I can't remember a time when I couldn't see the glow. As a little kid, everyone I saw had a small, faint, softly glowing area in the center of their head. All kids think they're pretty normal and I didn't think anything about it. It never occurred to me that I was the only one who saw that glow.
As I got older, I noticed that, while I always knew when someone was near me and who they were, other people seemed oblivious. I could sneak up on anyone and poke them or yell, "Boo" to surprise them. No one could do that to me. I could always feel that glowing spot. I knew where they were and who they were, even if I couldn't see them.
By the time I was in preschool, I found that I could make people itch. That was fun. If someone annoyed me, I could give them a case of the itches somewhere that was embarrassing or hard to reach. All I had to do was reach out with my mind and give their glow a little pinch. It's hard to explain to someone who can't do it.
One rainy Saturday when I was about 7 years old, my sister found me staring out the den window, bored. "Hey, Ethan, wanna play a game?" she asked. I looked at her suspiciously. Karen was almost 2 years older than me and loved to show off how much she knew that I didn't.
"What kind of game?"
"Let's play hide and seek!"
I'd heard of the game, but somehow had never played it. "How do you play?"
"One of us stays here for 3 minutes and the other one hides somewhere. I'll hide first. When 3 minutes are up, you ring the bell," she said, pointing to the old ship's bell on Dad's desk. "Then you try to find me. If you can't find me in 5 minutes, I win!"
"Are you kidding? That's the stupidest game in the world!" To me, a game like that was completely pointless. How could I not find her? All I had to do was follow her glow with my mind and I'd know exactly where she was. She could do the same thing when it was my turn to hide.
"Betcha a quarter you can't find me in 5 minutes."
My allowance was a dollar a week, so a quarter wasn't a trivial sum. Added to what I already had, I could buy one of the jumbo dark chocolate candy bars I liked so much.
"Okay, go hide."
I timed three minutes on the wall clock while tracking Karen to our parents' bedroom closet. She hid in a back corner, behind dad's winter coat. That was pretty clever and also borderline cheating. We weren't allowed in that room without Mom or Dad. Still, it didn't matter where she hid, she had to know I could tell where she was, didn't she? I was puzzled, but I had a game to win.
I trotted up the stairs, walked into the bedroom, slid open the closet door and pushed dad's coat aside. Karen was looking at her treasured Minnie Mouse watch.
I grinned at her. "Gotcha!"
"You cheated!" She was outraged. "You didn't stay in the den! You followed me up here!"
I laughed. "You heard the bell, right? I couldn't ring the bell unless I was in the den, could I?"
Karen was royally pissed. Not only had she lost, she'd lost to her little brother. "You owe me a quarter," I said, holding out my hand.
"Not yet," she said. "Now it's your turn to hide."
"Wait a minute, you bet me a quarter I couldn't find you. I found you. You lost and you owe me a quarter."
Karen thought it over. "Tell you what; you hide this time. If I find you in five minutes, we're even. If I can't find you, I'll give you 50 cents."
"Okay, let's go."
Back in the den, Karen checked her watch. "Go!"
I walked out of the den and turned left, going through the dining room and the kitchen. I climbed up the back stairs, walked down the hall to the front stairs and took a seat on the top step, not bothering to hide. When three minutes were up, Karen rang the bell. She'd seen which direction I'd gone and she ran through the house and up the back stairs. I went down the steps, into the dining room and waited. The first place she checked was her hiding place. I followed her easily, tracking her glow. For the next few minutes, Karen scrambled around, thoroughly searching the upstairs and then running down the front stairs. I moved quietly up the back stairs and sat on a chair in the hall, thinking. She couldn't see my glow. That meant she probably couldn't see anyone's glow. How come I could see everyone's glow and she couldn't? What about Mom and Dad? They could do all kinds of things I couldn't do. It was hard to believe they couldn't do something so simple. They knew everything. Didn't they?