Chapter 1

I've heard of people who grew up feeling that they were 'different' from those around them. In many ways, I suppose most of us do. We are, after all, individuals, isolated from those around us by our very individuality. Many spend their entire lives trying to 'fit in' and thus, erase those differences.

From an early age, I knew that I really was different, and from that point forward, 'fitting in' was never an option. I believe I was eight years old when I first began to realize that I was not the same as those around me. My mother was scolding me for something that I had done, and I continued playing my video game as she ranted.

Finally, she shouted, "Turn that damned thing off and listen to me!"

"I am listening," I said, continuing to shoot bad guys as fast as they popped up.

Frustrated, my mother ripped the controller from my hands and shouted, "No you're not! You can't listen and play video games at the same time!"

I can't? I thought, dumbfounded. But I remember every word!

I could, in fact, have refuted several of the points she had made, had it been safe to do so, but I had learned, even at that age, that when mom was in one of those moods, it was best to just let her wind down.

While she was winding, however, the part of my brain that wasn't required for listening, and now didn't have video games to occupy it, began to wonder if others could split their attention like that, or if what mom had said was true. Could people really not do something as simple as listening to someone else talk while engaged in other activities?

I filed it away, but soon, other evidence began to emerge. As I progressed through school, for instance, I never understood the claims my friends made about having to study. I mean, when I needed knowledge, it came to me. I soon discovered that it was better to pretend than to let others know that I didn't have study, and to occasionally get a question wrong on a test. I could have aced them all, but I didn't want the kind of attention that brought me. I didn't want to be a phenomenon, so I did my best to blend in. Not that my best got me much better than Head Nerd status, but I could live with that. Nerds were anonymous.

At least, we were until the #1 BMOC - the quarterback of the football team and heartthrob of every girl in school - decided to pick on me.

I was minding my own business, talking to some of the other nerds, when a hard shove from behind caused me to collide with the guy I was talking to.

"Why don't you watch where I'm going?!" I heard.

Now, mind you, the closest I've ever been to a martial arts class was while playing video games, so it came as a surprise to everyone around, including me, when I spun off of the guy I'd been shoved into and turned the spin into a roundhouse kick that decked the Big Man On Campus. One of the linemen from the team who always hung out with BMOC, stared dumbfounded for a moment, then decided that I shouldn't have done that.

"Why you little pipsqueak!" he said, lumbering toward me while making fists the size of my head.

I have heard other people talk about the fear and adrenalin of such moments, but all I felt was a surreal calm. I watched him come and from the way his body moved, I knew exactly how he was going to attack. I also knew exactly where to hit him to disable the arm he intended to hit me with first, then the other arm, and finally both legs. I don't know what others saw, but to me it was a surgical operation. Precise, and with no wasted motion, and it ended with me scanning the crowd for other threats, as if I had done this sort of thing all my life.

There were no other threats. The kids gathered around us gaped at me in a kind of horror, as if I were a monster from outer space, or something. I wondered idly what they would have thought if I had made some of the other choices that flitted through my mind - the ones that wound up with the guy lying dead at my feet. With the threat neutralized, time sped up again and I looked around. BMOC lay unconscious on the floor of the hallway, and the lineman lay twitching and groaning a couple of feet away. He would be able to move, soon, but he would have some rather painful charley horses for a while. As that thought occurred to me, I wondered how I knew that, and how I had been able to defeat these two so easily.

"He didn't say a word!" one girl was whispering to another. "It was like he was a trained killer, or something!"

How I heard that from ten feet away, I also didn't know, but that was the point at which I began to know that I was different. I, a ninth grade nerd, had just destroyed two of the toughest seniors in the school. What did I feel? Justified. No elation, no fear, no pride. I felt that I had reacted with appropriate force, nothing more.

A teacher soon appeared and asked what had happened. The explanations were, to say the least, somewhat biased. Most of the kids liked the other two. The only ones on my side were the other nerds, who were looking at me with something akin to awe.

When my parents arrived, it got worse.

"Mr. and Mrs. Gustafson, I don't know where you sent your son for martial arts training, but it has no place in this school!" the Principal told them.

"Martial arts?" my parents asked, looking confused, as well they might. "He hasn't had any martial arts training, Mr. Bekins."

"Then please explain to me how he was able to put two of our finest football players in the hospital!" I watched the spittle fly from Bekins' fat lips, calculating the various trajectories of the droplets as my mind did it's two-things-at-once number. "From what the other students tell me, it was an unprovoked attack."

"For the record," I said tiredly, knowing no one would be listening, "Nelson attacked me from behind, and his friend Stark came for me after I took Nelson out."

"That's not what the others are saying!"

Suddenly, there was a picture in my mind of the hallway at the moment of the attack. I could see, as if from above, the positions of every person there. "Only three people saw the beginning of the incident," I said. "Walter Meegan who was facing me, Sandra Campbell, who was talking to her friend across the hall, and Bebe Dumont, who was behind Nelson and Stark as they came down the hall."

"And how would you know that?" Bekins asked. "According to your story, you were facing away from Nelson and Stark when they attacked."

Oh shit! I thought, here we go again.

From there, it went downhill. Trying to explain would only make it worse, especially since I didn't know how I could know who was behind me. Instead, I just said, "Look, just talk to those three. Maybe I'll get lucky and they'll tell the truth."

Fortunately for me, they did, but it didn't keep me from being suspended. Bekins was a football fan and didn't like having two of his best players out of commission, even if it was for only one game.

Mom and Dad were confused, and I had nothing to offer for their comfort. "I don't know," I shrugged repeatedly, "it just came to me!"

Was I a mindreader? If so, I couldn't do it consciously - I know, I tried. Was I some kind of robot? Every physical I'd ever had seemed normal. I know I sound detached from my parents, but then I've never really felt attached to anyone. Mom and Dad were good enough parents, but they had no more tools for understanding what I was than anyone else. Hell, who would?

I stayed around the house for the two weeks of my suspension, playing video games and doing whatever chores Mom set for me. She and dad, at least, knew I was strange, and didn't bother me too much about the incident. They were inclined to believe me, about being attacked, I mean. What was hard for them, as it was for everyone else, was what I did about it.

"Leave him alone, Martha," I overheard Dad saying, one night. "Just be thankful they didn't put him in the hospital."

I suspect that dad was a nerd in school, too. I've seen his high school pictures.

That two weeks gave me plenty of time for introspection, and one of the things that occupied my consciousness was how I had been able to replay the entire scene in my head, including what was going on behind me. Eventually, the only logical possibility emerged, and with it, the realization that I could use it in real time. Somehow, one or more of those wierd things that was part of me included the ability to 'see' with my ears. To be more precise, I could tell from the way sound reflected off of things, what and or who was around me, kinda like that Daredevil character in the comic books, only I wasn't blind. It was another one of those things like the fighting that should have taken years of practice to be able to use, but like the fighting, it came to me.