A few months ago, when Kingsley had come over, she had dipped into his mind and relived nearly every worthwhile memory the man had had. And that man had lived-and fought and killed... and made love. The many, many women he had made love to! Tammy smiled. She was still a virgin, yes, but reliving some of Kingsley's more titillating memories had been, well, wild.
Too wild for a girl her age, she suspected.
But, as she liked to believe, she was beyond her years, thanks to the thoughts and memories of these crazy-ass adults around her.
Allison had been a stripper in her twenties. A stripper! The stories Allison could tell, if she chose to tell them. But Allison didn't. She kept her past in her past. And, my oh my, the vampire boyfriend she'd had before meeting her mother. Wow wow wow! So hot. A boyfriend who was now dead, sadly.
Tammy relived that too.
Tammy could "relive" any memory of anyone around her, and she could do it quickly. She had developed an ability to "touch down" upon only the highlighted memories, so to speak. She'd never really explained this before, to anyone, but Tammy, when she dipped effortlessly into anyone's mind, could see that certain memories were "highlighted." She quickly learned to target these memories, as they were always the more interesting and worthwhile memories.
In the beginning, Tammy felt bad about invading the privacy of others. And so she only did it sometimes. Maybe just a few of mother's memories here and there. Maybe just a few of Kingsley's-she loved Kingsley's memories the best-and then some of Allison's. Mary Lou, her aunt, had boring memories. The "reliving the memories" part was strange and exciting, and at first, Tammy hadn't known what to make of it. In the beginning, she would find herself in the middle of the memory and be confused. Later, she learned to follow the trail of the memory to the beginning. After that, she learned to move "through the memory," which was the only way she knew how to think about it. She saw herself as a spirit, moving forward within the memory. Memories, after all, were really just long comic strips, so to speak. She could touch down at any point and sort of hit the play button.
Her mother could do something similar, but it took her more effort. Tammy, on the other hand, could lie in bed and do a number of things at once-and one of them was to relive memories even as she was doing homework. If, say, Mom was having wine with Mary Lou in the living room, Tammy needed only to dip into her aunt's mind, and idly poke around for the highlighted memories. Her boring memories! Except for a few wild years in college, her aunt was one big bore-fest.
Anyway, the fun thing about memories was that there were always more of them. Each day, each hour created new ones, and Tammy scanned them all, continuously and often. Yes, she knew she had a problem, but she also sort of saw herself as a kind of guardian, too. No one, but no one, was coming to this house without her knowing what kind of person they were.
Her father had lucked out in the sense that he had died before Tammy's gifts had fully matured. In a way, she was glad her father had died before she could dip into his mind. Quite honestly, she was afraid of what she might have found there.
The problem was... now she was now getting snatches of her father's mind within Anthony's mind. Snatches that filtered through her brother's thoughts-a mind she rarely, if ever dipped into her. Her brother's seriously gross mind.
After all, Tammy was certain that her brother had crushes on every female at his school, including some of their more curvy teachers. And not just crushes... but fantasies.
She shuddered. So gross.
The problem was-and this was why Tammy was currently not dating-her brother was not very different than all the boys at her school. Like all the boys. In fact, compared to some, her brother was tame!
Tammy was turned off-no repelled-by the young males of her species. She literally wanted nothing to do with them. Certainly not now, and maybe not for a long time, if ever.
Tammy had gotten quite good at letting feelings "slip away," as she called it. She had to. She saw too much, relived too much, heard too much, knew too much. She recognized early on the need to let go of the unwanted thoughts. Only the very good ones were permitted to stay. After all, some memories were just too juicy to let go of!
And her mom was full of them. Just packed with them. The good news was, Tammy had probed her mother's mind so much that she now knew which memories to avoid completely. These were the highlighted and slightly pulsating memories. Such memories were bound to traumatize Tammy for days. Yes, these were the memories of her mother and Kingsley... being intimate. Which she avoided like the plague.