--XXI--

The orange-pink sunlight glowed all around me as I closed my eyes.

Dictations only last for so long.

I remembered reading the sheet of paper, still spinning, still flying over toward the Lowdown.

"By the time you read this, you'll either have discovered your powers or this paper will be on top of your dead body. I'll guess you're alive because you get everything you want and my attempt to kill you probably didn't work.

I just want you to know you're worthless.

That you're pitiful, that everything you do is a mistake.

People will know you and remember you. And they will say good things about you.

I'll make sure you don't hear them. You'll hear only me. You will believe only what I said about you then, and what I think about you now.

Nothing you do is right.

Nothing.

I know this, because I controlled you then

And

I

Control

You

Now.

I AM THE POWERFUL ONE

NOT YOU"

I think I was about fifteen when I got that letter.

Having represented law enforcement and the US, and having been both in the Lowdown, and also then out of the Lowdown, threats were now pretty old.

I still gave them all equal weight.

I opened my eyes and looked around me. Not too far away I could see the Century Spire Tower; the other towers around it all fallen and crumbled in assorted heaps of silver and black. In a different direction, the Everglades. In another direction, and just barely, because of the distance, The Port.

I used to always wonder why there were the ones that like to destroy innocent people and destroy beautiful things. Why there were the ones that love to harm anyone around them so much.

I still wondered that at eighteen, but less. Because at that point I had seen and I had learned, at least a thousand different times, that what goes around comes back around.

A voice came through in my mind.

"You're really not slowing down."

"I never slow down for anyone, Kayles." I surveyed the roads and the old rivers of dirty water, now just trenches of soil and chopped-off branches and dead leaves- barely a habitat for even the squirrels. I planted some sunflowers there once; a typhoon killed all of them. "Ever. You got Sam to come with?"

"I'm here!" Another voice- Sam's.

I smiled.

"Thank God," I said.

"Well, you certainly sound thrilled," said Sam.

"He's just glad to have someone else who understands going fast," Kaylee babbled.

A flash of lightning- far to the east where I had come from. I glanced in that direction for a moment, and then after about twelve seconds, thunder. It shook even the air, hard, like an earthquake.

"Jesus!" Sam sneered. Her voice hardened as she spoke. "Is there a storm coming?"

Sam Shilberg and her brother were both adopted; they had virtually no similarities. Sam was a telepath and as fast as I was, minus all the flying.

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"The plants say yes," replied Kaylee.

"They know these things?" I said.

"Chaquille said if I dye my hair black and braid it and take painkillers I'll be a drug addict," Sam rambled.

I didn't even think. "That's his opinion."

"He's projecting!" Kaylee laughed. "It's what some people do. You don't need to read minds to know that."

I deposited myself on an abandoned scrapyard north of the Lowdown, first tumbling forwards, and then sideways, and finally backwards to slow down. Caleb was already there waiting.

The air smelled like rusty metal and rainwater mixed with ocean salt after a hot day. It smelled like what a desert might smell like, if a desert was near the equator where there used to be jungles and if it was where monsoons blew. I could almost taste the seawater in the air, as I slowed my breathing and listened to the chirping of tropical insects. It was 6:45 PM, an hour and fifteen minutes before the time at which we all agreed to convene.

I glanced up at the sky above us; the orange glow had shifted subtly to red, and was now slowly turning a deep shade of violet. Clouds obscured some of the light from the star that burned far away, as it moved away even farther.

I was the heavy heart that flew. The one that still smiled at people.

I said a prayer in my mind and wished Crayon was here.

"And you still don't believe your mind is a beautiful place," he told me.

He had a voice that gasconaded. It was almost condescending. Almost dictatorial. All I knew was that I'd heard that enough- much more than enough- in eighteen years. Much more than enough already in my first ten.

The way he spoke this last statement was exactly that.

"You're about to turn away," Caleb emphasized. "Don't."

Caleb Samuel Davenport, a man much larger than I was, a telepath and a technopath and one of the only steady things I had known. To me he was like a fire that glowed in a living room fireplace. The kind of thing your pet dogs or cats would go sit beside. To me he was that place where you'd be if you wanted marshmallows on a stick, if you wanted to tell your elementary school friends stories around a campfire and laugh until you fell asleep in the morning at 5 AM.

I was shutting people out of my head- something I rarely ever did. If Kaylee or Sam wanted to continue the conversation with me, they'd have to do it another time.

He frowned.

"You've never done that before," probed Caleb. "Is it something I did?"

His eyes were like glittering silver gems. It was evening and he usually shaved in the early mornings; at this time the hair on his face was more than just light 5 o'clock shadow.

"JOHNSON JUNK YARD," read a broken-down sign above me and to my left. "WHERE TRASH AND JUNK BELONG, WHERE USELESS THINGS ARE APPRECIATED."

It made me smile; I belonged here and I was appreciated here.

Caleb took both my hands and pulled me to him.

Because of the physical size difference any embraces between me and him were mostly him with his arms around me and me with my arms folded rather awkwardly in front of me, my hands usually clasped fists on his chest; my face turned to one side, usually the left.

I closed my eyes.

"Remember when you said I was the only thing," insisted Caleb, "the only thing you believed would never hurt you?"

I did say that, once, five hundred years ago.

Probably under duress or something.

I held my breath.

His voice dropped to a whisper. "Have I ruined that?"

I inhaled. He smelled like soap and brand new jeans from the store and laundry detergent and like a big fluffy dog you would always take with you to the beach on sunny Saturday afternoons, like something that I wanted to hug all the time.

"No," I said, my eyes still closed and the right side of my face still pressed to his chest where his heart was, its beat as strong and steady as its owner. I furrowed my eyebrows, my face contorted for just a split second. "Of course not. Don't be ridiculous, you haven't done anything."

He was like a big thing, squishing me from above, with his face. He was pressing it into my hair and I liked it.

"Then why does it feel like I have?" he faltered. "Why does it seem like every time I want you near me, you run away?"

I had two choices.

One: I could be blunt and just tell him, "Hey. I'm like that with everyone. Don't feel too bad about it."

Two: I could be blunt and just tell him, "We have a killer to catch, literally. And if I don't help to stop them I am literally going to kill myself, probably by jumping in front of one of the bullet trains. You'll have to find some other boyfriend to wear your jacket."

I went with choice zero and pulled back, for a moment, just to look him in the eye- because to me his eyes were maybe the most captivating things I had ever been fortunate enough, to have the opportunity to see.

"You're breathtaking," he murmured.

I said nothing.

He swallowed. "Do you know that?"

Why did I love his accent so much?

I did what I always did when I felt like it- I closed my eyes, pushed up on my toes, positioned my chin above his left shoulder, and moved my cheek against his. Idly, gently, slowly; softly like the songs I wrote on supermarket receipts. I would imagine some sort of big cute animal, like Aslan from Narnia. He was so adorable! The cutest lion ever, as far as I could tell from the ancient poster in my school library. To me there was something about the prickly and rough surface of Caleb's face that I loved, something about the sensation that calmed me, each time I did it. It was different for him- as my breaths slowed, his would always turn fast, uneven, ragged breaths almost. I would both hear them and feel them; directly against my right ear, along with the rapid contracting and expanding of his chest against mine.

Still I said nothing; I let the calm take over me.

Caleb was just barely audible, when he spoke to me again.

"Do you know how much I love when you do that?" he whispered. Panting almost, like he was short of breath.

I pulled back again. "No," I said. "I don't read anyone's mind. You know that."

"Maybe you should," said Caleb.

"It doesn't feel right to me." I smiled. "You don't need to agree with me. It's just my opinion, how I feel. I'm completely respectful of all other telepaths."

"The only other telepath here is me," Caleb insisted.

"Can I ask you to kiss me?" I said.

"Aw, Chris..." he trailed off, still breathing like a wolf after a thousand-mile sprint to catch a magical flying loaf of bread. "You're about to get more than just a kiss."

Saying that you got a soul

Just because you know that you are going to hell

Said I don't want to be near you

Said I don't want to be near you

Do we believe when we say, "never really going to need?"