A/N: This piece was really just an experiment in character development, with some fantasy thrown in. Intended to be a short story, but if people think so, I might make it into a story. Nitpick!!! Open to title suggestions, because I don't really like this one -- Eh, the whole secret Xanga thing is sooooo totally swiped from something my friend went though... sorry Bibi! And Isabel (both of them) and Erin, if they ever read this; the names were totally spontanious, I'm not writing about YOU here. Well, maybe a tiny, TINY bit. Very freaking tiny!!!! Blah, this is why I don't use my friends' names in stories... well, review, tell me whether or not to continue, give me character advice, etc. etc. (b/c I'm really focusing on the characters in this one).

Trust Falls

“I really, really don’t need this from you right now.” Erin angrily stood and grabbed her bag off the bench. She tried to turn away—

But Isabel caught her arm. “Erin…” she began, then stopped. “No, go ahead. I won’t stop you,” she said quietly, taking her seat on the bench again, staring out at the gently rippling surface of the lake and the reflections of the sunset-purple clouds. “I could, but I won’t. But you’ll never know why you’re different from everyone else. If you want to live life with a rock in your stomach, now’s your chance.”

There was a moment’s pause. “I just… Sorry,” Erin said, dropping her bag and sitting next to Isabel. “I’m dealing with stuff.”

Isabel smiled sadly; it was hard for Erin to apologize, to speak her mind. “What stuff? This’ll wait if it needs to.”

Erin chewed her lip. “Caleb found my secret Xanga,” she said very quickly, as if to get it out before she lost her nerve, “and now he knows everything that’s been going on in my head for the past four months.” She swallowed, face and body visible tense.

“'Secret Xanga?' As in, like, online diary?” Erin nodded unhappily. “Oh my God, Erin…” Isabel hugged her friend around the shoulders. “I’m so sorry. Did he tell anyone? About what he read?”

“No,” said Erin, pain evident in her voice, “but I can’t piss him off, or he’ll tell the whole school.”

Isabel didn’t say anything right away, just hugged Erin once more and stared out at the lake once more, and the slowly sinking red-orange ball of fire that was the sun at 5:00 in January. After about a minute, she asked, “What kind of stuff did you post?”

Erin moaned. “Everything. Whatever I was thinking, all the problems I was having. I went into the computer lab and made it all secret, but still…” she trailed off miserably.

“Can I read it?” Isabel cocked her head to one side and looked calculatingly into Erin’s eyes.

“No,” answered Erin immediately. “I don’t want anyone else knowing that stuff. The rest of the school will hear it soon, anyway.”

“Why don’t you trust me?”

“Isabel…” Erin searched for words. “I do trust you, it’s just that—”

“You’ve been betrayed, I know. You don’t have to trust me if you don’t want to, but I won’t turn my back on you and start spreading your secrets to the popular girls.”

“No, I do trust you,” Erin repeated. “I just—” she paused, and looked up into Isabel’s eyes, blue-gray, the color of the last patch of daytime sky on the other side of the park. “How did you know that? I never told you.”

Isabel returned Erin’s gaze steadily. Erin was one of the only people she knew—not that she had many friends—who would look into her eyes. “That’s actually what I wanted to talk to you about.” Erin looked at her, confused. “You know how you… I dunno, read people? You can kind of tell what’s going on in their head from their eyes, and what they do with their hands, and how they’re walking?” Erin nodded, still not comprehending. “There’s more to it than that.” Isabel paused, steeling herself to say what she was going to say. “It’s mind reading, Er. I can do it, and so could you.”

Erin gaped at her.

“But,” Isabel went on gravely, “you have to get it—like, understand it, accept it—or else you’ll lose it. If you walk away now, in four years the most you’d be able to do would be to tell if someone was angry or not. But if you stay… you could hear what people are thinking. Help them."

Erin’s eyebrows drew together. Isabel knew she was thinking hard; Erin was a very empathic person, who could tell what was going on in someone’s head—in the general sense, of course, but it was still a talent few had. Isabel would be staring off into space, and Erin would be able to tell whether she was thinking or just zoning out. She could read the light in people’s eyes. It was a game for her, figuring people and what made them tick, and, most importantly, helping people. She was like a therapist, only not, just a friend that would be there for Isabel and anyone else whenever they needed her to be.

“I can’t believe this. It’s impossible.” Erin put her head in her hands. “But I want it to be true. I really do, you know I do.” Her voice was barely audible now, muffled by her hands. “Don’t tease me.”

“I’m not teasing,” said Isabel, just as softly.

Erin’s head snapped up. “Then show me!” she demanded, an angry glint in her eyes. “Show me what you can do!”

Isabel shook her head sadly. “I would,” she said, “but you have to believe me first. You can’t just say you do, either, because I’ll know. You have to really believe me. If you can’t do that…”

“How can I believe you?” asked Erin, her voice anguished. “You’re telling me I can read minds; that’s impossible!” She was shouting now. “Oh, I get it! Caleb already told you what I wrote on my Xanga, and you’re just trying to humiliate me, and—”

Isabel grabbed Erin’s wrist, hard. “Don’t say that,” she said, and there was quiet steel in her voice. “I would never do that, so don’t even think it.” She released Erin, but her voice retained the same tone as she said, “and I wouldn’t need Caleb to tell me. I know you well enough. But, if you don’t want to believe me, fine, you can leave now. Leave now and never find yourself. Or you can put some faith in me.”

“I can’t,” moaned Erin, staring at the ground.

“Yes you can!” Isabel took Erin’s chin with her long, cool fingers and lifted it so her and Erin’s eyes locked. “I swear that I’m not lying, she said, still quietly, but her voice was thick and her eyes were shining. “I swear that you can read minds, and that I can. I’m not lying. If I am… you never have to speak to me again. You have to believe me.” A single passionate tear rolled down her cheek, that she didn’t wipe away. “It’s just like trust falls.”

“I—” Erin’s voice was thick as well. She swallowed. “I believe you.”

“Close your eyes,” Isabel instructed. Erin did. “Just relax, breathe deep.”

“There’s a spot behind your eyes,” came Isabel’s voice, echoing slightly. “It’s where you read people, where you get those hunches about what’s going on in their heads. Get behind it and think out to me.”

There was a light shining through Erin’s closed eyelids, and suddenly a blur of shapes and colors appeared in front of her eyes, voice clamoring in her ears. Isabel’s cut through the cacophony; “open your eyes.”

It all stopped, and again, she was looking at Isabel, and they were sitting on a bench, and the park was empty. The last glow of the setting sun was fading now, the unusually warm January wind blowing a little stronger now. “Thank you,” said Isabel. Only her mouth didn’t move, and her voice had a strange echo to it.

“Am I…?” Erin stuttered. “Did you… Did I…?”

“Do you know how to do it?” asked Isabel, not inside Erin’s head.

“I-I think so,” said Erin, still hardly daring to believe it. But it was slowly beginning to dawn on her… “If I wanted to,” she said slowly, “I could look inside your head and see everything you’re thinking, feeling? Who you like, what your darkest secret is, what you’re scared of?”

“You could,” answered Isabel simply. “But will you?”

There was a pause. “No,” said Erin finally.

“Good.”

“But… just now, we were talking about my secret Xanga,” said Erin, eyebrows together again, but in slight puzzlement. Couldn’t you just hear what I was thinking when I wrote those entries?”

Isabel shrugged and picked up her backpack. “I could have. I didn’t.” She started to walk away, then stopped and looked over her shoulder. “You coming?”

Erin took the strap of her own bag and hoisted it onto her shoulder. Each with their own thoughts, they walked together into the subway.