All of this came to me as a sort of accelerated slide show, pictures tumbling over pictures, snippets of video mingling with audio tracks, a vast hallucinogenic data dump.
A particular video caught my eye, and I plucked it out to examine. Liam was in a classroom and, judging by the other students around him, it must have been recent, from no more than a few months ago. In this, Liam was looking at Emma. I saw it as a glance, a look away to the white board and the teacher, a glance back, a look away, a glance, until Emma happened to spy him looking at her and she met his gaze with an arched brow and a dubious expression.
At the same time I saw Emma’s path to that same moment. I saw her earliest memories, her mother and father, her brothers, her cat, her room.
I felt ashamed. I had become a stalker, an invader of minds, an intruder in memories I had no right to. And yet it was fascinating and exhilarating at almost a physical level, a rush, a thrill ride. A nauseating intrusion, but with my own memory reduced to a few pencil sketches, this trove of memories and sensations—for I could feel the emotion in each memory—was luxurious. I swam in the warm waters of memories that were not my own.
Finally, reluctantly, I broke contact.
There were tears on my cheeks.
“They love each other,” I said. It was no great revelation, but I had felt the intensity of that emotion and knew in a way that left me feeling small and unimportant. Love, yes, the love I no doubt felt for my parents and a half-remembered brother, but this was a different thing. This was not a long-burning candle; it was roaring fire. This was desire and need and a willing surrender that empowered.
“Yes,” Messenger agreed. “And what of the wrong they have done?”
I frowned, not sure quite what he meant, though I had as well felt Liam and Emma’s panic and self-loathing at the violent act they had committed.
“They’re good people,” I said.
“Yes,” Messenger agreed. “What of the wrong they have done?”
“I . . . I don’t know what you want from me.”
“I want to know your thoughts, Mara. What of the wrong they have done?”
“Can’t you just open my head up and see for yourself?” I snapped. “If I can do it, you can. You have, obviously. You’re the one keeping me from seeing my own memories.” I was becoming agitated, sickened by the terrible violation I had committed in stealing the memories of these two decent kids, kids my own age, not monsters, just kids who had made a very bad mistake.
And yet . . . and yet did I not want to see still more? Did I not still wish that I was myself experiencing their intensity of feeling? There was a hunger in me that might be fed by gorging on borrowed emotion.
Messenger said, “I can do many things, Mara. But you will learn nothing from my reading of your mind. To learn you must form your thoughts and emotions into expression. What. Of. The. Wrong?”
I threw up my hands, helpless. I looked pleadingly at Liam and Emma—my God, I knew them each better than I knew myself—as if they could somehow save me from my own guilt. But, of course, neither of them understood that I had just dined on their most intimate experiences.
“I guess,” I said, “they should . . . pay something. Be made to . . . They should . . .”
I could go no further. Messenger relented then and turned away from me to face the two frightened kids. “This wrong demands punishment,” he said. “I offer you a game. If you win, you will go free, unbothered by me or by my apprentice.”
“A game?” Liam echoed in obvious confusion.
“A game,” Messenger said. “If you win, you go free. If you lose, then you will face the thing you fear most.”
“What . . . what game?” Emma asked, with a nervous glance at Liam. “What’s the game?”
“We will consider,” Messenger said.
“Wait,” Liam protested. “We’re just supposed to sit here and wait, not knowing? I mean, what the hell, man?”
Emma was ready to jump in and also demand some kind of resolution, but whatever she had to say, I didn’t hear it then, for we were no longer with Emma and Liam. We were once again with Samantha Early.
IT WAS A SCHOOL LUNCHROOM. NOISY, CHAOTIC, smelling of grease and overcooked brussels sprouts. On the walls were posters exhorting the team to beat the Redwood Giants. There was a nutrition poster on the wall next to the food line. The tables were round six-tops with molded plastic chairs that made a scraping sound with each movement and laid a sort of uneven rhythm track beneath the babble of voices.
Samantha Early was at a table with three other girls. None of them were talking. Mason Crain, a pleasant-looking if not handsome kid who had not quite grown into his hands and feet, sat down across from her carrying a tray loaded with something brown, something green, and something red.
Samantha glanced up, then returned her gaze immediately to the laptop on which she was typing in between bites of turkey lasagna.
Two tables away sat Kayla and her friends. They were not all beauties, but even those who were of only average looks were well and expensively turned out, with better-than-Claire’s jewelry, outfits from A&F and Nordstrom, designer shoes and bags and latest-generation cell phones.
“See who just sat down with Spazmantha?” Kayla asked.
All heads turned, noted the boy at Samantha Early’s table, and looked back to Kayla for guidance as to why, precisely, this was important.
“That’s Mason Crain,” Kayla said. “He’s acting all cool, but Samantha gave him a b.j. in his car up at the Headlands. In one of those pullouts where you can see the Golden Gate Bridge.”