Mind Games

Time to let it go, she thought. Time to look forward instead of back.

Thea closed her eyes and slipped into sleep, dreaming the dreams she built herself.

PART II

Living

Live all you can; it’s a mistake not to.

—HENRY JAMES

Deep into that darkness peering, long I stood there, wondering, fearing,

Doubting, dreaming dreams no mortal ever dared to dream before.

—EDGAR ALLAN POE

Chapter Eleven

At the end of her junior year, Thea assessed her college life.

In her freshman year, she’d survived frequent bouts of homesickness as well as Mandy, the Roommate from Hell.

Mandy, who liked to have phone sex—loud phone sex—with her boyfriend at two in the morning. Mandy, who spent most Sunday mornings puking up her Saturday night partying. Mandy, who appeared to have a religious objection to clothes hangers and wastebaskets.

Thea’d had sex for the first time, and had nearly decided it wasn’t as advertised. The second time changed her mind. The boy, or maybe just the sex, made her feel things she’d never felt before. Had her seeing stars and hearing bells ring.

But she’d made the mistake of convincing herself she loved the boy—Asher Billings, another computer nerd.

In the heat of sex and love, she’d told him about her gift.

His initial laugh hadn’t hurt, or not much. But what followed had cut though the core of her.

Freak, weird-ass loony, and worse. Worse yet, he’d dumped her and told others. Between the scorn and the stares, she’d nearly run home.

Home was safe. Home where people accepted who she was.

“Don’t you think about letting that jerk chase you off!”

Maddy FaceTimed two minutes after Thea’s misery midnight text.

“I’m over him, okay? I’m over him, but he’s got people talking about me, and this girl I don’t even know came up to me today in the coffee shop and said I was the devil’s spawn, and—”

“Are you?”

“Of course not, but—”

“Then fuck her, fuck all like her. You know who you are, Thea Fox, so fuck them. You stick, you hear? You stick and show them what you’re made of.”

“I shouldn’t have told him. I thought if we were going to be together, really together, he should know, well, what I’m made of.”

“He showed you what he’s made of. Pig shit’s what he’s made of, and you won’t step in it again. You get your guts up, Thea, and don’t let his kind take away what you love.”

“I wish you were here.”

“I sort of am. Now, what’re you gonna do?”

“I’m going to get up in the morning and go to class. I need what I’m learning here to have what I want. So fuck all of them.”