Chapter 5: The Unwanted Gift

January 2nd - February 11th, 1989

It all started very innocently when on the Monday we returned to school from the holiday break, Dr. Higgs asked me to clear out the drawing room on the third floor.

As we walked hand in hand up the stairs after school, Jennifer asked, “What exactly did you two do up here anyway?”

I simply said, “We were part of the peer tutor program when it started two years ago, then we worked on a special art project the room was set up for.”

“Art?” she echoed in surprise. “I never thought of you being into art.”

I just let myself smile at her, knowing she had accepted my words without question. It would have been so easy to flat out lie about things, but I couldn’t lie to her. Mislead her, yes. Stretch the truth, yes. Lie? Well, I didn’t want to start because I knew I wouldn’t be able to keep my telepathy from her forever.

As we walked up to the drawing room, Jennifer pointed to the room across the hall and asked, “What’s in there?”

“That one was ... Well, Joey, Suzi, and I made it our private room. We can look at it later, okay? I want to open this room up just in case it’s cold in there.”

“Private room?” she echoed.

As I suspected, the room was a chilly fifty or so degrees. Being on the third floor and not used for the most part, the rooms usually didn’t require much heat to keep things from freezing. After showing Jennifer the filing cabinet where the drawings were, I left to go downstairs to turn up the heat. I never understood why the rooms themselves didn’t have thermostats. In the winter, the rooms were usually chilly or too hot simply from changes in the outdoor temperature, wind or even the sun hitting them.

While I was down in the utility room, I grabbed two boxes I figured would be just about right to put the drawings in to take home. Joey had wanted to get copies made so we each had a set, but we both agreed that could be done later when we had more time for things like that.

I was about halfway up the stairs from the second to the third floor when I heard Jennifer’s horrific and painful cry. The boxes went in two different directions as I jettisoned their extra bulk and hightailed it back to the office as fast as I could.

I found Jennifer crying but calming down in the corner opposite from the desk and filing cabinet she had been sitting at when I left. I immediately walked up to her and checked her over visually, then finally asked, “Jennifer, what’s wrong? What happened?”

“I was just looking at your drawings and I ... I ... One of them HURT me!” she said, clamping her arms around me in a tight hug.

I savored the moment deeply, temporarily forgetting everything but the woman I loved whom I cuddled gently in my arms. She was so innocent, so dependent on the love and care of others. She was almost fragile, especially if a drawing of a symbol could cause her to...

I said urgently, “Wait. Did you say one of the drawings hurt you?”

“Yes,” she said, turning her head to face the desk while it stayed flat against my upper chest.

“One of those,” she said, pointing at the somewhat scattered pile of pencil-drawn symbols. “I was just looking through them, seeing if I could recognize any of them, and...” she stopped and flinched.

“Jennifer, show me, please? It’s very important,” I said while my heart pounded in my chest.

“But...” she said as I tried to move us closer. “But it hurt me...”

I sighed, then hooked her eyes with mine and let that familiar feeling form.

“How can a drawing hurt you, Sweetie? How?”

“I don’t know,” she said, relaxing in my gaze. “I guess it can’t ... okay...”

She broke our eye contact, then walked timidly up to the desk and examined the few on top without touching them.

“I don’t see it,” she said as I walked up behind her and gently wrapped my arms around her midsection.

“Well? Look through them. The worse thing that could happen is you get a paper cut.”

She hesitated, but then she felt ashamed of being so timid in front of me and started uncovering them one by one.

“I guess you’re right,” she said about halfway through them. “I mean, how can a silly picture hurt you? But something made me ... EEEKKK!!!”

Even as Jennifer grabbed me and buried her face into my chest shaking all over with her fright, my only reaction was to slowly fold my arms around her as I stared at the symbol she had reached.

Before me was the pencil drawing of the symbol that had been the hardest to draw simply for what it was. Joey and I had claimed it to be our favorite of the bunch just because it had been so hard to obtain, and the colored version was currently framed and hanging in my room after bringing it home from college last year.

It was the universal symbol for pain, and after having God knows how many flashbacks and colliding thoughts, my mind finally tuned back into my surroundings, and I gently pulled Jennifer away from my body and looked deeply into her eyes.

“Jennifer, it’s okay. There’s nothing to be afraid of. Let’s go to the other room. There’s something I want to show you.”

I carefully covered up the pain symbol before we moved towards the door, but then Jennifer dashed out ahead of me. Jennifer kept her back to the door while I caught up with her and then guided her across the hall to the other room’s door.

She was so upset from the experience that she didn’t even take notice of the furnishings in the room. If my own mind hadn’t been churning away from all the possibilities and resulting consequences, I would have realized that she was struggling with something.

I guided her to the couch and we both sat down lost in our own thoughts, but when I felt her shudder, I snapped myself out of it and asked her what was wrong.

“I ... I can’t get it out of my head,” she said pitifully. “I don’t want to think about it, but I can’t stop.”

I quickly pulled my coin out from under my shirt, pulled it out of the white gold holder, and said urgently, “Then here. Think about this and tell me what you feel.”

After taking it from me, she asked, “What is it?” as her expression and voice filled with wonder.

I couldn’t even answer her as I experienced an overwhelming amount of positive emotions flowing through me from seeing she truly did feel something from my coin.

“Tim? It makes me feel happy inside. And ... warm and tingly to my fingers. It’s wonderful.”

Looking up at me, she began, “ Where did you get...” but got caught up in my eyes filled with love.

It happened again ... And this time, there was something even more magical to it. We felt as if we were reaching out to each other’s souls and embracing them as we met halfway for our kiss, and then sank down onto the couch as we felt our hearts beat as one.

Losing ourselves in our sharing of our love for each other, there was no hesitation or resistance when I pulled Jennifer on top of me as we continued to kiss. The kissing was of the most gentle and loving kind, and while there still was no tongue involved, it was still very wet and stimulating.

Yes, I got a hardon, and yes Jennifer had felt it when it pressed against her thigh. But there was this new binding trust between us, one that told us both that we would not have sex until she was ready, and for now that meant waiting until she was eighteen with a wedding ring on her finger from me.

We kissed for what seemed like a very long time, pausing to catch our breath once in a while before gazing into each other’s eyes and being pulled back into our kiss.

When we finally had had enough for the time being, Jennifer sighed happily and closed her eyes while I stroked her back from her neck all the way down to just above her waist.

“Tim?”

“Hmmm?”

“Can I see that coin again?”

“You had it last...” I said before gently moving us so I could look upon her face.

I stared intensely at her while focusing all the energy and life I had in me into projecting a single telepathic message...

“I love you too,” she answered me aloud.

She didn’t catch my expression when she had confirmed my suspicion. She still had her eyes closed from feeling very peaceful and relaxed from my kisses and caresses.

I was about to announce it to her just like that, but luckily I got a hold of myself and calmed down enough to think rationally for a minute. Using my symbolic sight, I located the coin, reached onto the floor for the coin, then placed it against her lips, and was rewarded with her smile.

And then her eyes opened...

I don’t know what it was about her eyes, but they seemed brighter than ever before. Like as if something had awakened within her that had been dormant all her life. But this something wasn’t related to do with the coin or telepathy. It was much more important, and nothing supernatural about it.

When she pulled the coin from her lips, I kissed the back of her hand and then rolled her off me, giving her the couch, figuring she would want to sit up and examine it more closely.

But she just laid there examining the coin like that, and after a few minutes had passed, I got down on my knees beside her and laid my head on her shoulder to wait patiently for the questions I knew she would ask.

“Where did you get this?” she finally asked.

“My dad gave it to me when we met. His dad gave it to him, but I don’t know where my grandfather got it from. He’s dead now, so we’ll probably never know.”

“How can a coin ... Does it make you feel good when you hold it?”

“Yes, a little. It doesn’t make my fingers tingle, but it does to Joey.”

“Who?” she said, looking away from the coin for the first time since I had rolled her off me.

“You know. Suzi’s boyfriend.”

“Oh, him. How come you never showed this to me before?”

She was back to looking at the coin again but was glancing over at me every couple of seconds just to see if I was going to answer or not. I wasn’t sure exactly how to answer her, so I simply told her the straight out truth.

“Well, because of what it is, what it can do. Most people can’t feel anything from it. Only special people, Jennifer. People like me, my mom and dad, Joey, and now you...”

“What do you mean, special people? I’m not special. You are, but I’m not.”

“Now don’t start that again,” I said lovingly but firmly. “You are special, and this proves it.”

I sighed and said, “Jennifer, we need to have a long talk, but not here. I think the best thing to do would be to take you home and then tell you, Lee, and your dad about what this means.”

She frowned, then looked at me for a long time before smiling a sweet smile and saying, “You’re being awfully mysterious about this. This isn’t one of your surprises, is it?”

I couldn’t help but smile back at her as I softly said, “Sweetie, this time, I had nothing to do with it, but yes. It will be a surprise. A wonderful surprise. But...”

“But?”

“I’ll tell you in the car, okay? Help me pack the drawings up and we’ll take them with us. Oh, now, don’t get scared. I’ll pack the ones you were looking at. The others are ... Well, they’re harmless. Nothing about them could possibly hurt you.”

“The ones I was looking at? They can hurt me?” she said in a little girl’s voice.

“To tell you the truth, nobody has ever had any kind of reaction like you had. I don’t know why you did. Jennifer, just trust me, okay? I know what I’m talking about.”

She sat up and nodded her head, then hesitantly offered me back my coin.

“You can hang on to it if you like,” I said, then basked in the light shining from her smiling face.

I retrieved the boxes I had dropped over an hour before and carefully collected the drawings on the desk and put them in one. Jennifer wouldn’t even come into the room until I finished with those. Even afterward, she was very skittish about messing with the rest, but I couldn’t blame her. The pain she had felt had been intense. I mean, think of it like this. You walk up to a door you’ve never been through before and when you take hold of the knob, you get a huge electrical shock that knocks you flat. You’d be a little skittish about opening unfamiliar doors yourself for a while, and that’s pretty much what Jennifer was feeling too.

Joey and I had organized the symbols very carefully for we hadn’t labeled any of them for security reasons. We had two full-sized filing cabinets of drawings, and even though the eight drawers weren’t anywhere near being full, it was still a lot of drawings to handle, especially when I didn’t want them getting mixed up.

Four hundred thirty-seven drawings of a hundred fifty-four symbols, all drawn by numerous students on special nonyellowing heavyweight paper. About a third of them were drawn artistically in color, but most of those just didn’t look right to me with the colors the artist had used. Only about twenty of them Joey and I had drawn ourselves but looking through them brought back all sorts of memories of the time we were the closest of pals.

I easily shook those feelings off once we had finished without any more surprises. Yes, Joey and I had had some good times, but I felt our time had passed and now it was time for me and Jennifer to share as much and more as I had with Joey and Suzi combined.

“But?” Jennifer suddenly said in the car when we pulled out of the school’s parking lot.

“But what?” I asked, my mind still thinking about the things Joey and I had done that I wanted to do with Jennifer too.

“I don’t know. Before we packed the drawings up, you said but, then said you’d tell me in the car.”

“Oh. Sorry,” I said, grinning at her.

Then I got serious, for I knew I had to be careful so she wouldn’t disbelieve me when I told her later.

“Well?” she said when I took too long in thinking.

“Jennifer, you know I would never lie to you or try to trick you, don’t you?”

“Yes,” she said cautiously.

“Well, just remember that when I start saying some pretty wild things, okay? I’m really worried you won’t believe what I’m going to be telling you and your sister and dad.”

“Why? Oh, come on, Tim. Why can’t you tell me now? If it makes you feel any better, I’ll pretend like I didn’t know when you tell me in front of Lee and Daddy.”

“You don’t understand. The reason I need to tell you with your dad and sister around is so you can take their word for it, not just mine.”

“You’re right,” she sighed. “I don’t understand. Well, I just hope it is worth all this suspense.”

When she didn’t say anything more, I concentrated on working out how I was going to do it while Jennifer pulled my coin out and started testing it out on different areas on her body.

By the time I pulled into her driveway, Jennifer had her eyes closed while gently stroking her left cheek with the coin. I was tempted to just sit there with the engine running watching her like that, for she looked so precious.

I couldn’t help but chuckle when she blushed from my stare. But then it happened again, and even though it was nowhere near as magical or long as the last time, the kiss still sent us both to cloud nine for a while.

We were already finished with the kiss when Lee tapped on the window with her knuckle and startled us.

“I saw that,” she teased with a wicked smile as her boyfriend led her to his van parked on the street.

While Jennifer went through a much more intense blushing fit, I realized they were going to leave.

“Lee! Wait a sec!” I said, jumping out of the car.

“What?” she said out of the passenger side window.

“Are you going to be gone very long?”

“Just until ten or so. What is it? We’re kind of in a hurry here.”

“Shit. Look. I need to explain some heavy stuff to Jennifer, but I really need you to be there too. It’s really important. I don’t think it can wait until ten.”

She glanced over to her boyfriend, who just gave her a look that meant, “lose this jerk,” then turned back to me with an apologetic expression intending to tell me no.

“Sorry about this. You’ll understand later,” I told her as she got out of the van.

“Hey!” her boyfriend said before she could reply to me.

“What?”

“You want to try tomorrow?”

“Yeah.”

“Okay. I’ll pick you up at three instead.”

“Sounds good,” she said before turning away from him and walking back to the house with me.

As we entered the kitchen, their father said, “Lee? I thought you were leaving?”

Lee said, “I was, but Tim said there was important he needed to tell Jennifer.”

I said, “I know this sounds kind of weird, but could we go sit down in the living room? What I have to tell you is going to be hard to believe, and when I prove it to you, it’s going to be a bit of a shock.”

Mr. Corrigan looked at my serious expression, then asked, “How long will this take? I’m in the middle of fixing our supper.”

I looked down at the two TV dinners lying out on the counter thawing, then looked back at up at him with a questioning look.

He said a little jokingly, “I’m hungry, okay?”

I said with a grin, “Well, I guess we can wait long enough for you to pop them in the oven.”

Lee asked him, “Did you put mine back in the freezer, Dad?”

“Yes, Snookums. Tim, are you hungry? We can pop one in for you too if you like.”

I said, “Yes, thank you. That would be great. I think I’m going to be here a while.”

After Lee went back again to retrieve the one that had been out for her boyfriend, the four TV dinners were “popped” into the oven and then we all went into the living room for my little show and tell.

I began, “Before I start making you think I’m nuts, Jennifer, let Lee and your dad hold my coin.”

Jennifer said with enthusiasm, “That’s a good idea. Here, Lee. This makes you feel...”

I cut her off, saying, “Let’s just let them work that out, okay Jennifer?”

“Oh, all right!” she said a little grumpily. She had had her fill of my mysteriousness.

“Okay,” Lee said a little suspiciously while turning the coin over and looking at the other side. “What do I do with it?”

Jennifer asked, surprised, “Don’t you feel anything?”

“What do you mean? It’s just a plastic coin.”

Before Jennifer could respond, I said, “Let your dad see it, Lee.”

She handed it over to Mr. Corrigan, then after he silently looked at it for a few moments, Jennifer blurted out, “Don’t you feel anything?” in a more desperate tone than before.

“What am I supposed to feel, Pumpkin?” he said, flipping it, then handing it back to her.

Jennifer stared at the coin a few moments, then looked over at me with this confused expression on her face.

I said, “I’m sorry, Jennifer. I told you only certain people can feel anything from my coin.”

Lee asked impatiently, “Are you two going to tell us what’s going on?”

Ignoring Lee, Jennifer asked me, “But why not them? Why me?”

I shrugged and said, “I don’t know, Jennifer. Now that we know they don’t feel anything from it, why don’t you go ahead and tell them what you feel while I think a minute.”

As Jennifer began describing the sensations the coin gave her, I watched for their reactions, and as I had expected, they were very skeptical.

I didn’t comment as Lee and their dad voiced their disbelief, and just waited for one of them to let the other do the talking. That person turned out to be Mr. Corrigan, so while Lee and Jennifer argued like sisters do, I managed to get the coin from Jennifer and handed it to him with the words, “This is what Jennifer feels.”

I was the only one to hear Mr. Corrigan’s gasp while I simulated the sensations which Jennifer had described. I only kept it up for maybe thirty seconds, but it was more than enough to convince him we were serious.

“Lee,” he said faintly moments before I stopped my simulation.

“Lee!” he nearly shouted afterward. “She’s not lying. I just felt it too.”

“What?” both girls said.

“How?” Jennifer asked, then caught sight of my grin and said, “Tim?”

“Lee? Your turn,” I said, handing her the coin and giving Jennifer a wink.

Lee said crankily, “You’re all making me really ... Oh my God!”

“Tim!” Jennifer cried with impatience and confusion as Lee sat very still staring at the coin in her hand, almost like she was afraid to move.

“Hang on a second,” I said, wanting to give Lee at least the same amount of time her dad had.

“You said they couldn’t feel anything, but now they can? Tim, please tell me what is going on?!? I’m starting to think you’re doing it on purpose!”

I killed my simulation when I saw she was about ready to burst into tears. I winced, having not considered that I might scare her with this, but then I knew how to fix it without having to alter my plans.

As I felt that familiar feeling, I resisted letting a full empathic connection form and just let it calm her down.

Her father said, “I’m a little confused myself.”

Still holding the coin like it would bite her if she moved her hand, Lee asked, “How can a coin make you feel good just by holding it?”

Giving each of them a dose of my seriousness empathetically, I said, “This is where it gets a little hard to believe. Most people can’t feel anything from the coin, but when someone does, it means they have this ... potential or gift. My mom and dad both have it, I have it, both my grandfathers ... and Jennifer has it.”

Lee asked, “But we don’t?”

“No, you don’t.”

Sitting back, deciding he wasn’t going to buy it, their father asked, “What is this gift that Jennifer supposedly has?”

I thought to Lee and Mr. Corrigan, <Telepathy>

“Telepathy?” Lee snorted from missing the fact I hadn’t said it aloud while watching Jennifer take back my coin.

“Telepathy?” Jennifer echoed. “Why did you say that, Lee?”

<Lee, look at me. I’m not kidding here. See? I’m not moving my mouth at all. Don’t get scared, Lee, please? Your dad is staying pretty calm, which is good because I don’t want to upset Je... >

Jennifer interrupted, “Hey! Why are you all staring at each other?”

I held my breath as her two astounded family members stared at her for several moments before exchanging glances between themselves.

“Okay ... What’s going on?” Jennifer said, breaking out into a smile that faded very quickly.

I decided it was time to tell her, for she wasn’t going to last much longer without getting very upset from the suspense.

I got up from my chair, and after Lee vacated her spot on the couch for me, I sat down next to Jennifer, took her hands into mine and looked into her eyes as I said, “Jennifer, if I was to tell you that I could read your mind, would you believe me?”

Jennifer frowned and said skeptically, “Read my mind?”

“Yes. Like think of something I couldn’t possibly know about, something that isn’t private, but you’ve never told me anything about.”

After glancing at her sister and father, Jennifer asked nervously, “Why are you all staring at me?”

I said, “Blue and white shirt, striped, has a lopsided collar, and you ... You loved it because it had a little flower embroidered into it right there,” I said, touching the spot just above and to the left of her left breast.

“How did you...”

“I read your mind, silly. That’s what this is all about. I’m telepathic, and so are you, Sweetie. So are you.”

Jennifer’s face went through an amazing number of expressions, twice she had started to laugh but it never got beyond the first couple notes of her beautiful sing-song laugh.

She finally asked, “You’re joking, right?”

I said, “No, I’m very serious. Ask your dad or Lee. I was talking to them in their heads when you thought we were just staring at each other.”

“It’s true, Pumpkin,” Mr. Corrigan managed to say. “I don’t really know if I believe it entirely yet, but he was talking to me without moving his lips.”

“Then do it to me?” Jennifer said a moment later.

“Well, that’s not easy for me to do. I’ve told you you’re very special, and before this afternoon, I believed you would never be able to hear my thoughts. There’s a lot I have to tell you, all of you, some of it you won’t like to hear but you need to hear it anyway.”

I first told them about my own rediscovery of my abilities when I was in eighth grade, and how my mom had helped me gain control over them. I was pretty careful to ease the subject of altering someone’s mind into it all, but I ended up having to demonstrate it by having Lee do a perfectly synchronized ring around the rosy with me before they believed me.

At that point, I told them about how I discovered Jennifer was immune to my telepathy. That was probably the most confusing part for Jennifer. She didn’t understand how she supposedly had the gift and yet be immune to it too. I guess what made it so confusing was, I didn’t understand it myself.

I was very relieved to find she was accepting my word about these things, especially since I kept having to demonstrate it to her sister and dad when they started doubting me again. But with Jennifer, she never doubted anything I was saying, and only when she didn’t understand did I have to go into more detail or something.

Mr. Corrigan really surprised me by the way he took it all in stride. I mean, even though the whole concept scared him and he didn’t want to believe in it, he kept his mind open because he felt he had to at least consider the possibility that everything I was telling him was true.

Lee, on the other hand, kept challenging my explanations. Even while we were eating the TV dinners, Lee kept asking questions that I was able to answer easily enough, but I ended up being the last one done eating because of all the talking I had done.

Once I saw they all had a fair understanding of what telepathy could do, I said quite simply, “I’d like to help Jennifer to develop her telepathy, but there are some dangers in doing so.”

“Dangers?” Jennifer asked.

“If there’s a risk in it harming her...” Mr. Corrigan began.

“No, not her. Well, not exactly. I can’t ever believe it ever happening to Jennifer, but ... Telepaths are very susceptible to what I think is called the God syndrome. You know the saying, Power corrupts...”

“Absolute power corrupts absolutely,” he finished for me. “You’re saying she might lose control of herself.”

“Worse than that. She might alter you both in ways you can’t even imagine.”

Jennifer said in a small voice, “I couldn’t do anything like that.”

“I know you wouldn’t now, but ... It changes you, Sweetie. You stop seeing others as your equals because they can’t stop you from making them what you want them to be. Every telepath I’ve met uses people in one way or another, and even I have done some things which I’m not proud of.”

“Like what?” Jennifer asked softly, almost afraid.

“I’d rather not get into that tonight,” I sighed. “I’ll tell you someday, but it’s not that simple because of ... Well, because I wasn’t myself when I did those things. I’m here to offer myself to teach you what I can while at the same time hopefully keep you from corrupting yourself with it.”

I turned to her father and said, “I’d never take advantage of her, sir. Even if I didn’t love her, I’d still wouldn’t because ... because...”

When I failed to find a way to express my devotion to not becoming a monster, Mr. Corrigan asked carefully, “What exactly are you asking of me?”

“I’m asking you for your permission to try and help your daughter develop her abilities without letting them corrupt her. She has it within her, the coin says so. Without my help, she may never develop them, or she may develop them on her own without any sort of guidance.”

“I see,” he said, looking at his younger daughter who met his eyes with her own. After a moment of consideration, he asked, “Well, Pumpkin? What do you think of all this?”

“I don’t know, Daddy. I get excited thinking about it, but it scares me too. Lee? What do you think I should do?”

Lee had been clearing the table and was still standing, but with Jennifer’s question, she suddenly felt the need to sit down and did so by flopping herself into her chair at the table.

“I don’t know, kiddo,” she sighed. “I think I understand what Tim is afraid of happening. I mean, I was just daydreaming, and...”

“What, Lee?”

“If I could make people do what I wanted them to ... Well, I know I wouldn’t be able to resist ... You know ... The guys and all.”

“Oh,” Jennifer said a little down. But then she asked, “But do you think I could resist?”

“I don’t know, shrimp. I wouldn’t be surprised if you couldn’t control yourself with it. But you’re definitely not after the boys like I was at your age.”

“No, and I’ve promised Mom I wouldn’t do anything like that until I was 18 and married,” she reminded everyone. “I won’t be bad. I know I won’t. And I can’t think of anyone better than Tim who could show me the way, can you?”

Mr. Corrigan said, “Well, I think what we need is some time to think about it. Tim, thank you for being so frank about all this. I appreciate your offer for help and everything, but right now I think I’d really like to be alone with my family. Do you understand?”