With that, she went back to her research on Paula. That was a whole different story. She was not the angel her mother had said she was, but her mother probably didn’t know about the depth of her problems since she’d hit the university. Drunk in class, drugs, misdemeanors, theft from other students, generally raising chaos and raising Cain. She’d been put on suspension once and had a second one written up. Kate frowned at that. “Looks like Paula was in trouble a lot,” she murmured.
“While hanging out with that crowd, I’m not surprised.”
She nodded. “I doubt the mother knew anything about any of this.”
“Paula would have done everything she could to keep that from them, just to stay here with her perfect boyfriend Brandon.”
“Of course, but she had to be pretty damn close to getting her ass kicked out,” Kate said, “and she didn’t have an attorney on retainer or someone standing by to make a nice big donation.”
“I’m sure the mother would blame this group.”
“I’m not sure that it wasn’t them either, but people still have to own their own decisions. You can’t just blame everybody else in life.”
“No, but obviously this Brandon kid had some weird control over the others.”
“We’ve seen it before.” Kate shook her head, ending with a sigh. “It’s like a weird mesmerizing personality that gets people to do what they wouldn’t do in any other circumstance. In this case, we’ve got two young women, vying for the same guy potentially, but, according to Brandon, having some attraction to each other, caught up in this triangle. The whole transvestite angle was definitely to derail us but also to soothe his ego. Can you imagine how Brandon would handle it if some hot girl dumped him for another girl?” Kate chuckled at that. “What a fragile sense of self. And neither of the women really fit into the bullying rich-guy group, but they sure were desperately trying, yet not succeeding.”
“And is there anything worse than failure in college?” he asked, looking at her. “Worse than high school. If you don’t make the popular group, they feel doomed forever.”
“Especially in a case like this,” she murmured. “Failure is not an option because, if you aren’t part ofthatgroup, what are you?”
“Pretty sad that they think that way,” he muttered.
“Right. You’d think they would have figured that out in high school,” she said.
“Nobody gets past that need. Human nature has an innate desire to belong to something, even if it’s the wrong group.”
*
Simon lay onhis bed in the early morning, as he tried to figure out if it was safe to get up or not. For some reason he had a sense of impending pain. He hated that concept. There was absolutely no reason for it, as he looked around his bedroom, everything was suspect at the moment. His gaze narrowed, as he wondered where this information was coming from. Whenever something bizarre like that filtered through his brain, he had to stop and wonder if it was him or if it was a vision. The fact that he was even contemplating such things was enough to drive him crazy because it shouldn’t be visions. That was of his grandmother’s world, not his own. At least as far as he was concerned. But it didn’t seem to matter what he wanted these days.
As he rolled over to get out of bed, he banged his head against something. His night stand was where it always sat, out of the way and up against the wall. He should easily have gotten out of bed without hitting it. But he hadn’t seen it. He slowly got up and realized that he was struggling to see anything. He shook his head, and clarity came back again.
He kept on moving, got to the bathroom, turned on the hot water, and stepped in for a shower. Not for the first time, he wished he could talk to somebody. And though the time and opportunity had long past, his grandmother would have been the perfect person.
He stepped out, feeling better, yet these weird little cloudy wisps of another person’s life seemed attached to him. It filtered in and filtered out, so sometimes he thought it was his world, when it really wasn’t, and vice versa. It added chaos and confusion to his world. It was something he would have to work on. If he could get them to stop or could get the connection to that veil to strengthen, so that the visions or thoughts couldn’t cross so easily, it would help.
Not that he blamed whoever it was because he highly doubted they had a clue what they were doing either. If, in fact, they had done anything. Somebody was just calling out in need. Unfortunately Simon was picking it up, as a receiver. And that just brought back memories of his grandmother because, of course, she’d been a receiver and had been able to do a lot.
His grandmother would flat-out say that it didn’t matter what he wanted; it mattered what the spirit wanted. She was a firm believer that this was all spirits at work. And, in her case, she believed in God.
He was on the fence about that. He couldn’t understand that a God was out there who would allow a child, like Simon at four years old, to be hurt the way he was, with nobody to give a damn. That had really bothered him growing up, especially when the church types had repeatedly told Simon that God was looking out for him because Simon knew in his heart of hearts that, after his grandmother’s death, there hadn’t been anybody looking out for him.
As an adult, he could now see why there had been so much belief in the world, especially for those whose faith had not yet been tested, but it didn’t make him ready to listen to it. His grandmother had just said it was the Great Spirit around them. That they were all part of the same. He’d never told her about what happened to him, but she seemed to have known, though not at the time it was happening, only later when they reconnected. It had taken a long time for him to make that connection happen, but, as soon as he’d seen her, he’d instinctively known who she was, and, being as special as she was, she had seen it too.
That’s when she’d also become worried about him, worried about the path already presenting itself in his life. Even though he told her that he didn’t want anything to do with his “gift” and that he didn’t even believe in it, there had been just enough psychic happenings where he couldn’tnotbelieve. Whether she had shown him those things on purpose or not, he didn’t know, but she was certainly capable of such deceit, all in the name of giving him the facts of life.
Mostly because she had seen so much herself, and she didn’t want him to be unprepared. But how did one prepare for having one’s life put under a microscope like this and then be tormented to the extent that Simon had?
It made no sense that such a thing was even possible, and yet, here he was, still tormented, while being connected to some woman crying her heart out. He didn’t know if she was physically hurt. It seemed like she was emotionally traumatized. In the background with her tears, although right now she wasn’t sobbing, it was more of a heartfelt disquiet on the inside. He wanted to poke it and make it bleed because, if it festered and didn’t bleed, then it would never heal. But that emotional ball inside wasn’t something he seemed to be able to access. It was more of an emotional window into her soul, and that was hard to take in.
Shrugging, he turned his head, as he got dressed, looking out at the city around him. It would be a gorgeous day. He really loved this area and especially enjoyed walking along the harbor, sitting down with a coffee. It also reminded him that he was behind on his workouts, something he rarely let happen. He enjoyed his workouts, but, at the same time, he also found a lot of things were keeping him off balance right now. Things that he probably shouldn’t let have that much power over him.
On that note, he stopped and frowned because that’s exactly what he was doing. He was letting this “gift” have power over him, and that was something he couldn’t afford. He quickly changed into his jogging shorts and a muscle shirt. He picked up a key he kept on a wristband, put it into his pocket, leaving his wallet and full set of keys behind, then headed downstairs.
He didn’t let himself think about it, but he just raised a hand to the doorman as he plowed through the stairwell door into the lobby and kept on going outside, intent on a hard morning run. He heard Harry in the background, telling him to have a good time. Simon wasn’t sure anybody had a good time running, although, at times, it was good to run and to get away. As he ran, he let the voices disappear inside his head. He let them drift out what he considered the back door to his mind, as he was breathing really hard.
He exerted himself right now, waiting for the oxygen to kick his brain into gear, for his nerves to fire up, and for his heart to come alive and to make all this seem like it was his world—not somebody else’s. Being caught between two worlds was the oddest feeling ever, and he just wanted to be in his world, not theirs. He wanted to feel alive, not half dead with these other ghostly impressions. He ran down the blocks for a good mile, before swinging down around the harbor and coming up along one of the paths.