Don't Even Think About It

by Sarah Mlynowski

  We’d rounded up eleven of us. We weren’t sure if there were only were eleven of us, or if we could only find eleven of us. But one thing was definite: all eleven of us were from homeroom 10B.

  Who were we? We were Pi, Mackenzie, Tess, BJ, Jordana, Olivia, Nick, Isaac Philips, Levi Jenkins, Brinn Ferrero, and George Marson, who went by Mars.

  The original eleven.

  Pi and Olivia had walked by Nurse Carmichael’s office and found Mars and Levi waiting for the nurse to get back from her condom run. Tess had found Nick, Isaac, and BJ disoriented in the cafeteria, and Olivia had found Brinn mumbling to herself in the bathroom.

  I can’t believe this is happening, thought Olivia now.

  “It’s happening,” Nick said. And my mom better not find out about it. She’ll make me quit the baseball team. She’ll think this is from the stress. Nick was the only sophomore at BHS on the varsity baseball team. He glanced at the door as though his mom were about to sense something was up and run right from her biology class to the chess room.

  Tess bit her lip. Holy crap, this is ESP.

  “It’s only one type of ESP,” Pi said. “ESP is an umbrella term that includes all the extrasensory perceptions. We don’t have clairvoyance or precognition. At least I don’t. Does anyone else?”

  “I don’t even know what those mean,” Jordana said.

  “Telepathy is when you can hear other people’s thoughts. Clairvoyance is when you are aware of something happening in another location. Precognition is when you can tell the future. And then there’s telekinesis, which is when you can move objects with your mind.”

  “No, I’m just having the first one,” Tess said.

  “Me too,” Isaac Philips said, nodding his shock of gray hair. Yes, gray hair. He looked like his head had been colored in by a lead pencil. He was also the only publicly gay guy in our grade.

  Of course, within the next few days, we’d know about anyone who was still in the closet. There were no secrets from us.

  “But why are we the only ones to have any of it?” Tess asked. “What’s so special about us?” Not that I’m complaining. This is going to make a great book one day. Not that anyone would believe it. I’ll have to call it fiction.

  “It must have something to do with the flu shots,” Pi said, pacing the room.

  “We’re not the only homeroom to have gotten the shot,” Isaac replied.

  Vaccines come in batches, Olivia thought.

  Huh? Batches? Jordana wondered while filing her nails.

  Olivia turned bright red. Everyone heard me?

  “Get used to it,” Mackenzie muttered. She was sitting in the corner, giving us all death glares.

  What’s her problem? Levi wondered.

  “Me? You’re the one who’s always in a bad mood,” Mackenzie snapped. Although I’d be in a bad mood too if I had those teeth.

  Some of us gasped.

  Mackenzie flinched.

  Mackenzie wasn’t wrong. He did have terrible teeth. Probably because his parents owned a candy store on Reade Street. He’d worked there since he was a kid. He ate a lot of candy.

  “Sorry,” Mackenzie added. This whole thing is pissing me off.

  We should be pissed. Our brains were just contaminated by vaccines! Brinn thought, not looking up from the notepad she was drawing in.

  We all stared at Brinn. We’d never heard her talk coherently before. She was always in her own world, mumbling to herself and drawing in her notebook—usually while wearing fencing gear. She was on the fencing team, but didn’t seem to realize that the uniform wasn’t supposed to be worn twenty-four seven. Brinn was our nerd. Sorry, Brinn, but it’s true. She mumbled when she talked, her lips were so chapped they bled, and her hair looked like a bird’s nest. Not that she seemed to care.

  Mackenzie’s not pissed because her brain’s been contaminated, Jordana thought. She’s pissed because our brains have been. She doesn’t want us all knowing her business.

  I don’t want you all knowing my business either, Nick thought.

  Pi slammed her fist against the table. “Can we try and focus, people?”

  “What are we focusing on?” Levi asked. “I’m not exactly sure what we’re doing.”

  I’m not sure why we’re not in the emergency room, Olivia thought.

  “I agree,” Mars said. “We’re hearing voices, people. That’s messed up. Our brains might be melting.” Mars was a piano prodigy. The day before the flu shot, he’d broken up with his girlfriend, Jill Clarke, because he didn’t think they were a good fit. Jill had said she agreed. Mars was pretty hot. Dark hair, dark skin. Apparently he used to serenade her. He could sing, too, although unlike Cooper, he didn’t force us all to listen to him.

  “I’m not sure our best plan is to turn ourselves in immediately,” Pi said. “We have to weigh the options. And I think what Olivia said about the batches was right. It was probably just our batch.” I would have realized that myself eventually.

  What a know-it-all, Mars thought.

  And why is she acting like she’s the boss? Levi wondered.

  Pi spun around to face him. “Do you two want to run this meeting? Go ahead.”

  Mars cringed.

  Levi rolled his eyes and sank back into his chair. Then he reached into his pocket and took out a multicolored bag of candy Runts.

  “Can I have some?” Tess asked.

  He passed the bag around the room.

  “Let’s review,” Pi said. “All we know right now is that the eleven of us have developed some sort of telepathic capabilities.”

  We nodded.

  “Let’s discuss that capability for a minute, please.” Pi tapped her pen against a desk. “What do we know about it?”

  “The voices are like real voices,” Nick said. “You hear them all, but it’s hard to focus on more than one at a time.”

  “The closer you are to the person, the louder their voice,” Mackenzie said. I could hear Cooper really loudly.

  “You could? When? When you were getting it on?” BJ asked, arching his thick eyebrows.

  Mackenzie rolled her eyes. “No. We were talking. But good theory.”

  “People are also louder when there’s less in the way,” Nick said. “Like right now, since Tess is sitting between me and Olivia, I can hear Tess’s thoughts but it’s hard for me to hear Olivia’s.”

  Good, thought Olivia.

  Tess slumped in her seat. “Better?”

  “Think something, Olivia!”

  Olivia flushed. My head hurts.

  Nick gave her a thumbs-up.

  “We can’t hear anyone outside of this room,” Pi said. “Maybe walls also act as interference.”

  BJ stretched his arms above his head. “Anyone want to test my ‘thoughts are loudest when you’re hooking up’ theory with me?”

  “No,” the girls in the room said.

  “Isaac?” BJ asked.

  “You’re not my type,” Isaac responded. He’s so my type.

  Ha! BJ waggled his eyebrows. I knew it! I’m everyone’s type.

  You’re not my type, Tess thought.

  Olivia rubbed her temples. Her head was really killing her. She needed to go to the nurse’s office to get some Tylenol. She closed her eyes. She wished she had gone home after all. The idea of everyone in the room knowing her every single thought filled her with dread.

  She had dumb thoughts.

  She knew she had dumb thoughts.

  She didn’t want everyone in the room to know all her dumb thoughts.

  Wait a sec. She opened her eyes and heard—

  Well, BJ, you hit on anything that moves and you’re—

  She closed her eyes again.

  Silence.

  Opened them.

  —and your ears are kind of big—

  Closed them.

  Silence.

  Opened them.

  It stops when I close my eyes, Olivia thought.

  Pi looked right at her. “Can you guys shut up so Olivia
can talk?”

  Olivia gulped. I wasn’t planning on talking.

  “Olivia,” said Pi, sounding annoyed, “we’re trying to learn from each other here. It doesn’t help us if you hoard your discoveries. What were you thinking about your eyes?”

  Olivia nodded. “I … I noticed that it doesn’t work when you close your eyes.”

  “What doesn’t work?” Pi asked.

  “When I close my eyes, I can’t hear you. The voices stop.”

  Why didn’t I notice that? Pi wondered. “Let me try. Everyone think.”

  Mackenzie: How much longer is this meeting going to last?

  Levi: Who has the rest of my Runts?

  Pi opened her eyes. “Okay, enough. I couldn’t hear any of you. Could you hear me?”

  We shook our heads.

  “Were you thinking things?” Nick asked.

  “Of course I was thinking things,” Pi huffed. “I’m always thinking things.”

  “So that’s good news,” Nick said. “If we close our eyes, we can stop listening to people and we can stop other people from listening to us.”

  He closed his eyes immediately. We all did.

  “So we can still keep secrets,” Jordana said. She heaved a sigh of relief. We all did.

  “So what do we do now?” Nick asked.

  We all opened our eyes.

  That was the big question. Of course, all of us had different opinions.

  Levi: We spy on people!

  Nick: I don’t want to spy on people.

  Levi: Then you’re a moron.

  We should tell Nurse Carmichael, Olivia thought.

  The next thoughts came fast and furiously, ping-ponging around the room. It was hard to tell who was saying what. It was like all of us were talking at once in a stream of consciousness.

  What’s Carmichael going to do? … She could help us. … How? … Maybe there’s a reversal vaccine. … Maybe it’s not because of the vaccine. … What else could it be? … Maybe she’ll know how to get rid of it. … Why would you want to get rid of it? … Why wouldn’t I? … We have a superpower! Why would you want to reverse it? … I don’t want to know what other people think! … I do! It’s awesome! … Where are those candy Runts? … We should tell Nurse Carmichael. … Forget Nurse Carmichael. We should go to the emergency room. … Or call the Men in Black. … There’s no such thing as the Men in Black. … There’s no such thing as ESP either. … If we go to the emergency room, they’ll put us all in a rubber room. … And do experiments on us. … If they believe us. … They’d never believe us. … It’s not so hard to prove. … True. We just tell them what they’re thinking. … No one’s going to like that. … No shit, Sherlock.

  Brinn slammed her forehead on the desk and then mumbled something.

  What did she say? we all wondered.

  Can everyone shut up? My head is killing me.

  “Me too,” Mackenzie said, placing her hand on her stomach. “I feel like I’m going to puke.”

  “So have we agreed?” Pi asked, taking command of the room. “For now, we keep this among us?”

  “I don’t remember agreeing to that,” Nick said.

  “I think we should keep it quiet,” Tess said. “Maybe not forever. But for now. Until we get a little more used to it.” Until I can use it to find out what Teddy thinks. Oops. She looked around the room. Who had heard that?

  Nick was looking right at her. He was one of Teddy’s buddies. Had he heard?

  Nick looked away. Not getting involved, he thought.

  “We might as well see how we can use this,” Mars said.

  “Use this?” Mackenzie asked. “How do you use this?”

  Tess gave her a look. “Aren’t there things you want to know but no one will tell you?”

  We all nodded. How could we not? Of course there were things we wanted to know.

  “So let’s see what we can find out,” Pi said. “If we tell other people what we can do, they’ll quarantine us. No one wants his or her secrets to be public knowledge. So we have to keep this between us. That means no telling anyone. Friends. Parents. Teachers.” Pi looked at Nick. “Parents who are teachers.”

  Don’t look at me, Nick thought. My lips are sealed.

  “What about boyfriends who are in our homeroom but don’t have the ESP?” Mackenzie asked.

  “Do not tell Cooper,” Pi insisted. “Only tell those who develop it. And we must get to them before they tell anyone else.”

  “Who’s not here from our homeroom?” Nick asked.

  Tess counted those of us who were missing on her fingers. “Sadie, Isabelle, Courtney, Rayna, the twins. There are twenty-four people in our class. And we’re only eleven.”

  “But two didn’t get the shot,” Mars said. “So that makes twenty-two.”

  “Unless someone from one of the other classes had the batch we got,” Pi reasoned. She looked at us sternly. “We all have to be on the lookout for signs.”

  Or on the listen-out, Olivia thought, sinking into her chair. That was totally dumb.

  Tess laughed. Not dumb. I thought it was funny.

  Olivia sank even farther. They can hear me worrying about my dumbness! And now they can hear me worrying about worrying about my dumbness. It’s a friggin’ house of mirrors.

  “It is a house of mirrors,” Pi said. “And we have to watch from every angle. Especially the other people in our homeroom. Got it?”

  We nodded.

  “We have to be a team,” Pi continued. “We’ll meet again tomorrow at lunch.”

  “I have a Bloom meeting,” Tess said.

  “Skip it,” Pi ordered.

  Rude, Isaac thought.

  “For all we know, we might not even have telepathy anymore tomorrow,” Levi said.

  Olivia nodded. Fevers after vaccines only last a day or so. Why should this last any longer?

  Pi gave her a look that was part admiration, part annoyance. For someone who has never spoken in class, you sure have a lot to say.

  Olivia flushed.

  Mackenzie turned to Olivia. “So this could all be gone by tomorrow?” Her voice sounded hopeful.

  Olivia nodded. I hope so.

  “Thank God,” Mackenzie said. Life can go back to normal.

  Brinn shook her head. Her fingers were tinged with charcoal. Normal is boring. Who wants that?

  “Okay, everyone,” Pi said. “See you tomorrow at lunch. Keep your mouths shut. If you do discover someone else, please share our discussions with them and inform them about tomorrow’s meeting.”

  We nodded. Pi had spoken: class was dismissed.

  CHAPTER TEN

  THE NON-DATE

  FROM HELL

  Tess looked for Teddy all over school but couldn’t find him.

  She was psyched to finally find out if he liked her. No more wondering. She would just stand beside him and know if he felt the same or if she should move on.

  But by the end of the day, Tess hadn’t seen Teddy at all. Well, they’d crossed paths for a second on the stairs. Tess was going up; Teddy was going down. But there were like a hundred louder people between them, so she couldn’t hear his thoughts.

  She waved and tried to squirm her way toward him, but it was like rush hour on the subway, so no go.

  Between sixth and seventh periods he was by his locker, so she thought maybe that was her chance, but he had some sort of French test and all he was thinking was je pense, tu penses, il pense, and that did not help her get a feel for if he liked her one bit, malheureusement.

  By the time the bell rang, she knew she had to take matters into her own hands.

  She texted him:

  Hey, what are you up to later?

  She stared at her phone. And waited. She knew in theory a watched phone never got a text, but she still stared.

  Finally a text popped up—theory proven false!

  Have practice. But want to see new Death Valley movie with me and Nick after that?

  Tess did want to see Death Valley. She
loved seeing horror movies, especially with Teddy. The scarier the better. When the movie was especially bloody, she had an excuse to press her face against his shoulder and breathe in his Irish Spring scent. Yum.

  Usually Tess was happy to have Nick around too.

  But not tonight.

  Nick would hear everything she was thinking. Including thoughts about her signature sniffing-Teddy’s-shoulder move.

  So embarrassing.

  But time could be running out. She needed to see Teddy soon. She texted back:

  Sure.

  She was extra pleased when she got out of the shower and saw:

  Nick bailed. You still in?

  Yes. She was still in.

  Now, what to wear? She wanted to look pretty but casual. Not like she was trying. Normal, but really good normal. So he could see her and think she was pretty and not even notice the extra effort … or the extra few pounds. Or maybe even like them.

  The weight was all her mom could think about. Seriously, her mom had been thinking about it as Tess ate dinner. Maybe if she ate slower, she wouldn’t be so hungry. Does she have to use that much salad dressing? Why is she taking more sweet potatoes?

  So what if she wanted a second serving of sweet potatoes? Sweet potatoes were vegetables.

  She scrunched and diffused her hair and then zipped up her best jeans. Or what she thought were her best jeans.

  We think her best jeans were actually the ones with the frayed bottoms.

  Tess didn’t know that at the time, though, so she called Mackenzie to make sure she looked good in them. “My James jeans don’t make my ass look fat, do they?”

  “No,” Mackenzie said.

  “Love you,” Tess chirped. If Teddy felt the same way Tess did, soon they’d be double-dating with Mackenzie and Cooper. She couldn’t wait. “What are you doing?” she asked.

  “Just thinking,” Mackenzie said.

  “About what?” she asked. She wished their telepathy worked over the phone. Then she wouldn’t have to waste time with silly questions.

  “Nothing. I gotta go. Good luck.”

  Tess put on her best bra. It was black lace and gave her great cleavage.

  None of us had seen all her bras, so we can’t make an informed decision on whether it was her best.