She's Behind The Mask

Chapter 2 - Voices

"Hearing is listening to what is said. Listening is hearing what isn't said"
-Simon Sinek

I feel like I'm floating as I wake up, it's like when you're so happy that you feel like your floating. But when I open my eyes I scream as I realise the ceiling is just inches away from my face and my bed is meters below me. What the heck is going on?

I start to panic and fall straight back to my bed. My back hits the bed and I wheeze as the air is blown out of me. My heart starts pounding as I wonder how I got 3 meters in the air without even realising.

I eliminate the fact that it could be a dream as my wheezing continues. I try to take deep breaths and clear my mind to calm down. After my breathing becomes close to normal I decide that I'll figure out what happened later and try to focus on something else for the moment, knowing maybe it was all in my imagination.

I walk over to my bathroom and start having a shower, hoping that it will somehow make me forget what happened a moment ago. I pause for a moment while washing and think about school and my life, like everybody does in the shower... right? When I was just about to reach out and grab the shampoo it suddenly started levitating and slowly came towards me. My eyes go wide, like in cartoons, and I almost stop breathing. I'm not sure how long I was standing there just staring at the floating shampoo bottle in front of me but I know it was quite a while.

My statue-like state is disrupted when my mum calls out asking why I am taking so long, then says bye and that she is going off to work. The shampoo bottle falls to ground with a loud thump. I quickly pick it up, shouting bye to my mum, and put it back on the shelf. Seeing as these weird things are happening to me, why not try to understand them instead of ignoring the fact that I woke up floating. I look at the bottle, and think of wanting to hold it and for it to come to me. It does nothing.

How do I always use my powers without thinking but when I actually try it never works. "Maybe if I just don't think...", I whispered to myself. So I didn't. I just look at the bottle and slowly it starts floating towards me. I catch it and remind myself to practice later when I get home. I smile at the bottle and finish my shower. Why not just figure out what I can do and see where it takes me, there's no harm in that.

My walk to school is uneventful as usual but I notices something as soon as I get to school. The usual buzz of talking is not just loud, it is like I am in a football stadium, and there was too many voices for the amount of people talking.

I get to my locker and see Heather walking towards me. "Oh, Kaylee is here earlier than me for once". I furrow my eyebrows in confusion as I hear Heather's voice, but her mouth never opened.

"Hey Kaylee, what's wrong", Heather says when she gets to me, noticing my confused expression.

"Oh it's nothing don't worry", I smile reassuringly, trying to look normal. People were walking past us and I can hear so many voices but I can't tell where half of them are coming from.

It suddenly dawns on me and I mentally face palm myself for not realising what is happening sooner. If I can hear people's thoughts, how do I stop myself from hearing them then?

I close my eyes and try to concentrate and make the thoughts go away. "What's wrong with her? Why is she closing her eyes? Is she sleeping?" I look up at Heather, her confused face looking down on me. It isn't working, how am I meant to make it stop.

My heart starts pounding in my chest for the fourth time today, there are so many voices and I don't know how to make it stop. Its all so overwhelming and I start to panic, what if it's going to be loud like this for the rest of my life, what if I can never get the voices to stop?

Tears prick my eyes as I start panicking more. I look around the hallway at all the people, hearing all their thoughts loud and clear like they are being played through a microphone.

"Ugh, I forgot my pencil case"

"Oh my god, Brandon is down the hallway, does my hair look good?"

"I need to shower tonight"

"Where did that piece of gum go?"

"I wish I had a dog"

"What if someone here could read my mind?"

"What's wrong with Kaylee?"

I draw my attention back to Heather as she looks at me, worried. I start sobbing, how do I make it stop? She looks shocked and pulls me into a hug.

"Oh my gosh Kaylee what's wrong are you ok?", she says and I can hear the confusion and worry laced in her voice. I just continue to sob, not knowing what to do.

After my crying session in the hallway we head to class. Heather doesn't ask what was wrong again, she can tell I don't want to talk about it. My new found ability to read people's minds made it hard for me to concentrate and I hardly learned anything in any classes.

There is an advantage of being able to read people's minds. I can entertain myself when I'm bored in class. Today in English I overheard one of the boys in my class thinking about how he had set up a prank for the teacher, it sounded kind of childish to me but I waited to see if it would work.

Mr Popwell was not a very interesting teacher in my opinion. He was supposed to teach English but always ended up going on a rant about politics or his family issues. He also could get very mad, so mad that last term a total of 15 people got detentions from him.

Mr Popwell got to class and went over to the white board and tried to pick up a pen. Note I used the word tried. The boy, who I still had yet to learn the name of, had glued all the pens for the whiteboard to the holder, making it impossible to use them. Mr Popwell was angry and glared at the class, demanding to know who had done it.

After no success on finding the culprit he went over to his desk to find more pens from his drawers. The problem was that the boy had glued all the drawers shut as well.

The whole class had soon begun laughing, making the teacher get even more annoyed and frustrated. "I don't know who did this", he began, "but if you all continue laughing I will give you all detention!", he finished. The class shut up and he sighed.

Anyway that was the only eventful thing that day along with finding out who basically everyone in each of my classes has a crush on. Until during lunch.

That's when the voices stopped.