When Billy was younger, his powers had come in not suddenly, but in short bursts. Mostly with his mind-reading.
Everything was loud. There was a lot of screaming. It was like everyone in Westview was screaming on the inside, all the time.
Luckily, his family was singularly prepared to handle this situation.
His mother would stay up late at night with him, running her hands through his hair to lull him to sleep through all the thoughts bombarding him.
“It’s okay,” she whispered to him, voice soft. “Don’t think of them, try and focus on your brother. What’s he dreaming about?”
Tommy was sleeping in his own bed, across from Billy. He was dead to the world, even if he had promised to stay up until sunrise today. His thoughts felt like Agnes’ high pressure water sprinkler, which they liked to press their hands right up to the nozzle.
When he was awake, his thoughts slowed down to match the world around him. But in sleep, Billy’s twin ran as fast as he was meant to.
“They’re too fast,” he replied, “but I think it might be a happy one.”
“That’s good, then,” she relaxed a little, and pressed a kiss to his head. “I’ll teach you soon how to block out things automatically, so that you can only hear the thoughts of people you love very, very much, okay?”
“Okay,” he murmured, eyelids drooping down.
Mom told him later that she had also gotten other people’s thoughts in her mind, just like him.
“But I was years older than you when that happened,” she explained, as she worked on chopping the vegetables for lunch. Billy tried to hide the eggplant from her sight, so that she’d forget to put it in. “You’re just so little! Which means you’re going to be very powerful when you grow up. And I’ll be there with you every step of the way. It’s perfectly normal, after all.”
“Why can’t Tommy hear minds, then?” he asked, if it was so normal.
“Because everyone has different normals,” she assured. “Unless you’ve broken the sound barrier anytime soon?”
Billy giggled at the thought.
So, he could read minds, and it was normal. He had to learn to manage it, because otherwise it would get overwhelming. But no one ever thought it was strange.
He noticed, after a while, that people had two layers of thoughts. The screaming was actually the deeper layer. Above that, there was another layer of thoughts. Calmer, normal things that made sense and covered up the part of everyone that was screaming to be set free.
One time, he and Tommy got it into their minds to start a lemonade stand. Which then escalated to a door-to-door thing, because Billy wanted to buy a subscription to some comic books, and they would get more customers that way.
He used his powers then, to see what the potential customers wanted, and tailor the pitch to that. He got a lot of funny looks that day, though he didn’t catch on as to why.
Dad’s normal was different from Mom and Billy’s, and Tommy’s too. He was made of metal, but he still had thoughts like any other person that Billy could read. They were very… boxy. Dad said that was how computers were made, so it had to make sense.
“I can’t read people the way you do,” he told Billy once. “But I- well, I used to be able to process large amounts of information, all at once.”
“Yeah?” Billy asked, running a green pencil on his Hulk coloring book – three pages in and he had already run through one entire green pencil. “Like when you’re plugged into the TV?”
“A bit, yes, though that’s not precisely-” he laughed a little, “I’m sorry, I lost my train of thought there. Do you know what year it is?”
“You said you’d teach me to figure out a calendar after I learn how to make the loud thoughts quiet.”
“Ah, so I did,” he smiled, “Well then, let’s see if my protocols make any sense to you. They’re the only ones I know how to follow, after all.”
They didn’t help a lot. But it let Billy spend more time with his Dad, and that was good enough.
Mom and Dad were fighting. Not aloud, except for the two times where they did. But he could hear their thoughts. Both of theirs.
What if she’s lying to me. What if something is wrong. Something is wrong, I know it, none of this is right, but I don’t know enough to see what the lie is, went Dad’s thoughts, round and round like the hamster he and Tommy petsat for Mrs. Hart a while ago.
I’m tired. I’m so tired, and I just want to keep this as it is. Why isn’t he letting me keep this? Went Mom’s thoughts, like a boulder being pushed up a hill. Losing strength with each failure.
And sometimes, their thoughts converged. Let’s keep this together for a couple days more. Because I love what we have.
Every time that refrain happened, Billy felt a sigh of relief.
It had been happening less and less these past few days.
The voices followed him everywhere. But they stopped at the entrance of Agnes’ house, and inside was… quiet.
Quiet he barely remembered, except for the short thrum of Tommy’s thoughts waiting for him to tap into, which was a permanent and welcome constant in his life.
When the strange bad people all wearing black and pointing guns came to their home, his palms glowed blue.
That was different.
But also part of his new normal.
“Are we going to train this up, too?” he asked Mom as they all went back home, the bad guys stopped and probably being dealt with by the police. That nice glowing lady looked like she had belonged with the police.
“Tomorrow, maybe,” Mom hugged both him and Tommy at the same time.
Her hands were soft against his shoulders, gripping just a little too tight.
He could hear her thoughts. He wondered if she knew that. If she would try harder to police her own thoughts, if that had been the case.
That night, Mom and Dad tucked them both in, kissed them, told them goodnight, and shut the door behind them carefully.
“Billy,” Tommy hissed at him quietly, so that even Dad’s sensors didn’t pick up on it. “Do you think you’ll be sleeping tonight? We can try and stay up. I’m totally wired from that fight!”
“No,” he said, trying to keep his voice steady. “I think I’m tired. You’re welcome too, though.”
“Nah, it’ll be lame without you.”
“I thought you thought I was lame?” he needed to stop talking, his voice was shaking with tears.
“You still are a little bit. But I guess the blue makes up for it. And it’s not worth trying to stay awake without you. Good night, Billy.”
“Good night, Tommy.”
He didn’t go to sleep. He closed his eyes and wished he did, though. That he would wake back up and the next day they would go on maybe a fishing trip, only for the car to break down, and Dad would try to fly them all to the river one by one and then they’ll find out they need fishing licenses…
Something was strapped to his face. A dull ache ebbed from the side of his head.
Everything was strange, like he was swimming through goop.
Who am I? came his first thought, a weak and shriveled creature fighting to speak, only to be trampled over immediately by loud loud loud noises.
People were dying. People were thinking of other people dying, in terrible, gruesome ways. It soaked into him, muted out any of his own observations, a hoard so massive he wasn’t able to pick out any individual thought.
Who am I?
Whoever he was, beating the thoughts back took only a few minutes more, until he was finally able to breathe, a wall erected between him and them.
The thing strapped to his face was gone. He was left staring at… two people. Hovering across the room from him with nervous smiles.
“Hey, buddy!” the man said, clearly referring to him.
“Hey,” he replied, taking the cue.
“This is where you’d say ‘since when have you ever called me buddy?’,” the man told him.
“Would I?” he asked, because he desperately wanted to know.
The air shifted into pensiveness. He heard them speak, even if he didn’t see their mouths move. Something resentful, something stressed, both at odds with each other.
He didn’t know how he knew this, but in that second he understood that these two were close to him. And that they were fighting.
“Please, don’t fight,” a flash of fear went through him at the very concept.
“We… weren’t?” the woman said, smiling in confusion. He had to make sure her lips were moving when he answered to that.
He tried to keep his breathing steady. Okay, they weren’t fighting. Except they were, and fights with thoughts were even worse-
He was William Kaplan, it turns out. And he wasn’t supposed to be able to hear people’s thoughts.
It was strange, because he felt like he was. He responded to them naturally, and knew how to block them out just as easily too – that part went a bit haywire around people he cared about, but he was getting better.
He was getting better at pretending he was the normal kind of normal, too; playing at getting his memories back slowly, training himself to look at people’s mouths and check that they were moving before he replied, and not tripping over himself when he said the name that was apparently his, but just didn’t feel right.
He got better with the block, and even got a few snatches of total thoughtless silence sometimes. It didn’t sound right. Too empty, somehow, even though that was the goal.
He’d been having trouble sleeping, too. Same issue: it felt too quiet.
He got a white noise machine. It helped a little bit, but not entirely.