Quarter City

Chapter 10: Amber Van Mueller

When she was ten, Amber Van Mueller’s father went missing.  No one knew where he went, or why he left, or what could take him away from his pregnant wife and beloved daughter.  This was the day after Amber received a spanking for lying about breaking the table lamp.

When she was twelve, Amber’s stepfather was found face down in a creek, with no apparent trauma to any part of his body.  This was two days after he was released from jail for assaulting Amber’s mother.

When she was twenty, Amber’s college boyfriend was found in the boiler room in Marsden Hall, naked and dead, laying beside a young woman, also naked, also dead.  Both were choked to death.  The campus rumor was they were engaging in asphyxiation-aided intercourse at the time, they were known to have done so before.

When she was twenty-three, Amber’s Great Aunt Clara died of unknown causes at the age of eighty-one.  Amber inherited her house and her aunt’s savings. 

When she was twenty-four, Amber’s 14 year old brother, Steven, had a brain aneurysm which killed him instantly.  A coroner’s inquest discovered a mysterious tumor on Steven’s frontal lobe. 

Two days before, Steven had told Amber that he could hear her secrets in his head.

Later that year, Amber died herself, though nobody knew until much, much later.

It was following her twenty-first birthday that Amber discovered she had special abilities, things she could do with her mind that others couldn't.  She could suggest things to people, and they would do it.  She didn’t even have to talk to them, she could just will it, just think about what they should do, and they would do it.  It took her those twenty-one years to realize she had a psychic enhancement, but her life began to make sense to her once she did.  

She could remember wishing her daddy would go away while he paddled her bottom…  just wishing he’d stop and go away.  He did.  He put her on the ground, her pants around her knees, her bottom sore.  She watched him get up off his chair and walk out the front door. 

When he didn’t return days later, Amber cried.  She cried for a week, before telling herself to stop crying, before telling herself to forget why he left.   And she did stop crying.  And she did forget for over ten years.

She also remembered two years later wishing her new step-dad would go drown himself in the creek as he hit her mother in front of her.  She didn’t know that he had actually done just that, he just disappeared the next day.  She didn’t care why, she was just happy he was gone.

She remembered her last year in college.  She remembered Nick, her boyfriend of four months, telling her that if she didn’t put out that he would get it somewhere else.  She didn’t think he actually would.  Days later, Nick would brag to the hockey team about the wild night he spent with Trish Larson.  He would brag about how, to increase their pleasure, he would stick a pillow over Trish’s face, and how she’d wrap a scarf around his neck.  He would brag about how intense it was and how big his orgasm felt.  His bragging left the locker room, spread to all the hockey players’ girlfriends and wound up reaching Amber.  Humiliated and hurt, she wished the next time they’d actually choke to death. 

It was the day before her twenty-first birthday, she found out that was exactly what they had done, in Marsden Hall’s boiler room.  It was then that Amber Van Mueller realized what she could do.  And during that week she began to realize what she had done. 

She was surprised she hadn’t noticed it before, and she was happy that no one else had either.

For an entire month, Amber would suggest things for people to do.  She would suggest a cop pull over the tailgater behind her, and one did.  She would suggest the bodega clerk knock three cents off the price of Golden Delicious apples, and she did.  She would suggest the doctor not bill her for her exam, and he didn’t.  She would suggest to the homeless man on the street corner he dance a jig, and he did.