[12]

 CHAPTER TWELVE

“You do realise that we only have an hour before my mum is expecting me home?” I ask, leaning on the dark wood table in the dining room. “And I doubt I’m going to learn how to use my abilities in one day.”

Rand nods. “I’m just going to teach one thing. It won’t take long, but it will buy us some time to teach you everything. That is, if you are able to do it. The only abilities we know you possess right now are regeneration, telekinesis and some sort of elemental control.”

“How many abilities can one person have?” I ask.

“The most anyone has ever had is twelve.” He heads for the stairs. “I’m just going to get something.”

Next to me, Caden is sitting silently, staring at nothing, and I take the opportunity to ask him a question.

“How do you know Rand?”

He looks at me, apparently surprised that I’m speaking to him, and says, “He’s good friends with my father. I think they mainly became friends because they both share similar abilities.” He shrugs. “But I’m staying with him until my dad gets back from his overseas business trip.”

“So, I’m guessing you have abilities too?”

He nods. “But only one, and I’d rather not talk about it.”

“What about your mum? Does she have any?”

“She used to.”

I raise my eyebrows.  “Used to?”

“She died in a car crash when I was twelve,” he explains, running a hand through his hair. “I’d rather not talk about that either.”

After a brief silence, I say, “I’m sorry.”

He shakes his head. “No, it’s alright. You didn’t know.”

At that precise moment, I hear Rand’s heavy footsteps on the stairs, quickly descending. I watch as he enters the dining room holding a cage. He places it in the middle of the table and I feel my eyes go wide.

“A mouse?” I ask.

He grins and sits opposite me. “I’m testing you for the ability of mind control. It can be extremely useful and is fairly common among those with abilities.”

“Mind control?” I can’t help my disbelieving tone. “There’s no way that’s possible.”

“And regeneration is? What makes mind control so impossible when you can heal almost completely in a day?”

He stares me down and eventually, I look away. He got me on that one.

“Fine. What do I have to do?”

“To start, I want you to look at the mouse. Make eye-contact if you can.”

I sigh, and do as he says. Inside the cage, the brown mouse has squished itself up against the thin metal bars that keep it trapped. I spot one of its beady black eyes and stare, feeling ridiculous. “What now?”

“Think about what you want it to do and clear everything else from your mind. Maybe start off by trying to get it to take a drink from its water dropper.”

“So, think about it, as in, picture it?”

He shakes his head. “Say it. In your mind. So for instance, you could say, ‘Drink’ over and over until it does it.”

I try to clear my mind as best I can before thinking, Drink. But the moment I say it in my head, I feel like a complete idiot and my mind fills with thoughts again. I try a second time, vowing to just go through with it, and I repeat the phrase numerous times. After a while, the mouse starts running around in circles, breaking eye-contact, as if it knows what I’m trying to do to it. Maybe it does.

I look up. “I can’t. It’s not working.”

Rand frowns. “Your powers have been repressed, so it will be a lot harder to do than it is for most people. Maybe try again.”

I sigh. “Maybe I just don’t have the ability of mind control. Ever thought of that?”

Rand shakes his head. “You do.”

“And how would you know?”

“Because the mouse can sense you tampering with its mind. Animals always freak when you interfere with their mind.” He pauses, and then nods towards the cage. “Try again.”

I look back at the mouse, making eye-contact when I can, and for the third time, I clear my head of thoughts. Drink, I say. Nothing. It runs around and around, making me dizzy. Drink, I say forcefully. Still, nothing happens.

Irritation builds up inside of me. Why can’t it just stay still? Does it have to make everything harder for me?

Drink, I repeat. If it’s possible, it starts to run faster and all hope of making eye-contact is lost. This is ridiculous. Here I am, trying to get a mouse to have a drink of water, and it won’t even stay in place long enough for me to do it. Why am I even bothering?

Oh, for crying out loud! Stay still!

The mouse comes to a halt, freezing like a statue. I blink, surprised. Did I just do that? I shake my head. No, I couldn’t have. It’s not possible.

 “Was that you?” Rand asks.

I don’t know whether to nod or shake my head, so I remain still.

“What did you do?” Rand asks when I show no sign of answering his first question.

“I couldn’t make eye contact, so I told it to stay still.”

“Well it worked.”

I shake my head. “It must have been a coincidence, I can’t control minds. No one can. It’s impossible.”

Rand sighs, looks Caden in the eye. Suddenly, Caden’s eye’s glaze over and he gets up, grabs a glass cup and throws it at the wall where it smashes into a thousand tiny pieces, falling like diamonds to the ground. The murky wall covering Caden’s iris clears in the next second, and he immediately starts frowning. “I didn’t… That wasn’t…”

I just stare.

Then Rand’s eyes meet mine and he says, “Do you believe me now?”

-:-:-:-:-

After helping clean up the glittering mess that Caden made, I spend the afternoon telling the mouse to do various things, like run, or drink or sleep, until I’m exhausted. Rand offers to give me a lift to my place, and I accept it. On the drive, he explains my situation, and what I need to do if one of those people – who he still hasn’t given me a name for except them – does come after me.

I nod and pretend like I’m listening.

I tell him to drop me at the corner of my street so that my parents don’t see me in a stranger’s car and ask questions. Rand does as I ask, and I say goodbye before he drives off. I walk for a couple of minutes before reaching my house, and after telling my parents that I’m home, I head upstairs and retreat to my room, collapsing onto my bed.

My mind runs over the events of the day, trying to process all the new information. I know that Caden and Rand can’t be joking anymore, not after what I’ve seen and done today, which can only mean that the rest of what they said is true as well – that Sarah and I have been swapped, that my disease is slowly killing me, that there are people out there who want me dead, and that my parents aren’t even my real parents.

When I sit with my mum and dad at dinner, I can’t stop myself from seeing them as strangers, as people who don’t know me and people I don’t know. My mum was never my mother and my dad was never my father. I’m not even Melissa, and that fact hurts more than I can bear. The reflection in the mirror that I’ve come to know as mine – that I’ve truly believed was mine all my life – isn’t. I’m just a spirit – a soul – floating inside a body, connected, but detached at the same time. 

And the knowledge that Sarah is like me, that she too has this rare, undiagnosed disease, isn’t as elating or comforting as I would have thought.

Later in the night, I come downstairs and approach my parents seated on the couch. They both look up at me and a little frown appears on my mother’s forehead.

“What is it?” she asks.

I take in a deep breath, and for a short while, I can’t get any words out. My mouth moves uselessly while I try to produce sound. My brain urges at me to talk, to ask them, but every time I’m about to cross the line between silence and speech, something pulls me back. I close my eyes.

And then it comes:

“Why didn’t you tell me that I had gone missing as a child?”

The silence that comes after my question is louder than the silence before it. I can hear the blood pumping through my body, my heart beating out a steady rhythm, my breathing as it rushes in and out of my nose, my lungs.

I open my eyes.

My dad is looking down at his hands as he fidgets with the hem of his shirt. My mother’s eyes are fixed on me, expressing a plethora of emotions that range from surprise to sadness. She opens her mouth, but it seems that she is having trouble speaking also.

It’s been a minute when her words finally come, but it feels like an hour.

“I didn’t think it mattered.”

She’s lying. I can tell from the way she clasps her hands together in her lap, to keep them from moving, from the way her eyes dart away from my face a second after the words have left her mouth. She probably thought she could convince me she was telling the truth. But I know her too well.

That single thought threatens to break me, and it quickly becomes hard to breathe. I know her too well – this mother who isn’t my own but whom I love, this woman who raised and cared for me, who believes I’m her daughter when all I am is a stranger hovering inside her child’s body.

She shouldn’t love me – she should hate me. I’ve taken everything from her and it’s my fault. I’m the reason she can’t afford or make a nice home cooked dinner. I’m the reason she doesn’t know her own daughter. I’m the reason Sarah and I were swapped in the first place.

And even after all I’ve put her through, I still can’t stop myself from accusing her of lying to me.

“Why are you lying?”

She squeezes her eyes shut, looking almost pained, and tilts her head down. I find myself frowning. What is she hiding? Then: Does she know I’m not her daughter?

I look over at my father and catch him watching me. He averts his gaze quickly, and all I can think is: They know. They’ve known all along.

“I’m sorry,” my mother finally says. “We shouldn’t have kept it a secret. But I just felt so guilty for doing that to you.”

For a second, I forget to breathe. What is she talking about?

She misreads my confusion for anger. “I’m sorry,” she says again. “I shouldn’t have done it. I knew it was a mistake the moment I signed the contract.”

I frown and shake my head. Contract? What contract?

“What are you talking about? You signed a contract? I don’t – I don’t understand.”

Her eyes go wide and she clamps a hand to her mouth. She lowers it just enough for her horror-filled words to be heard. “Wait – you don’t know?”

“No. I only know that I went missing one afternoon and that when I came back, I was diseased.”

“Oh my goodness,” she says and then looks over her shoulder at my father.

He shakes his head. “You have to tell her now.”

My mother looks back at me and swallows. “You might want to have a seat.”

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