Chapter Five
Driven
Sunday was long and lazy. Not once did I give any thought to school work, and I didn't join the land of the living until my father had knocked on my door at around ten and was surprised to see that I was awake. I had been for the last four hours, lost in thought. Because of the conversation I'd overheard (not to mention the dream I had) the night before, I didn't rise to my father's bribe of banana pancakes, my favorite breakfast food. Nor did I even look up at my door as it'd opened, revealing my father's tall frame.
"You going to eat?" he asked me. It was then that I looked up at him slowly. My father was a lanky guy, and he made my five foot nine and a half inch height seem almost dwarfish. He peered in and watched me. I looked into eyes much like those I see in the mirror each day, and the humming almost ceased momentarily as I thought 'I have your eyes. What else have I inherited from you?' I didn't dare say it- I was too afraid- but the thought must have showed up on my face, for guilt, and almost remorse showed up on his. He couldn't look me in the eye, and taking my silence as a 'no', he left my room, closing the door securely behind him.
He came back when my alarm clock said it was near two in the afternoon. He knocked, but entered before I could give any sort of reply. My father took a couple of steps into the room, closed the door behind him, and stared at me as if to think about something really deeply. '...hear me?' I made a face unintentionally that showed I was concentrating on a sound. '..hear...me?'
My father closed his eyes, almost tightly. I watched him, slightly confused, and suddenly the silence was broken by 'Gabby... can... you hear me?' My eyes widened, and on instinct, I forced my face to go neutral as if to show my father (when his eyes opened and fixed themselves hopefully on me) that I hadn't heard anything. But I had. I know it came from him, and his lips never moved. I watched as he thought that to me. I knew he wanted me to respond, but I couldn't. What if by responding, he'd take me back to that Institute? "Are you still not speaking to me?" he asked, walking over to my desk. He scooted my desk chair closer to the bed where I had been reading Substitute for Love by Karin Kallmaker.
As he sat down, I said, "I just don't know what to say." Then, wanting to anger him enough to forget his mental message to me, I continued sarcastically, "Its not everyday my father yells at me for no apparent reason." Instead of anger, I got a calm response. I was not sure if that was a good thing or a bad thing.
"Touché'. I'm sorry about that. I just had to talk to your mother about some financial matters that had just popped up. They made me frustrated, and I took some of it out on you. I'm sorry." Had I not heard my parents' conversation, I might have believed my father's lie, played nice, and forgave him. Instead, I only nodded and played nice.
"I guess I understand that," I told him, putting my book on my bed, mere centimeters away from my left butt cheek. "Is everything okay? I asked, putting on my innocence.
"I talked to your mother, and we worked something out. It'll take a couple of years, but we'll figure it out." Again, I nodded, unsure what else to say. "Look," my father said, startling me, "I want you to know that I'm here if you want or need to talk about anything. No matter how strange it may seem. Don't be afraid to come to me - your mother, too. We're here for you."
I just stared at him blankly.
"Okay daddy," I said, and that was it. My father looked as if he wanted to say more, but had decided against it. He stood up with a short nod, and slowly left the room. I sat there stunned. I knew then that I wasn't sick. I was different, but I wasn't sick. It was then that I remembered the almost untold legends of this city, and the secrets the older generation of Gotham City and New Gotham kept. What if I was one of them? Well, not the ones what run around in costume saving the place every couple of nights, but the ones that are just there? The ones that hide the unusual things they can do. What if it wasn't a brain thing, but real telepathy? I don't know how or why, but my parents did, and they sure as heck weren't going to tell me anything. It would make sense. More sense, actually, than my theory of being sick. I couldn't just push back the thought that I was even more of a freak. I'm a lesbian with telepathic abilities that my parents probably tested me for as a kid. Nothing showed up then, though they knew I had it. No doubt, my dad knew it had surfaced or something and that may have been what he was hinting at. Would they have told me everything they were hiding from me had I told them about this first? Maybe, but I was too afraid of going back to that 'Institute', where, I'm pretty sure (after having that 'dream' about my dad and putting some of the pieces, what little I had, together) they had erased my memory of doing these 'tests'. It made me feel uneasy about the possible reasoning for erasing one's memories. Sure, I had this... thing that you only read about or saw on TV, so I can see why they'd want to learn the how or why, but I was no one's lab mouse.
My body jumped when I heard the doorbell ring. I looked over at the clock. My father hadn't left my room more than 5 minutes before that. "GABBY! YOU'VE GOT COMPANY!" I got up, not sure who it would be, but hoping it was Kelly coming to tell me she was sorry. It was Dinah, and I smiled when I saw her.
"Hey. I was hoping you'd be up for a ride. I got the car today, so I am just roaming around the city a bit." I shrugged, and then turned to look at my dad, who had answered the door.
"This is Dinah, Dad." I told him, and he nodded.
"Yes, we met. Go have fun, but be back before it gets dark."
"I guess that's a 'yes' then." I said. I didn't worry about a coat or anything except for what I had with me. I was ready to leave the house. I followed Dinah to the street where there was a nice H2 Hummer. How she could get to dive such an expensive car was beyond me, and what puzzled me more was how Barbara could afford a car like that on a teacher's salary. Rumor had it, she was the daughter of the old commissioner, but even so, I don't think they made THAT much money. I got in, and Dinah started the car.
"Pick the station," Dinah said once we were about 2 blocks away from my house, and one block away from the school.
"Uh, 91.1 FM," I replied.
"Ooh, an 80's girl, huh? I knew I liked you for a reason." She turned the radio on and I saw that it was already set there. A song I recognized from the movie 'Dirty Dancing' was on at the moment. We were silent for a few minutes as Dinah found some of the city's back roads and we just cruised. I had to admit that it was quite nice. Dinah looked as if she was concentrating on the road, but I felt the static in the car, and it felt to me as if she was thinking very hard, wondering if she should ask me something and initiate something.
After a while I asked, "Do you need to talk about something?" Dinah looked over at me in surprise as if she'd been caught, then she shrugged.
"Actually, I have this feeling that you do." This took me completely off guard. I shook my head.
"No, I-"
"I could tell when I came to your house today that you weren't... yourself." 'I haven't been myself for over a week now.' I thought slightly bitterly. "If you don't want to talk about it, I understand, considering where we've been the last week."
"I got scared last night after we hung out, that's all. I've been doing a lot of thinking and I scared myself. I feel a lot better now," I told her. "It was just my stupid imagination or something." Dinah nodded, and we continued on in silence. Watching the scenery was actually beautiful as the brown and yellow leaves swirled in the wind, and the sun shone almost without heat down on us. The radio station continued to play the songs I listened to on my computer most of the time, and Dinah and I stayed in a companionable silence throughout the whole drive. An hour and a half later, we were back in front of my house, and Dinah had turned the car off.
"Thanks for riding along with me. I know it was boring, but I needed the company."
"Hey, it wasn't boring. It was better than sitting at my computer trying to write an outline for a paper I have written on Christopher Columbus, one I have written every year for the past 3 years. Hell, I should dig up one of those and turn it in to save me the trouble... Besides, I liked it." I leaned forward intending to give her a hug, and forgot at the last second about her not liking to be touched. She had hugged me anyway, somewhat awkwardly, and I got out of the car. She waved to me before starting the car up and driving away. It was then I knew my life had just gotten that much more difficult, for it was then that I knew I had developed a crush on my new friend.