The Strangeness Within Pt. 04

.........*** Chapter 20 ***.........

Nicola moaned softly and braced herself against the bunk bed supports. Mark slowly pressed his penis into her from behind, letting Nicola lean back to help impale herself. For a moment they held still, Nicola trembling slightly. And then Mark started his familiar motion. In, out, in, out, his buttocks tensing while he stroked her back or her sensitive inner thighs.

Even in the dark, Esther could see them faintly. The odd little smiles and grimaces Nicola made every time Mark pushed all the way in with that meaty smacking noise. The way Mark's hands flexed, his muscles taut, yet holding Nicola gently. Esther's breath came faster, and she rubbed her back more quickly.

Her vision, her hearing, her smell — everything was sharper. Not the way it could become in those rare instances that seemed to be her version of an orgasm. But it was enough to see her roommates' lovemaking. And it was lovemaking, not just sex, whatever Nicola might think.

In their own ways they were both much more sensitive than Esther was. Surely they knew she was watching, and what she was doing under the blanket. But Nicola had kept her promise and never said a word.

When they were finally through, Mark stroked Nicola's chest one last time, then vaulted onto his bunk with his usual astonishing grace. Nicola sighed contentedly and reached for the usual towel. Esther got a strange thrill every time she came across that cloth when it was her turn to do laundry.

Nicola looked up, catching Esther's gaze, and Esther looked away quickly. But when she glanced back, Nicola smiled at her. Aware, but not taunting her. It was so much better than those first weeks, when she'd rubbed in Esther's face the fact she was having sex with Mark.

After a few minutes, Esther got up to use the outhouse. It was frigid outside, the mud frozen and treacherous, with patches of crusty snow here and there. After she'd used the toilet, she spent a while touching herself. The areas on her back and chest. The sensitive ring between her legs, surrounding the small hole that she didn't understand. She'd always been too nervous to manage one of those sensory orgasms in the cabin with Mark and Nicola. A few times in the bath, and one memorable occasion in the outhouse.

Not tonight, though. She was horny enough, but it wasn't going anywhere. Her butt was getting numb from the freezing toilet seat, as she still couldn't consciously summon her ability to keep warm. It was as though her body knew that she wasn't really in danger here, and her energy reserves shouldn't be wasted on something so trivial as pleasure. But her pleasure was the best key she'd found to unlock these abilities in the first place.

It was a bind, and she didn't know her way out of it. Probably it would just take time, as Abuela said. She was getting steadily more comfortable with this place.

She sighed and returned to the toasty cabin. And then she went to sleep and dreamed of Javier.

* * *

Javier stepped off the bus and pulled out the campus map with a sigh. For the thousandth time he wished he had a memory a fraction as good as Esther's.

The community college's engineering building was old and shabby. But when Javier found the computer lab, everything looked brand new. Samuel said some local rich guy had given a healthy donation for it.

He walked in nervously. But there was Samuel and a handful of his friends. The younger boy looked up and waved when he entered.

"Hey everyone, this is Javier," said Samuel. The other boys started to talk all at once and he missed most of their names. They seemed friendly enough, though.

Javier felt old amongst the eager group of tenth-graders, but even though it was a Saturday there were others in the lab. Students, most likely, with the usual wide range of ages this college attracted. One of them was even older than Mamá.

"Don't mind me," Javier said to the younger students. "I'm just going to be watching and listening for a while, I think."

"Eh, why not dive in, though?" said a voice from behind him. Javier turned to see a slightly plump girl with glasses, short blond hair, and a lot of piercings.

"Javier, this is my sister Kathleen," said Samuel. "Uh, Kat."

"Hi, Kat," said Javier. "Samuel has said a lot about you."

"Has he," Kat said with a stern look at Samuel. The younger boy looked nervous, but then she stuck her tongue out at Samuel. Javier immediately liked her.

"Let's get you set up with an account," said Kat, leading him up to the front. "You'll have full student privileges, which means you have your own storage space and full access to all the applications, as well as e-mail and the whole Internet. But it also means you can't fuck any of the computers up, which conveniently saves me work. Worst you can do is blow away all your own files."

Javier nodded, filling out the short form she handed him. In a few minutes she proclaimed him all set up.

"Change that password right away," she said. "There are instructions on the sheet. Oh, and Javier —"

She leaned close to his ear.

"If you didn't know, there are a lot of dirty pictures and stuff on the Internet," she whispered. "Try not to be obvious about downloading it or filling up your storage space. Because I'll be the one who notices, and that will just embarrass both of us. I mean, unless it's really artistic."

Javier coughed, and she smiled at him beatifically. Nervously he retreated to a spot near Samuel and started poking at the computer.

He had no idea what he was doing, of course. The other students were mostly playing games, though Samuel and one other kid seemed to be programming. He looked around the room and saw a few reference books on a shelf.

A half hour later he was carefully typing in some arcane commands. He smiled when a window popped open and a pair of eyes began following the cursor. It was a start. There was something tremendously satisfying about all of this: the quiet clacking of keys, the happy chatter of the other boys. The feeling of possibility.

At some point he looked up, and almost everyone else had left. He'd been here for hours, filling his head to overflowing with all the terse information in the book. Kat caught his eye and smiled, walking over to him.

"Getting near closing time," she said. "Looks like you enjoyed yourself. You know, I'm pretty sure they have some copies of this reference at the college library. Go ahead and borrow this one if you feel like reading it at home."

He nodded and smiled. "Maybe sometime," he said. "I don't think my brain can handle more for a while. But I'll be here next Saturday!"

On the bus ride home, he remembered Kat's warm smile. And the pretty little butterfly she had tattooed on one arm. He wondered if she had any more tattoos.

* * *

"A little farther," said Mark. "Then we'll have lunch."

Esther was breathing too hard to reply. Mark moved ahead, so fast that she almost lost him in the trees. But he never let himself past her sight. It was exhausting, a kind of torture she was putting herself through. But at least she wasn't around Nicola all day. Just when she'd thought they were getting along, the other woman had turned increasingly cold and irritable.

Anyway, there was a point to this exercise. She knew she was getting faster, though mostly that was from increased endurance. She noticed with excitement how large her appetite was getting on these days Mark let her come along.

Mark had been less enthusiastic. "I can't tell," he said. "If you're doing anything special to help your body's exertion, it's not very efficient. But you are getting in better shape, so that's good."

She eventually caught him at the side of a beautiful boulder-strewn lake. In the distance above them a few snow-white peaks of the Sierras shone with stunning brightness. A reward for the longer trip, she supposed, as those views were normally hidden behind trees and hills.

She kept looking at the scenery while they ate, and Mark noticed.

"This is a restful spot," he said. "Perhaps we can practice our meditations."

Esther found a sun-warmed rock to lie on. She was so tired that she half expected to doze off when she closed her eyes. But today she felt alive, as though maybe her body wasn't as weak she'd thought. She'd never be like Mark, but maybe she could have an ordinary, active life.

She didn't need her eyes to remember the details of this place. The slab beneath her was granite, a piece broken off from the massive batholith that had risen from deep under the crust many millions of years ago. The whole lake bed was practically a single enormous rock, scoured by water and glacier. The lake water was clear and frigid, glassy on this calm day.

There was a thick seam of quartz underneath her back, and every time she moved a bit, it rubbed her pleasantly. Very pleasantly. She thought about the time she'd immersed herself in the stream. She knew now that her body had protected her from the cold water, for a while at least. If she did the same today, she would feel the lake lapping against her back, a soothing counterpoint to the rough quartz seam. It would flow over her hardening nipples, licking between her legs the way she wished she'd managed to ask of Javier. Or Mark, for that matter. She'd heard the pleasure he gave Nicola. Surely even her body would enjoy that.

She sighed and felt further into the lake, to the boulders littering the bottom. The fish darting this way and that, communicating to each other by the subtlest flashes and pressure waves under the water, a language that humans had never understood. It was beautiful.

She heard a strange grunt from Mark, and all of a sudden her vision disappeared, but she didn't care. She'd done it! It hadn't felt like a sensory orgasm or anything. Just a careful reaching out.

She sat up and looked at Mark. He was staring at her as though there were something wrong.

"Mark?"

He breathed carefully a few times and looked away.

"Did you have any success?" he asked in a flat tone.

"Yes!" she said. It had been so beautiful that she wanted to tell him everything. But instead she walked back to him and sat on the neighboring rock.

Finally, Mark looked at her with discomfort.

"I made a careless mistake," he said. "I have become so accustomed to the way you hide your body. You — for a brief moment while I was extending my senses, you were not hidden anymore. Not entirely."

"Oh," she said, her mouth dry. "How much —"

"I would rather not think about it," he said.

"It's all right," Esther said, her stomach sinking. She'd had such fantasies. Of course they would never happen. Mark thought she was so young, and now maybe he'd even seen she wasn't a real woman.

To her mortification she found she was crying. Mark looked uncomfortable.

"Let's go back," she sniffled. "I'll be better eventually. And I did have a minor breakthrough with my vision. This hard exercise seems to help my meditations. Don't feel guilty about it."

* * *

Abuela was watching Esther when she opened her eyes. As usual, Esther couldn't find the relaxed pleasure she needed while sitting across from Abuela. But the meditation was still worth practicing.

"Abuela," Esther said slowly. "Do you know why Nicola is so unhappy with me?"

As usual, Abuela did not immediately respond. Most of the time she didn't answer direct questions at all.

"Have you told Nicola of all the progress you have been making?" Abuela asked.

Esther felt embarrassed. "No, I haven't."

"Do you not trust her to be enthusiastic about your accomplishments?"

Esther sighed. "I guess not, but I don't see why. She's far ahead of me in everything. And she's still getting better."

Abuela nodded.

"It is always most difficult to see in oneself what is plain to others," she said. "Tell me, what did you think the first time you saw me?"

Esther could remember the moment. And as she said it, she understood.

"You looked more like me than anyone I had seen. Much more than Nicola or Mark. Or Ramanujan."

If Abuela was surprised by the mathematician's name, she didn't show it. The old woman nodded, and seemed to come to a decision.

"You know I have unusual capabilities. Nicola and Mark have lived with that knowledge for years, perhaps under the impression that I was unique. And now they see you and they come to the natural conclusion: you must also have capabilities that outstrip theirs. Even if you don't know it yet."

Esther nodded. "Is that true? Is it so simple as genetics, or something like it? I have more of whatever makes us — different?"

Abuela shook her head. "In my experience it's more complicated than that," she said. "And yet in truth I have never seen someone as young with changes as profound as yours. Not even me. Ah, I see by your face that you are shocked at my sudden forthrightness after all these months."

Esther nodded slowly.

"Esther," Abuela said. "I am old. Very, very old, and each year I am less equal to my burden. I told you it would take time for you to understand yourself. But I am less and less convinced that I have the time myself. I had wanted to wait, to be sure that you were capable."

Esther waited for Abuela to continue, but the old woman was staring off at nothing again. Eventually Nicola knocked on the door for her lesson, but Abuela did not react. When Esther left the cabin, Nicola was frowning unhappily as she set Abuela's lunch tray on the table.

.........*** Chapter 21 ***.........

Esther sighed and opened her eyes. Meditating wasn't working, and masturbating hadn't gotten her anything either, except sore nipples and a lot of frustration.

Mark was off on one of his occasional multi-day trips, the type he seemed to take when he was feeling particularly irritable. Nicola had been oddly excited this morning, and she was off practicing her meditations in the dining cabin. Esther had hoped that in the quiet of her bed she could make some progress towards whatever it was Abuela was desperate for her to be able to do.

The door banged open, and Nicola burst in along with a blast of cold air.

Esther had never seen her like this. Giddy, smiling, not a bit self-conscious. She was beautiful, and Esther couldn't help but smile herself.

"Esther, I've seen something amazing," Nicola said. "Astounding. I don't know if I can even describe it!"

"Try," Esther said, sitting up. "Did you make a breakthrough? Something new with your senses?"

Nicola nodded, sitting down to face Esther.

"So far I've been able to feel things down to the fraction of a millimeter," she said. "I think it was mostly sound I was sensing, and that puts a limit on resolution, because smaller things vibrate faster, and even our ears probably can't hear things above a few tens of kilohertz. But we do sense vastly higher frequencies with our eyes, and there are other spectra — oh, I don't know how I did it. But I felt the vibrations all the way down to the atomic level!"

Esther nodded, mind rushing ahead. "Like, the individual kinetic motions of atoms? Or even the energy levels inside?"

"Both, I think!" Nicola said. "I felt the crystal structure of the rock. The chemical composition, the temperature, phonons and molecular energy levels. It was like an entire universe under my fingertip. Everything's vibration, Esther, everything! It's so beautiful! Oh, God, I think my brain's going to burst."

They both started laughing. Esther was envious, but mostly proud of Nicola. The other woman had worked so hard for this. It was like having a big sister finally succeed at something huge.

A sister. Esther had sometimes fantasized about that when she was younger. She didn't always get along with Nicola, but they were stuck together. And Nicola seemed so comfortable and happy right now. If there was any time to make a leap of trust, she supposed this was it. She couldn't do it with Mark, not after the way he'd reacted when he saw a glimpse of her. And maybe if was for the best if Nicola understood why Esther could never even compete for Mark.

"Everything OK, Esther?" Nicola asked. "I'm sorry, I know you've been frustrated with your progress. I just had to share with someone."

"You deserve to be excited," Esther said slowly. "It's amazing. I — well, it doesn't have anything to do with that."

"OK," said Nicola seriously. Ready to listen, if she needed. Like a big sister.

"It's about sex," said Esther nervously.

Nicola looked surprised, but she covered it up quickly.

"All right," said Nicola. "I'm all ears. You can't shock me, and I promise I won't be obnoxious. Seriously."

Esther nodded, her heart racing. She was going to tell someone, finally.

"My body is strange," she said. "I don't understand it."

Nicola nodded. Esther stared at the floor. She still couldn't spit it out.

"Do you want to ask me questions?" Nicola said. "We're not the same, I know. Probably all of us are different in our ways. But you know I'm not entirely normal, either."

"You're not on birth control pills, are you?" Esther blurted.

Nicola smiled, but then she saw Esther's expression.

"No, Esther. And I don't have periods any more than you do. I'm sorry, I hope that wasn't embarrassing. But there are so many ways it would have been obvious if you did."

"So you can't have children?"

Nicola nodded. "When my periods didn't come, even after I'd obviously gone through puberty, my parents took me to the doctor. They did some scans and said my ovaries had never developed right. I was traumatized, I guess, but that was so long ago. The truth is I know I'd have been a terrible parent. But I'm guessing this is a big deal for you."

Esther nodded. "Except that it's a lot more than my ovaries. My parents knew I was strange, and they made sure the doctors never saw me."

Nicola squinted at her. "Never? I mean, when my spots started getting more obvious, it got pretty clear that I should be cautious about that, but by that point I was — well, if you didn't know, I ran away from home at seventeen. But I can tell you that depressing story another time."

"I was much stranger than you were, I think," said Esther. "Even when I was young. Between my legs. I haven't had anyone to talk to, not even my parents, though they probably guessed something. They're both dead now."

"Oh," said Nicola. "Oh. I'm sorry. I didn't know that."

Esther shook her head. "It's all right. That's not what I want to talk about, anyway."

"So what is it, then?" Nicola said lightly. "You haven't been hiding a dick down there or something, have you? Because that would make me pretty jealous."

Esther put her head in her hands. She should have known Nicola wouldn't understand.

There was a rustling noise and she felt Nicola sit next to her. An arm cautiously encircled her shoulders.

"I'm sorry, Esther," she said. "So sorry. I've always been shit at this. Tell you what. I'll go make us dinner. You take a long shower, or bath, or whatever makes you most relaxed. Don't worry about the propane. I shouldn't have even mentioned that the first day. And then we'll have our dinner, and go to bed early, and if you're comfortable we can talk again tonight. And I'll keep my fat mouth shut."

* * *

The bath was marvelous. Steam hung in the air, illuminated by the dim light filtering through the skylight. For a long time Esther watched the tiny swirls, imagining the kinds of things Nicola might be able to feel. She couldn't do anything like that, of course, but there was a calm sense of clarity. Everything balanced. Her senses were sharp, but not focused on anything. Just the grand sense of her place, in a cozy shed surrounded by still forest and the lives of all the insects and mammals and birds scurrying about their business. An immense web, but she wasn't a spider at the center. Just another node, feeling the subtle way everything tugged on her. It was oddly reminiscent of the way she felt when she let her mind connect mathematical concepts. The whole universe was vibrations, as Nicola said. But there was more as well.