The Boy Who Read Minds

by Veronica Soliman

  It was as though I could see the future in that instant, and I stared at the darkness below my feet. It was plain, boring, and as dark as a lightless country sky. Nothing was special about the ground I walked on despite what everybody seemed to think. I was never one to overthink things, but this time I couldn’t help it.

  Maybe it was because for once, I didn’t have all the answers. Perhaps I just liked the mystery. I didn’t know why everyone’s thoughts disappeared when she looked me in the eyes, but I knew I craved it. It also occurred to me that when she’d touched my hand at the party, I somehow instantly sobered and the following day at school, whatever ailment she had had disappeared when I held her wrist. I needed to learn more; this was weird.

  I turned on my side to stare at the digital clock. In green, the time read 12:37 a.m. I had to sleep eventually. I had a math test tomorrow after all; I hadn’t even studied for it; I didn't have to. I could just hear others' thought processes and figure it out; view their work through their eyes and ace the test. Easy.

  My mind was up in flames and working overtime. It didn’t seem like these thoughts were planning on ending tonight. I felt like an insomniac. I walked out of the balcony, shutting the glass doors. I sighed, sitting on my oversized bed and staring at nothing.

  I shut my eyes, trying to force myself to fall asleep. The pillow was too hot, the room was too cold, and Violet was still on my mind. I froze in my tracks, confused as to why I suddenly felt this way; I didn’t want to keep asking myself why she was still on my mind because I already knew the answer. My thoughts fell into an abyss as sleep finally took me.

  ***

  A loud ringing from my alarm woke me up and I groaned at the sound. I had exactly one hour to shower and be at school. I stretched, a familiar ache in my back rippling throughout my body.

  One day. Get through this one day. I had forgotten to close the curtains of my balcony last night as an ungodly light pierced my eyes. I stood up as though everything was automatic. I showered, got dressed, greeted my parents, ate breakfast, then waved them goodbye. I wouldn’t be seeing them again until next week. They had conferences to get to, which meant I had nothing to do but be home alone for a few days.

  I drove to Rosemond High, letting the cold, fall breeze fly through my still-wet hair. I envisioned my mom telling me I’d get sick if I let my wet hair dry in the cold, so I shut my window.

  As soon as I parked my favorite green Toyota, my eyes landed on the familiar long, dark-brown hair of a person who I'd thought of far too much recently. Her back was to me as she pulled things from a car, her sweater caught onto the door and she dropped her backpack in order to remove the fabric. I watched in amusement as she fell from the force of pulling on her knit-sweater, leaving a small hole in the sleeve with a string hanging out.

  I watched her for a few more seconds until she picked up her backpack and tossed it over her shoulder, shutting the door as her driver, perhaps her mother, drove off. And out of nowhere, her eyes landed on mine as she turned away, but I just kept staring. I wanted to talk to her; ask her if she knew anything about mind readers. She was so smart; she might know something.

  I kept my eyes trained on her as she turned around for the second time to look at me, a light blush appeared on her cheeks and a smile at the edge of her. I got out of the car just as her smiling eyes turned to shock and she began speed-walking away. I was confused, surely, I’d misread the signs, but they could’ve easily been taken as embarrassment.

  "Violet." I heard myself say as she halted in her tracks. She'd just entered the school and now stood in the hallway entrance of Rosemond High school. Soon we would end up in our math class so I could ace the math test using her intellect.

  "Hi, Aaron?" She said, but it sounded more like a question. At a closer glance, I could see the dark circles under her eyes, as if she hadn't slept in a couple of days. I wondered what she'd been up to recently, but refused to ask, I was afraid that if I said anything, she’d shut me out immediately. I couldn’t comprehend why I cared about someone that I’d barely ever spoken to.

  Beneath her eyes was a small line of a puffy whiteness, the type that only shows when you’ve been crying. It became a struggle to focus on my own thoughts when she looked away. The loud clamor of the hallway's students shouted in my ear and for once, it wasn't about me. She looked down at the ground beneath us, I followed her gaze, my eyes landing on a large bruise on her wrist. I wondered if she was just clumsy.

  "How's it going?" I asked her as she kept her eyes trained on my knees. I was looking directly at her now, wanting so badly for her to look right back at me so the thoughts of our mindless classmates would be blocked out. I wanted to touch her, to feel the surge of power that came with it. I wondered if she'd ever felt it too.

  "Good." She muttered, barely audible as the hordes of students around us all seemed to think a million different things at once. I was on sensory overload and could hardly focus.

  Are they a thing now? I wished I could block out their thoughts. I tried to focus on Violet, it had been about two weeks since the last time I’d spoken to her; I really wanted to explore her mind rather than listen to a bunch of judgmental teenagers, who had nothing better to do than be concerned with my life.

  "Would I… uh… can I drive you home? After school? Today?" I asked, uncertain for the first time in a while. I could’ve easily broken eye contact to hear her thoughts, but I didn’t want to lose my rare opportunity to only hear my thoughts.

  "No.” She said, looking through me as she seemed to search around us, “I'm going to class." She firmly responded and walked away quickly as I stood there with my mouth hanging open, my jaw about to touch the center of the earth. I was speechless; I had never been that outrightly rejected before. Mainly because I didn’t necessarily ask if I knew what girls were thinking, but this strange feeling overwhelmed me.

  "See you." I called, my voice fading with her distance. I placed my hands in my pockets, slightly embarrassed at the thoughts people were throwing at me; none of them had a filter on their judgmental thoughts. Of course, they wouldn’t, they didn’t know I could hear them; I should have stopped caring about their thoughts by now. Yet, here I was, still a real person with real emotions who would grasp onto insults for ages and forget about compliments in seconds.

  I headed to my first class and second, then came time for my math class, which I was only looking forward to so I could see Violet. And ace the test, of course.

  I can't believe he did that to me. I don’t want to be here; I think I might start crying in the middle of class— I need to get a test. I could buy one on my way home. Mom doesn’t know. If she knew, she’d be so disappointed; she has too much going on now anyway. I can’t tell her. I heard these thoughts come from a familiar voice and I was stricken by the girl beside me. Violet’s mind was far from focused on the exam, which was concerning because school was usually all she thought about.

  "Good Morning! Who's ready for the math test today?" Our math teacher, Mr. Salé, walked in with a bright smile on his face. A collective groan sprang across the room, I turned to look at Violet who looked scared out of her mind.

  Miss smarty-pants didn’t study, I see. I usually did well when I listened to her mind during tests, but by the looks of it, she looked shocked that there was even an exam today. I thought I’d never see the day. I zoned in on someone else’s mind, hopeful that they had studied.

  Why is he looking at her? Whoever was thinking that was stopped mid-sentence and silence filled my mind. Violet's eyes were trained on mine and if I didn't know any better, I could've guessed she was pleading. Pleading, but for what?

  And all the noise rushed back in when she turned her attention to her empty tabletop. Mr. Salé began walking around, handing out the exams as I glanced at Violet beside me. I was concerned for her. She didn’t seem like her normal know-it-all self today.

  Why do I even go to school? Someone thought as soon as they saw their test and I stifled a laugh. I could zone
into each mind to see what they saw and copy how they wrote their answers. I shut my eyes, zoning in on Violet's mind.

  But math was far from it.

  I saw people yelling; it was blurry, she might've been crying. Another vision popped up; she was crying in this one too. I wondered what had been happening to her lately, were these just flashbacks? PTSD, maybe? She looked at the test in front of her and the vision disappeared.

  Focus. She thought as my concern levels rose. I had never seen such personal things in many people, especially not Violet. Usually, it was surface level thoughts, but there were rare occasions at school when someone would be crying inside and only, I would know. I never reached out, but for whatever reason, I was extremely worried about Violet.

  1. Solve for tan(x) of the graph below. I saw through her eyes and realized that she had no intention of solving the first problem, or any problem for that matter. She was apathetic toward school and I wanted to just grab her and shake some sense into her. I was annoyed that she hadn’t studied for this exam and left me reliant on other people.

  Nothing useful was coming from her mind and I began to panic, attempting to grab onto anyone else's thoughts, but they'd all moved on to the next problems. I groaned, writing random equations on the paper from what I'd seen the teacher do in class. I was almost certain that the concept wasn’t hard, drawing a tangent line would’ve been fine if I had studied. But the issue was that I hadn’t studied, and I had relied too much on other people’s minds only to realize that I might actually fail the test today; I copied a couple of solutions down from random people in my calculus class, hoping they were correct.

  Time was running out.

  I tried to zone in on someone, anyone, but in a panic, the bell rang, and everyone turned in their tests. I hadn't even completed half the problems and most likely got all of those wrong because I had copied off of Jared, and Jared wasn’t exactly known for being the sharpest tool in the shed.

  “Time’s up! Put your exams on my desk before you leave.” Mr. Salé said as everyone filed out. As everyone was exiting the classroom, I rushed over to Violet.

  "We need to talk." I said, feeling thankful that she was looking at me. I reached for her arm and tightly held it before she turned to look at it, pulling her arm away.

  "Don't touch me." She spoke. I quickly let go of her arm, her feelings were all muted. I was worried about her; I didn’t want to be, but I was.

  "Come with me then. I have to talk to you."

  "People are looking." She whispered as we stepped into the hallway and I followed her trail like a hawk.

  "Let them look, I don’t care. Violet, please talk to me." I wasn’t sure how to go about asking if she knew anything about mind-readers. I didn’t want to be annoying or seem insensitive, but she would think that about me anyway. She seemed stressed and unwilling to talk in general and I, for whatever reason, wanted to help her.

  "Leave me alone Aaron." She rushed through the halls like a car dodging everyone and somehow being three strides ahead of me each time. If I were her, I'd probably avoid me too with the way that I'd acted during the few conversations we had had. But I needed to ask her if she knew anything about mind readers, I needed her intelligence.

  "Violet wait." I rushed after her until she finally stopped and turned to face me.

  "What do you want?"

  Chapter 15:\ Close Encounters

  Violet

  He wanted to talk. I'd had enough talks in the past three days and I didn’t need or want another one. Especially not with a conceited guy whose intentions were unclear and unknown. I didn’t understand why, all of the sudden, I was of interest to Aaron. He would try to talk to me every so often and would stare at my eyes like his life depended on it. If I was another girl, I might’ve just found it endearing. But I didn’t want this attention, especially not today when I was struggling enough already to keep my composure and get through the day.

  But here he was, he had chased me down the hallway, no matter how quickly I'd walked away and now he was standing close to me with no escape route. He was too close, his fingers itching to hold my wrist as his intoxicating cologne surrounded me. I didn't want him near me, no matter how attractive everyone thought Aaron Paul was, I knew he was trouble. Guys like him always were, and I didn’t want to be around anymore men like him for the rest of my life.

  "Look… you got me, now talk. I need to get to lunch." I glared at him, his eyes sending magnetic bolts into mine. I couldn't understand why he was staring so much. It made me feel really strange.

  "Come take a walk with me… I'll buy you some food and we can talk." I wondered why he wanted to be alone with me. He did this two weeks ago too when Stacy had blown up after seeing us together. I decided to steer clear of him to avoid any issues with my best friend, but he kept coming back.

  "Aaron, I'm not interested in whatever you're selling." I felt choked, like I was missing something, and I realized his distance made me nervous. He was too close. His face was inches from mine, his warmth radiating on my body. I didn’t want anyone near me, I didn’t want anyone touching me. I needed to get to wherever I was going. A couple of students walked past us as the hallway emptied itself.

  "I’m only selling my friendship, and for you, I’ll discount it today, completely free." He smirked and I raised an eyebrow. I didn’t have time for games.

  "I’m leaving." I rolled my eyes, sliding away.

  "Look, I'm sorry, Vy," he said sincerely, stepping away to give me space.

  "It's Violet."

  "Violet, look, please… " I turned to look at his brilliant gray eyes, he was the first person I’d ever met with eyes that resembled the reflection of the moon on a morning lake. They were rather pretty, I must admit. There was no denying that Aaron was attractive, and undoubtedly charismatic.

  "Leave me alone Aaron, I said no. I don’t even know you and I don’t want anything from you. Why do you think you can just take me out of school, alone, and expect me to just say yes? Because you think you’re cute? Well, newsflash, Aaron, there’s more to life than good looks. And if you really want to leave, go by yourself or better yet, take some other random girl with you.” I exploded, glaring at him as I turned to walk away.

  "Why are you so mean?" He asked as I began darting toward the cafeteria, with every intention of ignoring him. I halted in my tracks; those same words came from another mouth two days ago. My heart was in survival mode as it raced to mars and back. I was a third of the way to the cafeteria. I could easily have avoided him and walked to my best friend Stacy. She'd definitely be waiting for me; besides, I didn't want to leave her to eat lunch alone.

  "Stacy is not your best friend." He chuckled, “and you’re a fool if you think she is.”

  "Wha… what?" I turned, so quickly that I almost got whiplash. It was calm, like a waterfall and nature had surrounded us and we were alone. I felt serene for the first time in a while and I relished the feeling. The ache in my heart disappeared, if only for a moment.

  "You heard me," he sighed. The ball was in his court now as I turned to look at him, intrigued. "I heard your thoughts and I disagreed." He simply said, crossing his arms, a smug look outlining his features.

  "We weren't even talking about her…" I replied, shocked. I wondered if this was some parlor trick he had.

  "I know. And it’s no parlor trick." His lips curled into a smirk.

  "You're crazy, what the heck? Anyone could've guessed that I was thinking that."

  "Really? I already told you, Violet, come with me. We can skip the rest of the day… I want to tell you so much. I want to explain why you think I have a sudden interest in you and see if know about whatever happened to me.” He said sincerely as I blushed. I thought back to the party from two weeks ago when he told me I wasn’t his rebound. I stared at him suspiciously, wondering why me of all people. Why did he think I would know anything?

  “Stop messing with me. Mind-reading, or whatever you think you’re doing, isn’t real.” I c
rossed my arms, frozen in space as the world around us disappeared. Something in his eye caught me, I gulped audibly as he reached for my hand this time, holding it in his. I didn't have the energy or the power to push him away. His touch made me feel strange things. Maybe I shouldn't have even come to school today. I failed that math test anyway, there was no climbing back up from that first-exam failure. Besides, maybe curiosity did kill the cat. Something inside me told me to go with him.

  His broad shoulders and sculpted jawline was enough to catch my eye, but I couldn't pretend there wasn't anything else. Every time he had touched my hand, I felt something really weird. I couldn’t explain it if I tried. It was a comforting feeling, one so safe and healing that I could temporarily forget about the world around us. I thought back to the parking lot incident a few weeks ago, I had been completely nauseous and had almost fallen until he grabbed my wrist, and suddenly I felt cured somehow. And now he was standing in front of me, telling me he can hear my thoughts. It seemed ridiculous, but I wanted to learn more.

  "Okay." I simply said and his sparkly, white smile shined through his perfect teeth. I wanted to let go of his hand, but I didn't. We walked together, through the halls and the cafeteria. My eyes landed on Stacy who looked like she was about to have a panic attack. She was fuming and I could only plead with my eyes. He'd taken full control; it was as though something possessed me, and I followed behind him like a dog. I didn’t want him to let go of my hand. I didn’t want the comforting feeling to go away.

  "Leave it." He muttered, noticing my line of sight. Or possibly ‘hearing my thoughts’ as he had claimed.