Age 7
Nobody has ever been able to hit Nicholas O’Halloran with a dodge ball.
He’s just uncanny that way, the gym teacher thought as the kid darted left and right, diagonally or horizontally or whichever way he had to go to steer completely clear of the flying balls. He’d seen enough kids go by to know true athletic talent when he saw it, and Nicholas had no true athletic talent. He was just psychic. He reminded the teacher of no one quite as much as Spider-Man. Nicholas had a spider sense.
Age 12
They don’t help Nicholas take tests.
The voices are good for telling you what’s coming a second from now, but a day from now? The voices can’t pop into the far future, look at your score, and then return to tell you that the answer should be B, not A. So Nicholas does have to study.
Age 17
Nicholas is with a girl in the back seat of his car going half out of his mind with how bad he wants her and just as he’s about to lift up her skirt the voice says “she’ll slap you.”
Nicholas doesn’t care. He does it anyway and gets slapped. It feels great. He thinks about slapping her back.
The voice says “She’ll stop fighting.”
Nicholas likes that prospect.
Two weeks later he knows when she’s about to call and takes the phone off the hook. He knows when she’s coming around the corner and disappears. He pretends not to hear what the school is whispering about where she’s going to have to go if she wants to stay in school.
Age 22
Nicholas is in love.
This girl didn’t need to get slapped, she likes him, she likes how easy he makes it and how well he knows just what will make her coo and scream, and she still manages to surprise him from time to time. Her name is Bree and she has dyed her hair black and has a nose stud and Nicholas adores her, wants to make her happy forever and ever.
But now there’s a second voice, and it’s contradicting the first. It’s the voice of two seconds later, and that’s not the same as one second later. And now for the first time there is a choice he has to make. Which voice should he listen to? The one that says take what he wants? The one that says ask for it? The one that says run away and the one that says stand up for yourself?
Nicholas has never had to make these choices before. Everyone else around him has had a lifetime of decision-making to lean on. He doesn’t. He’s never gone past the two-year-old stage of decision-making. He hasn’t had to. He’s had the voice.
She’s leaving him now. And now there’s a third voice.
Age 25
He’s lost in New York (Wall Street, Broadway, Stay where you are) and while he’s able to make money (click now, sell, buy, go, do it) and eat food (chocolate, turkey, salmon, takeout, cook, eat out), and in general survive (go clubbing, go for a walk, stay in, kill somebody just to see what it’d be like), he’s not happy (kill yourself, cry, scream, be quiet, disappear). He thinks he might need (nothing, a fuck, a bite to eat) some professional help.
He thumbs through the yellow pages and waits until all the voices say “yes” before he calls. John Van Dorn is the name. He makes an appointment and hangs up, then goes to bed and hides from his head.
Age 26
There’s a girl with grey eyes in the room telling him that she knows what the voices are.
And for once in his life, they’re completely silent.
