In “I Know What You’re Thinking” by Ian Martin, a serious-minded college student describes how an affair with her manipulative T.A. sent her life down a dark path. Martin’s feature film Cooke Concrete premiered at the Cinequest Film Festival and is currently available to view on several platforms, including Tubi, Hoopla, Apple, and Amazon Prime. He’s the recipient of a Yaddo Fellowship for fiction.

*****

I am a cautionary tale. A good girl gone bad whose mugshot stares at you from the newspaper page or your device screen. It’s a sphinx-like stare that gives you the heebie-jeebies. You turn to someone—your friend or your partner—and say “something is just off about her” and you both nod in agreement and you share a sense of relief because, no matter how boring or disappointing your lives may be, at least you aren’t me.

You don’t understand how someone like me could exist and, what’s more, you don’t want to understand. The last place you want to be is inside my head which is ironic because, in some ways, what eventually landed me here—a mugshot staring out at you—is that people did want to be inside my head.

I started dating Clem after my second week in the dorms. We met at a party in the finished basement of a frat house. It was one of those blacklight parties where everyone wears white shirts and writes on each other with highlighters. The music was ear-splitting and the blacklights gave the world a seedy glow; I made sure to pour my own drink. I had gone with some girls from my dorm who were expecting this to be like all the frat house movies they had seen in high school when, in fact, it was just a bunch of people too embarrassed to play a role.

I made my way to the edge of the basement, wondering how long I had to stay before I could leave without appearing snobbish. As I watched the crowd of people with glowing teeth and glowing shirts, I noticed a skinny guy with floppy brown hair standing apart from the crowd who looked equally out of sorts. He reminded me of someone but I couldn’t place who.

I wish I could tell you what Clem and I talked about when we first met but I just don’t remember which means it probably wasn’t all that remarkable. I remember that it was like we always knew one another, a conversation that felt as effortless as breathing. I remember Clem felt pleasant and light.

I made my way to the edge of the basement, wondering how long I had to stay before I could leave without appearing snobbish.

He was taller than most of the other guys there but he didn’t seem to like his height; he kept stooping to talk to me, which I assumed was because of the music but later learned he always stood with slightly hunched shoulders. I told him I wanted to leave and he offered to walk me back to my dorm. I accepted without concern; I knew he wasn’t a threat. Clem walked by my side on our way back to the dorms and I realized as he trotted next to me who he reminded me of. It was Winnie, my family’s golden retriever.

For the rest of my freshman year, Clem and I did more-or-less everything together. I was eager for companionship and Clem was there. Always there. Walking me home after classes, joining me in the cafeteria for dinner, tagging along at the library while I studied for exams. And Clem was comforting to have around; he was always trying to make me smile by telling me long-winded stories about people in his classes, stories that didn’t seem to go anywhere but were somehow still engaging.

He had a sincere love for people; the more boring the person the better—the acned wallflower in his Lit of the 60s class who took reams of notes, the monotone professor in his Biology 101 course who always wore bowties—he studied these characters in his world with affection, adoring their bland quirks in a way that never felt like mockery. I sometimes wondered what Clem’s appreciation for dull people said about me. Was I a snooze? But I don’t think Clem found me boring. I think he saw me as a cold stoic who had a hidden warmth that he was determined to unearth. My smiles were hard-won and Clem liked earning them.

The sex wasn’t bad either. Clem was a conscientious partner. He wouldn’t cum until I did or, when I wasn’t feeling it, pretended I did. The sex had a sweetness and earnestness to it; I knew he was eager to connect but sometimes that eagerness bothered me and sometimes the pride he radiated when he performed well was irritating, like he thought he was some Adonis when really he was just Clem. He thought he understood me—fully, completely—and, in his mind, that made him an exceptional lover. And he was always doing things to try and increase our intimacy.

“Do you want to lick each other’s eyeballs?” he asked one time after sex. “It’s supposed to help couples connect.”

I was aghast.

“No,” I said. “I do not want to lick your eyeball.”

Clem’s clinginess could wear on me and I was often tempted to set up boundaries by limiting how often we saw one another but I just couldn’t bring myself to do it. Any time I would start the boundaries conversation I would look into Clem’s big brown eyes and I’d think of Winnie back home and I’d chicken out. I could feel just how much the conversation would hurt him. Still, in the back of my mind, I knew the relationship had an expiration date. I just wasn’t sure when it was.

*****

Clem was a rising start in the Perceptual Studies department. You’ve probably never heard of this degree because our college offered the only program in existence. Perceptual Studies is paranormal research dressed up in scientific language. They study past lives, near death experiences, ESP. The department was financed by an endowment from the man who invented the Xerox machine which seems fitting given the department’s interest in multiple lives.

Did it embarrass me that I was dating someone who chose this major? I’m ashamed to admit that it did. In my defense, I come from a no-nonsense family. My parents are accountants; my brother is a tax attorney. Everything we do is rational. When my parents found out I had a boyfriend and asked what his major was, I lied and told them Clem was undecided. To them, indecision trumped irrationality.

Despite my embarrassment at his major, Clem’s interest in the supernatural could be entertaining. As research for his classes, we went to psychics and seances. Most of the seers we visited were amusing charlatans wheeling out cheap tricks to a gullible audience but one woman we visited had an offhand way of talking that felt convincing to me. She lived across the street from an old quarry in a house that looked like a stiff breeze could knock it over. We sat on a water-warped porch while she did a reading for us. Her son and daughter watched T.V. in the adjoining room; the voices of cartoon characters chattered in the background.

“You have a dark future,” she told me as she looked around my head. She said it so casually, like she was commenting on the color of my hair. “That’s all I’m getting. Nothing more.” She wouldn’t accept my money because she said she hadn’t done anything good for me.

I knew I shouldn’t believe her but I did and I wasn’t sure why. Later, I decided it must have been her performance and the setting; the way she seemed so indifferent to my reaction and her refusal to accept my money despite her obvious need for it. Most of the psychics and mediums seemed a little too eager to convince but she had a cold objectivity to her.

“Do you think any of that was real?” I asked Clem as we drove back from her house to campus in his tiny Camry.

“Maybe,” he said. “You have to keep your mind open. That’s the only way progress is made.”

“Progress?”

He looked at me with those earnest brown eyes.

“Understanding psychic abilities could be the next stage in the evolution of humanity.”

Clem’s faith made me nervous. He took his feelings and intuitions to extreme ends. In our second semester, he insisted he felt so close to me that he was certain we had a psychic connection.

“I can feel what you’re feeling. Even when I’m not with you. Do you ever feel that?”

I didn’t know how to respond.

“Maybe,” I lied.

I tried to ignore this irrational aspect of Clem’s personality, but he didn’t make it easy. His proclamations often had a dramatic flair. One afternoon, as I studied for a midterm, Clem bounded into my dorm room.

“Is everything alright?” he asked between heaving breaths. “I had a horrible feeling something happened to you.”

“Everything’s fine,” I replied, confused.

“Are you sure?”

I tried to think. Was everything alright?

“I started my period this morning,” I said with a shrug.

Clem nodded sagely.

“That must have been it.”

*****

Sophomore year, I rented a house not too far from campus with two girls from my floor, both of whom were named Kelly which, as you can imagine, often caused confusion. In my first few weeks back, I grew smitten with a T.A. named Tobin in my Psychology of Marketing course.

I didn’t speak to him at first. Instead, I admired him from afar. The class was in a packed lecture hall and I sat at the back. Tobin had these thick eyebrows and intensely magnetic dark eyes that looked like they were constantly seeking out potential threats. I was probably drawn to Tobin’s seriousness because I was wanting more of it from Clem. I had assumed things with Clem would naturally come to an end after freshman year but, when we returned back from summer break, things picked up where they left off. It was just so easy with Clem.

A few weeks into my sophomore year, I spotted Tobin at the gym while I was swimming laps. He stood at the lip of the pool, preparing to dive in, and I was floored by his physique. He was statuesque. Michelangelo’s David in flesh and blood. He looked serious and angry and fucking ripped.

I started going to the pool several times a week but never spoke to Tobin. The second time I saw him there, I noticed an unexpected quirk: Tobin had a faint, circular tattoo around his bellybutton. I couldn’t tell what it was at a distance but I was determined to find out.

“You’re working out a lot,” said Clem one night as we watched Sex and The City reruns. “Maybe I should go with you some time.” He looked down at his thin arms. “I could use the exercise.” Clem wasn’t at home in his body. I had seen him play basketball once at an intramural game. It was hard to watch. He scrambled about with a manic enthusiasm that made me cringe. The other players looked exasperated by his mode of playing; he wasn’t in sync with any of them.

“I prefer to go alone,” I said. “I find it meditative.”

I wasn’t sure if Tobin ever noticed me swimming in the next lane. He was in a bubble of focus and I sensed his goals were the only things on his radar. My desire to speak with Tobin was overwhelming but my relationship with Clem and a fear of saying something stupid kept me quiet. But then a window opened.

Professor Sterling said Tobin would deliver a lecture the following week on social proof—the idea that people mimic the behaviors of others in social settings. This was my opportunity. I could take my time to prepare a smart question to ask during his lecture. I sensed I couldn’t get Tobin’s attention by flattering him with a softball question. I saw the way the other women in the class mooned over Tobin. Their affection was too obvious and he barely gave them the time of day. I knew that the way to get his interest was to challenge him on something difficult. Something he’d have a hard time responding to.

So, the following Friday, after Tobin delivered a passionate lecture about customer testimonials on third party review sites and how they’re best exploited in countries that are more collectivist than the U.S., I raised my hand. Tobin made eye contact with me for the first time ever. I cleared my throat and took my shot.

“All these techniques you describe…they may be effective…but are they ethical?”

Tobin didn’t respond; he just stared at me. I had miscalculated something. My tone, the question, the timing. Something was off.

“I didn’t realize this was an ethics course,” he said and then nothing more. Silence. He stared at me with those dark eyes. I could hear the clock ticking on the wall. Someone behind me cleared their throat. I had expected he might not love my my question, but I hadn’t expect this level of antipathy.

“I would assume ethics should be considered in any course,” I said with a smile, trying to keep it light.

“That’s not what this lecture is about.” Tobin pointed at another hand on the opposite side of the lecture hall.

The interaction left me in a sour mood which Clem picked up on that night as we ate Chinese takeout at his place.

“What’s the matter?” he asked.

“Nothing,” I muttered.

Clem stared at me and smiled a knowing smile and I knew what he was doing. He was literally trying to read my mind.

“I know what it is,” he said.

I sighed. You really, really don’t, I thought.

I avoided the gym for a few days but I eventually decided I needed to go and blow off steam; I didn’t want some arrogant asshole to keep me from the things I enjoyed. I walked through winter winds and a light dusting of snow to the student health center. I changed in the locker room and made my way out to the swim deck. The harsh smell of chlorine and the warmth of the air woke me up and made me eager to move. I looked in my periphery at the other swimmers as I walked to my lane and I was relieved to see that Tobin wasn’t there.

The swim felt good. It helped me focus and clear my head and burn off some of the frustration that I had been carrying around with me. It also helped me reconcile some of the guilt I was feeling. I hadn’t cheated on Clem but maybe I would have if the opportunity had presented itself. I decided I would break up with Clem. If I was seriously thinking about other prospects then it wasn’t the right relationship for me. I felt a sense of relief after the swim. The satisfaction of a difficult decision made.

I toweled off on the pool deck and was on my way towards the locker room when I heard someone call out my name. ‘Mallory-allory-allory’ bounced around the tiled walls of the pool. I looked down. Tobin was treading water in the lane next to where I stood; I could see his legs scissoring in the clear water to stay afloat. He must have slipped in during my laps. He crossed his arms on the edge of the pool and pulled his goggles up. Up close to him, I noticed his eyes were a dark blue, almost black. He knew my name.

“What?” I asked, trying to sound cold.

He pushed himself out of the pool and stood dripping in front of me in a Speedo.

“I’m sorry if I was rude the other day.”

I tried to think what to say. ‘Apology accepted’? ‘You should be’? What I finally said came without thinking.

“Do you want to get a drink?” I asked.

*****

Tobin always wanted to have sex at my place and he was careful to make sure that my roommates were never home when he came over; he said he could get in trouble if anyone found out that a T.A. was sleeping with an undergrad. Avoiding my roommates wasn’t hard; Kelly waited tables at the TGI Friday’s near the mall and the other Kelly was always over at her boyfriend’s place.

Tobin and I would fuck in my empty apartment and, afterwards, he would get out of bed and walk naked around my room and inspect everything—my furniture, my posters, my jewelry, my books. He even opened my drawers and looked through my clothes. There was something odd about about the way he looked at my stuff; it felt remote and scientific, like he was collecting data. I told myself that was nonsense; he was intrigued by me and wanted to know what made me tick. During his searches, Tobin would hold up items and ask for the story behind them. One time he found a Zener deck that Clem had left at my place.

“What are these?” he asked.

“It’s a Zener deck.”

Tobin flipped them around and looked at the cards, a smug expression on his face.

“They use these to test whether you’re psychic?”

“Yes,” I said.

“Cute,” he muttered.

When I asked Tobin questions—which I did far less frequently because I never saw his place and knew so little about him—he was evasive and spoke in generalities. I managed to pick up a few things about him. He had gone to a private high school. His dad was the C.E.O. of an electronics company. That faint tattoo around his bellybutton? It was a clock. All three hands—hour, minute, second—pointing straight down. I had tried to get more details about the mysterious and suggestive tattoo, but he had just said he got it because he lost a bet, which I didn’t believe. I also learned that he had been a chemistry major in undergrad and was now getting his MBA to market chemicals that he felt had huge potential for industrial use.

“What type of chemicals?” I asked.

Tobin didn’t answer. He just picked at his cuticles and then licked my stomach, which was how he initiated sex. He loved to lick my stomach.

In lieu of Tobin sharing personal information, I had started to ask hypothetical questions. Where would you go if you could travel anywhere in the world? What time period would you most want to live in? And, in the string of hypotheticals from me, Tobin came up with that one of his own.

“What’s something illegal that you think should be legal?”

“Sex work,” I said.

“Would you ever prostitute yourself?”

“No but if someone else wants to then they should be allowed. It should be legal and regulated. Why? Are you hoping to pimp me out?”

Tobin ignored my question.

“What else?”

“Nothing else.”

“There must be something.”

I thought. What did I think was ethical that was illegal?

“I think it’s okay to steal from the rich. If someone needs it more and their life depends on it then I think it’s okay.”

“So you would steal money if you knew it would help someone in dire need?”

“Yes,” I said. “I guess I would. Why are you asking me this?”

Tobin nodded as if he were filing away this information in his head.

“I think all drugs should be legal,” he said, answering his own question and ignoring mine.

About the only thing I could get Tobin to talk deeply on was the ethics of marketing by needling him with challenging questions. In a one-on-one environment, making him angry was the way to get him to talk.

“Be honest, those methods used in class. Don’t they seem a little shady?” I asked him once.

“Why?” he said with a confused scowl. “We’re not forcing anyone to do anything. We’re meeting a need.”

“A need or a desire?”

“There isn’t a difference.”

In class, Tobin pretended like he didn’t know me. Even when I would catch his eye on the way out of class, he would give me a flat stare. His iciness creeped me out and made me hungry for some type of public acknowledgement. I wanted him to want to be with me, but it wasn’t happening and I wondered how many people he was sleeping with aside from me. But who was I to talk? I was still seeing Clem and he was totally oblivious to my cheating. I kept meaning to end it with Clem, but whenever I resolved to do it, I realized just how much I relied on him to keep me grounded.

“You seem distant,” Clem would say when we were together.

“I think I might be anemic,” was my constant excuse.

And then, two months into the affair, the relationship with Clem was ended for me. I came home to meet Clem for lunch and found him standing in my bedroom, holding Tobin’s wristwatch.

“Whose is this?” he asked and I could see in his face that he was finally putting it all together.

“Where did you find that?”

He tapped the mantel near the Zener deck.

I opened my mouth, ready to lie. But I didn’t. I couldn’t. Not to sweet Clem. He deserved better.

I told him everything. Everything except to whom the watched belonged. That part was for me. When I finished, Clem looked at the floor.

“I loved you,” he said with something that sounded like a whimper. It was my chance to say I loved him back, but I couldn’t.

When Clem left, I looked at Tobin’s silver wristwatch sitting on the bed. I could hear it ticking. Had Tobin left it next to the deck on purpose? Later that night, I texted Tobin and told him we needed to talk. Tobin’s brief texted reply came hours later. He was in the middle of writing a paper and it would be a few days before he had time. And then he was gone for the weekend to visit family. And then he had a lecture to prepare for. When he finally came over a week and a half later my anger had mellowed and his responses were characteristically flat.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said. “I’m always forgetting things places.”

I was confused. Had it been an accident? Had Tobin not meant to leave the watch? Maybe I was the one in the wrong here. After all, I was the one cheating. I eventually stopped caring whether Tobin had done it intentionally. Intentional or not, it had happened and I knew I wouldn’t get more from him than that.

The secret sex with Tobin continued, though it was faster and more mechanical than usual. One night, instead of his usual post-coital inspective walk around the room, Tobin stood naked in front of me at the end of the bed.

“Do you like my body?” he asked, a glimmer in his dark eyes.

Should I have played coy? Evasive? Maybe I should have, but I didn’t.

“Yes.”

“You like to watch it move?”

“Yes.”

“Stare at my stomach, stare at the clock,” he said, and then he started to…dance. It was a strange dance, his hips subtly moving back and forth, his shoulders shifting from side to side. I watched the muscles rippling under his skin. The two ribbed columns of his six pack pulling in one direction and then another.

“Watch the clock. Watch it move. Watch it closer.”

I did what he told me. Did I choose to do it? I’m still not sure. I knew that I was being hypnotized in a way. If I chose to go along with it, I suppose I did so because I so badly wanted something from Tobin. An answer. A truth. An honest feeling. It was a vicious cycle; the more I became convinced it wasn’t there, the more determined I became to find it.

Tobin was gone in the morning. His dance was the last memory I had. There are some people who are deemed highly susceptible to hypnosis but I hadn’t thought I was the type. I expected that from someone eager to believe, not a skeptic like me. I wanted to call Tobin the next day and ask what had happened, but I was afraid to, afraid that I had done something embarrassing. I did my best to forget. If I didn’t remember then maybe it never happened.

*****

The Kellys gave me the silent treatment. They were friends with Clem and word had got back to them about what I did. I was a ghost in my own apartment, haunting rooms that they were in, existing in a different plane. I stayed in my room when they were in the common areas but I could hear them through the walls talking about inanities—TV shows and gossip—and I wished I could be a part of it. The guilt and isolation started to weigh on me. I had a hard time concentrating and my grades started to slip. The worst part was that I couldn’t talk to anyone about it. My friends ignored me, Clem wouldn’t speak to me, and Tobin was all one-sided, taking in information and never offering anything in return.

I missed Clem. His warm personality and sprawling kindness. All of his flaws—his clinginess, his occasional smothering desire to fully connect with me—seemed inconsequential now that I was alone. On more than one occasion, I considered texting him to see if I could smooth things over but I knew I shouldn’t. I wrote him an apology letter but I didn’t send it. I needed to find something or someone else. Clem wasn’t it and I was starting to realize that Tobin wasn’t it either.

But, in my isolated state, it was hard to pull myself away from Tobin; I felt like I needed the sex. It seemed to be my only human connection even though sex with him rarely felt reciprocal. More like a highly sophisticated form of masturbation. I longed for some type of recognition from Tobin. He had taken a greater interest in me once Clem was out of the picture, but I sensed for dubious reasons.

The two Kellys went home early for Christmas break and I was left alone in the apartment for a few days. I figured I’d use the alone time to catch up on some of the classwork I had fallen behind on. Tobin came over one afternoon during a study break and we had sex while fat snowflakes spun to the ground outside my frosted bedroom window.

After sex, Tobin stood naked at the foot of the bed again.

“It’s cold,” I said. “Get back under the covers.”

“Do you like my body?” he asked.

“You know I do.”

“Stare at the clock.”

“Why?”

“Just stare at it.”

I did what he told me and he started to move his hips in that seductive dance. It was the last thing I remembered.

*****

And that’s how I wound up a mugshot staring out at you from your newspaper. I know, I know. I skipped over the part of the story that you want to hear. About walking into the bank. About writing the note and slipping it across the maple counter to the teller. About the way the teller’s eyes watered up as she read the note. About casually walking out the door and into the parking lot with a canvas bag full of money.

I would tell you all of that if I could recall it, but I can’t. The next thing that I remember after Tobin’s dance is being awakened the next morning from a deep sleep by a detective pounding on my apartment door. He brought me to the police station and showed me surveillance video from a bank near the center of town. Even with the slightly grainy video, there was no question that the ponytailed woman in the galoshes was me.

“But that can’t be me,” I insisted at my first questioning. “I don’t remember it. I don’t remember any of it.”

Detective Halpern fixed me with a look that I have since become quite accustomed to receiving: patent disbelief. As you already know, it did not go well for me. After constantly insisting that I had been hypnotized, the police questioned Tobin but he had the perfect alibi. When the robbery took place, Tobin was already back home in Connecticut with his CEO father and his interior decorator mother in the family home that had been featured in Architectural Digest. (Yes, I have seen a copy of their issue.

Tobin and his family stand in front of a grandfather clock; the whole family are dressed in tweed jackets and breeks like they’re about to go quail hunting. They gaze cooly out at the reader with that same dark stare that I’ve come to know so well.) And there simply wasn’t any evidence of Tobin in my life. It was as though he had planned it that way from the beginning. If only I had asked him an easy question instead of challenging him, maybe none of this would have happened.

“What did you do with the money?” asked my lawyer. “It will help your case if you return it.”

What did I do with the money? I’ve learned that you can’t do anything under hypnosis that you find morally objectionable so I assume that Tobin somehow convinced me that the money would go to a charity. Whether or not it actually went to a charity, I’ll never know. I hope it did.

The papers got a lot of mileage out of my story. Bank robbery! Hypnosis! A corrupt co-ed! What’s not to love? They interviewed the two Kellys and some of my classmates who painted a salacious picture of the girl next door with a sadistic streak and suddenly all the photos the press published of me took on an eerie contrast; the more pretty or innocent I looked in the photos, the more fun it was to imagine my transgressions.

*****

My visitors here are mostly family; my parents and my brother visit once a month like clockwork. I don’t try to convince them any more. They’ve done their research. They’ve read about Hardrup and Nielsen and the Copenhagen hypnosis murders and I think their minds are a little more open to the possibility that I’m telling the truth, which I appreciate. In a way, our relationship is better now than before all of this happened. There’s nothing like a little tragedy to bring a family closer together.

The only other visitor I get is Clem who, of course, fully believes everything I tell him. Good old Clem. He never spoke to the papers. When I first saw him behind the scratched plexiglass in the visiting area, he looked different. Skinnier and sadder, less boyish.

“I read about what that asshole did to you,” said Clem. “How he got in your head. That wasn’t right.”

“You remember how you thought you could read my thoughts?”

Clem shook his head.

“That was stupid of me. I was being stupid.”

I don’t talk to the press anymore but I still see my photo pop-up when there’s a good-girl-gone-bad story in the news. When I see my face in the paper, I’m always reminded what people like you must think when you see me. But you don’t know me. Yes, you know my story but you only know part of it. I have a strong desire to correct any misperception, to tell you that you don’t know who I really am. I want to change your mind.

But even if I could convince you, I couldn’t convince everyone. Some people will always think my story is an impossible fabrication, the poker-faced invention of a sociopathic mind. They point to clues sprinkled throughout my telling, holes in my story that never quite add up. I could never erase all doubt. No-one can ever fully know another person. And we have to accept this. I know I have.

*****

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