Skip to the Good Part

“Guess what I found in the little free library?”

You slide the book over. Gold letters on a sky-blue background, very modern font: How to Be a Telepath. I turn the book over to read the blurbs. There are no blurbs: a very bad sign.

“Don’t be so skeptical,” you say. “It works. I’ve read it myself.”

“Then what am I thinking?” I say.

“Not telling. Read the book.”

“Now?” I say.

“It’s important.”

I turn to the preface. My head throbs just reading the first sentence.

“I can’t read when you’re staring at me like that.”

“I’ll run some errands. But you’d better be through chapter two by the time I get back. No skimming, either.”

Your temples are glowing.

“Just read the book. It’ll explain everything.”

*

So I read the book, but the more I try to understand the more my head hurts. The book says it would, in the footnotes to the footnotes on the bottom of page seven in type so microscopic I have to take my glasses off and practically touch the paper with my eyeballs. The book says that’s part of the process: I just have to want it hard enough. The book says I don’t want it hard enough, twice, on pages 17 and 35. Why should I trust a book that claims to know what I’m thinking? I decide to go on Facebook instead.

But all the posts in my newsfeed are boring, one dimensional, and so very, very thoughtless, even the sad ones. No wonder my screen clutters with popups for ketamine: I’m no longer clicking on the ads for stuff I like, like books on how to be a telepath.

Suddenly I’m not so sure that that was actually my thought, and not one of those practice thoughts from the end of the chapter exercises in How to Be a Telepath. I can feel my hair growing, waving slightly as if underwater, like when a person looks at a clock long enough and see for themselves proof the hour hand moves. I stop staring at the screen, that false idol diverting me from the one true path which is telepathy. From now on I shall read only books, my mind tells me, starting with the one with the gold embossed letters set on a blue background that is somehow both sky and sea.

I determine to force my way through to at least the middle of chapter one. But then I think maybe I really should just skim the whole thing for highlights and only concentrate on the last chapter. That got me through college: why wouldn’t it work here?

The book warns me not to skim, in at least five different places. I figure that’s just what the book wants me to think. Stupid book! Instead, I dwell on how clever you’re going to think I am when you come home and notice how great at telepathy I’ve become.

“You’re such a natural,” you’d think at me, and I’d beam back the sorts of thoughts I never could put into words.

So I skip to the very last chapter.

*

Let’s just say the very last chapter is very, very disappointing.

*

But then the front door opens, and your head is on fire. You act like nothing is wrong, unpacking all the groceries, but your head is very much on fire.

I’m trying to act like I’ve read all the way through How to Be a Telepath, not just random bits and the ending, that I’ve fully mastered all there is to know about telepathy, successfully completing all the practice exercises, and that I can use telepathy in a safe and responsible way that would never set anyone’s head on fire.

I don’t need to know telepathy to recognize the look on your face. It is not the look of satisfaction for a job well done, or surprise that I had vacuumed the house without being asked.

“You skimmed, didn’t you?”

The rest of the house begins to burn. I am such a bad person.

“Did you at least read chapter two?”

*

Just as suddenly, I’m in the ocean, the infinite sea of chapter two. Yellow sergeant fish school around me, spotted eagle rays slowly circle just below. The water is warm, maybe not cool enough to put the fire out, but if I go deeper, perhaps. Down, down, into the cool and dark, past the nurse sharks, towards the reef. Chapter two is easy: think about water, think beautiful thoughts; put out the fire, telepathy. “I can beat this,” I think, as if nobody could read my thoughts.

But then I see the black ink, thickening the water in clots the consistency of spoiled blood, the countless unholy limbs. A tentacle shoots out from the pollution and wraps itself around my waist, dragging me down until I can no longer hide from that awful face, with the all-seeing eyes and mouth the size of a house. It dangles me like some morsel, while a horrible voice in my brain roars, endlessly repeating all the incomprehensible practice phrases from How to Be a Telepath, saying this is the hard way, this is the HARD way, THIS IS THE HARD WAY, making my skull feel it has split open, forcing me to see everything from which I’d been hiding.

I’d never thought I knew what the word gibber meant, but holy god.

Then I hear your voice, or what I imagine must be your voice, saying “there is an easier way [revealed in chapter three].”

Suddenly I’m home, dry and shrieking. Nothing is on fire, not anymore. Mouthless iridescent creatures snuggle around our feet, keening their wordless songs.

When I look at you, really look, there’s so much I want to know, that I had never before even imagined.

You are the sea.

I think, “I am so going to finish reading this book.”

And your temples softly glow once more.