Into the Deep

by Lauryn April

  Mom gave me her I’m watching you eyes as I came down for breakfast that morning but didn’t give me any more grief than that. I took two Tylenol before I left for school and hoped that my headache would clear up before I needed to do anything that required actual thinking. To my dismay, my head continued to throb all through Spanish, Art, my lunch hour, and into the first half hour of Psych.

  I sat in Psych with my head down on my desk. Mrs. Rochester was writing on the white board. Her dry erase marker squeaked as she dragged it across the board with too much force and I squeezed my eyes shut. The noise rang in my ears along with the high pitch shrill of her voice. My headache intensified. For a moment, the throbbing pain seemed to encompass my entire skull. My fingers coiled and twisted in my hair as the pain felt like fire crackers exploding inside my cranium. For a fraction of a second, the pain was so intense that I thought my skull would split straight down the middle, that it would explode, raining brain matter on all of my classmates. Then, just as quickly, the pain vanished completely. I cautiously uncoiled my fingers and opened my eyes, fearful that it would return any minute. It didn’t. When I looked up, Mrs. Rochester turned around. She had asked a question, but I hadn’t heard what it was, and by the look on her face she was scanning the room to pick the perfect victim to answer it.

  “Ivy Daniels,” she said, of course, and I faltered.

  Then from behind me I heard someone say “The hypothalamus.” I glanced over my shoulder but couldn’t tell who’d offered the answer up for me. I looked back at Mrs. Rochester, expecting her to thank the person who had answered and at the same time remind them that they were not named Ivy. But she said nothing. She appeared as though she hadn’t heard anyone say anything at all and was staring at me expectantly.

  “Well, Miss Daniels?”

  “The hypothalamus,” I said and she turned back around to the board and continued to teach, seeming satisfied that I’d answered the question correctly.

  I took a deep breath and ran a hand over the bump on the back of my head. The pain had just stopped, not eased away or slowly faded. It abruptly stopped. I remember thinking all of this a little odd at the time, but I dismissed it. I was just glad my head was no longer hurting.

  3

  As Real to Them as I am to You

  A week later, I was sitting with Christy and Tiana at lunch. My sunglasses rested on my head, their black frame holding back my hair. We were outside on the common, sitting at a round stone table near the fountain. It was a bright cloudless day, but we sat comfortably in the shade of a palm tree, its feathered leaves creating striped shadows on the ground. I was poking at a chicken Caesar salad, pushing the lettuce around with my fork, when I heard Christy say that she’d kill for a Twix bar.

  “Yeah, me too,” I agreed.

  “You too what?”

  Had she forgotten what she’d just said? “I’d kill for a Twix bar.”

  “I was just thinking that too. They really need to fix the vending machine.” She took a bite of her apple and I stared at her oddly for a moment.

  Then I heard Tiana’s voice. Like you’d really eat a Twix bar, Miss Psycho calorie counter, she said. Except I was staring right at her when I heard the words and she hadn’t voiced them. She had been chewing a bite of her peanut butter and jelly sandwich the entire time. Still, I knew I had heard her.

  “Did you just say something?” I had to ask.

  Ti looked at me strangely and swallowed her sandwich bite. “What?”

  My mind felt like it was racing, had I just imagined it? “Nothing,” I said, “I have to go.”

  Abruptly, I got up, grabbed my plate, and rushed from the table, leaving my friends sitting alone in confusion. I threw out the rest of my salad without a second thought and went inside. I practically ran to the nearest ladies room and went straight to the sink. I stared into the mirror and turned on the faucet. Splashing water on my face, I tried to calm down, and then I set my sight back on my reflected image.

  “Get it together, Ivy. You’re hearing voices,” I said as I looked into the reflection of my green eyes. “And, now you’re talking to yourself too.” I sighed, and ran my hands through my hair.

  This was ridiculous, I laughed, realizing that I had to have imagined it. Taking a few deep breaths, I convinced myself that it was nothing but my imagination.

  The bell rang shortly after that and I went to my next class, Psychology. I took my usual seat at the far end of the room, three seats back. Mrs. Rochester was already writing on the board. I looked around as the rest of my classmates filtered in. My nerves were still feeling frayed from thinking I was hearing voices, but I was calm and shook off the thought. I was tired and the bump on the back of my head from my near drowning accident had essentially gone away but the memory of it remained. I concluded that my odd experience was simply a result of fatigue. That was until I heard something again.

  Fuck detention, the male voice practically yelled, but I looked around and could tell that no one else had heard it. You couldn’t go around saying the ‘F’ word at Alta Ladera, or probably any other high school for that matter, without getting sent to the principal’s office. I wish I had a smoke, the voice said again and I looked to my right to see Brant Everett slump into his seat.

  He looked tense. I watched as his fingernails lightly scraped across his scalp and his eyes rolled up to stare at the ceiling. He was twitchy, almost as if he were fighting the cravings of nicotine addiction. He skipped this class often and the look on his face made him appear as if he didn’t want to be here now. I wondered if maybe he’d gotten caught smoking on campus again and had been forced to go to class, or maybe he’d been given detention for all his absences. Could what I heard have been his thoughts? Had I been hearing Christy and Tiana’s thoughts earlier? It sounded completely crazy. Brant looked at me then and it jostled me from my musings. He caught me staring and his frosty blue eyes narrowed in on me. I looked away.

  Mrs. Rochester turned around, finished with her whiteboard notes for the moment. I saw her notice Brant in the seat beside me.

  “How nice of you to join us today Mr. Everett,” she said.

  “Pleasure,” he said smugly.

  I looked up at the board then and my heart began to thump like the foot of frightened rabbit. Today’s subject of interest was written in caps in bright red marker, Schizophrenia. It was underlined. Beneath it was a bulleted list of its key symptoms: Delusions, Paranoia, and finally the last point on the list, Hallucinations, seeing or hearing things in which others do not experience. I felt my stomach twist and began to wonder if I was truly losing my mind. People can’t really hear other people’s thoughts, but some crazy people think they can. I slouched down in my seat and listened intently as Mrs. Rochester started her lecture.

  “I thought we’d delve into a little abnormal psychology today. Now, schizophrenics will tell you that the hallucinations they experience are just as real to them as I am to you. While the cause of schizophrenia is often under debate we do know that it tends to occur in people during late adolescence or early adulthood. Also, we tend to see that hallucinations are worse when a person is under stress…”

  I started to zone out as Mrs. Rochester continued. I felt like I had just gone down a check list of my own and marked every box. Are you between 15 and 25? Check. Have you recently been under stress? Check. Are you by chance hearing voices that are not really there? Big check.

  This class bites, I heard someone say and it rattled my thoughts.

  I looked to my left and saw Timothy Nelson put his head down on the desk. I didn’t know what to think. Was I seeing into other people’s minds or was I losing my own? I focused my attention on every word Mrs. Rochester said after that. Focused so hard I hoped that nothing but her voice would enter my mind. I didn’t want to hear anymore voices, and at least for the rest of Psychology, I didn’t.

  I was supposed to go to two more classes after that, but instead I did something I’d never done before. I left school, skip
ping the remainder of my day. I had walked in the opposite direction of my next class and went outside onto the common. From there it was a short jog to the parking lot and the school security guard was nowhere in sight. As I neared my car, I saw a puff of smoke float up from around the side of the building. I paused for a moment. Then my sunglasses slipped from my purse and fell to the ground with a clank. I picked them up, and stood as blue eyes emerged from around the building. More smoke drifted up to the sky. I gave Brant a glance then continued walking. Neither of us said a word to each other, but I could tell he was watching me as I made my way to my car.

  For some reason I never got a call home about my missed classes that day. Maybe, because it was the first time in my life that I’d ever skipped a class, someone had decided to let my punishment slide. It was only study hall and gym that I missed anyway. Those shouldn’t really count as classes. It was possible my absence had simply gone unnoticed. For whatever reason, I was just glad that no one had informed my Mom and that by the time she got home from work, she was over my lying to her about swimming the week before.

  Mom worked part-time as a real estate agent so she had somewhat irregular hours. She didn’t work every day, but she tried to always be home by 5:00 when she did. When she got home that day, I watched her set her brief case down on the kitchen counter. She said hi and asked her usual questions about how my day at school had been. I was sitting at the island, eating a blueberry muffin, and told her it’d been fine. I didn’t tell her that I’d skipped classes, didn’t tell her that I’d been hearing voices. I wanted to forget everything that had happened earlier and pretend that it had all just been a dream. I still hoped then that I could escape it.

  “What should we have for dinner?” Mom asked me as she opened the fridge. “Your father’s going to be home early tonight.” Maybe I should pick up some steaks, I then heard her say in my mind.

  I shook my head and squeezed my eyes shut. I worried schizophrenia was starting to take hold of me, that soon I wouldn’t know what was reality or a delusion. Or something impossible had happened and what I was hearing was really other people’s thoughts. I didn’t want that either. I didn’t want any of it, but I decided that I did need to know what was happening to me. Seeing as I wasn’t just tired and imagining things and that I was unable to will away the voices I kept hearing, I needed to know what they were. Was I crazy, or was it something more?

  It was then that I first started to try and hear the voices, my first attempt at controlling what I would later come to consider an ability. I needed to know if I was really hearing something or if this was some psychological disorder setting in. The one thing that kept me feeling that it wasn’t schizophrenia was what I was hearing. Maybe I was being stereotypical and naïve on this thought, but I had expected the voices that I heard to be malevolent if I were suffering from some disease. Honestly, I would have expected them to tell me to kill someone. And maybe that’s only what happens in the movies, but the fact that I was hearing things that sounded like the voices of people I knew. I was hearing things that sounded like thoughts, that kept me thinking that this was something… else.

  Ironically, however, after a day of trying to keep the voices from entering my head again, it was when I tried to listen for them that they vanished completely. I didn’t hear my mother’s voice as we talked about dinner; didn’t hear Sadie or Dad when we all sat down to eat. I didn’t hear another sound. That night, not hearing them had been almost as maddening as hearing them in the first place and I went to bed exhausted with frustration.

  4

  The Cards You’re Dealt

  Friday classes alternated every other week. The week prior I had had my Monday/Wednesday classes which meant I had my Tuesday/Thursday classes to look forward to that day, and I did look forward to them. After a long deep sleep, I woke ready to try and test my ability to hear the voices that the day before were invading my mind. I wasn’t sure exactly how I was going to do it at the time, but I knew I had to start hearing them again.

  My first class that day was Spanish. Christy was in my class and being around her quickly proved useful. It would be my first insight into how vain her mind really was. I was already seated at my desk when she entered and I heard her the moment she walked through the door.

  Why learn Spanish? We live in America. It was most definitely Christy’s voice and I looked over my shoulder to see her walk in. She took her seat beside me and said hi.

  “You know, I was thinking, why do we need to learn this anyway? I mean, what? ‘Cause there’s so many illegal immigrants now that we need to all know how to talk to them? This is America, they should learn English.”

  I laughed and nodded even though I didn’t agree with what she was saying. Spanish was a hard class, but I took it because I liked the idea of being bilingual. Christy took it because it was required for the college she wanted to apply to. Christy and I may have both been honor roll students, but I don’t think she enjoyed learning the way I did.

  “I think they’re trying to force us to be well-rounded or something,” I replied.

  “Well-rounded is overrated.” I should have taken French, I heard her think. “I should have taken French,” she then said aloud.

  The weird dèjà vu moment was almost enough in itself to convince me that what I was hearing was really her thoughts. Moments later, however, our teacher arrived and I didn’t hear another voice until lunch.

  God, look at her tits in that shirt, I heard someone think as I walked down the hallway, passing a group of guys on my way to the common. It startled me and made my head jerk back to look at them. One of them winked at me and I picked up my pace pulling my jacked tighter around me. I pushed past the glass door that led outside and was calmed by the smell of fresh air and the feel of a cool breeze on my face.

  Christy and Tiana were already sitting in our usual spot near the fountain, the sound of the cascading water drowning out the conversations of the tables around them. As usual, Eliza and Damon were getting lunch off campus. Today they’d be at Toppers as Damon had wrestling practice later. He always got Toppers Stix before wrestling.

  Only seniors were allowed to leave for lunch, but they didn’t keep close tabs on anyone. It was easy for a junior like Eliza to get away with eating lunch with her senior boyfriend. Sometimes they would stay and eat with us, but not often. Getting away from school and fast food were hard to pass up, and I think Eliza enjoyed getting away with breaking the rules.

  “Hey, Ivy,” Tiana called.

  “You ready to hang with Steve and Alex again this weekend?” Christy asked.

  I looked at her oddly for a moment. I had thought she’d forgotten about Alex after seeming to be so into Chase only a week or so ago.

  “Um, yeah,” I responded trying to sound excited. Christy didn’t notice the fakeness of my interest, but I saw Tiana roll her eyes beside her.

  “Great, I’ll call you later with details.” That color green really looks terrible on her; I hope she doesn’t wear that on Saturday.

  I tried not to narrow my eyes on her after I heard her bitchy afterthought.

  “So what are you going to wear tomorrow?”

  I bit my tongue. “Not sure,” I said, “maybe that dark blue dress I have.” She nodded.

  Well, that doesn’t look great on her but it’s a step in the right direction.

  “Hey, Ivy, do you have that Math homework that we got on Wednesday figured out?” Tiana asked me.

  “Yeah, mine’s all done.”

  “You mind helping me out with some of it one day this weekend? I’m stuck on number seven.”

  “Yeah, no problem.”

  She smiled grateful, but then I saw her look off into the distance. She suddenly had a distracted expression on her face, her mouth falling into a slight frown, her eyes deep and sad. Christy didn’t notice, but I followed her gaze to the other side of the courtyard. At first I wasn’t sure what she was looking at. Then I heard her.

  Smug asshole, she th
ought, and I saw him.

  Brant was leaning up against a tree.

  Damn him for being so sexy.

  An arrogant smile graced his face and there was a thin brunette standing beside him. The girl, most likely a sophomore, swooned over him as he brushed a stray hair out of her face. I looked back to Ti and she glanced away.

  “Well, I’m outta here,” Christy said, “Student council meeting. I’ll see you guys later.” Both Tiana and I said goodbye and then she was off.

  I turned back to Ti and caught her glancing at Brant across the yard again.

  “You alright?” I asked her and watched her eyes jerk to meet mine.

  She blushed as if she’d been caught watching some racy movie and not just innocently staring at a boy across the yard. She looked at me then glanced back at Brant once more.

  “Yeah, I just… It’s not like I expected anything with us to turn into a relationship. I guess I’m just thrown by how… nice he was that night. He was a real talker, you know. And then after Nicolette’s party it’s like I don’t even exist.”

  “He’s just a player Ti, just forget about him.”

  She sighed. “Yeah, you’re right.”

  Even though I could see through to the fact that I was truly hearing voices, doubt still remained like a thin fog clouding my conclusion. I wasn’t completely convinced yet that I wasn’t losing my mind. I had heard enough that I wanted to believe that what was happening to me really was some kind of mindreading or telepathy, but it was what happened in Psychology that day that persuaded me.

  Mrs. Rochester had already written notes on the board when I walked in. Parapsychology was scrawled in blue marker; below it were instructions for an activity. I sat down in my seat and noticed that for the second day in a row Brant was in class and on time. I thought about Tiana’s face at lunch and the disdain that she held for him. I didn’t even really know him, but thinking about how he’d hurt her feelings made me want to hate him.