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The chill of the January air doesn't bother her, but the fact that no one should see her and he always does lodges in her head.  They walk in silence.

It takes several blocks of walking, of focusing on the mechanics of walking, of not meeting anyone's eyes or looking into anyone's house or car, until what Sylvia feels is something less like that fury that is a thing unto itself and more like anger the way she used to know it:  seething and personal.  Private.  And once she feels she can contain it, she lets go just a bit and feels the crisp air numbing her cheeks, kissing away the heat of her scalp.  That's the weather, but the clarity, the balance, the calm--that comes from those cathedral windows.

She takes a shot at articulation.  "It sucks.  She sucks.  She's stupid.  And she's wrong.  About everything.  What a fucking cunt."  The words just fall out of her mouth now that they're far from school where she has to keep up the pretense of not having been raised to talk like Carolyn.

Logan remains silent.  He nods to acknowledge what she's said, but offers no opinions.  He has not data, no frame of reference, and therefore shouldn't have one.  He points to a truck selling food to construction workers and guides her over.  He leaves her a few feet shy and secures two cups of hot chocolate.  "Still too hot to drink.  It's just for holding now."  he says and they begin to walk again.  Him falling back into silence.

She holds the chocolate and finds that, the longer she walks with Logan beside her, the more the icy glitter of his mind makes the events of the afternoon seem distant and clear.  She tries again in a few minutes.  "It doesn't matter, I guess.  She has issues.  I knew that.  And she doesn't just have issues.  She wants you to have them, too.

"See, that's the thing.  I wasn't even looking in her head.  I didn't want to know.  And once I knew, I wasn't going to say anything.  But obviously I was reading her mind, right?  'Cause her mind is the most interesting thing on the planet, and I don't have anything better to do with my life than pick through her Telemundo trauma."  Sylvia is from California, after all.  "And for fuck's sake, after that it's like she's trying to pick a fight because that's the only way she knows how to deal with what's happened to her--externalize it all.  Make me the bad guy because all psychics are out to get her.

"Fuck," Sylvia says.  Then, more loudly, "Fuck.  Like I asked for any of this bullshit."

Once the chocolate has cooled to a safe level Logan utters only "It's safe to drink now."  And then demonstrates this truth by taking a drink of his.  He continues to listen, and they continue to walk, coming in what Sylvia discovers to be a full circle and passing the school.  "Bell is about to ring.  Or we can keep going."  he offers.

Sylvia stares at the school grounds, so innocuous from the outside and so treacherous inside.  "No.  You go on."  She shakes her head.  "I've had enough for today.  I'm going to--"  She doesn't know.  She can't go home without lying to Mitzi and Carolyn.  "I'm going to get some exercise."  She's going to Jack's.

"Thanks," she says in earnest, wanting to tell him that he's like an empathic heat sink, but she's not sure he'd understand.  "You helped.  You helped me.  Thank you."

"It was the chocolate.  It helps."  he says, and turns to go back.

It's later in the afternoon when Sylvia texts Donnie from Jack's.  She let herself in.  She changed into her workout gear.  She stretched methodically before slamming kicks into the long-suffering punching bag.

Now she feels better.  Numbed out.  Chilled out.  That's what Logan does for her, she realizes.  He has a way of reconnecting her to her own objectivity.

Are you okay?  Sorry.  Had to go.  Bad things would've happened.

Jack gave Sylvia plenty of room.  It wasn't until she was done with venting her emotions on the punching bag that he came in.  "Wanna watch a movie with me?  No color, but there will be singing.  I can make popcorn."

Sylvia sits on the vintage oak benches that line the basement gym, mopping sweat off her brow with an old pink towel.  She looks at Jack for a long moment with total incomprehension, head abuzz with the pure, meaty, demanding thrum of oxygen-starved muscles.  She seizes on the last word.  "Popcorn?"  What did she get?  Maybe two, three bites of her sandwich and one of Rhys's picks slices before the shit hit the fan?  "Yeah.  That sounds great."

She hauls herself off the bench and wobbles toward him, quadriceps molten with exertion.

For all the pretense that the modern world might baffle Jack, he's lived through it not been dropped into it from the past.  He runs the microwave like a champ.  Has no trouble getting ice out of the door of the fridge.  And in a few minutes they have glasses of soda and hot popcorn and are seated on the couch.  The entertainment center is a state of the art masterpiece of modern technology, if it weren't for the remote being as advanced no one could watch it.  In a minute though Jack has the movie queued up and going.

He promised singing, and Sylvia was expecting some sappy, over-the-top, unfunny comedy replete with tap-dancing little girls and lines of show girls.  But when the singing finally comes, it's a sad song crooned out by a dewy-eyed woman on a smoky stage.  The soft-focus headshot makes Sylvia feel like she's looking through the bottom of a bottle at the dregs of time.  The soulful longing on the woman's face brings someone else to mind.  "So are you dating the vampire?"

"No.  Unless they've changed the definition of dating again.  We went to see a movie and then we ice skated.  She bought dinner and I paid for ice cream."

Sylvia is fourteen years old.  Holding hands is dating.  "So how was it?  Were there sparks?"

"No.  But it was fun to be out with a girl that's older than I am and still looks younger than I do."

"Shucks," Sylvia says, eyes still on the television as she wipes salt and butter on her tee-shirt sleeve.  "I thought I caught a vibe.  Maybe you should give it another shot.  Sometimes old batteries corrode, and it takes a little work to get a charge."

Sylvia's phone chimes as a text message comes through.

U ok? Sarah thrw me 1 mile int air. She crzy. Whr r u? Cn I call?

Sylvia tries to observe phone etiquette to the limit of her generation.  She gets up, phone in hand, and wanders to another room to call Donnie back.  "Hi."  As physically and emotionally worn out as she is, she tries to sound smiley, for him.  "Did I miss anything between lunch and your going airborn?"

"I've been worried. Where are you? Are you okay? No, Sarah decided to scare the bejezzus out of me to get me out of my kill kill kill mindset. Being bzorted 1 mile in the air can do that for a person. And she kept doing it. I couldn't get away. PLease remind me never to piss Sarah off. Ever. I couldn't find you so I went to class and Sarah and I skiped the the next one to go, um falling I guess. Althea says she misses you. Again. I think she's gonna buck me off one of these days if you don't go flying with her soon.  Donnie is babbling, and Sylvia can almost her the audible click of his mind snapping shut the stream of words. After a moment, he says "Are you okay? Do you want me to come to you or do you want to stay off the radar for a bit?"

"I'm just hanging at Jack's," she says.  "We're watching some movie about a dame and a . . . whatever a boy dame is.  Someone steals something from somebody, and the dame and not-dame fall in love and shoot at ugly guys in sharp suits.  And there's singing.

"I asked Jack what film noir was, and he said that, once upon a time, people were so bummed out that watching other people lead terrible lives made them feel less bummed.  How twisted is that?"

"I heard of it, but never been that interested. There's several RPGs out there that are Noir in style. I watched the Maltese Falcon with my mom once. Bogie calling everyone sweetheart and everyone was betraying everyone else."

He gives Sarah a thumbs up and mouths At Jack's.

"It's kind of nice," she says.  "I kind of get it.  It's about, I dunno, struggling against the darkness.  Sticking to your guns even when everything sucks.

"So I take it you didn't kill anybody.  Or if you did, Sarah hid the body?"

"Nope. I left just after you did. I'm sure everyone patted Alicia on the head and said that Donnie was a just big meanie. Sarah went all Colin on me and calmed me down, although Colin doesn't throw people thousands of feet off the ground."

Donnie is quiet for a moment, and Sylvia is sure he was pondering if he should ask questions. In the end, he leaves it up to her. "You want to talk about it, or leave it alone for now?"

Sylvia doesn't so much sigh as inhale and exhale with precocious deliberation.  "I'm not sure what there is to talk about."  She takes a shot at what's most important to her.  "Are you okay?"

"Yeah. I'm still mad, but you are okay and no one else got hurt. Psychocat will be on parole though. If she does something like this again, I'm calling the cops."

He pauses.

"Maybe they can find a nice little padded cell with a large litterbox."

Sylvia laughs a little about that, then sobers.  "I can't be around her if she's going to keep digging into me.  I don't want to hurt anybody."

"Perhaps Sarah and Colin will convince her to keep her muzzle shut. I think we can all continue to be together if just ignore each other like proper teenagers having a fight. If she gets, um catty, I will ask Colin to talk to her. Sorry, I'm a bit punchy after Sarah's exercise in mortality for me. The puns just keep coming."

"She makes it too easy.  Watch out, though.  Keep it up, and you'll sound like one of those old-school spandex-wearing guys.  Like, 'Ha ha, is that all you've got, pussy?  Why don't you sink your claws into this?'"

"What's the matter, chum? Cat got your tongue? Justice doesn't taste as good as kibble, eh furball?"

Sylvia giggles, thinking about that four-color world in which the good guys always win.

"Sometimes I wish it were that easy," she says after a moment.  "I wish it were all about the spandex and the super-secret base.  I wish I had a magic lasso to make people tell the truth and an invisible jet so I could fly.  I want to be part of the Justice League.  I want Superman watching my back.  I want to be so kick-ass that, when I krav someone, the screen just shows a big explosion with the word, 'Pow!' in it.

"Is that what we are?  Is that what we're supposed to be?  Will it ever be that way?"

Donnie is silent for a moment. "Dahhhling, I would look terrible in spandex. You however, would look spectacular." He laughs. "I don't think the real world works that way. They never had to worry about the things we do. Perhaps you are a foreign princess born on a hidden island full of omen. You don't know your birthparents, so it's possible. As far as our futuire, I don't know. Right now I have to worry about an English paper, mending broken fences, and wondering if John will ever hesitate when I need defending from a sneak attack. I don't want to get PK'd because he remembers at a crux moment that I told him to go to hell."

"John's not like that," Sylvia says, as certain as if it were fact.  "Is he the one whose fence needs mending?"

"If you say so. No; I was talking about Sammy. I think John will get over it if I make nice-nice with Sammy, considering he's all in love-but-never-admit-to-it. I just hate that I can never say the right thing, and always screw it up when I'm trying to be nice. Maybe if you are with me when I talk to her. That way you can make sure my boy parts remain in the jar, because I'm such a beastly cave-man who can't control his urges."

"John has a thing for Sammy?  Where'd you hear that?  You're not thinking because of the love-goo kiss, are you?"

"He totally does. He just hides it well. I bet if you did a deep head scan, you'd find it." *smirk*

"If every brain were a book and the world were a library for mind readers, John would be a Dick and Jane story.  He pretty much reads himself to you."

"Which is why he is desperately trying to hide is secret crush on Sammy. Listen, they shared a kiss and nothing else, but that lodged something in his head. Alternaslut Sammy called him for a reason. She knew there was something there. He got all mad-dog defensive when asked about her after psycho-kitty went postal, remember?

Our John is too good of a person to ever come out about it, especially since Sammy already is balancing two boys on her dance ticket."

Sylvia presses her lips together.  She has little to say about Sammy's love life that should be said, so she changes the subject.  "She said I was acting like Torrance.  That was pretty. . . .

"Nobody really gets. . . .

"I was unhappy about that.  I still am."  Sylvia spins in place and lands a sweet kick square on the punching bag's flank.  It wheezes dust.

"Yeah, that was out of line. She should apologize for that. She did throw herself in front of you to keep crazy Alicia from getting to you though."

"I do appreciate that.  It's just, I dunno.  Is it always going to be this way?  Am I always going to be the bad guy?  Is that what telepaths are?"

"People are scared of telepaths. Usually, our thoughts are the only safe and sacred spot. Our innermost ideas, thoughts, urges. People feel laid bare when thier normally most private feelings are accessable.

I got used to it, but others never will."

"Sometimes I wish I'd asked him to turn it off, the way he did for Torrance, but then I think about how helpless I'd feel, what it would be like not to have the power to do anything."  She thinks it over, and her vivid imagination lifts her mood from resignation to contemplation.  "I'd be Lois Lane, nosy reporter.  I'd get kidnapped a lot.  You'd have to come and save me, and I could wear high heels instead of gym shoes.  That wouldn't be so bad."

"Mmmm high heels. The last time you wore high heels was at the dance. You are already half an inch taller than me. With those heels it looked like you were escorting me to the dance." Donnie laughs.
"I don't think any of us could ever really return to life as normal kids. We've all had more than a taste of the fantastic, and if we all lost our powers, we'd still be getting into trouble and solving crimes. We'd be the Scooby Gang. Ruh-Roh Rylvia! Look, Scoob! The monster was really the Head Cheerleader, Miss Hoer Shinyteeth! Ohhh I would have succeeded if it weren't for you meddling freshmen!"

Sylvia laughs.  "You might be right, but I sometimes think that, if we weren't paranormals, someone else would have come and helped us out by now--and not just by telling us over the phone that it's all going to be okay but by actually coming here and weeding out the miscreants.  I mean, I'm sure every hero out there has something better to do, big crimes to solve and serious villains to imprison, but who lets stuff like this happen to kids like us?"

"Balance, I think. Didn't the super-teens of the previous generation deal ith this too? Wierd crimes and they ere just there to take care of things? The orld works mysteriously. All I can say. Want me to come over to Jacks? It's been a week and a half since I let him kick the stuffing out of me. He's going to be annoyed I haven't jogged in two weeks. I can walk you home afterwards."

"Yeah," she says, brightening.  "You and me, a pair of bokken."  She puts on a melodramatic lilt.  "You will bow to the might of the Dragon Lady, Border Lord!"

"As long as she lets my boy parts out of the jar occassionally, I will. It's a match!" Donnie clicks off and turns himself invisible before exiting the computer room and skipping the rest of the day's classes.