tell her that he knew how she felt, and that he was all right. Because
just knowing he -understood would make her happier. But he didn’t have
the words. He couldn’t explain how or why he sometimes felt other
people’s feelings. And he didn’t want to try to tell them about it
because he was afraid of looking dumb.
He was dumb. He knew that. He wasn’t as dumb as Derek, who was very
nice, good to room with, but who was real slow. They sometimes said
“slow” instead of “dumb” when they talked in front of you. Julie never
did. Bobby never did. But some people said “slow” and thought you
didn’t get it. He got it. They had bigger words, too, and he really
didn’t understand those, but he sure understood “slow.” He didn’t want
to be dumb, nobody gave him a choice, and sometimes he thought a message
to God, asking God to make him not dumb any more, but either God wanted
him to stay dumb always and forever but why? or God just didn’t get the
messages.
Julie didn’t get the messages either. Thomas always knew when he got
through to someone with a thought. He never got to Julie.
But he could sometimes get through to Bobby, which was funny. Not ha-ha
funny. Strange funny. Interesting funny. When Thomas sent a thought
to Julie, Bobby sometimes got it instead. Like this morning. When he’d
sent a warning to Julie -Something bad is going to happen, Julie,
something real bad is coming -Bobby had picked it up. Maybe because
Thomas and Bobby both loved Julie. Thomas didn’t know. He couldn’t
feel sure- But it sure happened. Bobby tuned in.
Now Thomas stood at the window, in his pajamas, and looked out at the
scary night, and he felt the Bad Thing over there, felt it like a ripple
in his blood, like a tingle in his body The Bad Thing was far away, not
anywhere near Julie, but coming.
Today, during Julie’s visit, Thomas wanted to tell her about the Bad
Thing coming. But he couldn’t find a way to say and make sense, and he
was scared of sounding dumb. Julie and Bobby knew he was dumb, sure,
but he hated to sound dumb in front of them, to remind them how dumb he
was. Every time he almost started to tell her about the Bad Thing he
just forgot how to use words. He had the words in his mind, all lined
up in a row, ready to say, but then suddenly they were mixed up, and he
couldn’t make them get back in the right order, so he couldn’t say the
words because they’d be just words without meaning anything, and he’d
look really, real dumb.
Besides, he didn’t know what to tell her the Bad Thing was He thought
maybe it was a person, a real terrible person over there, going to do
something to Julie, but it didn’t exactly feel like a person. Partly a
person, but something else. Something that made Thomas feel cold not
just on his outside but on his inside, too, like standing in a winter
wind and eating ice cream at the same time.
He shivered.
He didn’t want to get these ugly feelings about whatever out there, but
he couldn’t just go back to bed and tune out either, because the more he
felt about the far-away Bad Thing the better he could warn Julie and
Bobby when the thing wasn’t so far away any more.
Behind him, Derek murmured in a dream.
The Home was real quiet. All the dumb people were deep asleep. Except
Thomas. Sometimes he liked to be awake when everyone else wasn’t.
Sometimes that made him feel smarter than all of them put together,
seeing things they couldn’t see and knowing things they couldn’t know
because they were asleep and he wasn’t.
He stared at the nothingness of night.
He put his forehead against the glass.
For Julie’s sake, he reached. Into the nothingness. Toward the
far-away.
He opened himself. To the feelings. To the ripple-tingle.
A big ugly-nasty hit him. Like a wave. It came out of the night and