Thanks for the Memories

Lee’s eyes narrowed at the boy in the row ahead of him. The boy was super-platinum blond. Scary, really. His hair was really curly too—the kind that all the little angel babies on bathroom wallpaper had—and he had a tall upper body. Lee’s mouth twisted a bit and he decided to see just what was inside that curly little head of Justin Massey’s.

He looked to his left and to his right to see both boys on either side of him staring at their test sheets with unwavering interest.

When he knew he was in the safe, he closed his eyes and breathed slowly and deeply. Then, ever-so-slightly, he felt words and images cross his mind. Those weren’t what he was interested in. He kept his breathing steady and kept his brain flat. Telepathy tended to get jumpy if the user was jumpy. Just then, he found what he was looking for. He mentally grabbed for the view of a test sheet and it stayed there, the other images vanishing into obscurity.

He watched as various questions were answered before his very… well, Justin’s very eyes. A, A, A, C, B, E, D, A, A, C, B, C, A, B, A, E, A, E, B, A.

As the image began to fade, Lee scratched the answers into his brain. He was somehow losing touch with Justin’s mind, but that was quite fine: He now knew the answers to the test. Of course now was the tricky part.

The next feat was easier by comparison considering it saved Lee’s life the very first time he’d ever used it. He simply focused on Justin’s mind and narrowed his eyes, willing the next few events to unfold…

Ethan watched the class with unrivaled boredom. Being a teacher’s aide, he was supposed to watch Mr. Anderson’s third period English class as they took the test and make sure no one cheated. But he was pretty drowsy… Mr. Anderson was doing well enough on his own anyway. And with the high stack of books and papers that separated Mr. Anderson and Ethan, he didn’t feel so bad about dozing off. Besides, it was just after lunch…

Justin Massey stood up abruptly and said loudly: “Mr. Anderson! I cheated!” And then he pulled a sheet from his pocket. It looked like the answer sheet. Then Ethan looked inside a folder and realized that the test answers were not there. Shit-fuck-titty-ass-cock.

“I didn’t show them to anyone, but I stole them just before the test! I do apologize and I hope that this will not disrupt the integrity of the examination.” Justin stood for a moment longer, eyes unfocused and a dumbstruck expression on his face. Then he fell backward into his chair and his head slumped down to the side.

Chatter began to breakout and Ethan knew he heard some exchanging of answers. He hesitated, but then stood, but Mr. Anderson (thank god!) beat him to the catch. “Stop talking!” he barked. Instant silence. His pointed nose and sharp black eyes were complimented by his spiky white hair that looked sort of like an Anime character’s as it fell down his back and to his thighs. He looked like a mad scientist, but here he was teaching English.

“Justin Massey, outside now! Ethan, you and I will talk later. For the mean time, keep the talking at an absolute zero.” A few of the kids laughed—they must have gotten the joke. Ethan, however, did not. Justin had gotten up, groggily walking out of the door and Mr. Anderson followed him as closely as a hawk until they were both outside.

The class seemed not to care so much. They all just sat and took the test without incident. Ethan scanned around and noticed that Lee Jensen was finished his test and looked as if he were forcing himself to go to sleep. He appeared to be the only one finished. Ethan stood and walked to Lee’s desk where he picked up the test booklet and answer sheet. The booklet looked fresh. Ethan narrowed his eyes at the top Lee’s mop of dreadlocks.

“Let me sleep,” Lee said, not looking up. Ethan only pursed his lips and took the exam stuff away. As he made his way back to his and Mr. Anderson’s joint desk, Justin and Mr. Anderson glared at him. As Justin took a seat, Mr. Anderson motioned for Ethan to get over to him. He led the way out the door. Ethan swore under his breath and followed.

“So yeah, I was like, ‘Shit. I’m gonna have to take the test over! I mean dude! I only just got the vocab memorized. I swear if he fucked it up…’” Aly shook her head and exhaled. Her hair was pinned up and looked a lot like Helena Broham Carter’s when she played Mrs. Lovett in Tim Burton’s production of Sweeney Todd. Lee, of course, knew that Aly had been doing it for a much longer time: Seven whole grades earlier.

“I don’t know why you just won’t let me help you out. You know I can handle it,” Lee said, taking a strand of Aly’s hair and twirling it in his fingers. “I’m better at sending stuff now.”

A few years earlier, when Lee was just coming into his powers, he and Aly had found a most amazing way to cheat: Steal the answers from the teacher’s head and share between themselves. Aly’s open-mindedness allowed him to easily send her thoughts even if she didn’t have telepathy of her own. It went on that way every Friday for two months before Lee began to spasm and collapse into a heap, blood pouring from his nose like a fountain. Aly never cheated on anything since that day in any form or fashion.

She only stared at him, her big brown eyes like chestnuts as they sparkled dully in the overcast light of the sky. Lee pursed his lips and looked away. He’d told her time and time again that he was better, that he could take on anything. She wasn’t giving in.

“Are you going to eat your fries?” she asked, not giving him a chance to answer as she took one and bit into it, savoring the taste.

“Don’t you want to know how I did it?” Lee asked, a little upset at the treatment Aly was giving him. Their parents always called them partners in crime, but lately, Lee was feeling like a solo-criminal.

“I heard through the grapevine. Justin Massey stole the test answers and then publicly announced it. It was pretty easy to figure out that you made him do it,” she shrugged. “This sort of stuff really isn’t news anymore.”

Lee was about to say something when a nasty wind came and his fries were tossed off the table (along with the trays of several other students around). But just as quickly as it had come, it was gone. Lee made a face and Aly only laughed, having caught a few as the carton was airborne.

“Did it ever occur to you to grab the carton of fries instead of just a few off the top?” Lee sighed.

“It did,” she said as she stuffed the survivors into her mouth. “But I knew this would piss you off much more.”

He looked at her and raised an eyebrow. “Anyways… Since I have to starve and it is Friday, we should go out to eat after school.”

“How’s Floating Dragon?” Aly asked.

“Nope.”

“Peaking Dragon?”

“Nope.”

“Crown Dragon?”

“Aly, do the restaurants have to be Chinese?”

“Well, sorry for trying to be supportive.”

“I’m only a quarter Chinese… Anyway, I was thinking more along the lines of that new place… Bohemian Basket. It opened next to—” he shuddered “—Peaking Dragon.”

“The one with the tribal stuff and it’s part supermarket, part deli, part restaurant, and part café?”

“That’s the one,” Lee nodded. “Of course, we’ve got to be really cool when we get there. It’s sooo neo-Bohemian.”

“My middle name is cool,” Aly smirked.

“You’re not working today and that’s final,” said the dark woman with the orange and brown scarf. “You can watch the performance, but if you’re going to fall asleep in class…” She was a first generation Liberian immigrant. She was petite and had wide eyes, though they weren’t innocent-looking as much as intense.

“Mom,” Ethan sighed. “I’m a teacher’s aide. All I have to do is sit there.”

“And you apparently couldn’t do that right. Making money is not a right, it is a privilege. I won’t let you go messing up in class and then let you go and play money-maker in the store. In fact, I’m considering getting someone to fill your place so you can study more…”

“Mom! I’m a senior! There’s nothing to study! I got through my classes already.”

“But you managed to get landed in art class? What senior has art? Isn’t that a freshman course?”

Ethan sighed. He had not taken art as a freshman because he was too busy trying to sign up for every science class he could find. In his spurt of mental retardation, however, he came to discover that he really didn’t even LIKE science that much. He passed the classes, but changed his focus to the humanities—especially composition. He just wound up not taking an art class. Slip of the public school system.

“Fine, Mom. But can I have twenty bucks?”

“No,” she said and turned away, adjusting the series of bracelets on her arms. “I know all about the stash of cash under the floorboard in your bathroom. Take it from there.”

Ethan’s jaw dropped and he blinked stupidly. “Yes ma’am.” He watched her walk through the archway that separated the living room from the kitchen and around the corner. When he heard the door slam, he snapped back into life. She was gone! He had a good four hours before the show started and a good five hours before he would actually turn up.

He had some major steam to blow. He crept upstairs, ignoring the pictures aligned with the banister. He knew his dad was long gone and far away, but if he made sure not to look at the picture of the tall gray-eyed German man with his two year old son (Ethan) then he could at least pretend that the man was upstairs in the master bedroom, sleeping away the afternoon like he would have been before Ethan’s mother threw him out.

Ethan never forgave his mother of course, but he found it impossible to live under the same roof with no communication with the breadwinner. Naturally, any words exchanged between them were snippy and short-sentenced. The tone became so natural that neither of them ever noticed that outsiders who heard the way they spoke to each other would think they were always at odds. And they would not be wrong.

Ethan made his way into his room and closed the door. He put his laptop and a few loose books into the closet. His room was essentially bare for the last two and a half years. That was when he discovered that he could mess around with the weather and that doing so could help take out major stress. And why not? At least he wasn’t smoking marijuana or anything like that.

He locked his door—habit mostly—and walked to the window where he pulled a self-installed metallic shutter over it. It kept the noseys out (or is that nosies?) and the wind in. He took a deep breath. A second later, he stretched his arms out and felt the whirling winds of a hurricane pour from his body, swirling around him close enough to whip at his body with its air pockets, but not enough to lift him or even move him. He closed his eyes and let it go. He knew it wasn’t really as strong as a hurricane, but it was fun to pretend.

His eyes tore through his lids, and he felt the curly mass of hair atop his head whip about his face and tug at his scalp as if it were force-straightening itself. He felt more wind moving, and his back pushed itself so that his chest stuck out. The arching of his back got to be so much that the wind began to exploit it, pulling him to his tiptoes and off his feet evermore. He was flying! Well, floating. Two inches above the ground, he felt himself begin to whirl about slowly as the wind began to exert its will. But the wind was his will.

He clenched his face and forced the wind into a different pattern. “Shit-fuck-titty-ass-cock!” he yelled as he was thrust into the upper corner of the room by the wind. The moment he hit, the wind died and he fell backward and onto the bed that had been nailed there just so it wouldn’t go flying. It didn’t really hurt, but the surprise would surely be the leading cause behind his first heart attack (bumping lack of sleep into a close second place).

“I can fly,” he said to himself, using a short burst of wind to flip him from his bed and onto his feet. He looked at himself in the mirror (also nailed) on the dresser (nailed and screwed) and grinned widely at his appearance. His light honey skin and tangled spirally curls had definitely seen better days, but he’d never looked so alive. To discover that he could fly… His grin faded when he saw the photo that’d been pulled from its hiding space on the side of the mirror. The wind must have found a crevice between the wall and the mirror and pushed it out.

There was a beautiful dark boy with big wide eyes and teeth made whiter by virtue of the richness of his skin. He had some definition in his slender frame and his expression was much like Ethan’s mothers. It said: ‘I know things. I know you want to know. You’re too afraid to ask and I’m too amused to tell you.’

Of course the older Berber teen knew things. Lots of things. On Ethan’s summer visit three years ago, he’d been the only English-speaking person who was remotely anywhere near Ethan’s age. He was a nomad (part of a larger group of nomads) and had settled where Ethan was staying for a while. And he was also mixed—with Arab though. His shoulder-length hair was as black and silky as a calm ocean at night. It only meant anything to Ethan because in his town, you were one thing or another. He (along with very few others) was two.

Had Ethan not been a stupid fifteen year old, he might have noticed that he was being seduced and led into an inescapable cave. Even 3000 miles away and separated by an entire ocean, the charm of the traveling Berber man-boy was not dead. Ethan shuddered every time he thought about it.

Ethan could never forget the petrified face of his summer-lover (he never called the Berber whose name he repressed an assailant) who had not expected to be electrocuted by the very boy he attempted to take. He suddenly felt the need to be around people. He was going to be at the store much earlier than he predicted.