She was used to being told she was attractive, but this indirect method struck her as odd. Jane was a young black woman, recently out of graduate school, and had never had trouble meeting guys. She looked at the large youth in puzzlement.
"How do you know that, Pete?"
"I can hear it."
"What? What do you mean you can hear it?"
"I can hear it!"
Asking for a better explanation from an eighteen year old with the mental capacity of an eight year old rarely yielded clear answers. Jane regarded the six foot seven adolescent as he sat across from her in the more than half empty cafe before proceeding. Pete looked more like a lineman for a professional football team than he did a teenage boy with a mental disability, large and well muscled underneath a small amount of the baby fat some teens carry into adulthood. His brown hair was just long enough to fall in his brown eyes. When he leaned over to take a bite of his muffin you could see the lines of a farmers tan at the base of his neck.
"What do you hear?"
"I hear his brain."
"You can't hear someone's brain." She scoffed.
This was a bad idea. Pete began to get angry at the sound of Jane's derision. His protests immediately drew the attention of other patrons.
"Okay! Okay! What can you hear from my brain?"
"You think I'm lying, but I'm not!"
People were beginning to stare. Jane needed to calm him down. She had only been working with Pete Jacobs for three weeks and hadn't yet had to face him in a state of agitation.
"Okay, Pete, I believe you. But can you show me again? Can you listen to my brain again?"
"Sure." he said, calming down a bit.
Jane immediately thought of something completely unrelated to anything in the cafe or the conversation they'd been having.
"Oh!" Pete said, excitedly, "I want nachos!"
Jane gave him a look of incredulity. She had been thinking of nachos, believing there was no way he could guess that.
"Miss Jane, are we going to get nachos for dinner?"
She was still not sure what to think.
"Yeah. Yeah, we can go get nachos."
On the drive from the cafe to the taquerÃa Jane continued to test Pete's mind reading.
"Cheese cake. A fast car, it's red. An old lady, your mom, she's dead now. That's sad. June 18th, it's your birthday. A giraffe." He was never wrong. As soon as she jumped from one thought to another he could say what it was.
Suddenly Pete fell silent.
"That man who likes you is following us." He said as he looked out the passenger window of Jane's blue Corolla. The image of the man's face surfaced in her mind.
"Yes, that man."
"Perhaps it's just a coincidence, Pete." Jane said it mostly to calm herself.
"No. He wants to...he's thinking bad thoughts."
Jane's skin went clammy. She was, at this point, completely convinced that Pete could read minds. She wondered if she should ask Pete what kinds of thoughts.
"I said! Bad thoughts! He wants to hurt you! He wants you to cry! He wants..." Pete began to cry into his massive hands. What he was saying now had put her into a cold sweat and she could feel the vinyl of the steering wheel become slippery beneath her hands. She wasn't sure what to do.
Pete was weeping heavily into his hands, occasionally mumbling to himself, as he filled nearly the entire passenger side of Jane's two door Corolla. She began to consider her options. Try to escape this creep through side streets and traffic? Pull over in a crowded public place?
"Don't go home." It was the first coherent thing Pete had said in the five minutes since his crying had started. "He wants you to go home, don't go home Miss Jane."
"Ok, Pete. How bout we just go get those nachos?"
The nachos seemed to distract Pete rather well. He was calm all the way through the meal, and appeared to have forgotten all about the man from the cafe. Pete's return to normal behavior helped Jane to relax as well.
"Pete, can you hear that man's thoughts still?" She wanted to be sure they were safe.
"Which man?"
That was enough for Jane. After the meal Jane drove back to her apartment in the Sunset district of San Francisco, where she would wait with Pete for his parents to arrive. Jane said nothing of Pete's apparent mind reading abilities to his parents, but simply agreed to pick him up the next day at the normal time.
"What are we going to do today, Miss Jane?" But before she could answer he shouted, "OH! I love the zoo!" Jane thought that there was no way his parents could have not noticed how often Pete knew what you were going to say before you said it.
"Remind me not to play guessing games with you."
"But I always win those games!"
Jane couldn't help but laugh at that as she started her car towards the zoo. Unfortunately, their visit was cut short when the weather changed for the worse. Jane had begun ushering Pete toward the exit as soon as rain had started to fall, and was glad for that when the moment they were inside her car it began to come down in sheets.
"Don't worry, Pete. We'll just go to my apartment and play some games."
On the way there they stopped at Pete's request to get some ice cream. The rain had let up to a steady drizzle by the time they got to Jane's home and they rushed from the car up the stairs to the entry. Jane opened the door and let Pete in, hurrying in after him. As she closed and locked the door she felt the hair on her neck stand on end.
Suddenly Pete cried out in fear. Jane spun to see a man only slightly taller than her self, clothed in a black hooded sweatshirt and jeans, hit Pete over the head with the lamp that was usually on the small table next to her entryway. The body of the porcelain lamp shattered on Pete's large head and he crumpled to the ground. Jane screamed at the sight and looked up at the approaching stranger. She recognized his face from the day before. It was the same middle aged white man that Pete had pointed out at the cafe.
Panic stole her voice away as her assailant grabbed her roughly by her shirt and flung her to the ground in the hallway. Jane began to cry as she tried to get up and run to the bathroom, the only room with a lock on the door. By the time she had rolled over and gotten to her knees she felt the strangers hands grabbing her hair and the back of her shirt. He threw her again, this time onto the floor of the living room. The sudden violence of it all left Jane stunned. She felt cold, and could only watch in fear as the stocky, unshaven man advanced, a horrible look of excitement in his blue eyes.
Jane could hear her own short, fast breathing and the thudding of the mans work boots as he strode toward her. Whatever fear or shock had held her in place had let go and Jane sat up and tried to scramble backwards on all fours. The man quickly lunged forward, grabbing her ankle and pulling her back to the middle of the living room.
"Stupid nigger cunt." He spat the words and slapped Jane hard across the face.
Jane's hands covered her stinging face as she began to cry harder. She felt the man pin her legs beneath his own and tear open her shirt. When she tried to fight him off he pushed her hands away and slapped her again.
"You be a good slut and don't try that again." His voice was like broken glass and his breath smelled like cigarette smoke masked by mint chewing gum. "Or else I'll punch your fucking teeth down your nigger throat."
"You don't say bad things to her!" It was Pete. He was holding his knees, huddling as much as such a large person could, still in the entryway.
