12
Julia
I’m on my second veggie slice, answering all that I can in between bites. Turns out I’m ravenous. We sit cross-legged on his office floor, the open pizza box between us. My words fall out without thought. There’s no need to filter myself when I have nothing to hide. It’s freeing. While the truth remains—that we can never go forward with the touching and kissing—it’s nice to have a friend to share with. The freedom of being wholly yourself is a heady thing.
“I can’t believe you drive all the way up to the old factory every month,” he says, chewing thoughtfully.
“More often lately,” I admit.
“That’s so far. And dangerous. Aren’t there a bunch of unsecured mines that they never cleared? I’ve seen all sorts of signs warning about collapses and such.”
I nod.
“I used to go hike up there with Lincoln. When I used to do things,” he mumbles half-jokingly.
“It’s the only place I know where I won’t hurt anybody. I can completely … unleash, so to speak. This is so hard to explain.”
“So is it always the same? The bright light and intense heat?” he asks. Then immediately adds, “And the shocks from earlier. Was that part of it?”
“I think so.” I fiddle with a piece of crust. “I have, like, levels of being worked up. A warning system, I think. So far as I can tell, it’s glowing first, then little shocks, then it sort of escalates from there. But I haven’t spent a ton of time testing it.”
I look away. I don’t tell him how different it was today compared to the other times. I don’t tell him how it’s sort of impossible to measure it when it’s always just me. Everything was so sporadic at first. Once Grandma Sue and I discovered that dancing was a way to release, we didn’t want to risk messing around with it. We had a system that worked. Mostly.
“Interesting …” he mumbles, but I can tell his mind is running a million miles away.
His focus is above my shoulder but his foot dances as always. He’s gone. I love when he gets like this. Lost in deep thoughts. I like to imagine his brain as a super-complex machine filled with cogs and gears that rapid-fire when he is coming up with a new idea. I imagine them all working in tandem like a steampunk mechanism. He thinks on another level. His intelligence is completely enthralling and exotic to me. As if it isn’t already enough that his eyes glow with different shades of browns and greens like some multifaceted gem. It’s not enough that he has the perfect sense of humor and disarming charm. That he’s tall and handsome. It’s still not enough that he gets along with everyone and treats all people with the respect that they deserve. He also has to have a freaking supercomputer mind. He took it all. How could anybody compete with that? How can I leave this place and not compare every single person I meet to this man?
I must accidentally sigh because he snaps his attention back to the present. My brain grapples quickly for something to say and hope he doesn’t notice my swooning.
“Can I just say, you’re handling this really well.” I use my tongue to fish in a thin string of cheese from the side of my mouth and he watches the action before bringing his focus back to my eyes.
He tilts his head like he doesn’t understand. A brow lifts in question.
“You’re an engineer,” I explain. “I guess I thought you’d be trying to figure out how I faked it.”
He sets down his plate and dusts his hands off. “Did you know that there is a woman in Ireland who can smell when a person has Parkinson’s disease?” he asks.
“I did not know that,” I say cautiously.
“Yeah,” he says. “Not only can she tell who has it, but she can sense how developed their case is. And it’s not just Parkinson’s either. Alzheimer’s. Various types of cancers. When asked what they smell like she said something along the lines of, ‘It’s like when you smell milk and know it’s gone sour.’”
“Wow. That’s incredible.”
“I read about another woman who can supposedly predict events with frightening detail that have yet to happen,” he continues. “In her dreams. She writes them down as soon as she wakes up. They’ve recorded her doing it.”
“Hmm. A psychic? I happen to think that those people are highly intuitive and pay attention to details. And then make a lot of guesses. Like they say, even a broken clock is right twice a day.”
He grins at me. “Quite the skeptic for being a human lightbulb.”
I cough on a mouthful and have to chug my water. “Fair point.”
“But don’t you think that intuitiveness is, in its own way, a power? Or what about people who can play complex sonatas after hearing them one time? Or look at some athletes. I don’t think just anybody can do those things. My point is, to people who lack the innate talent for it, those things might seem like a superpower.”
I lean back and stretch out my legs so my feet are just to the right of his hips. “Ah. I see what you’re saying. People who sing beautifully are a species I’m jealous of. It’s unreal how some voices can be so perfect.”
“Your voice is lovely,” he says earnestly, holding my gaze.
I flush and look away. A napkin twists between my fingers. “The thing I have though—it’s more like a defect.”
