Unusual Circumstances

Part III: Dorothy's Story

I left 6 years ago, when I was 16. My telepathy had just begun developing and the constant noise from my family was driving me insane. Both my parents are upper class businesspeople; my mother's in advertising and my father is in accounting. I have an older sister and two younger brothers. I didn't leave just because of the noise at home, of course. But that was among the worst. Both my parents were considering having affairs at work, and my sister was constantly reviewing annoying ACT vocabulary words and it was driving me insane. One of my younger brothers- Ralph- was contemplating suicide and I'm pretty sure it was my fault; he did constantly blame me for it in his head. Another of my brothers- Jake- was cheating on his girlfriend and kept worrying about that and how to break up with her, poor thing. But home wasn't even so bad. School was the worst.

I was surrounded by dozens of teenagers at a time, none of whom could keep a latch on their hormones or their thoughts. At least 8 were depressed and 2 were self-harming. And I know I pro-

Dorothy went quiet for a second and Keith got up, worried. He began to walk towards the ER doors, but stopped as she returned.

Sorry. Damn, these doctors are crazy. One guy- Never mind. I was telling you about my family and life before I left.

My best friend, it turned out, was secretly dating the guy I liked- a childish thing to get angry over, I know- and she was considering telling me but she wanted to- get this, this is great- rub it in my face. Want to know why? Because I didn't let her cheat off of me on a test we'd had the week before. And as that week went on and my telepathy got stronger, I began to have moments when I would just break down in tears. And she just laughed. They all just laughed.

In summary- and no surprise- school was awful. I felt like I was going insane and on the fourth day, I broke my fingers in my locker door and went to the nurse, just so I could get excused. I never went back.

I left home a week after the telepathy started. And while it got easier after a couple of years, my abilities just got stronger and stronger for the first month or so. And trust me. It. Sucked. With a capital S-U-C-K.

For the first six months, I was nearly starved and barely living off of the cash I had stolen from the family's cookie jar and emergency stash of money. There were nights when I would have sold my body for a freaking sandwich, and nights when I had to run for blocks from perverts and other thieves. I gradually learned how to use my abilities to con people out of small amounts of money- I vowed to never steal from those who didn't have enough- enough to purchase a loft. I actually still live there and I draw in my spare time. Funny story: the guy who rents it to me said that he was finding it difficult to find someone for it because of the subway noise nearby. I laughed and told him that I'd take it so long as there weren't too many people around. He's nice. Doesn't like chocolate, mind you, but he's nice.

Keith glanced up as a pair of cops approached. "I'll talk to you later," he thought to Dorothy.