by Robin Benway
We had a little stare-off for a few seconds, and I thought I might have pushed it too far and would now have to deal with a month of detention or something. But instead he just put his glasses back on and said, “It’s currently two fifty-three. At three o’clock, you’ll be meeting Henry in the library.”
“Who?”
“Your tutor.”
I could only blink. “My European history tutor is named Henry?” I said. “You don’t find that ironic? Which of the many Henrys is he? Henry the Ninth? Henry the Benevolent?”
“Pick one. Either way, you will be meeting him in the library at three.”
You kind of have to respect a guy who uses the Jedi mind trick. “No problem,” I told him. “Are we done now? I have to go explore other options for my teenage angst, now that I can’t fail European history anymore.”
“May—”
“Kidding, kidding,” I said quickly. My toes were starting to tingle, and I was starting to learn that wasn’t a good sign. All the witty banter was taking its toll. I was pretty sure that if I got too tired, too angry, too much of anything, I would suddenly become nothing at all. “Catch you later, gator,” I said to Mr. Corday before scooting out of the office and into the hallway.
Henry the Tutor was waiting for me in the library when I got there at 3:03. I hate the school library. It smells like old yellow paper and pencil shavings and nerds. April always says, “That’s just the smell of history and knowledge.” She’s ridiculous sometimes.
Henry the Tutor’s head was buried in a book that looked neither interesting nor frivolous. The amazing thing about Henry, though, was that nearly every item of clothing except for his jeans was from Stanford—the shirt, the sweatshirt, the pin on his backpack, the actual backpack. And I was willing to bet money that he was one of those douchebags that had a lame license-plate frame, too, like “FUTURE STANFORD ALUMNI” or something.
In short, Henry was a brochure with legs.
Fantabulous. These types were always my favorite.
“What’s up, buttercup?” I said as soon as I was close enough. “Apparently you, you lucky guy, are going to be the savior of my European history education. Good luck with that.”
He just looked up, startled. His eyes were wide and blue, and he had a perma-frown across his brow, like he was waiting for something to disappoint him. “You’re May?” he asked.
“Are you expecting someone else? Or do you just hang out in libraries for kicks?”
I wouldn’t say he glared at me, but it wasn’t exactly his happy face, either. “Okay,” he said slowly. “Let’s start.”
I slunk into my chair next to him. “So you don’t find it ironic?” I asked him.
“Find what ironic?” He was already pulling out a pen and pencil that both had—wait for it—Stanford written all over them.
“That you’re named Henry and tutoring me in European history,” I told him. “Like there’s not enough Henrys running around already in this subject?”
Henry just sighed. “You’re one of those girls, I guess.”
I bristled. “Well, if by ‘those girls,’ you mean one of those awesome and amazing girls that are light years beyond their peers but unfortunately stuck in high school due to circumstances beyond their control, then yes. Yes, I am one of ‘those girls.’ Wanna join?”
He just started flipping through his textbook, and when I didn’t follow suit, he looked at me. “Did you bring your book?”
“Excellent question.” I opened my bag and shook out a geometry textbook, some silver gum wrappers, four watermelon-flavored Jolly Ranchers, some crumpled-up papers, six pens, one broken pencil, and then surveyed the pile. “What do you think? Do you see it anywhere?”
Henry sighed again. “Yeah, that’s what I thought. Here, use mine.”
“Goodie,” I said.
“What about homework?” he sighed. “Did you even bring that?”
I thought for a minute. “You know, it’s entirely possible.”
Two and a half minutes later, I managed to produce the crumpled worksheet from the bottom of my bag. “They should invent a paper iron,” I muttered as I tried to smooth it out on the edge of the desk.
“They did,” Henry replied. “It’s called a folder.”
“I’ve heard about those,” I shot back. “I just don’t believe in all that newfangled technology.” But I made a note to order some folders online. From the UC Berkeley store.
“So,” Henry said with a sigh. “Prussia.”
Henry talked for awhile, but to be honest, I didn’t hear a word he was saying. It just seemed impossible to focus on anything that had happened in the past when there was so much happening in the present. I was pretty sure that what had happened to me and my sisters hadn’t happened to anyone else before. And if it had, well then, these history books were definitely not covering the important stuff.
Henry, though, was way into this old-school history. He actually got a little flushed talking about it. That’s the kind of thing that April would find charming, some guy getting all passionate about school and college and life plans, but it doesn’t do a thing for me. Plan all you want, dude, I thought to myself. You have no idea how fast things can change.
“Can we take a break?” I said after about fifteen minutes or so. “All this historical excitement is starting to tax my delicate sensibilities.”
“Hey, let me guess,” Henry said. “You’re being sarcastic. Wow, how original.”
“Well, just don’t go telling everyone or my secret will really be out,” I shot back. So Henry and I were not going to be wearing “Best Friends” necklace charms, I think it’s pretty obvious to say.
“Like I said. One of those girls.”
It was like waving red in front of an angry bull, and I suddenly found myself wishing for the kind of power where I could shoot fire-balls out of my eyes and obliterate this guy. “What is your problem?” I finally demanded. “God, if you don’t want to tutor me, then don’t. It’s no skin off my back, trust me. You’ve probably had your head so far up your ass that you haven’t heard about this yet, but there’s a series about another jerk named Henry on Showtime. I’ll just watch that instead.”
Henry just waved his hand over the mess I had made on the table by emptying my bag. “Do you mind cleaning this up?”
“Wow, Mister Type A, is it making you uncomfortable? Do you need meds to cope with daily life?”
“Look, I’m only doing this because volunteering looks good on my transcript,” Henry snapped. “Believe me, I don’t want to be here, either, but Stanford—”
“Who’s Stanford?” Yeah, I was messing with him. I had to. It was too easy.
“WH—WHO’S Stanf—?” he started to gasp.
“You might want to take some deep breaths, pal,” I said, crossing my arms over my chest. “I was kidding. And what the hell do you mean, ‘one of those girls’? What sort of psychological damage is that supposed to do?”
“I mean,” Henry spluttered, “that you’re one of those girls who doesn’t even study because you think you’re so cool and above everything. You just think your life’s so hard all the time when you probably have this like, picture-perfect life. Seriously, do you even have any, like, future plans? Or goals?”
“Sure I do,” I snapped. “Like not causing you any bodily harm, for examp—”
Just then, I felt my foot tingle. As much as I wanted to verbally bitchslap him, I couldn’t. Not when it meant that I could disappear at any minute.
“I have to go,” I said, scrambling to my, uh, foot. The bathroom was less than a hundred feet outside the library door, and I had no idea if I could make it there in time. “I, I … I’ll see you later.”
Henry just stood back as I jumped out of my chair, grabbed my bag, and hoofed it towards the back door of the library. “May, wait …”
“It’s been swell!” I hissed over my shoulder, then slammed the door and dashed down the hall, looking for somewhere to go, where I could be nowh
ere at all.
chapter 6
“It turns out that being a mindreader does have its upsides.” june
I have to admit, I was not at my perky best Tuesday morning. I was awake from two forty-seven to four thirty-three the night before, listening to whoever was awake with me. I figured out that the quieter it is, the more I can hear. Like, in the school hallway or whatever, it just sounds like a bunch of people shouting at me. But at night, when it seems like no one in the entire world is up, I can hear the awake ones like they’re whispering into my ear.
Some of it is stupid stuff—our next-door neighbors worrying about their mortgage and whether or not they should refinance—but other voices are terrible. There’s that homeless guy on the corner a few blocks away, and all I get from him at night is yelling—crazy nonsense that’s so angry that I have to put a pillow over my head. It doesn’t stop the noise, but at least I feel safer.
The only thing good about that Tuesday morning when I woke up was the idea of my pink skirt.
Okay, so here’s the deal with the pink skirt. I didn’t wear it because it was like my favorite skirt of all-time or anything. I mean, it’s cute, I can’t lie, but I wore it because because I wanted to impress Mariah and Daphne and Jessica. And now that I could read minds? I’d be able to get an honest opinion about my entire wardrobe.
It turns out that being a mindreader does have its upsides.
April hates Mariah and those girls. She calls them the Angelas because I guess there was some snotty girl named Angela in fourth grade that used to tease April about being smart. I tried to talk to her about it before all this craziness happened. I tried to tell her that these girls aren’t like that girl and please do not put your childhood issues on me, but she doesn’t listen. “They’re nice!” I finally told April. “They do volunteer work.”
“They have to,” she replied. “It’s a graduation requirement.”
I don’t even bother talking to May about it. It doesn’t take a mindreading skill to know what she thinks about it. She’s sort of transparent that way.
But whatevs. April and May are too old to remember what it’s like being a freshman. They don’t remember what it’s like to go from eighth grade to ninth, which feels like moving from the minor to the major leagues. And after these four years, I have to go to college. And if I don’t learn how to be popular now, I might as well just join a convent and learn how to make soup for orphans, or whatever it is that nuns do, because I am doomed.
(Also, I don’t ever tell anyone this, but every time I think about going to college, I get nervous. Swarm-of-butterflies nervous. I have to leave my house? My room? My friends? My mom? I have to pay thousands of dollars to live at school?)
April and May also don’t know that on the first day of school, I ate lunch by myself. I would seriously die if they ever found out, or if anyone ever found out. It was really far away, way out by the softball field and behind a tree. But a tree isn’t a friend, and sitting in the dirt watching everyone talk to everyone else wasn’t how I wanted to spend the next four years’ worth of lunch periods. No thank you very much.
Of course, this was all before I could read minds. It was a new ballgame now, as far as I was concerned, and I was team captain of everyone.
Batter up.
There was just one thing that stood in the way between me and intense popularity: my pink skirt.
A funny thing happens when you walk through the front doors of high school. Maybe it happens to you, too. I don’t know what your life is like, but whatever looks good in the mirror at home or in the parking lot suddenly seems like the worst idea you’ve ever had. I know all the magazines tell you to be an individual, but when you’re not the air-brushed model in the photo spread, it’s really hard to be an individual. I’d rather be a follower any day of the week than wear legwarmers to school again. (That was just a bad idea, but I was in eighth grade then and didn’t know any better.)
But judging from what people were thinking as I walked down the hall in my new pink skirt on Tuesday, this was gonna be right up there with the legwarmer incident. I was so excited to read people’s thoughts that I forgot I could actually read people’s thoughts.
That skirt should be shorter so you can see her ass.
Who wears pink anymore?
Did she tie cotton candy around her waist?
You get the idea. I certainly did.
I needed to remember to start bringing a back-up outfit to school. Something normal, like jeans and a hoodie. Sometimes May makes me so jealous because she just blends in with everyone else. I can’t do that, and once in a while, I wish I could.
By the time fourth-period English rolled around, I was half-ready to chase down April and beg her to change clothes with me. Maybe she would see all this happening and come to rescue me. Maybe she’d at least take me home to get a new skirt. Something from the safe denim family, perhaps.
No luck. My sister’s stupid future-seeing brain wasn’t seeing anything important, obviously.
I spent the rest of Tuesday working overtime trying not to hear anyone else’s thoughts. It takes so much effort, though. My sisters always get mad at me for reading their minds, but they have no idea. Imagine person after person coming up to you and telling you their secrets, one right after the other, and some of the secrets are the most juicy things you’ve ever heard in your life. And some of the secrets will keep you awake for the next three nights. Try doing this for a day and then tell me how you’re doing. Tell me if you still have friends, if you love your parents, if you even know anyone the way you thought you did. Tell me that.
I certainly wouldn’t blame you for wearing a potentially tacky pink skirt if this was your lot in life, let me tell you.
And then of course, there was the earthquake. Again, thanks so much, April. What good was it to be able to see the future when you can’t even predict a freaking earthquake? I was pretty sure she was gonna be the weak link in our chain.
I hate earthquakes. I hate the ground shaking, and I hate the way buildings make all those cracky, screamy noises during the whole thing. It wasn’t even a bad one, but then I had to listen to everyone’s thoughts afterwards.
So cool.
My dog is totally gonna be freaking out.
She’s so not wearing a bra. I love earthquakes.
(That last one was Jeremy Steston’s. He’s a disgusting perv.)
But I could hear everyone in my brain for minutes on hand, and I shook my head like it was filled with water, trying to shake them out.
I hope my dad’s okay—what if my mom—I wonder if we still have to go to school tomorr—shit, what the hell was—
I couldn’t make it stop, no matter how hard I tried. I even started singing “Supercalafragilisticexpealadocious” in my head, but that only added to all the noise and I couldn’t remember the second verse.
I was starting to feel a little crazy. I won’t lie.
I was so upset, in fact, that when the last bell rang, I didn’t even care that my face was oily in the T-zone area, or that my bangs were flipping up all weird, the way they always do, no matter how many times I flatiron them. I managed to get my books together and went outside to wait for April because she was my ride home. If there’s anything else I hate more than spiders and earthquakes, it’s sitting outside and waiting for my sister to give me a ride home. All the cool kids get rides home from their friends, and all of us freshman peeps are left behind, looking like losers. April’s always late, too, talking with some teacher or handing in her nerdy extra-credit assignments, so I have to sit there by myself and wait for her and start developing a complex about the fact that I have no friends.
When twenty minutes went by and April didn’t show, I put my little antennae up and started listening for my sisters. (Just between you and me, I kind of like the image of me with antennae. I’d be a really adorable bumblebee.)
I walked around the outside of the building a couple of times, trying to pick them up, but no luck. No one wa
s really around so I couldn’t even read people’s minds to pass the time. It’s kind of nice to do that, listening to people when they’re just thinking their rambly thoughts. It’s like floating on your back in the ocean, bobbing up and down on the words. No effort required whatsoever.
I was just circling back for the third time when I saw someone come out of the front office, carrying just one textbook in her bone-china arm. Whatever, she was thinking, whatever. It’s not like I’m going to Mexico anytime soon..
It was Mariah. I’d know that voice—I mean, those thoughts—anywhere. I quickly hustled over to her and tried to get closer without seeming like one of those sweaty, overeager type of people. I’m not like that, of course, but last week I wasn’t a mindreader, either. You never know what could happen.
“Oh,” I said as soon as I got close to Mariah. She was the only girl I’d ever met who could wear that much eyeliner and not look like a sad panda. Her brown hair had a raspberry-red tint to it, and it was so straight, too, like frizz didn’t exist in Mariah’s world. I took a deep breath and prayed to not sound like a dork. “Um, hi.”
Mariah glanced at me, judging me from head to toe in a thought that came so fast I couldn’t grab it. “Oh hey,” she said. “What’s up?”
“Nothing much,” I said. I hoped my pink skirt was still fluffy and didn’t look as deflated as I had felt all day. Behind Mariah, Jessica and Daphne, two girls I’d seen surrounding her before, sidled up alongside her out of nowhere, like the Queen’s guards or something. Judging from their thoughts, they weren’t big fans of mine. Jessica was sneering at me down her little skislope-shaped nose, and Daphne’s freckles seemed to get darker the more she stared at me.
Yeah, definitely not the friendliest group.
What does she want? Mariah thought as she inspected me, and I moved fast before the opportunity passed.
“I-I just wanted to say that I really like your hair,” I told her.
Oh, God, Jessica thought, even though she just smiled a bit, but Mariah’s thoughts jolted like a TV had suddenly turned on. “Oh,” she said. “Thanks.”