Free Salem's Sight by Eden Elgabri

elective brain surgery. Or maybe she looked more like I
needed it. Anyway, it took another minute or so before she shut her
mouth, which had been hanging open.
    “ You have to take the
classes or you can’t get your license.” She said it slowly,
succinctly, just in case I’d recently lost a few-hundred brain
cells, and my IQ dropped like September temperatures after the sun
goes down.
    I nodded and shrugged. Berkley
sputtered and tried to collect her thoughts.
    “ But everyone wants to get
a license. It’s every teen’s dream. It’s not normal to not want to
drive.” As if trying to convince me with the conformity issue would
work.
    I raised one eyebrow trying to look
cool. “And I would be normal in what way?”
    It wasn’t her best argument, but she
wasn’t ready to admit defeat. “Point taken. So you’re not exactly
like everyone else.” She said it like the differences were minor.
“Big deal, your psychic.”
    “ It is a big deal for me.”
I didn’t know if she was downplaying the psychic thing because she
changed her mind and no longer thought it was such a major concern,
or if she was just doing it because I was using it in the
argument.
    “ But it’s a dumb excuse for
not wanting a license. I just don’t get it. A license is
freedom.”
    Freedom for her and every other kid my
age. But not for me. For me it was fear and more frightening than
the visions that were taking over my life. I needed to take a
stand.
    “ I’m not going to change my
mind.”
    We had a stare down for a few seconds
before Berkley finally turned and grabbed her purse off my dresser.
“Gotta go. Think about it.” She zipped out the door without looking
back.
    I stood there and watched her walk
away. Why couldn’t I tell her the truth? She would have been cool
about it if I’d only told her.
    ****
     
    After a steamy shower I relaxed enough
to take a closer look at my homework. Math didn’t come as easy to
me as the rest of the subjects I took in school and AS Pre-Calculus
was especially hard. If I lived through it I’d take AP Calc as a
senior and be able to take a test to earn college
credits.
    After what seemed like an eternity I
finally finished and was about to call Berkley to double check my
answers when I remembered she was still mad at me.
    Wasn’t going to risk restarting the
argument over driving. I’d have to get my mom to look at them. What
a pain. She’d do out each problem to make sure the answers were
right. That was probably because math wasn’t her strong point
either. Boy, I could have used Dad about now. Math was his forte.
Too bad I hadn’t inherited the math gene.
    It was about fifteen minutes later
when she told me there were three wrong answers - out of thirty.
She pointed it out because she wondered why I singled them out with
water.
    The paper held three water spots. One
over each of the wrong answers. Okay, like how strange was
that?
    It didn’t take me long to figure out
that the drops occurred from my wet hair as I was doing my
homework.
    But to have three random wet spots hit
the page exactly where the only three wrong answers were? Major
weird, to say the least.
    Skyler rubbed along my ankle then,
looked up at the ceiling and mewed. I followed his gaze. Are you up
there, Grandma? I thought wondering if she aided with the math
correcting.
    As soon as I thought it, I realized I
was probably right. She must be here trying to give me
direction.
    I just needed to pay attention. And
ask Mom a lot more questions. Who was I kidding? If I wanted
answers I wasn’t going to get them from her.
    At this point it wasn’t that I didn’t
trust her or thought that she’d leave things out. It’s just that
kids don’t always know that much about their parents. I mean, for
real, we always think of our parents as just that. We rarely
consider them as individuals having lives that predated us. For
that reason, it’s hard to imagine them young. So we don’t ask. And
because it’s over and seeming to