I hesitantly linked to them once we were within range. Their chatter roared to life, clamoring in my mind, and I stumbled over a rock hidden in the grass. Their thoughts and mind scents blended together. Bald curiosity rippled through their minds.
The mental volume stepped down as Simon introduced me. This is Kira. His thoughts echoed in their minds.
The girl put a flashlight under her chin and made a face. Hi Kira, I’m Katie. Her dark wiry hair was pulled into a ponytail, which exploded into a puff.
Hi, I linked the thought to her. She looked me up and down and pictured a girl that wouldn’t be happy about how pretty I was. Before I had a chance to respond, the muscle-bound blond who sat next to her rumbled in with, Hey, Kira. His name was Zach and his shirt sleeve was rolled up to reveal pale skin darkened by tattoos. A third boy, Miguel, lounged at the very edge of the blanket, a blade of grass hanging from his mouth. He chimed in with a subdued, Hey. I probed and found he was the artist behind Zach’s tattoos.
In the dead center sat a boy that must be Martin, the designated drinker. His gangly arms seemed too long for his body, and his legs were folded up like a floppy doll.
His eyes were on Simon. Did you get it?
Simon handed him the pack of beers, and Martin tore the paper binding apart. The glass bottles spilled out and clanked together on the blanket. He opened a beer and chugged the entire thing in a long series of gulps. Simon gestured for me to sit near Martin, then sat next to me. He shifted close, nearly touching my leg and earning a raised eyebrow from Katie. An image of Simon pinning me against the lockers flashed through Katie’s mind, and my tangle of emotions flared again. She must have seen the whole thing or caught it in the thought-speed rumor mill. The image of a blond girl stomping off pulsed through her mind. I put two and two together. Simon avoided my gaze.
So, Kira, what are you, a freshman? Zach asked. He thought he was very funny.
I linked my thoughts to all of them at once. No. What are you, a second-year senior?
Then I heard the most amazing thing. Mental laughter. It sounded like tinkling bells and soft sizzling and little breathy snorts. I was pretty sure the last one came from Miguel. None of them laughed out loud.
I see why you like her, Katie thought. Then Simon’s voice rang loud through all their minds, She’s all right. They all echoed it back. She’s all right. All right. Right.
Simon finally met my gaze and gave me a crooked smile.
Martin pitched the empty beer bottle into the darkness, and it landed with a soft swish of prairie grass. He cracked open another and flung the bottle cap after the first.
The five of us mindtalked about nothing: the bugs; the blessed event that was the weekend; the lack of true art in tattooing today. I struggled to keep up with the four simultaneous conversations. Their thoughts were lightning fast and played over each other, like strings on a guitar, harmonizing yet separate. Simon’s linked thoughts played along, subdued in the harmony and not echoing through their minds, unlike his jacked in command before. It was difficult to keep up, and I wondered how readers managed it all day, every day.
As Martin finished the second beer, Katie and Zach shuffled nearer to him, and even Miguel sidled closer. Martin sent the second bottle sailing and cracked open a third, giving a tremendous belch that sent twitters of mental laughter ringing around the blanket. As he chugged the third one, I leaned away from him. If Martin’s stomach rebelled against the onslaught of alcohol, I didn’t want to be in spewing distance. No one else was concerned, so I tried to relax.
Martin burst out singing in his head, some bawdy song I didn’t recognize.
Jesus, Mary and Joseph, Miguel thought. If you’re going to sing, man, I’m leaving.
No one’s making you stay. Martin sent the third empty flying. With a crash of glass, the bottle met its mates in the weeds. A mental grumble went around the blanket, but no one moved to leave. In fact, they edged closer to Martin, who let his hands fall by his sides. His head flopped forward and his lips moved slightly, as if he’d forgotten that he didn’t need to use them.
Good beer, Simon.
Miguel tapped his finger on Martin’s bare foot, exposed as he sat cross-legged on the blanket. Martin flinched at his touch and then stilled. Katie and Zach rhythmically touched the outstretched fingers of one hand. Simon gestured to Martin’s other hand, a pale silver fish flopped on the blanket. Simon and I each took a different finger. Martin’s skin was as clammy as it looked. As for faking the effect of the beer, I wasn’t sure what to do. Martin was breathing heavily, and Miguel’s eyes were closed. Their thoughts were jumbled.
I glanced at Katie and Zach and was shocked to see them holding tight to each other and kissing. Katie’s dark skin mashed against Zach’s pale face mesmerized me until the brush of Simon’s lips near my ear made me jump.
“This is the fun part.” His whisper sent a shudder down to the spot where his hand pressed the small of my back. I jerked away. He gave me a measured look, then pulled me up from the blanket and led me across the meadow, away from his heavily fuzzed friends.
Halfway to the car, he veered to a glistening boulder sitting lonely in the meadow. He leaned against it and laced his fingers with mine. The moon glazed half his face with light, and his hair fell loose in a frame of darkness.
“Still mad at me?” he asked.
“Yes.” I pulled my hand away and rubbed my eyes, even more tired than when I juggled thirty minds in math. At least in class they weren’t all talking to me at the same time.
“Is it always this hard?” I asked. “This jacking thing is wiping me out.”
“You’ll get used to it.”
I wondered how long it would take for me to pass for a reader easily, like Simon. I gazed at the partiers who were still linked and kissing and drinking. “Did I do okay?”
“You did great.”
I peered up into his dark eyes. “When did you know? That you could mindjack?”
He studied the weeds in the distance. “When I put my sister in a coma over a fight about… something. I can’t really remember what it was. I was twelve.”
I held my breath, not sure what to say. “Simon, I’m sorry…”
He shrugged and leaned back on the rock. “It took me three weeks to figure out I could wake her up again.”
“You were just a kid.” I remembered my panic that first day, when I had knocked Raf out and thought I might slay the whole school if I went to class. What if I hadn’t inadvertently woken Raf up? I placed a hand on Simon’s shoulder, but his face stayed blank.
“You didn’t have anyone to help you,” I said. “You couldn’t have known.”
He ducked his head, examining the prairie grass at our feet. His hair fell forward, masking his face in shadow. I wanted to brush it back.
“Well, she’s off to college now,” he said. “So I guess there was no permanent damage.”
I swallowed. “I’m lucky to have you to help me.” He looked up, and a smile ghosted across his face. He smoothed down some tendrils of my hair floating in the breeze and stopped with his hand behind my head.
He pulled me closer and his kiss was gentle, but the hot liquid feel of it still made my body sing.
When he broke the kiss, he whispered, “What are you thinking?”
I was thinking that I would rather be kissing than talking, but those words were not going to come out of my mouth, if I could help it. I just shook my head.
“Well, that’s new for me,” he added. I didn’t understand. “Usually, I know what a girl thinks about when I kiss her.”
Oh. His smirk drove me to look back to the partiers. Simon had probably kissed a lot of girls before me. Girls that knew what they were doing in the kissing department. I ordered the blood out of my cheeks. Somehow my mind powers didn’t extend to controlling my own bodily reactions.
“Hey. What?” He tipped his head to try to catch my eye.
“I don’t think I blend very well.”
“You’
re not like them.” He touched my cheek to bring me back. “You’re much better.”
Considering we lied to everyone about who we were, I didn’t feel much in the way of superiority. “How do you do it?” I asked. “Lying all the time?”
His face hardened into a mask that sent a shiver through me. “You get used to it.” He glanced at his crew, still silently dipping to get their fuzz. “We’ll never be like them, Kira. Besides, we’re just marking time here. We’re meant to do greater things.”
“What do you mean, greater things?” I was only hoping for normal, but somehow normal always escaped me.
He lifted his gaze to the trees in the distance. “My birthday’s in two weeks,” he said with great solemnity, as if that were some fabulous pronouncement. The boy was definitely demens.
“Um, happy birthday?”
“I’ll be eighteen,” he elaborated. I was just as lost. “Then I’m going to walk into the principal’s office and get my diploma. I’m not going to sit around wasting my time in high school.”
Could he really graduate as soon as he had reached the age? Of course. I had yet to hear Simon boast. It made me wonder if there was anything he couldn’t do.
“What will you do? Get a job?”
“I’ve been doing some small jobs. If things work out, I’ll have something lined up by then.”
My suspicions came running out. “Like what?”
“Something better than hanging out here, pretending to be like everyone else.”
“Like what?” I repeated, disentangling from his embrace and stepping away. “More petty larceny at the local convenience store?”
He snorted and rolled his eyes. “I’ve been doing that since I was fourteen, Kira. That’s kid stuff. I want to do something more serious.”
“What, serious like grand theft auto?”
He crossed his arms. “I can see you don’t think much of me.”
“Just leave me out of whatever criminal master plan you have.” I threw my hands on my hips and matched his rigid stance.
A two-foot gulf opened between us. “After all I’ve done to help you, this is what I get?” he asked. “Criminal mastermind?” His stare became an ice dagger that plunged into my chest. Echoes of Raf’s departing words rang through my head. I’ll leave you alone, Kira. Since that’s what you want. Simon was the only one that understood the bizarre power unleashed in my brain. And I was insulting him to his face. Driving him away. Just like Raf.
I let my hands drop to my side, and my gaze sank to the prairie weeds surrounding us. I shifted from one foot to the other. “I’m sorry…,” I mumbled. “I just… the whole beer thing kind of threw me.” It sounded lame, even to me.
“I was only trying to help you fit in.”
The sound of breaking glass reminded me that Martin was still pitching beer bottles. “Hmm,” I said. “I’m hoping we are better than that bunch.”
Simon blazed a smile. “You, at least, are better looking.”
“Yeah, well, you’re not too bad yourself.”
His face went serious, his jaw cutting a sharp line in the moonlight.
“I am sorry,” I said. “You know, about calling you a criminal.”
He studied my face. “Do you trust me?”
I didn’t trust Simon, but I knew I needed him, a thought that made my face burn.
I whispered, “I’m not sure what I’d do without you,” and pulled his face down to mine. He gripped my waist and pulled me up so that my toes just kissed the prairie grass. His lips branded mine, and by the time he set me down, I wasn’t sure I could stand straight.
My head rested on his chest. I couldn’t read his mind, or feel his emotions when we touched, but the way his heart pounded, it seemed like our kiss affected him too.
“So, I was wondering…” His words rumbled under my ear.
I lifted my head. “Yes?”
“…if that boyfriend position was still open?”
“I think it’s just been filled.”
chapter NINETEEN
The next week was an endless blur of too many minds.
The first few days, I gripped Simon’s arm to combat the dizziness of the hallways, brought on by having to constantly shift focus and link with dozens of minds. Simon wore Second Skin gloves for a while so we wouldn’t be conspicuous.
The cafeteria was worse.
Ground zero for thought-wave-rumors, people buzzed about the zero-turned-changeling, and why I was dating Simon and not Raf. Our drama was better than the latest big screen sim-cast.
I caught whispers of Raf’s thoughts passed from mind to mind. It was like our childhood game of mindtalk, where we pretended to read minds by whispering messages around a circle. The message had been distorted beyond reason by the time it circled back, which had caused us fits of giggles. Only Raf’s messages of anger and pain were far from making me laugh.
Raf kept his promise and kept his distance. He couldn’t hear my thoughts, unless I jacked other people’s minds and sent my thoughts ringing through the room for everyone to hear.
I kept the mindjacking to a minimum in the cafeteria.
Besides, knowing I was a jacker wouldn’t hurt Raf any less. It would only put him in danger. If he knew my secret, so would the other reader minds. It wasn’t impossible for readers to keep a secret—just very, very difficult. Like trying to not think of pink elephants. The bigger the secret, the harder it was to keep your thoughts away from it.
And Simon and I had a mastodon-sized secret.
Somehow, the thought-rumors hadn’t reached my mom. She must be even more isolated than I knew.
My mom still thought I was a zero, Raf thought I was a changeling, and Simon thought I was jacking them both. It was official: I was lying to everyone I knew.
I didn’t have much choice about being a liar, but I didn’t have to cheat too. In class I could easily pluck the virtual answer key from our teachers’ minds for our take-home tests, but I resisted. Cheating wouldn’t help me catch up in that race for normal that suddenly seemed within reach.
But to Simon, it wasn’t enough for me to pass for a reader. He wanted me to hone my jacking abilities too. Which I did, until I finally was in control—not of other people, but of myself.
Except when Simon kissed me.
There, control eluded me in a fierce way that found me brazenly kissing him at every opportunity, which wasn’t often. Readers did their lip-locking in private or at dipping parties where everyone was doing it. Even kissing in front of the crew would have caught us grief unless we jacked them to look the other way. Which Simon occasionally did, leaving a grin on my face that lasted long after the warmth from his lips had faded.
It was all mesh, but by Friday I was exhausted.
Simon and I waited for the crew to ditch class and join us on the bleachers. All my free periods and after school time had been spent with Simon or his crew or practicing my skills. I wanted to catch up on schoolwork over the weekend. Passing for a reader wouldn’t count for much if I failed my classes.
Simon caught me off guard by asking me out on a date.
“I have a ton of homework.” I whispered so the couple students at the bottom of the bleachers wouldn’t overhear. Simon put his hand over his heart and feigned heartbreak.
“You’re turning me down for homework?”
“And how would I explain being gone on a Saturday night?”
He shifted to serious. “You haven’t told your mom about me?”
I squirmed in my seat. “Well, no.”
“But you are jacking her?”
“Yes.” The lies were getting easier every day.
“So, tell her you have a date.” His eyes sparkled. “Besides, I’d love to meet your mom.”
A warning siren blared in my head. “No, uh, that’s not a good idea.”
“Why not?”
He wasn’t buying this nonsense. It was time to go big and lie large.
“Because my family is very strict. We’re Catholic
, and my dad’s a Navy man, through and through. He always said I could date when I’m, like, thirty.”
“Well, let me meet your dad. I’m sure I can convince him otherwise.”
The gleam in Simon’s eyes made my stomach clench. “My dad’s on deployment right now. If he found out I went on my first date while he was gone, he would skin me alive.”
Simon threw his hands up. “You’re the one in control here. Just jack in and tell them it’s okay. You don’t have to do what they say.”
“I can’t jack my dad over the phone 7,000 miles away! Unless you have some super-secret power you’re holding out on me?”
He narrowed his eyes. “Sneak out.” He was challenging me now. I could probably sneak out of the house, but I had to focus on school or all of the lying would be for nothing. And his order didn’t sit well with me.
“Maybe I’ll tell my mom I’m going out to meet Raf. She’d probably be fine with that.”
“What?” His eyes went wide. “I thought you were staying away from him.” Zach and Katie started hiking up the steps. Simon followed my gaze, but snapped back to stare me down. “Well?”
I dropped my voice. “I’m just saying it would be one way to get out of the house.”
He exhaled a long, low breath, and I was glad I couldn’t read his mind at that moment.
As they came into thought range, Katie frowned at Simon. Trouble in paradise?
Everything’s fine. Simon’s thoughts boomed in her head.
Oh, everything’s fine, she and Zach echoed, serene smiles relaxing their faces. Jacking feelings was the same as jacking thoughts, but my stomach twisted every time Simon made me do it. I nudged the hard presence of Simon in Katie’s mind, a warning. As my skills had improved over the week, I found I could push that marble after all. And I’d push him right out if he kept manipulating Katie.
Simon’s eyes flashed, and he nudged back, but the creepy smiles disappeared.
Tell Simon I need to study this weekend. My command rang loud and clear through Katie’s mind.
Tell Kira she better not sneak out to see someone besides me. As Katie echoed Simon’s words, I threw my hands out in frustration.
What Tomorrow May Bring Page 10