Wild-born (2 page)

Mom’s frown jumped from Dad to me. “Addy! Let your sister eat.”

“I wish you’d stop calling me that, Mom,” I said, grabbing Cat by the shirtsleeve and hauling her back into her chair.

Addy was the baby name I used to be called when I was much younger, and only Mom still used it. Cat liked taunting me with it, but only with a running start.

“Oh, Addy, you know old habits die hard,” said Mom as Cat smirked at me.

“At least Dad knows my name,” I grumbled, and finished my orange juice in one long swig. “Hurry up, Cat, or I’m going without you and you can come jogging after the bus.”

“Adrian, wait for your sister,” Dad said without taking his eyes off his paper.

“If you like, I’ll go trade her for a new oven?” I asked hopefully.

Dad laughed, but Mom glared. “Addy!”

“Bye, Mom. Come on, Cat, let’s go!”

The brain is kind of strange that way. I don’t even remember what I had for breakfast this very morning, but that day’s breakfast is burned into my memory for life.

The next memory I have is of waking up on a hospital bed with plastic tubes stuck up places you wouldn’t believe. I had been unconscious for two days. The minivan that hit me hadn’t been going much faster than I usually cycle, but even so, I ended up with a couple of broken ribs, broken right arm, lower left leg, two fingers on my left hand and, of course, a complimentary cracked skull. In short, I was dressed for the pyramids and cursed with a dull throbbing pain that lasted weeks. If it had only been an arm or a leg, rather than both, I might have been able to return home in a few days wearing a cast hard enough to hit Cat with, but as it was, my parents both worked and my home environment wasn’t suitable for my recovery, or so the doctors said.

I was moved to and spent nearly two months in the hospital’s long-term recovery ward. There, I met a kind nurse I came to know as Miss Julia who sometimes took me outside in a wheelchair, and Cat often came to visit after school along with some of my friends and a bag full of homework from my teachers. It’s very painful to laugh with broken ribs, but nevertheless my friends and I were so rowdy that, after repeated reprimands to which we never listened, I was moved to a private room.

And it was in that room that I learned how to do my homework without touching my pencil.

At first, it was just a daydream pastime. If you have ever been hospitalized, or been forced to stay indoors for a few days with nothing to do, then you will know exactly what I’m talking about. Television can be really boring in the mornings and early afternoons, and when you’re stuck on a bed, there’s not much else to keep you occupied. You can only sleep so much at a time. I whiled away the dead hours staring at the clock and hoping time would go faster so that I could see my friends. They didn’t come over every single afternoon, but even Cat’s company would be better than none at all.

Sometimes I would concentrate on a picture on the wall, or the get-well cards on my bedside table, seeing if I could make something happen. Nothing ever happened, so I went back to willing the clock to go faster as I slowly fell into a half-sleep in which I dreamt of flying erasers and spinning clock hands.

When I woke, it was nearly six in the evening. No one had visited. I lay there groggy and dejected, wishing I hadn’t woken up. Dinner was always at six, but that day Miss Julia did not come with the tray. Although I wasn’t really hungry yet, I was beginning to worry that I had been forgotten. I was just about to push the “call” button when in walked Cat.

“Homework, Addy,” she said, using my baby name on purpose. If I had been able to get up and do something about it, she wouldn’t have dared. At least not at this distance.

I frowned. “Don’t call me Addy.”

Cat started singing, “Addy-baby! Addy-baby!”

“I’m warning you, Cat!” I growled.

Cat just laughed. “What are you going to do, sneeze at me?”

“You just wait till I get better!”

“Okay, okay. But until then,
Addy-baby,
here’s your homework,” said Cat, plopping the books and papers onto my bedside table.

“Why didn’t you stop by on your way back from school?” I demanded, remembering my original annoyance at her lateness.

Cat rolled her eyes. “That’s what I’m doing, dummy!”

“It’s 6:30, Cat.”

“No, it’s not. It’s 3:30 like always!” said Cat, and then looked at the wall clock and laughed. “Your clock is fast. Look out the window.”

She was right: It was just a bit too bright outside. Cat showed me her wristwatch. I must have only been asleep for an hour and a half. Time had not sped up for me—but the clock had!

The slow pace of life at the hospital was what set me on my path. I discovered that my telekinetic power existed in a small space between consciousness and unconsciousness, that is, between being awake and being asleep. I slowly learned to find that spot, and once I did, I could, with days of trial and error, bring it closer to the conscious side. Or perhaps my consciousness was just becoming more aware of that tricky space. Whichever way it was, less than two weeks later, I could make small objects move. I could make a pencil start to roll across the floor. I could make it stop, and roll back. Eventually, I could even make it stand on end for short periods of time. I also found that erasers and get-well cards were much easier to move than pencils. Paperclips were more difficult, though I didn’t discover why until much later.

As excited as I was about my new power, I was careful not to let anyone see me using it. I agreed with that boy at camp: This really was weird. I wanted to understand it far better before I even considered showing it to anyone. As I’m sure you already know, secrets are incredibly hard to keep alone, but for the time being, I kept my mouth shut. Not even Cat suspected, I think.

Once I thought I had gotten the hang of rolling and standing up pencils, I tried drawing a simple smiley face on my notebook. This, I discovered, was much harder. I could get the pencil to stand up on the paper, but making it press down at just the right pressure while moving it in the direction I wanted? Well, it would have been easier doing it with my left hand minus two broken fingers. Sometimes the pressure on the paper was too weak to draw good lines, and sometimes the pressure was too much and I broke the pencil tip. Once, my pencil slipped off the notebook and stabbed me in my right thigh. Ouch! I had to call Miss Julia to help me clean and bandage the wound, and I didn’t want to tell her the truth, so she must have thought I was a real klutz to stab myself like that.

Even so, just three days after stabbing myself in the thigh, I was “willing” my pencil to do my homework, slowly writing book reports and doing math worksheets. I had lots of reading homework too, and it was fun to turn the pages without touching them. Useless, really, but fun.

But that wasn’t all. By now, I could also lift small objects into the air, which was difficult but far more exciting than turning book pages. Levitation was no different from sliding things across the floor. It just required more concentration. Increasingly tired of being trapped on the hospital bed, I even tried levitating myself, but I wasn’t able to do that... yet.

One day in mid-June, I was flying a paper airplane around and around my hospital room. It didn’t have to be in the shape of an airplane, of course. It could have just as easily been any small object. But it was more fun this way, and besides, when I briefly lost my concentration, the paper airplane would just glide along until I reconnected with it. It was fortunate too, because that day, Miss Julia suddenly opened the door, and the airplane collided with her forehead. Miss Julia complimented my “aviation skills,” thinking that I must have folded and thrown the plane using only my left hand and still it sailed right across the room, landing a bull’s-eye. I was left thanking my lucky stars that it wasn’t something that looked less aerodynamic, like my toothbrush.

I admit I was sorely tempted to show Miss Julia what I had actually been doing, but I knew, deep down, that this was not the kind of thing you just told anyone about. It wasn’t just weird. It was dangerous. What if that airplane had been another sharpened pencil?

It was already a week into summer vacation when I got out of the hospital. There was a welcome-home party with lots of ice cream and cake. Cat spilled orange juice all over herself and the living-room sofa, which I would have found funnier if my mind wasn’t elsewhere at the time. My power, while not all too alarming (it wasn’t like I was making things explode), was growing too quickly, and I was having trouble getting used to it. All my school friends had come over too, and I had to be careful during the party not to enjoy myself too much because if I got carried away with some game, I might do something I’d have a hard time explaining.

Finally, the last of my casts were taken off, and I was told to get “safe exercise” in the form of non-aggressive sports. When I wasn’t commuting to the rehab center, I went cycling and swimming, often with my friends, but sometimes even with Cat. The last two months had brought us a bit closer together than we had been before the accident. Feeling the continuing strain of solo secret-keeping, I seriously thought about showing Cat my newfound powers, but I couldn’t trust her not to go blabbing about it to everyone she saw.

Besides, at the time, it seemed as if my telekinetic power was disappearing. After returning home, I found it much more difficult to focus on the things I was trying to move. There were times, especially during the daytime, that I couldn’t even make a tissue paper twitch. The distractions of daily life were taking their toll. That’s what I thought was happening, anyway, and it didn’t bother me very much because the sensible part of me insisted that I was better off being normal. Looking back, I guess my power wasn’t fading at all, but growing despite my lack of focus.

And by now, focus was not only what made my power work, but also what kept it in check.

On the hottest day of the summer, four of my friends and I, as well as Cat and three of her friends, were at our local water-slide pool. After a few runs down the slides, the five of us (that’s us minus Cat & Co.) were playing water tag. It wasn’t easy swimming in a pool full of little waves made by people smacking into the water as they came down the slides. Besides, though my bones had mended well and weren’t causing me too much pain anymore, my muscles hadn’t fully recovered from the weeks spent in bed, so I ended up being “it” much more often than I would have liked.

My sister wasn’t about to make it any easier for me. She and her friends had been watching us for a few minutes, treading water near the shallow end of the pool, when she called out to me, “Adrian, can we play too?”

I almost answered yes. Cat was ten, and would be easier to catch, as would be her friends. But they were
girls.
No, I couldn’t live with that.

“No, Cat,” I said. “Go back to your slides.”

“Aw, come on, Adrian!” whined Cat.

“No! It wouldn’t be fair. You girls would be too easy to catch. Start your own game if you want.”

“Bet you can’t catch me!” Cat smirked, swimming a little closer.

“I don’t want you to get hurt,” I said. “You can’t play with us.”

“Addy-baby!”

“Cat!”

“Addy-baby! Addy-baby! Bet you can’t catch me!”

That was it! Nobody calls me “Addy-baby” in front of my friends and gets away with it.

I swam toward her, but she knew I was coming. Cat was a fairly good swimmer, but even so, I should have been able to catch her easily. However, she was right: In my current condition, plus the fact that I was already a bit tired from playing, I wasn’t about to get near her anytime soon. Cat managed to stay well ahead as she laughed at me, saying, “See?! Girls can swim too! Addy-baby!”

That was when it happened. Cat was near the edge of the pool when she was lifted clean out of the water and thrown onto the poolside concrete. She let out a yelp of pain, having twisted her right ankle landing. I knew perfectly well that it was my doing, but I swear I wasn’t trying anything of the sort. At worst, I was just going to grab her and push her under the water for a second or two. I never wanted to actually hurt her.

“Cat, are you okay?” I panted, pulling myself out of the pool.

“I think so,” said Cat, sitting up on the concrete. “I hurt my leg. What happened?”

“I don’t know,” I answered, which was, in part, honest.

By now our whole group was crowding around, and the lifeguard had come over too. He checked Cat’s ankle, making sure she could limp well enough, and suggested that we take her home and let our parents decide whether or not to take her to a hospital for an X-ray.

“Did you see that?!” exclaimed one of Cat’s friends as we left the lobby of the water slide.

“It was like she was ejected from a fighter plane,” said one of mine.

“It looked like something grabbed her and threw her out,” said another.

I kept silent, hoping that my camping trip story wouldn’t resurface here, but sure enough...

“Hey, Adrian, did you do that?”

“Do what?!” I asked, trying to cover my fear with an annoyed tone.

“You know, like you said at camp. That things sometimes move when you look at them?”

“It was a story, okay?” I said, my voice rising higher. “How can you compare that to what just happened?! I didn’t do anything!”

“Okay, okay! Don’t have a fit, Adrian. Just asking, you know.”

Nothing can bring out emotions better than the truth. And the truth was that I did do something that day. Something I had inwardly feared ever since I realized that I had this power: I had hurt someone with it. It wasn’t fair to Cat that she didn’t know what had happened to her.

Near bedtime that day, after taking my bath and changing, I knocked on Cat’s room door. “Cat, can I come in?”

A moment later I heard Cat answer, “Yeah, okay.”

My sister’s room was next to mine on the second floor. I used to just barge in whenever I needed to, but Cat was ten and a half now and I would be thirteen in October, and we respected each other’s privacy.

I opened the door and stepped through, glancing around her room. I hadn’t been in here in a while, and some of the posters had changed a bit. Sitting at her desk, Cat was in her pajamas too, having taken her bath right after dinner.