“Huh,” she says, not at all the reaction I expect. “I thought it might be something like that. But how does it work?”
I’m thrown by the question, expecting an outcry of disgust or disbelief or something.
“I, uh … I don’t really know,” I admit. “I’ve been able to do it a really long time and it’s just—I just want something and people around me want it too. I don’t really think that much about it most of the time.”
“What do you want right now?” Indah asks softly from her perch.
“I want you to explain who the hell you are, but…” I concentrate on the part of my feelings that always feels like an old bruise. The place I poke at when I do what I do. The bruise is silent, un-aching.
“It’s weird,” I continue, “I can’t—you’re not explaining. And I can’t really feel the want.”
“Does that happen a lot?” Indah asks.
“Never,” I say, moving my gaze back to Neon. “What did you do to me?”
“What I do,” she says, leaning back and lifting her chin in pride.
“And what exactly is it that you do?” I spit. “Knock people unconscious?”
“Sometimes.” She shrugs. “I try not to make a habit of it.”
“But you’re…” I trail off. Not sure how to ask for it. Not even knowing what word to use. Feeling self-conscious about this conversation still.
“God, I need a smoke.” Neon stands abruptly, digging into her pants pockets. “You got a light, babe?”
“Neon,” Indah chastises.
“What?” Neon asks around her cigarette as Indah jerks her head toward me. “Oh, right, is it cool if I smoke in here? This whole situation is, you know, kind of stressful.”
“What the fuck do I care?” I shrug, annoyed that the conversation is getting waylaid and I’m apparently completely powerless to control that. Neon should be sitting, telling me all of her deepest, darkest secrets, and instead she’s kissing Indah on the cheek as she takes a lighter from her hand and completely ignoring me.
“Um, excuse me,” I snap, “I think you were just explaining why I was unconscious on my hotel room floor a few minutes ago?”
“Right, sorry.” Neon pulls the lit cigarette from her mouth and sits back down on the coffee table, leaning toward me, her elbows on her knees. She takes one more long drag before meeting my eyes as she exhales, face serious, the cigarette dangling from her fingers.
“I’m an electropath,” she says, like I know what that means. “I can make things go all sparky with my mind,” she explains, before I can ask for more clarification out loud.
She rests her cigarette on the edge of table, brings up her arms in front of her and suddenly the air crackles with electricity. Lightning comes from her hands, twisting around her fingers, kissing her wrists.
“No, it doesn’t hurt,” she says dreamily, gazing at her hands with affection. She’s so calm, so comfortable in herself, that I can’t tell if she’s answering my desire—still distant in my body—or anticipating the natural question you have when seeing someone essentially electrocuting themselves.
“How…,” I breathe, not even knowing what I want to know.
“How long?” she ventures. “How does it work? How do I use it?”
“How did you know about me?” I blurt, my lips making the rare move of forming words without my brain’s careful crafting of them first. “How did you figure it out so fast?”
“It took us a month. I wouldn’t say that’s exactly fast,” she grumbles. Then, seeing my unsatisfied expression, she rolls her eyes and continues. “When you’ve been around the block as much as I have, you learn how to recognize other Unusuals.”
The way she says it, I can practically hear the capital letter.
“Unusuals?”
“That’s what I call people like us. No one I’ve met has ever had a word for it, so that seemed as good as any.”
She picks the cigarette back up and takes another drag and I want to inhale the smoke she lets out of her mouth, like breathing in her exhale will give me all the knowledge she’s ever gained about people like us.
“I—” I start, “I didn’t know. I thought it was just me.”
“In all your Kerouac-ing around the country, you never ran into another Unusual?”
“I, um…” I rub my hands on my legs. “I never really got to know anyone well enough to find out.”
“God, that’s sad.”
I don’t know what to say to that. I don’t know how I could possibly disagree. So I don’t say anything at all.
Another drag. We sit in silence as she exhales.
“You don’t just…”
I sit up straighter, unused to Neon trailing off.
“What?” I push.
“Ask people?” She raises her eyebrows at me. “I mean, not ask people outright but … you know … ask in your unique way of asking. Want them to tell you,” she finishes, like I didn’t get the point.
“I can’t ask what I don’t know to ask,” I tell her softly, embarrassed to admit that I don’t know something.
“You never wondered if there were other people like you?” she asks, lips moving around her cigarette.
“I just never even thought about it,” I say. “I never … I’ve never had a name for what I can do. At first I thought I was going crazy.”
“Yeah, me too.” She snorts, smoke curling out of her nose. “But, well, it’s hard to deny this.” The tips of her fingers crackle and spark in emphasis and I flinch involuntarily, making her smile.
“Don’t worry, it can’t hurt you,” she says, smiling proudly as she takes the cigarette out of her mouth, the electricity briefly flirting with the lit end.
“I think I have pretty solid proof to the contrary,” I retort, sinking farther into the couch.
“You’re fine, aren’t you?” she quips. “A little singed maybe, but … fine.”
“I’m actually…” I search for the want deep inside of me and am uncertain about what I find there. Things usually just happen. But this conversation isn’t going at all as I want it to and I don’t know why. It’s different from the unbalanced feeling I had standing in front of the tall man earlier tonight. This isn’t being disoriented or frustrated. This is empty.
“I think maybe you did something to me,” I finish, hoping Neon will fill in the blanks.
“You mean with your ability?” Indah asks, twirling a cigarette between her fingers. I’ve never seen her smoke but she always carries them with her. I don’t know yet if Indah is an Unusual like Neon, like me I guess, but she’s already an enticing enough mystery on her own.
“Do you guys…,” I start. As I struggle to find my words, I realize that I don’t normally talk this much. My interactions with other people are often short and always dictated by what I’m feeling. I don’t say much because I never have to say much. My wants find their way to the people around me so that I never have to voice them out loud. Even with Indah and Neon so far, the point has been to make them laugh, hear them joke, make them like me without revealing too much about myself. But here we are being honest and it’s new and terrifying territory.