Kinetics: In Search of Willow (8 page)

"Forced amnesia?" I
supplied.

"Essentially. It's okay, Eugene.
Things will get easier as we go along."

"I hope so. I don't even know if I
believe it."

-It's hard to ignore hard
facts.-
 I was starting to get used to
Willow's voice in my mind.

"So can you talk to anyone with that?"
I asked.

"I could." Willow replied,
aloud.

“
What about normal people?
Can they hear telepathy?”

“
Yeah, they can hear if
you are specifically sending them thoughts, but they can’t
respond.”

She smiled. “You’ll want to be careful
though, telepathy is one of those things that…" she considered her
words for a moment. “It's personal. You're not just sending words,
like a text message, you're sending a piece of yourself, of your
feelings and memories."

She sucked in a breath,
and I felt her words enter my mind. -
Do
you remember when we were children and we would play
hide-and-go-seek in the field behind our school?-

In those words I saw flitters of
memories of golden grass as tall as we were, hiding us from each
other. I could hear echoes of our childish laughter and feelings of
something like contentment.

"Wow."

She smiled. "Yeah."

***

At some point we turned around and
headed back to my house. I tried to grapple with the new concepts
and names floating in my head, but they only seemed to encourage a
headache to blossom at my temples.

When we reached home, I trudged up to
my room. Willow trailed behind. Jacob had left at some point, and
the only evidence of his visit was a half-empty glass of water,
beaded with perspiration, and the papers spread out like a fan at
my empty kitchen seat.

I ignored my parents, for the sake of
my own sanity more than anything, and buried my head under my
pillow.

I kept my eyes closed the whole time.
Trying in some way to visualize what my power would be. How would I
even know how to use it if I found out? How is something like that
trained? I wasn't sure how much time passed.

Willow sat at my computer and played
video games, occasionally telepathically sending me little words of
encouragement. Right before she sent something, I could always feel
a glimmer of something at the back of my mind.

"That's my link. I have to create one
with you before I can send you thoughts," she said after I asked
her about it. "If you could 'path,' then you would have to create
one with me to send thoughts my way."

"How would I make one?"

"I don't know how it works with
Vunjikas, but my mom told me it's sort of like redirecting a
stream. If you can find the stream of your thoughts then you can
try to redirect them toward the person you are trying to
'path.'"

I opened my eyes and watched her play
games for a while. She was focused, her eyes set on the screen and
her eyebrows knitted tight. I was glad it was the weekend. I don't
think I could have handled school at the moment, especially not the
constant reminders of what went on there today. Willow, despite how
tired she was after it all, seemed like she took it in stride. But
I guess for her this was normal, everyday.

I let my eyes close again. I know I
should have been up and talking with Willow or playing games with
her, but my head felt too full. I guess I should have been excited
to learn I have powers. Who hasn't read comics about superheroes?
Who wouldn't want to be one or at least have their abilities? I
think if I could choose, I would want to fly. I tried to imagine
it. I could see myself flying through the clouds, going wherever I
wanted to, as far as I wanted to.

Eventually, I heard Willow say that
she needed to go home, and I only barely acknowledged her as she
left. I could still sense her link flitting at the back of my mind.
It was a small bird, and I was a loser with a broken
net.

At dinner, my parents spoke quietly in
Japanese.

My dad was originally from Japan but
had moved to the United States for work. They had met while my mom
was on a university study abroad program in Tokyo. They liked to
joke that she stood out like a sore thumb when he met her. She was
the only white woman in a whole room full of Japanese students
trying desperately to learn how to ask where the bathroom was.
Though now that I knew there was more to my father’s “work,” I
questioned the story of their meeting. I would have to ask again
when I didn’t feel like I was growing a brain tumor.

My parents would revert to his native
language when they were trying to keep something from me. I didn't
even try to listen in. Most time if I really wanted to I could get
the idea of what they were saying, but right now I didn't care. My
head hurt, and everything involving concentration made it worse. It
even took a second for me to realize when my mom switched to
English that she was asking me a question.

"What?"

"I hope you don't have any plans for
tomorrow," she said.

I shook my head. Willow and I had
initially planned to go to laser tag, but I really didn't think
that was going to happen now.

"Good. You're going to come with us to
the Conference."

I had known about the Conference for
years. I used to go before I entered elementary school, but after
that, whatever went on there was a big secret between my parents
and my brother. My vague memories of the time offered no clues. I
had always thought that it had something to do with Dad's college
fraternity.

"Why do I have to go?"

"A woman will be there, and she will
discuss more of the contract with you." Dad said between bites of
his chicken. "And if you agree to it, then she will sign you up for
some remedial lessons and find you a specialist to help you find
your powers."

I wanted to ask what these remedial
lessons were all about, but Dad wasn't looking up from his plate.
He was unhappy about something.

"Ok," I said and didn't speak of it
again for the rest of the night.

***

That night, I dreamed that a man
dressed in fire walked toward me.

His face was too bright to see, but I
knew he was someone I should know. He walked in a circle around my
room, and everything that his fiery clothes touched burned. I was
surrounded by the bars of a prison, and I couldn't escape. The
smoke stifled all my screams.

I think I died.

CHAPTER 6

"The world in which we
live is full of suffering. No one person can go through life
without experiencing some kind of pain, emotional or physical. We
as Kinetics are surrounded by hardship. The men and women we lose
every day are each someone's lover, parent, or child. But we have a
great hope. No Kinetic is truly alone, for we are connected in a
way our non-Kinetic peers are not. We have telepathy. We have a
connection that defies all borders and all languages. No one has to
suffer alone."
~ Jordan Vanderwaal.
Anyan's Alliance member. Excerpt from The Writings of Jordan
Vanderwaal on the State of the World and Its People.
1956.

A red and green banner with a white
crest fluttered in the midday wind.

According to my parents, most people
associated the Anyan's Alliance crest with a super-exclusive
fraternity. My parents had told me it was used as one of the fronts
for the Alliance, among others that they had yet to reveal to
me.

Hundreds of Kinetics filed into the
huge convention center. My parents kept me squarely between them as
we walked with the flow of the crowd. It felt like they were trying
to guard me from something, but the people going into the
convention center looked just as normal as anyone else on the
street.

We reached the entrance, where a man
in a tan and grey coat, an InfoCon officer, stood pressing two
fingers to each person's temple. He would nod, stamp something on
the person's hand and wave them inside.

First Dad went through, and then Mom
tapped my shoulder to go next. I stood in front of the man as he
pressed his icy fingertips to my temple. His eyes narrowed, and he
studied me. "Vunjika?" he asked.

I nodded.

His lips pressed into a
thin line, and he took a red marker from his coat pocket. He
grabbed my hand and slashed an 
X
 on the back of my hand. A
couple people around us saw it and whispered under their breaths to
each other and stared at me. Mom went in with much the same process
as mine, but her 
X
 was black.

I ignored the stares and a few
pointing fingers and followed my parents into a conference room
where a man stood on a podium adjusting his tie. My mother and
father walked ahead of me and bee-lined toward the
front.

Outside the conference center, life
moved about normally. Normal people went about their lives,
completely unaware that the people congregating inside the center
were capable of powers beyond their wildest imaginations. I
desperately wanted to be out there with them. I barely understood
the world that was opening up to me, and I craved some kind of
normality.

We took seats in the second row from
the front. There were names and job titles on the seats. Mom and I
just had our names, but Dad's had 'Chief of Intelligence' under his
name.

"So are you like…the Kinetic CIA or
something?" I asked Dad.

He had his notebook open and was
reading some papers, so he didn't look up. "Yes."

"Nice." I sat back and looked around
at the room filling up with people. I wondered what powers each of
these people had. In the distance I caught a flash of red hair, and
Willow appeared from between a couple groups of people. Her parents
followed closely behind.

I waved at her.

"Hey!" She smiled as she
and her parents approached. "It's 
so
 weird seeing you
here."

"It's
weird 
being
 here," I said under my breath.

"I wish you were coming on a better
day. It's all silly political stuff this year," Willow said as she
plopped down into the seats directly behind us. Her parents were
both Intelligence Analysts, according to their seats.

"Is it different other
times?"

"Yeah, some summers they have more of
a county fair sort of feel. That's when the Regional Chiefs travel
around the world to each of the conferences and 'spread culture.'"
She chuckled.

I nodded and looked at the people
standing on the podium. The man who had been adjusting his tie was
now looking out at the crowd and waiting for people to finish
getting seated.

"So...what's gonna happen now?" I
asked no one in particular.

-I'll
explain,-
 said Willow's voice in my
head. I sensed lots of bubbly humor flowing through her link. It
was almost infectious. I smiled while facing the podium so she
couldn't see my face.

Dad apparently hadn't heard Willow's
telepathy.

"The Conference is made so that we in
the governing sectors of the Alliance can keep up to date with
other regions. It is also a way for the Council of Anyan to notify
us of new rulings or decisions," he replied.

"Council of Anyan?"

"They are six people chosen to make
the decisions to guide our people. They tell the Chief Minister,
and the Chief Minister tells the Regional Chiefs and on down," he
said.

A man tapped the microphone and
cleared his throat. The Conference had begun.

-Ok.- 
Willow
began.
 -The guy up there now is Jon
Perry. He's originally from the Eastern Canadian Region, but he
transferred down here to work directly with the North American
office in Columbus. He's also the de-facto spokesperson for North
America. He goes to all the conferences.-