Pulse

What, like a thousand?”
    Dylan laughed. “If there were a thousand carriers, it wouldn’t be much of a secret. It’s rare. Until we know more about your skill set I think I’ve told you everything I can.”
    “Don’t make me pick you up again. I might drop you a lot farther next time. I’m unpredictable.”
    Dylan was starting to get a good feeling about his student. She was whip-smart and fast on her feet, and she didn’t mind working hard once he had her focused. But he was running low on time; and time was one of those things that, once it was gone, there was no getting it back. He would need to make the most of every second he had before the school closed.
     
    In the nights that followed, Faith was diligently trained by Dylan. She asked a lot of questions, all of which Dylan answered the same way: you’ll find out in time. Faith wanted to know why she and Dylan were carriers, who else had the power, how it had been discovered, and on and on.
    On the next night Dylan worked with the cups, balls, and blocks, teaching Faith how to pick them up and move them at different speeds and in different ways. By the third night the items had been replaced with pool balls, blocks of wood, and metal cups. She found these items more difficult to work with. They caused the sharp pain in her neck to reappear several times, all the items crashing down onto the table at once. At the end of a particularly grueling night of exercises, Dylan removed all the items from the table but one black pool ball. It was a number eight. Faith would always remember this, long after Dylan used it to teach her a hard lesson.
    “You’ve been asking me about the pulse,” Dylan said, rolling the pool ball back and forth on the table in front of her. “You have a special one, very rare. It’s what allows you to do these things. And I have the same kind of pulse, so I can do the same things.”
    Faith could tell by the way he was looking at her that there was something more he was trying to say. Their relationship was becoming more intimate that way—they could tell what the other was thinking, sometimes just by looking into each other’s eyes.
    “There’s something else about the pulse, isn’t there? Something you’re not telling me?”
    Dylan nodded, then lifted the eight ball with his mind. It hovered a few feet up in the air as he set his hand flat, facedown, on the solid table beneath it. He blinked, and the ball fell like it were held up by a string and the string had been cut. When it reached his hand, the ball moved sideways, rolling across the table and landing on the floor with a loud pop. Before it bounced a second time, Dylan moved it back onto the table with his mind and picked it up.
    “There’s more than one pulse,” he said. “There’s a second pulse, much deeper than the first.”
    “A second pulse?” Faith asked. “But that’s impossible. No one has two pulses.”
    “You don’t have to believe me, but I’ll tell you what it does and why it’s so important just the same. If you’re a carrier, you have a second pulse, but it takes a lot of work and special understanding to bring it to the surface. It’s hidden deep inside you, and it’s the most important part of being a carrier. Want to know why?”
    Faith’s head was reeling, but she was very curious and desperately wanted answers. She nodded, said nothing, hoped for some new insight.
    “Put your hand on the table, like I did,” Dylan instructed.
    “Are we back in school again? I thought you were going to tell me a secret.”
    Dylan didn’t respond, which was his way of saying he was done talking until Faith did what he’d instructed her to do. Faith rolled her eyes, feeling tired of being told what to do. But she laid her hand flat on the table, palm down, hoping for something .
    “Now promise me you won’t move,” Dylan said. “No matter what.”
    “I won’t move.”
    Dylan tossed the black ball in the air, and it stopped about ten feet over the table. It spun around in circles but otherwise stayed in the same location. He knew she wouldn’t be able to keep her promise, so without her knowledge, he held her hand in place with his mind. No matter how much she might want to move it, nothing on Earth could make that happen as long as Dylan didn’t want it to. He let the ball free-fall, and as it approached Faith’s hand, she couldn’t help but try to move her hand out of the way. Her arm wrenched back, tightening at the elbow, but her