Wild-born Read online

  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. It would have been even better if only my pencil knew the answers to the questions! 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 complemented 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 either. 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.
r />   “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 that 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. As I opened the door and stepped through, I glanced 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.

  “What are you doing?” I asked, trying to keep my tone casual.

  “Just reading.” Cat held up a magazine and looked at me apprehensively. Did she already know what I had done? Maybe she thought I was going to throw her again.

  “Can we talk?” I asked cautiously.

  “Oh, come on, Adrian, it was just a little joke! I promise I won’t do it again, okay?”

  “Do what?” I asked, wondering what I had missed.

  “You know…” said Cat, and silently mouthed, “Addy-baby.” I was so caught off guard that I actually stared at her for a moment, my mouth hanging open.

  “Cat, I – I don’t care about that!” I sputtered. “Call me whatever you want. That’s not what I want to talk to you about.”

  Cat gave me a surprised frown. “Oh. Well, what do you want to talk about?”

  “Um, yeah… Well, hey, Cat, is your ankle okay? I mean, does it still hurt?”

  Cat blinked twice, and then said, “I’m fine. You know that. I was okay at dinner, wasn’t I? You know, you’re acting really strange.”

  “Really strange?” I repeated. “No, I’m just getting warmed up.”

  After swearing her to absolute secrecy, I told my sister everything that had been happening these last few months. I even gave her a demonstration, first by making an eraser fly around her room, bouncing it off the walls and ceiling, and then by making one of her dolls move through her doll house. I couldn’t actually make the doll walk properly, but Cat got the idea.

  “So you threw me out of the pool?” she asked.

  “I swear I didn’t mean to,” I said. “It was an accident. I just lost control.”

  Cat narrowed her eyes. “You lost control?”

  “Yeah. I mean, I wasn’t even trying to use my power on you at all, to catch you or anything. It just, sort of… happened,” I said uneasily. “I’m really sorry, Cat.”

  Suddenly Cat grinned widely. “Can you do it again?”

  “What?” I asked, incredulous.

  “Can you lift me up?” Cat asked excitedly. “Can you make me fly? Like you did with the eraser?”

  “Of course I can’t,” I said. “That’s just an eraser. You’re much bigger.”

  “But you did it at the pool, didn’t you?”

  “I wasn’t trying to, Cat,” I said, shaking my head. “Like I said, it just happened.”

  “Come on, Adrian. Can’t you at least try?”

  “Cat!”

  Cat looked at me imploringly. “I want to fly! Please, Adrian!”

  “So far, I’ve only moved things that aren’t alive, like pencils and cups,” I protested. “I don’t know how it would work on a person. It might really hurt you.”

  “You didn’t hurt me at the pool,” said Cat. “I hurt myself when I landed.”

  “But it might not be the same this time, Cat.”

  “Please-please-please! Come on, Adrian! I promise I’ll never call you Addy-baby again.”

  I sighed heavily. “You already promised that a moment ago, not to mention like a hundred times this year.”

  I knew well enough by now that I was going to lose this argument. If Cat was nothing else, she was persistent. That was probably why my sister so often got her own way in my family.

  “Oh, Adrian, you came in to apologize, right?”

  “Well, yeah…”

  Cat grinned. “Then you can do this for me instead.”

  “That makes no sense at all, Cat,” I said, scratching the back of my head. “Alright. But don’t say I didn’t warn you!”

  Cat jumped up and gave me a big bear hug. My ribs still hurt a bit.

  Disentangling myself, I gave her a stern look. “Cat, since you obviously can’t land like one, I want you to go stand on your bed. No, actually, sit down on your bed, so there’s more space between you and the ceiling. And take your pillow and hold it over your head.”

  Cat did as I told her to, sitting cross-legged on her bed with her giant yellow psychedelic flower-patterned pillow held firmly over her head. She looked like a mushroom.

  “Ready for takeoff, Captain!” Cat giggled nervously.

  “This probably won’t work, you know.”

  Cat gave me an impatient scowl. “Just try, Adrian!”

  At that moment, it occurred to me that the sensible thing to do would be to pretend I tried and failed. I ignored that thought and focused on levitating Cat.

  I soon discovered that size did matter. It was like learning my power all over again. The focus had to be just right, evenly spread all over Cat and her crazy pillow. Then it had to be powerful. Just like weightlifting. Minutes went by as I concentrated all of my consciousness on lifting my sister into the air.

  “My arms are getting tired holding this pillow,” whined Cat. “Can I just balance it on my head?”

  “No,” I breathed through clenched teeth, “and shut up!”

  “Adrian! I think it’s working!”

  She was right.

  Cat was now hovering a few inches off of her mattress. She was still cross-legged, though her feet were sagging down a bit and her toes were lightly touching her bed. I lifted her higher, halfway between her bed and the ceiling.

  “Wow!” shrieked Cat. “I’m flying! I’m really flying!”

  “Be quiet, Cat!”

  I was no longer clenching my teeth, and I realized I had gotten a little used to her weight.

  “But this is so great!” cried Cat.

  “Mom and Dad will hear you,” I hissed. “Be quiet!”

  Sure enough, there were two rapid knocks on the door and I heard Dad’s voice say, “Cat, what are you doing in there?”

  Cat panicked, pulling her pillow off her head, and I panicked, losing control.

  Crack! Cat hit her head hard on the plaster ceiling before falling straight back down onto her mattress.

  Dad opened the door just as she landed.

  “Cat? Adrian?” he said. “What are you two up to in here?”

  Cat got off her bed, wincing painfully, her right hand pressed firmly over what was sure to become a towering bump on her head.

  “We were, um… just talking,” I said, trying to look innocent.

  “Doesn’t look like it,” said Dad. “What were you talking about?”

  “Flying,” Cat said casually.
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  I froze. Was Cat about to spill the beans on me?

  “Flying, huh?” repeated Dad, eyeing Cat’s hand on her head. “You mean you were talking about flying or you really were flying?”

  Cat laughed. “Just talking, Dad. You know I can’t really fly.”

  Dad gave her a slight frown. “Aren’t you getting a little too big to be jumping up and down on your bed?”

  “Sorry, Dad,” said Cat. “But Adrian said I’d feel weightlessness if I was falling. Just like an astronaut!”

  “Adrian!” said Dad, shaking his head.

  “Well, it’s true,” I said lamely. I had, in fact, said that to her once, not too long ago.

  “Is your head okay?” asked Dad.

  “I read it in my science textbook at the hospital!” I answered defensively.

  “I was asking Cat,” Dad said dryly before turning to my sister. “Do you need any ice?”

  “No, it’s not that bad, Dad,” said Cat, removing her hand from the bump.

  “Okay. Just don’t break the mattress. Or the ceiling,” said Dad, chuckling as he left the room.

  Cat and I looked at each other for a moment, and then Cat smiled broadly and whispered, “Ouch.”

  We burst out laughing. When we finally stopped, Cat looked at me and said in an awestruck tone, “That was amazing, Adrian.”

  “Yeah, amazing you didn’t break your neck, Cat,” I said, getting up to leave. “We’re not doing that again.”

  “Well, not indoors anyway.”

  “Nowhere, Cat!” I said firmly. “I mean it! Not until I can control it better.”

  Cat smiled playfully. “So you’ll do it again when you can control it better?”

  “No promises.”

  “Okay, Adrian. But I really had fun. Even at the pool. Hurt my leg and bumped my head, but it was still fun. Really!”

  “Glad you enjoyed it,” I said. “You won’t tell anyone?”

  “Did I tell Dad just now? Don’t worry, I won’t tell.”

  “Okay. Well, goodnight, then, I guess,” I said, walking to the door.

  Cat grinned. “Goodnight, Addy-baby.”

  “Yeah, whatever. Goodnight, Cat.”

  Cat had been my first experiment with the living. In the days that followed, I learned that there wasn’t that much difference in the essence of what I did between living and non-living when it came to moving or lifting them. However, not only did size and weight matter, but the complexity of the object was also important. A table is heavy, but it’s basically a big lump of wood, which is a single material. A person, on the other hand, was much more complex, with skin and bones, muscles and organs, solid and liquid.