Bubble

Jeanna stretched out on her parents' bed, their sleeping bodies huddled under the covers in either side of hre so that the tall frame of her father and the shortter, slighter frame of her mother suddenly became the same. She could feel the heat of their night sleep through the blankets, even though she was on top of them and her parents hidden underneath.

The bed was old, a canopy bed, the fabric dusty and rough, faded, dark blue with yellow flowers. When Jeanna stared up at it from between her parents she could see movement in the air just below the yellow flowers, underneath where tha canopy hung. The air was buzzing in diamonds. Not jewelry diamond, like on her mother's ring, but in diamond shapes. Shimmering diamond shapes. They weren't sparkly, but moving, in motion, more like static from the TV, a back and forth buzzing, but silent.

The static diamonds were also curved. When she looked they curved in the air around her, enclosing her, and her parents, and the matress of the bed, in a sphere of energy.

Jeanna knew it was there, even though no one else could see it. Or at least her mother couldn't see it. The one time she asked her about it, flat on their backs on the bed, Jeanna kept pointing up and asking "What is it?" And her mother answered over and over again until she became exasperated. "The canopy, Jeanna! It's just the canopy! Do not ask again!"

So she didn't. She knew it was invisible to everyone else, just as it was to her, unless she thought about it, and then she could see it just fine.

Alone

When I was very small I knew I was different from everyone else. I couldn't explain why or how I knew, but I was sure that all of the other people in the world were really two legged monsters, hairy, intelligent apes. When I finally saw The Planet Of The Apes as a teenager I recognized the plastic, domesticated versions of my childhood phobia.

The important thing to realize about these ape-like cave monsters was that they wanted me to think they were human, just like me. I'm not sure WHY they would bother to fool me, why every single being of their kind would want to focus on pulling the wool over my six-year-old eyes, but what mattered more than motive was that it was true. I was sure that, at some point, the monsters would reveal themselves and rip me to pieces.

I would stare out the car window and watch pedestrians crossing the street, on their way to work, to school, to home, absorbed in their own lives and ignorant of my very existance, and I knew that as soon as they turned the corner and were out of my sight they would shed their human skins and laugh about their scheme.

Not one person was exempt from this fantastic phobia. My classmates, my teachers, my parents, my brothers, they were all chosen to be close to me and deceive me, to lure me further into their trap. I was alone.

When I finally saw the movie Truman, I sympathised with the unwitting star of his own reality show. It revived my fears as a child. That movie frightened me more than any other I have every seen.

I don't know why I felt that way. I guess all children have some sort of self-centered fantasy, before they realize they are one of many sentient beings, and that every one of them has their own set of experiences, memories, likes, dislikes, and feelings. But looking back it's funny how things ave changed. These days I imagine that I am invisible. I can walk down the street or down the aisle of a store and no one sees me. My family, my husband, my own children, they all go through the motions, smiling, nodding, but they are just luring me into the beleif that I am important, that I am real, like they are. I am forgotten as soon as I am out of sight.

Bridge's House

"Aunt Bridge?" she called through the screen. The door itself was wide open, even though the air was chilly with fall. Shelly shielded her eyes with her hand, peering in through the dusty screen. "Hello? Aunt Bridge? Are you in there?"

Shelly glanced over her shoulder down the street, looking for someone, anyone, she might be able to call out to in case of an emergency - maybe someone broke in. Maybe the worst had happened and Aunt Bridge had some sort of medical emergency... as if that made any sense. Why would a medical emergency lead to the door standing open at 5pm in September. What Shelly was really looking for, down that tiny street, was a sense of regularity. Something to re-establish reality.

Lark street was lined with almost-identical houses, as though they had all been built from the same Make-a-house Kit. They were each painted a different color, but they were all very neat and trim. Lawns were mowed. A couple of houses had flags over their doors, one had a carefully tended rosebush prominently displayed. One even had a small statue of a child squatting next to a smaller statue of a frog. But the houses were alike inbuild and in the care taken of them. The driveways had different cars, if they had cars at all, but were all free of debris. The cars sitting in the debris-free driveways most likely worked. Insdie, the houses would be more or less neat and clean. The air would be breathable. The rooms themselves functional.

And then there was this house. Aunt Bridge's House.

It was the corner house, which made it stand out even more, if that was possible, given the bright shade of Barbie pink it had been painted. Even though the paint was peeling and chipped, it had lost none of it's color. The house itself was falling apart. Two shutters hung on loose hinges, and a window on the side of the house was actually barded up with boards, the boards themselves plywood stolen from a construction site across town, and half covered in spray paint.

The yard, however, was in such a state that the house was hardly noticable. It was clutteres with birdbaths, half begun gardening projects that involved deep holes and shovels still stuck in the earth. Piles of rocks , tin cans hainging from sticks and strings, and various other "Art" were scattered all over the place. This was exactly what Shelly had loved about Aunt Bridge's house when she was a little girl. And now that she was an adult she could see the danger in it, the disorganization, the senility, the mess, the craziness. It looked as though the bracken in back of the houses had actually vomited the unsavory parts of the woods and wilderness onto Aunt Bridge's property, and no one had cleaned it up yet.

Shelly pushed open the screen door and walked inside. It was, as usual, a cluttered mess. Shelly held her reath, trying to postpone the unavoidable scent of pent up air and dust and cooking and inscence and mold she would inhale as soon as the needed to take her first breath. "Aunt Bridge?" she called again. "Are you home?"

The light switch did nothing. Shelly gritted her teeth, wondering how long Aunt Bridge's light had been out and how long she would go without replacing it. The old woman might live years in a house with no working lightbulbs, and then be surprised and offended when someone mentioned the fact that she didn't have to live in the dark.

Maybe this is it, she thought. Maybe this is when I walk into a room and find Aunt Bridge... what> Had died in her sleep? Had suffered a heart attack? Hung herself in the closet? Had suffocated under a pile of fallen... junk?

Shelly stepped around a pile of books in the bathroom and peeked into the shower. Nothing. She walked carefully down the hall into the bedroom, dodging a trunk filled with rocks and sticks and a storage container of... scarves? Were those brightly colored scarves? Shelly peeked her head into the bedroom.

Aunt Bridge lay on the bed, eyes closed. A book spread open on her chest, her reading glasses askew on her face. Half of her grey-blond hair escaped the simple braid she wore each day, and frizzed around her face. The face was... slack. Shelly strained to see a sign, any sign, that her Aunt was still breathing.

"Aunt Bridge?" she whispered. "Bridget? Are you seeping?" Shelly took a step closer to the bed and reached out to take a pulse... if she remembered her first aid it would be right there, on the neck...

Her Aunt jerked back in surprise and Shelly shrieked in startled irritation.

"Oh, Shelly! How long have I been asleep?" the older woman asked, straining to sit up.

"Jesus! Aunt Bridge! You left the door wide open! I thought something happened to you!"

Aunt Bridge fixed her glasses and closed her book, folding the page back to mark it. "Well that makes no sense," she said. "Why would the door being open mean anything had happened to me?"

Shelly shook her head and turned back towards the kitchen. "Where do you keep your light bulbs?" she shouted.

The Bracelet

"You dropped something," he had said, reaching his hand into her pocket. She felt that same weakness spread through her body stemming from where his hand had brushed her hip through her coat pocket. What had she dropped? She softly picked her way through the kitchen to the chair she had thrown her coat over when she had gotten home, and slowly reached into the pocket, not wanting the rustling of the material to wake Jerry, asleep on the couch.
It was a bracelet.
And it wasn't hers.
It probably belonged to one of the other girls, but none of them had said anything about missing a bracelet.
She shook it, rubbing dirt off the charms as gently as she could. It was a thin chain, for a charm bracelet, and the charms seemed tiny themselves, delicate. There were five of them: a baby shoe with "1997" inscribed on the sole, a heart with a clear stone, a butterfly with both clear and blue stones in it's tiny wings, a couple of music notes with clear gemstones in the note parts, and something that looked like a book. "To JC from CW" was inscribed on the tiny cover, like the title of the tiny little novel. That was the biggest charm everything else was very tiny.
It didn't seem like something that would belong to Tasha or Ginger.
For a second she thought it might be a gift to her from Jesse, but them she remembered the initials on the book. She was not JC and he was definitely not CW. Whoever those people were.
This belonged to someone else.
She took it to the bathroom and dipped it in a cup of water. SHe was afraid she might rust it, but she was trying to get more of the dirt off. Whoever had lost it had lost it a while ago she guessed. They might not be looking for it. At least not anymore. It was surprising, actually, that something so tarnished and caked with dirt would be so... complete. The inscriptions were legible. The stones were still there - none had fallen out. They were tiny, tiny little stones - more fragments, than actual stones. But still. You could tell what they were
She looped it around her wrist and fastened it. The clasp worked with no problem. She was actually able to fasten it the first try, which was more than she could say for anything else with those little clasps.
The bracelet was warm from the water, and made her wrist seem graceful. She glanced into the bathroom mirror, half expecting to see a willowy, perfect-hair person staring back. But it was still her, hair frizzed out, eyes startled and a little bit poofy from crying and lack of sleep.
"I am not going to be with Jesse," she whispered to herself. She knew it was true, and she was, surpisingly, OK with it. The bracelet was light and tickly on the back of her hand and she brushed her hair back from her face and smiled.

Woods - first part

Someone had hung red CD's from the trees. They had looped string through the CD's and then just flung the ends up into the tangled mess of branches. The CD's must have been either the same CD or someone had spray painted them bright red. Either way, the effect was oddly festive, especially from the road.

In the dark, she couldn't see the CD's. Everything was blue and black, the only light coming from the distant windows of Tom's mother's house and the tips of lit cigarettes traveling to and from teenage lips. She could make out the warm mist of her own breath in the late October air, and she hugged her chest tighter, remembering how she and her sister used to pretend they were smoking when they breathed out into the cold. Now that she was standing with a group of smokers, her breath didn't resemble the smoke at all.

Jesse offered her a cigarette and she took it, anxious to look calm and confident, as though she smoked and stood out in the dark and the cold for no reason on a daily - um - nightly basis. She hated cigarette smoke. She hated the dark and the cold. But Jesse, she liked.

Some of the guys and a couple of the girls were sipping beer from a smuggled six pack. When Tom extended one to Jesse he shook his head and put his arm around her shoulders. She could feel the warmth of him through her jacket. She could smell his soap, even though the smoke.

The talk was mostly about guys they knew, about people they knew who could drive, and about how to get pot. She didn't have much to contribute, so she did her best to laugh at all the right places and look like she was smoking the cigarette in her fingers. After awhile, Jesse leaned over and plucked it from her, taking a deep drag and lighting the tip bright red. "Smoking's a nasty habit," he whispered in her ear. "If you don't smoke already, you probably shouldn't start." He pulled her closer as he finished off her smoke.

Her mother thought she was at Heather's. She wasn't worried about her mother calling, and she knew Heather would cover for her because she had covered for Heather on more than a few afternoons while she met with her own boyfriend, Jackson, in his car. Jackson seemed really old for Heather, but whatever. Heather had her own life. And now she was returning the favor. Which made it all worth it.

Driving

The road looked different.
She hadn't actually expected to make it out of the driveway, but the minivan easily turned with the road instead of sliding into the trees, as she had expected. She didn't know what she would have done if that had happened. She couldn't even think about the consequenses of that one. She wouldn't have been hurt, no. It was a driveway. But if the car had been damaged, if she had been unable to get out, and if she had had to explain how her car came to be here, in this particular driveway, at this particular time of day... well, she wouldn't have been able to do it. So when she pulled out into the road, she was distracted. She could feel her fingers tingling and her heart thumping and thoughts flooding her brain. "I almost lost everything," she thought. And of course she was right. It was too risky. It would have to stop. She couldn't come here anymore. It would just be that simple. Jared would understand when she didn't call him. She would start shopping at the Shaws instead of the FoodMart. He might never run into her by accident.
She wasn't sure, at first, if the road looked different because of her new outlook on life or because of the snow. Everything always looked different in the snow, but she had seen snow before. She had seen this road in snow before. It wasn't until a tree branch hit her winshield that she realized it was the ice.
It was a pine tree, one with the long, soft needles. She expected a soft brushing noise, but instead the branch hit with a sharp THUD and the winshield cracked. "My God!" she cried out. She slowed even more, glancing at the clock. She was going to be late picking up her kids. "Well, I probably won't be the only one," she thought. The road wasn't too bad, but broken branches lay in the road.
She kept having to avoid them - they were big branches. Around each one was what looked like broken glass. At first she thought some other poor driver had had their winsheild really smashed, then she saw it was ice. Ice. Ice coated each branch, each pine needle, each remaining leaf. That's why the branches were so low - the weight of it all. That's why her car winsheild had broken. The weight of the branch...
It did look beautiful though.
Leave it to nature to make the beautiful so deadly. Wind, water, ice, snow... all so pretty. All so seemingly innocent. But you wouldn't want to be stuck in it. She glanced over and was able to see that each blade of grass in a yard was covered with it's own ice armor. In the bushes, each leaf was coated in ice. She would be able to take off the ice, and have perfect ice leaves in the palm of her hand.
That's what she was noticing when her car tire hit the branch in the road. She braked, but the car kept going, swerving diagonally. She heard the soft whump of the tires hitting the snow on the side of the road, and closed her eyes as the minivan fell down an incline, into a pile of rocks.
Less than two minutes later another car passed. The couple in the car noticed the branch and avoided it. They also noticed the freshly broken trees, but didn't see a car or any lingering evidence of a crash. They assumed, without thinking of it, that the accident had been a small one, and that no people had been seriously harmed.
That night the temperature dropped below zero and stayed there for three days. Before the cold snap was over, posters covered the town and those surrounding asking for information on her wherabouts.

Change

She didn't take the breakup well.
Her best friend was surprised. After all, she said, didn't YOU break up with HIM? He wasn't cheating on you. He didn't leave you. In fact he cried, CRIED, sobbing and pleading with you to take him back, leaving embarassing messages on your answering machine promising he'd be a better... what? Person? Boyfriend? That was the issue, wasn't it. It wasn't him, it was you, so why are you so upset?
She just didn't get it.
Lauren cut her long hair boy short. She bleached it, then colored it red. She gained five pounds, then lost fifteen. She started running in the mornings before work. One mile. Then two. Three. Five. Soon she was waking up at five thirty so that she could run for two hours, hardly giving her enough time to shower and get to work before nine.
Work. At first she spent more time at work, putting in twelve, fourteen, sixteen hour days. Then she abrubtly stopped. She became more efficient instead, and left at exactly six PM so that she could spend some time at home with her cat.
Oh, yeah. She got a cat.
She became addicted to Survivor, then went months without turning the TV on at all. She read instead, selecting biographies of presidents and historical non-fiction that she would set aside after the first hundred pages or so. She took a yoga class, then a kickboxing class... she took a course at the community college on money management, and then impulsively signed up for another on begining automechanics, which dropped after only one class.
She bought new makeup and new clothes, trying to appear sophisticated, then girlish, then casual, then finally giving up altogether and wearing the same jeans and sweatshirt any day she wasn't required to be presentable.
Eventually he stopped calling and leaving messages, and she knew he was somewhere else, hating her, maybe even with another girl. He probably even felt sorry for her by now. How sad she was.
She had thought it was what she wanted. She wanted a boyfriend. She wanted a house. She wanted to get married and to have four kids and to go to soccer games and cheer on the sidelines with all the other parents. She wanted living rooms full of toys and the chaos that kids inevitably brought. She had seen it happen to her friends as one by one, or two by two really, they became parents themselves.
But when it came right down to it, she wasn't ready.
She couldn't do it.
When it was there before her, she had crumpled it up and thrown it away.
But really how was she supposed to be a parent when she had no idea who she was? She was still trying to figure it all out. She was waiting for it all to settle. And it wasn't settling. The more she tried to find what was comfortable the more her life seemed turned upside down.
And now she wasn't even dating anyone, which was probably a good thing, since her old boyfriend was something of a drip. The messages - sheesh. It's one thing to want to get back together, but golly gee, don't cry like a baby and beg. It's just so unmanly.

Seeing Right Through You

Have you ever really thought about how truly awful it would be to know what other people are thinking? No one is as simple as they seem. Everyone has secret thoughts and feelings that they hide.
What if you were talking to your best friend about your breakup with your boyfriend and you overheard her thinking about how pathetic you sounded, or about how bored she was, or even about how she wished she had ordered a burger instead of the ceasar salad. The waiter may smile, but you hear him thinking about what snobs you are. The man who bumps into you in front of the rest rooms may be your father's age, but he's thinking about how your breasts would feel under his hands.
Movies about mind reading make it seem like a simple, clear, sometimes voluntary thing. People think, then speak - never both at once, but one at a time. They always think clearly, in complete sentences. Sometimes they can even turn it on and off.
How do you think? Do you always use words to think to yourself? Not always, right? Sometimes you talk to yourself, sure, but sometimes you remember things that happened to you. You see images, you remember songs or music, or sometimes a rush of strong emotion can bring a feeling back as though the even just took place.
Hearing thoughts is noisy business, but it's not like hearing a voice. And it isn't exactly like seeing, either. A thought is as different from a sound or a sight as a smell or a touch. A thought is it's own thing, and being able to receive the thoughts of others is a completey new sense. A kind of sixth sense, if you will.
I know what you're thinking. Trust me, I do. But you should listen to me anyway.