Missing the Big Picture by Donovan, Luke (great book club books txt) 📕

go into the radio station. I was hoping Rich would be there and say that the voice in my mind was really his. At twelve thirty I called the radio station, asked for Rich, and was told by the station director that Rich didn’t come in that night. I thought that was very strange. Why didn’t Rich come to his first radio show? Why, since I started having telepathic communication with Rich in March, was he suddenly avoiding me? Two days later Rich’s voice entered my mind again. I was disappointed and dumbfounded about why he was avoiding me.

About a week after Rich’s no-call, no-show at the radio station, I ran into him at the campus sub shop with two of his new roommates. Rich was seldom by himself. Even though he came off as a tough guy, Rich could hardly do anything alone. If he was with another male, he was worried somebody would think he was gay, so he always had to have at least two people with him at all times. At the sub shop, he asked me to stop e-mailing me, so I did. I was angry because once again somebody had gotten in the way of me forming a friendship.

Even after I stopped e-mailing Rich, I still heard his voice in my mind. One time when I was working in the admissions office, my supervisor asked me to file some papers in the basement, where all the old files of the sophomore class were stored. Even though I knew it was wrong, I would often read the files of my friends and people in my dorm. I never told anyone that I was doing this, since I loved my job at the admissions office. I read Rich’s letters of recommendation, his essay, and his high school transcript. As I was reading his file, I heard his voice in my mind simultaneously. I found out that Rich was vice president of his high school class, played soccer and ran track, and had close to a ninety-five average. In my mind, Rich’s voice was upset and felt that reading the file was an invasion of his privacy.

Throughout the fall semester, I continued to hear Rich’s voice in my mind up to five times a day. Rich would apologize for the way he was acting toward me. He would ask me to stop by his radio show again, and this time he promised to be there. Once again he said that if I went to his radio show, he would admit that I was having telepathic conversations with him. At this point, Rich had a cohost for the show, but that didn’t deter me from wanting to stop by. I decided to just call the radio station and request a song instead of going there, just like I did two weeks before. I went down to the basement of my dorm and called the radio station at slightly past midnight. When Rich’s cohost answered, I asked for Rich and was connected with him. When Rich heard it was me, he started yelling and calling me a “freak.” He then said to me a few times, “What are you thinking?!”

The following morning I had another telepathic conversation with Rich where he apologized and said that he felt bad after the phone call. That was last time I heard Rich’s voice during the month of September. By September 28, three whole days had passed since I’d stopped hearing his voice in my mind. Since I had been back at school, one day was the longest stretch I’d experienced. I was convinced that the voice might be gone forever, so I decided to write Rich an e-mail. It had been a couple of weeks since he’d confronted me in the sub shop, asking him to stop e-mailing him. I did remember this conversation as I typed an e-mail, but I knew that since the second semester of freshman year, Rich and I had an off-again, on-again friendship. This time, however, after I wrote Rich an e-mail that Saturday morning, our friendship would turn definitively off.

The next day after dinner, I received an unexpected phone call from a woman who identified herself as an Officer Washington with the university police. My heart began pumping, and I became very nervous. Rich had gone down to the university police station and filed a report against me. I never thought that Rich would have taken it that far. Officer Washington said I would receive more information about the matter later, but for now, I needed to cease all contact with Rich immediately.

After I got off the phone, I wasn’t sure exactly what to do. I knew what I wasn’t going to do—e-mail Rich—but I wanted to tell somebody about the incident. I couldn’t imagine what my friends would say to me when I was in trouble for what appeared to be harassing another male. Then I realized that Rich wasn’t just an innocent victim; we had had plenty of actual conversations when Bruce and Rich instigated my bothering him. I just thought it was all in good fun. For example, toward the end of September, I had received pranks late at night and strange instant messages from people, both girls and boys, who wanted to initiate sexual contact. I always knew that Rich or Bruce had something to do with them, and I would just hang up the phone or block the person from instant messaging.

I first decided to tell Denise about what had happened. Even though Denise and I had grown apart because of her relationship with Rodney, I always knew I could tell her everything and she would be nonjudgmental and supportive—well, everything except the voices I heard. Denise was surprised that Rich took it that far, and she told me that they were just making fun of me and it was stupid to think that we were friends. Denise didn’t like Rich; Bruce; Rich’s roommate, Neil; or anybody else in their clan.