2 Empath by Edie Claire

“Where’s Tar? I thought she was coming with you.”
    I fixed him with an appropriately withering look. “She did,” I answered, refraining from adding, you moron!
    “Well, where’d she get to? I gotta ask her—” His eyes widened suddenly to saucers. His stubbled jaw dropped nearly to his chest.
    The next word out of his mouth was that word. He said it clearly. He said it really, really loud. And he said it, quite unfortunately, just as the last chords of the song died out, making his astonished voice reverberate to every corner of the room. “No!” he continued shouting, oblivious. “Get out! Tara? Is that really you?”
    The entire assembled crowd stared right at us. Kylee and I exchanged a tension-filled glance. Damon wasn’t a bad guy, really. He was friendly enough, and like his sister he was actually quite good looking — tall and athletic with sandy brown hair and blue eyes. Unlike his sister, however, he was neither particularly interesting nor particularly bright. Tara always said that her brothers had the collective intelligence of a bran muffin.
    A few people tittered. A nearby chaperone threw Damon a disapproving glare. The next song began, but despite its familiar upbeat sound, no one moved.
    Kylee and I watched anxiously for Tara’s reaction. Would she bolt again?
    But Tara merely groaned. “Of course it’s me, you idiot!” she snapped. “Who did you think it was? Now shut up and make yourself useful. I like this song.” She grabbed him roughly by the hand, spun him around, and led him, unresisting, to the dance floor.
    Kylee and I relaxed. “She’s going to be okay,” Kylee assured.
    We watched together as Damon clumsily began to dance with his sister, only to be replaced within seconds by one of his smarter — and smoother — senior friends. “Something tells me we won’t be seeing her for a while,” I said happily.
    “Nope,” Kylee agreed, her dark eyes sparkling. “My job here is done.” She then turned and looked at me with equal fervor. “Now, back to you. I had a long talk with ba noi this afternoon. She says you’re an empath.”
    My eyes widened. “I’m what?”
    “An empath,” she repeated. “It means that you have the ability to pick up on other people’s emotions. Anybody can try to read emotions by picking up on obvious cues, like tone of voice, facial expression, body language. Some of us are better at that than others — and women tend to be better at it than men. But a true empath is different —they actually perceive other people’s emotions and feel them like they’re their own. That’s what you’ve been doing. It’s a separate gift from seeing the shadows, but it’s a lot more common. Ba noi knows a bunch of empaths in San Jose, and she’s going to ask them for advice on how to control it. You know, learning how to shut out the background noise so it doesn’t get overwhelming. How cool is that?”
    “That’s…” I said breathlessly, “pretty darn cool.”
    I felt a surge of giddy excitement. Part of it, no doubt, I was picking up from the people around me, most of whom were mindlessly enjoying a good party. But it wasn’t all them. I felt like a sick person must feel when — after a string of doctors tells them their symptoms are all in their head — one doctor finally takes them seriously, diagnoses their trouble, and prescribes a cure. I was not crazy, and I never had been. I had some rare and unusual gifts, true. But aside from that, I was a perfectly normal person.
    Sweet.
    “Hey, Kali!” came a voice to my left. I looked over to see one of my guy friends, Lucas, smiling at me from behind a cup of punch. “You look awesome!”
    I smiled back. Lucas was a bit of a nerd, but he was a nice guy. I noticed he had trimmed his ordinarily shoulder-length hair for the event, and might have actually looked decent if he hadn’t chosen to wear an eggplant-purple tux with a bright red vest and bowtie. But what did I care? At least he could