The class was extra chatty. There were voices everywhere. She felt nauseated—like she was on a boat. The floor was swaying. Also, she was hot. And sweating. Her underarms were wet. Had she put on deodorant that morning? She thought she had. Yes.
She reached the front of the room. She turned around. She tried very hard not to look at Lazar, who was sitting two rows back and staring at her. He was definitely red-cheeked and cute.
Everyone in class continued to talk.
“It’s so hot in here.”
“Forgot my Spanish homework.”
“Should have had a third cup of coffee.”
“Why didn’t I pee before class?”
Olivia didn’t think she could do this. But she had to. Unless she refused. And failed the assignment and possibly the class.
She took a deep breath and waited for everyone to stop talking. She looked at Mr. Roth, who nodded at her to go ahead.
She looked back at the class.
“This is going to be excruciatingly boring,” someone said.
Olivia cleared her throat.
“Why is she just standing there?” Olivia heard.
They were still talking. Olivia closed her mouth, deciding to wait for everyone to shut up.
Renée looked right at her. “Come on, Olivia, you can do it,” she said.
Except Renée’s mouth wasn’t moving. Her mouth was closed. Huh? Olivia was confused.
Oh no, she’s looking at me strangely. Is she going to pass out?
Renée was talking, but her mouth wasn’t moving. How was she doing that? She looked like a ventriloquist.
Lazar was looking at her too.
She doesn’t look good, he said.
Why did he ask if she was single if he didn’t think she looked good? And why wasn’t his mouth moving either?
Was she hallucinating? Did anyone else notice what was happening?
Olivia looked around the room. Everyone was talking, but no one was moving his or her lips.
What’s wrong with her?
She looks like she’s going to barf.
Oh. My. God. They were not saying these things, Olivia realized. They were thinking them. She was hearing what people were thinking. And they were all thinking about her. The shock was so strong, she could barely breathe.
Voices were coming at her fast and furiously:
She’s turning blue.
I really have to pee.
Why doesn’t she start already?
The room began to spin. Olivia needed air.
She’s going to faint!
What is happening? Olivia wondered. She saw Pi looking right at her.
I have no idea, Pi said.
Had Pi just responded to her thought? That made no sense. The room spun, like she was on the Tilt-A-Whirl. Olivia trained her eyes on Pi, a trick her dad had taught her when he took her to Disney World when she was a kid. Pick a point in the distance and stare and you won’t get sick. But suddenly there were two Pis.
“Olivia!” Renée yelled.
That was the last thing Olivia heard before everything went black.
CHAPTER FIVE
I KNOW WHAT YOU’RE THINKING
We don’t know why it happened to so many of us during third period. Not all of us. But a lot of us.
Eleven a.m. must have been the witching hour.
Mackenzie was sitting in calculus when it happened to her. She was thinking about Bennett. She didn’t want to be thinking about Bennett. She tried to stop herself from thinking about Bennett. Did she even like Bennett? She wasn’t sure.
He was a year older than she was. A junior. He went to Westside Academy. Private school. And he lived in her building.
They had spoken for the first time over a year ago, the summer before her freshman year, when she was single.
They’d met on the terrace on the eighth floor. It was August. She’d been tanning.
She tanned a lot. There were three lounge chairs on the deck, and Mackenzie always took the one on the right.
He’d taken the chair next to her. Mackenzie hadn’t noticed at first. She’d been listening to music on her iPhone, but then she opened her eyes to take a sip of Diet Coke—she drank a lot of Diet Coke—and there he was, the hot guy from the elevator.
He was tall, dark-haired, and shirtless. He was wearing aviator sunglasses and using a navy T-shirt as a pillow.
“Hey,” he said.
“Hey,” she said back. She wished she were wearing her black Michael Kors bikini instead of her green Milly one. And just like that, she was in love. Or at least in lust.
In October, he texted her at eleven to meet him on the deck, even though you weren’t allowed on the deck past ten. He had a joint with him, and she smoked for the first time. Everything went fuzzy and they hooked up on the lounge chair. The lights were off by then, so no one could see.
They hooked up on and off: on the terrace, in her room when her parents and her sister were out, in his room when his parents were. They didn’t have sex, but they did everything else. They met up at least twice a week until February, Valentine’s Day, when Mackenzie had to know: What was going on between them? Were they just hooking up? Were they a couple? They hung out together in the neighborhood, but he never introduced her to his friends, who mostly lived on the Upper West Side. On the weekends, he went to his parties and she went to hers. Mackenzie’s friends knew about him and his friends knew about her, but they weren’t official.
Mackenzie liked things that were official.
When she was a kid she’d only been part of “official” fan clubs.
She never bought purses on Canal Street. If she couldn’t afford the real thing, then she’d wait for it. She didn’t like fakes. She liked labels. And she wanted the label of girlfriend.
“I’m not looking for a girlfriend,” Bennett told her. They were in his room, on his bed. She was putting her shirt back on and trying to look like she didn’t care. He didn’t want to be her boyfriend? Whatever.
Outside she could see the eighth-floor terrace. She realized he had probably watched her suntan the entire summer before he made his way out to meet her.
She had been lying there. Easy prey. Or just easy.
She moped for a week. She wouldn’t tell her parents what was wrong. Cailin never even asked; she was too busy with her senior year. Mackenzie wasn’t sure if she didn’t notice or didn’t care.
Mackenzie stopped texting him. She waited for him to text her, but he didn’t. Since his school was uptown, he left an hour before she did, so she hardly ever ran into him in the elevator.
She avoided the deck.
A few weeks later, Cooper and Mackenzie kissed for the first time at Jordana’s birthday party. She hadn’t seen it coming—they’d known each other since they were in diapers. They grew up in the ’hood together. Cooper’s parents, Mackenzie’s parents, and Jordana’s parents used to triple-date, until Jordana’s parents divorced and her dad moved to L.A.
Anyway, Jordana’s party was the very first night Cooper and Mackenzie flirted. A lot.
The lights were low and they kissed in Jordana’s mom’s home office.
By the next morning they were a couple. Held hands. Talked every night. Hung out with each other’s families. They were inseparable.
Until Cooper went to camp, four months later.
Mackenzie didn’t mean for it to happen. Or so she convinced herself.
We aren’t sure we believe her. Here are the facts: She went to the terrace. She sat in her chair. She wore her black Michael Kors bikini.
One hot August day Bennett came out and sat beside her. “Hi,” he said.
“Hi,” she said back.
That night he texted her to come upstairs and hang. She knew she shouldn’t. She told herself, Do not go, you know what’s going to happen, you cannot cheat on Cooper. But still she put on her cutest jeans, a lacy bra, a thong, and a tight black top Bennett had once said looked good on her. Then she went. Her heart thumped all the way up
to his floor in the elevator.
They were in his bed thirty seconds after she knocked on the door.
Again, they didn’t sleep together. Just everything else. In her mind, that made it less bad.
“What now?” she asked Bennett.
“What do you mean?” he asked, and she knew that nothing was different. Nothing had changed at all.
She wasn’t sure what to tell Cooper. She wasn’t sure why she’d done it. She loved Cooper, didn’t she? True, she had felt some relief when she realized that hooking up with Bennett probably meant they were done. What she and Cooper had was too good, too easy. It was bound to end eventually.
But when Cooper showed up at her door a week later and smelled like home and hugged her so tight she thought she would burst—in a good way—she decided that she would only tell him one thing.
“I missed you,” was all she said.
She felt guilty. Every day the guilt ate up a little more inside her like a tapeworm.
That was why she’d gotten the flu shot. As punishment. She deserved it.
This was what Mackenzie was thinking about at eleven a.m. on Wednesday morning in Mr. Gilbert’s calculus class. Thinking very loudly, as it turned out.
She was not paying attention to Gilbert in the slightest. She was twirling a curl around her index finger and remembering. She turned to the window and realized that Tess was staring at her, eyes wide open in shock.
“What?” Mackenzie whispered.
“Did that really happen?” Tess whispered back.
Mackenzie had no idea what Tess was talking about. “Did what really happen?”
Tess leaned in closer. “You cheated on Cooper?”
Mackenzie’s heart raced. “I did not.” Had Bennett said something? He wouldn’t. He wasn’t the kind of guy to kiss and tell. Anyway, they didn’t have any friends in common. And she hadn’t breathed a word to anyone.
“You were just talking about it,” Tess whispered. “Two seconds ago.”
“I was not!” Mackenzie couldn’t believe it. What was Tess trying to pull?
Tess shook her head. “I’m not trying to pull anything!”
“Girls,” Gilbert said, turning from the blackboard. “You’re both excused.”
Crap. Mackenzie was already in trouble with Gilbert for always handing in her homework late. She was in trouble with all her teachers, actually. “But—”
“Goodbye,” he said. “Next time don’t disrupt the class.”
Mackenzie sighed. She and Tess collected their books and headed to the door.
At least, Mackenzie figured, she’d be able to find out how Tess knew about her and Bennett. Maybe Tess was just guessing. Although Mackenzie had been thinking about it. Had she been talking out loud? Mumbling to herself? No one else had heard her. Maybe she’d been mouthing the words and Tess had read her lips. Did Tess know how to do that? Mackenzie doubted it. Tess didn’t have any secret skills.
The two girls stepped outside.
Tess’s eyes were bugging out of her head. She definitely knew something.
This was not good. Not good at all. Mackenzie hadn’t told a single person what had happened with Bennett over the summer.
No one was supposed to know.
Even Tess. She loved Tess, but she couldn’t tell her something like that. Tess looked up to her. Mackenzie liked that Tess looked up to her. And Tess would think she should tell Cooper the truth.
Mackenzie couldn’t tell Cooper. He’d break up with her. And then what? She’d lose him. He’d hate her.
We can’t help wondering if she wanted to lose him all along.
Still, tears burned the backs of her eyelids. Her heart raced. Her head hurt. Her mouth was really dry. She needed a Diet Coke. Or one of Bennett’s joints. No, no, nothing about Bennett. That was what had gotten her into this mess in the first place.
How had Tess found out?
I can’t believe she hooked up with Bennett again. He’s such a user.
“Excuse me?” Mackenzie asked, hands on her hips.
Tess took a step back. “I didn’t say anything.”
“Yes you did. You said Bennett was a user,” Mackenzie said.
Not out loud! Tess thought.
What the hell is going on? they both thought.
At that second, just down the hallway, the door to Mr. Roth’s public speaking class was thrown open.
“Get Nurse Carmichael!” Lazar yelled as the entire class cleared out of the room.
Voices came from everywhere.
“Give her space!”
That must have hurt.
“She needs to breathe!”
She looks kind of dead.
Mackenzie grabbed on to Tess’s hand. “I don’t understand what’s happening.”
“Me neither,” Tess said. “And it’s so loud.” They pressed their backs against the row of lockers to try to stay out of the way—of the people, of the voices. So many voices.
I’m hungry. Is it lunch yet?
I think I’m wearing different-colored socks.
Pi came out of the class last. Her eyes were shining as she walked by Mackenzie and Tess. She was muttering silently to herself. I could hear her. I could hear what she was thinking. She could hear what I was thinking! How did that happen? Is she the only one?
Mackenzie crossed her arms in front of her chest. No, Mackenzie thought. She’s not the only one.
Pi stopped in her tracks and stared at Mackenzie. You too?
Me too.
And me, Tess piped up.
Pi started to laugh. How is it that we can hear people’s thoughts?
We have no idea, Mackenzie and Tess thought at the same time.
Jinx, Mackenzie thought.
Now someone better buy me a Diet Coke.
CHAPTER SIX
IT’S A PUZZLE OUT THERE
Pi was the first one of us to get it. She got it before school, at seven a.m. We aren’t sure why. She thinks it was because she’s the smartest. We think it’s because she was swimming at the time. Working out. More blood flow to her brain.
She was swimming in the downtown community pool on Warren, a few blocks from school. She swam every morning. It cleared her head. She’d read an article in New York Magazine saying that daily exercise increased one’s IQ by about ten points. She would not let ten points get away from her. She did all kinds of things that were supposed to increase IQ—ate fish with omega-3, practiced writing with her left hand, listened to classical music, taught herself chess and poker. Did sudoku. She did sudoku a lot. Sometimes she imagined boxes of numbers on white walls.
Pi had the second-highest GPA in our grade, just behind Jon Matthews. But Pi wanted to be number one. Harvard would never take two kids from one public school. And she wanted to go to Harvard. She wanted to study physics and be a physics professor. She wanted to understand the universe.
Her father was a doctor. Well, he was a researcher at Mount Sinai. He’d lost his license after a malpractice suit. It hadn’t been his fault at all, but that was what happened in New York. Greed and bureaucracy got in the way of brilliance. Her mom had left him and taken a job at a hospital in Indiana when the whole thing went down. Pi had refused to move with her, and decided to stand by her dad. They didn’t need her mom. She didn’t need her mom. Pi would be fine—no, exceptional—without her.
On Wednesday morning, Pi was underwater swimming laps when she kept hearing Black-Speedo Guy talking to himself about the memo he was supposed to send to his boss by noon. Times or Arial? What says “promote me”? She saw him there often; he always wore the same Speedo.
At first Pi stopped mid-stroke. “Excuse me!”
The guy ignored her and kept swimming.
But he also kept talking. I need a raise. At least a hundred bucks a week. Then I could eat out more often and get cool stuff for my apartment. Like a high-def TV. Better speakers. A custom-made bobble head that looks like me and is wearing a Speedo.
Everyone had the right to voice
his ideas, Pi thought, but not when they intruded on someone else’s personal space. And this was Pi’s personal space. This was her morning swim.
When she reached the end of the pool, she stopped to tread water. She lifted her goggles. “Excuse me! Can you please stop?”
He didn’t stop.
“Sir!” she said again, this time louder.
He stopped and turned to her. “Yes?”
“Can you please stop talking? It’s making it difficult for me to concentrate.”
“I’m not talking. I’m swimming.”
“No, you’re talking,” she argued.
“No,” he snapped. “You’re talking to me.” He shook his head and said, Crazy chick. Her swimming cap is on too tight. Then he dove under the water.
Pi held on to the edge of the pool and tried to figure out what had happened. He had said something, but his lips hadn’t moved.
And on it went all morning. On the walk over to school. Getting her coffee—one cup of coffee was also rumored to increase IQ. Homeroom. She was starting to worry that she was working too hard when Olivia had her meltdown in class. It was then she realized what was happening. Olivia could hear thoughts too. Then, in the hallway, she discovered that the same thing was happening to Tess and Mackenzie.
As soon as she made that discovery, Pi moved Mackenzie and Tess down the hall so they could talk without anyone overhearing. Or without them overhearing anyone else. The farther they stood from the others, the quieter the voices in her head became.
Mackenzie hugged her arms to her chest. What number am I thinking? Seven.
“Seven,” Pi said.
Tess’s jaw dropped. “This is crazy. I heard it too. My turn.” Tess closed her mouth. Eight. No, ten. No, thirty-three and a half!
“Eight, no, ten, no, thirty-three and a half,” Mackenzie said.
“This is the coolest thing ever,” Tess said, eyes dancing.
Pi glanced at the others in the hallway. “As far as I can tell, it’s just happening to the four of us,” she said. “You two, me, and Olivia.”
“Where is Olivia?” Mackenzie asked.
“She fainted,” Pi said matter-of-factly.
Don't Even Think About It Page 3