Empath (Book 1 of The Empath Trilogy)

  Ch. 6

  Friday. No class, no work; nothing. I wasn’t going home this weekend. When I spoke to my mom earlier in the week, I’d used the excuse that school just started and I wanted to “get into the swing of things” so I would be staying on campus this weekend to try to meet people and hang out with some of my new friends. Mom and Dad were genuinely pleased to hear about my first week of college. I had to admit, too, that just talking to them on the phone was far less intense and I remembered how much I actually enjoyed speaking to Mom and telling her about things. She, too, sounded lighter and happier than I’d heard her in a while. Reading the direction of my thoughts, perhaps, she commented in the same vein about me and I realized she was right.

  I seemed to be made for this life. I could easily limit my interactions with people, surround myself with books and spend as much time studying as I wanted to. I had entire days without classes or parents or other distractions and could spend my time at my own discretion. Sure, there were the usual limitations to that kind of isolation but I consoled myself with the academics. For the first time in forever, my classes were genuinely interesting. In high school, I was able to choose some electives but the pool from which we chose was so much shallower than this one. At college the requirements said to choose a history, then gave about twenty choices. It was great! This was the perfect place for an isolationist bookworm such as myself.

  I couldn’t help but feel happy taking in the large oaks transitioning to yellow for the season and the flowers in the gardens. The splashes of color lining the path and fronts of the buildings were giving their last good efforts at color before going back to sleep for another six months.

  I wandered into the library, signed the book back in and walked it back myself, intent upon keeping it from the generally curious. My attentions turned inward, considering the thin bit of useful information I’d been able to pick from its yellowed pages. I was completely caught off guard as I turned at the top of the stack to head down the row and replace the book.

  “Hey, try to find Jenkins yet?” Stephen was sitting on the floor cross-legged, looking at a much abused leather bound book opened to its halfway point. His shaggy hair hung just slightly over his eyes, which were looking up at me with a playful glint to them.

  I was so surprised that I jumped up about a foot and my hand not holding my book bag flew up to my face to halt a screech, though an unimpressive squeak still found its way out.

  “Oh my gosh! Seriously, I could have had a heart attack.” I gasped as my heart tried to find its place in my chest. I reached out to steady myself, dropping my bag to brace against the rack.

  He smiled and shook his head to get his hair out of his eyes. “That’s the wrong book.” He aimed his nose at the one now clutched to my chest.

  I couldn’t help but glare at him. “Someone else must have it, I haven’t been able to find it.” I was still trying to recover my breathing now coming in short jagged gulps.

  He winked playfully at me. “I wanted to give you a chance to really want it. You know, it’s the anticipation that’s half the fun.” He said looking down at the book in his hand, snapping it shut. “Here.” He stood up while handing me the book. “Enjoy.”

  I took it from his hand and looked at the spine, rolling my eyes. “Huh, well that figures.” He liked to mess with people. That explained a lot. “Did you have it when you told me about it or did you check it out afterward just to mess with me?” I didn’t like the idea that he’d manipulated me. Or that he’d succeeded in doing exactly what he’d said he wanted to do.

  “No, I was being nice. I marked the spots I thought you would find most helpful.” He started to point at the book. “It’s one of the older books so I was careful to just put paper in the pages you might want to look at first. Post-it’s tend to tear the paper fiber you know. Henry’s really protective about the older stuff.”

  Eyeing him, I decided against asking how he came to be on a first name basis with the head librarian. I didn’t want to know more about the manipulative character, I told myself; instead concentrating on the text now in my hands. Gingerly, I opened the book and sure enough, it fell open to a spot where a small scrap of paper was wedged in toward the spine, avoiding the need to handle the page. It was actually quite thoughtful of him. I started reading about “shielding.” It instantly grabbed my attention and I forgot about him entirely until he spoke again.

  “That’s what I thought. You might want to read that section twice. It would be useful for someone such as yourself.” I heard the satisfaction in his voice and glanced up, ready to defend myself lest he go around starting rumors.

  “What do you mean, someone like me? That is not the first time you’ve said that and might I point out that you don’t even know me.” I was getting my back up pretty fast but given how much he was guessing about me he could really cause some damage. Plus, I had to admit, as much as I didn’t like my curse, I used it a lot when I dealt with people. Knowing how someone was feeling was almost as good as knowing what that person was thinking. It was kind of like hearing their tone without the words. I always came prepared to handle whichever way the conversation would go. In short snippets it wasn’t even horribly painful, only mildly so.

  Just like last time, I couldn’t tell anything about how he was feeling so I wasn’t sure if he was teasing me, if he was being a jerk or just trying to get my goat. Regardless, I was out of my depth in speaking to him, and I didn’t know how to handle him. I had lost one of my senses. One I hadn’t realized I used as much as I did, it was like waking up blind and being told to drive.

  “Don’t worry, I come in peace,” he said as he held his hands out in front, palms out as if to calm a frightened animal. I might not have been so irritated at the gesture if it weren’t for his slightly patronizing smile.

  “You know, you can really irritate a girl. I can’t imagine you have much luck dating.”

  There was just the slightest break in his smile and then he laughed. It was a pleasant, genuine laugh and it made me smile in spite of my anger.

  “Don’t worry about me. Just look at the book and maybe we can talk later.” With that, Stephen glided away.

  Jenkins was exactly what I’d been looking for all my life. I was fascinated by what he had to say about shielding and empathy. Other books shared what he did about the empathy thing, however, Jenkins pointed out that it could take several different forms and that was new.

  Some people’s abilities were limited to a strong understanding of how others felt when they talked to them or hung around them. Kind of like a super counselor, able to read the emotion behind the words. Other people could feel the emotions of others before they even saw them, it was like they had a wider range of “hearing.” And then there were folks like me who could sense the emotions without having to see the person, but also could be altered themselves by the those emotions. It was called channeling. Although I had seen some limited information on channeling before, it hadn’t been so thorough. It was like this book was written just for me. I breathed a sigh of relief. It felt so good to know I wasn’t the only one and I wasn’t crazy. Correcting myself, I thought, at least if I was, I wasn’t alone in my insanity.

  I hustled downstairs to check the book out at the front desk and couldn’t wait to get to my room to learn more from my new greatest resource, Richard Jenkins, who had known me apparently several hundred years before I was born. How many others had this “talent” as he called it?

  It hit me all of a sudden as I was walking back to my dorm. I couldn’t believe how dense I was sometimes; maybe my family was right and I was socially slow. Was Stephen an empath like me? Is that how he had recognized me? Had he learned how to shield and that was why I couldn’t feel him? He became very interesting to me all of a sudden and I couldn’t wait to see him again to discuss the possibilities.