Authors: Lauryn April
B
y first hour, I found I had another problem. I was hearing thoughts quite a bit more then I had before, and the overlapping tones of voices were buzzing in my ears. Sitting in math class, I attempted to work through the example problem that Mr. Sumner had written on the board but the thoughts of everyone around me kept me from focusing. Some were thinking the problem through, others were daydreaming. They were thinking about their weekends, movies they’d seen, boys, girls, how Mr. Sumner, who was in his twenties, looked in that argyle sweater. It was as if twenty TV’s had been turned on in the same room but were all set to different channels. All of it was immensely distracting.
“Mrs. Daniels,” he called on me, “what did you come up with?” I panicked. I hadn’t been able to focus well enough to actually do the problem. I gaped at him for a moment and then I heard my salvation.
Nineteen
, someone thought.
“Nineteen,” I said and he looked almost shocked for a moment but then continued on. I sighed in relief.
Lit went by similarly, and by the end of second hour I found myself with a throbbing headache. I was hearing more and more with every hour that passed. It was one thought after another, a continuous stream that overlapped voice over voice and I didn’t know how to block them out. By the time I got to Bio, I had a little reprieve. We were watching a movie the entire hour. It was dated and I was forced to listen to terrible ‘80s theme music, but a good number of my classmates decide to sleep during the film and I was free, for the most part, of their thoughts.
On my way to lunch I stepped down an empty hallway and leaned against the wall. I tilted my head back and started to rub my temples. Alone in the hall, I had a minute with my thoughts and only my thoughts; just a minute where I didn’t pick up anyone else’s brainwaves. The throbbing of my head started to ease a little. Then I heard one more.
Ivy’s pretty cute.
I looked up. My eyes snapped open. Walking down the other end of the hallway was Chase Bryant. My eyes went wide. I hadn’t really seen him since the night at Lakefall Country Club as we didn’t have any classes together. Had he really just thought that I was cute? For a moment my breath hitched and I felt my palms grow sweaty as he walked toward me, shaking his dark blonde hair out of his eyes.
“Hey,” he said.
My words caught in my throat. “Hey,” I finally responded.
He smiled at me and I smiled back. That moment dragged on as we gazed at one another. I was reminded of when he stared at me in Eliza’s garage, the way he held my head and looked deep into my eyes. In retrospect, he was only looking to see if my pupils were dilated, but that moment in the hallway I remembered it in some romanticized dreamlike vision.
Chase cleared his throat.
“Do you know where I could find Christy?”
“Oh,” I said and my smile faded along with my hopes. “Yeah, um, yeah she’ll probably be sitting by the fountain on the common unless she has a student council meeting.”
He smiled again. “Thanks,” he said and walked past me.
I sighed. He may have thought I was cute, but he was still into Christy. I took another minute to myself and then started to walk to lunch. I walked through the doors that led outside, and it was then that it hit me.
It was like a fog horn going off in my ear. I took one step onto the common and squeezed my eyes shut as the pain intensified. I heard it all, thoughts from every student that encompassed the space before me. Hundreds of voices all in my head, all at once, words and phrases layered on top of one another. They sounded like screaming as they jumbled together and grew in volume. The voices were pushing into a space designed for my thoughts, designed for my thoughts alone, and it felt like there wasn’t enough room in my head for all of them. It felt like my skull was going to crack open and that my brain would swell until it was the size of a hot air balloon.
My hands reached up to either side of me head and pushed against my ears as if that could keep them out. It couldn’t. The voices continued to grow in number and volume and I felt myself getting faint. I couldn’t take anymore. My knees started to buckle, my arms fell limp, and then I tumbled to the ground. There were two things I noticed before everything went black. The first was the feeling of arms catching me before I hit the pavement. The second was one clear voice.
A month from now, they’ll all be dead.
W
hen I woke, the voices were gone. Well, most of them. I was lying on a thin mattress. My head was still throbbing slightly, though nowhere near as bad as before. The room was hazy and bright when I first opened my eyes. Sunlight streamed in through the window and lit up the tiny particles of dust that floated in the air.
Leaving on a jet plane
, I heard a female voice sing. The John Denver tune was recited over and over in her soft voice
.
The air was stuffy and humid and it smelled of antiseptic and plastic. I looked around as the room started to come into view and saw I was in the nurse’s office.
“Oh! You’re awake,” the nurse said as she walked over to me.
She was a lean woman with light blonde hair and thin lips. I’d never met her before, as I rarely got sick and didn’t tend to like going to the nurse’s office. I sat up swinging my legs over the small cot I’d been laying on, and she placed the back of her hand against my forehead. As she checked for a fever, she started to hum the song she’d been singing in her head aloud.
She looks alright
, I heard in a familiar voice and looked to my left to see Brant sitting slouched in a chair on the far side of the room. His eyes were locked on me with concern and yet his body language was cool and relaxed.
Pieces of what had happened started to filter back into my mind at that point. I remembered the voices, the pain, remembered how I had felt woozy and spiraled to the ground like a falling leaf. Then finally I remembered not hitting the cement, but being caught in strong arms. Brant must have caught me before I hit the ground and brought me here. He was probably standing in the shadows along the side of the building where I’d come out, maybe he’d been smoking, and then he saw me freak out. He would have seen me wince in pain and bring my hands to my head to cover my ears. I felt my skin blush in embarrassment imagining how strange I must have looked.
“Well, you seem like you’ve got a bit of a fever,” the nurse said. “Mr. Everett here said you took quite a tumble out on the common.”
“Um, yeah… I must have fainted… I skipped breakfast this morning,” I lied.
“You probably have low blood pressure, and it seems like you’ve got a bit of a cold coming on. I’m gonna let you go home if you can get a ride-can’t let you drive after fainting-but you have to promise me you won’t skip breakfast again.”
“I’ll take her home,” Brant said and my head jerked to face him. “I’ve got a free period next hour.”
“That’s very noble of you, Brant, but I’d have to okay it with your parents.”
“Actually, I just turned eighteen last week, so I could take her and come right back, you wouldn’t have to okay it with a soul.”
The nurse thinned her lips and thought for a moment. “Well, alright,” she said and turned back to face me. “I’ll write you a pass.”
I turned to stare daggers at Brant. I didn’t know what he was doing, why he was helping me, but I felt like he had to have some alternate agenda.
I
stomped down the hall away from the nurse’s office. Brant was behind me. I didn’t want him to take me home. I didn’t want anything to do with him.
“Hey, hold up,” he called out and caught up to me.
I didn’t slow down. “Look, thanks for not letting me crack my skull open out on the common and all, but I don’t need your help.”
“Oh really?”
We were still walking at a fast pace and the door leading outside was in view.
“Well, I promised the school nurse I’d take you home, so seems you’re stuck with me.”
“I don’t think the school nurse is going to have any idea if I choose to drive myself home at this point.” I had my hand on the door and began to push it open. “So thanks, but no thanks.” I stepped outside and he followed me.
She’s so damn stubborn
, I heard him think and then a second later it was if I was standing before a firing squad and had a dozen pistols shooting at me.
The moment I took a single step outside, the voices flooded my consciousness. I was hearing the thoughts of a few hundred students again. It was the end of the lunch hour and the common was still filled with kids. The pain came next and I winced. Instinctively my hands flew to my head and then I felt Brant walk up beside me. He reached an arm around me and guided me away from the building. Reluctantly I walked with him. The farther away we got from the common, the fewer voices I heard and the softer they got. We rounded the corner and the pain started to ebb. I shut my eyes for a moment, letting him lead me as I rubbed my temples.
Then I heard the car door open. I hadn’t even realized we’d stopped walking. I opened my eyes and saw him staring expectantly at me. His hand was on the opened passenger door to the lackluster and rusting ‘80s Camaro.
“I’m okay now, I don’t want your help.”
“Yeah, well… I’m all you’ve got right now.”
I glanced back to the courtyard of the school. From where I was standing I was out of range of their thoughts, but I knew if I walked back a few steps, I’d start hearing them again. And, relentlessly, they would pour into my skull. In that moment I felt like an outcast. I felt pushed away and exiled and the loneliness of it was a boundless crater that I’d fallen into to be swallowed up by the darkness. I couldn’t go back there, not then.
Just get in the car
, I heard him think, and I did.
For a short while after he got in the driver’s seat there was silence. Brant didn’t say or think anything as he started the car and pulled out of the student lot. I felt relieved for the moment of quiet, and yet at the same time wished he’d give me some clue as to why he was helping me. I wished he’d think something, anything. I found, however, that he was good at keeping his thoughts hidden.
“Where do you live?” he asked.
“Two-twelve Sunnyside Lane… it’s down off of Parkway.”
He nodded then after a moment’s pause, he turned to me. “So, you can... you can hear what people are thinking.”
I looked to him but said nothing.
“I mean, that’s what that whole fainting thing was about yeah? You were hearing them all at once weren’t you?”
Again I was silent, this time looking away from him to stare out the window.
I wonder what it’s like
, I heard him think then and it brought my gaze back to him.
I decided to answer his question. I sighed. “It’s like… it’s just like hearing people talk, except they don’t know you can hear them.”
His gaze shot to me and the car swerved an inch but he quickly regained control. Brant looked at me with a mix of wonder and fear.
You really can hear thoughts.
“So you hear everything then, everything people think?”
Can you hear me now?
“Yep.”
God, this is crazy
.
“Yeah, you’re telling me. Look, this isn’t something I’m all that thrilled about being able to do so could we not talk about it right now?”
You don’t know how to control it.
It was a statement not a question. This time I chose not to answer.
“You don’t, do you? How long have you been able to do this?”
I sighed. “Hit my head at the bottom of a pool about a week ago, nearly drowned, since then I started to hear things… just now and then, but then they got louder and now… I can’t stop them.”
God, she looks so upset
, I heard him think but then he shook his head and hurried the thought away, as if he hadn’t wanted me to hear it. “Well, there’s got to be a way to do that, to turn it off?”
“I don’t know.” We were both silent for a moment. “Why are you even here anyway, why catch me, take me to the nurse?”
I wish I knew
, “I was just there… when you fell. I was standing out of Farrow’s sight having a smoke and you walked out of the building. You looked like you were in pain and then… you were gonna hit the ground, and hard. I couldn’t just let you fall.”
I remembered something else then, something I heard just before I passed out. A voice had said
A month from now, they’ll all be dead
. Remembering it sent a chill through me. I looked to Brant for a second, but I knew the sound of his voice. It hadn’t been him. Whoever had said it seemed angry at the world. It was a deep male voice that even in so few words had been filled with pain. I didn’t know then what to do with what I had heard, but I did know that whoever had thought it had meant it.
“What are you thinking?” Brant asked and I realized I’d been lost in my thoughts.
“What? Nothing, it’s nothing.” I saw we’d turned on to my street then, and my house was coming up.
Brant was still looking at me waiting for me to tell him what I’d been thinking about when I zoned a moment ago, but I didn’t want to tell him about the voice I’d heard.
“My house is that white one just up the block, the one with the red mailbox.”
He looked to where my house was then glanced back at me. “So you’re not gonna tell me anything else then?”
I looked at him with wide eyes and a crumpled brow wondering why he suddenly thought he was someone whom I could confide in.
“Brant, I barely know you. Until today you’ve hardly said two words to me. I realize you have some fascination with this thing I’ve been cursed with, but… we’re not friends.”
“Right,” he said and then pulled into my driveway and the car came to a stop.
We’re not friends, would’a never even have talked to you or any of those stuck up bitches you hang with otherwise,
he thought. “Well, I guess I’ll see you around then.”
I got out of the car and he sped out of my driveway. For a moment I just stood there looking out into the road. His thoughts were angry, but he chose to be civil aloud. He seemed like he was conflicted with hating who he thought I was and wanting to get to know me better. It was strange. I thought then about how I had told him that we weren’t friends. It was true, but looking back it sounded so mean to say. For a moment I felt bad for having hurt his feelings with those words. Then I remembered that he was Brant Everett. I remembered that he’d hooked up with one of my good friends at a party and didn’t give her the time of day after. I remembered that everything I knew about him said that he was a complete asshole.