Into the Deep by Lauryn April Read Free Book Online Page B

minds. If I didn’t know what Steve had been thinking, would I have found him charming? Would I have stayed and had a fun time? Would I have ended up getting drunk and doing something I would have regretted? I shook my head. I didn’t want to be grateful for my newfound gift. I was mad and frustrated at being able to know what people were thinking, but more so I hated that I couldn’t just have told Christy exactly what I’d heard. I hated that I couldn’t explain why I left the beach.
     I sat on my bed; my yellow comforter wrapped around my waist, with my laptop before me and pulled up a browser window. I went to the search bar and typed in telepathy . I scrolled through the generated list of web pages and read through a definition as given by Wikipedia .  I concluded that what I was experiencing was in fact transference of thoughts from other people to me, but that didn’t explain why. I went back to the search engine and glossed past links to various superheroes and comic books. There were links to movies and books, entries for New Age self-help books dedicated to ‘discovering the inner you’ and listings for psychic hotlines. After a few pages of finding nothing to offer me any real answers, my shoulders dropped and I let out a huff of defeat.
     I felt like I had been cursed. I didn’t know how to control what I was doing, didn’t know how to escape it. I had the ability to see into people’s private thoughts and yet I felt like I was the one being violated. I felt like I could never again have mystery in my life; never again let people tell me things when they were ready. Everyone around me would be wearing their hearts on their sleeves, they’d be entrusting me with secrets they never told me, they’d be letting me in to their deepest desires and worst fears just by thinking them around me. The ability to judge people not only for who they are on the outside but for the things they think, for the things they keep to themselves, was frightening. I found myself with an ability and a responsibility I’d never wanted and the worst thing about it was that I didn’t even know why.
     I went back to the search engine and typed in the only other thing I could think to type- swimming pool accident . At first I found nothing that really related to what I wanted to know, but I wasn’t expecting much. There were a number of news articles about various accidents. Small children drowning when left unattended, a woman becoming paralyzed during a party, but nothing related to acquiring strange abilities after an accident. I tried a different search term. Hit head on bottom of pool , I typed. Then I found one article that I thought might help me understand. I clicked on the link and began to read the article. It was about a man who hit his head at the bottom of a swimming pool and woke up with astounding piano skills. Before his accident he’d never even played the piano, but after he was an instant concert pianist. He still can’t read music, but he can play it.
     I kept reading, feeling for the first time like I wasn’t alone. I hadn’t discovered another person exactly like me. He couldn’t hear other people’s thoughts, but he did develop an ability that he didn’t have previously, and after an accident nearly exact to my own. I at least felt confident that what had caused my ability to know what people were thinking was my falling into the pool at Lakefall Country Club. I didn’t have all the answers, but I had something.
     

 
     
 
     
6
     
Into the Deep
     
O n Monday I was the first of my friends to arrive at school. I made my way across the open courtyard to wait for them by the fountain. Leaning against the cold stony ledge, I listened to the flow of the water behind me and exhaled a deep breath. After how Saturday night ended, I wasn’t expecting Christy to have forgiven me yet, but I knew she would eventually. With the sun warming my face, I closed my eyes and soaked