Part .15

You know that feeling that somebody loves you a whole lot? You know that other feeling that even though they love you a whole lot, having you near them is painful? I think that's the way it was with Frannie. I left her off at the house, her new adoptive parents calling her Francie and showing her Frankie, and I couldn't help but see a sigh of relief on her face. If I hadn't have known better, I would have thought I had imagined it.

Frannie was just trying to be normal. With me there, she saw Manticore and all that wasn't normal about her. I knew the feeling. Zack gave me it to me. I supposed that was the reason that I wouldn't go near Zack. I would keep contact with Frannie down to a bare minimum.

I arrived home very late. I sat down on my couch, tired as hell, but knowing that I would have to stay up just a while longer before I went to sleep. I needed a bath -- heavens, yes I did -- and I needed to see if I had any messages in the mail.

Half-heartedly placing a wallet I had lifted off of some social elite while walking home from the station on the end table, I grabbed the stack of letters by the door where they had fallen and glanced through them. There wasn't very much. A postcard from Martin, postmarked Illinois, however the hell he did that, caught my attention, but nothing else of real importance. Wearily, I set the letters aside and took off my caught.

Impatient.

I glanced up. Had somebody spoken to me? I didn't hear anything else. It must have been my imagination. I put my coat on the hook and glanced down as the cat started rubbing himself on my left leg. "Cat," I said to him, "you are getting fur all over my pants." The damn thing ignored me, as usual.

. . . idiotic . . .

I stopped as I had began unbutton my blouse. It wasn't coming from the room. It was coming from outside. It was in my head. I began to tremble, not from seizure, but from fear. Whoever was there could penetrate my thoughts so easily that it scared the bejeezus out of me. I hadn't heard in so many weeks, so many months, that having my peace interrupted so suddenly made me so honestly frightened that I wanted to scream, roll into a ball, and be whoever it was to leave me alone and stop calling me a silly child . . . wait . . .

Ty needs to stop refusing to see me and come to . . .

My senses? Hell no. It was Zack. The bastard. Okay, how far away would he be at the moment? I wanted to calculate, I honestly did, but having him try to see me, after I had expressed my desire not to, made me so angry I was seeing red. I was now not going to even think about him if I could help it. I was just trying to get on with my life and he just wanted to drag me back down. Well, not this babe, mister.

And yet it seems . . .

I looked around for a handy window I could shimmy down. I spotted a perfect one almost immediately; the fire escape. I slinked out of the window onto it. It was a little rusty and admittedly old, but it held my weight -- not that I weighed a good deal, or anything -- sufficiently to allow me to quickly scamper down the thing and into the alleyway.

I peeked over the corner of the building and saw him enter. Serves him right, always blaring his thoughts for me to read as if he were a newsstand that I should pick up and glance over. Unfair to me. I started jogging down the street, gleefully aware when Zack opened the door to my apartment and found nobody in it.

I found myself at the park. I don't know why. It was always the park I had played it; had thought in; but I hadn't gone back to it after the Temi user. I didn't figure that I needed to be there for a while. However, my subconscious mind made up a decision without me and left me in a bind.

There were a lot of people there. I wondered if a school had let out early for the day or maybe was on a daytrip as an end of the term sort of thing. However, I didn't see so many kids there as I saw adults. Lots of adults wearing dark and bright colors. Gangs . . . I veered toward the left, not wanting to interrupt their going ons.

"Hey!" somebody called out. I stopped a turned, bored, and a little bit cold. Damnit all to hell, I had forgotten to put on my jacket. I was an idiot. The person who had spoken was young, but looked very old. His face was scared and he was missing an eye. I viewed him, bored, waiting for him to speak. "Why are you coming around here?"

"Thought I'd take a little ride on the swings, but it looks like they're occupied," I said icily. Come on, man, leave me alone and let me go on and let me find something else to do. "So I thought I'd leave and try another park."

"A little girl like you shouldn't be coming around here, you know that, don't you?" the man slid up to me and placed his hand on my head in an affectionate manner. Either he was perv, or he had a daughter that looked like me. I didn't care either way. I stood there, waiting for him to continue. "Especially after one of Big Jesus's men got killed the couple weeks back."

That piqued my interest. It couldn't be . . . "Killed?" I asked, starring at the men shouting at each other, waving empty hands around in the air. There were too many plainclothes policemen, I realized -- as did they -- to start a fight. They knew when a bystander was a bystander and when he was a cop that couldn't be bought.

"Yeah, some Temi beat him pretty bad. Took off a finger." The boy traced a finger around my ear. I ignored his actions.

"I done heard he got whack on Temi himself 'fore anyone try to hurt him. I done heard he picked a fight." The man's fingers tightened around my ear and squeezed the lobe between then. I swatted him away. "Hey, stop it . . . " I paused, searching for a name if he had given me one.

"Jose."

"Jose. Stop it. It hurts." To prove my point, I started to reach up to give him a turn on the ear. I realized, halfway there, he hadn't any. "Boy, you done got yourself pretty beat up."

"Uh huh."

"So, uh, you want me to stay away from the park because some Temi got beat by another and theys set to scalp anyone who sneezes wrong?" I asked.

"Uh huh." I began to laugh. He whirled me around to face him. "What's so funny?"

"I was just thinking about this joke, right? See, there was this gang man, right?" I spoke in the rhythm of the streets, different from what Mom and Cindy spoke, in a way of its on. "See, he's with one of his honeys. She just gave him another pup, right? So, there he his, checkin' out the kid, makin' sure it ain't no deformed sucka, you know what I'm saying?" Jose nodded, so I continued. "Then the gang man done hears somethin'. So he leans toward the baby and waits for it to make noise again. It does. It says 'mother' and when the gang man hears that he rush to his honey and he call out, 'Hey! The baby just said half a word!' you know?"

Jose laughed and let go of my shoulders. "You're all right for a little girl," he told me. "Come back when you're grown up, sister."

I walked away without reply. Then I stopped, walked back to steps, and called out, "You can count on it." I walked towards the streets and the basketball courts I knew that were a little while down the road. You can't ever have to many guys playing basketball on a court at once. Even if there are a million of them, they will still divide the team up and play, just for the sake of it.

i watched for a while, watching as they passed the ball back and forth between each other. Suddenly, the ball came out and hit somebody in the head. Ouch. That had to have hurt his nose.

{vivid thoughts}

I'm playing basketball with Case. The boy is getting pretty good. His speed his quick and his agility is well past mine. "Go easy for your old man, boy," I tell him as I lean over my knees. I wonder if he will or if he'll ignore me. He just grins.

I stand up straight and race toward him, successfully stealing the ball away from him. I dribble back out of the key from where Case had been trying to make a lay-up and make a jump shot. It hits the rim and bounces off, right towards Case. I watch, almost in slow motion, as it hits him right in the face.

"Holy . . ." I say, running. "Case, how is your nose? Is your nose okay?" I try to pull his hand away from his face in an attempt to look at his nose.

"Dad," he says, moving his hand down, "my nose is fine."

{/vivid thoughts}

I sighed. Another Casey Billings memory. They were starting to get on my nerves. Hadn't I enough trouble without some workaholic invading my mind like some sort of pest? I needed a roach motel for these foreign memories of his. Well, Casey Billings can just go suck it, because once a memory has entered the cabinet I'm putting them in, it isn't coming out. God, he must have been right on top of me when I tore down that wall.

I walk home slowly, enjoying my time out even if it is freezing cold and my arms are starting to goose bumps. I figured Zack had to be out of my house by now -- I wouldn't sit and wait for two and a half hours just to talk to somebody who didn't want to see me -- so I felt pretty safe in entering through the front door.

I was right. He wasn't there. I noticed another letter on top of the ones on the table. There was just my name on it, written in a soft, feminine script. It had to be from my mother, though I didn't remember her handwriting looking like that. She must have come in and found me not home and left a note. I tore it open and, out of habit, glanced down at the signature.

Zack had written it. I closed the letter without reading another line and balled it into a rumpled piece of parchment. I didn't need to be reminded of anything he wanted to remind me of.