Page 53 of Inherited Light
“Who taught you that?” she asked as I stroked her cheek.
“Cinn, actually. When I started school, I spent countless days at home sick. Only I wasn’t sick, I was confused. I didn’t understand why I could feel things so strongly just by looking at someone.”
“Example?” she asked.
I thought about it for a minute and then held up my finger. “In kindergarten, we had a guinea pig who lived in a cage against the wall. We took him out and let him run around the carpet with us once a day. One day my regular teacher was gone and we had a substitute. She told us we couldn’t take Sammy out because she didn’t know how to take care of him. Everyone but one boy obeyed. He took Sammy out of the cage without telling anyone and Sammy ran away.” She grimaced and I nodded. “Right, it was terrible the next day when Miss Kimberly returned and Sammy had gone MIA. After talking to the janitor, they told her he would likely never be found, so best to prepare us for the inevitable, at least in kindergarten terminology. She sat us down and told us we would probably never see Sammy again, but it wouldn’t be because he died. She spun a whole tale about how Sammy had gone off on a grand adventure. It placated all the kids but one. Travis sat across from me at the table every day and after she told us about Sammy, it was time for snack. We sat down at the tables and when I stared across the table at Travis his sadness and terror washed over me in a way all I could do was cry. I sat there wailing and in seconds Travis had tears running down his face, too. Miss Kimberly thought we had fought and took us in the hallway. Travis told her he lost his dog yesterday and it got hit by a car and died. He was afraid the same thing would happen to Sammy. As Miss Kimberly comforted him, calmness covered me like a blanket and I stopped crying. She took us back to the room and not another word was said about the incident.”
“But it scared you as a child?” she asked and I nodded, one brow up in the air.
“Freaked me right out is a better way to say it,” I said and she laughed softly. “I didn’t know what to do. When I was overwhelmed with other’s emotions, I stayed home from school. As I got older I learned to deal with it better by pretending it wasn’t there.”
“How did Cinn change it?” she asked.
I stared up at the ceiling and grimaced. “If I tell you this, you can’t think I’m a kook, okay?”
She shrugged. “You’re sitting here with me. I think you’ve already proven you’re a bit of a kook.”
I laughed and tugged on her nose. “Excellent point, my dear. Long story short, I found a way to shut out the feelings of others by the time I hit third grade. When Cinn left to tour the country, I was barely ten at the time. I missed her so much it physically hurt. After she’d been gone for about six months I had dealt with missing her and the pain lessened, but never disappeared. Then one day I sat at my desk and had intense pain in my belly so strong I burst into tears. I couldn’t stop crying, which by the way for a fourth grader wasn’t even close to cool, and they called my mom. She took me home thinking I had the flu or some other childhood illness. I curled up in a ball and slept until the next morning when I begged off going to school saying I had a stomachache. It was the same day we got a call about Cinn coming home for a break and to see the family.”
“And when she got home?” she asked, using her hand to motion for me to go on.
I swallowed hard and she reached out, wiping a tear off my face as I remembered such a scary time in my life. “She had lost almost fifty pounds and resembled a starving child. It was terrible. I was so excited to see her I shoved the feelings I had away and pretended I didn’t feel her pain. Mostly, I couldn’t ignore her all-encompassing fear, which clouded my mind. I snuck into her room the first night she was home and slept on her floor because I wanted to be sure she didn’t die in her sleep.” She opened her mouth to speak and I held up my hand. “I know, I should have told my parents, but I didn’t know how.”
She lowered my hand. “Not what I was going to say. I was going to say keeping your sister alive is a lot of responsibility for a ten-year-old boy to handle when he doesn’t understand what the problem is.”
I flipped my hand around so I could hold hers in mine. “It was, but thankfully my parents already suspected with her weight loss and her sickly pallor there had to be a problem. The worst part is, she didn’t get up in the morning.”
She cocked her head to the side. “What do you mean?”
“I mean she was so weak she couldn’t get out of bed. She had used all her energy to get home and had nothing left. I got her water, but she threw it up and there was blood everywhere. I was scared, but her fear washed over mine and forced my feet to run toMa?asobbing about how she would die if we didn’t take her to the hospital.Ma?aran into Cinn’s room and witnessed her daughter vomiting blood. She called 911 and after extensive testing they diagnosed her, and saved her.”
“Or you saved her, because you trusted your gift.”
I shrugged. “No, I think onceMa?achecked on her in the morning she would have hit the panic button even without me.”
“There you go again, not giving yourself any credit,” she said, giving me half a smile.
“My intervention in Cinn’s illness only tells half the story, Cat. All those months earlier, when I had pain at school and didn’t know why, was the first time Cinn started to feel poorly. She pushed it and pushed it so she could keep playing, but eventually her body failed and they sent her home. I think they should have put her in a hospital and called us, but things were different then. Anyway, Cinn ended up in the hospital for weeks and I didn’t want to leave her side.”
“Why? Were you afraid of losing her?”
I shook my head. “No, I knew by then she would be okay once the treatment kicked in. I sat by her bed to reassure myself I would know instantly if there was a problem. There came a day when I alerted the nurses to a problem with her feeding tube before it turned into a big problem. After that incident, you couldn’t get me to leave her bedside.”
She frowned. “I’m sure it wasn’t good for you though, Ren. Mentally or physically.”
I laughed sadly and squeezed her hand. “No, it became almost obsessive compulsive and my parents were concerned. They didn’t know about my gift. Only it didn’t feel like a gift; it felt like a curse. They asked one of the hospital counselors to spend time with me while Cinn was at therapy. They called themselves a child life specialist and used play to get kids to let their feelings out.” She nodded and her eyes told me she had plenty of experience with them. “I didn’t know how to talk about it, but as you’ve seen I’m creative and like to draw and build things. As I created a world with Legos I detached myself from all the anguish inside me and it all poured out. The therapist didn’t seem shocked or act horrified by the things I told her, which is what I feared the most. I was afraid people would think I had some kind of freakish power or I was a monster.”
“No, Ren. It’s not like that,” she said soothingly.
I ran my hand down her face and squirmed to get more comfortable on the bed. “No, it’s not, not now, but then I didn’t have the maturity to see it. I spent a lot of time with the counselor over the next few days and she finally asked me if my parents could come in while we played. I told her only mymamá.”
“Because yourmamáis Hispanic and comes from a part of South America where psychic gifts aren’t considered a bad or weird thing,” she answered.
“Gosh, you sound like you have experience with this,” I teased and finally got a solid laugh out of her.
“My aunt, not the one who lived here, but the one who died before my mom, was a psychic.”
I smacked myself in the forehead. “Ahhh, now it makes sense why you don’t think I’m crazy. Of course,” I said slowly.
