Chapter 25

I looked Kitty’s mom in the eye and felt the saliva disappear from my tongue. If I couldn’t get angry, I’d have chickened out.

“Hey, Kitty, I gotta talk to your mom,” I said, kissing her. I pushed her towards the dining room door.

“Talk to me?” Judy looked up from the Keurig machine she was loading.

“Yeah, go, Stegosaurus,” I patted Kitty’s ass one more time. Judy frowned at me.

“Or or!” Kitty barked laughing.

I frowned, that seemed almost familiar.

“I swear, my girl’s the only girl that gets excited to be called a multi-ton lizard,” Judy said. “What’s this about? Am I gonna be a grandma? You two have only been together for like two weeks.”

“No ... Well, I don’t know, technically. She’s on the pill, I think,” I said.

“She’s supposed to be,” Judy said. “She’s a bit careless, that one.”

“That’s what I want to talk to you about,” I said.

“Did she hurt somebody?” Judy said. “I try to help her with her scatterbrained idiocy. I finally seemed like we were making some headway, but–”

Four minds kept spinning in and out of the room. I turned, Kitty was waiting, just around the door to the living room. I gestured her to go.

“But you’re talking about me!” Kitty pleaded, interrupting her mother.

“Go. I love you.”

“You’re already using the L-word?” Judy shook her head. “She’s your first?”

“Second, sort of,” my high school girlfriend and now my college harem.

“This’ll either be the best thing ever or the greatest blow up I ever witnessed,” Judy sighed. “I saw Dove’s first heartbreak. It was all I could to keep her from hurting herself.”

“Is that why you crack her brain and leave her dead inside?”

“Huh,” Judy said. “Brain? Not heart?”

“Heart pumps blood,” I said. “I know, the girls want me to be more romantic and–”

“Girls? Shit, you had some of the Psychoryl too?” Judy sighed. “Of course you did. She baked it into cookies for god’s sake. Obviously they were for you. How did she mix up a teaspoon of baking soda ... It comes in a cardboard box with an arm and hammer on it! In the cupboard,” she pointed to the corner of the kitchen. “I was certain I had kept that pill bottle in my work bag. How in the shit did she–”

Judy shook her head. Her muttering stopped and she looked me in the eye

“I’m sorry,” she said. “Is this about you suing? Do you need money? I’m looking the other way with my daughters. You don’t want this to be a fight.”

“I really don’t,” I said. “but if I don’t fight for them, you’ll keep breaking them.”

Kitty had finally closed the door to her bedroom. I had Judy’s singular mind in my mind’s eye. She was spinning at a one. A wobbly mind of confusion and anger. I could just reach in there, take hold and–

“Hey! I’m home!” Stephen’s voice boomed through the house as he came in the side door behind me. “Baby! Jordan...” He walked by me and kissed his wife. “Kitty not home yet? I think Fox said something about his therapist.”

“I’m in my room, Daddy!” Kitty shouted.

Out of sight wasn’t out of earshot, apparently.

Stephen’s face twisted in confusion.

“I’ve been having a talk with Mrs Baker,” I said.

“He seems to think I’ve done something to Kitty,” she said, tickling her husband under his chin.

I knew there was a male mind in the room. I had never felt one change before now. I stepped back, in a hurry, from Judy.

“What?” she asked.

“You’re not doing that to me,” I said.

“Doing what?” Judy frowned.

“Tickling my heart?” Stephen said, with a smile. He opened the fridge and grabbed a beer. “He’s got that Psycho-Real thing too. Only, he wasn’t as stupid as Fox about it.”

“You knew?” Judy said. “And you let Kitty and Dove...”

“He was a good kid beforehand,” Stephen cracked the bottle. “You’re not driving, are you Jordan?”

“Uh, I took the bus,” I said. He handed me the beer and opened the fridge for a second.

“Right, he was a good kid beforehand. Kitty really liked him. Fox vouched for him. Then Kitty got him caught up in your experiments,” Stephen said. “So long as Kitty kept coming home with that grin on her face, I knew she was gonna be OK.”

“And that changed a few days ago,” I guessed.

“Yeah, but I figured she’d warm back up when you saw her again,” Stephen said.

“No, your wife played with Kitty’s brain...”

Stephen frowned.

Judy crossed her arms.

“It’s not play. Kitty’s hyper-focus on you was costing her her friends, her grades, her hobbies, and her life. I had to step in,” Judy said.

“You broke her brain into three pieces,” I said. “After I had put it back together from two.”

“They don’t break apart, they’re like ... morningstars? Or planets and moons maybe. Balls on chains, imaginary chains, orbiting each other.”

“That’s not what they’re like at all!” I said. I closed my eyes. I found Judy’s mind. It was too fuzzy to do the heavy work on. I spun her up to a six and dragged her down to a zero, breakneck acceleration. She stumbled back, her butt bouncing off the cupboard doors. She dropped her coffee mug and it twisted off and spilled over the countertop before falling down towards her knee.

“Shit!” she said, dancing away from the semi-steaming coffee. Stephen grabbed a towel from the handle of the oven and quickly patted Judy’s leg dry.

“I didn’t mean to do that part,” I said.

“How’d you do it from over there?!” Judy hissed.

“Fox needs to touch people too,” I said. “But I guess it’s different, maybe a genetic thing?”

“Maybe...” Judy said. Her eyes lit up. She grabbed Stephen’s ear. He stood up and turned towards me. “Honey, I need him.”

Stephen took a step towards me. I had nothing but a full beer bottle between me and him. I reversed my grip and made a mess of their kitchen floor.

“What? Dammit, Jordan!” Stephen sighed. He squatted down, still holding the towel and started cleaning up.

“I don’t touch your brain, you don’t touch mine,” I said, harshly to Judy.

“Well, I think I owe you one.” She put on a crooked smile, one I had seen repeatedly on Kitty’s face. I frowned. “Right, but I do need to know. If I can get a handle on this drug, I could cure so many mental conditions. Lack of motivation, directionlessness, insecurity. Imagine being able to choose to have the mind of a driven person!”

“Is that what you did with your daughters?”

“And Fox,” Judy said. “When he was fifteen, he hadn’t done homework. I mean, ever. He hated school, he was only intrigued by video games and girls ... Now look at him, he’s going to be valedictorian in physics. He’s a genius and wants to be one!”

“Is he busted like Kitty and Dove?”

“Busted?” Stephen said.

“Kitty’s mind was broken in two,” I said, frowning at Stephen. I walked around him, staying several arm’s lengths away from Judy. I grabbed another towel. I bent down to help sop up the spill. “I put her back together, you know when you thought she was happy? She pulled her apart, rougher this time, ‘cause Kitty’s mind’s in threes.”

“How do you even tell?” Judy asked.

“I see them,” I said. “It’s not seeing, it’s–”

“I’ve been calling it sight too,” Judy said.

Stephen and I had gotten the beer. He took my towel from me and walked to the sink to wring them out. I picked the empty bottle back up. I wanted something in my hands.

“Anyway, when there’s not too many of them in a room, like three or less, I can pick them out. Feel how fast they’re spinning,” I said.

“How fast?” Judy’s eyes were lit up. “I need to get you into an mri!”

“Wait, Jude,” Stephen said. “You said you put her back together? Kitty?”

“And I put Dove back on her rotor,” I said. “She kept being disconnected from her ability to care or act or anything but fake a smile.”

Stephen nodded.

“You put her off again?” He looked at Judy.

“She was obsessed again!” Judy said. “Remember Daniel? If she kept following him, she wouldn’t have finished high school, his parents would have pressed charges.”

“If she’s obsessed with me,” I said. “I want her. So it’s OK.”

Stephen sighed. “It’s OK to give you both of my daughters? I want a life for them, Jordan. Families.”

“Family,” I said.

He frowned. “You can’t see your fuckups, Judy.”

“What’s it like, putting her back together?” Judy asked.

“For Dove?”

“Was it different?”

“Yeah,” I said. “Dove needed to have her brain put back on the plate. She was like a gear picked out of a watch or ... or ... maybe it was like popping a shoulder back into its socket.”

“And Kitty?”

“Like a deck of cards, sliding the plates back together like a riffle shuffle and bridge. Just the bridge,” I said.

“I don’t know card jargon,” Judy said.

“Their minds, they’re like plates, connected on a stick and spinning,” I said. “There’s like, connections between them, bolts of lightning. They let one feeling go to the next thought. Connections.”

“Pathways in the brain?” Stephen suggested.

“Maybe,” I said.

“And you want to put them back together?” Judy said. “Well, we can make a deal.”

“And that deal is: help our daughters. Love them,” Stephen said.

“Stephen! You have no idea what I could learn from him!” Judy said.

“You can learn to let our daughters be themselves,” Stephen said. He held Judy in a hug. I saw a flicker in his eyes. He shook his head. Judy’s face flared up in conflict.

The side door opened. Fox was home.

“Um, hi?” Fox said. He had a girl with him. Woman, mid-twenties, large breasts under a ribbed sweater. She was short with a skinny waist. She had a dark olive complexion and wild black hair. She looked grumpy. “You and my parents, Jordan? Ah, shit did you knock up Kitty?”