The questions continued to swirl as we finally entered Mariano’s and got a table for five. Dad was telling Frank about the last time the family had Italian, which must’ve occurred at some point while I was at Northwestern. I took a seat at the end of the booth, with Lizzie sitting across from me, still giving me strange glimpses. Uncomfortable with the look, I quickly picked up a menu and navigated to search for a beverage section.

            Frank continued to try to carry a conversation, but sitting across from Mom, who refused to even acknowledge Frank’s presence, he was more or less talking into a void, with Dad the only listener. The waitress eventually came to our rescue to take our drink orders. I felt bad about leaving Frank alone in conversation, so I asked him more about Marianne’s work for a while. He seemed grateful for the tangent and talked aplenty about her work at the travel agency and how she often had to work away for weeks at a time. The conversation continued to die when neither Mom nor Dad added anything to the conversation. Frank asked me how school was going, which was redundant since we had already exhausted the topic when Frank and I first met at the museum. The conversation was a poor attempt to get my parents back into the conversation, but with the lingering tension of the incident in the parking lot, it went nowhere. Frank turned to his daughter in a last-ditch attempt. “What are you ordering sweetie?”

            She didn’t answer, eyes planted on the menu, eyes glossy.

            “Lizzie?” Frank asked with a shoulder rub.

            “Huh?” Lizzie said, as though only just realizing where she was. “Oh, the pollo alla parmigiana looks good.”

            “Is something wrong? You seem spooked.”

            She again eyed me uncertainly with another bite of her lip. “I’m good. I do have to use the restroom though.”

            “By all means,” Frank gestured with a frown.

            Lizzie rose, but kept her eyes locked onto me. And with the tiniest nudge of her head, I realized she wanted me to go with her, probably to get me in a private conversation. What’s this about? I worried. She seemed so unsettled after the incident in the parking lot. Maybe she would tell me what was going on?

            “I’m going to go too actually,” I said with a rise of my own. And with a slight glance, I saw Lizzie’s expression immediately soften, relieved I had read her right.

            Mom shot a surprised look my way, hearing the strange tone of my reply. I gave her the most innocent smile I could and turned away from her, following Lizzie deeper into the restaurant.

            As soon as we were out of eyesight from the group, Lizzie grabbed my arm and yanked me forward. “Whoa!” I yelped, letting her drag me into the vacant hallway where the restrooms were. The hallway was fairly isolated from the dining area, so unless someone walked through to use the restroom, we had privacy.

            She led me to the very back of the hallway and turned on me so fast it sent me backward with whiplash. “Beck, what the fuck was that back there?”

            “Wh-What!?” I said, stumbling over my words. “What are you talking about?”

            “Don’t play dumb. Out there in the parking lot, I know I heard your voice.”

            I stammered, completely flabbergasted at the interrogation. From her tone, one would think that Lizzie would be speaking with anger, but that didn’t seem to be the case. Instead, her face was a wild mix of perplexity and… wonder? What was with the intensity? “I… said something?” I asked vacantly. “What did I say?”

            She peered deep into my azure eyes. “Something along the lines of ‘For the love of everything, calm down Lizzie!’ You know what I’m talking about, right?”

            My face flushed. I remembered thinking those exact words—or words nearly identical to them—but they never reached my lips. “I… but I didn’t-”

            “Say it aloud?” she said with an “ah-hah” tone.

            I shakily nodded. “I didn’t think I did. I guess I must’ve whispered it or something-”

            “Beck,” she said, and to my surprise, a small smile was forming on her lips. “I heard it in my head.”

            “You- What!?” my jaw dropped. “In your head!?”

            “I’m dead serious,” she said, her bizarre smile widening even further.

            I blinked over and over trying to put reality in its place. Was Lizzie going crazy? Was she pulling some kind of prank on me? Or was she actually claiming that she read my mind somehow? Going over everything I knew about Lizzie, I slowed my heartbeat and inspected her closely. Whenever she was being playful or pulling a prank, she had trouble maintaining eyesight at risk of blowing away her cover. She’d be unnaturally stiff as to hide her excited mannerisms, almost robotic in a sense. Her tone would also betray her, as she’d be much more dismissive or passive with her statements, hoping that I would just go with whatever flow she had set up for me. I got none of that from her. She was making zero attempt to hide her strange enthusiasm. Her hands were shaking, her lips struggling to stay still, and she held eye contact like breaking it would end the world. Whatever she was thinking, it was genuine excitement she was exuding. But why was she excited at all? Because she heard me say something?

            “I… I don’t understand…” I said slowly. “What was so weird about me saying something aloud?”

            “What’s weird is you didn’t say anything aloud!” she persisted, struggling to keep her voice from shouting. Her hands were gripped tightly onto my wrists, and she was wildly shaking them as she spoke. “No one else heard you say anything remember? Your mom and Frank both said they didn’t hear you speak!”

            I shrugged dramatically, utterly dumbfounded. “So you heard me whisper something then, what’s the big deal-”

            “No, it wasn’t a whisper,” she countered, her expression as stern as she could get it amid her exhilaration. She was doing everything she could to convince me that she meant business despite how she actually felt. “If anything, it was more of a shout. Like, it sounded like you were desperate. And no one else heard it but me.”

            Her glasses made her eyes gleam, but I could only look back bewildered and stumped. She saw my expression and pulled back on her demeanor slightly.

            “Ok, maybe I should start from the beginning then,” she said, to which I nodded appreciatively. She took a deep breath to compose herself. “Frank and your parents were talking over and over about your symptoms and I kept feeling guilty because of what happened at the hotel. You grabbed my hand, obviously to calm me down, but I was having a hard time keeping silent ‘cause… I mean, you know how I felt about the whole thing, I didn’t want you to ignore possible health concerns. I was really close to just admitting you had another symptom flare when I felt something weird in the hand you had grabbed.” She released a hand from my wrist and looked at it with unfocused eyes. “It happened so fast that I can’t even describe it. It was like… another static shock, but didn’t hurt or anything, it just… travelled up my arm like a spasm or something.”

            My eyes widened when I heard that, remembering the weird sensation I had felt during the moment from the parking lot. What she described certainly matched what I felt on my end as well.

            Her eyes found mine and she formed a Cheshire-like grin. “I knew it, you felt it too, didn’t you?”

            I stammered out a confused confirmation. “I-I mean… s-sorta?”

            She waggled her eyebrows at me. “So… you see where I’m going with this then?” she asked teasingly.

            In reality, I couldn’t be more lost. I shook my head, narrowing my eyes, trying to follow her story.

            Her smile faded when she saw my perplexed expression. “So… you really don’t know what happened?” she asked, a bafflingly disappointed tone outlined her words.

            “No,” I responded. “I mean, I felt that weird spark thing you mentioned, and I agree that it was weird and all but… what does this have to do with you hearing my voice?”

            She studied my confusion for several seconds, as though trying to tell if I was telling the truth. If anything, I was only growing more befuddled as the conversation continued. “Huh…” she muttered. “I guess not… Ok, well… Anyways, right after I felt it—and I mean right after I felt it—my arm spasmed weirdly like it was getting tickled from the inside, and suddenly I heard your voice. But it didn’t sound like someone speaking, it was as though it was coming from my own thoughts. Like I had formed a coherent thought in my brain, but in your voice. It, like, reverberated in my head. Loudly. But I know it couldn’t have been my thoughts. They were too foreign, and the voice in my head doesn’t sound like you. Plus, I wasn’t the one trying to calm myself down, you were. That’s how I know. I heard your voice in my own head. I know I did. That’s why I freaked out back there, I was trying to comprehend what just happened.”

            My throat croaked a sound of surprise. That’s why she jumped in the parking lot? She thought she heard my thoughts!? Nearly all the blood was gone from my head at this point, and everything felt numb. She had to be mistaken. She couldn’t possibly have read my freaking mind. “But… there’s no way! Are you sure you didn’t just imagine it?”

            “Were you thinking those words in the parking lot?” she pressed.

            I gulped, realizing her point. She had somehow repeated my exact thoughts that I had right before we felt the weird spark in our hands. It had to be a coincidence, right? I nodded slowly. “Near exactly. But like I said, maybe I just whispered subconsciously-”

            “For the last time, it wasn’t a whisper,” she insisted, grabbing my wrists again. “It was a shout. It was a plea. And it was loud. I felt like I was wearing invisible headphones with your voice blasting through the speakers. It was so prominent that it startled me; I almost tripped! You saw it yourself, if I didn’t hear your voice then what did I hear?”

            “But how is that even possible!?” I blurted out. This couldn’t be real. This couldn’t be happening.

            “I was hoping you could tell me,” she said, voice losing some energy. She looked genuinely disappointed. “You really don’t know what happened? I was sure you knew…”

            I shook my head. “Why would I know? Lizzie, I’m so freaking lost right now, and I honestly can’t tell if you’re joking or if you’re going crazy, or if I’m going crazy…”

            “No one’s going crazy,” she exclaimed, her eyes locked onto mine. “I know what happened. We both felt the spark, didn’t we!? That weird tingle going up our arms?”

            I had felt that spark, and I was just as perplexed about it as she was. But I still had no idea how that was relevant to anything.

            I looked into Lizzie’s eyes, trying desperately to believe that she was fully sure of herself, that there was no room for doubt. As far I as I could tell, she fully believed that whatever occurred had really happened, and that somehow she heard my thoughts. That… that had to make her crazy, right?

            Then again, not two hours ago I had somehow convinced myself that I could dispel a static energy through a mental command.