Leatherbound Lives

Chapter One

I spent less than a moment rubbing my forehead, now determined. I backed up to the center of my room, and tried again, thinking harder this time. This attempt yielded the same result. Frustrated, I found a roll of duct tape in my desk drawer, taped my pillow to the wall, and positioned myself in front of it. I pressed my fingers to my temples, and tried again, and again, and again, each time getting a faceful of sweaty pillowcase.

After nearly an hour of this, I knew I needed to change tactics. Rather than imagining myself standing in the kitchen in the third person, I pictured the kitchen from a first person point of view.

This new technique made a difference. I ended up on the back staircase, very near the kitchen, which meant I had teleported past several walls without incident. "Okay," I said aloud to the empty house. "So I'm teleporting in a somewhat controlled manner now. Not just spastically flying into walls. That's a good sign, right?" The house did not answer.

Excited, I ran back up to my bedroom. I took my time, visualizing the kitchen in its current state in as much detail as my overheated mind could manage. I focused on recalling what types of magnets were on the refrigerator, and what was hanging from them - last quarter's report card, my parents' work phone numbers, a menu for delivery pizza. I thought of the order the mugs were lined up in next to the coffee maker, and if the coffee pot was there or not. Finally, when I had thoroughly completed my mental image, I thought, not in words, but in a feeling, that I wanted to be in that kitchen, seeing that exact scene.

And I made it so.

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Over the coming weeks, I told no one of my newfound abilities. I continued to practice teleporting only in the few hours after school that I had the house to myself. I walked laps around the house, memorizing every detail I could, wishing I had a more photographic memory. I teleported from different areas of the house. Slowly, I got better at visualizing each room, and quicker at it, too. I tried talking while I teleported, and dancing while I teleported. I taught myself how to chain-teleport. I would go from my bedroom, to my kitchen, to the bathroom, to the livingroom, to the guest bedroom, and back to my bedroom again in less than thirty seconds. I took objects with me. I wished to test if I could take people with me. One time, I tried teleporting while sitting on my bed, and when I opened my eyes, my bed was with me in the bathroom. I learned the hard way that it was much easier to teleport large objects away from their original place than it was to teleport them back.

I became more observant of my surroundings. It was a kind of game I played in school when the teacher was going over something I already understood. I'd memorize as much of the room as possible - what sort of odd knick-knacks were on the teacher's desk and how they were arranged, what homework was written on the board, and so on. Always thinking in images, never in words. Instead of saying to myself, "There's a blue pencil sharpener on Mrs. Hall's desk," I would think about what the object looked like, and what the room it was in looked like, and where that room was in relation to the other rooms in the school.

I was never late for classes anymore, because I could teleport from one class to my locker to the next without anyone really noticing my abilities. It seemed every time I would appear in a classroom, the teacher would be looking down, either fiddling with something on their desk, or on their computer. They would notice me and say, "Oh. You got here pretty fast, Lynn."

Being able to teleport also allowed me to get back at kids who annoyed the crap out of me. Kaleb Reese, who sits behind me in Social Studies, loves to kick at my desk all period long. So every once in a while, I'd pick just the right moment, when Mrs. Carter wasn't looking, to teleport to an old janitor's closet that was rarely used, and return back to my seat in the span of a few seconds.