I expected telekinesis to leap to my command as easily as my ability to slow time had. After an hour of trying, this did not prove to be the case. It didn't help that Billy kept interrupting. Me being able to not get punched in the face by him seemed to make me cool in his book, and he kept trying to start a conversation. I was only mildly irritated by this because I had something else I had planned to do with the quietude.

"Hey," Billy said again. "What do you think Mr. P is going to do? I mean, this already feels like a bonus. We don't have to sit through math. I wonder if we'll get to miss history too."

I cocked my head. Math and history? Billy was on the same class schedule as me? I hadn't noticed. I wondered at that. I realized I didn't really know Billy at all. Were we in the same grade?

"Yeah," I said. "We're definitely going to miss history, too."

"Oh, sweet," Billy said, sagging, in visible relief.

I cocked an eyebrow at him. He didn't like history? I didn't know people didn't like history. It was so fascinating. Shaking it off, I made another attempt at the pencil cup. I imagined what it was I wanted the cup to do—move towards the edge of the desk. My mental thoughts cheered it on. I pictured it moving, the cup sliding just half an inch closer to the edge. I imagined my tongue pressed up against the side of the cup, which was a little gross, I'll admit. But I did it nonetheless. And then I pressed my tongue up against the roof of my mouth. And focusing on that movement, I imagined the movement—my tongue pressing not on the roof of my mouth, but on the cup. Nothing happened. I tried pushing my tongue against the front of my teeth. Nothing happened. I tried every single variation of pushing my tongue in any direction I possibly could. Still, nothing happened.

"Seriously though," Billy said, "what do you think Mr. P is going to do to us?"

I looked over at him. "He's probably going to give us three weeks of detention," I said.

"Whoa, three weeks? That would be righteous."

I processed that. Righteous. He wanted detention? My mind clunked to a stuttering stop. Who wanted detention? Why would you want to stay after school instead of going and doing anything else?

I looked over at him. "You mean... you would be happy to get detention?" I asked.

Billy nodded. "Yeah, dude. Then I wouldn't have to go home."

I blinked at him. Detention was better than going home? There was a tinge of a color in his aura that hadn't been present earlier. It wasn't all red. There was a little thread of white. This color stuff was confusing. What was white supposed to be? Red seemed to be anger, I thought, but honestly, the feeling was much more complex.

I needed more time with it.

I debated about asking Billy why he didn't want to go home. But I realized I was afraid of the answer. I didn't want to know why Billy didn't want to go home. Why was I afraid of the answer? That wasn't normal. I wasn't normally afraid of answers.

Oh, there it was.

Something deep in my gut. Billy was like me. Except that he wasn't. And how much he was like me with how he felt scared me, and I was worried that if I delved into why he didn't want to go home, I would discover that I wanted the same thing, except that I had never acknowledged it, and it felt like a rock sitting in my stomach… I didn't want to know how I felt.. I stuffed that one down in the back of my mind. I found a box, and I buried it.

I had not realized that I did not want to know how I felt, but now that I was able to put words on it… It was true.

I didn't want to have my emotions. They were a waste of time. Feeling things was not productive. I wanted to be productive. I wanted to learn. I wanted to help people. I wanted to go find Dad.

Nobody else was doing anything. It was up to me. But there was more on my plate now. I clenched my jaw at the thought that Not-me had never mentioned Dad. This was the most important thing. There was nothing more important than finding Dad.

‘Why hadn't he mentioned whether or not he'd found Dad?!’ I mentally shouted.

Was this one of the things that I didn't want to feel? I hadn't realized you could shout inside your own head, but I definitely was. I looked over at Billy to make sure I hadn't actually shouted out loud. Billy was staring at the carpet, a quiet smile on his face, seeming content, humming a tune that I thought was classic rock. I didn't know he was a classic rock fan. He didn't wear any of the paraphernalia. Apparently, I had not shouted because he was not giving me a look like I was out of my mind.

I had been afraid to ask Not-me, and I had been afraid to feel that I was afraid to ask. I didn't want to know the answer. If Not-me had found Dad, he would have said so. Wouldn't he? I didn't know. I found a new box. I opened it up, and I stuffed that one in there, too.

Redirecting my attention, I again went through the motions of pushing the cup forward, but...

‘You're a coward!’ I heard shouted in my own head. It was my voice, but it was not my voice.

What was wrong with me? In that second, as I was imagining the cup moving across the desk, pushing but not pushing with my tongue, the feeling of anger at myself, at my future self, at my own cowardice, at my own neglect, at the fact that I hadn't found Dad and the people who had taken him away from me had gotten away with it flooded over me all at once, like a wave rushing from head to toe, causing an involuntary shudder, and I tasted a metallic taste. Was that blood?

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Through the pounding, ringing in my ears, the cup on the desk in front of me, which I had been fixated on with a stare that penetrated through it and carried on beyond, scraped. It was the tiniest movement. Then the metallic taste went away and I realized I had tasted the cup.

Gross.

But it had worked! Hadn’t it? The pounding in my ears receded as I focused on breathing. I was about to lose control. Breathe… In, two, three, four, out, two, three, four…

Had I imagined the cup moving? I let out a juttering sigh, as if my diagram was spasming after a long cry.

Billy’s stink made keeping up the breathing exercise difficult. He smelled like moldy cheese and sour body odor. I leaned farther away, clinging to the four count like a rope at the edge of a pit.

"How did you do that?" Billy said. I thought he was asking about the cup. It hadn't moved much. Had it? I was doubting that it moved at all. I looked at the desk, and I looked at him. I fumbled with it. I was having trouble talking. I needed to hold on to my breathing. The crashing inside my head was too much.

"Um" was all I could manage, which was good because I had been about to over-explain about telekinesis when Billy said,

"Your dad's not really the owner of a dojo, is he?"

Oh. I understood. He wanted to know how I had caught his punch. Billy was massaging his knuckles.

"That really hurt. That's the same way it feels to punch a wall."

I looked at him. He knew what it felt like to punch a wall. Why would you punch a wall?

Breathe… In, two, three, four, out, two, three, four…

“That was badass,” Billy said, “could you teach me how to to that?”

I looked at Billy, my eyes watering with the deep breaths of his stink I was taking in. A line of white larger than before streamed across his aura and I reached for it, my own emotions threatening to drag me into them.

I felt hopeful, if I could catch a punch like that, I could protect mom. I could actually do some good. We wouldn’t have to be scared anymore. I would actually be able to be someone who wasn’t worthless…

I surfaced from Billy’s aura. A single tear escaped my eye before I could stop it. I felt like I had spied on someone’s private life. I shook my head.

“No,” I said. “That line about my dad and the dojo was just banter. My dad has been gone for four years now. I just got lucky with the punch.”

Billy processed that, his mouth turning down into a frown. The white thread shrank, but was bigger than before. Then he ginned at me.

“You’re lucky,” he said. “No dad is better than my dad.” He leaned back in his seat, “You’re alright Tim.”

He held out a fist, and I stared at it for a moment.

“Call me Freak,” I said. Then I reached over and I bumped his out-held fist.

Billy nodded then closed his eyes, and leaned his head on the wall. After a moment his breathing evened out and he let out a gentle snore.

I realized then that my emotions weren’t trying to crash over me anymore. Taking a peek at Billy’s made mine easier to manage somehow. A shudder passed through me, and I stared at the floor, trying to process what had just happened.

***

I stayed like that, eyes on the floor, almost unthinking, enjoying the fact that I had returned to a point where my emotions were not vying for my attention. Billy, for his part, continued to nap, his snores turning into more of a rasping quality and kept jerking his head forward every time he'd have a loud one. He only shifted in his seat and fell back asleep. I didn't try to contact Not-me, and I didn't try to sample Billy's aura again. I had had quite enough of that, and so I stared at the floor until Mr. Pheizer came back into the room.

He opened the door, and I glanced up. It startled Billy awake, and he snorted himself to blinking awareness. Mr. Pheizer frowned at this, and I swear a quiet smile played across his face for a moment and then was gone. The look on his features I would have called irritation, but as I reached to try and figure out what he actually felt, I again encountered a wall.

He had two manila envelopes, as he did the first time, and again did his nifty maneuver between the cabinets and the edge of the desk. As he passed, he bumped the pencil cup, and it spilled across the desk onto the chair and onto the floor behind it. Mr. Pheizer let out a grumbled curse and slapped the manila envelopes down, looking up sharply at both of us. I put on my best completely innocent look. He glared at us both. I was relieved to see Billy caught the brunt of the glare, and I was a secondary consideration.

"Were you boys getting into my desk?" he asked.

Both of us shook our heads. Billy chimed in for me. "No, we sat here the whole time, Mr. P. Honest."

His frown deepened for a second, and then he seemed to take Billy at his word. Meanwhile, I fought down a thrill that I now knew it had worked. I had managed to move the pencil cup. It hadn't been much, but it had been enough. So it hadn't been my imagination.

Mr. Pheizer set to trying to clean up the pencils and right the cup, which required him to move the desk because he didn't quite have enough room to get to everything behind it. I was alarmed at how easily the man moved the desk, like this was an easier task than bending over. After a moment of grunting, during which I heard several more curses, reminding me of Not-me, he eventually had everything back in its place. I watched as he meticulously reset the desk and put the pencil cup into its exact place.

Finished, he once more grabbed the manila envelopes and sat down in his usual spot behind the desk. I was sure his glare this time contained genuine irritation. He launched into the familiar spiel of telling us that the school had a no-tolerance policy about fighting, which I felt significantly less affected by now. Surprisingly, Billy this time volunteered that he had started it. Mr. Pheizer eyed both of us and shook his head.

"It doesn't matter who started it. I've got to give you both the same punishment, understand?"

Billy nodded, looking a little ready to argue, but I knew the dance was pointless either way. So, being curious, I volunteered, "Would a week's detention be sufficient?"

Billy shot me a horrified look as if I had betrayed him with that. Mr. Pheizer shook his head. "I think you boys need three weeks to learn your lesson," he said, at which Billy looked visibly relieved. If Mr. Pheizer was aware of the interplay going on, it didn't show on his features. The rest played out as I expected.

We accepted our detention slips, acknowledging that we had to go get them signed by a legal guardian, and we left the office. Billy stopped me once we were out in the hall.

"Hey, uh, Ti— I mean, Freak?"

I looked up at him. "Yeah?" I said, curious where the boy was going with this.

"Listen, you're alright. If you ever need help, like somebody hassling you or something, you come tell me, okay?"

I looked at him. He seemed genuine. I was surprised. I wanted to ask him if he fought everybody that he became friends with, and why he had singled me out to try and punch in the face, but I thought better of it, having already experienced way too much of Billy's life. I just nodded. He accepted that, and we went towards our next class. We were on the same class schedule I discovered, as we reached English.

He slid into a seat in the back as I took my usual seat in the front. When I glanced back at him, he shot me a smirk. I returned the smile and then kept my eyes forward. Was everyone more complicated than I thought, or had I just not given Billy enough credit?

The teacher walked in. He was a put-together looking young man. I shook my head; that was probably Not-me influencing my thinking. He was in his late twenties or early thirties. He had a neat comb-over style haircut, and he wore the English teacher-appropriate sweater vest.

He stood behind the desk and looked at the students. "All right, the first week's almost over, which means if you haven't transferred out yet, I got you for the rest of the year." He winked at the class, which got no response. His name was Mr. Hinkley, and he wrote his name across the blackboard again, as he did every time he entered the room. I wondered why he didn't just leave it up there.

"I'm going to want a writing example from all of you. This won't be graded, but I will need it by Monday," he said. The class all groaned at this news. I had already heard this before. "I want you to read the CliffsNotes on Hamlet, and then I want you to go to the end of the story and imagine a meeting beyond the grave between Hamlet and his father. You are to write me a two-hundred-word scene in which Hamlet and his father have a confrontation about everything that took place during Hamlet's ill-fated attempt to find revenge and peace for his deceased father. It's up to you to decide whether the ghost indeed found peace at the end or whether he was upset with Hamlet's attempts to enact revenge.

"You will have the rest of this class as a study hall to read through the CliffsNotes, which I'm going to hand out to all of you. I encourage you to read the play on your own. You'll be able to find it online, or if they're not all checked out, you can go to the school library and check out a copy. What I want from you is to know: do you think Hamlet was right, or do you think Hamlet was wrong? I need your writing to reflect this. If you want to get to work on the scene, you have the rest of the class period to attempt to do so. Handwritten is fine. Typed is also acceptable."

He then volunteered one of the students to hand out copies of the CliffsNotes, which I was already quite familiar with, and left me to sit there and contemplate the question. When I had first written the scene for Hamlet encountering his father, I had concluded that his father was indeed pleased with his actions and could now rest peacefully. But after the experiences I recently had, I was now not so sure. If I ever got to turn this assignment in, I was curious whether or not I would conclude that Hamlet's father had found closure.

***