Helen did as he told her, but the sensation was way too intense to
process.
She had lost her sunglasses once. She?d looked all over, in the kitchen,
the living room, back up in her bedroom, but she couldn?t
find them anywhere. It was annoying because she knew she had
just had them in her hand, but she couldn?t remember what she?d
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done with them. Then her dad told her that her sunglasses were on
top of her head.
In that moment she realized that she had been using the wrong
sense. She had been looking when she should have been feeling.
She reached up and felt her glasses with her hand, but she also felt
them with her scalp, and when she thought about it she realized
that she had been feeling her glasses up there the whole time.
She?d just been so busy looking she hadn?t thought to feel.
This was similar. Again, she was realizing that there were many
different ways to experience the world around her. Now, she was
still aware of all of her millions of cells, but she could also feel
something new. She felt herself falling toward something truly
huge, and she knew she had another sense that could stop the
falling.
Scared out of her mind, she instinctively pushed with this new
sense. She needed to put some distance between her little army
and the big, fast monster she was falling toward?the monster she
suddenly realized she had been falling toward every second of
every day of her life.
A moment too late to stop herself, Helen realized that the monster
was the earth, and the falling sensation was gravity?and that
what she had just done was switch it off. Vertigo sucked at her,
pulling her off balance. She grabbed on to Lucas, frantically burying