as soon as she saw me, because they were already pulling up. I expected the same two guys from the crazy night that set all this in motion, but two different officers got out of the car. They seemed to know of us, nonetheless: they approached with knowing grins.
“Don’t arrest me. I’m a law-abiding Brown student. Arrest her. She’s an unregistered telekinetic.” I tried to gesture toward Beth.
“I just registered at school,” she said to an officer.
“You mean they took you as a student?”
“That, too, but the director also helped me register legally. As of five minutes ago, I’m an official, government-recognized, Other-Talented Healer, telekinetic.” She pulled a cardboard slip out of her pocket with “temporary” emblazoned in red across the top. I’d never paid enough attention at the registration centers at the mall to realize that they received actual licenses or identity cards.
While I was musing on that, they placed the cuffs on me rather more roughly than was necessary and forced me into the back of the police car. It was a more welcome feeling than the strange half-paralysis my sister had had me under. I guess they read me my rights, but I didn’t hear them. I looked out at Beth and Carlos’s wife placing him back into the wheelchair like a life-sized doll, and my elbow smashed awkwardly into the door as I reached futilely toward the object of my affection. The car started up. “Wait,” I shouted. “Isn’t my sister coming with me?”
She lowered her face to the window and my life took on a distant quality, like I was watching a scratchy videotape of it long after the fact. I heard her muffled voice tell me something about working on my case and getting me out soon. I had to let her get away with such a lame explanation because I didn’t have a different option, and also I was going into shock. Only moments before, my life had been on the verge of a fairy tale ending. True love and happiness forever had been on my horizon, and I had been on the cusp of grabbing it with both hands. Now, my freedom hung in the balance of a scale apparently controlled by my unremarkable little sister.
They put me in a cell by myself, probably because Beth had said I was sociopathic. It was antiseptic and uncluttered, and I had the notion that this was what it had been like for her to grow up in that plastic-encased, sanitized room in our house. “How can this be? How can this be?” I howled all night long.
In the morning, feeling sheepish, I asked the woman who brought me my breakfast whether such night howling didn’t happen all the time here.
“I’m sorry, miss, I’m not allowed to talk to you.”
That left me speechless. Was I meant to spend who knew how long in this place with nothing to do and no one to talk to? I wasn’t sociopathic, but I soon would be.
No one rescued me that day or the next. I was becoming accustomed to my new life, which consisted of pacing, crying, and imagining Beth going to the mall and doing all those stupid things she liked with Carlos and his wife, earning A+ grades at her new school, and learning the latest in fourth dimension design possibilities at RISD. My camera-ready tears gave way to clenched fists and a low, constant growl I couldn’t seem to suppress by the time they let me out and handed me a plastic bag with my personal objects.
I walked out to the foyer and found that my rescuers were, improbably, my parents. They looked shabbily extravagant, wearing bright colors but with drawn faces and fast-blinking eyes. I suddenly preferred the blank austerity, the clean slate, of my jail cell. Through no fault of their own, the faces of these people only reminded me of everything I’d tried to leave behind when I came to Providence. I don’t think my face even registered recognition. When my mother embraced me, my growl reverberated in her necklace.
“I think she’s still in shock,” she whispered to my father.
Still? More like, constantly bombarded with
“Don’t arrest me. I’m a law-abiding Brown student. Arrest her. She’s an unregistered telekinetic.” I tried to gesture toward Beth.
“I just registered at school,” she said to an officer.
“You mean they took you as a student?”
“That, too, but the director also helped me register legally. As of five minutes ago, I’m an official, government-recognized, Other-Talented Healer, telekinetic.” She pulled a cardboard slip out of her pocket with “temporary” emblazoned in red across the top. I’d never paid enough attention at the registration centers at the mall to realize that they received actual licenses or identity cards.
While I was musing on that, they placed the cuffs on me rather more roughly than was necessary and forced me into the back of the police car. It was a more welcome feeling than the strange half-paralysis my sister had had me under. I guess they read me my rights, but I didn’t hear them. I looked out at Beth and Carlos’s wife placing him back into the wheelchair like a life-sized doll, and my elbow smashed awkwardly into the door as I reached futilely toward the object of my affection. The car started up. “Wait,” I shouted. “Isn’t my sister coming with me?”
She lowered her face to the window and my life took on a distant quality, like I was watching a scratchy videotape of it long after the fact. I heard her muffled voice tell me something about working on my case and getting me out soon. I had to let her get away with such a lame explanation because I didn’t have a different option, and also I was going into shock. Only moments before, my life had been on the verge of a fairy tale ending. True love and happiness forever had been on my horizon, and I had been on the cusp of grabbing it with both hands. Now, my freedom hung in the balance of a scale apparently controlled by my unremarkable little sister.
They put me in a cell by myself, probably because Beth had said I was sociopathic. It was antiseptic and uncluttered, and I had the notion that this was what it had been like for her to grow up in that plastic-encased, sanitized room in our house. “How can this be? How can this be?” I howled all night long.
In the morning, feeling sheepish, I asked the woman who brought me my breakfast whether such night howling didn’t happen all the time here.
“I’m sorry, miss, I’m not allowed to talk to you.”
That left me speechless. Was I meant to spend who knew how long in this place with nothing to do and no one to talk to? I wasn’t sociopathic, but I soon would be.
No one rescued me that day or the next. I was becoming accustomed to my new life, which consisted of pacing, crying, and imagining Beth going to the mall and doing all those stupid things she liked with Carlos and his wife, earning A+ grades at her new school, and learning the latest in fourth dimension design possibilities at RISD. My camera-ready tears gave way to clenched fists and a low, constant growl I couldn’t seem to suppress by the time they let me out and handed me a plastic bag with my personal objects.
I walked out to the foyer and found that my rescuers were, improbably, my parents. They looked shabbily extravagant, wearing bright colors but with drawn faces and fast-blinking eyes. I suddenly preferred the blank austerity, the clean slate, of my jail cell. Through no fault of their own, the faces of these people only reminded me of everything I’d tried to leave behind when I came to Providence. I don’t think my face even registered recognition. When my mother embraced me, my growl reverberated in her necklace.
“I think she’s still in shock,” she whispered to my father.
Still? More like, constantly bombarded with
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