That’s how I can afford to go on.”
Alicia’s sister owned a pretty studio house – one of five that stood in a row, all of them designed in the Spanish style. At the front there was a courtyard with flowers spilling out of terracotta urns and twisted vines climbing the walls. A pair of cats stretched out in the sun and the air smelled of perfume. The house itself was very simple. A living room and a kitchen, two bedrooms and a bathroom, all of them furnished simply. Fans circulated and cooled the air. Two framed travel posters and, on the coffee table, a model of an old biplane, were the only clues that the place might belong to a flight attendant.
“Can I get you a drink?” Alicia asked.
“No, thank you.”
“Do you want to lie down? You can watch TV if you like…”
Jamie looked around. “What’s your sister called?”
“Caroline.”
“Are you close?”
“We see each other when we can.”
Jamie and Alicia were standing in the living room. They both looked awkward. This wasn’t their house. And they still hadn’t quite absorbed the chain of events that had brought them together. “Look, I’m sorry. All right?” Jamie muttered the words. “What I said, back at the restaurant, that was wrong. You’re trying to help me. I know that. But what you want me to do – you don’t understand…”
“I’ll make some coffee,” Alicia said. “Why don’t we go outside?”
Ten minutes later, they were sitting together on the patio at the back of the house. Night had fallen but a full moon had come out, illuminating a stretch of decking, a tangle of plants. They were surrounded by other houses but there was nobody else in sight. It felt very private. Even the noise of the Los Angeles traffic couldn’t reach them here.
“I don’t like talking about myself,” Jamie said.
Alicia said nothing. She wanted him to relax, to begin in his own time.
“Me and Scott. We’ve always been…” Jamie held up a finger and thumb, almost touching, to show what he meant. “He’s the smart one. He’s the one who gets us out of trouble. He always knows what to do. I think of him as my big brother although I guess we’re twins.”
“You don’t know?”
Jamie shook his head. “We were found dumped near a place called Glenbrook, near Lake Tahoe. We were, like, babies in a basket, left by the side of the road. Except it wasn’t a basket, it was a cardboard box. We had no names. Nothing. Oh yes – this was really funny. Someone had given us a tattoo. Both of us, the same tattoo.”
“Where is it?” Alicia hadn’t meant to ask but she couldn’t stop herself.
“Here.” Jamie flicked a thumb over his shoulder. “On my shoulder. It’s a sort of circle with a line through it. It doesn’t mean anything.”
“So how did you get your names?”
“They called him Scott because the box we were found in was for Scott’s grass seed. I got called Jamie after the local doctor who examined us. They thought we had Native American blood. They asked about us on the reservations.”
“You do have that look,” Alicia agreed.
“I won’t tell you too much about our life – what happened to us. I don’t suppose you care a whole lot. Because what you want to know about is The Accident. That’s what we called it. But we never talked about it. I never said anything to anyone about it except Scott and I don’t want to talk about it now.”
Alicia sighed. “Maybe if you start at the beginning, it’ll make it all easier.”
“Whatever. There’s not much to tell you anyway.”
Jamie had a cup of coffee in front of him, but he hadn’t drunk any of it. For a few moments he stared into the black surface of the liquid as if it were a mirror, showing him the past.
“OK. We were just left by the roadside. We never had a mum or a dad or anything like that. There was a newspaper story about when we were found. We were called the Seed Box Babies. And after that we were taken into protective custody. I guess they kept us in hospital for a while but then we were fostered. They put us in this foster home somewhere in Carson City. There were another half dozen kids there, all with Indian blood. I can’t even remember where it was any more. The people who ran it were called Tyler and we took their name while the police and the social services tried to find out where we’d come from.
“Except they couldn’t. Everyone was interested in the tattoos. They thought the tattoos had to mean something. After all, who’d go to the trouble of putting a tattoo on a baby? They went onto the reservations and asked questions and they offered a reward. But it didn’t work. And in the end they closed the file and just let us get on with it.
“But things never stopped going wrong for us. We were always blowing out of different foster homes. We used to get into fights with other kids. We didn’t pick these fights – they just sort of happened. By the time we were about six years old we knew that it was always going to be the same… Scott looked out for me and I looked out for him. And as for the rest of them… we didn’t give a damn.
“I lost count of the number of homes we were in and out of. The one thing was, they never separated us. We had this case worker. Her name was Derry and she said that it was important they keep us together. Like it was the law. When we were nine, they tried fostering us out-of-state in Salt Lake City and that worked for a time. I think we were happy. We were with a couple who couldn’t have kids of their own. They had a nice place and they were kind to us, but about twelve months after we’d been there, they decided they’d had enough. Derry flew out to see us, and by now she knew what was going on and that was when she tried to tell us. We were different. We were special. But we made people uneasy. That’s what she tried to tell us, but she didn’t exactly put it into words. Maybe she thought we’d laugh at her.
“It didn’t matter, though. We’d already worked it out for ourselves. We knew we had this… ability. Maybe you’d call it a power, only that would make it sound as if we could put on costumes and turn into Spider-Man or something and it was never like that. Even while Derry was talking to us, trying to explain it, we knew we could have looked into her mind and seen what she was thinking. Telepathy. That’s the word for it. But we weren’t superheroes. We were freaks. We weren’t like anyone else. And that was why we’d never been able to fit in.”
“Did you ever use your ability?” Alicia asked. She felt she hadn’t breathed the whole time Jamie had been speaking. He was so skinny and vulnerable, sitting out here on the patio with his black hair falling to his neck. Only now was she beginning to understand all he had been through.
“How do you mean?” Jamie asked.
“I don’t know. To cheat in exams. Or to find out about stuff you weren’t supposed to know.”
“No!” Jamie shook his head. “You don’t understand how it feels to be able to read people’s minds, Alicia. It isn’t fun. It was like there was this whispering all the time. All the time! We’d be walking down the streets and it would be everywhere, all around us, never stopping. Can you imagine what it would be like going to a movie if the audience never stopped talking? Well, that’s how it was for us. Sometimes it could drive us mad.
“What most people are thinking, most of the time, isn’t very nice. They’re thinking about their husbands or their wives and the arguments they’ve had. They’re thinking about the people they want to hurt and how angry they are and how miserable they are and why it’s never their fault. Or maybe they’re worrying about money or about losing their jobs or it can be even worse. They can be thinking horrible, foul thoughts. So, no, we didn’t use our ability. We did the exact opposite. It was like putting our hands permanently over our ears. We managed to close all the doors.
“We kept just one of them open. I could hear what Scott was thinking and he could hear me. It worked even when we were a mile apart, although it got fainter… you know… like a whisper. But we were never scared to go into each other’s heads because we always knew there would be no bad surprises. We knew it would be safe. And that’s how we became the telepathic twins. That’s what Don White made us.”
“Were you sent to him next?” Alicia asked.
Jamie shook his head. “Can I have another drink?”
“Coffee?”
“Coke.”
“Wait there…”
Alicia went into the kitchen. Fortunately, her sister kept the place well stocked. She came back with a can of
