“Careful, it’s loaded.”
She weighed it gingerly on an open palm. “It’s heavier than I would’ve thought.”
“I know.” Ethan popped the baby against his shoulder and started rubbing her back. Violet promptly belched like a trucker. “You’re not freaked out about it?”
“A little.” She set it on the counter. “But it’s probably not a terrible idea. Just in case.”
“Just in case of what?”
She didn’t answer.
Indestructible’s Jake Flynn out of the closet!
Heartthrob Jake Flynn is well known for his abs. But it’s the fact that he’s an abnorm that’s startling people. Last week the singer-turned-box-office-sensation announced he was a tier-five brilliant, a fact never before revealed.
Now, in an exclusive interview with People magazine, the hunky star comes clean about life, love, and being brilliant.
PEOPLE:
Let’s start with your gift. You’re hyperthymesitic. What does that mean?
FLYNN:
I remember certain trivial details with exceptional clarity. If you give me a date, I can tell you what I wore, what the weather was like, that kind of thing.
PEOPLE:
May 3, 1989.
FLYNN:
One of those days when you know spring has arrived. Blue skies, puffy clouds, the smell of things growing. I wore Spiderman pajamas. [Laughs.] I was five.
PEOPLE:
You’ve always been private about being gifted. Why?
FLYNN:
If I talked about it, that would have been the way I was framed. “Abnorm actor to star in blah, blah, blah.” It’s not that important to me, and I didn’t want it to be that important to anyone else.
PEOPLE:
Then why come out now?
FLYNN:
People are getting so worked up about norms and abnorms. It felt like by not mentioning it, I was part of the problem. I just wanted to say hey, you all thought I was one thing, and now you know I’m something else. And yet nothing’s really changed. So chill.
PEOPLE:
Your gift must make learning lines easier.
FLYNN:
I wish. It’s not a matter of memory. I lose my car keys all the time.
PEOPLE:
Abnorms are hot right now. What do you say to people who suggest you came out as a publicity stunt?
FLYNN:
That’s ridiculous.
PEOPLE:
Why?
FLYNN:
For one thing, it’s about the twentieth thing I think of myself as. I’m a husband, I’m a father, I’m an American, I’m an actor, I’m a singer, I’m a Cubs fan, I’m a dog lover. On and on. After all of that stuff, it’s like, oh yeah, I’m also an abnorm.
PEOPLE:
What do you think of the growing conflict between norms and abnorms?
FLYNN:
I hate it. For me being an abnorm is no different than having blue eyes. I get that there are tier ones out there, exceptional people who are changing the paradigm. But there are a lot more folks like me. I mean seriously—I know that it was raining in Denver on June 9th of last year. Because of that, my government wants to implant a microchip in my neck?
PEOPLE:
When you put it that way, the Monitoring Oversight Initiative does seem a little silly.
FLYNN:
The problem is that the media portrays this like there are two factions, norms and abnorms, and we’re all supposed to choose sides. But really, it’s a spectrum. At one end you have President Walker murdering his own people because he’s afraid of what brilliants represent, and he wants the power to contain them. On the other, you have abnorm terrorists saying it shouldn’t be about equal rights, that brilliants should rule the world. The extremists are the problem. Most people just want to live their lives.
PEOPLE:
Speaking of lives, you and your wife, Victoria’s Secret model Amy Schiller, recently had a baby girl—
FLYNN:
Oh God. Not the name question.
PEOPLE:
It’s an unusual name.
FLYNN:
I don’t know what to tell you, man. We want her to be her own person, to not feel like she has to fit the world’s constraints, and we both really like Thai food, so . . .
PEOPLE:
Noodle Flynn.
FLYNN:
Won’t be any others in her kindergarten class.
CHAPTER 3
He was being the spider when the SUV finally stopped.
The truck was black. There were two men inside. It had been coasting to a halt for almost three minutes. It would be three more before the doors opened. Then five minutes to cross the half dozen paces to where he sat. He had plenty of time to be the spider. An ocean of time, massive, deep, crushing, and cold. Time like the Mariana Trench, thirty-six thousand feet deep. Time that weighed and warped.
The spider. Tan and black, an inch long. A wolf spider, he believed, although he was no great spider expert. He had been watching it for eleven hours. First had come revulsion, the primal skin-crawl. Eventually, the tracing of hair on her legs and abdomen—he had decided it was a female—came to look soft, almost inviting, like a stuffed animal. Eight eyes, shiny and complete. The fangs fascinated him. To bear your weaponry so blatantly before you, to move through the world as a nightmare. The spider regarded him, and he regarded the spider.
She was perfect. Stillness itself, until motion was called for. And then motion so fast and precise it could hardly be seen by the prey. Brutal and without remorse. For her the world was only food and threat. Were there vegetarian spiders? He didn’t think so.
No, she was a killer.
From his position he could see both the spider and the SUV; he shifted focus to the vehicle. His eyes didn’t move, of course; they were locked in the glacial pace of muscles, of flesh and blood. But he had long ago learned to move his attention even while his body lagged behind. It was a simple thing to focus on the SUV and the two men inside it. The driver was speaking. It took twenty seconds for him to frame six words, and his lips were easily read.
Inside the SUV, the driver asked, “So who is this guy, anyway?”
“His name is Soren Johansen. He’s the most dangerous person I’ve ever met.” John Smith smiled through the windshield. “And my oldest friend.”
Hello, John. I’ve missed you.
It was hardest with people.
There was a reason he was alone. In retreat, like a Buddhist monk on a mountaintop. And like the monk, he had been striving not for knowledge or wisdom but for nothingness. Not the idea of nothingness, not the exercise of it, thoughts sent drifting down the river as they intruded on his meditation. No, his comfort had come, when it did, in true moments of nothingness. Moments when he did not exist. Only in them did the relentless dragging of time not overwhelm.
When he couldn’t be nothing, which was often, he became something else. Something simple and pure. Like the spider.
People, though, were neither simple nor pure. It was agony watching them move through life like they were fighting through wet cement. Every motion endless, every word taking an eternity, and for what? Motions without purpose or grace, words that wandered and drifted.
Therefore it surprised him to realize that he had missed John. But of all the gifted—and no one else was worth considering—John was most similar to himself. John lived in a multilayered view of the future, plans within plans, eventualities a year away set in motion by a conversation today. It was different than Soren’s own perspective, but it provided a frame of reference, a means of understanding.