The Whisper Seekers

Liam Exposed

The park sits at the top of a hill in the middle of an older neighborhood. It has a shiny, old metal playground and splintery wooden benches scattered around the perimeter. There's no one else here, which feels odd for a Saturday, but then again, the hot sun isn't exactly inviting anyone outside.

Liam grabs my hand as we walk over to the swing set. As we drop into the low swings, we both immediately pull our hands back, the chains too hot to hold.

"I'm not used to the Texas heat yet," Liam admits as he shakes his hand out. We cautiously reach for the blistering chains again, and soon we're acting like fourth-graders. We pump our legs, trying to swing as high as we can before jumping off to soar through the air. We land in the gravel, leaving long skid marks, only to run back to the swings and try to get even more air.

"Hey, remember when I said I wanted to show you something?" Liam asks while pumping his legs back and forth.

"Yeah," I say as I mimic his actions. I watch him pass by me on his swing, and just as he jumps midair, he vanishes. I hear him land in the gravel and see the long skid mark, but I don't see him.

My heart lurches. I leap off the swing, completely freaked out.

"Liam?" I call out to him. He appears next to me and I stare at him wide-eyed.

"What the hell was that? What did you just do?" I gasp while he closes the gap between us.

"It's what I wanted to show you," he tells me softly. I reach out and gently touch his forearm. He suddenly vanishes, but I still have a grip on his wrist. It looks like I'm holding onto an invisible cylinder. After a few seconds, my hand disappears too. I whip it away and it quickly goes back to normal.

"How...how the hell can you do that?" I ask, amazed and confused at the same time. He appears in solid form in front of me again.

"Just like our thoughts and your manipulations, I don't know how or why," he explains. "It started slowly, a few months after I was able to read minds, and I've learned to control it. I've even been able to extend it to other objects, like your hand."

I'm speechless. I've never seen anything like this.

"You have a real invisibility cloak," I say in awe.

He shrugs in agreement.

"Why haven't you shown me this before?" I ask, still amazed by what I just saw.

He scrubs a hand through his hair, then slowly strolls over to one of the wooden benches. As he sits down, he drops his hand and rests his elbows on his knees, clasping his hands in front of him.

His sudden shift in demeanor makes me wonder if he's ashamed of this ability. He doesn't seem nearly as excited about it as I am. His gaze is fixed on the gravel as I walk over to him. I sit down beside him, but he still doesn't look at me.

"It's why I distanced myself from you after our sonnet," he says. "You told me we had nothing left to hide, but I did. I felt like I was lying to you, or something. I just... I needed time to figure out how to show you." He pauses, then adds, "And then you took it the wrong way, and went boating with Derek and all that. I regret staying quiet for so long. I shouldn't have withdrawn from you completely. I just needed to be sure I could trust you before I showed you this. When people find out I have this... talent, they get selfish. They start seeing how I could be useful and try to use me."

I take his hand in mine, and finally, his blue eyes flick to meet mine. He exhales, and I can tell this secret has been weighing on him for a long time.

"Who else knows?" I ask.

"Well, my mom knows. And I've shown a couple of other people like us. But that's all."