Chapter 10
THE LOOK ON KAYA’S FACE was different from the other times she had gotten out of the car at the State University campus. She looked around with new eyes.
“It looks different when it’s gonna be my school, too,” she told Graham. “It looks bigger, more threatening. Like, that building over there? What if I have a class in there, but I can’t find it, and I go into the one over there instead? Man, I hope I don’t ever have one class after another. How could you cross the whole campus in what, five minutes?”Graham smiled at her warmly. “It’s not that bad,” he assured her. “Yeah, sometimes I have a long way to go between classes, but you can control your schedule. I’ve never had classes any closer than thirty minutes apart. The bell doesn’t ring like it does in high school. Different classes start at different times, and they have different lengths. You’ll be fine. I’ll take you to my psych class tomorrow so you can see what it’s like.”
“But you’re a junior,” Kaya protested. “It will be like jumping from twelfth to fifteenth grade in one day.”
Graham laughed. “I bet you’ll be able to follow a psych class. Maybe we’ll talk about auditory hallucinations tomorrow. You have first-hand experience.”
“Yeah, but I’m not gonna say a word.” She hefted her backpack to her shoulder. “Let’s go in. I can’t wait to see where you and Gina live.”
They walked across the parking lot, and Graham led Kaya through a walkway and then a courtyard. They walked up two outside flights of stairs, and then Graham unlocked the door. They stepped inside. “You’ll sleep on the couch,” Graham said. “It pulls out into a bed. It’s really comfortable. One time when Gina had a bad cold, I had to sleep in it because I had a final the next day. I slept like a baby. Plus, I didn’t have to hear her hacking up a lung all night.”
“I notice you only say things like that when she’s not around,” Kaya said as she dropped her bag on the couch. “This place is small, but it’s okay.” She walked to the refrigerator and opened the door. “I see you have more than just mustard. It’s obvious that a woman lives here. Is that a bag of carrots?”
“We eat pretty well around here,” Graham said. He took an apple out of a bowl on the counter and handed it to her. “Wash it first.”
Kaya rinsed off the apple, rubbed it on her shirt to dry it, and took a bite. “So where did you say Gina is?” she asked, still chewing her mouthful of apple.
“She’s doing an internship,” Graham said, giving her a look of disgust. “Do you always talk with your mouth full? Maybe that’s why you don’t have a boyfriend.”
Kaya gave him a pouty look. “Low blow, bro,” she said. “But it just so happens, I did meet someone recently.” She gave him a little smile.
“Met someone?” he asked. “Where did you meet him?”
Kaya shrugged. “At school. Where else? I don’t know how I missed him, but all of a sudden, there he was in the lunch line. There was only one pudding left, and we both reached for it at the same time. Our hands touched. It was like the movies. Chemistry. Tingles and everything.”
“Wow,” Graham said. “Huh. What’s his name?”
“Grayson. Isn’t that a great name?”
“If you’re a vampire,” Graham teased. “Is he a senior too?”
“Yes. But he wasn’t hiding the whole time. He moved to Wisteria at the beginning of junior year. He’s not a huge sports fan, so he never saw me cheering. He just likes pudding. But he let me take the last one. And the funny thing? You know how I usually hear voices around guys and it puts me off of them? This time, the voice was really positive.”
“What did it say?” Graham asked.
“He said, ‘Wow.’”
“Wow?”
“Yeah.” Kaya sighed. “That’s all I needed to hear. What else does a girl want to hear? Wow. Yeah, I agreed. Wow.”
“What does Mom think about Mr. Wowser?” Graham asked.
“She likes him,” Kaya said. “She had me ask him over for dinner a few weeks ago. It went really well.”
Graham shook his head. “Why didn’t you tell me about him before?”
Kaya shrugged. “I figured I’d be here soon and I could tell you face to face. Like now.”
Graham nodded. “Okay.” He took a seat on the couch. “So what about your, well, your issue? Have you told him about it?”
Kaya looked uncomfortable. “Sort of,” she said. “I told him that sometimes I can tell what other people are thinking.”
“Kaya! If you’re gonna talk about it, you should at least tell him the truth!”
“I will,” she said, defensively. “But it’s not as easy as it sounds.”
Graham rolled his eyes. “Kaya, I’m not saying it’s easy at all,” he said. “I don’t think it would be easy at all. But you know what’s harder? Having to take back a lie. And explain why you lied. The way I see it is you could tell the truth or he can find out that you lied on his own. Both ways, he knows the truth.”
Kaya bit her bottom lip. “I know you’re right. But sometimes, it does feel more like I have a special power than an illness. Sometimes, I have to remind myself that I’m not hearing people’s thoughts. It’s their voices, and what they say is mostly unexpected, like things they don’t want other people to hear. You know. Like hidden thoughts. Secrets.”
Graham blinked and nodded. “I know,” he said softly. “It’s appealing to think about it that way.” He smiled at her. “But The Enigma is sworn to tell the truth at all times. She wears Wonder Woman’s Lasso of Truth around her waist as a belt.”
Kaya laughed. “Should we make dinner for Gina before she gets home?”
Graham nodded. “What’s your specialty?”
Kaya gave him an exaggerated smile. “You got ingredients for pancakes?”
“I have no idea what to say to him,” Kaya said as she followed Graham down the hallway toward Dr. Blake’s office. “I mean, he’s like a hundred years old. Does he even speak modern English?”
Graham gave her a look of disbelief. “He’s like sixty-three, maybe,” he said. “He’s younger than Grandpa. You talk to Grandpa all the time.”
“I know,” Kaya said, wringing her hands. “But Grandpa doesn’t have a PhD. Grandpa likes to talk about pickling onions. This guy knows about brains and stuff. And what’s inside them.”
“He’s just a guy,” Graham told her. “And he’s kind of eccentric. He might know about neurotransmitters and synapses, but he can’t find the cap to his coffee thermos. He wears a tweed blazer. I don’t think they even make tweed anymore.” He stopped in front of a closed door. “Here we are. Are you ready?”
A flash of panic came across Kaya’s face. She ran her fingers through her bangs. “Do I look okay?”
Graham smiled at her. “You look beautiful. Like always. But I think Dr. Blake is married.”
Kaya smirked and smacked him on the arm. “I don’t know if you’ll get a better grade in your class because you’re bringing me to meet your professor,” she said suddenly.
Graham stared at her. “Why would you say that?”
Kaya shrugged. “I know you weren’t really thinking that, but that’s what your voice just told me. But I could understand you actually thinking that. I mean, not like you’re using me for a grade, but if you get a better grade, that’s a nice perk.”
Graham furrowed his brow. He thought about it. Yeah, it probably was something he would think. But had he just been thinking it? He couldn’t remember if he had. He shrugged and then he knocked on the door.
“Come in!”
Graham opened the door. “Dr. Blake? Hi. I brought my sister to meet you.” He ushered Kaya into the office. “Kaya, this is Dr. Blake. Dr. Blake, this is my sister, Kaya.”
As Dr. Blake stood, a smile spread across his face. He stuck out his hand. “It’s wonderful to meet you, Kaya. Reed here says you’ll be attending State next year.”
“It’s Graham. Last name Reed.”
“Yes,” Dr. Blake said. “I have to check every now and then to make sure you remember.”
Kaya smiled and reached out shyly for Dr. Blake’s hand. “Nice to meet you,” she said softly. She stared at Dr. Blake.
Graham observed his sister. The look was somewhat familiar. She was hearing a voice. She was hearing Dr. Blake’s voice. Her smile grew, and then she let go of his hand.
“Have a seat,” Dr. Blake said, motioning for them to sit in the two seats in front of his desk. “Do either of you want coffee? It’s from this morning. I can rewarm it if you want.”
“No thanks,” Kaya said confidently.
Dr. Blake nodded. “So I saw you in class with Graham this morning,” he said. “Did you enjoy the lecture?”
Kaya nodded. “A lot of it was above my head, but it was interesting.”
“Yes, the brain is fascinating. I hear that you have a fascinating brain yourself, young lady.”
Kaya squirmed slightly. “That’s what they tell me.”
“I’d like to hear more about it,” Dr. Blake said, lacing his fingers together in front of him. “Graham said that you would like to learn more, too. He said you would be interested in being part of a study, including some testing on the fMRI.”
Kaya nodded. “Yes. Since I first heard about it, I’ve done some reading, and I’m really curious. My doctor did a regular MRI on me a few years ago, and everything looked pretty normal, but he said there was a slight enlargement of the structure of my receptive language area of the temporal lobe. He said it appeared to be congenital. He did a repeat last year, and there were no changes. He didn’t think it would be responsible for causing auditory hallucinations, but he’s not a neurologist. I was always curious as to why he didn’t refer me to a neurologist. He just sent me right to a psychiatrist. It seems that once someone makes up their mind that you’re crazy, there’s no other way to go but the psych route. I could go into an ER today with a knife coming out of my back, and they’d probably just focus on asking me if I’m hearing voices.”
“Yes, the stigma.” Dr. Blake sighed. “My family had to deal with it with my grandfather. At one point, when he was old and had health problems, we had to decide if we were going to have him move into an assisted living facility, but no one wanted to take him due to his diagnosis of bipolar disorder, and the fact that he was hospitalized several times as a younger man. We ended up having to have him live with us until he died, which was seven years. It was extremely hard on my mother. I vowed to do everything I could to break the stigma when I had a voice that people would listen to. And now I have that voice, and I’m using it.”
Kaya looked at Dr. Blake in awe. “You’re a superhero,” she said. “When I find my band of cohorts, I’m going to invite you to join us. I’m The Enigma. You’ll need to choose your own superhero name.”
Dr. Blake chuckled. “I’ll give it some thought. No one has ever called me a superhero. Nerd, yes. Superhero, no. But I’ll be retiring in the next two years. I’ve always wanted to be on the cutting edge of some new, groundbreaking discovery. Now, Kaya, I don’t know if that’s where we’re headed. I don’t want to get your hopes up that we’re going to discover something that no one has discovered before and find a way to fix it. But every little bit of information we get goes a long way in helping us form the bigger picture. Every bit of data counts. Your symptoms are unusual. Learning more about your condition might not lead to helping you, you understand, but it might help someone ten, twenty years from now. And not just someone. Lots of someones. How do you feel about that?”
Kaya bit her lip. “I’d like to help myself, but I’ve already learned that medication isn’t the way I want to go. I know there are probably a lot of people out there that don’t want to take meds, but they don’t have any other option. Most of them don’t have the same advantages that I have. Their symptoms are worse, more distressing. So if I can help them, yeah, I’m on board.”
Dr. Blake smiled. “Excellent,” he said. “We can spend some time together today gathering some basic information about your medical history and your experiences with the auditory hallucinations. I have some brief questionnaires for you to fill out about your symptoms, or lack thereof. Why don’t you do those first and get them over with, and then we’ll have a discussion about everything else.”
He handed Kaya a clipboard and a pen and gave her an encouraging grin.
“While you fill this out, I’ll be under my desk, looking for my wallet. It seems to have gone missing again. I hate when my things grow legs and walk away.”
“So what did Dr. Blake’s voice say?” Graham asked after they left the office an hour later.
“What?” Kaya asked.
“You know,” Graham said. “When I introduced you. You were all nervous, and then you shook his hand, and when you were done, you stared at him and smiled. What did his voice say?”
Kaya laughed. “Oh my God. You can tell when I’m hearing the voices? That’s so wild! But yeah, I was feeling really shaky, but then when we were shaking hands, his voice told me that he was really nervous about meeting me. Can you believe it? Nervous about meeting me? I’m a seventeen year old high school kid!”
Graham laughed. “Yeah, but could you imagine what he was like back in high school? Cheerleaders probably never gave him the time of day! He was probably feeling kind of out of his league.” Graham shook his head. “Kaya, you even got me forgetting that it’s not his real thoughts. It was his voice, but not his thoughts. But it seems like it put you at ease, so I guess it doesn’t matter. I bet there’s no one else in the world who gets comfort from their hallucinations like you do.”
“Maybe,” Kaya said. They left the building, and she looked across the quad. “Let’s go look at some of the other buildings. Where did you have the most classes freshman year?”
Graham pointed to a three-story brick building. “This is the Sawyer Building. It has the biggest lecture halls. Let’s go inside. I bet there’s an empty one we can go into.”
Graham led Kaya into the building, past students sitting on the stairs reading or talking to their friends. In the entryway, there was a mob of students milling around holding backpacks or notebooks. Almost every one of them was holding a cup of takeout coffee.
“I guess coffee’s a big part of college life,” Kaya said. “I wonder if that coffee cart serves hot chocolate or chai tea.”
“They have hot chocolate,” Graham confirmed. “We must be the only kids in North America that grew up with parents that didn’t drink coffee. You would think that we would have rebelled by drinking all the coffee. Gina likes it though, so I’m trying to learn to like it.”
“Maybe I could learn to like it.” She was looking closely at the handsome man behind the counter at the coffee cart.
Graham laughed. “What about Grayson?”
Kaya looked at him. “Grayson? He doesn’t like coffee either.” She gave him a sly smile.
Graham laughed again. “C’mon,” he said. “I’ll show you the lecture hall.” He walked through a door, and Kaya followed him in. “This is where I took my introduction to philosophy class.”
Kaya’s eyes widened as she took in the massive hall. “Wow!” she exclaimed. “This place is bigger than the gym at Wisteria High! How many students are in these classes?”
“Around two hundred,” Graham said.
Kaya shook her head. “Oh my God! So, if you don’t show up for class, no one knows?”
“That’s right,” Graham said. “I’ve missed a class or two over the years. You just have to make sure you find out what you missed. You’ll get a syllabus in each class, and it should tell you about what’s being covered every week, if not every single class, and a list of all of your assignments, but it’s always good to make friends in your classes, so you can ask them if there was anything you need to know in the lecture. You can make copies of their notes.”
Kaya sat down in one of the stadium seats. “Close seating,” she said. “It’s like a movie theater. Is there enough room to move around?”
Graham took the seat next to her. “I guess,” he said. “I mean, yeah, your arm might be up against the person next to you, like on an airplane. But it’s only for an hour or so. You’ll get through it.”
Kaya nodded but she wasn’t smiling.
“What are you worried about?”
Kaya shrugged. “It’s just close quarters. You know. Close quarters.”
Graham suddenly understood. “More voices in close quarters.” Kaya nodded. “Yikes.”
“Yeah.” Kaya looked at her shoes. Then she looked up and around the room. “Maybe I can figure out how to make it not so bad. I can sit at the end of the row, so I can get up and get out if I need to. Maybe I can sit near the back or stand against the wall. Oh, I could sit on the floor in the back. They use microphones, right?”
Graham felt a stab in his heart. He couldn’t believe all of the thought that had to go into where Kaya would sit during her classes. All he ever had to do was walk in and find an empty seat. And he only had to focus on one voice, the one giving the lecture. Kaya always talked like she was fine, and that her voices didn’t disrupt her life at all. But maybe they really did. Maybe Kaya didn’t realize it because it was all she had known for several years now. Graham swallowed. His throat felt tight. He put his arm around her shoulder protectively. She looked up at him, searching his eyes. Then, she relaxed against him and let her head rest on his shoulder.
“It will be okay, Graham,” she said softly. “It always is. I promise.”