Soulmates
5
Listening vs. Hearing
Jaime
THE NEW ARRANGEMENT worked well for Jaime. To start with, he was no longer deposited into the slowest learning class. He could understand why Belle had chosen computer instruction, but Jaime often got more from the teacher’s thoughts than he did from the words. He was becoming better at filtering out thoughts from his classmates, while letting the thoughts of his teacher through.
Selective hearing, he thought. In the early days of his education, some teachers had determined that he had selective muteness and tried to force him to talk aloud. He read up on the subject online and one search led to another.
His research showed that selective hearing was practiced by almost everyone who could pay attention to one aural input while ignoring all or most others. People often did it in environments where several people were talking, but they were only paying attention to one. People let themselves get so absorbed by movies or television or even music that they didn’t hear anything else. In fact, that was the technique Jaime had used when he put on his headphones.
He had to practice selective hearing in his head as well as his ears.
Of course, sometimes a stray thought caught his attention. It wasn’t intentional, but he found himself suddenly listening to another person. At first, it was difficult to zero in on who he was listening to. By the end of middle school, he was able to identify the thinker almost as readily as his ears could identify a speaker.
Everyone had what he considered a different head taste. It was like the pitch, tone, and accent of an out-loud voice that would distinguish between one person and another. He made a practice of sampling the head taste of the people around him so he could tell quickly who was thinking when he heard something in his head.
His last year in middle school, Jaime had become painfully aware of the physical changes taking place in nearly everyone around him—and, indeed, in himself as well. He might not have noticed it so soon had it not been so loudly thought about by so many of his classmates—male and female. Girls were developing secondary sexual characteristics and the boys around him had begun to notice. Their shapes were changing and the boys were reacting to the visual stimuli—like breasts and butts.
At the first mention of the subject through a stray thought from one of the boys in his social studies class, Jaime was suddenly fascinated with the subject and found changes in his own body that were making themselves known.
Girls, as well, were noticing changes in the boys. A girl might thrill to the sound of a boy’s voice that had shifted from a soprano to a deep baritone. Boys who grew taller than the girls were noticed. All through their schooling, most of the girls had been taller than most of the boys. Muscle mass increased on some boys and that was noticed as much by girls as breasts were by boys. Some boys were already shaving before they reached their teens.
Jaime tried not to be a head voyeur, but it seemed the thoughts of sex were the ones screamed loudest by the pubescent boys and girls alike. He was amazed at how confused most were about the actual biology that was involved and determined to educate himself online.
David did not believe in restricting Jaime’s internet access through parental controls. He felt children in general self-regulated what they looked at through their own interests. If Jaime saw something like a discussion of transsexuality, he would read it if it interested him and would not read it if he found it uninteresting. They talked about what was online a lot. Jaime recognized the dangers of social media and really didn’t use it much. He found talking to people he couldn’t read mentally was exhausting and undependable.
When it came to sex, his education took several late nights on his computer. He was enlightened about great swaths of human sexuality. He found how the parts were supposed to fit together, what the major stimuli were, and the risks in engaging in sex. It was almost more than he wanted to know and he was thankful he could not ride in the heads of those he saw on the computer.
It took much more effort to block the thoughts of others as he moved to high school and began encountering people who actually did have experience, or at least imagined they did. Apparently, some had watched the same videos he had because their imagined exploits matched those he’d seen online remarkably closely.
While home was a refuge in the evening after a day of filtering out thoughts, Jaime still sought out ways to make his filters easier and more automatic. He’d practiced using music as a means of filtering out extraneous mental input since he was very young. As a result, he’d fallen in love with orchestral music. When the music didn’t have words, he was free to just float on its melody and release his thoughts. It was like meditation to him.
He also discovered that anything that focused people’s thoughts on a single subject tended to quiet a room full of noisy minds. He wondered if teachers knew how few people in their classroom focused on what they were saying. There were a couple of classes that were really interesting and people’s minds were occupied with a single thing. Most classes left students’ minds scattered to the wind, so to speak.
Whenever a group of people were caught in a single experience, like a movie, they focused on that experience to the exclusion of all other thoughts. Or at least of most other thoughts. The movie theater was a place of mental quiet for Jaime as he merely rode the waves of people’s emotions as they watched the movie.
He spent at least one afternoon or evening each weekend at a concert or a movie. But once back in school on Monday, he would be bombarded with the typical thoughts of teenagers. Here he found sporting events were almost as good as concerts. The day of a school sporting event, most thoughts ran in the same channels—some deeper than others. It was like listening to people speaking in unison instead of all speaking about different things at the same time.
Jaime found himself at a movie one Saturday afternoon, anticipating a relaxing time with the audience—of which there weren’t too many people anyway—focusing on one thing and leaving his mind relatively free. A row ahead of him, he recognized a burly boy from the football team, which had won an important game the night before. He didn’t recognize the girl he was with, but she seemed tense. As soon as the lights went down and the movie started, her thoughts started to intrude on his own. They ran contrary to the thoughts shared by most of the movie audience.
I can’t believe I agreed to a date with Tom. All the girls warned me he was an octopus. If he tries to feel me up again, I’ll leave. I swear I will.
At the same time, Jaime became aware of the boy’s, Tom’s, thoughts.
I am definitely going to bust a nut in this virgin. She plays hard to get, but Dan said he got to second base just by kissing her. She is so hot!
The thoughts of the two continued to run counter to the movie for a while and Jaime was able to shut them out until a quiet and sweet scene in the movie left everyone sighing together. Suddenly the girl had an alarming thought.
Oh, my God! He’s got his hand on my breast! When did that happen? I didn’t even feel it! I don’t want it there. What should I do? It would be stupid to make a big deal about it now that it’s done. I don’t even know how long he’s been squeezing me. And it feels kind of good. No! I don’t want this! I’ll wait for a scene with action and shift my position so he can’t reach it. Damn! I wish it didn’t feel so good!
I knew it, the boy thought. She’s hot. Damn! Her nipple popped up hard as a rock. I can’t wait to suck on it. She’s got such smooth legs and a short skirt. Like she was just ready for this all along. This cherry is going to pop tonight!
When did he put his hand on my leg? God! That kiss on my ear was just too much! I should have worn tights or pantyhose. And jeans instead of a skirt. What was I thinking? Oh, shit! I’m gonna kiss him!
Jaime observed all this from behind the couple. It was truly distracting from the movie. He watched her turn her face toward the boy and kiss him. He was surprised but got right into it. The thoughts were less orderly as the kiss progressed.
Little silk panties.
When did I put my hand on his cock?
Yeah. You like me pinching your little nipple, don’t you?
I’ll just relax my legs a little. His hand feels so good there.
She’s wet already. Her panties are soaked.
Rub! Rub right there!
The movie was far from over, but Jaime got up and left the theater.
Jaime had never encountered another person who could communicate in their head. At least, no one but his dying mother had ever spoken to him. He often tested his theory that people were generally head deaf by speaking in his head to someone. Occasionally, a person would pause, but then would continue on their way without acknowledging the idea. Jaime modified his opinion to believing there were people who weren’t originally head deaf but had trained themselves not to accept mental communication.
He would have been surprised to find a teen in a school across town who had a different experience.
Trayce
Trayce had an active imagination. She was very creative and had begun writing little stories when she was in elementary school. In middle school, her imagination had been lit on fire. She discovered web sites where people posted fan fiction for some of her favorite stories. She began writing stories herself and posting them online.
Of course, biology caught up with her in middle school as well. Her mother told her it was all just part of becoming a young woman and had given her hygiene instructions and talked to her lovingly about how her body was changing. Trayce caught overtones from her mother that said she was very concerned about her daughter maturing and would talk to her father about whether she was handling it right. Trayce thought it was odd how she had those impressions from her mother, but she often got them from her father as well. She always knew what kind of mood he was in and what he wanted to do on the weekend.
One day she had decided to ship a story about a relationship between two boys in her favorite fantasy novel. ‘To ship,’ she had found out the year before, was to create a story about a relationship between two characters in a story who didn’t have that type of relationship in the original.
She was in her study hall and had finished her math assignment, so decided to start writing the story about the two boys. She hadn’t gone far when one of her characters came to life in her head and began talking to her.
I really like him. Yeah, we compete on the football field, but it’s a game. Trash talking is just part of the game. I don’t really hate him. But what can I do about it? If the guys found out I liked him, I’d be finished. As it is, I have to leave the showers when he walks in or I’d be rock hard in an instant. I think I might love him.
Trayce scribbled the words down as quickly as she could. She’d heard of people who had characters so real they dictated the story, but this was the first time she’d heard one of her own. Of course, that was when the class bell rang and everything was disrupted. She put away her writing and went to her next class.
Trayce was sad that all of her characters didn’t talk to her like that. And sometimes when she sat to write about one thing, another character she hadn’t even invented yet would intrude on her thoughts and she had to change everything to accommodate the new character. That was even more exciting—a character who took over the story and all she had to do was write down what she said.
The ideas came to her so fast that she despaired of being able to ever complete a story before her mind jumped to another.
Discipline, she thought. I need to teach myself to focus on one thing at a time and ignore the other things.
It was a difficult process, but gradually she learned to separate herself from the characters and treat them as things she could control. And if she couldn’t control a character, she could shut them off and not think about them. Sometimes they would return to her and sometimes she would lose them, but she decided that was just part of the creative process and if she thought of them once, she could probably think of them again.
“You bitch,” snarled a girl with a locker near hers. “It’s taken me three months to find you, but I’m going to rip you apart.”
Trayce did not recognize that she was the one being talked to until the girl grabbed her shoulder and spun her around.
“Don’t ignore me, you little whore. How did you get hold of my journal? I know it was in my bag. When I saw that story on Willow Works, I made sure it was safe. It’s never been out of my room since. But you wrote a sequel and it’s word for word what I put in my journal. You don’t have the right to steal my things and put them up where everyone can see them.”
“I don’t know what you mean,” Trayce said. “I didn’t steal anyone’s journal. Really! My stories are just things that pop into my head and I write them down. I don’t know what story you’re talking about.”
“Oh, yes you do. I read it three times to be sure it was the same as my journal. It’s the one you shipped about Janey and Alexandra getting stranded in the forest.”
“That’s about characters from the Dreamboats saga. I just made it up.”
“You mean you disguised it. It’s what I did last summer. I met Sally at summer camp and we hit it off. We snuck off into the woods one night to be together.”
“That’s not what happened in that story.”
“I said you disguised it. And then you wrote a sequel and had them getting together in school. When she read it, she refused to have anything more to do with me! She accused me of being you. She thought I’d posted our private thing for everyone to see. I hate you!”
“But I didn’t!” Trayce complained. “I don’t even know who you are. All I know is you are in the same study hall. I don’t have any idea what you are talking about with your journal.”
“I’ll get hold of you someday. I’ll find you where no one can see us and I’ll make you pay. I loved Sally and you made her run away from me. I’ll kill you.”
Waves of hot anger radiated off the girl. Trayce still didn’t know her name. She could just see the ways the girl thought of killing her and it made her physically ill. Trayce ran to the restroom and threw up. She didn’t want to go back to class, but there were still two periods left in the day.
When she got home that night, she went to the Willow Works story site and removed the two stories. It made her sad because they were the highest scoring stories she’d written so far. She didn’t realize writing could be so dangerous.
Trayce didn’t write for a couple of weeks after that. Whenever a new character popped into her mind, she vigorously shut it off.
No. I’m not going to write about you! You’ll just get me in trouble!
Of course, the more she tried to shut them off, the more characters clamored for her attention.
Finally, she gave in and began writing stories again. Each time she imagined a new character for a story, or imagined an existing character who found his or her voice, she was elated and began furiously writing down what was said. But in the quiet of her bedroom when she transcribed her story to the computer, she would often realize how scattered her character was and how ridiculous it seemed. She would keep the voice and rewrite for consistency and storyline.
Trayce started participating in online writing groups and contests, talking about the voices she heard when thinking about a character. She was pleasantly surprised at the number of other young writers who agreed. They critiqued each other’s work and called Trayce’s stories ‘character driven.’ Her writing friends advised her to write ‘by the seat of her pants’ and let the characters tell the story.
The problem with all this was that the people giving her advice had no more—if as much—experience than she had. When she actually took a class in high school in creative writing, she was shocked to find her stories were really quite shallow and had no plot or real storyline. Her fans were other writers like her and a limited number of readers who were specifically into the fan fiction she posted online.
The class exposed her to plot development, story arcs vs. character arcs, planning, and outlining. She also learned about The Hero’s Journey and was encouraged to find and develop her own stories—perhaps based on the experiences of her own life.
It was while she was deeply involved in the process of plotting a new story in her room that tragedy struck.
Trayce was shaken from her deep concentration and jerked herself upright screaming. Her mother rushed to the room, finding Trayce’s laptop on the floor as the girl sobbed in the middle of the bed, crying “Daddy! Daddy! Daddy!”
It was not long after that police arrived at their door to ask Mrs. Lombard to come and identify the body of her husband, killed in a drunk driving accident earlier in the day.
Trayce quit writing.
Please feel free to send comments to the author at devon@devonlayne.com.
