Free Falling From Grace by S. L. Naeole Page A

finest moment to be sure, but this wasn’t exactly the time to be wowing a judging panel.
    Why is it easy for you to accept that I can read your thoughts, but not that you can also hear mine?
    “Who said that I accepted you reading my thoughts?   For goodness sake, people aren’t supposed to read other people’s thoughts!   And I wasn’t born with this…this… thing !   Why should I accept hearing your thoughts?” I shouted, exasperated, annoyed…frightened.
    “Grace, I told you that you were different.   Most girls would be trying to think dirty thoughts around me—most girls do no matter what—but not you.” He knelt beside me on the ground.   He put his hand under my chin and lifted my face so that I could look at him.   Or that he could look at me.   Secretly, I hoped it was the latter.
    “It is,” he reassured me, grinning when he saw me grimace — a reaction to him hearing what I didn’t say.   “I don’t want to scare you, Grace.   I cannot explain to you how, but I just knew — deep inside of me — that you’d be able to learn of my secret, and keep it.   The way a friend is supposed to.”
    Was it really that simple?   All he wanted was a friend?   If that was it, why did I feel so disappointed?
    “I want you as my friend,” he said, smiling as he offered me his hand.
    “Okay, look.   That’s really going to annoy the crap out of me,” I told him, taking it and pulling myself up to a standing position.   “My thoughts are my own.   I’m sure you wouldn’t like someone always digging around in your private thoughts, would you?”
    He shrugged, his expression stoic.   “My sister is always in my thoughts, needling her way to find out bits of gossip, or secrets she can blab to one of her girlfriends.   It’s no big thing.   If there’s something I don’t want her to know, it’s not that difficult to keep hidden.”   He looked down at my hand, still enclosed in his, and smiled again.
    I forgot what I was going to say because I, too, was staring down at our hands joined together.   I didn’t realize that I had never let go…and that he hadn’t either.   I also didn’t know that when touching like this, skin to skin, I couldn’t stop the influx of thoughts that passed between the two of us.
    It flowed like water into my head — filling up crevices that had been empty for longer than I had been alive — as my mind seemed to drain of everything it had ever contained to make room.   His voice filled my head, roaming around in my mind, echoing, calling, searching…searching for what?   I was starting to feel full, stretched too tight.   I felt my face pinch, wincing as the pain was beginning.   It was throbbing, merciless…the pressure was increasing at an enormous rate and it didn’t seem close to abating any time soon.   I could see his face, his wide, fear filled eyes; he was hearing my inner cries of pain, and they were hurting him.  
    You…need…to…let…go…Grace.
    And then he was gone.
    Everything was gone.  

    ***

    I was lying on a bench, something hard beneath my throbbing head.   I felt something dripping from my face — it being wiped up by something cool and wet.   I could smell the rusty tang of blood, and the syrupy sweet smell of something unfamiliar.   My eyes opened to two big pools of liquid mercury staring worriedly into my face.
    “Are you okay?”
    I tried to sit up, but I couldn’t move — something was holding me down.   I looked back at those liquid pools and realized that at the way they were angled, I had to be lying down in his lap.   My eyes flicked down to my chest, and saw his hand was pressing down on my abdomen.   I turned my head and saw his other hand was holding down my left shoulder.   I couldn’t get up because he was holding me down.
    I looked up into his face once more and said in a shaky voice, “I’m fine.   I just need to sit up.”
    He looked reluctant to let me go, but eased his grip on me