Chapter 1

Looking back, I think the first clue about my abilities occurred months before they started manifesting. It was in the first week of January in 2001. I was still sixteen at the time. It was the week my mom died.

I’ve had classmates who’ve lost family members, through accidents and illnesses, so I’ve seen both ways, fast and slow. Before I lost my mom, I used to think that fast was better. Maybe I still do. I would have hated to watch her suffer. But the shock ... Oh man, it’s brutal. And the guilt ... Not too much in my case, just the normal regrets of not being nicer to someone you loved while you had the chance. For my dad though, it was a different world entirely...

He’d been married to my mom for more than thirty years. They both grew up in Sterling, Illinois, a small town of about fifteen thousand an hour or two west of Chicago. My parents lived there all their lives, sharing classes in primary school, becoming high- school sweethearts ... My dad started working for Northwestern Steel and Wire right out of high school, just like his dad. My mom became a sales clerk. They married each other when they were both twenty-one.

My dad is a union man. I’m not saying that to boast or to put down. I’m just telling you his perspective. According to my dad, there are two great opposing forces in the universe. I’m not talking about God and the Devil. I’m talking about labor and management, and my dad is on the side of truth and goodness. He’s labor.

My dad thinks of the USW as his family. He’s also honest, a hard worker, kind, and horrified by the lack of loyalty the Northwestern owners have shown for their workers. My dad has seen it all, from reneging on promises for medical care to blacklisting people who spoke out about safety violations.

My dad started working the night shift in 1967 as an apprentice operator, learned the various trades of tending and casting, became a team leader ... By the 1980s he was working mostly with specialty steels, and in the last decade before the accident he earned his certificates as master millwright and worked almost exclusively in maintenance and installation. He loved his work, took pride in it to the core of his being. Then in December of 2000, after 122 years in operation, Northwestern filed for Chapter 11. And a few weeks later there was the car crash. For a while everything just seemed to fall apart.

It started for me in the early Monday morning of January 1, 2001, a few hours before sunrise. I was home alone fast asleep when someone started pounding on the door. It was the police...

I was at Community General a half hour later, met dad in a deserted waiting room outside the surgery area. He almost didn’t recognize me, and I almost didn’t recognize him. He looked as if he was aged fifteen years in the last few hours. In a shell-shocked voice he told me what happened.

He and mom were coming home from the union’s New Year’s Eve party, about two in the morning. Dad was driving. Mom had just unclicked her seatbelt to get something from her purse in the back, and suddenly there was a tremendous crash and the car went flying. Dad and the other driver were unbelievably lucky, a few pulled muscles and some minor cuts from the glass. Mom though ... Mom went through the windshield, head first...

For all the torture Dad would put himself through in the coming months, we never could get a clear picture of what happened. Except for the driver of the other car, there were no witnesses. He claimed Dad swerved wildly and struck him, but that story didn’t particularly fit with the crash evidence. Both drivers had been drinking, but both were also legally sober. In the end, no citations were issued. It was just one of those accidents. Maybe if the lighting or the road conditions were just a little bit better, or if either driver had been just a little more alert ... maybe nothing would have happened.

If ... In reality, I was sitting with my dad in the living room in the late afternoon after the funeral. I asked him a couple of times whether he’d like something for dinner, but he kept shaking his head no. I just sat there in silence with him for almost an hour, not knowing quite what to do. I knew what dad’s problem was. Men of his generation are not supposed to cry...

I had my eyes closed, thinking of mom, hating the emptiness of the hole she left. I was angry and sad and frustrated all at the same time, and then all the emotions seemed to focus into one white-hot spark of rebellion against the universe, and I felt the brief flash of a terrific headache behind my eyes.

“Eric?!”

I opened my eyes. “Uh ... Yeah dad?”

“Did you just flick the lights on and off?”

“Huh? From here?”

My dad just stared at me for a while. “Yeah, I guess not. I must be seeing things. Sorry...” He closed his eyes before I could reply.

I sat there feeling totally bewildered. The weirdest part was, I had seen the flash too, but it was behind my eyes, two live wires of anger and sorrow shorting against each other in my mind. How in the world could dad have picked up on that? I sat there probing my mind for the intense headache I thought was coming, but I felt fine. I finally shrugged it off as a meaningless coincidence. There was no other logical explanation. And I was right. There was nothing logical about that flash at all...

Chapter 2

I went back to Sterling High on January 8th, a week after the accident. The kids were very sympathetic, that helped a lot. It’s a modest-sized school, just over a thousand students. The class ahead of me, the graduating seniors, number about two hundred. I have some mixed feelings about the school. I like my teachers, but the drug dealing has gotten so out of hand that I sometimes worry about my safety ... And Melanie’s...

Melanie is my girlfriend. She gave me a really great hug after school that day, long and affectionate, holding me in her arms as if she never wanted to let me go. We had seen each other briefly over the past week, but there was so much family coming in from both my mom’s and dad’s side that we never really had much of a chance to talk. We both decided to skip the bus and walk home...

I should tell you about Melanie. We’re in the same AP science and math classes and have been friends since we were toddlers. She’s bright, considerate, very courageous, athletic, ambitious ... She is determined to become one of the world’s greatest doctors ... Melanie is also absolutely, positively, the most beautiful creature who ever walked the Earth. She also has one of the wackiest, most dysfunctional families I’ve ever heard of, let alone met. Seriously, they’re one for the record books.

We held hands as we walked home, not doing much talking at all. Somehow, we didn’t need to. Melanie could sense how I was feeling and she thought having me talk about it would only make it worse, at least for now. She gave me a quick kiss and a warm smile as she dropped me off at my house. Her home is only three blocks away. I felt a lot better heading up to my room to study. Melanie was right. She’s so perceptive. Just being with her and not having to try to verbalize all the chaos within me ... It was exactly what I needed.

That’s where we were in our relationship, at the holding-hands stage. Well, over the last few months, we’ve started to kiss each other goodbye too. But Melanie is genuinely shy about getting more physical, and to tell the truth, so am I. We’ll be going to the junior prom, of course, and we both have our dreams about the future. But for now, we’re still exploring how to be emotionally intimate with each other. We’re holding off on the physical stuff till later.

And the months passed. At the end of February (or the first of March, take your pick when it’s not a leap year), I turned seventeen, a month ahead of Melanie. More time passed, and somehow, I came to terms with never seeing Mom again. But for Dad, it was a different story. The United Steel Workers were a family to him, but somehow, even the USW couldn’t replace the hole Mom had left in his heart. Winter turned into spring, and I hadn’t seen Dad smile or even relax in months. And the fact that Northwestern would be shutting down the plant in May certainly wasn’t helping any. I worried a lot and tried to be around for Dad to talk with. There didn’t seem to be much else I could do.

Then on the last day in May, I came home from school and found Dad grinning like a Jack-o’-Lantern. He had been traveling over the past week, ever since the plant closed, and had just gotten back from a trip to Reading, Pennsylvania. One look at his face, and I knew he had struck pay dirt.

“Carpenter Technology?” I asked, grinning.

He nodded happily. “I was unbelievably lucky. They have an opening that fits me perfectly! It’ll actually be an increase in base pay, much better than I was hoping for. I’ll be going back into operations again, specialty steels, and branching out into titanium.”

I gave him a beaming smile. “So when do you start?”

For the first time, dad looked a bit worried. “They’re anxious for me to start right now. They’re offering me a nice bonus if I start this coming Monday. Eric, we have some talking to do.”

I’d been so happy for my dad I wasn’t paying attention to the implications of all this. It suddenly hit me like a ton of bricks. I’d be moving with dad to eastern Pennsylvania. Melanie?!!

I broke the news to her the next day, after we left the prom. We had a really nice time there for about three hours, but then some of the kids started pushing the envelope on rowdiness. The chaperones were struggling to keep things under control. A part of me wanted to stick around and help them, but my first loyalty was to Melanie. I wanted her out of there. So we drove to the Dairy Queen for some ice cream. I waited until we finished our cones, and then I told her about dad’s new job.

“What?! Eric! You’re not joking, are you?”

“About something like this? No, of course not. He’s going to leave on Sunday, start the next day.”

“He? You’re not going with him?”

I shook my head and tried to smile. “No. I’ll be around for the summer, hopefully for almost all of it. Dad wants me to fix up the house and sell it. He’s hiring me.”

“Hiring you?”

“Yeah, union wages too ... He insisted; $16.93 per hour, plus time and a half for overtime.”

Melanie had to smile at this. “You’re joking, right?”

“No, not at all ... Uh, Melanie ... I’ll be around for the summer ... And afterwards, I don’t want to lose you...”

Melanie said nothing for a while. She just stared into my eyes for the longest time, and then started to cry. No sobs, just silent tears falling down her cheeks. “Eric ... What you mean to me ... I haven’t even explained it to myself, let alone have something I can offer you, but ... I don’t want to lose you either...”

“Melanie...”

“Eric ... Do you want to have...” her voice squeaked, “ ... with me?”

“Huh?”

Melanie blew a full breath of air through her cheeks, and then leaned and sank back into the car seat. I reached across and held her hand. After a while, she said, “I thought we had more time; lots and lots of more time. I thought you would enjoy chasing me. I thought I could give you the pleasure of pursuing me before I let you capture me. And now...” She leaned over and rested her head against my shoulder. “Hold me?”

I put my arm around her shoulders and my head against hers. We stayed that way for the longest time without speaking. Finally, I turned and kissed her. “Melanie, nothing has changed. We’re planning on being close to each other for college.”

“I know.”

“It’s for one year. We can talk on the phone, and I asked my dad about the odometer on his car. It’s 830 miles between Reading, PA, and here. I could drive that in one day, fifteen hours maybe, no problem.”

Melanie sighed and nodded and just cuddled with me. She leaned up and lightly kissed me on my cheek. “A year ... It seems like such a long time. Will you really wait for me?”

“Count on it!”

She relaxed for the first time and kissed me again. “Okay! And I will wait for you. Hell! I wish my parents liked you better! They can be so impossible sometimes! And it seems to be getting worse, not better!”

I almost nodded, but didn’t want to spoil the moment by turning the conversation to such an annoying topic. I drove Melanie home by the time limit her parents had set. Both her dad and mom came out and more or less glared at me as I walked Melanie to her door. Figuring what the hell, I gave her a quick peck goodnight anyway, and she smiled and did the same. Her dad looked angry, even more than I was expecting. Hell, I didn’t want to get Melanie into trouble. I tried to smile politely and then left.

Chapter 3

The summer was an incredible educational experience for me. In three short months, I picked up an unbelievable amount of experience. Dad had friends from other trade unions come in and oversee my work. The learning opportunities were priceless, and I wound up working close to eighty hours a week. I completely rebuilt the kitchen under the kind tutelage of the UBCJA, the UAPP, and IBEW. That’s the United Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners of America, the United Association of Plumbers and Pipefitters, and the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers.

The house looked great, and I was so proud of the kitchen. I changed the floor to ceramic tile, even put in new sub-flooring before I did the mud job. I sweated in the plumbing for a new sink location and the dishwasher mom always talked about having. And I did all my own wiring, including the installation of a sub-junction box down in the basement. No more worrying now about having the toaster and the microwave on at the same time. The various city building inspectors said everything looked very professional.

I also did a lot of finishing woodwork and found I loved it. I completely rebuilt the staircase to the second floor, replaced a cracked stringer, and put in new handrails and new risers and treads made out of Brazilian cherry wood. It gleamed! And by far I was most proud of the kitchen cabinets, customized solid hardwood maple complete with Hawaiian Koa wood inlay. It took a lot of time with the sanders and the routers and the table saw, but the result looked fantastic. I think it’s what sold the house, even in the soft market.

I saw almost nothing of Melanie that summer. She was one of a few high-school students in the entire state to be accepted in a special pre-med summer program at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. It’s just over 200 miles by car from my house to the campus, about a three-and-a-half-hour drive. It’s not a bad trip, but I only drove it once. Word got back to Melanie’s parents about my first visit, and they really reamed her out about it, even to the point of threatening to withdraw their permission for her to be in the summer program. We talked on the phone the next day and decided we wouldn’t push the issue.

We talk a lot on the phone, in the evenings. Gosh, I miss her. The talking does help though. Her latest struggle is trying to get her parents to sign for her driver’s learning permit. They promised to do it when she turned seventeen, but somehow the paperwork never quite gets done. I don’t know why her parents treat her like this. Melanie is one of the most mature and thoughtful people I know. She wouldn’t abuse driving privileges. Her parents just don’t seem to appreciate her. And her father’s attitude towards unions is, “Bust ‘em up!” For some incredibly wacky reason, somehow that got translated to “Melanie, stay away from Eric!” It’s totally insane!

The summer flew by. With all the work and the overtime, I was struggling not to charge my dad more than $1600 a week, but I had given him my solemn word I would not underreport my time. By the end of the summer, I had grossed close to $20,000. It felt really strange, getting paid so much for doing work I found so enjoyable. Before I knew it, the summer was over. It was the last day of August, the Friday before Labor Day. Dad came to close on the house sale and pick me up.

He had a tear in his eye when he saw all my work. He said he couldn’t quite believe all the reports from his friends about what kind of job I was doing. His friends aren’t the type to rave, and he sometimes wondered if they were joking. I never felt so proud. Then after one last look, we went to the lawyers and signed it all away. My days at Sterling had drawn to a close.

Dad had bought a house in Exeter Township, a few miles east of Reading. The township had a much better high school than the city. It’s even smaller than the one in Sterling, only about 800 students. I started right after Labor Day. The students were mostly friendly, not too cliquish, and the drug problem wasn’t quite as bad as in Illinois. 9/11 happened my second week of school, and somehow I think that helped the class accept me. I think they saw me as a fellow American, rather than some outsider from another state.

My only real problem with the school is that they had this fixed policy that you had to take Advanced Placement courses as a junior IN THEIR SCHOOL before you could take AP courses as a senior. We argued and argued with the school principal and finally even petitioned the school board. No luck. Dad and I hate wasting time fighting losing battles, so in the end, he bought me some college texts on calculus and physics, and most of my science that year was self-taught.

The second time my abilities manifested was right after a phone call I had with Melanie during Thanksgiving break. It was the day my universe changed.

Melanie was calling from a friend’s house. The time was late Saturday afternoon.

Right after I had moved to Pennsylvania, Melanie’s parents had forbidden her to contact me, no phone, no e-mail, nothing. But we both feel that kind of control is way beyond their parental rights. They were even monitoring their phone bill to check on her. I guess it’s not illegal, but man oh man, what an awful way to treat your child. I try not to make sarcastic comments about it. They’re still her parents. For the phone call, I tried to start on a topic I knew she’d enjoy.

“So how’s track coming?”

“Fabulous!” Gosh, it was so nice to hear her happy. “Coach Collins timed me at 35:37 on the ten-kilometer run last Saturday.”

“Wow! Six six-minute miles?!”

“Yep! Under! I’m doing a mile every 5:44.”

“Wow ... Dreaming about the Olympics, Melanie? Athens is less than three years away!”

“Yeah, right! I’m still six minutes off the women’s world-record pace, and probably one or two minutes away from being good enough for the Olympic team. I hope to be on the podium at the State Championships though.”

I took a risk. “Surely your parents must be proud of you, at least about this.”

Melanie gave a mirthful laugh. “Well, I must admit, they have inspired me to be the runner I am today.”

“Really?! Hey, that’s great!”

“Yeah. They still say I’m not trustworthy enough to have a driver’s permit. But I figure if I can run five miles in half an hour, then I really don’t need to drive.”

“Oh ... Oh hell, Melanie...”

“Oh, it’s not so bad, Eric. And in another four months, I won’t need their signature for the permit. I’ve got the date circled on my calendar. On Monday, April 1, 2002, the April Fool girl will have her birthday and be eighteen. I’ll be emancipated.”

Melanie was trying to hide it, but I knew her too well. She sounded just a bit depressed. I tried to shift the topic to her older sister. “Well, better than being emaciated I guess! So how is Patricia doing?”

For the first time in the call, I heard Melanie giggle. “Oh, that’s right! You don’t know. Patty is a guest again of the Whiteside County judicial system.”

I must have been slow that day. It took me a moment to realize what Melanie was saying. “Yikes! What’s she done now?”

“Oh, just the usual, more shoplifting.”

“Ah ... No more probation, huh?”

“No, not this time. Patty even tried to lie to the judge again about what was going on. She kept insisting that the sales clerk had said it was okay for her to take the merchandise out through the loading dock. She sounded so self-righteous!”

“I take it the judge wasn’t buying it?”

“Not this time. He added an extra sixty days for perjury. Patty was lucky it wasn’t a year! The earliest she can get out is late summer.”

“Hell! How could she be so stupid?!”

Melanie chuckled over the phone. “Yeah. My sister has two strikes against her. She has no morals telling her not to steal, and she’s not smart enough to be intimidated about being caught.”

I sighed in agreement. “A double whammy...”

Melanie made a humph noise. “It’s so frustrating when I try to talk with her. She dreams up these elaborate and silly lies to explain her way out of the messes she makes, and she thinks the lies will save her. She tells me things, and I have no idea if they’re true or not.”

I sighed. “How did your parents react? To the jail sentence, I mean...”

“Oh, they’re still very supportive. Mom and dad reassured Patty her bedroom will be waiting for her when she gets out, and dad has promised to find her a new job.”

“Think he can?”

Melanie was silent for a while. “This time? I’m not sure ... Maybe not. There’s no job on Earth where people will tolerate dishonesty. There is no job like that ... Hell, Eric! I feel like Cinderella sometimes, and Patty is my evil step-sister! Maybe I should start breaking the law! Maybe then my parents will love me...”

I nodded and sighed. “Nah. It would just give them some real ammunition to shoot you down with ... Melanie, I love you ... not as a parent though.”

“I know. I love you too ... Eric, I think of you when I run. That’s what makes me so fast!”

“Huh?”

“I push myself into high gear, and then I dream of you. I imagine you’re holding me, and my body explodes with happiness. My last kilometer is usually my fastest. Not by much, but Coach Collins says that’s still very unusual...”

Melanie paused before continuing. “I do love you, so intensely it takes my breath away. And I miss you. Not so much in the daytime. The days are so busy. But at night, when I lie down ... It’s been so long since we’ve seen each other ... Oh Eric, I want so much to hold you again, and to feel you holding me. I keep reliving my memories of you...”

I trembled with my own longing and whispered, “I know. I’ve been reliving my memories of you too. It’s been exactly half a year, Sunday, June 24th. I keep remembering the last time I saw you, going out to dinner with you at Urbana ... How you looked, your kind smile, how you cried when you kissed me goodbye...”

Melanie gave a really deep sigh on the phone. “Eric, I’m so sorry about my parents ... You don’t know how grateful I am...”

“Huh? Grateful for what?”

“For you putting up with all this insane nonsense about not seeing me! For you putting up with all these stupid, secret phone calls! I know how ridiculous this must seem to you ... I had a nightmare last night, a really damn awful scream-in-the-dark nightmare, where you decided that this situation is so wacky, dating me just wasn’t worth the effort!”

I blinked as I realized what she said, and tried to reassure her by joking. “Melanie! That’s crazy talk!”

Melanie seemed to hiccup over the phone, and then she laughed, a sweet musical release from her center of her heart that sounded so pretty. “Right! I must have inherited the skill from my family! You are so ... SHIT!!!”

“What?!”

“Dad’s car just pulled up outside! Goodbye my love!” and she hung up the phone before I could reply.

I sat there for a few minutes, hoping she wasn’t in any trouble. Her parents are her legal guardians for another four months. They could still make life hell for her if they wanted to.

I decided to do some school work. I opened my desk drawer to get a pen, and noticed in the back of the drawer my old combination lock from Junior High. I pulled it out on a whim and stared idly at it. I felt hot and upset that Melanie was probably getting yelled at, 800 miles away. I pressed the back of the lock against my forehead to cool off, shrugging a bit at the thought that after four years I had completely forgotten the combination.

It was the most unearthly feeling. I could imagine the cams of the lock behind the dial so clearly, imagine exactly where the slots in the cams were that released the shank. I pulled the lock away from my forehead and stared at it. In my hand, it just seemed normal.

Totally dumbfounded, I returned the lock to my forehead. The details of the knowledge of the inside of the lock were both exquisite and absolute. I pulled the lock away and stared at it again. Nothing. “What the hell is this?” I muttered.

It’s so difficult to describe a completely new sense. Imagine trying to describe color to a blind man who has no idea of the concept of sight, or trying to describe music to a deaf person who has no idea of the concept of sound. My language just doesn’t have the concepts developed to describe what this sense is like.

That said, I’ll try to make an analogy about what it’s like. Write the number four on a piece of paper. Put it on a desk in front of you and stare at it for a while. Then cover the paper with a book. Now, try to imagine the reality of what number could possibly be under the book. It’s a four. You’re absolutely, positively sure of it. In your mind’s eye, the knowledge is absolute, unquestioned.

That’s what it was like for me, but even better. I could imagine zooming down and knowing the lock in fine detail, even better than if I were using my eyes on a disassembled lock. I pulled back and stared at the lock again in my hand. Nothing.

I got up and got the combination lock I was currently using for the gym. I opened it and got a screwdriver, and then unscrewed the release at the bottom of the vacant shank shaft. I took the lock apart and played with it for over an hour. I taught myself exactly how it worked.

Then I went back to my Junior High lock. I put it back on my forehead, and the solution seemed so obvious. I turned the dial briefly, watching with my mind’s eye how the slots in the cams were lining up. I pulled the lock away from my face and pulled on the shank. It opened easily. There was nothing to it. But I still didn’t know the combination.

I locked the shank and put the padlock on my forehead again, spinning the first cam to the correct position. Then I reached out with my imagination and looked at the number on the dial, 27. That’s all I needed. I suddenly remembered the rest of the combination. That part didn’t feel like magic, just normal memory.

I put the lock down and shook my head in amazement. What the hell was going on?

Well, the credo of a scientist is: test and learn! I took a simple ruler and placed the origin against my forehead, sticking straight out. Then I closed my eyes and tried to find how far I could imagine seeing the markings on the ruler. It was just over two inches. It was a sharp cutoff.

I began taking notes and making measurements all over my head. Then I just sat there and stared at the numbers. I began to tremble.

It seems there’s a point within my skull, dead center between my eyes and about three inches in. Anything within about six inches of that point I can nail with imagining what it looks like. I sat at my desk almost in a dream, exploring my own nose for a while. It was interesting, and not nearly as gross as it sounds...

What to do? Did I have to do anything? Should I tell dad? Melanie? Once I tell somebody about this and demonstrate it, there’s no turning back. I went and lay on my bed and thought for a long while.

I finally decided I had a perfectly moral right not to tell anybody if I didn’t want to. I went downstairs and had a late turkey sandwich snack with dad. We played a couple of games of chess. I lost both games. Then I sacked out for the night. I lay in bed for hours before sleep came, thinking about the lock and wondering ... Finally I started dreaming about Melanie and got some rest.

Chapter 4

Three weeks later on December 15th, I got a hand-written letter from Melanie. I stared at the envelope for a while. It was definitely her handwriting. But she had listed my father’s name at our old house in Sterling as the return address. It suddenly occurred to me that if the post office had trouble with the postage or the primary address, the letter would still be forwarded to my dad here in Pennsylvania and not back to Melanie. Wondering why she was bothering to do this, I opened the letter. Here’s what it said:

Dearest Eric,

I think I have less freedom now than Patty! I am super grounded. I’m off track; in fact, I have no after-school activities at all. I don’t even have permission to leave the house! Mom threatened to sue the school if they allowed me internet access, and the school admin caved in. I’m effectively under supervision 24 hours a day.

Mom and dad have been spreading insane rumors about you brainwashing me to be your future slave, and some of the other parents have shown them their phone records. My parents know that we have been talking to each other. I’m penning this letter in Study Hall. At least here I’m safe. I think.

Why am I capitulating to all this? I have all my college applications out, and none of them requested financial assistance. With Dad the managing director of the Wells Fargo branch and Mom a full partner at O’Hare and Snyder, my parents earn way too much money for me to qualify for aid. Both my parents are threatening to cut me off financially if they catch me communicating with you again. They say it’s their final warning.

Eric, I’ve never had a job. Lots of great summer programs and volunteer work, but I’ve never earned anything. My parents are super-controlling my access to money, and I don’t have the resources to fight this battle, at least not now.

I feel like I’m trapped in a fairy story gone berserk, some crazy combination of Cinderella and Romeo & Juliet. Eric, darling, wait for me, please? Stop! I can’t ask you a question and ask you not to respond at the same time! I say instead that I love you and I know you love me, and that I trust you will wait for me. Please, please don’t write back, even through the internet or a third party. My parents are so furious with me, it’s just too dangerous.

I’ll try to call you if I can find a completely safe way to do it. It might be a few months, maybe not until April. I’ll hoard up a bunch of quarters for a pay phone or something.

Oh, Eric, I can only imagine how crazy this must sound, but I’m not joking. You wouldn’t believe how often I’m searched and how intensely I’m spied upon. Mom comes in and picks me up at the school office every day. I’m going to sneak this letter into the mailbox outside during my lunch period.

Under the microscope in Illinois, offering you my love and faithfulness, Melanie

I stared at Melanie’s letter forever, reading it again and again. I finally decided I needed a reality check. I went and showed the letter to my dad. He just kept shaking his head as he read it.

“Dad, why do they hate me so much? I’ve always tried to be polite with Melanie’s parents. I really have.”

Dad nodded and then grunted. “Hell, Shakespeare! Not a bad analogy. Maybe she’s right.”

“What?”

“Romeo and Juliet. I read it with your mom in twelfth-grade English, back in 1966 ... You want to know what this might be about? My granddad and Melanie’s great-grandfather had a legal dispute once, about a bank loan. Gus won, and Melanie’s great-granddad took it personally ... real personal...”

I grimaced and whined, “But that was ages ago! Why spend your life fighting your grandfather’s war?”

My dad sighed. “Yeah, that is the question, isn’t it? Probably because they’re not smart enough to find better things to do. It’s as simple as that ... Eric, if you want some advice, let Melanie call the shots on this. She’s the one in the war zone. Let her pick the battle plan.”

I nodded glumly and went back to my bedroom. After a while, I made another measurement of what I’ve decided to call my inner sense.

It’s growing. In the three weeks since Thanksgiving, the sphere around my internal center-point expanded from 15 cm to 24 cm. I could now scan objects six inches from the top of my nose. And the detail! I could fill my imagination with a tiny crevasse on the ruler. It’s hard to quantify this, but I’m estimating I can see four times as much detail compared to Thanksgiving...

I made some more experiments. I don’t have to have the sense on if I don’t want it. It’s like opening an infinitely effective eyelid. Unless I want to scan, I feel completely normal.

I sat back and wondered. Where was this all heading? And then I had to smile a bit. What would be my story if dad noticed me sticking the ruler all around my head?

Christmas break arrived. My nights were filled with thoughts of Melanie, and as for the days, it was crunch time for applying to colleges. I selected Mech. E. as a major and had a big list of schools: Case Western, Purdue, Carnegie-Mellon, Boston University, U. of Penn ... My SAT scores were 790 in math and 590 in verbal, not bad. My safety-valve school was Penn State, and I also had one pie-in-the-sky Hail-Mary pass in the air. I applied to M.I.T.

The second Monday in January, I toured the campuses of B.U. and M.I.T. The interviews at B.U. were fun and relaxing, and I think it’s an excellent school. Then I crossed the Charles River into Cambridge and spent the afternoon at M.I.T.

There I was in a professor’s office in Building 3, with a nice view of the Great Court out the windows to my back. It was IAP on campus, the Independent Activities Period. The whole month of January is like that at M.I.T.: no formal classes, just everybody playing with the sciences and nobody worrying about grades. What a great idea!

Professor Hanson was seated across from me at his desk. He was polite, attentive, and I think incredibly bright. At first, we hit it off very well. I described how I had spent my previous summer, and he said it sounded marvelous and how he wished he had such an opportunity when he was growing up.

But as he went through my school transcripts, he also started giving me thoughtful looks. I didn’t find it too encouraging.

I decided to level with him. “I need honest feedback, Professor Hanson. Do I have a chance of getting in here?”

He nodded. “Yeah, okay. I’ll give you my straight opinion as an engineer. You might make the waiting list. Eric, personally I think you might do fine here, but M.I.T. creams the country for the best students. There are just a lot of other applicants who have better qualifications.”

I sighed. “My SAT scores?”

He shrugged. “That’s minor. The 790 is excellent! The 590 in verbal ... isn’t bad...”

I nodded. “I could have boosted it, worked on my vocabulary. It was a conscious decision to do the summer work instead.”

Hanson nodded and returned to my transcripts. “You were in Honors English your sophomore and junior years? Math and science too?”

“Yes. Well, that’s Sterling, Illinois’s version of Honors classes. Any kid that was serious about studying was put into Honors. It was still a bit slow.”

“But you dropped out of AP courses in your senior year?”

“Oh, hell!” I thought. I went on to explain Exeter’s ridiculous policy. Professor Hanson seemed sympathetic, but it wasn’t really his problem. We talked a little more about M.I.T., and then he asked me, “Anything else you’d like to mention?”

It was crunch time! I knew if I walked out with a question like that hanging in the air, I could kiss M.I.T. goodbye. But add what? Without thinking, I told him a little about finding my Junior High padlock, and how I opened my other padlock to see if I could figure out how to open the first one.

He smiled at me when I was finished and then laughed. “Yeah. I take it you learned knowing how one lock works is not the same as opening another?!”

I had nothing to lose. I respected the Professor, but I was also desperate. It was time to deal him a joker straight from the bottom of the deck.

“Heck no,” I said, giving him this big beaming smile. “I taught myself how to pick the lock!”

“Huh?! You can pick a Masterlock?”

“Yeah.” I tried to mention this very casually. “There’s not much to it, if you know the secret.”

Professor Hanson was looking at me as if I were an utter charlatan from some alien planet. And then he gave me this huge, devilish grin. “Well,” he said, reaching into his desk drawer, “it just so happens...”

A moment later, I was sitting staring at the biggest, fattest, ugliest combination Masterlock in creation. It felt massive in my hands. Professor Hanson was grinning at me from ear to ear, but it was a playful grin. I’ve seen the Union people grin at each other like that, one professional to another, offering an impossible challenge.

“Two conditions!” I grinned back.

“Okay!”

“Turn around. I don’t want you to see how I do this!”

“Protecting your trade secrets, huh? Very fair! What else?”

I grinned. It was time to put my gonads on the table! “When, and I say when and not if I open this, and if I get accepted here, and if something is later stolen from a locked area, don’t jump to conclusions about me. Ability is not intent!”

Professor Hanson grinned back. “Oh, that first part is a proud boast, lad! Let’s see if you can sustain it! And as to your second part ... That’s a damn thoughtful point. Agreed. And to protect you from others jumping to conclusions, I solemnly promise not to tell anyone that you picked this lock...” The big smile came back. “ ... If you do! How much time do you think you’ll need?”

“Uh...” What to say? I thought I would only need a few seconds. “Five minutes?”

His eyes shot up in astonishment. And then he burst out laughing.

I tried to recover. “ ... if I’m lucky! Maybe ten?” My voice was squeaking. Damn!

Hanson nodded, his eyes wide open and rolling. Then he looked at the clock, pulled out a book, and turned around and started reading.

It was a huge lock, almost the size of my palm. I brought it up close to my face and sensed it. I decided my first impression was wrong. The lock was indeed big and fat but it definitely wasn’t ugly. It was, in fact, an incredibly beautiful lock, infinitely better made than my school padlock. This was a masterpiece of lock engineering.

I still thought I had lots of time. I started making minor noises with it, pulling on the thick, gleaming shank and spinning the dial just for audio appearances. The outside was extremely high-quality chrome steel. But my mind was captivated and delighted by the mechanism within. Four disks!

The structure was completely different from my old lock. I suddenly realized I would need some serious time to open it, even with my abilities. First, I had to figure out how the damn thing worked!

Time passed without notice. The interior engineering of the lock was magnificent, precision-machined, oiled surfaces perfectly sliding against each other. I was enthralled. And all the protuberances on the disks were confusing me. My old lock just had one per disk.

I finally saw the complexity of the design. Even with my inner vision, I would need time to learn how to tell the difference between the true gates and the false gates. There was also a lot of preliminary spinning to do. I finally figured out I had to turn the knob to the right past the first cam slot four complete turns to align all the true notches correctly. Then I had to pass the second true number three full turns to the left. Then two full turns to the right before the third true number.

After numerous trial-and-error attempts, I finally saw I was one half turn away from opening the lock. I shuddered and breathed a sigh of relief and made the last twist. With the apertures of all four cams finally aligned, the spring-loaded bolt slid and released with a very satisfying cha-ching!

“What?!” Professor Hanson whipped around and stared, partially at me but mostly at the open lock in my hands. He tore his eyes away to glance at the clock, fourteen minutes. He looked back at me and whispered in awe, “How did you do that?”

I shrugged. “It’s a gift...” Which was the truth, and besides, what else could I say?

“That lock was made by a guy named Stephan,” Hanson said at last, “A grad student of mine. He got his Master’s six years ago and went to work for Masterlock. That’s a specialty lock. It would cost over $300 apiece to make if Masterlock ever went into production with it. But it’s not sold commercially as a padlock. There’s no market for such high precision in a padlock.”

“Yeah,” I commented. “It would be just too easy to bring a plasma torch and slice through the shank.”

Hanson nodded. “Exactly ... Stephan made a few of these on a whim, as demos for the sales channel...”

“It’s the most beautiful lock I’ve ever seen,” I nodded in agreement. And then, a touch of pure bravado. “Very sophisticated ... but vulnerable, if you know its weakness.”

Hanson blinked and frowned. “Stephan thought it would be unpickable...”

Dang! Had I gone too far?! “Yeah, well ... It was a challenge...”

“Yeah ... Eric, I just realized sometime. The other kids applying here, if they were curious about how their lock worked, they would just look at combination locks on the web and study diagrams. But not you. You reached for a screwdriver and another lock...”

Professor Hanson took a deep breath. “Eric, what do you want out of life? This isn’t a trade school. You’ll be firmly in the camp of management if you graduate from here. Is that what you want? You told me about the Union background of your family...”

“If I graduate from here?!” I thought silently. “Whoa!” I tried to collect myself as I realized Professor Hanson was asking me a very thoughtful question. “Oh, there won’t be any problem there. The family ties win out. At worst I’ll be their spy in an enemy’s territory, unless I do something heartless.”

He nodded. “At what do you think?”

“About labor versus management? That they need each other, that labor needs the capital market, and capital needs the labor market. The competition is fine! It’s a pity though the competition can’t be more symbiotic, more win-win...”

Hanson nodded. “Damn, Eric! I’ll ask you straight. Do you think you can cut the physics and calculus here? The other kids will be coming in better prepared.”

It suddenly occurred to me that I had never mentioned all the homeschooling I was doing. Professor Hanson’s eyes really lit up, and he smiled and relaxed when I started to describe my studies.

“What text did you pick?”

“The Feynman lecture series.”

“Really?!”

“Oh, I’m hooked on it. Back in my physics class at Exeter, we’re still talking torque. It’s so boring! Formulas out of nowhere and no explanation of where they’re coming from! How can anyone learn physics like that?! You just can’t see the true nature of what’s happening without the calculus. But on my own, I’ve just covered Feynman’s lecture on the principle of least action. Beautiful stuff! He has such incredibly different ways of looking at things...”

We wound up chatting about mechanics for over an hour. It was one of the most enjoyable conversations of my life. Well, except for Melanie, of course. I drove home that night in very high spirits.

Chapter 5

One month later...

Time: Tuesday, February 26, 2002, 3:40 p.m. Eastern Standard Time

I felt my heart leap when I came home from school a few days before my 18th birthday. Melanie had sent me another letter! I raced upstairs to my bedroom and sat down at my desk to look at it. It had the same strange business with the return address as before. After staring at it for a moment, I opened it and saw that Melanie had sent me a handmade birthday card.

The first drawing had a simple stick figure standing at the apex of a simple triangular mountain, with the title, “Today I am a man!”

The second drawing had the stick figure in a sitting and thinking pose, the head-circle leaning on the line-hand, with the title, “Now, where is my woman?” Underneath the mountain far below was a tiny second figure, lying down and gazing up at the huge figure sitting on the mountain top above it. I smiled and began reading Melanie’s short letter.

Hi Eric, and Happy Birthday!

I hope you’ll forgive me for waiting so long to write. So much has been happening here. I should first tell you I am in good health and have been accepted at Harvard! (Remember I applied for early decision?) Their package came just a few days after I mailed you my December letter.

I had to pay a price, of course, but all the immediate uncertainty about college is behind me. I negotiated with my parents under an end-of-January Harvard deadline for completing all the acceptance forms and mailing in an initial deposit for the tuition. Some serious bucks! That’s what convinces me all this is real. My dad and I walked everything to the post office over a month ago. I watched my future hopes go into the mailbox and breathed a huge sigh of relief. The application package even issued me a Student ID, 579040. That makes it seem real too.

And my price for all this? I had to split my personality. This is Melanie #1 who is writing this letter. This is the first time she’s been allowed to come out during the daytime in over two months. I’m in Study Hall again, writing you this letter on a cold Friday Illinois morning. I’m sure you’ll get this in time for your birthday, probably a few days early.

Eric, I won’t reach majority for another five weeks. Please continue not to contact me. I’m still standing on very thin ice, still under very intense supervision.

My parents’ price for Harvard? That I become the daughter they’ve always dreamed of having. That’s Melanie #2. Mom threw out all my old clothes in order to please Melanie #2, and got her/me an entirely new wardrobe. I think I’m the only senior at Sterling High going around in clothes that look straight out of Junior High, but ... I decided Harvard was worth it.

Remember me in Junior High? All the bright colors? You should see me now, in my canary yellow skirt and argyle knee socks! I even have my hair in pigtails again, just as mom had me do when I was in seventh grade. I even spend time (lots of time!) painting my nails. (You probably wouldn’t recognize my toes!)

I’ve been avoiding my old friends. I think the really important ones have some understanding of the true nature of what’s going on and forgive me. At least I hope so. I also have a bunch of new, parent-approved friends, from some of the richest families in the Sterling area. Mom’s throwing me a birthday party with them when I turn eighteen, my first birthday party ever! Melanie #2 is very excited about that.

Oh Eric, do you forgive me for surrendering? I know and admire your courage. I know you wouldn’t have degraded yourself like this, no matter what. But when the decision was before me, I took the easy way out, the one with no yelling and a nice warm bed and meals and a great college and lots of shopping trips with my mom.

My parents love me Eric! They love Melanie #2! I finally know what it feels like to have parents who love me. Poor Patricia! I never understood what a pit of dependency my parents have dug for her, and how deeply she is trapped in the quicksand at the bottom. I used to envy Patty, but I feel so differently now. I pity her.

Eric, I couldn’t pull this off as an act. I had to live the part. My true personality had to disappear, truly disappear, at least during the daytime. Melanie #1 comes out only late at night, and she has learned how to cry without making a sound.

Amusing, in a sad sort of way. My parents accused you of brainwashing me, but it is they who are the true practitioners of mind control.

I dream of you Eric, almost every night. I meet you in my dreams, and you hold me and give me strength. Thank you Eric. Thank you for waiting, thank you for holding me in my dreams, thank you for giving me strength, thank you for loving me. I sign myself The True Melanie

I put down Melanie’s letter and shivered, my mind overwhelmed with emotions. I leaned back in my desk chair and closed my eyes, trying to calm myself.

After a minute or so, I started to scan the desk in front of me as a diversion. There was a loose paper clip on the desk, very near the back edge, and just within the limit of my sense-sphere. The sphere had been growing slowly but exponentially for months, doubling in radius every 31 days and 20 hours, as close as I could measure. It had a current radius of 118 cm. I was expecting it to reach four feet by my birthday.

With my eyes still closed, I dived into the detail of the paper clip, tracing the three simple loops back and forth with my mind. And then my anger at Melanie’s parents erupted out of me, and I hissed and PUSHED and ... The paper clip disappeared!

“Huh?!” I thought as I opened my eyes. I looked at my desk, no paper clip! “What the hell,” I thought. “I can make things disappear too?!”

After a moment, I got down on my hands and knees and looked around under the desk. On the rug next to the wall in the back was a paper clip. I was relieved to think it had to be the same one. I picked it up and then sat back in my chair, just thinking for a while.

Had I bumped the desk and knocked the clip off the top? Somehow I didn’t think so. I put the clip on the middle of the desk and tried to remember exactly what I was doing when it disappeared. It felt like a new way of sensing...

I finally went back to my anger. I stared at the paper clip and imagined it was owned by Melanie’s parents and I PUSHED it and ... It moved! Not very fast, but it moved, all by itself!

I was in a whole new ballgame! Passively sensing within my sphere was a huge and wondrous ability, but having the ability to make changes with my mind ... Wow! That was a whole new level of pure blow-off-the-socks magic! I started to practice my new skill. Once I learned the trick, it was very easy to do. I moved the paper-clip back and forth and then in slow, lazy circles and spirals around the desktop, becoming more and more excited.

Some caution settled in. I would have to be very, very careful. My thoughts are my own. Nobody could ever really see me using my sense-sphere, really be sure of its existence. But this?! Pushing things around?! These were physical changes, not just thoughts. This was visible! I had to be very careful...

I tried to lift the paper-clip up in the air. No dice. I sat thinking for a moment. Time to do a few experiments!

I got out a protractor and measured the angle the clip would start to slide down a tilted plane. With a little trig, that gave me the coefficient of static friction for sliding against a horizontal surface. I then went back to my box of clips to see if I could determine the weight of one clip.

After a little time weighing small piles of clip-on my postage scale, I had a few numbers about my new ability. I think one clip weighs 0.43 grams, so it should take 0.0042 Newtons of force to lift it against gravity and based on the protractor experiment 0.0003 Newtons to slide it along the desktop.

I stopped and considered. It was hard to quantify, but I thought I was right at my limit for sliding it, right at one hundred percent of my maximum push. I stretched out the clip into a straight wire and got out my ruler and a wire cutter. I clipped off seven percent of the wire and put it on the desk. Then I tried to push it up.

Nothing happened for a moment, and then very slowly the little piece of wire began drifting off the desktop. I smiled and released the snippet from my push. It fell back immediately. I reached for my cutter and cut the small segment in half. Then I tried again with only 3.5% of the original paper clip.

It worked! It fell upward immediately. I did some timing, and found at maximum push I could get it to fall upward at the same rate it would normally fall. I was exerting a force of two-g on the little sliver of wire. My force of 0.0003 Newtons was causing a net acceleration of one-gravity upward.

I sat back and shuddered. Should I throw all my physics books away? I had just violated the conservation principles of both energy and linear momentum. Energy ... That’s right. It takes power to do this. My current limit on force seemed to be 0.0003 Newtons. I didn’t have the right setup to measure that more accurately. Was there also a limit on how much power I could generate? I started thinking about ways to measure...

I pulled out my stopwatch from my desk, the one I used to time Melanie with when I helped her train for track. Pushing aside the emotions for her for now, I set up a little track of my own, a little imaginary 230 cm vertical track from the floor to the ceiling of my room. If I put my head halfway in between, I could accelerate the tiny wire for the whole trip, having it shoot past my nose.

I started writing down a few equations. The kinetic energy as a function of time would be E(t) = .5 m v(t) v(t), where v(t) = a t, so my power into kinetic energy would be dE/dt = m a v(t) and my power into potential energy dP/dt = g m v(t).

I timed the flight of my tiny wire. It went from floor to ceiling in seven tenths of a second, consistent with a constant upward acceleration of one-g. My power into kinetic and potential energy at the end of the flight was the same, about one milli-Watt each. Unfortunately, my stopwatch only measured down to tenths of seconds, not very accurate for what I was trying to do...

I stood there thinking about the results. Two milli-Watts? Not much power ... But that was only a minimum estimate. I still had no idea of a maximum. How to test ... I was so preoccupied I didn’t hear dad come home and pause outside my bedroom.

“Hi Eric!”

I jumped. “Oh! Ah ... Uh, hi, Dad!” My Dad stared at me, wondering why I was so nervous. He glanced at the stopwatch in my hand. I smiled sheepishly. “Just thinking about a physics experiment ... Sorry ... Didn’t hear you come in...” He gave me a brief nod and kept on going. “Phew!” I thought. “I’ll have to be more careful!”

After dinner, I showed Dad Melanie’s latest letter. My Dad had grunted and shook his head during Melanie’s first letter, but this one he read in silence and was absolutely motionless. When he looked up at me at the end, there was a tear in his eye.

He shook his head. “Talk about a pact with the devil ... She made a deal with a pair of ‘em ... We guessed wrong ... about Romeo and Juliet ... Melanie and I both guessed wrong...”

“Huh?”

“This is more Faust than Shakespeare. Eric, think! Her parents don’t really hate you particularly. They would hate anybody that would allow Melanie to be independent of them.”

I shrugged. “Well, they’re sending her to Harvard. That’s Melanie’s path to independence.”

My dad frowned. “Yeah ... Hell! That doesn’t fit the pattern at all! I wonder...” He was silent for a long time. “Eric?”

“Yeah?”

“We never really talked about this, about Melanie. But from her letters ... I don’t mean to pry, but ... How serious are you two about each other?”

I was my turn to be silent for a while. “We love each other. I think of her as my girlfriend, and she thinks of me as her boyfriend. We haven’t made any life commitments. We both feel we’re not mature enough for that. And we haven’t gotten physical with each other, we really haven’t. We both want to be more gentle with each other first. Melanie calls it emotional intimacy. We want to develop that first ... I guess that’s where we are, Dad...”

My dad nodded and gave me a kind smile. “Sounds like I should expect Melanie to be my daughter-in-law someday...”

“Well ... It’s still uncertain of course ... But yeah ... Melanie and I have been dreaming about that since Junior High...”

Our conversation ended soon after. Dad went back to his project of re-grouting the floor tiles in the kitchen, and I went upstairs to finish an English paper that was due the next day. We both sacked out a little after 10 p.m.

Chapter 6

Time: Wednesday, February 27, 2002, 7:40 a.m. Eastern Standard Time

I was riding in the school bus, sitting by myself, feeling a bit tired. I didn’t get much sleep the previous night, thinking about Melanie. I had a paper clip in my hand, and I began idly playing with it, stretching it out into a straight wire...

I did a spot check on my sense-sphere, 1.196 meters. I’ve gotten very good at self- testing; I don’t need a ruler anymore. Then I went back to trying to push the paper clip down into my finger, and then up. Could I feel the difference? Maybe ... Well, maybe not...

I tried combining my two abilities, my ability to zoom in for detail and my ability to PUSH ... Things felt weird for a while, weird ... then really weird ... and then...

I could see it! No, not see it, feel it, sense it. The paper clip wasn’t just simple metal. It was made of a very rigid frame holding a light but very stiff fluid. I suddenly realized that that stiff fluid-like substance must be the free electron population in the metal. I couldn’t focus on individual electrons, not even close, probably by twenty orders of magnitude, but I could feel the population. My sense for detail was now allowing me to feel the electron population as a distinct fluid, very light, much lighter than the atomic frame...

Could I PUSH it? Just the fluid? I tried. It was totally impossible. It suddenly occurred to me the fluid had nowhere to go. I bent the straight wire into a circle and tried again. It worked! As I stared at the wire I could feel the effort, sense the electron fluid spinning round and round. Fascinating...

“Eric my man! You on drugs or something?”

I looked up. “Oh, hi Bob! No, just wool gathering. Ready for the math test today?” I spent the remainder of the trip chatting with a friend.

I had a free period that morning. Our history teacher was out sick, and the sub hadn’t shown up either. The class was asked to go study in the library. I ran ahead and managed to get one of the computer spots. Something Dad had said last night about Harvard not fitting the pattern was bugging me. I wanted to look something up. I spent part of my time looking up contact information for Harvard’s Registrar Office, and another chunk of time thinking about pushing electrons in wires. About fifteen minutes before the period ended, I slipped out of the library and headed over to the deserted physics lab.

I was in luck. The door was unlocked. There was a nice multi-meter on a lab bench there, locked down so nobody could walk off with it but still usable. I grabbed a 4.7 k-ohm resistor and a short piece of medium-gauge copper wire. I connected the wire to both ends of the resistor, and then clipped the multi-meter probes to both connection points. I turned the meter to read DC voltage. It showed 0.000 volts. Well, that made sense...

I looked at the clock, 11:20 a.m. I probed my sense-sphere. 1.2 meters exactly, as far as I could tell. And then I locked the electrons in the copper wire and I PUSHED, as hard as I could. I could sense them flowing. I glanced over at the multi-meter. It was registering 1.004 volts. I smiled and let go of the electron-fluid, and the meter dropped to zero. I put everything back and went to my next class.

I did a short calculation. Power equals voltage squared divided by resistance, so my current maximum power output was 2.15 mW. So ... I must have been barely able to do my acceleration experiment last night...

Rather than eat lunch, I went outside the school building and got out my cell phone. It was time to verify something. I called up the Harvard Bursar Office.

At first, they didn’t want to talk with me, even after I gave them Melanie’s student ID and social security number. But then I said I wanted to pay for Melanie’s tuition deposit, and the guy went to get his supervisor.

“Who is this?” a woman’s voice asked a short time later.

I decided to play it straight. I introduced myself as a close friend of Melanie who wanted to cover any payment issues there might be with Melanie’s enrollment. We talked for a minute, and then the woman decided to level with me.

“We’ve sent so many notices! The deposit was required to be here by the end of January. There’s a one-month grace period, but it’s a strict cut-off after that. Melanie’s enrollment is about to be terminated.”

I blinked. “She’ll lose her option for early decision?”

“No. Regular enrollment is a completely different rotation. She’s about to lose her chance to come to Harvard, period.”

“Oh my gosh,” I said without thinking. “Can I wire you the money?”

“Yes. It absolutely has to be here by tomorrow though, $11,984.”

I let out an explosive gasp. I was still thinking in terms of an application deposit. “Uh, could you break that down for me?”

“Sure. The charges for the first year will be...” and then she read me a list of numbers. “$24,707 tuition, $4,461 room, $3,945 board, $1,082 health services, and $1,755 misc. fees. The first third was due in January, then two payments of $11,983 each are due at the end of May and mid-September. You want a breakdown of the fees?”

“Uh, no, that’s okay...” I thanked her in a daze. Fortunately, I was with it enough to get all the bank routing codes and account numbers I would need to wire the money. The bursar also asked for my contact information. Right before I was about to hang up, I said, “May I ask? Wasn’t there a payment sent in January?”

There was a pause on the line and then a grunt. “I remember this one. We sent our final notice over a week ago! All the paperwork on the acceptance form was fine. But there was a stop-payment order on the check.”

“Ah ... Will you be sending a letter to Melanie’s parents about this new payment?”

“Well ... Normally, the receipt notice just goes to the person paying the bill. Do you want one to go to Melanie’s parents too?”

“Uh, no, actually, I guess not.”

“Hmmm. Okay. Then their next notice from us will be in mid-April, for the May payment.”

“Uh, could you send that to me instead?”

There was a long pause. “That’s not normal ... But parents putting a stop-payment order on a tuition check isn’t normal either...” There was another long pause. “Done. Expect to see the bill by April 15th.”

I thanked her and hung up, and spent the rest of the school day doing a lot of soul searching.

I told everything to my dad that evening, as we were washing the dinner dishes. I must say, he didn’t seem too surprised, at least about the lack of payment from Melanie’s parents.

He sighed as he dried a pot. “Now that I think about it, I seem to recall something similar happened to Patricia. There was some registration mix-up, and she missed going to college right after high school. I can’t remember the particulars...”

I stared at him. “I didn’t know that. I don’t think Patty ever did go to college.”

“No, I don’t think she did either ... Eric, after we finish here, let’s sit down and talk.”

A short time later, we were in the living room. Dad was just sitting and smiling at me. I realized he wanted me to take the lead in the conversation.

“Dad, do I have your permission to pay for Melanie’s tuition?”

“Do you need my permission?”

“Well ... No ... But I’d like to have it just the same.”

“Then go to it!” My dad laughed and then thought of something. “Actually, maybe you do need my permission. I’ll pick you up at school during lunch, drive you to the bank. The bank will probably consider tomorrow the day before your birthday. They might still think of you as a minor.”

“Thanks...” I leaned back in my chair and sighed, mentally going over my finances. Mom had a $50,000 straight-term life insurance policy which she left to Dad. She also had a $300,000 accidental death policy which listed Dad and me as equal beneficiaries. Dad had assured me he’d pay for any undergrad program I wanted. Mom and Dad had already saved up for that. I had thought with my $150,000 and all the other money I’ve saved up, I would come out of college in fine shape. But four years of paying for Melanie would really take a bite out of my savings...

“Well, worst-case scenario, we both graduate with still a little money and no debt. That’s not so bad.”

My dad frowned at me. “Don’t jump the gun, Eric.”

“Huh?”

“Eric, Melanie needs to learn how to be independent, not jump from being dependent on her parents to being dependent on you.”

“But?! Didn’t you and mom depend on each other?”

My dad laughed. “Sure! After we were married! Son, think! How can Melanie freely decide to marry you, if she has no other option?”

Dad’s point left me thunderstruck. “Holy shit! I didn’t think of it like that...”

“Don’t get me wrong Eric, I’m not trying to tell you how to spend your money. But I would think Melanie will qualify for financial aid once she can document her parents have abandoned her. You might just have to pay for the first year.” My dad paused. “I’m not trying to tell you who not to marry either. What I’m trying to say is, help her stand on her own two feet first ... Eric...”

“Yeah dad?”

“If things get tight, come and talk to me. Assuming you two stay together, medical school for Melanie might be a big expense. I’d like to help.” My dad sighed. “You’ll probably wind up borrowing from the bank for most of it. That would be normal, and nobody will be loaning me money to retire on. Still, I’d like to help.”

I nodded gratefully, and got to thinking. Even with Melanie’s expenses, boy, I couldn’t complain. And my new abilities, so amazing ... Any way of turning them into money? I had to smile. No combination lock could withstand me. Are there legal ways of turning my abilities into money? There must be something! No, I guess I shouldn’t worry about money after all...

Chapter 7

Time: Saturday, March 23, 2002, 1:30 p.m.

I’m riding a bus over to a service center to pick up my car. I want it to be in good shape for my trip to Illinois next weekend. I’m getting some new tires and an alignment, new front and rear brake pads and shoes, and an oil change. My car is a simple 1998 Chevy Cavalier that I bought used last year. It’s never given me any trouble, and I try to take good care of it.

I bought myself a multi-meter a couple of weeks ago. I wanted to track the growth of my power output on a daily basis and didn’t want to risk getting caught in the high school physics lab alone. What would be my reason for being there?

My power output has been growing rapidly, much faster than the expansion of my sense sphere. The force I can exert on objects is also increasing, at a rate just a bit slower than my power growth rate. At 11:30 this morning, I measured:

My sense-sphere radius was 2.024 meters, still doubling every 31 days and 20 hours.

My maximum power output was 19 mW. I pushed the voltage across the 4.7k-ohm resistor up to 9.45 volts. My power growth rate is a clean exponential, with a doubling time of 7 days and 15 hours.

And my maximum force is about 0.0027 Newtons, as close as I can measure it, nine times stronger than when I first discovered it with the paper clip. I’m guessing it’s also exponentially growing, with a doubling rate of 7 days and 23 hours. I built a torsion scale in my bedroom to measure this. A stiff steel wire with another stiff wire crossing it at the bottom. I push against the tip of the horizontal cross piece, torquing the main vertical wire, and the maximum angle of my push gives me my force.

Last week I indulged myself and bought a high-tech min-flashlight. It runs six high-output white LEDs with 1.4 Watts from a single AA Li-battery, providing 50 lumens of light, 250 candlepower. It’s not much compared to a light bulb. A 100-Watt light bulb produces 1600 lumens. But for a really tiny flashlight, 250 candles isn’t bad.

According to my graphs, I should be able to generate 1.4 Watts in less than two months, on May 9th at 9 p.m. Man, that would be so cool, lighting up the flashlight all by myself! And if not, well, I’ve bought myself a $60 toy...

A guy with a really ugly boombox boards the bus and sits right next to me. He had the thing blaring, and looked even uglier than the box, a real mean-looking biker dude. He was snarling and trying to make eye contact with anybody who would dare look at him.

I don’t back down from necessary fights, but I really don’t like to fight. I thought about putting up with the noise and just letting the matter go. My stop was only about ten minutes away. But I got to thinking...

The boombox was in his lap, the speakers pointing right at me, a little less than two meters away and just within my sphere of influence. Hmmm ... I started probing the box, tracing the circuitry. My ability to zoom into details is growing exponentially too, though I haven’t thought of a good way to measure it. If I had to guess, I could focus down to about 300 micrograms.

I isolated a single input on a chip in the boom box. I traced the wire coming out of the chip on the printed circuit board and then PUSHED 19 mW in the opposite direction.

The awful rap music continued with the same volume, but it suddenly started to sound very hissy. The biker dude looked down at his box and frowned and started trying to tune the station. I let go after a moment, and the hiss went away. Another idea had occurred to me. I zoomed down with my sense as tight as I could go. At maximum magnification, it was a sphere of about 300 microns radius, and I zoomed right into a transistor-rich region of the microchip. And then I pushed that sphere with everything I had, 0.0027 Newtons.

I felt my target area zip away from me in an instant and the boombox went silent. The biker dude looked extremely, extremely annoyed and I turned away from him so he wouldn’t see me smiling.

I got to thinking about what I had just done. Holy shit! I had probably PUSHED that micro-sphere of transistors with hundreds of gravities of acceleration. Where the hell did it go?! Grateful that I didn’t seem to have injured anybody, I got off the bus a few minutes later.

Time: Thursday, March 28, 2002, 11:47 a.m.

I picked a quiet area outside the main cafeteria area to eat my lunch. I wanted to be able to talk in private if my cell phone started to ring...

I checked my power level this morning at 6 a.m., 11.73 volts on my multi-meter, 29 mW, right on track. Last Saturday night, I also did a few calculations on the boom-box micro-chip I destroyed. My best guess is I accelerated my micro-sphere for about one millisecond at about 1,000 gravities and then hit my power limit. At that time, it had probably moved 2.6 mm and was moving around 16 mph relative to the rest of the chip. So, my micro bowling ball probably never left the chip. I’ve got to watch myself though, and think through the implications of what my capabilities are before I try new stuff...

Sunday and Monday, I started having a lot of second thoughts about going to Illinois this weekend. Melanie turns eighteen on Monday. I certainly don’t want to drive off with her before that. Until Monday, she’s still her parents’ minor child, and I’m a legal adult now. I could probably be arrested. But even after Monday...

I kept thinking ... Melanie still needs her High School diploma. Her parents might be totally wacko, but they also have a lot of power in town. Maybe it would be better for Melanie to continue her ruse for another two months and peacefully pick up her diploma. But then again, I don’t know how bearable her situation is. I kept re-reading her letters, and finally decided I needed some input from her. I decided to ignore her request not to ask for some third-party help...

Greg was my closest friend at Sterling High and a good friend of Melanie’s too. I swore him to secrecy and told him about Melanie’s act and how her parents had almost succeeded in sabotaging her enrollment at Harvard. He was stunned, and then readily agreed to slip Melanie his cell phone if he got the chance.

A few minutes after noon on the 28th, my cell phone started to ring. My hand was shaking so badly I had trouble answering it.

“Eric?” It was a whisper, Melanie’s voice!

“Yes! Are you safe to talk?”

“Yes, for a few minutes. I’m very grateful to two old friends. Jason is usually guarding me, but Greg got his sister to make a fake pass at him, and Jason’s gonads won out over the money he’s getting from my dad to monitor me. Greg is nearby right now, keeping watch for him.”

“Jason? Oh shit, not C.J.?!”

Melanie laughed. “Yes, Creep Jason! How did you guess?”

“Hell ... Melanie, I’ve got some important news to tell you...” I spent the next few minutes describing the situation with Harvard. There was silence on the line when I finished. “Melanie?”

“My God ... my God Eric,” Melanie whispered. “I’m living with monsters! Cruel and manipulative monsters...”

“No argument from me on that one...”

“Eric, this changes everything! What should I do?! Wait! Eric! I can’t accept you paying for Harvard!”

“Sure you can. Melanie, I’ll help you move out of your parents’ house on Monday if you want, or do you want me to wait until you graduate?”

Melanie paused, and then gave a soft whisper. “Oh Eric, I love you!”

“I love you too.”

“ ... This changes everything ... My gosh, Eric ... Uh, wait till I graduate. Can you come to my commencement?”

“Count on it!”

“Okay! I will! What?!” I heard her call out, probably to Greg. “Eric, I have to go! Bye!”

I sat nervously for ten minutes before I got another call. It was Greg’s voice. “Eric?”

“Yeah. Everything cool?”

“Yep. Mission accomplished.”

I breathed a huge sigh of relief. “Greg, thanks a million. Thank Lisa for me too.”

“Thank her yourself. She’s right here...”

“Lisa?”

“Eric! You and Melanie owe me big-time! I almost had to let C.J. start pawing me to keep him distracted!”

“Shit! Really?!”

“Yes, really. He is a true creep! But I’m just joking about a debt. I was glad to help. Uh, my brother wants his phone back.”

“Greg? I can’t.”

“Oh hell Eric, don’t mention it. Really. I just wanted to let you know, Melanie got back under C.J.’s radar without being discovered. I had the chance to tell her if she ever wanted my phone again, just to make eye contact with me.”

“Greg, you the man.”

“Glad to help, ole buddy. Hell Eric, this situation is right out of a horror novel.”

“I agree.”

“Don’t worry about Lisa or me. We will be tombstones about this. One more thing. Melanie had a chance to hand me her social security ID. She asked me to mail it to you.”

We chatted for a few more minutes, and then Greg had to go. I felt incredibly relieved, and then a little foolish that I didn’t try to do this earlier. Having two friends in Sterling helping us was such an enormous benefit. I stared at my cell phone and realized my hand was still shaking.

Chapter 8

Time: 12:03 AM Friday, May 31, 2002, DeKalb Illinois

I had checked into a motel late Thursday night, shortly before 11 PM, an hour’s drive east of Sterling. I had been on the road since early morning, had driven close to 800 miles, and now I was lying in bed trying to get some rest. Melanie’s commencement is tomorrow, two days after mine. No, wait. It’s after midnight. Her commencement is later today. I still don’t know how events will play out, but I’m hoping Melanie and I will drive back to Pennsylvania.

My sensing and pushing abilities have continued to grow. I can now sense things from 9 meters away, exert a force of 1.05 Newtons, and generate over 9.5 Watts of power. I found I really don’t need my expensive flashlight. I can just lock 2 cubic mm of air and pour 9.5 Watts of power into it, raising the temperature to 4000C in a millisecond. The incandescence is quite brilliant.

I’ve come to realize that I can be quite deadly to anyone within my sphere, lock and fry their heart pacemaker tissue in an instant. I’ve vowed to myself never to use my powers to attack anyone’s body unless it were truly a life-or-death situation.

I felt exhausted from the drive. I had a concern I’d be so worried about Melanie, I wouldn’t be able to sleep, but I soon met her in my dreams...

The commencement was unreal. Melanie was valedictorian, and had asked to speak at the very end of the program, after the diplomas were handed out. Graduation papers in hand, she went on stage and gave an incredible speech, stressing the importance of both self-esteem and love for others, the importance of both courage and consideration, and how utterly she had personally failed these ideals. She described how her parents had been manipulating her and degrading her for months, how she had allowed them to strip her of her dignity, and then she denounced them for trying to sabotage her enrollment at Harvard.

Both her parents started screaming at her from their seats. Her dad was incoherent, and her mom was screaming that Melanie was committing slander. He parents then both stormed out of the hall. The rest of the auditorium remained sitting stunned and silent.

Melanie finished her speech, bidding her friends goodbye and walked off the stage. She handed her graduation robe to Lisa and then came straight to me. “Eric,” she said simply, “Get me out of here.”

We got to my car in a tie with C.J., and he started standing in front of my driver’s door, glaring at me and itching for a fight. “Eric, you piece of shit! You think you can just walk in here and steal my girl?! You pervert! She’s promised to me!”

Melanie shook her head in pity, “C.J., let go of your delusions.”

C.J. whipped his head around to Melanie and seemed to notice her for the first time. He seemed astonished by what she had just said. “Don’t call me that, you bitch! My name is Jason!”

I was confused by his words. He hadn’t said Melanie belonged to him. He said Melanie was promised to him. Promised by whom? “Let it go, Jason,” I finally said, trying to be reasonable. “There’s nothing you can do to stop us from leaving, short of breaking the law, and Melanie’s dad isn’t paying you enough for that.”

C.J. turned back to me and shot me a look of wild hatred, and then threw a punch at me. I was more than half expecting it, and ducked and launched my counter-attack. I had scanned C.J. a moment before and knew he had a cheap butane lighter in his pants pocket underneath the graduation gown. I melted a hole near the top of the plastic lighter in less than two seconds, and my 10-Watt incandescent power point easily ignited the butane. C.J.’s expression flashed instantly from pure hatred to stark terror as he realized his pants were on fire.

As C.J. was running around desperately trying to pull his pants off in the center of the street, Melanie and I jumped into my car and drove off.

“Wow, that was fortunate,” said Melanie. “What an incredibly lucky break.”

“ ... Yeah...”

We were both too keyed up to start talking with each other. I just drove south over the bridge on Route 40, driving through Rock Falls to pick up I-88 East.

One mile from the Interstate, I was stopped at a red light at the intersection of West Rock Falls Road, and I looked up into my rear-view mirror. I could not believe my eyes, the moment seemed completely surreal. Melanie’s parents were right behind us. Melanie turned and saw them too and started to whimper.

“It’s okay, just relax!” I said. I probed their car and waited. Just as the light was about to turn, I fried the micro-chip controlling their electronic fuel-injection, and then calmly stepped on the gas a second later. The car behind me was dead in the street and the people further behind started honking.

“Wow, that was fortunate,” said Melanie, looking back and seeing her father open his car hood in the distance. Her mother was also out of the car, and she seemed to be gesturing wildly at both her husband and the traffic trying to pass them.

“What?!” muttered Melanie. “Another incredibly lucky break?” She looked at me with a very confused expression. “Eric? Did you cause that?”

“Uh...” I had promised myself I would never, ever lie to Melanie, no matter what. “Sort of. Don’t ask me how, okay?”

She stared at me in pure admiration. “Okay. Wow! Very professional Eric! I feel as if I’m in the middle of a Mission Impossible movie!” We got on I-88 a moment later and started heading East.

We drove 400 miles that day, stopping only for short restroom breaks. I had box lunches for us already in the car. We finally stopped in Sandusky, Ohio, at a small hotel along the banks of Lake Erie. It was very pretty, and a bit off the beaten track. I thought it would be a good place for Melanie to unwind.

My first thought was to rent two rooms for the night, but Melanie didn’t want to be alone and we wound up renting one room with two queen-sized beds. Melanie was delighted that I had pajamas for her and two extra day outfits. I thought about basking in more of her adoration for a moment, and then confessed the clothes were my father’s idea.

We both took showers after checking in. Melanie spent a long time under the steaming hot water, and commented after she got out she hadn’t felt this clean in a year. She looked so pretty in her new clothes, and we strolled along the promenade for a while, holding hands after sunset and watching the water as the evening twilight turned to night. We found a nice restaurant and had a light dinner. Afterwards we walked back to our hotel room and sacked out.

Our conversations for the whole day had been caring and affectionate but also a bit light. I was sure Melanie was under a terrific strain, trying to adjust from all the horrors she went through, and wasn’t ready to talk about them yet. For my part, I was hiding the fact that I had abilities that made me effectively non-human. I think we both sensed we were hiding major things from each other. It made things just a bit awkward.

We changed for bed. I tried not to stare at her as she came out of the bathroom in her pajamas, but ... Damn! She is so incredibly, incredibly beautiful. She still had a very fit body, even being off track she somehow managed to get in lots of exercise. She looked like an angel without a bra, her pajama top falling loosely around her taut breasts.

I was already in my bed. She climbed into hers and turned off the lights, lying on her back, her head face up on the pillow. “Good night Melanie,” I whispered. “I love you.”

“Goodnight, my love,” she whispered in reply. She hadn’t pulled the sheet up past her hips, and I lay there silently for a while, watching the rise and fall of her breasts as she breathed, overcome with emotions of wanting to care for her. After a while I turned over to give her some privacy.

An hour passed, the room silent except for the soothing rush of coolness from the air conditioner. I thought I heard the softest of a whisper. “Asleep?”

Did I just imagine it? “No...” I whispered back. I heard a rustle of Melanie leaving her bed, and then I shivered as she climbed into mine, curling up around my back. She petted the side of my hip for a while, loving caresses. Then she kissed the back of my neck and pulled me to turn to her.

We were soon locked in a fierce embrace, more loving than passionate at first, but the sexual desire certainly was there on both sides and it was building. Melanie started to pant and I could feel her body shiver from her arousal. We stroked each other’s bodies through our pajamas. Melanie was on her back, an arm under me holding me to her, and I was lying on my side against her. I could feel my stiff penis pressing into the side of her hip, and I was delighted she didn’t mind. My throat caught as I realized Melanie was welcoming my arousal.

We were kissing, sweet and playful kisses drifting in and out of passion, rubbing noses and exploring each other’s lips with our tongues. My hand was caressing her ribs and stomach, and in one deep kiss I was overwhelmed with desire for her and my hand came up and cupped her breast.

Melanie shivered and then nodded her head fiercely. I broke our kiss with a gasp, so many emotions swirling in my mind, all the desires, so strong and so beautiful. I began stroking the softness within my hand. It was the first time I had ever felt a girl’s breasts. So soft, so beautiful, so mysterious, all softness and warmth and the swollen points of her aroused nipples rubbing against the palm of my caress.

“Eric?” Melanie whispered.

“Yes?”

“Do you want to take me? Tonight?”

“ ... I love you...”

Melanie snuggled against me. “And I love you ... What would you like?”

I cried. I actually gave out a cry, not loud but primal, a direct protest from the core of my soul, protesting the conflict between my overwhelming sexual desire to mount and enter Melanie and my overwhelming desire to be gentle and care for her. In a gasping breath, I replied, “We should wait ... I love you ... so dearly ... I don’t want to hurt you...”

Melanie cried back and nodded, kissing me and whispering, “Thank you! I couldn’t bear to deny you my body, but ... Thank you for waiting...”

Her body started shaking. We cuddled for a while, feeling each other shiver through our pajamas.

Melanie smiled at me with tears in her eyes. “And thank you for loving me ... There’s so much I have to tell you ... So much horror I have to tell you...” She curled against me and cooed, trying to unwind from her arousal. I suddenly realized I could smell her, smell her wet desire for me between her legs. This beautiful, most precious creature in my arms ... My hand drifted down from her breasts. She is so perfect! I started to caress her stomach again while we kissed, dropping the caress to stroke the lean and fit abdominal muscles below her stomach.

Melanie giggled. “Yes, right there!” she whispered. “Without you, I’d be in a lot of trouble, right there, probably right about now...”

“Huh?”

“Here, let me show you...” she whispered. She took my hand in hers. “Stretch out a couple of fingers...” She took my outstretched hand and slipped it underneath her pajama bottoms. I could feel the rich brush of her coarse pubic hairs sliding along the side of hand. My fingers were pressing down into her body on one side of the front of her pelvis, near her hip bone.

“That’s right, right there...” Melanie whispered. “Push down. Feel that? That’s my left ovary. I felt it twitch yesterday. I think I’m rolling an egg, right now, along here ... Feel that? Feel the Fallopian tube? Feel how it joins with the top of my uterus?”

I was both aroused and fascinated. Without thinking I probed with my sense, clearly seeing in my mind and tracing with my fingers the intimate core of Melanie’s reproductive system. I felt overwhelmed that she was sharing such intimacy with me. “Yes, I feel it,” I whispered back.

Melanie shuddered. “Eric, if it weren’t for you, I’d probably be getting raped and impregnated right now.”

“Huh? ... WHAT?!”

“My parents ... It was your call and my eighteenth birthday party that finally opened my eyes to the true horror of my parents...” Melanie sighed and stretched out and began caressing the back of my neck. She began opening up to me.

“My birthday party was surreal. Mom and dad invited a some stuck-up couples and a whole bunch of unattached boys, none of whom I liked. The boys were shockingly rude, demanding to kiss the birthday girl and pinching my ass when they did. And then C.J., C.J. no less!, would come to my rescue and break it up.”

I grunted. “C.J. to the rescue, huh?”

Melanie giggled. “Yes. It was no less ridiculous in real life either. And my mom and dad fawned on C.J. at the end of the party too, thanking him for taking such good care of me. I had known for months he was head coordinator of the boys who were keeping track of me at school. Everything was so fake, so pathetic. Oh, Eric! I’m so sorry I didn’t write you more often last year. It’s just that I was almost never free from observation.”

“Hey! I understand completely. Melanie, what you went through is beyond my imagination. You don’t know how much respect I have for you, even to survive...”

Melanie leaned up and kissed me, and then settled back in my arms and continued. “These last two months, my parents were dropping so many stupid hints, about what a fine young man Jason was, and how lucky I would be if I could somehow get him to take me as his girlfriend. At first the suggestions sounded so ridiculous I thought my parents were joking, even though that would have been way out of character. But they were serious...”

Melanie sighed and was silent for a moment, reliving the memories. “Ever since my party, my mom has been keeping an inventory on my bedroom, looking through my trashcan and keeping track of my supply of maxi-pads in my desk. I finally realized what was going on. She was timing my ovulation cycle, trying to calculate when I would be fertile...”

The horror of what Melanie went through finally dawned on me. I nuzzled the side of her head and gently kissed her. “My God Melanie...”

“Yeah ... A steady drumbeat over the last two months, how lucky I would be if I captured Jason, how happy my parents would be for me, and did I want to invite him over in the evenings to watch some movies? Such a fine young man, and I should feel so fortunate he was interested in me. My parents said they would help me if I wanted to date him. Have him come over for dinner and maybe a movie, they kept saying. I knew my parents would then find some excuse to slip out of the house for a while...”

Melanie started to shiver. I held her close and kissed her. “My God Melanie ... How did you survive?”

“I kept saying I was very unsure about dating, how inexperienced I was with boys, how much I wanted to talk to my school counselor about the idea. That put mom off for a while, but just barely.”

Melanie shivered. “I finally had to negotiate. I agreed to evenings with Jason as long they started after my graduation. I think mom calculated I would be isolated from my High School friends and it also would be perfect timing with my fertility cycle. She accepted my condition...”

“It was a perfect setup for my parents Eric! I suspect they were going to pay Jason to fuck me silly over the summer. He must have thought it was the perfect job! And if I had got pregnant through consensual sex, C.J. would just take off and I would stay home with my parents to have the baby. And if I resisted his advances, Jason would rape me and, well, it would have been my word against his and both my parents. And the scandal would also keep me home.”

“The only remaining possibility would be Jason fucking me the whole summer and not getting me pregnant. Who knows what would have happened then? Maybe my parents would have accused me of being a slut and canceled Harvard for that reason. Anyway you look at it, I would be at home next year, and it would be all my fault.”

“Melanie,” I whispered, kissing her and stroking her abdomen. “I’m so glad we waited. It’s not just not having children. Sharing our bodies without commitment ... real committment...”

“I know ... I’m glad we’re waiting too. I just didn’t want to refuse you of anything. I can’t tell you how happy I am, that you rescued me, and that you love me...”

Melanie cooed and sighed and then was very still, falling asleep in my arms. I stared at her for a long while, an angel so infinitely precious, sleeping peacefully in my arms.

Chapter 9

Time: Thursday, July 4, 2002, 10:43 p.m.

I kissed Melanie goodnight and walked back to my own house. We were coming back from a fireworks display, and my dad had dropped us off at her apartment. I couldn’t be happier. I have a girl who loved me, an exciting future at M.I.T. starting in two months, and unbelievable kinetic powers. The world is my oyster!

Melanie got a summer job at Reading Eagle, the local newspaper. She started as a part-time proofreader, and the editorial staff was so impressed with her that they also hired her as a junior reporter. She’s now working 40+ hours a week and loving it.