Chapter 5

One month later...

Time: Tuesday, February 26, 2002 3:40 PM Eastern Standard Time

I felt my heart leap when I came home from school a few days before my 18'th birthday. Melanie had sent me another letter! I raced upstairs to my bedroom and sat down at my desk to look at it. It had the same strange business with the return address as before. After staring at it for a moment, I opened it and saw that Melanie had sent me a handmade birthday card.

The first drawing had a simple stick figure standing at the apex of a simple triangular mountain, with the title, "Today I am a man!"

The second drawing had the stick figure in a sitting and thinking pose, the head-circle leaning on the line-hand, with the title, "Now, where is my woman?" Underneath the mountain far below was a tiny second figure, lying down and gazing up at the huge figure sitting on the mountain top above it. I smiled and began reading Melanie's short letter.

Hi Eric, and Happy Birthday!

I hope you'll forgive me for waiting so long to write. So much has been happening here. I should first tell you I am in good health, and have been accepted at Harvard! (Remember I applied for early decision?) Their package came just a few days after I mailed you my December letter.

I had to pay a price of course, but all the immediate uncertainty about college is behind me. I negotiated with my parents, under an end-of-January Harvard deadline for completing all the acceptance forms and mailing in an initial deposit for the tuition. Some serious bucks! That's what convinces me all this is real. My dad and I walked everything to the post office over a month ago. I watched my future hopes go into the mailbox and breathed a huge sigh of relief. The application package even issued me a Student ID, 579040. That makes it seem real too.

And my price for all this? I had to split my personality. This is Melanie #1 who is writing this letter. This is the first time she's been allowed to come out during the daytime in over two months. I'm in Study Hall again, writing you this letter on a cold Friday Illinois morning. I'm sure you'll get this in time for your birthday, probably a few days early.

Eric, I won't reach majority for another five weeks. Please continue not to contact me. I'm still standing on very thin ice, still under very intense supervision.

My parent's price for Harvard? That I become the daughter they've always dreamed of having. That's Melanie #2. Mom threw out all my old clothes in order to please Melanie #2, and got her/me an entirely new wardrobe. I think I'm the only senior at Sterling High going around in clothes that look straight out of Junior High, but... I decided Harvard was worth it.

Remember me in Junior High? All the bright colors? You should see me now, in my canary yellow skirt and argyle knee socks! I even have my hair in pigtails again, just as mom had me do when I was in seventh grade. I even spend time (lots of time!) painting my nails. (You probably wouldn't recognize my toes!)

I've been avoiding my old friends. I think the really important ones have some understanding of the true nature of what's going on and forgive me. At least I hope so. I also have a bunch of new, parent-approved friends, from some the richest families in the Sterling area. Mom's throwing me a birthday party with them when I turn eighteen, my first birthday party ever! Melanie #2 is very excited about that.

Oh Eric, do you forgive me for surrendering? I know and admire your courage. I know you wouldn't have degraded yourself like this, no matter what. But when the decision was before me, I took the easy way out, the one with no yelling and a nice warm bed and meals and a great college and lots of shopping trips with my mom.

My parents love me Eric! They love Melanie #2! I finally know what it feels like to have parents who love me. Poor Patricia! I never understood what a pit of dependency my parents have dug for her, and how deeply she is trapped in the quicksand at the bottom. I used to envy Patty, but I feel so differently now. I pity her.

Eric, I couldn't pull this off as an act. I had to live the part. My true personality had to disappear, truly disappear, at least during the daytime. Melanie #1 comes out only late at night, and she has learned how to cry without making a sound.

Amusing, in a sad sort of way. My parents accused you of brainwashing me, but it is they who are the true practitioners of mind control.

I dream of you Eric, almost every night. I meet you in my dreams, and you hold me and give me strength. Thank you Eric. Thank you for waiting, thank you for holding me in my dreams, thank you for giving me strength, thank you for loving me. I sign myself The True Melanie

I put down Melanie's letter and shivered, my mind overwhelmed with emotions. I leaned back in my desk chair and close my eyes, trying to calm myself.

After a minute or so I started to scan the desk in front of me as a diversion. There was a loose paper clip on the desk, very near the back edge, and just within the limit of my sense-sphere. The sphere had been growing slowly but exponentially for months, doubling in radius every 31 days and 20 hours, as close as I could measure. It had a current radius of 118 cm. I was expecting it to reach four feet by my birthday.

With my eyes still closed, I dived into the detail of the paper clip, tracing the three simple loops back and forth with my mind. And then my anger at Melanie's parents erupted out of me, and I hissed and PUSHED and... The paper clip disappeared!

"Huh?!" I thought as I opened my eyes. I looked at my desk, no paper clip! "What the hell," I thought. "I can make things disappear too?!"

After a moment I got down on my hands and knees and looked around under the desk. On the rug next to the wall in the back was a paper clip. I was relieved to think it had to be the same one. I picked it up and then sat back in my chair, just thinking for a while.

Had I bumped the desk and knocked the clip off the top? Somehow I didn't think so. I put the clip on the middle of the desk and tried to remember exactly what I was doing when it disappeared. It felt like a new way of sensing...

I finally went back to my anger. I stared at the paper clip and imagined it was owned by Melanie's parents and I PUSHED it and... It moved! Not very fast, but it moved, all by itself!