Chapter 10: Thought Police

Jaime and Keira

«WHAT HAPPENED back there anyway?» Keira asked as they walked to her door. They had reached for each other’s hand, but withdrew before they touched.

«I don’t know ... Can we leave this conversation for later? I’m really drained ... and a little overwhelmed, » Jaime responded.

«Yeah. I get it. Maybe we could get together tomorrow and just go for a walk?»

«I think Dad will agree to letting me bike over in the afternoon, » Jaime grinned. «We should exchange videos. You know we’ll have to explain.» They sent each other the videos from the night.

«Okay ... Until we figure out what happened, maybe we’d better not touch or ... kiss goodnight.»

«Right. Okay. Nite.» Jaime hadn’t considered the possibility of a goodnight kiss. That would be awesome. But delayed.

«Nite ... boyfriend.»

Keira and Her Parents

Of course, neither Jaime’s nor Keira’s night was over. Both knew they needed to talk to their parents about what happened. Otherwise, when a policeman showed up to have them testify, it would be completely unexpected.

“How was your date?” June asked Keira as soon as she walked in the door. Both parents were uncharacteristically up late on this Saturday night, pretending to watch TV and doing a good job of eating popcorn while they waited for their daughter.

“Um ... Mostly good,” Keira ventured. “We had ... or I should say we encountered some problems after the movie.”

“What did he try?” John growled. “I just knew he’d pull something.”

“Please, Dad. It wasn’t about Jaime. Let me describe the whole thing. When the movie ended and we headed toward the exit...” Keira had to go through the entire story, just as Jaime was doing with his father.

Jaime and David

“So, we want to get together tomorrow afternoon to talk about it and to kind of end our date properly, without the police or anything,” Jaime signed to his father.

“I can imagine,” David said. “I’ll call John and June to verify it’s okay. You are okay, aren’t you?”

“Yes, Dad. We were scared and shaken, but neither of us got hurt.” Jaime shared the videos that he and Keira had exchanged. The parents were all terrified for them.

“Okay. You might text Keira and make sure it’s all right for me to call her parents at this hour.”

Jaime sent a text to Keira and received a quick response that her parents were waiting for the call. Jaime nodded at his father and headed to his bedroom.

Jaime and Keira

After a flurry of late-night text messages between Jaime and Keira, mostly detailing how much fun they had and hoped to repeat the best parts of the evening again soon, they finally said their goodnights and went to bed.

He could feel Keira still thinking of him. It wasn’t as strong a connection as when they were close and communicating, and it was nowhere near the connection they’d shared for a minute while holding hands. That had been unreal!

Jaime cut his thoughts off with a picture of a polar bear holding a big floppy fish in its mouth. He’d promised not to try to connect with Keira when they were alone and feeling ... horny. He just couldn’t call another girl to mind at the moment. He wondered if polar bears actually fished through the ice like cartoons showed. He was pretty sure grizzly bears feasted on the fish they caught from rivers and streams. Probably black bears, too, but he couldn’t think of having ever seen an image of a black bear with a fish.

He puzzled over the conundrum until he faded off to sleep.

«Did you sleep okay last night?» Keira asked when he bicycled up to her house.

He didn’t go in, but Keira came out and they began a silent walk to the park. Both were wearing winter jackets and risked holding gloved hands. There was a frisson of excitement there, but nothing like what had overwhelmed them the night before.

«Thanks to the polar bear, » Jaime chuckled. «All night, though, I had images from the theater flashing through my dreams. Some were just the movie or people going ‘Oh, shit!’ when we all got surprised. Others were a little disturbing.»

«Like the kidnapper?»

«Yeah, of course. But there were at least fifty people thinking about things other than the movie. I remember flashes from all of them. Why did we zero in on the kidnapper?»

«Maybe we should back up a little and figure out what happened.»

«We were startled and reached for each other’s hand, I guess, » Jaime said.

They both looked down at their joined hands.

«I don’t feel the same thing now, » she said.

«Maybe it has to be skin to skin.»

«Let’s wait to try that. Why did we reach for each other’s hand? And why did we start holding hands as soon as we left the house this afternoon?»

«It seemed ... sort of natural.»

«Yeah. Natural. Like it was perfectly normal for a boyfriend and girlfriend to hold hands, right?»

«I guess that’s ... Red? Are you my girlfriend?»

«If I wasn’t before, I sure am now. Zip, I’ve never felt anything like that ever before. It was like... »

«Yeah. Like I was in you.»

«More. Like I was you.»

«That’s it. Like there wasn’t any part of me that wasn’t open to you nor any part of you I couldn’t feel. It was too much to comprehend all at once.» Jaime was excited and then stopped suddenly in embarrassment. He grabbed for the polar bear.

«We both had ... thoughts. Since we both had them, we shouldn’t need to be ... embarrassed by them.»

«Aren’t you ever embarrassed by your own thoughts, even knowing no one else can hear them?» Jaime asked. «A lot of times I catch a stray thought from someone and they are immediately embarrassed by their own thought and try to shut it down.»

«Well, yeah. But ... I don’t feel like I should be embarrassed because you heard my thoughts. It might take a little work to get to that point, though.»

«Yeah. Red, are all girls afraid all the time? I mean, that girl Heidi was just as scared of us and the policeman as she was of the kidnapper. And ... I can see you are ... cautious.»

«I’m probably not as fearful as most girls because I can hear the thoughts of people around me. But yeah. We ... It’s kind of programmed into us, or taught to us repeatedly from the time we’re babies. All men are trying to touch us, look at us, see through a gap in our blouse, or up our skirt. All men notice a nipple pop if we don’t have enough layers of clothing between their eyes and us. I know ... you do it, too.»

«I’ll never look at a girl like that again!»

«I think it’s as ingrained in boys as it is in girls. And that being said, I appreciate the sentiment. It tells me a lot about the kind of guy you are. For most girls, it wouldn’t make a difference if you looked or didn’t look. They can’t read your mind. Girls will assume you look—even when your eyes dart away as we look at you. You know the popular meme: Girls would rather meet a bear in the woods than a strange man.»

«Preferably one with a floppy fish in its mouth, » Jaime sighed. The breath was audible as well as internal.

«The thing is, even though I think most boys reflexively look at girls that way, the majority of them are decent enough to shift their thoughts away and would never act on those thoughts. Unfortunately, head deaf girls don’t know which ones are a danger and which are just ... guys.»

«I still don’t understand, though, » Jaime said. «When we touched, I felt us ... expand, I think is the word. I could hear a hundred times more than I usually hear when I’m completely unfiltered. And it wasn’t just crowd noise, like with everyone talking out-loud at once. I could hear each of them individually.»

«Wow! That was more than I got, » Keira said. «I mean, I heard more, but I could only filter out a few distinct thoughts. As soon as I heard the kidnapper, everything else just went away.»

«The girl, Heidi, has a very unhappy homelife. Her mother often sends her out to the movies while she entertains at home. She was afraid if the police called her mother, she’d be punished. She was thinking of running away. That was before the movie ended. After the attack, she was thinking maybe she’d have been better off if he took her.»

«Wow! You got that all in the minute we were holding hands?»

«More. There was a guy hoping his date would really appreciate him going to a chick flick with her. He figured it should at least be worth a blowjob. Another guy was worried he wouldn’t get out in time to meet his dealer. And a guy was thinking that if anyone saw him at the movie alone, he’d get outed as gay and he would kill himself.»

«I guess I’m glad you heard more guys than girls, » Keira said.

«I think most of the girls were in the ‘Oh, shit! No!’ crowd.»

«I was at first, » Keira said. «I don’t know if it was because of the movie or because of the crowd reaction, or because I was holding your hand.»

«You didn’t want to hold my hand?»

«I did want to hold your hand! I do want to. It just surprised me that it happened all at once and then everybody else flooded in.»

Jaime looked at their gloved hands, still clenching each other firmly.

«We could... » Jaime’s thoughts outpaced his conversation as he imagined the tingle of contact when they held hands.

«Yeah. We could try again. But we should prepare ourselves. I mean, we’re pretty isolated here in the park with just a few people around, not like all the people in the theater. Still, touching might send us into each other again and we might ... It scares me a little, Zip.»

«Me, too, » Jaime said. He led her to a picnic table. «How about if I just lay my hand flat on the table and you put yours on top of it. Neither of us will grip. That way, either of us can pull away if it’s too much.»

«Jaime, you’re really kind. That’s one of the things I like about you. Thank you.»

«I just don’t want to be like all those guys girls are afraid of.»

«You’re succeeding.»

They sat on opposite sides of the picnic table and took their gloves off. Jaime extended his hand palm up across the table. Keira took a deep breath and softly laid her hand on his.

They were both prepared for a rush of sensations, but even that preparation was not enough to stem the feelings of pure joy that flooded them both. They smiled across the table as each opened more to the other. Awareness of other people in the park played around the edges of their senses, but they were completely focused on each other.

«Do you really think I’m that pretty?» Keira said in his mind. Only to Jaime, he was asking the question himself and his answer was «How could I think anything else?»

Both teens blushed and mirrored each other biting their lower lips. Something told them that if they stayed like this for long, they might never want to let go. They slowly withdrew their hands.