“You do have that look,” Alicia agreed.
“I won’t tell you too much about our life – what happened to us. I don’t suppose you care a whole lot. Because what you want to know about is The Accident. That’s what we called it. But we never talked about it. I never said anything to anyone about it except Scott and I don’t want to talk about it now.”
Alicia sighed. “Maybe if you start at the beginning, it’ll make it all easier.”
“Whatever. There’s not much to tell you anyway.”
Jamie had a cup of coffee in front of him, but he hadn’t drunk any of it. For a few moments he stared into the black surface of the liquid as if it were a mirror, showing him the past.
“OK. We were just left by the roadside. We never had a mum or a dad or anything like that. There was a newspaper story about when we were found. We were called the Seed Box Babies. And after that we were taken into protective custody. I guess they kept us in hospital for a while but then we were fostered. They put us in this foster home somewhere in Carson City. There were another half dozen kids there, all with Indian blood. I can’t even remember where it was any more. The people who ran it were called Tyler and we took their name while the police and the social services tried to find out where we’d come from.
“Except they couldn’t. Everyone was interested in the tattoos. They thought the tattoos had to mean something. After all, who’d go to the trouble of putting a tattoo on a baby? They went onto the reservations and asked questions and they offered a reward. But it didn’t work. And in the end they closed the file and just let us get on with it.
“But things never stopped going wrong for us. We were always blowing out of different foster homes. We used to get into fights with other kids. We didn’t pick these fights – they just sort of happened. By the time we were about six years old we knew that it was always going to be the same… Scott looked out for me and I looked out for him. And as for the rest of them… we didn’t give a damn.
“I lost count of the number of homes we were in and out of. The one thing was, they never separated us. We had this case worker. Her name was Derry and she said that it was important they keep us together. Like it was the law. When we were nine, they tried fostering us out-of-state in Salt Lake City and that worked for a time. I think we were happy. We were with a couple who couldn’t have kids of their own. They had a nice place and they were kind to us, but about twelve months after we’d been there, they decided they’d had enough. Derry flew out to see us, and by now she knew what was going on and that was when she tried to tell us. We were different. We were special. But we made people uneasy. That’s what she tried to tell us, but she didn’t exactly put it into words. Maybe she thought we’d laugh at her.
“It didn’t matter, though. We’d already worked it out for ourselves. We knew we had this… ability. Maybe you’d call it a power, only that would make it sound as if we could put on costumes and turn into Spider-Man or something and it was never like that. Even while Derry was talking to us, trying to explain it, we knew we could have looked into her mind and seen what she was thinking. Telepathy. That’s the word for it. But we weren’t superheroes. We were freaks. We weren’t like anyone else. And that was why we’d never been able to fit in.”
“Did you ever use your ability?” Alicia asked. She felt she hadn’t breathed the whole time Jamie had been speaking. He was so skinny and vulnerable, sitting out here on the patio with his black hair falling to his neck. Only now was she beginning to understand all he had been through.
“How do you mean?” Jamie asked.
“I don’t know. To cheat in exams. Or to find out about stuff you weren’t supposed to know.”
“No!” Jamie shook his head. “You don’t understand how it feels to be able to read people’s minds, Alicia. It isn’t fun. It was like there was this whispering all the time. All the time! We’d be walking down the streets and it would be everywhere, all around us, never stopping. Can you imagine what it would be like going to a movie if the audience never stopped talking? Well, that’s how it was for us. Sometimes it could drive us mad.
“What most people are thinking, most of the time, isn’t very nice. They’re thinking about their husbands or their wives and the arguments they’ve had. They’re thinking about the people they want to hurt and how angry they are and how miserable they are and why it’s never their fault. Or maybe they’re worrying about money or about losing their jobs or it can be even worse. They can be thinking horrible, foul thoughts. So, no, we didn’t use our ability. We did the exact opposite. It was like putting our hands permanently over our ears. We managed to close all the doors.
“We kept just one of them open. I could hear what Scott was thinking and he could hear me. It worked even when we were a mile apart, although it got fainter… you know… like a whisper. But we were never scared to go into each other’s heads because we always knew there would be no bad surprises. We knew it would be safe. And that’s how we became the telepathic twins. That’s what Don White made us.”
“Were you sent to him next?” Alicia asked.
Jamie shook his head. “Can I have another drink?”
“Coffee?”
“Coke.”
“Wait there…”
Alicia went into the kitchen. Fortunately, her sister kept the place well stocked. She came back with a can of Coke and a glass filled with ice. She waited while Jamie drank. Then he put the glass down.
“Reading minds wasn’t the only thing we could do,” he said.
The Accident. Alicia remembered he had mentioned it when he began talking. She guessed that he was coming to it now.
“After Salt Lake, we were moved back to Nevada, to Carson City. We were fostered by a couple called Ed and Leanne. Ed worked in a local hospital. He did maintenance. Leanne didn’t do anything.
“We were still going to school at that time. We were ten years old. And we still didn’t fit in. We were flunking most of our classes. Anyway, there was a big kid at the school. His name was Ray Cavalli and he used to pick on us all the time. Everyone was scared of him because he threw his weight around and nobody would go to the teachers because they didn’t want to rat. Anyway, I got into a fight with Cavalli and he was really beating me; of course Scott knew what was happening as soon as it started and suddenly he was there. And he came between us and I’ll never forget the look in his eyes. He just looked straight at Cavalli and told him to get lost.
“And you know what happened? Cavalli stepped back like he was dazed and didn’t understand what was going on. Then he just sort of walked… stumbled… out of the school and kept going.
“It took the police two days to find him and he nearly died. He’d walked into the desert and he’d got lost. This was the summer and it can easily get into the hundreds out there and he had no water. When they found him, he had no idea where he was or how he’d got there. Anyway, that was about it. I heard he got better in the end and the family moved to another state. I never saw him again.”
“You think the two of you were responsible?”
“I know we were. You want to hear the rest of it?”
Alicia nodded. Jamie took another sip of Coke.
“Ed and Leanne weren’t too bad. We liked Carson City. We used to see bald eagles and hawks in the summer. It was OK. But trouble always followed us around. And this time it was my fault. There was this teacher, Mr Dempster, and he used to pick on us. Maybe Scott and me knew a bit too much about him. Maybe he guessed that somehow. Anyway, he was always putting us in detention and stuff like that and one day I decided to get my own back on him and I slashed the tyres on his car. He had this Beetle and he was so proud of it. It was a dumb thing to do but I took a knife to his tyres and the worst thing was… I got caught.
“I never thought the whole thing would get so out of hand, but the next thing I knew, I was under arrest and I had a probation officer. Suddenly I was in front of a judge – and the upshot of it was, what Ed had always been saying came true.”