Tom's Secret

When Tom was a child, he faced many physical obstacles. His heart and lungs sometimes stopped working, leaving him with a constantly cyanotic appearance. Tom learned to control it by staying hydrated. In some ways, Tom needed water more than anything, because the sudden coldness shocked his system into working again. Swimming also provided the necessary "shock treatment."

As Tom grew older, he was determined to surpass the other children so that they wouldn't suspect the insidious heart defect's existence. As far as Tom was concerned, the problem was only another game to be won, a kind of constant opponent to boost his creativity. That is, until Tom fell out of a tree and broke his neck. The only thing that saved his mobility was a grim determination to get better and a passionate, fiery anger toward weakness and infirmity.

Tom used a self-control unknown to most nine-year-olds to move and recover from the usually fatal predicament. As soon as he could move, Tom then directed his unusual ability to control things toward his lungs. For four long years, Tom forced himself to gain control over the unpredictable time bomb most called the diaphragm. He slowly learned to predict when a cardiopulmonary arrest was about to occur, signaling a vital victory over the handicap Tom refused to accept.

As in all quick fixes, Tom's water solution didn't always work. Sometimes, he'd have to go home and find the life-saving epinephrine. Only a few people knew about Tom's heart, and he refused to wear a medic-alert bracelet, so only Tom knew what to do in the case of an arrest. If he didn't get home in time, he would die. If he took too little or too much, he would die. Tom learned that the hard way.

Tom was a loner. In a way, this was out of necessity. It was mostly pride, but a little bit of necessary precaution. When he was alone, there was no stress to raise his pulse and blood pressure to the point where his heart stopped. But if he was alone, there was no one to help if it happened too far from water or his home. Tom didn't get out of the house much as a result of the dangers.

As Tom enhanced his control, he noticed that he could control other things, also. Things that weren't part of his body. He discovered this one day when he told a cat to lie down, and it did. He then told the cat to sit on the chair, and it did. Tom, his curiosity piqued, told the cat to meow twice, and it did. The sixteen-year-old frowned in thought, suddenly wondering what it was like to be a cat. He called the furry creature over to talk to it, as he was alone that day and wouldn't be judged.

"What's it like, mate? How's life for a cat?" Tom looked into the cat's eyes for comprehension and found none. "He's a cat, Tom. Grow up." As Tom scolded himself, he realized that he really wanted to know what being a cat was like. The strange curiosity would end up confusing one of his friends in high school.

Just for kicks, he imagined himself as a lanky black tomcat, knowing that was what he looked like in real life: tall, skinny, black hair. Tom could identify with the skinny street cats he'd seen around the city, especially downtown. They were outcasts among their own kind, skinny, and usually sick. Yes, Tom could see himself. It was a bit humorous to him that these stunted waifs that no one cared about had become his closest comrades. The connections between the boy and the animal on the porch beside him were very uncanny.

In many ways, Tom was just like a cat. He was aloof, often detached because of his love of thinking, and when Tom was angry, he'd try to run before too much happened for his faulty heart. Tom was cautious and reclusive, also because of the cursed demon in his chest. He was also more primal, listening to his instincts to survive. As a result, he was about as dependant as a young, bold tom. It made sense to Tom.

Tom's fascination with the experiences of others only increased as he matured into a young man, as did his talents for control. He worked at harnessing the full power of his mind, trying to figure out just what made him so able despite his condition. Tom was fast, strong, and smart, and broke every school record except slowest pulse after the mile run. That was a student-run record book, obviously.

Tom's friend Tad, one of the few people he felt like getting to know, had broken that record, that is, until the boy's new girlfriend came to Minneapolis. She surprised everyone, because she skipped three grades. But E'Ann didn't look her age. Tad had skipped one grade, as well. He, E'Ann and Tom had an inside joke going that Tom was jealous, but they all knew he couldn't stand the thought of dating E'Ann.

Tom used every moment of spare time to exercise his mind. What was initially a curiosity about the human brain and the thoughts and memories of others had, quite honestly, become a bit of an obsession with learning. Tom read every book he could find, but didn't like the thought of being a bookworm, so he just checked out books from the library. He also made up impossibly difficult math problems and solved them in his head to improve his mathematical skills. He wrote thesis papers on anything and everything that occurred to him, too.

When he had finished reading the books that could be checked out, Tom started in on the reference books. He read very quickly, and he really was interested in everything to learn, so he finished the reference books within a few months. Still curious, but with nothing to learn, Tom turned to his parents' college textbooks. He also read all of the religious texts, learning six foreign languages in the process.

In the midst of all this, Tom still fought with his heart's tendency to suddenly stop beating. He still had to go to a hospital every six months to keep track of it. He still had the water intake of four purist athletes. He was also still single. Tom's secrecy kept the girls at a safe distance, even though he hated being so lonely. His pride kept it from showing, though.

After Tom had finished reading all educational and theological books in the languages he'd taught himself, he had a pretty clear idea on where the world was in his time frame. He also decided that Christianity had the most truth of all the religions, even Zoroastrianism. Tom had had to learn a dead language to read that, and he also had to convince the museum director to let him have a closer look at their replica of the Zoroastrian text. That was the hardest part of studying the dead religion of Zoroastrianism, because he had figured out how to translate quickly.

Tom's incessant curiosity brought him to the realization that he could do more with his mind than most thought possible. At any given moment, Tom was using almost thirty percent of his brain, three times more than the average human. He tested himself constantly, thinking up math problems and using Socratic Method to figure out the universe. He often wished for something new, some great new discovery to happen so that he could learn about that instead of the same old mathematical principals and theorems that haunted his dreams at night. Tom was getting bored with learning.

So he rested, using his knowledge instead of increasing it. Tom wrote poetry and prose, often about the dark thoughts he'd had almost all his life. He also learned how to play guitar, putting some of his work to music. It was the one thing he really learned for almost a year. The break from learning refreshed his thirst for knowledge, and Tom quickly learned the rest of the instruments to pass time until he could find something new to wrap his mind around for once.

Tom maintained a quiet exterior so that no one would disturb his secretive passion for learning. He was quiet in class and dressed in muted tones, if any color. He would distance himself from socialite kids and preferred to hang with a less accepted crowd, one that enjoyed rocking out and getting stoned. Tom never participated in the latter, but only social rejects heard him laugh and saw him smile. Until E'Ann came.

She somehow managed to get him to open up and display the wry sense of humor he kept hidden. Tom avoided her in order to stay the same as he was, and as a result, he stopped hanging out with his cousin, Amy. It hurt, but he felt it a necessary sacrifice to remain steady in his way of life. The kids he hung out with pressured him to try drugs, but the willful teenager returned with equal pressure on them to quit. So they stopped spending time with him. Tom started to have the dark, depressing thoughts again, and he hated that. He was slipping back into weakness, and he knew it.

Tom's heart was acting up more often, too. The water wasn't lasting long enough, and only he and E'Ann knew why. Tom wouldn't let her help him out, though. He figured that, if he was really doomed to live and die with this curse, he'd just let it be. But Tom knew that wasn't an option if he wanted to overcome every one of his enemies, and that flawed heart of his was the biggest one. Tom's pride started to crumble, further weakening his defenses against a cardiopulmonary arrest, where his heart and lungs froze up. He warmed up a little to E'Ann, talking to her if she decided to walk home with him, and eventually relaxed enough to smile around her.

Having that specific girl for a friend ended up saving Tom's life. E'Ann was very kind, making up for her annoying persistence, and bugged him into letting her help him out a few weeks before graduation. The sudden help proved to be exactly what the doctor would have ordered, had he known who E'Ann was, and knew her lineage.

Tom and E'Ann shared a secret, one that could get E'Ann and her family in a lot of trouble, and Tom knew it well, as he hid the same secret, so he kept it for the girl. She never suspected him to be any more than a strange, secretly talented teen, and Tom intended on keeping it that way, at least, until they were all out of college. He kept the dark secret for almost five years, until his girlfriend teased it out. They had been talking, and it was clear that she wouldn't care about what that secret was, just that she wanted to know a little bit more about the man she was dating.

"That's it?" She had asked after he told her. "Gee whiz, baby, I thought it would be something sinister, the way you always act guilty about it!" Tom had only smiled, extremely amused. His girlfriend was very sweet and incurably curious, similar to E'Ann, only his age, and much more likable to the tall, quiet-loving boy.

After E'Ann helped him, Tom's heart was completely normal. He felt indebted to the girl, and he hated it. E'Ann always tried to blow it off, saying it was "unimportant" and that she was "just helping a friend out." Tom eventually gave up. He figured it wasn't worth lowering his walls to thank her every time he saw her.