So I'm writing it. That's how this particular arrangement works, after all. I am theirs to do with as they will, and I suppose in some sense I should be ecstatic that the only thing they apparently will for me right at this moment is that I tell the miserable story of my life in so many iterations and with so much detail that by the end of it we will all be able to pretend that it makes some kind of sense. Their will for me should undoubtedly include other things in the months and years to come, but for now it's just this diary.
Dr. Preston calls it a journal, but I think he's just used to dealing with stern government spooks. Journal is a good word for those people. Not as macho as a report (or better yet, a log), but you can still feel tough when you're writing in a journal. Diaries are something that only teenage girls have. They go buy a cute little book, something in a girl-friendly pastel color, and they write in enormous loopy cursive about things that stern government spooks would never dare to mention.
This is a diary, not a journal. I am, at least in the most technical sense of the term, a teenage girl. And the last time I wrote in a diary was a few days before everything changed.
After that, there just wasn't anything I felt like I could share with anyone, or risk having my parents sneak in and read about.
Wait, we should make this official. It's not a diary if you don't write it like one, right? So:
DEAR DIARY,
Today I was asked to write a diary. If things were normal, I would tell you a funny story about something that happened to me at school, or something a girl I know told me, or something about a boy I like but I'm afraid to tell. Those are the best kinds of diaries, because they don't mean anything and when they embarrass you it's the kind of private embarrassment you know you'll feel okay about when you're older. And by then you won't remember that funny story very well, you won't have talked to that girl in years, and you'll never be able to remember the name of that boy you liked.
This diary is more like homework, because I don't get to write about things that don't mean anything, and someone else is going to be reading it. They told me to write about how I came to be here, because up until this point I have made them guess about it and figure it all out on their own. They had a file two inches thick all about me when I was arrested, and maybe it's thicker now but that's not because I've told anyone anything.
They want me to write about my life. That's all they asked me to do, but I know that no one cares about anything that happened to me before everything changed, so I'll just wave my hands over it like a magic trick: see Cecilia, the only little girl of Darrell and Alice Johnson! She's in Denver! She's good at school! Now watch closely, and...
POOF! She's gone!
The audience asks, where has she gone? What happens next? Because, you see, those are the only questions that anyone cares about.
|
"So that's Cecilia Johnson at 13." |
Suddenly, I felt sick. A fever and some cramps, and my ears started aching. I felt like I was going to throw up, only the feeling never got to my stomach, it just stayed behind my eyes. Like maybe my brain was going to throw up.
But then I realized I knew where Mom was and why she was staying out of the way and I knew where Dad was because I knew what he was thinking and I knew that the Vollners, our next-door-neighbors on one side, were home and what they were thinking, and what our neighbors on the other side and behind us and across the street were thinking, and really, the only person who I couldn't figure out where she was or what she was thinking was me.
And then suddenly, there I was, right there, and I knew what I was thinking. I was thinking that when my parents found out I was a mutant, my Dad was going to kill me.
The diary won't repeat those words right, by the way. It'll sound like I was a little girl who just snuck a beer out of the fridge and couldn't handle it and threw up in the bushes and oh man my parents are just going to KILL me when they find out, ha ha.
That wasn't this little girl. This little girl looked inside her Dad's thoughts and knew that when he found out that she could do this, that she was one of those filthy mutants the hippies were whining about, he would kill her, really and for real. Because mutants are evil and dangerous and should be kept away from normal people.
I threw away my diary that same night. The cover had a starry sky over a green field on it, and there used to be a sticker of a horse on the field but it never stuck right and eventually it fell off. There was just this little white smudge of torn paper where the horse used to be. I'd tell you, new dear diary, that the horse ran away to Montana and is very happy now, but the fact is that the sticker fell off when I was eleven and we just threw it away. But maybe the horse is happy anyway.
I threw away my diary because I knew Dad and Mom would read it when they saw that I was acting funny, and I needed to hide this from them. Besides, I didn't need to write anything down about this, because this wasn't something I would ever be forgetting. I went for sixty-three days in a state of panic and exhaustion, because while I could hear everything a person might say to me, I couldn't listen to a word of it because so many other people were thinking other things. I'd lose track of what I was thinking and get lost in other people's thoughts. I bumped into a lot of things and fell over desks at school and sometimes I'd realize that Dad was thinking that I was on drugs and probably dating a wetback. And I thought about buying some pot and hiding it in my room and maybe throwing some Spanish words around just to make him punish me for that so he'd stop looking for the real reason I was acting like such a spaz, but I was too afraid to do anything, really.
On day 64, I finally got it under control. I still couldn't really handle being in a crowd, but I could walk around the halls at school without knowing what everyone thought about me or feeling like my brain was going to puke again. I also figured out that I could push things around in the real world. You know, telekinesis.
So that's Cecilia Johnson at 13. She's a good student, she's shy, she spaces out a lot, her Mom and Dad think she's up to something, and it turns out she really IS up to something. And I spent a lot of time thinking about how I could keep them from figuring out exactly what I was up to.
Dr. Preston said I should only write for an hour a night, so my homework is done now. Good night, diary, we'll talk again tomorrow.