lifted back the disheveled sheets and got up quietly, not wanting to wake him or to engage in the awkward conversation she knew would ensue. After slipping on her panties, and while looking around for her jeans, T.K.’s head popped up.
“Hey, where are you going?” His eyes betrayed that he desperately wanted her to stay.
The look only caused her irritation to increase. Why did she have to be like this? So hot before and so cold after.
“Can’t,” she said, offhandedly. She had learned from experience it was better not to drag it out. “Aunt Dora’s probably waiting up for me. Look, it was great and all, but I’ve gotta go.”
“When will I see you again?” he asked, too quickly.
“I dunno. I’m pretty busy what with mid-terms and working at the Blue Flame…” She knew how lame it sounded. She never had been any good at pretending.
T.K.’s look hardened. “Okay. I get it. The earth didn’t move for you. Sure had me fooled for a while there, though.”
“It’s not that.” She caught the annoyance in her tone and softened a bit. “It was great, actually. I just don’t—”
“Don’t what?”
“Nothing.” She couldn’t bring herself to finish the sentence. I just don’t feel anything for you, was what she had been about to say. She wanted nothing more to do with him. She pulled up her jeans and, under his scrutiny, collected her bra, hooked it up in the back and slipped her cotton t-shirt over her head. Stepping into her sandals, she hurried out the front door of his apartment without a backward glance, leaving T.K. to wonder what he had done wrong.
The red numbers on the digital clock displayed on the office building across the street told her it was nearly four in the morning as she exited the air-conditioned lobby of T.K.’s apartment and stepped into the steamy, sultry night. Home was fifteen minutes away, and despite the lateness of the hour and Aunt Dora’s constant lectures on not to walk the streets late at night, she decided to do just that, and headed south on Willow. The air was thick and still, and so laden with moisture that halos formed around the street lamps. Jasmine enjoyed the sweltering heat almost as much as most people found it oppressive. The sauna-like humidity never caused her to perspire or wilt. Like an exotic flower, she seemed to thrive on it.
She passed a coffee shop still open for business and stopped to buy a large cup of Columbian, black. She’d had too much to drink before going home with T.K. and didn’t want any grief from her aunt on the off-chance she might be waiting up for her. Back outside, stopped at an intersection waiting for the light to change, she rummaged through her purse for her cigarettes, brought one to her lips to light it, then jumped when a man’s voice spoke close by her ear. She hadn’t noticed anyone nearby.
“Looking for company?”
She turned and came face-to-face with a man in his late twenties, dressed in jeans and t-shirt with cut-off sleeves, a look no doubt designed to show off the musculature of his biceps which, admittedly, was impressive. His dark hair was cropped short and gelled, giving him a tough, dangerous look. He looked her up and down with wolf’s eyes.
Jasmine said nothing for a moment as she studied him, sizing him up. Her appetite for sex was large, and she found the prospect of taking him up on his offer tempting, but something about the rapacious gleam in his eye caused her to reconsider. She narrowed her jade eyes down to slits and she stared back hard at him. Forget it, asshole, you don’t want to do this. Walk away while you still can.
The man’s head jerked back in surprise. His expression quickly changed from salaciousness to one of confusion. She had not spoken a word.
The light changed to green and Jasmine continued to stare at him. That’s right. It’s all downhill from here, buddy. Walk away.
The man turned from her and hurried in the opposite direction as if he’d seen a ghost, looking back over his shoulder at her before picking up his pace. Jasmine crossed at the light and continued on her way home.
She was used to it. What had just happened had happened countless times before. She had come to think of her particular ability as “pressing”. Some were more susceptible to it than others, but it was something she had always been able to do, pressing her thoughts on people. She tried not to take advantage of the talent, generally preferring to play fair, but she had to admit, it came in pretty handy sometimes.
Once, when she was nine, she had tried explaining it to Aunt Dora, but her aunt had not believed her. And when she first confided in her best friend, Carla had looked at her like she was a couple of cards short of a full deck.
“Prove it,” Carla had demanded. When Jasmine pressed a thought on her, Carla had stared back at her in amazement.
“That’s freaky,” she declared. “Can you do it all the time?”
“Yes. But I don’t like to. Especially with grown-ups.”
After that, she had experimented with her ability on one of her teachers, with disastrous results. Miss Richter had insisted she be transferred to another class, telling the principal there was something “off about the girl”. Jasmine, hurt and angry after she’d heard some of the kids talking about it at recess, had cried herself to sleep that night. The very next day, Miss Richter was permanently injured in a car accident and never came back. That was the other thing about Jasmine, the thing that convinced her she was, indeed, a freak. Bad things happened to people who crossed her.
All she wanted was to be like everyone else, to fit in. But she didn’t, and she never would. Especially after what she’d come to think of as the incident. What had happened when she turned sixteen had cemented her suspicion that there was something inherently wrong with her.
Getting used to high school had been difficult enough, and the first two years without Carla, whose parents had sent her to a private school, had been hell. The boys pursued her relentlessly and, as a result, the girls despised her. In the cafeteria, she always sat alone, her previous attempts to sit with other groups of girls having been met with icy stares and silence. Except for the snickering afterward when she walked away.
The real trouble started with her first sexual encounter, a boy named Brendon Walker. A sad smile touched her lips as she remembered the heady sensation of that first experience with what would soon become an addiction. The first time with Brendon had awakened a latent and powerful emotion in her. She remembered how the act itself had felt sacred to her, an awakening that had affected her profoundly. After that first time, Jasmine sought out sex at every opportunity, for she discovered it was the only time she felt truly in her element. She craved it the way most people craved salt on their food; she needed it as much as the air she breathed.
Brendon had been a willing participant in her search for sexual ecstasy. Unfortunately for Jasmine, having been shunned by the girls in school, she had no way of knowing that spiteful Sharon McGillivray, who was one tough cookie and ringleader extraordinaire, considered Brendon to be her property. The day came when, returning home late from school one afternoon, Jasmine found Aunt Dora on her knees, scrubbing away at the sidewalk in front of the house they shared. Even the solvent and scrub brush Aunt Dora was using had not managed to completely erase the words whore and slut painted in large red letters on the walkway.
One look at the dismal expression on Aunt Dora’s face had been enough. Something snapped in Jasmine. A kind of slow burn began inside her, something that grew and grew, until it became too huge to contain. Frightened by what was happening,
