The Phantoms

I sat in amazement as I stared at the whiteboard. A few kids gave some glances and confused stares, but it uncharacteristically didn’t bother me at all. I watched as the teacher drew shape after shape, dumbfounded at how she was making them move. It was as if I had apparated to Hogwarts and was reading the Daily Prophet. The figures spun and rotated, dancing as shadows were cast behind them by the fluorescent lights. Why wasn’t anyone else amazed? Couldn’t they see this pure magic? The moment was cut off as Mrs. Sine erased the board, moving on with her lecture, but I had stopped listening completely. What did that matter now? It wasn’t until lunch that I asked anyone about that moment.

“Alicia!” I chased my best friend down in the lunch line. She had picked up her tray and was heading for the lunch lady to pay.

“What is it?” She giggled. She had never seen me so excited.

“Did you see the shapes in math today?” I nearly yelled as we chose our seats.

“Yeah, you mean the ones Mrs. Sine put on the board?” She gave me a puzzled look.

“Yeah weren’t they incredible?”

“Umm, no, not really.” She seemed genuinely concerned. “They were just shapes. Triangles, rectangles, the like.”

“You didn’t see them move?” I was baffled at her lack of enthusiasm.

“No, they were just regular shapes.”

“Oh.”

“Are you okay?”

I grew quiet, my excitement dwindling as I pondered. “Yeah, I’m fine.”

I stayed relatively quiet for the rest of the day, trying to understand what was happening. Why had everyone looked at me strangely? Why did they all seem so unknowing when I asked them? I know what I had seen, yet no one else had a clue. I brushed it off as the day progressed. I spent my entire afternoon drawing shapes and watching them spin, even managing to move a few of them, even if only for a moment. I nearly tackled my mother when she came home.

“Please tell me you see it!” I pleaded, pointing to the shapes on the ground, desperate for someone to relate to.

“Yes! Those are very good shapes honey!” My mother set her work bag down and walked to the bathroom. My smile faded as I realized that she hadn’t seen anything but the roughly drawn objects on the paper. I waited for her to finish using the restroom before I continued my quest.

“Can I use the computer?”

“Sure, sweetie.” My mother and I walked up to the computer, I sat down and she typed in the password. I immediately went to the internet, desperately looking for anything that could explain this, but there was nothing. Why? This was confusing and frustrating, and I couldn’t stand having no understanding. But there was nothing I could do about it, so I left it alone. For years now I have seen things, as they have branched out from just shapes, to math equations solving themselves, to seeing scientific concepts, such as matter being made of billions of atoms and the movement of air particles. These visions, and I have simply been calling them hallucinations, are a part of my everyday life, yet I have no explanation for them.

As soon as I saw the show “Touch” over Christmas break two years ago, I fell in love with it. I could relate to the main character, Jake Bohm, and the storyline was more interesting to me, incorporating mathematics into every aspect of life as I do. But it was when I saw Dr. Arthur Teller’s visions that I had a little spark of hope. This was what I saw. His visions were my reality. So I went online once more, as I had done many times, hoping that looking up the TV show's characters and scenes could lead me to something I hadn’t seen before, something I had either missed or was new. I found a wikipedia page, which led me to a fandom page, followed by a page detailing Arthur Teller, but still nothing. Everything detailed by the show was portrayed as science fiction, saying that those people who could “see the patterns” were a chosen people by God, sent to maintain order in the world. I was crushed; I had finally seen something even remotely close to my world, and it felt as if it were mocking me.

I am yet to find any explanations for my hallucinations. Not everything about them is bad, and as far as hallucinations go, I’m pretty lucky; the things I see aren’t frightening or confusing. In fact, they come in handy in math class. But it is frustrating to feel completely alone with this aspect of my life. I believe that the hallucinations have fueled my love of math and made math into a central part of my personality and interests. Ultimately I’ll keep looking for an explanation, and I’m hopeful that science will progress enough to give me one.