don’t like her?”
“Like who?”
“The girl they choose for me. What if I don’t want to be with her?”
The fridge door slammed as my father put away the bottle of milk he’d used to lighten his tea. It was probably not the wisest time to ask that question, but it was the sort of chat which could never be had at a good time.
“Where is this coming from, Paul? We’ve been over this countless times.” His tone was much too even, almost like he was talking to a younger version of me. He only got that way when he wanted a quick end to a discussion. Getting emotional only ever prolonged matters.
He was right. We had gone over this, and a host of different topics related to my abilities, many times since our first revelatory talk. I had no say in the matter, no choice in my future, because of what I was. Because of what could happen if I knocked up the wrong type of woman, one not specially selected for her unique baby making skills. I knew bringing it up again was pointless but I had to. I needed him to tell me how ridiculous I was being.
I hadn’t been able to get Nora out of my head for the last few days.
I’d thought about her lots of times before our encounter the other day, but those had been fleeting thoughts, harmless daydreams which evaporated once I scolded myself for being foolish. The way I felt after I walked her home was totally different. Maddening, really. Nothing I’d ever experienced prepared me for the stifling sensation which came over me that night when I lay in bed thinking of her. Thinking of what I’d done for her.
At first, I assumed I was having a panic attack and considered calling out to my father for help, but what would I have said to him? Dad, help! I’m freaking out because I’ll never be able to hold her hand, look into those eyes, touch her hair…or press my lips against hers. He’d have smacked the thoughts right out of my head and gone back to bed. Maybe that’s what I’d needed.
After Nora ignored me the next day at school, I’d convinced myself that things would settle down and I’d be able to cope once I fell off her radar. But then she walked up to me at the supermarket and began chatting away like we’d planned to meet up. Certified whack job behaviour. Or maybe she was just acting like most girls did; I was confused as hell, seeing as I had no female friends to compare her with. It had taken a while after she left the store for my nerves to settle, and thirty seconds of seeing her at the café for them to get rattled again.
“I just wondered what it’d be like if we had the chance to pick. Not a random girl off the street but, maybe, if we get to choose someone from a list, someone we might actually be attracted to…”
Maybe I’d be able to pick someone who reminded me of Nora. That wasn’t too much to ask, was it?
My father stared at me for seconds which stretched out longer than I was comfortable with. He was probably wondering if I’d accidentally bashed my head in the shower.
“Paul, son, we don’t get to choose. If everyone gets to pick a girl they fancy, who’d choose the not-too-pretty girls? It’s not a meat market. These women sacrifice their bodies for the good of our kind and we should treat this like the sacred act it’s meant to be. These rules have been in place for a long time to protect us. Stop torturing yourself with trivial concerns.”
There, he’d said it. I was being foolish. If these women were willing to give up a couple of years of their lives to further our cause, who was I to complain? All I had to do was show up, do the deed (no one said I had to keep my eyes open) and take my son from her for training when the weaning period was over. My father had never given me a concrete answer when I asked where they found the child-bearing volunteers they assigned to us. All I knew was, after I got my kid, I’d never see her again. How messed up was that?
“Is there something I should know about? A girl at school? At work?” Dad asked with what sounded like genuine concern as he came over to stand beside me.
“No, there’s no one.”
I made sure not to answer too hastily or slowly so he wouldn’t suspect I was lying. Thankfully he couldn’t do the lie detecting thing on me because it didn’t work on our kind.
Sighing with what I hoped was relief, he went back to his breakfast. “Look, I know this can’t be easy for you, I’ve been there and I know what it feels like. Teenage hormones rage and try to take over, but you have to always remember we are not like everybody else. We have a duty to people out there and we cannot afford the luxury of such distractions.”
Of course we couldn’t. We were Averters, tasked with helping people escape harmful futures by rejigging their minds before they carried out the damning acts. I’m making it sound like a terrible fate, but it’s not really. Without our help, there’d be far more misery in the world and a lot of guilt on our part.
We are born with our abilities so it’s not like we have much choice in the matter. Once Averters reach a certain age, we begin to sense things about people others wouldn’t, like when they’re being dishonest. And then in our early teens, we feel our first jolt.
Yeah, I said jolt. That’s what it feels like when the vision hits you; electrifying flashes of what a person will do which will mess up pretty much everything in their life from that moment on. Once we know what we’re meant to stop, our task is to carry out an Aversion without the person knowing what’s happening to them. That’s kind of what I’d done to Brandon the other day, altered his memories so he wouldn’t bother Nora anymore. But the error in what I’d done was that I hadn’t carried out an Aversion to protect him; I’d done it to help her.
I’d do anything to protect Nora Brice.
“So, we’re all good?” My drifting thoughts were interrupted by my father’s voice and I nodded to reassure him of my commitment to the cause.
It didn’t upset me when he dismissed my concerns about girls with such ease, even though I knew he had a mild obsession with Mrs Steelton at 423B. We’d moved into our building about six years ago and got the flat right below hers. Before that we’d lived a block away from her family home. Before that we’d been in a different town; and yes you guessed it, she lived in that town too. I was certain he had no idea I was aware of his feelings for her. My father was far too disciplined to ever make a move. Apart from the fact that we weren’t allowed to indulge in romantic pursuits, she’d been married for over a decade and had a couple of kids to show for it. Home wrecking was not his style.
“Yeah, we’re good. Thanks.” I smiled in an attempt to dispel any worries he had.
His frown told me he wasn’t buying my easy acceptance of the state of things, but he didn’t push it. As he’d just noted, I was a teenager; my hormones were occasionally allowed to make me ask stupid questions.
I rushed the rest of my breakfast to escape his quiet stare, so I ended up getting to the bus stop a little earlier than planned. I hated waiting at bus stops. At least once a month, without fail, I’d had to carry out an Aversion on someone at one. Maybe I was just unlucky but I’d noticed the trend and tried to avoid peak hours when stops would be heaving. It was kind of impossible to do so when a bus journey was the only way to get to school.
I was definitely not in the mood to alter anyone’s mind that morning. Not with my thoughts wound so tightly around self-pity.
“Hey, Pretty Boy,” Cheung Yee dug his elbow into my side as I took a seat beside him when the bus finally arrived. No jolts had hit me and I’d relaxed a little. “Are you going to Keith’s party on Saturday? I hear there’ll be booze and loose women aplenty.”
The elderly lady beside us turned to eye us with disapproval. I offered an apologetic smile but she huffed and looked away.
“Morning to you too, Cheese Face.”
I wasn’t being mean. Cheung had given himself the nickname years ago after he was hit with a nasty case of chicken pox which left his face riddled with tiny holes. He functioned on the logic that if you laughed at yourself before anyone else did, you’d turn out okay in life. Although the scars were now mostly gone, the unfortunate name had stuck. The religious
ly dyed straw yellow mop of hair which always covered his face didn’t help either.
“And I hear Keith and Sandra are not standing on solid ground at the moment. This might be my time to make a move. What do you think?”
Cheung was the closest thing to a best friend I’d ever had. We were similar in quite a few ways; single parent upbringing (a mother in his case), a passion for what my father called ear splitting music, and a recent mutual fixation with stealing cigarettes off our parents. He listened to me on the few occasions I complained about my father, and I did the same for him when he wanted to whine about his mother. He was the only person who knew most things about me. Except for what I truly was.
Nobody at school knew what I was. Okay, that’s not entirely true. The other dozen or so Averters who roamed our hallways knew me. Question, how do you spot an Averter? Answer, if you can’t read a vibe off someone, they are most likely one. Either that or your abilities needed fixing. The guys at school were reasonably nice; we said hello to each other every now and then, but we weren’t friends. That wasn’t unusual. Most Averters I’d met weren’t too sociable with other Averters, although we maintained a level of civility to acknowledge our kinship.
“Earth to Paul,” Cheung snapped his fingers in my face.
“No, I don’t think you’d stand a