Tommy wasn't listening. He was reading one of the many flickering sidebars on the screen, which told him all about the girl:
ASHLEIGH GOODLING, it said. FALLEN OAK, SC. Her name and town stayed fixed, but the line underneath it changed every five seconds:
SENIOR CLASS PRESIDENT
PRESIDENT, CHRISTIANS ACT! SCHOOL CLUB
CAPTAIN, VARSITY CHEERLEADING SQUAD
“…I’m not perfect,” the girl said. “I get tempted all the time. Your body wants it. That’s why you have to rely on your mind, and on prayer. When adults set the example, and they say abstinence is bad, it just tells us to go ahead and give in to our urges.” She was squirming in her chair as if agitated, and her tongue flicked across her lips.
“Ashleigh Goodling,” Tommy whispered.
“Looks like a sweet slice of tail, don't she?” Vinner snickered, and Tommy slapped the lascivious grin from his face. Vinner fell quiet, but he didn't complain. He seemed to like a little abuse now and then, a little dose of Tommy’s fear. Some people did, and such people took to following Tommy around in a very annoying fashion.
“...Christians get persecuted, but God takes care of us. I don’t care if everyone hates me. I have my faith.” The girl named Ashleigh touched the cross pendant around her neck.
Fallen Oak, South Carolina, Tommy repeated inside his head. Fallen Oak, South Carolina.
He watched the girl talk, entranced. A lifetime of violence and small-time robbery had given him a stony outer crust, but he felt something move inside him. Something big. Like those massive plates under the earth, the ones that made earthquakes and volcanoes.
He'd had plenty of women, in his way—it was easy enough when you had Tommy's special thing, the nightmare that lived inside him. His touch filled people with fear. He could make them hand over wallets, car keys, the contents of a cash register.
This was a different feeling, though. He didn't just want to rip this girl’s panties off. There was something else, a hint of something he hadn't felt in a long time. Not since he was a kid, and that had only been a glimpse.
He knew better than to trust the feeling. He'd never seen Esmeralda again, after all. That sense of falling for somebody seemed to hint at forever, but it was an illusion. In real life, you couldn't surrender to those feelings, or they would just rip you to pieces.
Tommy knew all of this. He thought of all this. But it was on the back burner of his mind.
On the front burner, red hot and smoking, was the need to find the girl on the television. And then...do something. He could imagine a lot of things he might do to her—he'd been in prison almost a year—but those weren't the main things that interested him. There was a lot more going on here. A mystery. He could feel things about that girl.
He tried to shake off the feeling. Stupid. He was just caged up and horny, and that was all.
“Thanks for having me, Mr. O'Flannery,” Ashleigh said at the end of the show. Then she smiled, and then she was gone.
Over the next few weeks, Tommy tried to push down his thoughts about the girl from the TV. He couldn't win: he kept catching himself daydreaming about her while he worked in the prison's cannery. She filled up his dreams, and he awoke hot, sweaty, and more miserable than he’d ever felt.
Tommy put together his plan. He had to be careful—he'd learned that the hard way, after he robbed that convenience store and the cops had taken him down with Tasers. Fucking shocking you to the ground from ten feet away, out of reach—that wasn't fair, in his book.
Tommy had found that if he could just get his hand on a cop for a moment, he could usually intimidate the cop into letting him go. He'd used that trick more times than he could remember. But if they were going to stay out of reach and zap him into a vegetable with electric wires, his special fear-inducing touch didn't have much room to play.
He made his move after lunch, on the way out of the cafeteria. Vinner was walking alongside him, jabbering away about his meth-addicted pregnant sister. As they passed a pair of guards, Tommy turned and punched Vinner in the face. Vinner went down, bleeding from his nose and lip.
The two guards grabbed Tommy and hit him a few times, and Tommy went slack and fell on the floor, pretending to be semiconscious and groaning in pain.
“Good night, you crazy bastard,” one of the guards crowed.
“Let’s put this prick in the Hole,” the other said.
They each took one of Tommy’s wrists and dragged him away from the cafeteria. He could feel them shivering a little, as his touch began to work its magic.
When they dragged him into a side corridor, Tommy seized their wrists.
He didn’t take any chances. Tommy’s touch always made people afraid, whether he wanted to or not, but sometimes he could focus and make it really powerful, terrifying people out of their minds. He imagined pushing it out through his hands, pumping the guards full of fear.