Second That Emotion

Second That Emotion

Latikia

Chapter 2

After the hunting trip my brother Ivan made every effort to stay as far away from me as possible. Since he was five years older it wasn’t too hard for him to find reasons to be elsewhere. He was finishing his senior year of high school, had played varsity football and had been recruited with offers of full scholarships to several prestigious universities. He ended up attending an Ivy League school in Connecticut.

My father eased up on me a bit after that day. I think he and Granddad had some really long discussions about me, but neither one mentioned that day ever again.

I don’t know for certain, but I think Granddad told my mother what happened. She was always protective of me, and for a few months after that she kind of went overboard…making me my favorite foods and letting me have my way if I got stubborn and pigheaded (like all teenagers tend to get). But by New Years she got over whatever had softened her up and she went back to being the hard as nails mother I had always known and I stopped being able to get away with much of anything.

Isabeau. She’s four years older than I am and along with Ivan had been my first and most personal tormentors. But where Ivan was mostly a straightforward bully (using brute strength and size to abuse me), Isabeau was clever and ingenious, subtle and innovative. Ivan constantly got caught…Isabeau never did.

She would (as most older sisters do to younger brothers) use me like a doll, for dress up games, tea parties (when we were younger) and make over sessions (when she got old enough for makeup). When she hit twelve or thirteen and began puberty she suddenly gained a following of girls her own age and would bring them home after school to play. You can probably guess what their toy of choice was. Yup…me.

Prior to the hunting trip I can honestly say that Isabeau never apologized for anything she said or did to me. Ivan often did, but that was mostly under threat of death or worse from my mother. Isabeau, I don’t think, ever considered me a real person, worthy of her compassion or personal interest, unless I could satisfy some momentary desire to hurt or torment.

But that changed abruptly two days after the trip.

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I had jumped out of the truck as soon as it came to a stop in front of our garage and run into the house. My mother called out asking how the trip had gone. I ignored her and darted up the stairs and into my room, locking the door behind me. I kept the lights off and went looking for the deepest, darkest hole I could find to crawl into. I had to make do with my clothes closet. I burrowed in, forcing shoes, boxes and hanging clothing out of the way and pushed the folding track door closed. It was dark, cool and quiet. I fell asleep an hour or two later, slept thru supper, the entire night and breakfast the next morning. I awoke to hammering on my room’s door.

“Ike! Are you okay? Do you want something to eat, honey?” my mother called.

I wormed my way out of my hole to the closet door and opened it a little way.

“I’m not hungry Mom.” I said, not caring if I could be heard, and then pulled back into my cave and shut the door. And I stayed there for two days, only coming out to use the bathroom or get a drink of water. I didn’t see anyone, no one saw me (or so I thought) and that’s the way I wanted to keep it. (Hey, I was thirteen and still thought that what I wanted mattered to the world at large. I was just beginning to realize how flawed that belief system was.)

The afternoon of the third day I heard a very soft knocking on the door of my room.

I had emerged from my hideaway the night before to sleep in my own bed, and was laying there under the covers feeling disgusted with myself and the world in general. I have to admit I’d started to think about what kind of uses I might be able to put my gift to. I’d also started referring to it (at least to myself) as my talent rather than gift. Gifts were supposed to be good things, fun and enjoyable (if you didn’t include clothes you got from family at birthdays and Christmas). I hadn’t been able to think of one fun thing I could do with my talent.

The knocking on my door jarred me from my semi-awake state. It was too soft to be my Dad, Ivan or Granddad, so that left either Mom or Isabeau.

Out of pure cussedness I decided to try and make a link with whoever was on the other side of the door. I tried to feel the heartbeat. And I couldn’t do it. I was half relieved and half disappointed. Maybe a little more relieved.

“Who is it?” I called out half-heartedly.

“It’s Izzy. Can I come in?”

I was more than a little surprised to hear her use her childhood nickname. It was the first time in about three years I’d heard it pass her lips. When she was thirteen she demanded that the entire family start calling her by her given name and refused to answer to anything else.

I dragged myself out of bed, unlocked the door turned and dove back under the blankets. It was getting colder outside and winter was coming on fast. My Dad was not one to turn up the thermostat just because it was cold out, so you either dressed warmly or stayed in bed and under the blankets.

Isabeau opened the door a bit and stuck her head and shoulders part way in. My room was pretty dark, since I hadn’t turned on any lights and kept the heavy curtains drawn shut, but it wasn’t completely black. There was a bit of daylight sneaking in from the edges of the curtains and now from the partly opened door.

“Are you feeling okay?” she asked gently, having spotted me pulling the bedclothes over my head.

“What do you want?” I snapped from inside my cocoon. She was acting out of character, and I wasn’t sure how to deal with her in a non-tyrannical mood.

“You’ve been hiding in here for days now, and I’m worried about you. Is that so odd?”

I poked my head out and locked eyes with my sister. I didn’t say a word, I just stared, and after fifteen seconds she blinked and looked away.

She sighed quietly, then opened the door and stepped inside. I guess she was waiting for me to order her out, because when I didn’t she shut the door behind her and walked over and stood beside my bed.

“Look, I know I haven’t been very nice to you in the past. I’ve been a rotten sister, and I’m probably a rotten person. But you’re my little brother and I do love you and right now I am worried about you.”

“Why? Why now?” I popped up out of my nest and verbally attacked one of the sources of my childhood misery. “Why didn’t you care when I was six and you made me wear a dress out in public? Why didn’t you care when your friend Shelly was beating me up when I was eight? When you put makeup on me and drug me out to the mall when I was eleven? You didn’t care last month when two of your friends barged into the bathroom when I was showering and groped me and made fun of me. Where the fuck was my caring, loving older sister then!?”

Isabeau seemed to collapse like a puppet whose strings had been cut and dropped heavily onto the edge of my bed. Her shoulders shuddered and her breathing got ragged and gasping.

“I’m…so…sorry.” she cried.

Something in me snapped. I went from feeling cursed, depressed and responsible for the world’s miseries to being enraged.

How dare she! After all she’d put me thru over the years, how dare she suddenly go from tormentor to wounded victim? Did she expect me to just forgive her and magnanimously accept her apology? How DARE she!

I linked with my sister. I didn’t even have to think about it. Didn’t have to try, make an effort, nothing. I just did it. I unwittingly reached out and slid inside and before I knew it I was wearing her feelings.

I can’t read minds. I know some of you might think that’s what I do, but it isn’t. I can link with pretty much any living creature and I can tell exactly what they’re feeling as long as I’m linked. I have no idea what their specific thoughts are, I don’t know what they were feeling yesterday, I don’t know what they’ll be feeling twenty minutes from now. I can tell if you’re making love, but not to whom. I can tell if you’re angry, but not who or what that anger is directed at.

So I was linked with Isabeau all of a sudden and her feelings washed over me like a flood and I got swamped.

Pain…real pain…was tearing at my sister’s heart. There were many other emotions surging thru her at the same time, but this was the first time I’d ever linked with a human and it wasn’t easy trying to separate one emotion from another. Some of her feelings were so unfamiliar to me that I couldn’t begin to identify them. Of the ones I could recognize, pain was the strongest, along with love (which surprised me), fear and remorse.

The strength of her pain tore at me and I cried out, clawing at my chest. I curled up in a ball and croaked out in a voice I couldn’t recognize as my own, “Stop it, stop it…I’m sorry Izzy…please stop it! I forgive you!”

As quick as that the pain melted away. Where there had been searing and unrelenting pain there was now only love, fear, amazement and something else I didn’t recognize. My body uncurled and relaxed slightly. I stopped digging my fingernails into the skin of my chest and let them fall to my sides. I was exhausted. I struggled to return my breathing to normal.

“Oh god, Ike…what’ve I done?”

“Your heart was breaking and I couldn’t take the pain. Not your fault, Izzy…not your fault. I believe you’re sorry about what you did to me. I know you’re sorry and I know how much it hurts you. I forgive you. It’s over…let it go.”

My sister’s damp eyes got big and her mouth went slack. She shook her head to clear the cobwebs and quickly regained control of herself.

“Granddad was right. He told me and Mom about what happened, but I didn’t believe…”

And then she did the most amazing thing. Isabeau scooped me up in her arms and held me tight against her, squeezing me so hard I thought blood might shoot out my eyes.

I was still linked, so I felt the welling love that filled my sister. The fear was gone, the remorse and regret were still there, but were less than before. And that other emotion, the one I couldn’t place, had wormed itself up and was piggybacking on the feeling of love.

I put my arms around Isabeau and hugged her in return, lightly stroking her long dark hair and murmuring “It’s alright” into her neck. When I did that, the unknown feeling grew stronger and merged with her feeling of love.

‘Something’s not quite right here,’ I thought, but lack of knowledge and experience left me unsure about what to do about my misgivings.

Isabeau finally released me from her anaconda grip and gently pushed me back. She looked me in the eyes and there was a determination there, matched by a stream of anger in her feelings.

“Tell me who they were. The two girls from the shower…tell me their names. I’ll make sure that kind of thing never happens again.”

I stared right back then placed the palm of my hand against the side of her face, cupping her cheek.

“Your friends have always followed your lead. If you treat me like one of your friends, so will they. No more hurting, okay? Not me, not them, not anyone.”

Isabeau rested her head against my hand and smiled…the anger faded away and that oddly mixed feeling of love filled her, pushing everything else into the background.

“Okay Ike. No more hurting.”

“I’m so tired…” I yawned widely and slumped back into bed, closing my eyes. I could feel Isabeau tucking me in and smoothing the covers around me. I felt her soft lips on my cheek when she lightly kissed me and whispered, “Sleep tight…I love you.” I could feel her love enveloping me like a warm quilt. But that other feeling, the one mixed in tight now with her love, was starting to make me feel funny; kinda squirmy and tingly. But I dozed off before I could examine those feelings any further, and when that happened the link was broken and I couldn’t sense her anymore.