Illusion

Karina Fabian

 

Sleep was good, was peace, was a blessed oblivion. Dreams, when they came, were merely dreams, phantoms Deryl could sometimes control. Even the dreamtime training sessions of the Master, which sometimes left him with visible bruises upon awaking, were at least linear and thus understandable. And when the Master finished his lesson of the night and Deryl faded out of dreams and REM sleep, his mind could finally rest. Sleep was healing.

Deryl woke into nightmare.

Even before he opened his eyes, the assault began: discontent about leaving a warm bed to put on the chilly school uniforms, dread at another day of facing bullies and disapproving teachers, eagerness to hang out with friends, fear of a math test, excitement about the math test, eagerness for the week to end and see parents, sisters, girlfriends. So many thoughts.

None of them his.

Think about the sheets: soft and warm, the blanket nice and heavy over me, like a cocoon. Smell the laundry soap. Laundry soap, not deodorant. Cotton sheets, not polyester blend pants. Dark and dry, not echo-y and steamy. My name is Deryl Stephens…

He pulled the covers over his head and fought against the dizzying onslaught of thoughts as his dorm mates prepared for the day. This early upon awakening, the chaos of their minds brought nausea more than pain. He’d learned that if he breathed slowly though his mouth and concentrated on physical sensations and his mantra, he could usually stay calm and fake sleep until the room cleared. It didn’t matter if he missed breakfast; he’d be too sick to eat anyway. Later, when his waking mind had better control, the queasiness would leave, and the headaches would start. Enough medicine and he could bear those. Besides, if the Master had taught him one thing, it was how to handle pain.

There’d be less pain if I did what the Master wanted.

He felt himself scowling even though no one could see him. If disobedience meant pain, he’d deal with the pain. He was not going to attack other humans, not even in his dreams. He’d already learned how easy it was to lash out at others, how much he could enjoy it if he let the Master lead him down that path. He couldn’t always keep track of who he was anymore, but he knew one thing: He was not a killer.

The distant hum of thoughts told him the room had emptied. At last, he could get up, shower, and steel himself for the day.

As the cool water struck his back and plastered his hair to his scalp, he began the mantra: “My name is Deryl Stephens. I’m thirteen years, four months, and seven days old. I’m in eighth grade. My favorite subject is science. I like meteorology best. My worse subject is Social Studies. I like raspberries and hate chocolate…” Every detail he could think of that was his, he muttered aloud, forcing himself to hear it above the wants, needs, pains, and thoughts of the population of the George Weinmann School for Boys. Sometimes, it was enough.

Once showered and dressed, he reached under his bed and pulled out the bottle of Motrin hidden there and poured eight into his hand. The bottle rattled. He’d have to buy or steal more soon. He took two in anticipation of the headache to come and stuffed the rest into his pocket. He shoved the bottle back into the mattress, through the tear, securing it among the filling, then pulled out a small, framed photo. He ran his fingers over his mother’s hair, traced her smile. Her eyes looked wrong in the photo; they always did. No camera could capture the life that shone from them or the hidden knowledge that darkened their depths. She would have understood what he was going through; she would have helped him. But it was too late. He couldn’t talk to her now, and he couldn’t imagine what she would say. He shoved the photo back next to the painkillers then went to wash the tears off his face.

He checked his schedule and his homework, making sure they held his name and not someone else’s. He recited his mantra along with his first hour classroom number. Finally, with a deep breath, like a swimmer about to jump the high dive, he pulled open the door and forced his feet to take him to his—and not someone else’s—first class.

Social Studies went okay—a film about the civil rights movement kept everyone focused enough that he could focus too. He even managed to take coherent notes.

Algebra proved harder. Even when they were supposed to be paying attention to the problem on the board, some of his classmates were still trying to catch up in the book; others were going on to the next problems; some were just baffled. A couple did homework from another class. Numbers and operations swirled in his mind along with boredom, exultation, and confusion. He closed his eyes and rested his head in his hands to try to cut down the visual stimulus until he could straighten out the rest.

Please. Make it stop!

“Mr. Stephens, please pay attention.”

Make it stop. Make it stop! Makeitstopmakeitstop—

“Mr. Stephens, I said would you please come to the board and solve this problem?”

I am Deryl Stephens!

Deryl jerked his head up and looked at the board. I am Deryl Stephens. I’m thirteen years, four months, and seven days old. I’m in eighth grade, and I am in algebra. I need to find the area under a curve.

“You can do this, can’t you?” Mr. Lane’s voice was laced with sarcasm, and his pessimism thrust at Deryl like one of the daggers the Master used in training. Deryl wrapped his arms around his ribs against the phantom pain, but the teacher took that for obstinacy. He opened his mouth and said something.

Deryl didn’t hear it. Around him, the room had focused on him. Loser Deryl. What was his problem anyway? How’d this retard get into algebra in the first place? Kid’s just weird. Wonder if he’ll do something crazy again?

Deryl sprung out of his seat, desperate for a reason to put even the slightest distance between himself and his classmates. He went to the board, but the numbers refused to resolve themselves. Chalk up to the blackboard, he hesitated. People thought he was stupid. He thought he was stupid. I am not stupid!

He heard his mother, clapping her hands over some school assignment he’d brought home and hugging him, telling him he was brilliant. He heard the Master scolding: Of course, you are not stupid. Now, show them. Use your abilities intelligently!

Mr. Lane couched his voice in boredom to mask his growing irritation. “Anytime now, Mr. Stephens. It’s really a very simple problem.”

And suddenly, it was, and Deryl’s hand flew across the board, etching out the process and the answer without his having to think. Which, of course, was the problem.

When he stepped away from the board and his focus left the problem, he felt confusion from the class, mixed with amusement, and a combination of suspicion and surprise from Mr. Lane.

“Well,” Mr. Lane started then cleared his throat and tried again. “Yes, that is indeed the correct answer—if we were in calculus and not algebra.”

He looked at the board—with his own eyes as well as the class’—and realized he had no idea what he’d written. It had happened again. He’d mistaken the teacher’s thoughts for his own. He wanted to cry, but the kids started laughing—hard, cruel laughter—and helpless, he laughed with them.

He was late to gym because he had to wait until everyone cleared out of the locker room so that he could stare at his reflection in the mirror and recite his mantra. “I am Deryl Stephens. I’m thirteen years, four months, and seven days old. I’m in eighth grade. I am learning algebra. I do not know calculus…”

Gym class should have been easy. They were training for the fitness test: sit-ups, push-ups, chin-ups—so many ups!—then a run and the rope climb. Simple, physical, mechanical; even when minds wandered, they never strayed past the pounding of feet and the counting. Counting was hard, but even if he missed a number, they’d chalk it up to everyone else counting at once.

Then Gordo Villanova fell from the ropes and cracked the back of his head, and Deryl felt the blow as if it were his own. Only the training from the Master—or rather, learning to think past the pain of the training—kept him from crying out. He only paused for just a moment to grimace, easily mistaken for effort on his forty-second sit-up. His partner yelled encouragement, and he absorbed his excitement and plunged on. Afterward, he excused himself to go to the restroom, and when no one was looking, he swallowed down four more pills.

One would have thought the hallways would be the worst of all, but with so many minds thinking in so many directions, Deryl’s went into sensory overload. Sometimes, he’d actually shut down and have to lean against the wall and force himself to breathe until he could see with his own eyes again; but today, the mellow mood of the students and the painkillers had caused everything to fade to a kind of roar of psychic white noise, and he rode it along, reciting in his mind his name and the room number of his next class.

A thought pierced through the rumble. Barry Whitewater, anticipating the mayhem when he bumped Andy Bernstein into one of the meanest seniors in school. A memory—his own memory—of being on the wrong end of that trick flooded his mind along with the words of the Master: You have an advantage none of your peers have. Use it!

Barry stumbled and pummeled into the jock instead. The senior snarled an obscenity and grabbed Barry by the collar and shoved him against the locker. As the others, including Barry’s intended victim, crowded around, shouting jeers or encouragements, Deryl hurried away before he got caught up in the thrill of the violence. Still, it was the best part of his day.

In the middle of French class, he was called to the school counselor.

Again, he had a few minutes of relative solitude, and he made his way down the great staircase and through the hall slowly, letting the clacking of his shoes on the marble floors sooth him. He recited his mantra until every word came out in English. He paused at the water fountain to take the last of his Motrin. He heard (or rather, Gordo heard) the nurse scolding him that if it really did hurt that bad, he could take that and ibuprofen together. Maybe after he met with the counselor, he could go to the nurse and coax her into a couple. The thought cheered him enough that he even managed a sincere "Good afternoon," to the secretary and managed to fend off her irritation, imagining them as ants and brushing them off his arm before he knocked, then entered Counselor Phelps’ office.

He found Dr. Peterson in the office too. That came as no surprise. Even if he hadn’t felt the psychiatrist’s presence, he’d expected it. They always talked to him as a team if only to corroborate that they heard the same bizarre things from their most trying student. He forced himself not to hunch defensively as he greeted them and took a seat between the psychiatrist and Mr. Phelps.

Their judgment and their concern made him want to cringe. It would help if they didn’t believe themselves so sincere. If they really cared about him, they’d believe him, wouldn’t they?

“So, Mr. Stephens, how are we feeling?”

As he had many times before, Deryl answered Dr. Peterson’s question literally. "You woke up at two this morning with a toothache and are counting the minutes until you can get to the dentist because the ibuprofen you took isn’t cutting the pain. You could try some Motrin; that’s what the nurse is telling Gordo Villanova to do for his head. Mr. Phelps had been having a good day until Mrs. Whitewater called to complain about the treatment of her son. In the office, Mrs. Meriweather is upset because she and her husband got into an argument because she wanted to buy new towels, and now, she’s torn between crying to her sister, buying the towels anyway, or getting something even more expensive for herself. And I have my usual headache because I can feel your tooth, and your frustration, and her anger, and where Gordo hit the back of his head. He’s not faking like the nurse thinks. It really hurts."

Believe, he begged. Please, this time, believe that I really am psychic. Help me!

The two gentlemen traded looks, and Deryl’s heart sank as he felt their skepticism. He knew it was his heart—no one else could possibly feel as desperate as he did.

“Why did you trip Barry Whitewater?” Mr. Phelps asked instead.

“What?”

Mr. Phelps just gave him a stern look. However, he saw it in his mind: Barry insisting that Deryl shoved him as he walked by; two students saying they never saw a push, but he did fall just as Deryl passed, and that Deryl hurried off right after.

“I didn’t—”

“Are you certain?”

You have an advantage your peers don’t. Use it! the Master said.

Had he?

He shook his head, but in that moment of confusion, he dropped what little guard he had, and it all came flooding in: Mr. Phelps wondering how long he could walk the tightrope between pleasing the two biggest supporters of the school; Dr. Peterson running through the next possibilities of medication; the snappy comebacks Mrs. Middleton knew she’d never have the guts to say; the jock in the cooldown room, wondering if he would get suspended and what he’d tell his parents; Barry’s swollen lip, which throbbed in time with his pulse but made him hope that maybe this time his mom would get tired of it all and send him home to his real dad; the drama class laughing over one boy’s comedy routine—it was so funny, and Deryl didn’t know why…

Inside his mind, in the small part that he knew was Deryl Stephens, he screamed. In the shell he presented to everyone else, he fought to keep himself from gibbering, to keep his tone even; but the part of him between his inner self and the outer shell was full of teenage boys with their mood swings and their doubts and the sarcasm they wore as a shield against the hurts real and imagined.

“Well, Deryl? Have you anything to say about Barry Whitewater?”

He felt himself shaking and clenched his fists on his knees in an effort to regain control. Nonetheless, words tumbled from his mouth. He prayed they were his. “Barry’s last name is Carlton. His mother remarried, but Barry doesn’t care that his stepfather adopted him—he thinks the man is a jerk and only adopted him as a power play, and every time someone calls him ‘Whitewater,’ Barry feels like he’s betraying his dad. And maybe if you talked to him about that, you could find out why he likes to push other people into the football players. All I did today was give him a taste of his own medicine in the process.”

“So you admit to doing it.”

The counselor’s feeling of triumph sent Deryl over the edge—for once with his own feelings. “I may as well! It wouldn’t help if I denied it—or even if I were innocent. The Whitewaters own half this school. Barry could lie through his teeth, and it wouldn’t matter. Principal Williams is afraid of them, and that makes you afraid. I know what I am to you: the bastard son of a mentally ill woman. My uncle has plenty of clout, which is why I’m still here, but apparently not enough that you’d actually believe me!

“Well, she was not crazy; she was psychic. But she found people to believe her—believe in her. That’s what I need: someone to believe in me and help me learn to control this! And no!" He whirled on the psychiatrist. “A new medication is not going to help!”

Without waiting to be excused, he tore from the room. He wanted to sigh. He wanted to change his name. He wanted to go buy new towels. He wanted to call his girlfriend and get her to bring some friends to the party…

Make it stop! Make it stop!

He ran out of the school building and past the fields. He wanted to make a touchdown—a real Hail Mary move—so the recruiters would be impressed and he could get his dad off his back. He wanted the weekend to come so he could go home and party with his friends; now that he was eighteen, Mom and Dad didn’t care.

My name is Deryl Stephens. I’m thirteen, and I am an orphan!

He made it to the small garden shed on the far side of the school grounds. The door creaked open to a mental command he didn’t realize he’d given. He dashed in and pushed past the rakes and tools to a small corner and tucked himself in. I am Deryl Stephens, and I am an orphan. My mother died three years, two months, and five days ago. She is dead, and no one else believes what’s happening to me, and I just hurt someone without even thinking. Grief washed over him, and it was his. He clung to it and let himself cry, real tears, his tears, until he fell asleep.

Sleep was good; it brought relief, brought oblivion, but healing was an illusion.