Forever Freaky by Tom Upton Page A

way of being supportive; she knew that my having strange
abilities isolated me from other people. She was always afraid that
I would end up being some kind of weirdo old lady who scared all
the neighborhood kids—in other words, she didn’t want me to turn
into my grandmother. But even now, as she attempted to convince me
I could be pretty much like everybody else if only I applied
myself, she didn’t see the irony.
    “Mom, I’m moving a pencil with my mind,” I
said. “Exactly how much do you think I can blend?”
    She sighed. “Julie, you’re impossible,
really.”
    “And yet here I am.”
    “Can we talk?”
    “We are talking,” I said.
    “I mean, without the—whatever you call
that.”
    “Telekinesis.”
    “Whatever. Can you put your hand down?”
    I lowered my hand. The pencil remained
suspended in the air, still turning slowly around.
    She gawked at the pencil for a moment.
    “Julie, really!”
    I snatched the pencil from the air, and
slapped it down on the tabletop.
    “There! Better?” I asked, feeling a little
hostile.
    “Thank you.” She took a couple seconds to
compose herself, to pick up her train of thought. “Look, maybe I
haven’t been expressing myself so well. I understand that you will
always be different from other people. There’s nothing you can do
about that. But you are still a human being.”
    “If you say so,” I said.
    “You are,” she said. “Your dad and I have
been talking.”
    “You need to stop that. The marriage will
last longer.”
    “Julie, please.”
    I didn’t stay anything. I figured it was best
to let her say what she was going to say, and have it over
with.
    “We’ve been concerned with a few things about
you. And this has nothing to do with your gifts. Your abilities,”
she amended after I’d rolled my eyes.
    “Then what?”
    “It’s just that you’re so—I don’t
know—emotionally detached.”
    “Yeah?” I said dully.
    “I mean, look, I’m a nurse, right? I got into
the field because, basically, I care about people. I have sympathy
and understanding. Your dad, too. He’s a fireman and, sure, that’s
a good job but you can’t want to become a fireman without caring,
without wanting to keep people safe. You see where I’m going with
this.”
    “No, really, I don’t,” I said. “You and dad
like your jobs?”
    She sighed. She seemed uncertain what to say.
Then she blurted out, “Julie, your dad wants you to see a
psychiatrist.”
    I was horrified. “Uh-uh. No way.”
    “He thinks you may be sociopathic.”
    “What! No, I’m not…. What’s sociopathic,
anyway?”
    “That’s when a person has no feelings for
others—no feelings at all. Some sociopaths end up, you know,
killing people.”
    I stared at her. I couldn’t believe what I
was hearing. I honestly didn’t know what to say. My parents weren’t
really concerned that I wasn’t quite normal; they actually feared
I’d turn into a mass murderer or something.
    “It’s just that you never show us anything,”
she continued, uncomfortably. “You know, like kids usually show
their parents.”
    “Oh, I see,” I murmured. “Well, you know me:
I’m not going to go around hugging everybody.”
    “I understand that,” she said.
    “I do love you guys,” I said. “I just do it
in my own way.”
    “Well, Dad doesn’t understand why you are the
way you are.”
    “Maybe you should explain it to him,” I
suggested.
    She looked aghast. We had never told my dad
about my abilities, so he couldn’t possibly understand the affects
that possessing them had on me.
    “You can’t be serious. He’d have you in a
mental hospital in about two seconds. And I’d be right there with
you. He’d never accept it—not in a million years. The guy doesn’t
even believe in ghosts,” she added wryly.
    I grinned. “I could prove it to him.”
    “Uh, no,” she said. “No, we’re not doing
that.”
    “Well, then talk to him,” I said. “Tell him
something he will understand. Make