructions. I sit here waiting, imagining, remembering every horror movie I’ve ever seen. I have ghosts on the brain, zombies, dead people coming back to life, dead children, animals rising from graves, knives in showers, blood spilling, curses, even my own body on the slab.

Who would give their minds to science? Who would allow their memories, their emotions, their entire lives to be explored, raped, pillaged by total strangers? Why would anyone do that?

The steel doors swing open, and I jump ten feet in the air.

A fifty-something orderly wheels a body on some kind of pushcart. The body is zipped inside a black bag.

“Special delivery,” he smiles at me.

“I—”

“Hey, hey,” he almost touches me. “You’re turning green. Oh, god, I love first timers. Look,” and suddenly he’s all friendly again, turning back to the body. He’s trying to tell me through his actions that there’s nothing to worry about. “I’ll show you how it’s done, so you’ll know for next time, all right? Just don’t throw up on me.” Another smile.

I nod.

“What you do is, you take the body out of the bag,” he unzips the entire thing, revealing a woman’s body. “You move her to this gurney.” I can’t take my eyes off her, disgusting as this is. She’s around my age. Unspoiled, naked body. Beautiful face. “Like this,” he continues. “Then you take a sheet from here, and you cover her with it.” He does so. “After all, you telepaths are going to remove the sheet to touch her, aren’t you? Then you shove her into the freezer.” He closes the freezer behind him, turns to me, and flashes his most disarming smile. “There. All done. Now sign this,” he produces a form from his shirt pocket, unfolds it, and puts it in front of me.

It’s to acknowledge receipt. I sign the form wordlessly and get to keep a copy. I notice the name. The body is Stephanie Reynolds.

“Excellent,” he repockets the paper. “Now where’s your form?”

“What?”

“Where’s your form?”

“I just signed it.”

“No. Where’s your form?” I look at him blankly. “They told me you signed it.”

“Signed what?” But a shiver begins to run up my spine. She had said to sign all forms, and she had enjoyed that moment in particular.

He goes to one of the drawers, full of different forms, and pulls out one. “This. They told me you signed this.”

I look at it. “What is it?”

“Anyone who works here, anyone who goes to the Academy, signs this. It says you consent to donating your body to science, to this. After all, you guys need to help yourselves, don’t you? They usually send me all the paperwork a couple of weeks into the semester, once they’ve threatened you a bit. You’re going to sign it anyway. So you can sign it now, if you want.”

This was what she’d emoted at me when she left. Perverse pleasure. And the knowledge that if I don’t do this I’m out of the Academy, looking at a forced, lifelong military career with no way back into civilian life. And I can’t afford to be…

I don’t think my voice is even audible when I say, “I’ll wait. Thank you.”

He shrugs. We both know I’m going to sign it eventually.

It’s eleven p.m. when I get to my dorm room for the second time today. For the second time ever. In the morning, I had just enough time to throw my bags on the floor before I had to go to first period. The rest of the students in my class are down the hall. We each get a huge suite with a bedroom, a small living room, and a bathroom.

I crawl onto the bed. Showering can wait. Unpacking can wait.

I want to cry.

Later. Later. Please. Later.

I wake up in the middle of the night, my heart beating: I forgot to set the alarm!

I stumble off the bed, drowsy, everything spinning.

The light’s on. I slept in my clothes. My mouth is dry. My alarm clock is still packed.

I need to pee. I go to the bathroom, and a glance at the mirror makes me gasp. What the—!

My face! My face is smeared with red-and-white toothpaste!

The door—I didn’t lock it.

Did they touch me, even for a second? Did they invade my thoughts? Did they invade my dreams? Did they read me?

Was it my class? The older students?

I hate this place. I hate these people. Dammit!

I sit on the edge of the bathtub and cry and cry and cry.

“When we die,” Professor Bendis begins his lecture at eight on the second, “although there are no thoughts, the neural paths remain. The memories remain. Identity remains. The emotions of the past, the complexes, remain. They are all inactive. We can search them, navigate through them, without resistance from the subject. And thus we can probe and learn. Undisturbed, not afraid of harming anyone’s privacy.

“It takes roughly seven days for the ‘mind’ or the ‘personality’ to deteriorate and disappear beyond our capability of probing it. As my own professor used to say, ‘Our personality dies seven days after our body does.’”

He slams his hand on the podium. “There’s a fresh body in the morgue. We have less than six days to analyze the subject’s mind. Until further notice, class will be held there. Ms. Watson, you have the key on you?”

“Yes.”

“Then we shall go.”

I open the freezer and wheel out the body.

The class holds back a gasp. I can feel their collective need to run away.

Professor Bendis ignores them. He walks up to the body, removes the sheet enough to reveal her face, and touches her forehead with a finger. Five seconds later, he breaks contact and looks at me.

“Ms. Watson, do you know her name?”

“Stephanie Reynolds, sir.”

He nods. “Do you know her middle name?”

I blank out. Then I see the form in my mind. The slot for middle name was empty. “No,” I say.

“Touch her,” he says. “And tell me her middle name.”

I come closer, standing right beside the body. Why did he have to pick me first?

I touch her, searching.

There’s nothing.

I raise my eyes. “Professor Bendis, I’m not sensing any thoughts or emotions.”

“Of course not. She’s dead, Ms. Watson. She hasn’t had a thought for approximately twenty-four hours.”

“Then how—”

“But the neurological patterns are there nonetheless. The memories of thoughts and emotions she’s had are still stored in the physical connections inside her brain. You have to think for her. You have to create movement. You will have to move from one pathway to another. And you will only be able to move down emotions or thoughts or memories she’s had before and that have been etched into her mind. Your movement will be through her memory.”

Hesitating, I touch her again.

Nothing.

I will her thoughts to move. Nothing.

I look at him. “But to move I have to start from someplace. There’s no place to start.”

“To get a starting point, you have to think a thought she’d already had. You have to find a place that already exists in her memory. That’s not as difficult as it sounds. Try this. Put your finger on her, and think ‘mother.’”

Without noticing, I think “mother” a split second before I touch her. Automatically, my mother’s image is in my head, especially the way she’s starting to look her age. I have her height, I have her build, I have her face. I know that’s what I’m going to look like when I’m old.

And there’s an image of my mother, tired, and for the first time I can see that she’s fifty. And suddenly I understand that whenever I look at her, I see the image of who she was when I was five. I haven’t seen her real face in years.

She’s shorter and smaller and older than I am. And worn. She’s worn. You can see the fight on her face. I don’t want people to see how hard it was to get to this place. Please don’t let me be as wrinkled—

No, that’s not me. That was Stephanie. Stephanie’s mother. Stephanie’s thoughts. I look up at Professor Bendis. Her thoughts fade into nothing, even though I’m still touching her.

“From there on,” Bendis says. “You move to a place that is ‘linked’ in some way to this memory. For example. You can easily move from ‘mother’ to ‘father.’”

Mother, tired, for the first time I can see that she’s fifty—

—Dad is fifty—

I see his fiftieth birthday. Dad sits on the sofa, watching television, while Mom frets over the spread-out dinner table.

I see it in his eyes. I’ve seen in it in his eyes all day. He claims he doesn’t care, but that number hits him where it hurts: he still thinks he’s young. He still thinks he’s twenty-two. Dad thinks he’s Peter Pan.

He thinks he still looks twenty-two just because he weighs the same.

The doorbell rings. Mom looks up—

“From there,” Bendis continues, “you can move to ‘mother and father fighting.’”

The doorbell rings. Mom looks up, and I can feel the pressure, the sweat. She’s not ready—

—Mom shouting at Dad, I think—

“It’s inconsiderate,” Mom is practically shouting.

“But it doesn’t make any sense!” Dad’s tone becomes even calmer than it was a second ago. “I never notice if people are making a noise when they chew. You’re being unreasonable.”

“It doesn’t matter if it makes sense to you. I find it disgusting. I find it abhorrent. That’s what I feel. You know it makes me feel bad, and you’re still doing it.”

“But there is no reason in the world why it should bother you. You’re being hysterical for nothing.” So cool, I sense Stephanie’s thoughts, dipped in disgust. So ignorant of feelings. Why can’t he understand her? Why does he do that? Why doesn’t he understand?

“Understand her!” Stephanie wants to shout. “Just for once, understand—”

“From there,” the professor’s voice breaks into Stephanie’s emotions, “to ‘Will I fight like this with my husband?’”

“I want a man who understands me,” Stephanie says. She’s lying on the bed—I can sense the location in her mind and feel the covers on her stomach. Margaret is lying beside her, also on the stomach, resting on her elbows. And although I didn’t pick it up from Stephanie, I can see from Margaret’s face that these two are now more or less sixteen. They’re alone in the house. I know that.

“He has to be kind,” Stephanie goes on, and I feel in her what that emotion means, how nice it would be. “And considerate.” Yes. “And he will love me.” Yes. “And give his life for me.” Yes. I feel exactly like that.

“From there to ‘Marriage is not for me.’” The professor’s words, although calm, land on me like a wall of bricks. Stephanie’s mind vanishes to me.

Of course marriage is for her! I just felt it! She was ready for marriage and she was only sixteen!

The professor is looking at me. “Problem?”

“No.”

“From there,” he continues, “to ‘Marriage is not for me.’”

I close my eyes, preparing, knowing I’m looking for something that does not exist.

“—Kind. And considerate. And he will love me—”

—Marriage is not for me—

“When I finally find a man, a man I’m ready to settle down with and who is ready to settle down with me, I will not let him marry me.” She’s lecturing Margaret. I can’t see the buildings, but the gyro inside all of us says that they’re at the university. This is probably a couple of years ago. “Marriage is an institution that started out in barbaric times. Women were slaves at worst and cheap labor at best. When I find a man—”

—Did you find a man? I ask her—

Her emotions run away from me and I lose her. She’s gone.

It takes me a second to realize you can’t ask dead people questions. I need to find the right thought in order to—

“You see?” The Professor notices my concentration has lapsed. “Unlike our own minds, the minds of the dead are open books. All you have to learn to do is to navigate. Do you understand, Ms. Watson?”

“I think so.”

“Good. Then tell me her middle name.”

I look at him and I don’t understand.

“Her name, Ms. Watson. What is her middle name?”

I concentrate and touch her again. “My name is…” I think.

“My name is…” Stephanie stands in front of the class. Her inner gyro puts her at first period in Mrs. Craig’s class. She’s in the first grade. This is her first day of school. “Stephanie Jean Reynolds and I live in 1421 North Shadeland Avenue.”

“That’s enough,” Mrs. Craig says. “Thank you, Stephanie.”

Stephanie nods and sits down.

I break my touch with her and look at Professor Bendis. “Her middle name is Jean, sir.”

“All right. Very good, Ms. Watson. Step back.”

I nod, and move back.

Professor Bendis calls on another student and puts her through the wringer. And then another, and then another. He asks each of them a different question, he guides each of them through a different set of memories. But he doesn’t touch Stephanie again, not even once. In the five seconds he touched her, he accessed more information than all of us did in two hours.

And through all of this, Stephanie’s immobile face rests there, unmoving, still perfect though dead, while the rest of the world frets around it. I watch it rock slightly, only a millimeter in every direction, when someone touches it. Everyone touches it at a different spot.

Mark touches her on the cheek. Suzy on her shoulder. Greg hesitates, and touches Stephanie’s temple.

And Stephanie jiggles ever so slightly whenever someone pulls his fingers away, as if her face and the finger were glued together.

The class is done after two hours. We’re all in a hurry to get to the next class. Professor Bendis reminds us that tomorrow we should reconvene here and not in class.

While they leave, I have to put the body back in the freezer.

I move as slowly as possible, waiting until they’re almost all out the door and their backs are definitely turned to me. As I slip the sheet over her face, I touch her for only a second, making it seem like an accident. And as I do so, I concentrate on the flutter you get when you’re in the beginning of a relationship, the butterflies in the stomach you feel when it’s the real thing, when…

Stephanie sits there, alone in her bedroom, her cheek squished against the wall. Her gut burns, physically burns, with what I know to be fear and insecurity. Her feet—now in socks—feel as though they’re a hundred times more sensitive than she’s used to. Her feeling of butterflies in the stomach is ten times stronger than mine.

She thinks about yesterday, about the kiss they had, the buzz it gave her, and it feels like blood actually fills her eyes and blots her eyesight. She slides her cheek down the wall of her bedroom slowly, playing that kiss again, exhilarated, fearful.

I can’t help myself, and I surf to that memory, to that “yesterday” in his apartment—

I am in the kiss. I am feeling Michael’s tongue, Michael’s lips, on mine. I see only his eyes, wild, blue, innocent, lovely eyes. I close mine as I kiss him, and he slips his hand down my shirt. His warm fingers on my breasts feel like—

The contact is broken, and I’m back in the morgue. I hadn’t even broken stride. I wheel her a few more seconds, then look behind me, at the door.

Professor Bendis is standing there, looking at me. His face is expressionless, but he saw me. I know he saw me. And I know he knows what I did.

He doesn’t move. Either out or back in, he doesn’t move.

I turn around, certain my face is red, and finish wheeling her into the freezer. I put her in, and close the door. I check its temperature. I fiddle with it, to create an impression that I’m very busy. I recheck the freezer door. I open it and close it again. I look at the temperature again. There’s nothing more I can think of, so I finally turn around.

He’s not there. Probably hasn’t been there in quite a while.

I hate myself.

I lock the morgue and head for my next class. My heart is hammering. It won’t stop.

I don’t know what this feeling is. Is it the excitement? Is it the butterflies? That kiss?

No, it’s the feelings of blood blotting the eyes, love pumping through her, stronger than her, stronger than me.

My heart won’t stop hammering.

I walk into Professor Willis’s class, and sit down.

The other students’ heads turn to the door. I follow their gaze. It’s Professor Parks.

“Alexandra Watson,” she says.

Oh, what? “Yes.”

“Come with me.”

Everybody’s looking at me now. I stand up slowly, looking down. I make my way to the door. Why did I have to sit so far away?

She leads me out and shuts the door to the class. We’re standing in the corridor.

“Did I do something, Professor Parks?”

“No. I need your key to the morgue. Open it up for me,” she says.

I realize I’ve been staring at her blankly for a few seconds longer than I should have, when she says, “Let’s go.”

I follow her down to the morgue. I look at her from the back as she walks. She dresses exactly as she looks: Controlled, powerful, smooth. I’ll never get to be that.

We reach the door. Half her class is already there. No, my mistake. They’re juniors. Half a class is their class.

I put my key in the lock and realize I can get to touch her again.

Did he love her? Are they still together? I mean, were they still together when she died? Did she find someone better?

I stand over the fridge without remembering getting here. I open the door, and just as I wheel her out, just as I’m figuring out how to touch her accidentally, I see that the students and Professor Parks are looking at me. They’re like Bendis. If I touch, even accidentally, they’ll know. They’re telepaths. They know what a touch does.

I act businesslike. I don’t touch. I stand back and let Professor Parks stand over the body. Professor Parks approaches the gurney and removes enough of the sheet to reveal her face.

“All right,” she begins, addressing the class. She then stops and turns her attention to me. “Thank you, Ms. Watson. You can go back to your class, now.”

What? “But….I’m not supposed to leave it unatten—”

“We’ll take care of it,” she dismisses me. “We’ve all done this before. We’ll put her back in the freezer and close the door behind us. You can go. Come back when class is over and lock the morgue. There are no vandals here.”

“Now…” she turns her attention back to her class as I begin to walk out “…if you think that what you did last year when autopsying the dead was exploring the mind…” I open the door, and let myself out. “…you’re about to learn that it was child’s play compared to what we’re going to do n…. “ I shut the door behind me.

I go back to class.

Once class is over, I run down to the morgue and go inside. The room is empty. The light is off. Stephanie’s in the fridge.

I wonder—

I could lock the door from the inside….

No.

I leave the room and lock it behind me.

I go to the cafeteria. All my class is sitting together. A weight on my shoulders just got heavier. I buy some food and sit with them.

“So who’s going to read who?” Greg says, his eyes gleaming.

“What do you mean?” Megan sits opposite him. She’s attracted to him.

“They’re going to set us up in pairs, you know. And then the pair is going to read one another’s mind all year long, just like Parks said.”

“Don’t be stupid. One of us is leaving. We’ll be an odd number.”

“So what do you think is going to happen?”

“Everybody is going to read everybody.” Rebecca says it like it’s obvious.

We catch ourselves looking at each others’ faces.

Greg laughs and shrugs. “Maybe they’ll do a mirror thing. I always wanted to try that with another telepath.”

“What’s a ‘mirror thing?’”

“Well, for example. Alexandra reads my mind, and sees what I think of her.” He smiles at me and winks. He’s coming on to me. God, this is shit. “Then I read Alexandra’s mind and see how she perceived what I thought of her. And then she reads my mind, and sees how I perceived that. And so on. And so on. And so on. And the more times it happens, the farther it will be from the original thought. I always wanted to try that.”

“Hmm…,” Rebecca says calmly. “I don’t know why you have to do it just on how someone perceives you. You could do it on every thought, on every image we see, on every sound we hear.”

“Which one of us do you think will be the one to make it?”

“Me, of course,” Rebecca says immediately. She smiles, but she beams at us, I’ve never failed in my life.

Greg laughs, amused. “Actually, it will probably be me. The only thing I’ve failed at in life is failing. Boy, I’ve tried to fail, I’ve tried to get myself kicked out, and I keep getting the best grades.” He laughs again, and he doesn’t care that no one thinks that anything he said is even amusing.

For the first time, I look around me.

All the rest of the students are here. One or more of them came in last night and smeared me with toothpaste. Was it the ones looking at me? The ones not looking at me?

I hate this place.

Going over to next period, I get called to the morgue again. During the day, I get called one more time. One for each year, I guess.

The classes over, I head back to the dorm. I stop. I look at the entrance.

Jeez, what’s the matter with me?

I should go to my room.

Fuck this. I’m going to make sure Stephanie’s okay.

I lock myself inside. I keep the lights off. I walk, as silently as possible, to the freezer.

Feeling things with my hands, I pull her out. I move aside most of the sheet.

I touch her.

And I’m smack inside the kiss, the same kiss I’ve been living in since I touched her seven hours ago. It’s stronger here. It’s stronger in her dead mind than it is in my live one.

—How did you meet him?—

Her thoughts disappear.

I delve into the kiss again, and surf from there backwards, until they are no longer touching—

I move forward, my movement creating her thought, surfing through an existing memory—

She’s sitting on the floor, leaning on the sofa, looking at her notebook. Her inner gyro says that this is night and that she’s in Michael’s apartment.

Michael is behind her, on the sofa, looking over her head.

“Oh, man, this is uncomfortable,” Stephanie says. She wiggles her back. Then, after she convincingly seems uncomfortable, she shifts her position and moves aside, in-between Michael’s legs, her back still turned to him.

“There. Much more comfortable.”

He’s shown interest in her before this. She’s shown interest. She’s been manipulating things all night, so that he hardly has to do anything to make the first move. But he still has to do it. He has to want her enough.

She asks him about a question in the notebook she had placed on her knees.

He leans forward, trying to read it. He obviously realizes now how close he is to her, and suddenly he looks at her. He smiles, and she smiles back. He almost laughs, and her body sends out a buzz of pleasure. And suddenly the hand she can’t see caresses her far cheek. She leans her face into his hand, the world forgotten. And his lips are on hers, and they are in that familiar kiss, and her body goes wild as most of it grows alive with pleasure. Everywhere he touches, everything he does, is perfect. It’s like her brain is melted and all she is is her body and her skin.

All right. All right.

I take my hand away. Her face more than jiggles this time. She almost stuck to me.

Did it get hotter in here since I came in?

I could go back to the moment any time I want. I just… need to calm down a bit.

Wow.

Someone else’s touch has never had such a powerful effect on me.

I look down at that face.

Wow.

Who are you, Stephanie? I caress her cheek.

All I see is the ceiling, but Michael’s hands are all over my naked body, and they are inside me, and the pleasure blots out all other senses. The pleasure comes in waves and waves and waves that spread out, that annihilate the rest of her mind. It makes her body one. It nulls her mind.

I break contact.

I look at her. More. More. More!

I run it over and over and over again, the waves that continue even when he no longer touches her.

All right. All right. I should stop. I should do something else. After all, her entire life is there, behind that face. Everything she ever thought, everything she ever dreamed, everything she remembers. Everything.

How like me are you, Stephanie?

Her face does not answer.

When were you betrayed, Stephanie?

Were you ever betrayed?

I caress her again.

“Don’t you understand how bad it makes me feel!” Stephanie is screaming at the top of her lungs at her mother. Stephanie is sixteen and in her living room. Can’t you get it through your head! Do I have to scream at you every single week about the same thing?” Stephanie’s mother has agreed to another family meeting at Grandma’s, when Stephanie has tried to establish time and time again that she would go any other day but Sunday, that Sunday was her day, her private day for herself. “Can’t you see—can’t you see—how bad it makes me feel!” And the tears come out. “Do you like making me cry?”

“Stephanie, how can you react like this when all we’re doing is going to see Grandma?”

“It’s not Grandma; it’s the fact that it’s Sunday.”

“But it’s just a few hours.”

Something sinks inside Stephanie. A helplessness. “This is how I feel, Mom.”

“Well, then you should do something about that. Change the way you feel. You’re being ridiculous.”

A wave of incredulity washes over Stephanie. “Mom. What about all those times, all those arguments with Dad? That he doesn’t understand you. That you can’t help what you feel. You should know. You should get what I’m saying. This makes me feel bad.

“We’re going to see your Grandma. You love her and she loves you. Why are you giving me such a hard time?”

And suddenly it dawns on Stephanie that every time her mother complained about Dad not getting her, not being considerate, that was her trying to get her way. When the shoe is on the other foot, she makes everything about her. That’s how she gets her way. For Stephanie’s entire life, Mom has always made it about her. And Stephanie fell for it. And all the work Stephanie ever did, and all the times she put herself aside to help Mom, all the times she sacrificed her time, her precious time, to do what Mom wanted and to make her feel good—that was for nothing. She has never appreciated it, has never noticed that Stephanie was helping. All she wanted was more, more, give me more, Stephanie.

Her mother is inconsiderate, blind, deceitful, and, worse than that, she has ignored Stephanie all her life, ignored who she really is and everything she’s done.

I stop.

I need to stop for five minutes.

I sit beside her and look at the rest of her body. There is something gruesome about this. There is something unfair in having such a great body even though you’re dead. There’s something beautiful in having someone lie there, prone, ready to reveal all her secrets.

What secrets are you hiding? What deep, dark secrets can you tell me?

“I only care about myself,” she tells Margaret. They’re both fifteen, sitting outside Margaret’s house. “I don’t care about other people. Everything I do, everything I ever say or do is just a show. Sometimes I forget, I get carried away, and I actually believe what I’m faking.”

“Are you faking it with me?” Margaret looks at her, vulnerable.

“No,” Stephanie touches her cheek. “I think you’re the only person who understands me. I think you’re the only person I really love. No one knows that I’m just a phony.”

—Another “secret”—

“Jee-zus,” Margaret is saying. They’re both in her dad’s car. Stephanie is driving, her heart is racing. “Am I glad you’re driving. I would have hit the dog.”

Stephanie missed the dog on the road, but a memory flooded through her mind. Her “secret.”

That first day she drove alone in the car, and she ran over a cat. She had seen the cat run into the road and she had swerved. And then she had felt that horrible bump. She hit the brakes and had stopped in the middle of the road.

I see it now—

She steps out and looks back. The cat’s head is squished, and the rest of its body keeps trying to walk in the air, jumping, turning, while its head is glued to the road. Five or six other cats gather in the middle of the road, and look at it, not understanding.

The cat’s body spasms in place. And it is her fault.

She gets back into the car and drives away.

Fifteen minutes later, she comes back. The cat was is now a piece of meat on the road, having been run over many times now. Even its friends had forgotten it.

She never told anyone. She hated herself over that.

No. These were not as dark as I had hoped. I need to find the right emotion, the right memory or thought that will give me access to the really deep places.

I need to think about this for a day.

All right. That’s enough for today. Still. I just want to see one more thing. I just want to see—

—Michael—

—Michael—

—Naked—

He stands there, naked. I’m sitting in bed, curled up between his sheets, as he gets up to go to his apartment before he goes to his job.

“Michael,” I say. Stephanie says. Stephanie.

He looks at her. “Yeah?”

“Before you get dressed, give me my glasses.” She points to the table.

He reaches for the table, and I see the folds in his stomach, the ribs stretch. He stops halfway, and looks at her.

“You want to see me get dressed?”

“Yes,” she says. Playful. God, she’s so happy.

He smiles back. He likes it. He gives her the glasses.

His image becomes clearer still. It didn’t look hazy before. Stephanie’s mind must have embellished intelligently, accurately, and unconsciously.

He dresses, now turning this into a mock striptease show, teasing her, dancing with his clothes as he slowly gets dressed. He’s having a riot. He’s so funny.

Once he’s dressed, I replay this. As slowly as I possibly can without having her thoughts dissolve into nothing. It’s not just the way he looks, it’s what she feels, too. It’s so amazing. I feel what she feels. As slowly as I possibly can.

Once that’s over, I surf to another time, another place, and see him getting undressed, and another time I see her practically ripping his clothes off. I play that slowly as well.

I surf to each spot I can find, to see his body from all possible angles. I see him above her, as they’re halfway through sex.

I see him lying down.

I see him getting out of bed, on the way to the bathroom. She checks out his ass, the way his legs look from behind. I see what they look like from the front.

I see her examining him while he sleeps. His hair rumpled; his face even more trouble-free than usual; his eyebrows with a single grey hair; his nose, his nose, his button of a nose; his mouth squished by the pillow; his chin needing a shave; his neck and the wrinkles she sees he’ll have in ten years. She pulls away the covers to reveal his chest, smooth and hairless like a nine-year-old’s. She peels the blanket from him softly, going down and down and down his body, until she examines his every appendage, his every hair, even his little toes. She takes care to put the cover back on each spot she’s through with, so that he won’t be cold.

I don’t know how much time all of this took, but I have to see one thing. One more thing before I go back to my room.

I want to see her.

I see her standing in front of the mirror before she goes into the shower. She looks at her thighs, checking for fat. She looks at her stomach. She turns around and looks at her behind. She plays with her breasts, moving them to one side, then to another. They’re uneven. Everyone’s are uneven, but she doesn’t like the way one is leaning, lopsided, looking dead. She has no idea how perfect she looks.

But looks change. I surf to other showers, to other times she took off her clothes.

And for some reason, I now center on her face. Every morning, when she wakes up, the first thing she does is go to the mirror to look at her face. Every time she’s alone and goes by a mirror, she looks at her face. How tired does she look? Can you see the fight on her? Can you see how hard it is?

No, you can’t.

I find a time when she goes on a date, that even she believes herself to be presentable and good-looking. I play her face slowly, looking at every flaw, at every inch, at every… at everything. I burn her face into my memory.

—No, you don’t look tired, I tell her—

And everything vanishes.

Yeah. Can’t talk to her. That was stupid.

I look at the time.

Oh, my god. Oh, my god. Oh. My. God.

Ten minutes to eight. Professor Bendis’s class is about to start. I stayed here the entire freaking night, and I’m going to be late for his class. As quickly as humanly possible, I put Stephanie back in. I can’t believe I did this. I shut the freezer door and take the key out of my pocket. The entire night! I open the door, go out, shut it, and—Bendis is standing there—I almost scream.

“Ah, Ms. Watson,” he says in his calm voice. Oh, shit, I forgot. Class convenes in the morgue! A few more minutes, and everybody would have been here. “Working extracurricularly. Excellent.”

Bendis turns around. I follow his gaze. Greg is coming. Bendis turns back to me.

“No reason to wait outside,” he says. “Let’s go in.”

Greg looks at me as I follow Bendis.

“What?” I say.

“You’re wearing yesterday’s clothes.”

Oh, god.

“Did you get lucky last night?”

Oh, god.

“Ms. Watson.”

“Yes, sir?” I just wheeled her back out of the freezer.

“Do you know the name of her childhood friend?”

“Margaret, sir.”

“That’s right. She believes her father has what sort of complex?”

“Peter Pan, sir.”

“That’s right. Step back. We won’t cover anything you don’t know today. Mr. Willis, step forward.”

Bendis doesn’t let me touch her again during the entire two hours, but the truth is that they do cover things I already know.

The rest of the day I go through the motions all day, doing my best not to fall asleep. But when the last period’s over, I go to my dorm room.

I lock the door twice, and put a chair behind the handle to make it impossible for anyone to come in without waking me.

I finally get out of these clothes and take a shower.

I’d like to see Stephanie again. Her emotions are so powerful inside me.

But I’m dead tired.

I collapse in my bed, cover myself with the blanket, and fall asleep.

“Ms. Watson,” Bendis’s voice is like a hammer. We are all standing over Stephanie’s body.

“Yes, Professor Bendis.”

“How did this girl die?”

My heart withers under his stare. “What?” It’s never crossed my mind.

“You knew so much about her yesterday. Can you tell me how she died?”

How did she die? She’s around my age. She can’t be more than twenty-four. “No, sir.”

Bendis looks at the rest. “Anyone?”

Rebecca behind me, raises her hand.

“Yes, Ms. Anthony.”

“She committed suicide.”

What! I turn to look at her. It’s ridiculous!

“That’s right,” he says, and I spin my head to look back at him. She can’t have! Her life is so perfect. She’s so….

“How do you know?” Bendis says. “Did you go through the actual moment with her?”

“No, sir. I didn’t see it when I was in her head.”

“Then how?”

“Her hands,” she points to the hands that are now covered. “She slit her wrists. I saw it yesterday, when Alexandra removed the sheet.”

What!

“Very good. Sometimes we lean on our abilities too much and forget to look at the physical evidence. There’s a lot to be learned just by looking and reasoning.” He looks at the entire class again. “Did anyone else notice this?” Silence. “Has anyone gone over any moment from her last days?” Silence.

I can’t believe she killed herself. It’s just not possible.

“Well, barring incontrovertible telepathic evidence, does anyone have any ideas how this happened to her, just from the physical evidence before us?” I look at the body, and then I notice that Bendis hasn’t removed the sheet from her body, on purpose. We can’t even see her face.

“Slitting your wrists,” I hear Megan behind me. Bendis looks at her. “Sir,” she amends herself. “If I may. Slitting your wrists is usually a… I heard that it’s a cry for help, sir. There are easier and more effective ways to kill yourself.”

“That’s right. It was a call for help. Unfortunately, as we see before us, no one heard it in time.” He purses his lips. “Each of you has been in her head at least twice, now, on two different occasions. You had your free roam of her mind. And not one of you saw a problem, a call for help, a deep depression, a hint of the event that ended her life.” There’s silence, again. “Today we are going to learn to look for signs of trouble, for calls for help, for tendencies toward extreme emotions.

“Ms. Watson!”

“Yes, sir.”

He uncovers Stephanie’s face. “Tell me how she died.”

I look at her face. I take a breath, and take off my glove.

“What are you going to do?” Professor Bendis interrupts just as I’m about to touch her.

“I… I was going to look at her last days.”

“How?”

“What?”

“How are you going to find her last days?”

“Um….I don’t think I have a pain or a feeling that I know corresponds to wanting to take your own life, so I thought I’d take the worst moment I’ve seen till now in her life, and try to expand on it.”

“Which moment?”

“I…” I look at him and I don’t want to say it.

“Do it.”

I cover my eyes. It’s not exactly true what I told him. In fact, I’m going to do the opposite.

I touch her.

—I replay the instant in which she had multiple orgasms, in which the pleasure overwhelmed her. And then I reverse it, searching for a lack of it—

She can’t breathe, her heart-rate doubles, and it’s dark.

What the hell! Her inner gyro says she’s in her bedroom, and it’s the middle of the night. Her parents are sleeping in the next room.

The scene she’s just reacted to happened in her head. Michael’s leaving her for good. This would explain his behavior over the past few weeks. Michael’s leaving for good.

And for an instant, in her mind, it’s true and inevitable.

Her world is so dark. There is no hope. There is no reason to live. There is only pain.

But this isn’t it yet. It’s not what Bendis wanted. I take the feeling and multiply it a thousand-fold.

Her pain takes my breath away.

And suddenly I see her from the outside. There’s no one in the room but us two and she’s not covered. I see her naked. I see her guts. I see her soul, her passion, her greatest desires, her pain, oh, how beautiful her pain is, bottomless, perfect, amazing. This pain opens her up to me in ways that couldn’t exist if she were alive.

I surf her blackness. It is endless. There is nothing about her I can’t know. She’s giving me all her secrets. To me. I love her.

More, open up more for me.

The pain multiplies by a multitude. Michael is there, saying “Yes,” and suddenly a wave of—of—of—of—of—

of—of—of—of—of—

of—of—of—of—of—

I’m on the floor, pain shooting through my elbow. Rebecca is holding me, half helping me up. I must have fallen.

“What happened?” I whisper.

“Bendis yelled at you to break contact,” she heaves me up, then adds, “And when you didn’t, he slapped you.”

“Are you all right, Ms. Watson?”

“Yes, sir. I’m sorry. I don’t know what happened.”

“Keep your distance from the body,” he says. And I notice I almost grazed her.

“Yes, sir.”

“You saw Michael before it happened, didn’t you?”

“Yes, sir.”

“When Michael said what you saw him say, Stephanie’s brain short-circuited from the pain. The same thing almost happened to you, Ms. Watson. She had to live with it. You don’t. You weren’t even ready.

“Sit the rest of the class out.” He points to a chair. “That’s enough adventures for one day, Ms. Watson. You’ll be fine.” Almost in the same breath, he looks aside, and I’m forgotten. “Mr. Crowley, step forward.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Same assignment. Find what led to her death.”

“Yes, sir.”

“And Mr. Crowley?”

“Yes, sir?”

“Try not to short-circuit your mind. This is just an assignment.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Ms. Watson, a word,” he says once class is over.

We’re all alone. I still have to put the body back in. “Yes, sir.”

“You’re not hurt.” There’s no question in his voice, but he’s right. The ordeal was over as soon as I sat down.

“Yes, sir.”

“This happened because you’re identifying with the subject, Ms. Watson. You mistook her feelings for your own, instead of being an observer. That’s dangerous with a young woman who killed herself. During our next lesson, we won’t be going forward to her last few days. We’ll be going backward, trying to understand the seeds of the emotions that led to such pain. You’re not ready to see her death. Do not try it alone. Do you understand?”

“Yes, Professor.”

“Good. Lock up.” He walks toward the door, then stops and looks back at me. “By the way, Ms. Watson.”

“Yes, Professor?”

“Are you really fine?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Good. Then I should tell you… I’m gay.” So I should stop fantasizing about him. He probably hears me drooling every time he walks into the room.

“Yes, sir.” Should I…? Should I tell him? Damn it, yes. “I know, sir.”

He smiles, impressed. He knows I got it from his mind and not from physical evidence. “Very good.” And he walks out.

That only makes you more attractive, sir.

I rush to Professor Parks’s class. I sit through an entire hour and a half, and it’s like sitting on a geyser. Once her class is over, I rush out. We get thirty minutes for lunch, but I almost run to my dorm room.

I shut the door, double-lock it. I run to the bathroom, lock its door, put down the toilet’s lid, and sit on it.

Suddenly my throat constricts and I have to gasp for air.

Stephanie’s feelings overwhelm me again. But I’m not touching her, so it’s diffused, less powerful than it was. It was a pain worse than loss of hope, worse than loss of a loved one. Her future vanished, and it was as if she had vanished. No, it was even worse. There was no reason for her to live. It was the most basic emotion I have ever felt in a human being. There was no internal reason for her to exist. She ceased to exist at that second.

That was the emotion. Carried to the power of ten.

I didn’t see all the events that led to this when I was in her mind. I had to hear it from the class during the rest of the lesson.

Michael has been growing apart, keeping his distance, never initiating a call, but always sounding fine when she called. They hadn’t met in weeks. Stephanie had ignored it for as long as she could, but eventually she confronted him. He waffled and stammered, so she said, “Are we through?”

He said, “Yes.”

That instant she saw in his eyes how long he had wanted her to know. And she knew she had lost him forever.

And for her, it touched on something primal and ancient. A key turned inside her and the world turned white.

I saw more, though. I felt more before Bendis slapped me. Something in between the whiteness. Something….

I replay the feelings I felt. Piece by piece, I separate some of the emotions. Despair. The return of the ability to think. Walking home. Sinking into bed and out of life. And there are some actual moments in my head, some very clear moments from her last day.

Stephanie was lying on her stomach, face buried in the pillow, hardly breathing, all darkness. The inner gyro says it was her bedroom and that it was after seven p.m. It was dark outside even though she hadn’t seen it.

Her mother’s voice comes from behind, annoying, unbearable—she’s been talking for a while, now.

“I don’t know,” she says, “what you’re going through, or what’s so bad. But if you’re even thinking about killing yourself” and a shot of electricity goes through Stephanie’s spine—she’s been thinking exactly that “…I want you to know… I won’t have it. I’ll kill myself. I won’t have it.”

“Oh, gawd!” Stephanie shouts into the pillow, and her pain is unbearable. This is exactly like her mother. “This isn’t about you! Not everything is about you! This is my pain! Stop making everything about yourself!” And she shouts so loudly that she becomes hoarse, having uttered just those words. And without words, she keeps shouting in her head: This is mine. Mine! Don’t you get that?

I don’t know how this conversation ended. I don’t know how it began. But it was close to the end.

There’s another memory.

Still in the pillow. Still dark. Later still.

Her father’s voice behind her, more reasonable than ever, calmer than ever, “You will come to dinner and you will eat.”

Stephanie rolls her eyes, even though he can’t see her. Please, please, go away. You don’t understand. Go!

“No one cares that you’re depressed,” he goes on with an emotionless voice. More emotionless than ever, he tries to show her what nothing should feel like. “Depression is a choice. A luxury.”

She wants to cry. But it’s her father. She worships him. She needs him to understand. “You don’t know.” Stephanie turns around on the bed, looking at him, her voice plaintive like a six-year-old. “You have no idea what depression is. Or you wouldn’t say that. You don’t know.”

“Ridiculous. I feel as depressed as the other guy. But I do not let it bother me, because I cannot afford to.”

“Dad,” she bursts into tears, feels the hopelessness of explaining emotion to him, but needing him to get it. “You don’t feel as deeply.” It’s the first time she’s ever said this to him. “You don’t know what depression is. You don’t know what it does to me.”

“Depression…” his voice grows even colder “…is an indulgence, nothing more. Any reasonable person can put it aside.”

That’s all there is of that memory. I break down into tears.

Her pain is in me. Her pain washes over me and I bathe in it and I can’t stop crying and I don’t want to. I know that pain. I love that pain. I need that pain. Stephanie understands me. Anyone who feels this understands me.

An hour later I’m still crying, and now I can’t stop.

I missed one class. I can’t go to the other, even if I do stop crying.

That exhaustion you have after you’ve cried a lot, they’ll feel it, they will all feel it. And see it on my face. And hear it in their heads. I can’t go.

I’ll stay here, with Stephanie.

Her emotions are better, clearer, stronger, more powerful.

She can handle those emotions that are greater than mine. But not me. I can’t even handle my own, stupid world.

This isn’t good. It isn’t healthy. I… I need help.

There’s no one to turn to, though. There’s no one who will understand. There’s no one who….

I walk over to the morgue and unlock the door. I pull her out.

Stephanie. Stephanie….

Have you ever been as alone as I am now?

My hand hovers a few millimeters from her cheek, almost touching.

Have you ever been as desperate?

I almost touch her.

Have you ever needed someone to love you so desperately?

My finger doesn’t touch her, but something in the air is—

She collapses on the bed, feeling violated.

My finger wavers in the air and the contact is broken.

Jesus. I need to breathe.

That was like staring into an emotional mirror. She is everything I’m not, and yet she is everything I am, only more. Her emotions are more powerful than my lame ones. She has unreachable depths, whereas I only travel in the shallow end. She has an ability to deal with pain, while I… I don’t even know who I am.

Help me, Stephanie. Help me!

The door creaks when I open it. I can hear my breath. My chest is tight. Her back is turned to me. She’s typing on a computer.

“Professor Parks?”

She swivels in her chair. “Ms. Watson?”

She stands up, extending her hand. I practically jump backward, belatedly realizing that she is wearing gloves.

She pulls back her hand and sits back down. “How can I help you?”

“I… It’s not important.”

“I didn’t ask you if it was important, I asked how can I help.”

“I… I have a question.”

“All right.”

“I… uh.” If I ask her, she’ll know I’m unstable and kick me out. But if I don’t, I’ll go crazy, and she’ll kick me out. But if I ask her, she’ll know I’m unstable. But if I don’t, I’ll go crazy. But if I ask, she’ll know I’m unstable. But if I—

“Ms. Watson?”

“Yes, ma’am?”

“You had a question?”

“No, no, I don’t. Thank you.”

“Trust me, Ms. Watson,” she puts her hand on the table and stares into my soul. “You had a question.”

“Well, I did, but it’s not important now.”

“Still. I want to hear it.”

Oh, damn.

“Ms. Watson?”

“Well, see, if I ask it now, it’ll be magnified and it’ll seem like this huge thing, when it’s this really, really small question.”

“I see. That’s fine.” She swivels back, and starts typing again. “You have a question for me, Ms. Watson, and you’re not leaving this room before you ask me a question. I don’t care if it’s the question you came in here to ask or another question. But you’re going to ask me a question.” And on she types, not looking at me.

“I have another question,” I say.

“All right.” Her back is still turned. She’s still typing something on her computer. “Ask away.”

“It’s a theoretical question.”

“Good.”

“Is it possible…?” Something in me sinks. She’s going to know.

“Is it possible?” she reiterates.

Just plod on. Just plod on. Just plod-plod-plod on. “For someone….”

“For someone,” she repeats softly, as she searches for a function key. She finds it and presses it, “A-ha!”

“To become the person you’re…. To have her thoughts overtake you?”

Parks swivels on her chair, looks at me, and says simply, “No.” She turns back to the screen. “There. You’re free to leave now, if you want.”

“Thank you.” She’s all right.

I’m near the door, when she says, “Alexandra?”

Alexandra?

“Yes, Professor Parks?” She’s facing me, leaning closer. I can feel that her mood is soft and smooth.

“It’s like this. Your brain is your own. You cannot become a different person. When we feel someone else’s thoughts or emotions, we simply find the corresponding thoughts or emotions in us. If it doesn’t exist in us, then we can’t feel it. Everything goes through your mind, and every emotion is actually yours. That’s why even with telepaths we don’t know that the pain someone else feels is the pain you feel. We still don’t know if we see the color red in the same way. Because when we read someone’s mind, we interpret it through our own mind and emotions. So, no, it’s not possible to become someone other than yourself. It is possible, however, that you need a gigantic hug.”

I laugh and look down.

“Well, I’m not allowed to hug you.” She stands up. “But I am allowed to feed you.”

I look at her, surprised.

“I’m on my way out to the city. There’s a fantastic fish restaurant there, my treat.”

“But…”

“I’m not going to touch you. I’m not going to read your mind. I’m not going to delve into your business. I am going to feed you.” She saves her document and turns off her screen. “And anything we say…” she turns off the light in the room and leads me out “…will not be held against us. All right?”

“I… I don’t….”

“Say ‘yes.’” She likes me. I can feel it.

“Yes.”

“Good. Let’s go.”

She’s got a ten-year-old Mazda that smells new.

Inside the car feels like outside the Academy. I lie back and sink into the seat.

She drives us around the Academy and toward the gate.

The same guard that let me in that first day is there now. He opens the gate as we approach.

I look at him. I don’t think he can see me through the tinted glass.

We are outside the Academy. We are outside the Academy.

I shut my eyes and melt into the soft cushions.

Bright lights. The smell of smog. Young men and women walking the streets in immodest clothes. Civilization. It’s like I’ve been in the jungle for two years.

The restaurant is full of people, but there’s still room inside and outside. I ask Professor Parks to sit outside. I want to soak in the atmosphere.

“You have no privacy when you’re a telepath,” Professor Parks says after we’ve ordered. “Normal people can relish in not knowing. We can’t afford that luxury.

“When your boyfriend makes love to you, he touches you, and you see everything he feels and everything he thinks about you. It’s never as perfect as you would like. It’s ugly and spotty and sketchy. When you’re insecure, you touch him and you know he doesn’t like you as much now as he did yesterday, and that if you tell him what you know, he’ll like you even less. You see the parts about you he can’t stand, and you see the parts he can’t get enough of. You know what he fantasizes about you, and you know when he fantasizes about someone else. And when he makes love to you, you see your body while you’re doing it, and you know that your right breast looks strange, that you gained two pounds, that your legs don’t look flattering from most angles, that you need to shave again, and what your breath smells like. And you know that what he really likes about you is that you remind him of the buxom sixteen-year-old babysitter he used to have when he was a kid, and that, even though he doesn’t know it, he’s still in love with his first girlfriend, with whom he’s never been able to get along.

“And the hard thing is to learn that it’s always like this. Even ‘as good as it can possibly get’ is like this. You have to learn that this is the truth and that this is normal. You have to abandon the lies when you’re a telepath and start living in the real world.”

A waiter brings our drinks. She thanks him and he walks away.

“We have to face each mask and make it vanish. We have to clear everything. All the subterfuge we feed ourselves with. We have to dig under all the tasks we set for ourselves, under all the complexes and falsehoods and false reactions we have set up while we were growing up. We have to learn to clear everything away. Sometimes it feels like you’re wiping your entire personality away. But then you realize—you have to realize—that whatever’s left, that’s you, that’s really you.

“If you go through it, Alexandra, if you go through the entire four years—and I know you can—you wouldn’t believe the person you’ll become. You wouldn’t believe the strength that comes from having no secrets, from knowing so much about yourself. From knowing that when you speak, you don’t lie.

The waiter brings in the food. The Professor has sea scallops and I have Alaskan king salmon. On her. She recommended it.

“Thank you,” she tells the waiter. Then, as he leaves, she makes a face and drops her fork. “Bathroom.” She smiles at me. “Be right back.”

I nod.

I take the opportunity to look around and look at the people in the street. Shirts made of nets, crazy tattoos, wild haircuts, teenagers younger and younger, looking older and older.

Two minutes ago, the couple behind me got up and left. The couple in front of me, behind where Professor Parks sat, is getting up now. We’re going to be just the two of us outside. It’s getting cold. But I just want to keep looking at the people, to feel the whiff of haphazard thoughts whenever one of them gets too close. To look at what they’re wearing.

Michael almost bumps into the couple that’s leaving on his way out of the restaurant. That was awkward. He smiles his usual worry-free smile, and—huh?

Michael?

Those same features, that same face, that—

I never thought of him as alive. But of course he’s alive. Of course he’s real. They’re all real people. Everyone’s still alive, except Stephanie.

I stand up. Michael keeps his back to me, makes sure the woman is fine, and exits the restaurant. Once on the sidewalk, he comes in my direction. As he passes near me, I get a perfect view of those clear, lovely, baby-blue eyes. The eyes that shine “happy” at you when you wake beside him in the morning.

He looks at me then looks past me.

He didn’t recognize me. But why should he? I sit back down. I won’t look back. I won’t look back.

Professor Parks returns.

“So,” she says. “Can I tell you something about myself?”

We get back into her car. It’s twenty minutes till we’re out of the city, another ten until the scenery becomes green again, and another ten before we’re at the Academy’s gate.

We don’t talk much.

The gate opens automatically for her.

“Wait,” I say. She looks at me. “Can I get out here?”

“What?”

“Since I’m out, I’d like to go see some people I know.”

“Are you sure?”

“I have a few dollars on me. I can get around. Just drop me here.”

She thinks about it for a second, then says, “Sure.”

I let myself out. “Thank you,” I lean back in, the door still open. “Thank you.”

She smiles and crinkles her eyes. Then she looks forward, and says, “I’m tired. See you tomorrow.”

“Thank you,” I say again and close the door.

She drives through the entrance, and the gate slowly rolls shut again. The guard looks at me, but keeps his distance.

I look around. I don’t have a cell on me, and I don’t know the number of a cab company.

I walk over to the guard. “Excuse me,” I say. “Can you call me a cab?”

“Where are we going?” the cab driver says.

“Back to the city,” I say. “1421 North Shadeland Avenue.” Stephanie’s home.

I ring the doorbell. No, no, I should go. Go, I should go. Just go, just go, just….

Someone touches the handle on the other side of the door. Fuck me. Fuck me. Fuck, fuck, fuck me.

The door opens slowly. I put on my best smile.

I see Mom’s face in the doorway, looking up at me, wrinkled, old, the way Stephanie couldn’t see her. She literally has half Stephanie’s face, something Stephanie never noticed.

She looks up at me, with her green eyes, and they’ve almost lost all of the shine and softness they had when she was in her late twenties and Stephanie was only a kid.

“Yes?” she says. Her voice is a rasp. Did I wake her? No, she doesn’t go to sleep before midnight.

“Yes?” she says again.

My mouth is dry. I lick my lips. Help.

“Who are you?” she says. “I…”

I’m sorry, Stephanie’s Mom. I’m sorry.

“What’s your name?” Her voice grows more suspicious, and it’s back to sounding like the voice I know. “What’s your name, girl?”

“Alexandra Watson.”

“What are you doing here? It’s late.”

“I’m… I’m… Stephanie!”

Her eyes dim at the mention of her name. “What?”

“Stephanie. I….”

“You knew Stephanie?”

“Yes.” Yes! “I was… I was her friend. I was her best friend.”

Something happens to her mom’s eyes that Stephanie doesn’t recognize. Does she see the lie? It’s the truth. I’m sorry. “I’m sorry.” I am sorry.

“Come in,” she says.

“I was in New York. I just got back to Indianapolis a couple of minutes….”

“Come in,” she says and moves aside, clearing the way for me.

Jesus. I know this living room. I know its smell. The memories give the living room a claustrophobic feeling, hemming me in on all sides.

She grew up here. I’ve seen the walls change over two decades, I’ve seen the room shrink as she got older. The wallpaper was ugly green when she grew up, until her mom replaced it with elephants, and later still with brown geometrical shapes. I’ve seen five different television sets where the current one sits.

“Charles,” she says. And he turns around.

And Charles, Stephanie’s dad, sits there on the sofa in front of the television set. He looks at me. Perfectly shaven. Not typical for this time of day. They must have had guests.

They had. Obviously they had. They’re in mourning.

“This is Stephanie’s friend,” Sylvia introduces me. “Uh….”

“Alexandra, sir.”

I offer my gloved hand. He shakes it.

“You’re… Stephanie’s friend?”

“Yes, that’s right.”

“From the university?”

“Yes, yes. We took communication studies. We had the same classes, and we just….” I blank out. I just shrug, “You know.” Her mother nods in understanding. Her father is looking at me. “She told me everything about you two. Charles…” he nods “…and Sylvia.”

“She told you everything about us?” she asks.

Oh, no. “She told me everything about everything. We talked for hours.” Sylvia looks around, wiping her moist hands on her clothes. Oh. She didn’t catch me in something, she was making it about herself again.

“Would you like…. Would you like something to drink?” Sylvia asks. “We have tea, we have….“

“Tea would be great, thank you. With nothing in it.”

Sylvia turns and goes to the kitchen.

“There were a few people here earlier,” her dad says. “But they’re gone. I’m not sure what we can offer you….”

“Oh, Charles,” her mom shouts from the kitchen. “She just flew in. We’re not going to drive her out….”

“I’m not saying that. I’m just saying I don’t know what we can…” and I can see that he changes his mind in mid-sentence, and says something else, “…talk about.” He breathes deeply and turns around. “We have a few albums of her over here,” he points. “And… her friends did some sort of a shrine in her room. It’s…” he points “…through there.”

I look up. That familiar small corridor that leads to Stephanie’s bedroom on one side and to her parents’ bedroom on the other. “Can I look at the albums?”

“Of course.”

He leads me to a little stand near the TV, filled with albums. I sit on the floor and take an album. He sits back on the sofa, and mutes the television. I take an album and look at him again. He’s still watching TV, he just muted it.

I open the first page. Stephanie at seven days, I’ve seen this picture a million times. She’s as cute as can be, the perfect baby.

Baby Stephanie breastfed by her mother on the porch. Oh, my god, look at Sylvia. She’s not even my and Stephanie’s age; she’s younger. She’s a little kid. In a couple of years, when Stephanie will have clear images of her mother in her memory, she’ll be this huge giant of a grownup. We’d never seen Sylvia like this.

Four-year-old Stephanie running through the tall grass. I remember the day they took the picture. Mom kept telling her to run and run, and Stephanie did, chasing after a butterfly she made up, performing for her mother. She’s so carefree, so happy. I’ll have to check with Stephanie, later, and see what changed, how could she have grown up and had the happiness sucked out of her.

Stephanie’s first bike. I remember the day Dad took the training wheels off and had to run after her for an hour.

The entire family at a beach in San Diego. Look at Dad. He’s like he’s a different person. Pretty handsome, too. His legs were like elephant-legs to Stephanie. She used to run in between them as if they were a tunnel.

Sylvia’s coming closer. I turn around and look up. She’s holding a cup of hot tea.

“Thank you,” I take the hot tea.

Sylvia sits on the edge of Charles’s couch, looking at me.

“How did you two meet?”

“I met her during our first day as freshmen. On the way to western lit.”

“You became friends?”

I nod. “She was an amazing woman. She was my best friend.”

“Did you…. Did you know about…. Did you know she was going to….” She trails off.

“I know about Michael,” I say. And she looks into my eyes. Oh, my god, she’s asking me if I could have stopped it. “But…. By phone. And…. All I knew was that it was big. I didn’t know that it was this big.”

She sits by me. I sip the tea. It’s too hot. I want to look at the album, but she’s looking at me expectantly. She always gives this look when she has something to say but would rather force the other person to ask her what it is.

I look at her for a few more seconds, and when she says nothing, I turn back to the album.

I can’t take it. I can’t take her looking at me. I can feel her desire to say something. I can feel her pain all the way over here.

“Um….” I face her again. “Can I go to the bathroom? I’m a bit….”

“Sure,” she stands up. “Through there.”

I put the cup down, get up, and walk through the corridor.

My hand hangs on the handle, and I look around. They can’t see me from here. Behind me and to the other side is Stephanie’s room. I can say I made a mistake, that I didn’t know where the bathroom was.

I shut my eyes.

Who cares? I don’t.

I walk to the door of Stephanie’s room and open it slowly.

Oh, god. It feels like her. It smells like her. It’s slightly bigger than I thought, but that’s because I’m shorter than her.

That smell. Slight draft of dust from the bookshelf mingled with a whiff of Margaret’s perfume. She was here recently.

Her bed is to one side. I can still see stuff under Stephanie’s bed, a hint of the teddy bear she’d had since she was a kid. I bend down and look. She dropped it there a few hours before Michael broke up with her. After Michael broke up with her, it didn’t matter.

I bend down, and pick it up. It’s tattered, but still soft and familiar and friendly.

I put it back in its place.

“The bathroom’s over there,” I hear Sylvia at the door.

“I know,” I turn around. “I just saw the room. I had to come in.”

She walks in and sits on Stephanie’s bed. “You remind me of Stephanie.”

“I do?”

“Something about you looks like….” Oh, gee. “Oh. You blink like her.”

“I what?”

“You blink like her. No, it’s not that. It’s when she was embarrassed, she always blinked to cover it, and crooked her head, just like you’re doing now.”

I catch myself. I never used to do that. I must have picked it up from Stephanie. And, more embarrassed than before, I do it again. I’ve been picking up the way she moves.

“I think I got it from her. It’s easy to pick up.”

Sylvia shrugs. “Well, it makes you look like her.”

I feel myself going red. “Thank you.”

I look around.

I can’t look at the room when she’s here. But I feel closer to her, now.

“Sit,” she taps the bed beside her.

I sit next to her.

We just sit there, silent. I stare at a spot on the wall ahead of me, afraid to make a wrong move.

It’s so silent, I can hear her breaths. I can hear that they’re harder than they used to be. I feel the rhythm change in the way she breathes. I try to breathe as noiselessly as possible. The fridge in the kitchen kicks in again. Her father is turning on the television sound. I hear the sofa creak beneath him as he changes position.

“Well,” Sylvia says.

I lower my eyes. “I’m sorry.” It’s the only thing I can think of to say. And then the tears come, “I miss her. I miss her.”

And beside me, without touching her, I feel Sylvia’s bitterness a second before the words reach me. “She did it to spite me.”

My heart stops. “What?” And I look at her.

“We had an argument. That last day. A few hours before.”

Oh my god.

“What….” I can’t say it, but I have to. “What was it… about?”

“She was depressed because Michael broke up with her. And I came in… to help. And she yelled at me. All the anger and pain she had for Michael, she took out on me.”

“Sylvia, I mean…. She was depressed. Because of Michael.” I find the most harmless way to phrase it, and I say it with the softest voice I have, “It wasn’t about you.”

“I knew she was depressed,” her voice drops to a whisper, although there is no one else in the room. “I knew she had depressions. I thought….” She bites her lips. “I thought she might kill herself.” She waits for a response. I don’t give any. “I told her how much it would hurt me. I told her that’s not what you do to people you love. I told her how hard we would all take it.” She grabs my hand and stares into my eyes. Thank god I’m wearing gloves. “And she did it anyway. She didn’t reason, she didn’t wait for it to pass. She did it anyway. I told her how much it would hurt me, and she went and did it. She did it to hurt me.”

“No, Sylvia. I know Stephanie. She would never do anything to hurt you. This was about…”

“You know her from now. I’ve known her a lot longer than you. It was the same argument we’ve always had, only now she found a way to blame me and to keep on blaming me forever. She wants me to walk around blaming myself for the rest of my life. That would make her feel good.”

No, no, you’re getting it all wrong. “Sylvia,” I gently caress the fingers that touch me. “We talked about you a lot.” There’s a flash of danger in her eyes. “No, nothing bad. She said nothing bad. She loved you, and I know—I know, Sylvia—that what she did, it wasn’t meant to show you a thing. If anything, it was meant to show you that it wasn’t about you.”

“She wanted to hurt me…,” self-pity gushes out of her, “…and she did.” Her mouth turns into a cynical smile. “Well done.” It’s still all about her. It’s still all about Sylvia, and nothing about Stephanie, nothing about Stephanie’s pain.

“Sylvia,” I’m fighting myself to keep my voice soft and encouraging. “You’re talking as if this was just another argument with you two, just a bigger one. But this is so big. Can’t it be that it was about something else entirely?”

“You weren’t here,” she states emphatically. She turns her back to me and gets up. “Anyway, what does it matter now?” She straightens her clothes, and whispers. “I’ll never forgive her.”

I want to cry. She committed suicide—Stephanie gave her life—and you can’t even hear what she was saying. It was in front of your face, and you’re treating it like it’s the same old same-old, damn you!

“What does it matter why she did it?”

We both turn around. Charles is standing by the door. He’s looking at Sylvia, speaking to her, not to me. “It was the easy way out.”

“The easy way out?” The words are out of my mouth before I realize I’m talking. “It was the bravest thing she ever did!”

Sylvia looks at me, shocked, but Charles, behind her, says, “Brave? It would have been brave to stay alive another day. She didn’t. It would have been brave to go to the university again. She didn’t. It would have been brave to strive, to survive. But Stephanie…. She ran away. From responsibility, from friendship, from pain, from facing her fears. She ran away. The way cowards do.”

“But…. You don’t know what a bad state she was in. You don’t know what great pain she was in.”

“How much pain could she possibly have been in? Her boyfriend broke up with her.”

“To some people, that’s life and death.”

“I’ve known heartache. Trust me when I say you can walk away from it alive.”

“When she went through it, Charles, her pain was so huge, it was so awful, that she killed herself. Otherwise, like you say, she would never have killed herself. The fact that she did take her life shows you how awful her pain was.”

“No. She killed herself because she was a coward. It had nothing to do with her depression.”

That bastard! He won’t admit it!

“I really think we should not be talking about….” Sylvia steps between us.

But I practically shove her aside. The man drives me so crazy. “You never believed she felt what she felt! You’ve been delegitimizing her emotions since she was a kid! She killed herself to show you how strongly she felt! She killed herself because her pain was so great that none of us could understand it!”

He snorts. “I thought you said she killed herself to show me how strongly she felt.” He looks down, and I can feel how much he needs a smoke. He looks back up and says softly, “You don’t know what you’re talking about.” God, how he needs a smoke. “She was weak. She was always weak. She always ran away from problems. She never had the heart to face them. That’s what happened.”

What the hell is this? The Spanish Inquisition to your recently dead daughter? It’s like she died for nothing! It’s like she lived for nothing! Weren’t any of you listening when she cut herself and bled to death!

“Look.” I hear tears in my throat. “She was the bravest woman I’ve ever met.”

He shrugs. He doesn’t care to talk to me anymore.

“Look,” I force him to look at me. “Give me one time that she ran away. One incident!”

He half turns away. “What does it matter?”

“Because!” And it sounds like I’m speaking each word separately as I say, “You don’t remember her right. You don’t understand her. You have to remember…” and I almost lose my voice “…who she was!” I feel tears coming, and I can’t stop them. “There’s a great hole in the world, and it’s shaped like Stephanie! She’s gone and the world has changed and none of you can see it! She’s gone and the world is different!”

“Alexandra….” Sylvia takes a step toward me.

“The world is different,” I back away, half-screaming, tears streaming down my cheeks, “but you’re both the same! What’s the matter with you people!”

“Alexandra….” Sylvia gently brushes away a tear from my cheek. I get a whiff of paranoia—a fear so powerful it taints every image I see. I shove her hand aside quickly, and, backing away, I fall onto Stephanie’s bed. The familiar sheets embrace me. The mattress bends to fit my body again. Sylvia takes a step closer. I turn around, and scream into the pillow.

“Leave us here,” I hear Sylvia say.

The feeling I get from Charles grows distant. He’s walking away.

“Take as much time as you need, dear.”

She stays for a minute, her hand on the back of my shirt. Eventually, she stands up and walks away. She turns off the light and then shuts the door.

I take a huge whiff of the pillow and stretch out on the bed. I take the blanket, fork it in between my legs, just the way she used to, and hug it.

Stephanie! Stephanie will show them. She’ll show them.

There are birds chirping outside, and light blinds me when I try to open my eyes.

Oh my god! I sit up, ramrod straight.

What’s the damned time?

I almost choke. Five thirty! And I’m not even…. And I slept in my clothes…. And I slept in her room…. Hi, room…. And I yelled at her parents…. And I need to see Stephanie…. Dammit, I need to go.

I stand up and straighten my clothes. I straighten the mattress and the bed.

They couldn’t possibly have left me here without looking in. Sylvia must have come in to check on me at least once and seen me asleep. She let me sleep in her daughter’s bed. Jesus.

I don’t want to see them again.

I cling to the door, trying to feel if anyone’s there.

Nothing. I’m not getting anything. Either they’re asleep or not home.

I straighten the mattress and the put the pillow back in the room. I look at the room.

Bye, room.

I open the door. Silence. I walk into the living room, and, as silently as possible, I call a cab.

I go past the guard at six fifteen a.m.

There’s plenty of time. But I can’t, I can’t, I can’t go to the morgue in the same clothes again.

I go to my dorm, take the quickest shower I’ve ever taken, get dressed, take my cell phone, and get to the morgue at fifteen minutes to seven.

I unlock the door as quickly as I can, close it behind me, and go for the freezer. I wheel her out and remove the sheet.

Oh, that face. I love, I love, I love that beautiful face.

I take off my glove and stare at her.

Show me they’re wrong, Stephanie. Let’s go through the end again. Show me how powerful your pain was.

I touch her, readying myself for the shock I felt yesterday. And….

Nothing.

What? No!

I play another emotion in my head.

Nothing. She lies there, unmoving, beautiful.

Still touching her, I replay a memory I’ve gone through.

Nothing.

Dammit!

Bendis said we usually had a week, well, six days, and it’s only been four! You can’t do this to me!

I try again.

Nothing.

Please.

Nothing.

No! I didn’t get everything from her! I didn’t get her essence into me! I’m missing memories! I’m missing experiences! You can’t disappear on me, Stephanie. You have to let me remember you. You have to let me carry on your memories forever.

I touch her again.

The coldness of her cheek hurts me. There is nothing.

There is nothing left of her.

Oh, god.

There’s a hole in the world, and it has Stephanie’s shape.

There’s a hole in the world. There’s a hole in the world.

I didn’t get all of her. Oh, god, I didn’t get all of her.

I leave the lifeless body in the fridge. I lock the door behind me and just stand there.

What time is it?

Seven a.m.

Maybe I should try again?

Leave her alone, she’s gone.

My stomach tightens.

Parks. Yes. Professor Parks touched her, and she’s my friend.

I walk up to her office.

It’s closed. What time is it? Seven-oh-eight.

I’ll wait.

There’s probably a procedure about what to do with the dead bodies. As soon as the rest of them find out about her, I’ll probably have to go with the wagon or burn the body or something.

Maybe I should try to touch her again?

Leave her alone. Leave her alone. Stephanie’s not there anymore.

What time is it?

I sense Professor Parks coming from around the corner.

She appears around the corner, surprised to see me.

“Stephanie is gone,” I tell her.

There’s a flash of something in her eyes, but I can’t detect what it is. She looks at me and, at length, says, “I’m sorry.”

She takes out her keys and opens her office. She walks in. I follow her. She settles in the chair behind her desk.

“I need your help.” I say.

She looks up at me, and I still can’t sense anything she’s feeling. “How can I help you?” she asks, her words deliberate.

“You read her mind.”

“I did.”

“And you probably read more of her memories than I did. You’ve seen more of her emotions. You read her more deeply than I did.”

“It stands to reason.”

“Please… I need to see who she was. I need to see her core.”

She leans back, and as she changes into her teacher mode, she lets slip some worry. “What do you mean when you say ‘her core?’” And her question is so cold that it’s as if she asked for a definition.

“I mean her soul, the center of everything she was. The core that made her…. Her core.”

Parks leans forward. “Sit down.”

I sit down and lean forward, my right hand on her desk. She looks at my hand. “Take off your glove.”

And suddenly I’m afraid she’ll know about last night. But I have to do this.

I have to know. I do as she says.

“Put your hand back on the desk.”

I put it on the desk.

She takes off the glove on her left hand. My heart hammers. I can’t let her know! I can’t!

“I’m not going to touch you,” she says, as she slowly puts her hand down, fingers spread, a few millimeters from mine.

“From this distance, with my ability, we’re safe. I only feel what you want me to feel, and you only feel what I want you to feel. Let’s test it.”

And suddenly I’m smack inside Stephanie’s and Michael’s kiss. I feel his tongue inside mine, I feel the buzz it gave her, and it feels like blood actually fills her eyes and blots her eyesight. She slides her cheek down the wall of her bedroom slowly, playing that kiss again, exhilarated, fearful.

And then it’s gone. That was her.

Thank you! I send her waves of gratitude.

She ignores them and says, “What do you mean when you say ‘her core?’ Give me an example.” And with her eyes she gestures at my fingers.

When did I feel it? When did I not feel it?

She’s looking at her eyes in the mirror. So ugly, so disgusting, she thinks.

“It’s the power of her emotion!” I say. “The way she hates hers….”

“Don’t use words,” she says. “Give me another example.”

“Oh, gawd!” Stephanie shouts into the pillow, and her pain is unbearable. This is exactly like her mother. “This isn’t about you! Not everything is about you! This is my pain! Stop making everything about yourself!” And she shouts so loudly that she becomes hoarse, having uttered just those words. And without words, she keeps shouting in her head: This is mine. Mine! Don’t you get that?”

Did she see? I look into Parks’s eyes. There’s something noble in the pain. Something so deep….

It slips out of me before I can finish my sentence—

She looks at her body before she dresses for the date with Michael, checking for spots, blemishes, new fat, old fat, each depressing her more, each an impossible hurdle. Will he notice? Will he still like me?

Beyond my control, faster than I can think—

I’m sweating in my bra, and it’s not even hot. My panties are too tight in one place and too baggy in another. My dress is too conservative. They’re going to know.

I pull my hand away. “I’m sorry. That was mine. I’m sorry.”

“That’s all right. I think I understand what you’re saying. Put your hand back in place. This time it will be my turn to transmit.” I put my hand back on the table, a millimeter away from her fingers. The part closest to the tip of her closest finger is slightly warmer, but I feel nothing else.

“Tell me if I have it right,” she says.

And suddenly I’m Stephanie, again. It begins slowly—Parks is giving me a chance to look around.

Stephanie is nervous because of Mrs. Wright. She’s been ordered to stay after school to talk to her about her behavior. We’re in the eighth grade, now. Stephanie is thirteen.

Before Mrs. Wright got a chance to bawl Stephanie out, her cell phone rang, and she answered it. Her boyfriend is breaking up with her.

Events speed up to normal. Mrs. Wright is still talking to her boyfriend.

“No, come on.” She glances at Stephanie in fear, then turns her back to her and lowers her voice. “Let’s talk about this later, but let’s not decide until we talk about this.” And Stephanie felt the pain in Mrs. Wright’s voice.

“Come on, Steve….” And in Mrs. Wright’s cracked voice, Stephanie recognized her own feelings. Too many of them. Mrs. Wright is like a future Stephanie. It made her want to cry.

And it disappears.

I look up at Professor Parks. “Yes!” I whisper at her. “That was it! That was the same emotion! Right there at the end….”

Professor Parks purses her lips, and—

Stephanie is home, again. I have time to feel the inner gyro. She’s almost seven. Mom and Dad are—

“I don’t want a clown!”

“But clowns are fun and funny and you wanted a birthday just like everyone else,” Dad reasons calmly. Mom and Dad are standing over her, telling her what they have planned for her seventh birthday.

“I don’t want a clown!” Can’t they understand how sad clowns make me feel? “I don’t want a clown!” They make me cry! Can’t you see? Don’t you believe me? And in frustration, she begins to stomp the ground with her feet and shout, out of control and in tears: “I don’t want a clown! I don’t want a clown! I don’t want a clown!”

And it’s gone. That was the emotion. It was the precisely the same emotion that came at the end of the last incident. Without Parks I would never have thought to look in places like this, but that’s not why she showed this to me.

I look into her eyes. I think she’s taking me back in time! I think she’s taking me down to Stephanie’s core!

And suddenly Stephanie is four years old and she’s at eye-level with Mom’s bed. Mom is lying on the bed. There is sun outside. It’s almost noon. Mom is lying there, on her stomach.

“Mom, let’s go outside! Let’s do a picnic! Let’s sit in the sun!” And that emotion is here again! She feels pleasure and fun and joy. No, that’s not true. She’s faking it. She wants her mother to feel that.

Mom lifts herself slightly and gives Stephanie a questioning look, her face mooshy from sleep.

“Come on!” Stephanie tries to excite Mom. “It’s such a great day!”

Events zip in fast-forward, at Parks’s behest—

I see Mom getting up, and setting up a picnic outside.

Parks slows down events—

Mom is hugging me. “You are so pretty and lovely. You’re the best and wonderfulest little girl in the world. What would I do without you to keep me sane?”

And suddenly events zip back, in quick rewind—

Before the picnic, before Mom got off the bed, before Stephanie woke her up, before Stephanie walked into the room—

Stephanie stands in front of Mom’s closed bedroom door, about to come in and wake her. Something is wrong. Something is wrong with Mom again. No: Mom is in pain.

She looks at the door, and chooses to go in.

Stephanie decides to go in. She shoves everything she feels aside, and puts on her cute face. She opens the door….

And it’s gone.

“There were hundreds of these incidents all through her childhood,” Parks says. “Stephanie’s mother was deeply depressed. When she congratulated Stephanie the way she did she made Stephanie responsible for her happiness. Stephanie felt she bore responsibility for her mother’s good mood. And, eventually, for everyone’s good mood.”

I look at her. “But… that wasn’t it.”

She smiles. “I know.” She leans closer and her smile grows wider. “That’s the point. Watch.”

“I don’t want a clown!” They can’t understand how sad clowns make me feel. (The pain hits her. I can distinguish it better the second time around.) “I don’t want a clown!” They make me cry! (Pain!) Can’t you see? (Pain!) Don’t you believe me?

“I (Pain!) don’t want a clown! I don’t want (Pain!) a clown! I don’t want (Pain!) a clown!”

And it’s gone.

“Was that the same thing you felt before?” Parks asks me.

I crinkle my eyes. “Yes.”

“Did you see it more clearly now?”

“Yes.” What does she want from me?

“Did you see the pain?”

“Yes.”

“Did you recognize it?”

“No.”

“All right.”

She blinks and—

“Oh, gawd!” (Stephanie shouts at her mother. We’re back to the day she died, again.) “This isn’t about you! (Pain!) Not everything is about you! (Pain!) This is my (Pain!) pain! Stop making everything (Pain!) about yourself! (Pain!)” And she shouts so loudly that she becomes hoarse, having uttered just those words. And without words, she keeps shouting in her head: This is mine. (Pain!) Mine! (Pain!) Don’t you get (Pain!) that?

And the scene changes—

She looks at her body (Pain!) before she dresses for the date with Michael (Pain!), checking for spots (Pain!), blemishes (Pain!), new fat (Pain!), old fat (Pain!), each carries its own series of these pains. Will he notice? (Pain!) Will he still like me? (Pain!)

“Wait,” I move my hand away.

She looks at me patiently.

I recognize the pain. When four-year-old Stephanie opened the door, when she shoved her emotions aside, there was a feeling of loss at losing yourself, at pushing yourself aside. That was the pain that was flooding her all the time now, in her grownup life.

I look at Parks. I want to ask her to play it again for me. But I don’t need her for this.

“Oh, gawd!” (Stephanie shouts at her mother. We’re back to the day she died, again.) “This isn’t about you! (Pain!) Not everything is about you! (Pain!) This is my (Pain!) pain! Stop making everything (Pain!) about yourself! (Pain!)” And she shouts so loudly that she becomes hoarse, having uttered just those words. And without words, she keeps shouting in her head: This is mine. (Pain!) Mine! (Pain!) Don’t you get (Pain!) that?

Stephanie’s pain, her great pain, that great, bottomless depth it had—it dissolves before me now, made of smaller, completely trivial pains.

I look at Parks, my hand wavering out of her reach. “Wait,” I say. “Wait.”

Let’s try something else.

“Stephanie,” her mother says. “How can you react like this when all we’re doing is going to see Grandma?” (Pain!)

“It’s not Grandma, it’s the fact that it’s Sunday.”

“But (Pain!) it’s just a few hours.” (Pain!)

Something sinks inside Stephanie. It’s that sense of feeling the door, replayed. She has to shove herself aside, she has to put herself on hold. She is so helpless. “This is how I feel, Mom.” And she is in greater pain because she knows her mother will never understand. Because inside she knows her mother will need her to put herself aside again.

It can’t be! Her pain was so important to her! It defined her! It defined her personality! It was there every second of her life!

No. I run everything I’ve seen of her in my head, and everything is different now.

Stephanie was wrong.

Everything she understood was wrong. Everything she felt was wrong. Everything she had felt was so trivial, so ridiculous. It all boiled down to nothing.

But….

“Professor Parks…” And she looks at me with patience. “Professor Parks, Stephanie’s pain, the reason I liked it so much… I also have it. I also have that same pain. All the time! Are you saying that everything I have, everything I feel is wrong?”

Professor Parks looks at me for a second, and then she smiles graciously. “Welcome,” she says, “to the Indianapolis Academy.”

God.

“It’s not true!” I scream. I am so weak. “I am not dust! I am not nothing!”

Professor Parks doesn’t move.

That’s it. She’s done with me. She just sits there and looks at my face. Why would she even talk to me? Why would anyone love me?

But someone does love me. Or at least he did love me. I have to call him. I have to see him. I have to feel his touch again.

Not even looking at Professor Parks, I run out of her office and into the hall. I run through the corridor as I take out my cell phone and dial his number.

I press “Send” only once I’m out of the hall, on the grounds, alone.

It’s ringing.

“Yeah,” he answers, always sounding the same, always sounding cheerful and carefree.

“Michael,” my voice breaks. I’m not sure he heard me. “Michael. It’s me.”

“I’m sorry, I don’t recognize the voice.”

“I, uh, I’m sorry. It’s me, uh, uh, uh, Alexandra. I’m… Stephanie’s friend.”

And the temperature drops on the other end of the phone.

“Yeah,” he says, his voice different.

“I need to meet you. I need to talk with you about something. Now.” He hesitates for a split-second, so I push on. “John’s Café?” Five minutes from the university, where he teaches.

“I’m giving a lecture in an hour.”

I can’t tell anything from his voice. Which probably means that he really doesn’t want to do this. I have to see you! “Thirty minutes, then?”

Slight hesitation. “All right.”

“Good. Thank you.” And I hang up immediately.

I am not nothing!

I see him coming into the café.

He looks around. I’ve seen you naked, guy. I could pick your body from a police line-up.

Now he looks for women sitting alone. There’s only me. He’s coming over.

Suddenly I realize I have nothing to say to him. There is nothing I could say.

He stops beside me. “Alexandra?”

Quickly, I remove my gloves underneath the table. I stand up and offer my hand. He takes it.

And I am inside him. I don’t care what he feels or what he thinks right now. All I care about is finding an image of Stephanie—There!—and replacing me with her image.

For a second, he’s stunned at seeing Stephanie in front of him. But he doesn’t let go of my hand.

And I use that to see…

Stephanie—

Stephanie!—

Naked—

And I see him watch Stephanie take off her clothes for the first time. The way her legs go all the way up, the way there’s a little fat, just as you reach the crotch. He loves that small ring of fat so much, finds the space between that and her panties, that space through which light gets through from behind, so appealing.

And I feel how badly he was attracted to her then. And I make him feel it again, now, for me, standing in front of him.

“Hug me, Michael.” I cling to him. “Hug me. Hug me.” And he does. Tightly, so tightly.

And his cheek touches my forehead.

I surf to the moment he first saw her, sitting among five other women he didn’t know. And her image practically leapt at him, touched him, showing something in her even from afar that he liked. At first sight.

I am not as beautiful as she was.

“Stay,” she says. They’re at his apartment. It’s the middle of the day. He has to go teach.

“I have to go.” He puts on his pants.

“Stay,” she purrs, and curls on his bed like a cat. He can see, underneath her playfulness, how desperate she is.

He puts on his shirt.

She grabs it, her mood changed, and looks at him. The desperation in her eyes grows. She’s afraid that if he leaves the apartment she’ll never see him again.

Oh, my god. I remember this moment. I’ve seen it in her head. But I don’t… feel it anymore. I was never as desperate as this.

I make Michael hug me tighter, and I search for a memory of her later in their relationship, his strongest memory.

“Yes,” Michael says. They’re in the corridor where she cornered him, outside his apartment.

Stephanie stands in front of him, and it’s as if everything inside her changes. Something in her eyes changes, something in her cheeks falls, her face freezes, and she collapses into a ball on the floor.

It’s as if she is dying in front of him.

She did die that instant. But something in me doesn’t feel for her as much as I used to. I am not as depressed as she was. I am not in the same pain as she was.

I look up at Michael. I am not in love with him. I am not attracted to him.

I step back, and it feels like pieces of who I am fall to the floor.

I am not as beautiful as she was. I am not as desperate as she was. I am not as depressed as she was. I am not in the same pain as she was. I am not in love as she was. I am not attracted to Michael as she was. I am not as crazy as she was.

I am not Stephanie. And I am not Parks. And I am not Bendis. And I am not my parents.

I am not dust. I am not nothing.

And it dawns on me that I am… something.

I am me, for once. I am different now. I am strong. I am as strong as Parks. I am stronger than Parks, and she knows it. I am aware of my thoughts. I am free. I am without fear. I am ecstatic. I am in love… with no one. I am in need… of no one.

And I am through with this.

I let Michael sit, and I walk off. He’ll be confused for a couple of minutes, but he’ll be all right.

I call a cab.

When we get there, I see a sign above the gate I failed to see before: “WELCOME TO THE INDIANAPOLIS ACADEMY!”

That’s right. Because we deal with truth.