Marilyn Kaye - Gifted - Now You See Me

‘Hey, Mom,’ the boys called out to her.

‘Need a hand?’ one of them added.

‘No thanks, dear, I can manage,’ she said cheerfully. She paused and looked at the lawn. The cheerful expression vanished. ‘Oh, no. Charles must be in one of his moods.’

The woman Tracey had seen earlier opened the door for the woman. ‘I’m so sorry, Mrs Temple. I couldn’t stop him. I’m cleaning the mess in the living room now.’

‘I’ll help you,’ Charles’s mother said.

Tracey skipped on ahead of her so she could get back inside the house. She was interested in seeing how Mrs Temple was going to deal with Charles’s behaviour. Would he be grounded, lose privileges?

But Mrs Temple didn’t even go to Charles’s room. She disappeared for a few minutes, and when she returned she was carrying a vacuum cleaner. She joined the other woman in the living room.

This must be normal behaviour for Charles, Tracey realized. His mother was upset, but she didn’t seem at all surprised by the mess he’d made.

She stood there, watching the women clean the carpet and waiting for Charles to come out of his room. Suddenly, out of the blue, a dish came floating across the room. It carried a stack of cookies, and as it whizzed past her, cookies fell off and dropped on the carpet. Mrs Temple sighed, and put the vacuum cleaner down. Picking up cookies along the way, she kept pace with the plate. Tracey went too. When the plate reached Charles’s door, it opened. Mrs Temple went in, and Tracey followed.

Charles was on his bed, watching TV. He barely glanced at his mother. He made the plate settle on his lap, took a cookie and crammed it into his mouth.

This was something new, Tracey realized. Charles had summoned the plate from another room that was not in his line of vision. She’d never before seen Charles move something without being able to see it. So his gift was evolving and changing too, like hers. But he hadn’t shared this with the class.

‘Charles, I want to talk to you,’ his mother said.

Charles didn’t respond. His mother took the remote control and switched off the TV. That got a response.

‘Hey!’

For a moment, Tracey felt like she was watching a replay of what had gone on in Martin’s house. There was a big difference, though, between Martin’s bullying grandfather and Charles’s mother. Mrs Temple sat on the edge of her son’s bed, and gazed down at him with serious concern.

‘Charles, why do you do these things?’ she asked him.

‘What things?’ he mumbled.

His mother’s voice became sterner. ‘Things like ruining the lawn, when you could have gone up the drive to the back door.’

‘I just wanted to see what it felt like, to be on the lawn. I would have walked on it but I can’t walk, in case you haven’t noticed.’

‘Why did you make the vase fall?’

‘Because I wanted to smell the flowers. Only I couldn’t because I can’t stand up.’

She indicated the plate of cookies. ‘You summoned your snack here, and now there are cookies all over the floor. Were you just too lazy to go to the kitchen for them?’

‘I’m not lazy!’

‘Then why did you use your gift?’

Charles pressed his lips together tightly, as if he was trying to keep the words from coming out. His mother waited, but when he still didn’t respond to her question, she sighed and shook her head.

‘I don’t know what to do with you, Charles.’

He had an answer for that. ‘Just leave me alone.’

Silently, Mrs Temple rose and left the room. Tracey remained. Was Charles like this all the time at home? she wondered. Or was this an especially bad day for him? She recalled the expression on his face when he saw his brothers playing basketball. Maybe that was what set off this wave of bad behaviour.

She couldn’t be absolutely, positively sure, but she thought maybe she knew why Charles acted like this. He felt helpless, and he used his gift to feel powerful.

He wasn’t helpless, of course. Being in a wheelchair might give him a disadvantage, but lots of people had disadvantages. Charles used his gift so he wouldn’t have to deal with the fact that he couldn’t walk. He was hung up on being helpless.

She could understand, because she’d given in to helplessness herself. She blamed her parents for ignoring her — but what had she done to help herself? She’d wallowed in self-pity. Amanda had shown her how to break out. And it wasn’t just the clothes, the haircut, the make-up. It was learning to stand up for herself.

That was what Charles had to do — stand up. He couldn’t do it physically, but it was Charles’s attitude that kept him down, not his legs.

He wasn’t the class spy. He was just another sad kid who wanted to be like everyone else. And she could help him. She couldn’t take over his body like Amanda had taken over hers. But she could talk to him, she could be a friend, and maybe he’d open up to her. His family loved him, but they couldn’t understand his needs. She could, because she’d been there.

She wanted to help him, and she had to do it now . When else would she be able to corner him alone like this? If she could make a real connection with him, maybe she could encourage him to connect with the Gifted class, open himself up to the group experience. She knew she couldn’t appear right in front of him, so she dashed out of the room and out of the open front door.

Behind a bush where she knew she wasn’t visible from the house, she closed her eyes and concentrated on becoming visible. She envisioned herself as real and solid, and commanded her body to reappear. When she felt nothing happen, she gritted her teeth and worked harder, concentrating, focusing, directing all her mental energies into becoming herself. She couldn’t remember the process ever taking this much energy before.

Opening her eyes, she realized why. She was still invisible.

And she began to get nervous.

JENNA SANK INTO THE chair in the lounge and looked at the TV screen without even seeing what was on it. She supposed she could take advantage of the fact that for once she was alone in the lounge, and she could watch something she wanted to watch. But she wasn’t in the mood for TV.

She wasn’t in the mood for anything. It was 5 p.m. on a Friday afternoon, and she’d been at Harmony House for three days. What would she be doing if she wasn’t here? Waiting for her mother to come home from work, and thinking about what they might have for dinner. Maybe throwing some things in a backpack for one of the regular Friday night sleepovers at Tracey’s. Checking online to see if there were any good movies playing in town.

Instead, she was imprisoned in a facility for bad teenagers, and she wasn’t bad. And right now, all the really bad teenagers were enjoying visits from friends and families, while she, Jenna Kelley, who had done absolutely nothing wrong, was all alone.

That Landers woman had said she couldn’t have visitors or phone calls for the first forty-eight hours. Those forty-eight hours were over twenty-four hours ago, and she’d had neither a visitor nor a phone call.

Peter Blake, the creepy resident assistant, came into the lounge.

‘It’s visiting hours,’ he announced.

‘Yeah, I know,’ Jenna muttered.

‘Guess you didn’t get any visitors,’ he commented.

Jenna didn’t think she needed to dignify that with an answer.

He turned to leave, but looked back at her from the door. His lips curved unpleasantly into a smile that was more like a sneer. ‘I wonder why.’

So did Jenna. Not one visitor, yesterday or today. Not from her mother, not from Tracey or Emily. She’d harboured a faint hope that Madame might have come to visit her. OK, maybe she acted like she didn’t give a damn what Madame thought about her, but deep in her heart she did trust the teacher, and she thought the teacher trusted her. But now she had to wonder if maybe Madame thought she belonged in this prison.