All morning the rain has been pelting the campus. When lunch hour arrives, instead of idling in the quad, most of the students pour into the gym. Knotted together like weeds, the kids generate an almost unbearable noise. A noise that boomerangs off the high walls of the cavernous space.
Somewhere Inside of me Elias stirs, I can feel him struggling to surface. He knows the difficulty I have in dealing with such intense stimulation. I tense myself, keeping Elias within.
In my attempt to create order out of the noise, my senses swirl. They capture every sound -- every sneaker that squeaks against the wooden gymnasium floor, every plastic tray slammed against a tabletop. The laughing. The laughing. The laughing. And even the wind has such a sharp tune as it chants its way into the space with every opening and closing of the heavy doors. My skin bristles as the noises burrow deeper inside me.
In the echoes, I try and locate the girl. She is different. She has the ability to connect. Although Elias and I aren’t sure if she’s aware of it, Elias says we desperately need to communicate with her. But with so many distractions she is difficult to locate. I close my eyes and scan the gym with my mind. Finally, I hone in and find her alone at a table near the bleachers.
I open my eyes, gaze in her direction. The energy of so many confined voices and thoughts create a near impenetrable barrier. My steady stare burns away the clutter until finally my focus is fixed only on her.
But in this moment of intense concentration, Elias has grabbed the opportunity and forced himself to the surface. He is so much stronger than I. Within moments the girl raises her head and glances our way.
Every person has an echo, some have more than one. Elias says this to me. The girl’s echoes are stronger than most. Her controlled level of awareness is why she is so important to me -- to us.
She senses our presence. We can see that by the way she stares in our direction, picking through the crowd. An expression of understanding creeps across her face when she locks eyes with us. The brief expression is blinked away, her comprehension collapses. She lowers her head and resumes picking from her plate with her fingers.
Elias and I wait in the long line to grab something to eat. At the counter we ask for a tuna melt and a Pepsi, and then we find a place to sit at a table not far from where the girl continues her lunch. In between bites we try again to connect, but her awareness of us has dissipated completely.
When the bell rings we get up, leaving our trash on the table. We stuff our hands deep into our pockets and head down the hall to our next class. The corridor and the gray lockers that line the walls spin rapidly without moving. A sense of illusion assaults me and Elias from seven directions.
During science class, Elias withdraws and allows me to deal with the click, click, click the reels make as a graphic film dealing with rabbit dissection is spit onto a white screen.
Two classes later, in English 101, I am in the same room with the girl again. Her desk is near the front of the room. While the teacher drones, I watch the girl from where I sit in front of the window. Only when she begins to wrap a lock of red hair around two fingers, do I attempt to reach her. She is drifting away now. I know this and I concentrate on connecting. But I’m only able to penetrate her deep enough that she ceases twirling her hair. She straightens in her seat and turns around to scan the room.
Once before she’d nodded knowingly. Elias had been with me then. We floated through her green eyes and inside of her, staying with her. That’s how we discovered there were two of them, maybe more. But the screech, screech, screech of chalk scraping the blackboard had shattered that connection, had sent Elias and me spinning through the air, through shards of prismatic light.
At the back of the class I slouch at a desk in front of the window. On warm afternoons when the window’s pushed open my pores suck in the hollow hums and grassy odors caught in the breeze blowing in. If the days are dark and damp, though, the room closes in, smothers me. The buzz of fluorescents on the ceiling, the scuff of sneakers on the tiles, the scratching of so many pencils pressed against paper, and the snap of streamers writhing above the heater vents behind me would finally force me to press the balls of my palms to my ears.
Seeing me, the teacher would open her mouth. Her voice would stretch across the room -- “D a n -- y e l” -- and I’d be jerked back. Elias would usually come out then, in case a reply is expected from the teacher.
I close my eyes and concentrate. Because I am unsuccessful, I allow Elias to take control. Finally she twists in her seat and meets our gaze. A dull film rises to her pupils. They are both present now, and when they smile I know they both recognize us. An instant later, however, she blinks her echo away and turns again to face the blackboard.
After school I follow her home. She lives at the end of a gray street in a house backed up to a meadow. As her distance from me increases, Elias struggles to reach the surface. We shout out to her when she is almost home, but she is too far. Our hand reaches forward, trying to grasp her, growing longer and larger and wider, creeping through the afternoon mist until it consumes everything ahead of us.
Still, she keeps walking, just beyond our grasp, shrinking smaller and smaller and smaller, until she is no more than a faraway fleck.
At home, with my hands behind my head, I stare up at the ceiling. I do this every night while I wait for darkness to whisk me away.
At dawn my mother taps her fingertips against my shoulder. I hear her voice, feel her gentle touch. I desperately try to tell her. But even before my eyelids can flutter for a third time, Elias has dragged himself to the surface.
Our mother disappears from the room and we roll out of bed to deal with another day. |
