The Rules

by Stacey Kade

  Ariane bit her lip, then said, “It’s the only one I’ve got.” She pushed the door open and hopped down, pulling her balloon out after her.

  “Wait,” I said. “What about tomorrow?”

  Her hand on the door, Ariane glanced up at me, blinking hard against the brightness of the dome light. “What about it?”

  “A repeat performance of tonight,” I prompted. “The daytime version.”

  “I can’t meet you there?” she asked, her shoulders sagging.

  I frowned. It hadn’t been that bad tonight, had it? Aside from the encounters with Mrs. Vanderhoff and Rachel, I thought we’d had a good time.

  Before I could say anything, Ariane nodded with a sigh. “Fine. See you tomorrow morning.” She started to shut the door and then stopped. “Here, though,” she said pointedly. “Not at my house.”

  “Got it,” I said, drumming my hands on the wheel, a nervous fidget. I hated leaving her to walk in the dark. It seemed wrong. Like tempting fate or something.

  “I mean it.”

  “I said okay.”

  She gave me one last stern look, as if reinforcing her point, and then slammed the door. The glow from the dome light faded, but I waited—I never promised I wouldn’t do that—watching her cross the street and then walk up the sidewalk until she vanished—presumably into one of the houses on that side of the block.

  The tightness in my stomach eased with the assumption that she’d made it home okay. And it was right then that I realized I might be in way over my head with this game of pretend.

  WHEN I SLIPPED through the front door, the house was dark and still except for the murmuring and flickering of the TV I’d left on in the family room. I let out a breath I hadn’t realized I’d been holding. Of course my father wouldn’t be home yet. It was barely nine; he wouldn’t be home for hours. And yet the guilt of sneaking out and obliterating nearly every one of the Rules made me feel certain he’d be waiting for me, grave disappointment and censure carved into his face.

  But he wasn’t.

  I went into the family room, clicked off the TV, and hurried down the hall to my room. I needed to get everything put to rights and be asleep (or look as if I were) before he arrived home. I had plenty of time, but I could feel my crimes written all over me—in what I was wearing, in the sagging balloon tied to my arm, in the plastic shopping bag containing fair snacks and the stuffed bog/dear Reginald. And judging by my reflection in the mirror, I was nowhere near sleepy or even a reasonable facsimile of it. My cheeks were flushed, my hair was all over the place, and my eyes…

  I stepped closer to the mirror. My eyes looked brighter even behind the dulling plastic of the blue lenses.

  I’d enjoyed tonight. I mean, any evening that ended with Rachel coated in shaving cream and shrieking had to be on my top ten of all time. But it was more than that. Zane was not who I’d thought he was. Or, if he was that arrogant, privileged jerk, there were other sides to him, other facets: the little kid who, if the memories/images in Zane’s head were to be believed, had once had Star Wars sheets on his bed, so great was his obsession. The guy who knew what it was to be different and not good enough.

  Not that learning those things about Zane changed anything. My opinion of him was irrelevant. This would be over in a day or two, at the most, and then things would return to normal. Or maybe slightly better than normal, as Rachel would finally have a taste of what it felt like to lose, and I’d learn more about regaining control over my “lost” ability.

  That last part made me queasy. In all honesty, I didn’t really want my ability back. At least not any more than was strictly necessary to keep those weird power flare-ups at bay. But limiting myself wasn’t an option. I needed to be able to protect myself and my father if GTX came after us.

  But my brain had put up this barrier for self-protection, and for good reason. I didn’t want to be the person who could do what I’d done in the lab, near the end of my stay there. And some part of me believed that if I brought the barrier down permanently and regained control over my ability, I’d finally be the success Dr. Jacobs had been longing for, and he’d, I don’t know, somehow sense that and find me. I knew, logically, that wasn’t true, but I couldn’t stop thinking about it, especially after seeing Rachel in action tonight, hurting Zane for not cooperating. It brought back lots of bad memories.

  “I’ve got big plans for you, my dear,” Dr. Jacobs used to say from the observation room window, the one that made up the entire fourth wall of my little room. “You will save lives.”

  What he’d failed to mention, though, was that I’d have to take other lives in the process. Not that it had started out that way.

  The new tests began when I was six. (Only a month or so before my father would rescue me, actually; though I didn’t know that then, of course.) And this time, Dr. Jacobs and the techs didn’t want blood or bone marrow or brain tissue—much to my relief. Instead, these tests were more like tasks. Just games, tricks for treats—all of them with the promise of a potential trip Outside if I performed “up to standards.”

  The first series of tests: move the big rubber red ball to specific locations in my room (far right corner, five feet in the air) without touching it. No problem. I’d been doing much the same on my own for as long as I could remember. I could lie on my cot and float a book from the shelf across my room over to my waiting hands just by focusing on the spine of the one I wanted. Levitation. Easy.

  Second series: my favorite lab tech, Mara—she talked to me like I was a person and smiled at me instead of avoiding my gaze—would stand with an open bag of my favorite candy in her hand and a plastic cup on the floor in front of her. My task? Stop the peanut M&M’s Mara dropped before they fell into the cup (or onto the ground, her aim wasn’t so good sometimes). And I got to eat the candy I “saved.” Yummy.

  Then, once I’d mastered that, I had to redirect the falling candy to different target cups set out across the room, on command. And at faster and faster speeds. Bullet speed, in fact. For the last test, Mara used rubber pellets, and one of them actually tore a hole through the far side of a disposable cup, sending plastic splinters into the air. I got to keep the whole bag of candy that time. (It wasn’t until years later that I understood what they were training me to do. Redirecting bullets is a handy skill if you have the need for that sort of a thing.)

  The third series of tests, though, that’s when everything changed. Mara wheeled in a glass cage on a metal cart. In it, a tiny brown-and-white mouse scurried through a bed of cedar chips, running between a shiny metal wheel in the corner and a water bottle hanging down the side of the cage. I was entranced. I’d never seen a live animal, of any variety, before. And, foolishly, I thought I was getting some company in my lonely little room, even if it was only for a few days.

  My first tasks with the mouse were simple, innocuous. Use my mind to keep the wheel from moving when the mouse tried to push it forward. Then I was supposed to hold the mouse still, again without actually touching him.

  “From across the room, darling,” Dr. Jacobs said over the intercom.

  High on previous successes and with the carrot of Outside dangling in front of me, I didn’t even hesitate. Of course I could stop the mouse from moving. There were complexities to this task, involving energy, molecules, the vibration of atoms, and various other aspects of the science that I didn’t care about. It was simply enough that I could do it.

  But I took special care not to hurt Jerry. We were, in my six-year-old head, friends. (I’d named him after the clever cartoon mouse; though, my Jerry, sadly, showed nowhere near the initiative or intelligence of his namesake. But I was hopeful.)

  At night, when the tests were done and everyone had gone home, I had the comforting noise of Jerry shuffling through his cedar chips or running on his wheel to keep me company. I talked to him, too, whispering so no one could hear. He didn’t respond or acknowledge my existence in any way, but I knew that would change eventually.

  I was train
ing Jerry to trust me. I picked out the sunflower seeds in his food before he could eat them and used them to lure him closer so I could pet him. (There’s a bit of irony for you—the experiment training another experiment, using the same methods that had worked on her. Or maybe it’s just evidence for the nurture side of the nature vs. nurture debate.)

  In any case, my week or so with Jerry was probably the happiest I ever was in the lab.

  I really should have known better. My studies should have clued me in on what was coming next. The daily curriculum now included videos with diagrams of mouse anatomy. Find the heart. Understand how it works.

  But I was oblivious. Until Dr. Jacobs spelled out exactly what he wanted.

  “Kill the mouse,” he said to me late one afternoon over the intercom, barely looking up from the sheaf of papers on his clipboard.

  “What?” I stared at him, not understanding. I looked to Mara, standing next to Dr. Jacobs in the observation room, for guidance. But her eyes were wide with surprise.

  “Sir—” she began.

  “Just stop the heart. You can do it,” Jacobs said to me impatiently, with a glare at Mara.

  Mara, in turn, gave me a forced smile and a stiff encouraging nod. But I could feel her fear.

  I didn’t move. I knew I could do what he asked—find Jerry’s rapidly beating little heart by picturing it as I’d seen it on the diagram and telling it to STOP. But I wouldn’t; Jerry was my friend.

  Something in the quality of my stillness must have registered with Dr. Jacobs. He put his clipboard down with an exasperated huff. “Darling, you’ve been doing so well, so far. You want to go Outside, don’t you?” His smile was tight, threatening somehow.

  My mind flashed back to Leo and his bloodstained grin. Freak. They’re never going to let you out of here.

  I frowned. He’d been telling the truth, I’d felt that for sure. But I didn’t get any sense of deception from Dr. Jacobs, either. Someone had to be lying.

  Dr. Jacobs never specified when you’d be let outside or in what condition, my logical side pointed out suddenly. I recognized it as a negotiation strategy commonly employed among humans. It was called leaving a loophole.

  A rush of heat filled me, driving me to clench my hands into fists. I hated Dr. Jacobs in that moment, not just for asking me to kill Jerry, which I wouldn’t do, but for making me hope for something that he had no intention of delivering.

  Dr. Jacobs took my continued silence as assent. “Very good.” He scooped up his clipboard and resumed flipping through pages.

  “No.” My voice came out small and soft. I could feel sweat breaking out on the backs of my knees and in the crooks of my elbows. Refusing always had consequences. But unlike the other times—where techs like Leo were sent in to force cooperation—this was one thing Dr. Jacobs couldn’t make me do.

  Or so I thought.

  At the sound of my refusal, all activity in the observation room stopped, the techs’ gazes moving to focus on Dr. Jacobs. Things had been tense lately. Men in military uniforms—so many buttons and medals on their shoulders—had taken to appearing in the observation room on occasion, where they were seemingly unexpected and not particularly welcome.

  Dr. Jacobs put his clipboard down with a loud snap. “Now, Wannoseven, I don’t think you’re—”

  “No,” I said again quickly, before I could lose my nerve. I was shaking from head to toe.

  Mara tried again. “Sir, I think she’s become attached to the—”

  But Dr. Jacobs was beyond listening to either one of us.

  He had my cot removed that night, leaving me to sleep on the cold, hard floor. When that didn’t work, he stripped the cell of everything but Jerry’s cage.

  By that time, though, I was starting to enjoy his frustration. And he knew it.

  So he took away food. Not just mine, but Jerry’s too.

  I started to see the effects on Jerry after a day or two. He no longer left his nest of cedar chips to run on the wheel or drink from his water bottle, which I refilled at the sink. I checked on him constantly, making sure his sides were still puffing in and out with breath.

  On the fifth day of my rebellion, Dr. Jacobs, Grandpa-freaking-Art, had turned out the lights, leaving me alone in the dark.

  Remembering those days in the pitch-black, I shuddered and left my bed to turn on my desk lamp and closet light, making my room as bright as possible.

  I would never forget that kind of dark. It was like nothing I’d ever experienced before or since. My eyes had created hazy, crazy designs out of nothing in a panicked attempt to see something, anything. And the thick quality of the blackness was such that I felt like I might choke on it.

  But the silence had been the worst.

  I couldn’t hear anything. No noise except for Jerry and me. No thoughts, no feelings. Just empty, abandoned silence.

  Would they just leave me here? Forever? Jacobs had already told me—multiple times—I had no value to him if I was uncooperative.

  So…my only excuse is that I was six and hungry and scared. And trapped in a small room in the dark. Maybe forever.

  Still, that’s not enough. Not for what I did.

  When Jacobs returned to check on me—three days later, I found out—Jerry was dead and I was curled up in a ball in the corner. As far from Jerry’s cage as I could get within my own cage.

  I don’t remember much of those three days, other than the paralyzing darkness and the occasional shuffle of Jerry in his cedar chips…and then the ear-ringing silence of being completely alone and knowing what I’d done. It was horrible.

  When the lights came back on in my room, they were blinding. And Dr. Jacobs’s voice boomed congratulations in what was probably his normal speaking voice, but it felt like screaming to my ears. He ordered all my privileges returned in double portions.

  But none of that mattered, not when I squinted up to see Mara coming in to wheel Jerry’s cage away and she wouldn’t even look at me, her fear a distinct pulse in my head. Only this time, she wasn’t afraid of Dr. Jacobs. She was afraid of me.

  Sick shame filled me. Dr. Jacobs had made me like him; I’d hurt something smaller and weaker than I was.

  Too weak to stand, I rolled onto my stomach and dry heaved until I passed out.

  I’d woken up, hours later, hooked to an IV for nutrition, with a tech (not Mara; I never saw her again) fussing over me. And it hadn’t taken long for Dr. Jacobs to start up the testing again. Or, to try to, anyway.

  Something had happened in the dark. A switch inside me had flipped. Whether it was the trauma of the dark, or killing Jerry, or both, it didn’t matter. I could not access my ability anymore. Nothing Jacobs did after that made a difference, carrot or stick. And he’d tried both. More candy, more promises of Outside, followed by days without food or light.

  But it didn’t matter; I couldn’t have done what he asked even if I’d wanted to. I was empty, hollowed out. Whatever had been there before was now gone. After that, if I wanted something from across the room, the only way for me to get it was the human way—walking over to retrieve it.

  Jacobs had been enraged and threatened to “dispose” of me in the days leading up to the explosion that would allow my father to free me. But I…I’d been relieved. He could no longer control me; I couldn’t even control me, so to speak. The ability to obey his demands had been taken away from me, and with it, the fear.

  But now I was supposed to be working to get all of that back. And even though having my telekinetic ability restored would actually make me more powerful, it felt more like I was daring Dr. Jacobs to come and find me.

  I shook that thought away. With effort, I refocused my attention on hiding the evidence of my illicit evening.

  I tucked the Puppy Chow and French kiss cookies into my schoolbag. I couldn’t leave them in my room without risking my father’s attention. And I’d learned during my hoarding stage that food stored in unusual places attracts bugs, which…gross.

  But at school, I
could keep them in my locker or share them with Jenna.

  I flinched and snapped my bag closed. No, I would not be sharing them with Jenna. She hadn’t returned any of my texts or calls. She’d been serious about putting some distance between us.

  Except tomorrow she’d hear someone, somewhere talking about Zane and me, and then she’d hate me forever.

  I sighed and crossed over to my desk. Maybe that was for the best. Maybe my father was right: I was too attached to Jenna when she didn’t even know the real me. At least if she was avoiding me, I wouldn’t have to see the hurt on her face when I couldn’t explain what was really going on. How it was all fake. How I didn’t really like Zane and he didn’t like me.

  That last thought surprised me with the pang of hurt that accompanied it.

  Don’t. Don’t be that stupid girl. Nothing had changed. My goal was the same and that had to be my focus.

  I opened my desk drawers to look for scissors. I needed to cut the balloon off my arm, pop it, and hide the evidence at the bottom of a garbage can, preferably under the nastiest, smelliest trash I could find. Subterfuge. It was my specialty. Well, one of them.

  So Zane was attractive and less of an ass than I’d originally thought. That was no reason to lose sight of the point of this exercise. Even if his smile did funny things to my insides and his hands were big. Which was nice.

  I remembered the feeling of his hand, gentle but certain on my back, steering me out of the gym. And I shivered. Which was ridiculous. I’d been holding his hand all night—why this would have made a difference, I wasn’t sure. It just felt more personal.

  And then in the parking lot, when I’d responded without thinking about it, taking his arm to look at what Rachel had done. The heat of him had radiated against me, and I’d been all too aware of that small distance between us, as if an electric connection existed, leaping across the space. He’d looked at me with warmth in his gaze, and I’d felt small but not in a bad way, not in the way I was accustomed—where the world felt dangerous and enormous, and I was on my own. Instead it was more like being protected, shielded from all those searching for me, wanting to hurt me.