I kept my voice soft so it wouldn’t travel. “It’s okay. They’re gone.”
Her eyes snapped open. She scrambled away from me, banging into the locker wall. She braced herself up from the carpet and slowly backed down the hall.
Even the harassed knew who was lowest on the social ladder.
I shook my head. The changeling was on the wrong side of the pravers today, but if she survived the change, she might do something important one day, like heal people or rescue them from burning buildings. It’s still possible, I told myself. The change could still come. But I wasn’t sure I believed it anymore.
And no one would trust a doctor whose mind they couldn’t read.
chapter TWO
Mr. Amando may be mesh, but Mr. Chance was the teacher to have in junior year.
I shuffled past him into second-period English. He was already filling the minds of the students circled around him with the sights, sounds, and smells of exotic sims I would never experience. Mr. Chance looked half-demens with his old-fashioned patched jacket and feathered hat, but his students were clearly entranced.
I had as much chance of passing his class as the chair I was sitting on.
Life wasn’t always this bleak. Back in junior high, Trina and I had talked for endless hours about nothing, everything, and boys. Raf tried for a year to convert me to that screechy synchrony music he likes. Then Trina went through the change and Raf wasn’t far behind. Nearly everyone had their change parties by the end of freshman year.
The longer I remained a zero, the more likely I would be that one-in-a-thousand who would never change. Zeros didn’t attend college—no one trusted them to do real work, so what did they need college for? I’d have to get some low-paying job where I wouldn’t have to mindtalk or be trusted. At least I didn’t live in a country where they sent zeros to asylums. In Chicago New Metro, I’d just be relegated some job that readers couldn’t stand, like guarding the demens ward of a mental hospital.
Raf, in his fitted soccer jersey and oversized shoes, blew into class on the final bell. Female attention swept down the aisle with him, and he glided into the chair next to me. When we won the State Championship last year, Raf became the Portuguese Soccer God, and girls still swarmed around him like bees in a field of clover and honeysuckle. He eased his backpack to the floor and flashed me a grin. I returned it, powerless to resist when he was the only one not treating me like furniture.
“You’re going to wreck your image, sitting next to me,” I said quietly.
He caught two girls ogling him. “I need something to take the shine off.”
I smirked. “I’m just the zero to help you out with that.”
A stormy scowl crossed his face. “Don’t call yourself that, Kira.” His Portuguese accent got stronger when he was riled. I’d missed it while he was away at soccer camp.
I shrugged and traced the non-slip pattern on my desk. The world and I were at a standoff, waiting for me to change, but the world didn’t care. If I never changed, it would move on and leave me trying to catch up in a race I would never win. How long would Raf hang around? How long would I keep hoping, not giving up?
Sooner or later, we would both have to face the truth.
My face must have shown the pity party in my head, because the storm on Raf’s face gentled into a soft flurry of concern. I concentrated on twisting a strand of my hair. Thankfully, some unspoken thought from Mr. Chance commanded everyone’s attention.
He was scribbling on the same wireless board the teachers used last year, when they still taught out loud for the readers who hadn’t mastered their skills. If only he had a mindware board, he could focus his thoughts on that and transmit them straight to our e-slates. Instead, students had to mentally focus to hear his thoughts. Great for them, to increase their mindreading skills, but it wasn’t making my life any easier.
Mr. Chance’s board notes claimed that his grandfather had taught with antique paper books, and he proceeded to walk between the rows and pass some out. I didn’t understand why we weren’t using regular books. I tried not to break my copy when I cracked the pages open. Bits of paper dust floated up from the yellowed pages and smelled musty, like dried grass. I peeked at Raf’s book, and he showed me the pages we were supposed to read. I sped through the opening chapter of The Scarlet Letter, careful not to crumble the pages to dust.
When I finished, Rafael was still bent over his book, dark curls hanging off his forehead as he plumbed the depths of Hester’s pain. A summer of running drills had tanned his light olive skin, and his lips pursed in concentration. I wondered if his thick eyebrows were soft or bristly. His blinding smile sent me scurrying back to my own book.
It wasn’t fair that every other girl in school knew his thoughts better than I did.
If I changed, things might be different. Until then, well, zeroes simply didn’t date. Some pravers like Shark Boy might enjoy feeling up a zero girl, but no normal boy would want a mental-reject with a pre-adolescent brain. It was like dating your friend’s twelve-year-old sister.
If I didn’t change, boyfriends would be like college—an experience other people would have while I figured out my life as a zero. I pushed that thought from my mind.
Students swung their seats around, and I realized we were breaking into groups. I had lucked into having Raf nearby, since no one else would want to pair with me.
“What’s up?” I asked.
“We’re supposed to discuss the symbol of the rosebush outside Hester’s prison door.” Raf kept his voice low, but he still gathered annoyed looks from two readers next to us.
“Even the author says he doesn’t know what it means.”
“Well, I guess we’re supposed to be smarter than him.” Raf scooted closer so we could whisper. I flipped through the paper book and tried to ignore the nearness of Raf’s arm on my chair, but it was hard to focus with him so close.
“So what’s your theory, Soccer Cyborg?”
“Hey!” Raf pretended to be affronted. “I’m more than just an athletic machine!”
“Yeah. You have awful taste in music, too.”
“As if you don’t have Cantos Syn on your player.”
“Whatever.” But I smiled. “So, the rosebush?”
He leaned closer and spoke in a mock grave voice. “I think it means she likes flowers.” My strangled laugh didn’t distract Mr. Chance from his animated sims up front. When we were done, we spent the rest of class in more reading, with only the flipping of paper pages and rustling of seats to disturb the silence. Raf smiled his goodbye, and a cluster of girls captured him up front. I didn’t watch, not needing that particular torture, and slipped out the rear classroom door.
My ex-friend Trina and a dark-haired girl hunched over a shared mindware phone by the girls’ bathroom, like it held the answers to the universe’s most pressing questions. If I had the ability they took for granted, I wouldn’t waste my time conjuring holographic unicorn games.
My snort carried across the hall, but didn’t attract their attention. Unfortunately, I did catch the notice of another couple of students. They leaned against the wall five steps down from Trina and smiled at me like I was their next meal.
Shark Boy and his friend, Shark Junior.
chapter THREE
I spun away from Shark Boy and Shark Junior and their leering grins.
Raf and his gaggle of admirers were still working their way down the hall. I scurried up to blend into his group of fans. No one noticed me, not even Raf. Shark Boy’s thoughts must not have carried over the mental clamor of the hall. If he touched me out in the open, he would be violating the No Touching Rule, but that hadn’t stopped him on the bus. If he tried anything now, at least Raf would help me fend him off.
Seamus had explained the No Touching Rule shortly after he changed—how readers shared feelings when they touched. That was all the information I got before my brother had turned red and bolted from the room, but it explained why everyone became bizarre about the
ir personal space after they changed and why air-kissing was as far as things went in public.
Not that I knew much about what happened in private.
I didn’t hazard a look back until our ragtag group had rounded the corner. Shark Boy and his friend seemed to have given up, probably waiting for a time when fewer witnesses would be privy to their nasty thoughts. My heart didn’t stop pounding until I was safely in my seat in biology.
I managed to muddle through the rest of my morning classes. The soaring humidity of the Chicago New Metro suburbs was like an extinct rainforest simulation, and my jeans were sticking to my legs.
All right, wearing jeans in August—that was my fault.
After lunch, I had high hopes for Algebra II. I was Mr. Barkley’s top student in freshman Algebra I, and I managed to pass Geometry. Being all written work, it leveled the playing field.
I strode into class right before the bell and smiled at Mr. Barkley as I passed his desk. His unexpected smile in return distracted me, and I stumbled over a backpack, left like a land mine halfway down the center aisle. Then three things happened in rapid succession: I fell forward, I grabbed the edge of a desk to catch myself, and I pivoted down into Simon Zagan’s lap.
Falling and catching myself: fine. Landing on Simon Zagan: a tragic catastrophe.
Our arms tangled, all sticky from the heat. He jerked back, dumping me off his lap.
“Watch it, zero!”
I scrambled to avoid face-planting on the floor, but my backpack spewed its contents under occupied chairs on either side. I was glad no one could hear the elaborate profanities coursing through my mind. The nearby students stared as though I had gone demens and leaned away as I retrieved the items under their seats.
As if I might jump them next.
When I had finally gathered my scribepads and stylus, my thankfully intact e-slate, and Mr. Chance’s battered paper book, I slung my gaping, empty backpack over my free shoulder.
I paused to shoot a daggered glare at Simon.
Under normal circumstances, I wouldn’t have been so bold. With his black, arrow-straight hair and dark, intense eyes, Simon seemed slightly dangerous. He never got in any real trouble that I knew of, but he hung out with the kids voted least likely to graduate.
Unfortunately for Simon, I had reached my quota of self-righteous pravers for the day. So I glared at him, and he glared back like he was trying to drill into my head. Then the strangest look came over him, as if he was puzzled by something I said, although I had been successful in biting my tongue and not saying anything at all.
What was his problem?
Sure, I broke the No Touching Rule, but I was a zero. My accidental encounter with Simon shouldn’t have affected him at all. Unless he was like Shark Boy and liked to prey on girls who hadn’t changed. I turned my glare frosty. Simon slouched in his seat and looked away, which was fortunate for him. I took the seat behind him and hoped he felt the chill of my disgust.
A breathless quiet settled in as we tackled the worksheet Mr. Barkley cast to our scribepads. I straightened out the mess of my stuff and buried myself in sines and cosines.
Mr. Barkley walked between the rows and tapped the tip of his finger to the back of each student’s hand. A few of the rich kids were wearing Second Skin, and Mr. Barkley waited patiently while they tugged off the sheer, elbow-high gloves. The touch-check was new, and it seemed to violate the No Touching Rule. I would have to scrit Seamus to get his true thoughts on that.
When Mr. Barkley reached me, I smiled up at him. His blue-gray eyes matched his crisp blue shirt, and the wintery stripe in his black hair had grown wider since freshman year. Of course, he would have to check my answers the old-fashioned way.
He cleared his throat. “It’s nice to see you in my class again, Ms. Moore.” He spoke softly, but his voice carried over the scratching of styli and creaking of chairs. “How are you doing?”
“Great. Thanks.” The silence closed back in, punctuated only by Mr. Barkley’s footfalls toward the next student.
After math, my legs twitched with the need to run and escape the small minds of heavenly wrath. I had a free period next, so I retrieved my gym bag and changed in the locker room.
The long legs I inherited from my dad flew me down the street, past suburban houses sticking up like skinny fingers and carefully spaced apart to avoid hearing the neighbors’ thoughts. I dodged small yippy dogs and sprinklers trying to revive the rings of dead grass that buffered each Gurnee house from the next. The heat lay like a wet blanket on everything, and the late-blooming day lilies bent under its weight. Sweat coated every inch of my skin and seeped a sense of normal into me.
If I had been born ninety years ago, I would have felt this way every day. Back then, it was the first readers who were different and paid the price for it. Grandma O’Donnell’s stories about the camps where the government held her dad and the other early readers still gave me the creeps.
Only later did they find the pharmaceutical cocktail that had been brewing in the world’s drinking water supply. The mixture of drugs was everywhere, around the world, and by the time anyone understood what was happening, it had already started to activate the part of people’s brains that sensed thought waves. And it was too late to stop it.
Even if I never changed, at least I wasn’t destined for an internment camp simply for being a zero. The world had become more civilized since the experiments on those first reader kids. I would simply struggle along, one step above the demens on the social ladder. I rounded the corner to school, trying to outrun my fate. Even my shoes pounded it out.
Ze-ro. Ze-ro. Ze-ro.
I seriously needed mental help. Maybe I could join one of those positive-thinking cults that were trying to bring peace to the world by thinking good thoughts. That idea made me laugh so hard, I coughed and gasped for air.
They wouldn’t want a zero either.
After a quick shower and an overly long band rehearsal, I hurried out to catch the late bus. Just before I stepped aboard, its darkened windows caught my eye. I couldn’t tell who was on board without actually getting on, and the driver wasn’t looking any friendlier than the one this morning.
I turned and strode down the sidewalk, opting to walk home in the afternoon heat.
chapter FOUR
My mom didn’t have many friends.
Sarah Moore wasn’t quite a heremita, those readers who shut themselves away in their bedrooms to hide from other people’s thoughts. But she came close. She kept up the appearance of normal by baking cookies for PTA functions she never attended, but mostly she stayed home and cleaned.
The sour smell of silver polish wafted from the sink where she attacked an elaborate tea service. With Seamus off at West Point on scholarship and Grandma O’Donnell passing away over the summer, Mom’s cleaning had taken on shades of OCD. She followed me around, scrubbing things and keeping an eye on me, like I was a ticking bomb that would explode at any moment.
I tried to ignore her while I ground through my Latin homework at the kitchen table.
Normally, I encouraged the hands-off approach appropriate for unidentified explosive devices. It was better than the alternative, which might include talking about my dwindling number of friends. But today, her noiseless polishing only echoed the silence at school.
The quiet made my skin itch, and the words tumbled out. “So, today sucked at school.”
She gave a start. I couldn’t read her mind, but her clenched jaw and the abused silver radiated her disappointment. She set down the tortured sugar spoon and leaned against the counter with crossed arms. Her hair, auburn and gray, flew about in wisps.
“What happened?”
“Nothing.” The incidents with Simon Zagan and Shark Boy were better left unsaid. “I just decided I’m going to walk this year. And I’ll need that hearing aid after all.”
She nodded slowly, as if moving too quickly would set the bomb off.
“I don’t suppose the hearing aid comes in
the color invisible.” I meant it as a joke, but her face fell a tiny amount. I was turning out to be a zero, just like her mom.
“I’m sure I can find one that won’t be…” She struggled for the right word. “…obtrusive.”
“There’s no hiding the fact that I need help, Mom.” It came out snippier than I meant. “But, yeah, something that isn’t neon orange with a giant zero stamped on the side would be good.”
She grimaced at the word zero and opened her mouth, but the front door creaked open and interrupted her. My dad came up the stairs to the kitchen, all spit and polish in his Navy dress uniform. Coming home this early wasn’t a good sign. It usually meant deployment.
He pressed his lips to my forehead. “Hello, baby girl.” I grimaced and pushed him away, even less fond of that nickname today. His flash of grin extinguished when he kissed my mom. They must have exchanged feelings, and Dad couldn’t hide his disappointment like Mom could.
“So, you’re home early,” I said, hoping to cut off any Kira-related questions they might be thinking up. “Going on another secret mission?”
My dad worked for the Office of Naval Intelligence. When we were kids, Dad told us he was a spy, which was quite the joke. Politicians exchanged all key information at the annual Trust Conferences, and spying was a hold-over romantic notion that hadn’t quite died out. Dad probably coddled some high-ranking officials. Mom knew what he did, and my brother found out once he changed, but I still wasn’t sure where the sims ended and the truth began. Whatever he was doing, he would disappear for months at a time.
“Unfortunately, yes. Someone has to stop bad guys.” Merriment shone in his eyes, but he held my mom’s gaze a little too long. I knew they couldn’t help reading each other, but it was not mesh of them to mindtalk in front of me. Especially when I was likely the topic of conversation.
He turned back to me. “I’m leaving in the morning, probably be gone for a month or so.”
What Tomorrow May Bring Page 3