The Enlightened (Mind Dimensions #3)(46)

We know we’re lying. We are extremely buzzed. But so are our * partners.

“Fine,” Kyle says stubbornly. “You go, but I’ll be right behind you. It’s a free country.”

“Whatever,” we concede with annoyance. “Let’s just get this over with.”

The walk is oddly silent. We can’t help but notice how tipsy Kyle’s walk is. Who needs to walk whom home? we think but don’t say it out loud. We’re not in the mood to start an argument.

“This is me,” we say when we get to our door. “Thanks for the walk.”

“No problem,” he says. “Can I come in?”

“Sure,” we say.

When Kyle walks in, we stare at him expectantly. “The bathroom is down the hall.”

“That’s not why I asked to come in,” he says. “I wanted to be alone with you for a second. I wanted to talk.”

Shit. Not this. Our heart sinks. We were dreading this day. We’re no expert when it comes to men, but the looks Kyle has given us in the past always seemed odd—longing and lustful.

“I love you, Lucy,” Kyle says, his speech slurred. “It’s not the drink talking. I f*cking love you.”

We take a deep breath and organize our drunken thoughts.

“I’m sorry, Kyle,” we begin. We don’t want to break our best friend’s heart, but he hasn’t given us much of a choice. “It’s not you. It’s me. I don’t like men that way...”

His expression is hard to understand. “You’re just going through a phase,” he says softly. “Women belong with men.”

“I don’t think so,” we say more forcefully. Kyle can be such a bigot sometimes. It drives us crazy. “Besides, even if I wanted dick, what makes you think I’d go for yours?” That’s definitely the liquor talking, and we instantly regret the words.

Then there’s a Pusher presence in our mind.

You love me, the instructions tell us. You want me just as much as I want you...

I, Darren, disassociate in horror, but not before I see a glimpse of Lucy meekly following Kyle into the bedroom, murmuring sweet nothings to him.

Dizzy with dread, I jump ahead a couple of months in Lucy’s memories.

“I’m sick again,” we tell Kyle over the siren. “Nauseous for the third morning in a row.”

Kyle stops the car.

“What are you doing? They’re getting away,” we say.

A Pusher presence enters our mind.

Forget the pursuit. We’re taking a trip to the doctor’s.

I, Darren, follow the rest of this thread, completely stunned.

“How can this be? How can I be pregnant?” we ask in a brief moment of clarity from the Pusher’s influence.

The Pusher presence re-enters our mind. Forget the test results for now. You’re just having a rare condition called pseudocyesis—a false pregnancy.

I, Darren, can’t watch in detail—it’s just too crazy—so I skim Lucy’s memories, trying my best not to go too deep into the turbulent emotions of her pregnancy. When she begins showing, Kyle Pushes her to take a six-month vacation. Everyone at the department thinks she’s visiting China. But in reality, she spends those months in a dingy apartment Kyle rented for her in Queens. He messes with her mind at regular intervals. The whole horrid affair culminates in a birth. Then he Pushes her to give up the baby. The agony Lucy feels, even despite the Push, is terrifying. It’s so deep that, though I’m skimming, the intensity of it hits me like a physical punch.

Then, even after Kyle makes her forget the whole thing, she intuitively knows something is wrong with the world. Something is missing. This might be what led her to be so obsessive-compulsive sometimes, in her work and at home. Maybe she’s looking for that something that’s on the tip of her awareness—a splinter in her mind.

I fast-forward through more of her memories. Two weeks later, she almost remembers the birth, but not before Kyle Pushes her to forget everything all over again. And then he repeats the mind wipe fourteen days later.

This tells me that Kyle’s Reach must be about two weeks. After that, it wears off, and Lucy starts remembering the events concerning her baby.

Something else clicks for me. This is why he’s been hanging around Lucy all these years. He was making her forget. It had nothing to do with him providing me with a male role model.

I wonder why he didn’t kill her back then. Maybe he did love her, in his own loathsome way. His infatuation with her must’ve faded with time, though, because it didn’t stop him from trying to kill her today. In a similar vein, I wonder why he hadn’t Pushed her to get an abortion. And then I remember all the fights we had on this very subject. Of course. Kyle is Mr. Pro-Life all the way, even when it came to the product of his own rape.

This was the baby he allowed her to remember before she attempted to kill herself. But he said he’d allow her to remember something about Mark too.

With a heavy heart, I seek another memory. I already have an idea of what I’ll find, but I have to see it. Otherwise, I won’t believe it’s true.

We’re walking up to Mark’s house. We don’t recall the drive over. Strange how these things sometimes happen—you drive someplace but do so almost by instinct.

Mark opens the door.