Open Minds

by Susan Kaye Quinn

  Text copyright © 2011 by Susan Kaye Quinn

  All rights reserved.

  www.susankayequinn.com

  No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without written permission from the publisher. For information visit www.susankayequinn.com

  Summary: Sixteen-year-old Kira Moore can’t read minds in a telepathic world, but soon discovers she can control them instead and is slowly dragged into an underworld of dangerous mindjackers.

  November, 2011 Edition

  Cover and Interior Design by D. Robert Pease

  www.WalkingStickBooks.com

  Edited by Anne Victory

  For my mom,

  who always believed in me more than I did.

  And who never once tried to mind control me.

  I think.

  “Open Minds pushed me to the edge of my imagination and then tossed me over the edge as I screamed for more. Quinn has created an intensely dangerous world both inside the minds of her characters and outside—a world that left me asking myself questions I would never have asked before. When you can literally control the thoughts of others, how far will you go? Quinn takes the reader to this reality with breathtaking control and sparkle. Read this and you’ll never look at your thoughts the same again.”

  — Michelle Davidson Argyle, author of Monarch and Cinders

  “Open Minds boils with action, adventure, and surprises. I was fully invested in this inventive world and the protagonist. A story that had me imagining what if, long after I finished it.”

  — Terry Lynn Johnson, author of Dogsled Dreams

  A zero like me shouldn’t take public transportation.

  The hunched driver wrinkled a frown before I even got on the bus. Her attempt to read my mind would get her nothing but the quiet of the street corner where I stood. I kept my face neutral. Nobody trusted a zero to begin with, but scowling back would only make the driver more suspicious. I gripped my backpack and gym bag tighter and climbed the grime-coated steps. The driver’s mental command whooshed the door closed behind me.

  Yeah, junior year was off to a fantastic start already.

  Students crammed the bus, which stank of too many bodies baking in the early morning heat. I shuffled past the dead-silent rows, avoiding backpacks and black instrument cases. Two years of being the Invisible Girl had taught me a few things. As long as I didn’t touch an exposed arm or speak out loud, the blank spot of my mind would go unnoticed in the swirling sea of their thoughts. Which was great, until I needed a seat on a crowded bus.

  With a soft hiss of water exhaust, the bus lurched forward. I grabbed a sticky seatback to keep from falling on three girls deep in mental conversation.

  Two senior boys leered from the back row. The whole bus was within range, so they knew there were no thought waves beaming from my head. Yet, instead of ignoring me, they stared like hungry sharks. Last year, looks like those would have gotten them pummeled by my six-foot-two brother, Seamus. But Seamus had graduated, and the protective shadow he cast over me was gone.

  Whatever sims the boys were thinking, students four rows ahead of them turned to watch. Shark Boy tipped his head to his friend, obviously discussing me as they stared. His friend’s lips parted to show a sliver of teeth, and he gestured to the only open seat on the bus.

  Right in front of them.

  I could complain to the driver, but she wouldn’t believe anything a zero told her. Shark Boy’s thoughts wouldn’t carry over the mental chaos of the bus, and speaking out loud would only get me thrown off.

  I turned away from the wide grins on the boys’ faces and slowly sank into the seat. My cheeks burned with the expectant stares from the back half of the bus, but I kept my gaze on the suburban houses ambling past the window. The heat of Shark Boy’s hand reached me just before he brushed my bare skin, right below my t-shirt sleeve. I jerked away and clutched my gym bag like it was a shield.

  Shark Boy and his friend rocked back with noiseless laughter, as if touching a zero was the height of funny. I shivered in spite of the heat and decided to take my chances with the unfriendly driver. By the time my shaking hands found handholds to the front, we had rounded the corner to the school parking lot. I ignored the driver’s insistent stare. As soon as the bus stopped, I pounded the button on her dash to manually activate the door and scurried out.

  Once inside the main entrance of school, a scuffle of feet warned me to step back as a group of girls sailed past, looking all mesh with their band shirts and synced steps. One—Trina—cut too close and knocked shoulders with me. At first it seemed intentional, but then she acted as though I was something she would never touch on purpose. Heat rose in my face.

  Harassment from readers shouldn’t get a rise out of me anymore, but I’d fallen out of practice, sticking close to home over the summer. Trina’s snub wouldn’t have hurt at all if her sweater wasn’t still hanging in my closet, a casualty from a time when we traded clothes and secrets. I guess she didn’t miss it.

  I dug my schedule out of my backpack. At least the administration hadn’t put me in Changelings 101 again. As if a class on mindreading etiquette and self-control would help a zero like me. An anger management class would be more useful.

  My first-period Latin class beckoned from a dozen yards down the hall, its blue plasma lights gleaming like a lighthouse in a hurricane. I narrowly avoided a pair of students air-kissing and skittered to the classroom door.

  The new Latin teacher tried to be mesh with his shiny nove-fiber shirt. A circle of admiring students laughed silently at some mental joke. Seamus had warned me that I would need a hearing aid this year so the teachers could whisper their lectures to me while instructing everyone else via mindtalk. I had put it off, waiting for my brain to finally flip a switch and become normal, and hoping to get by in my classes until then. Meanwhile, to the teacher and his fans, I might as well be a dusty trashcan in the corner. I found a spot in the back, and a knot of certainty tied tight inside me.

  I will never be like them.

  My chair gained gravity and sank me deep into my seat.

  Long ago, everyone used to be zeros. When those first reader kids hit puberty and discovered they could read minds, the world didn’t know what to make of it. That first wave of Reader Freaks grew up to have more Reader Freaks.

  Now the only freaks were the few people who never changed. Like me.

  I physically shook that thought from my mind. Don’t give up. Just because most kids changed by the time they were thirteen or fourteen didn’t mean everyone did. Seamus didn’t change until he was fifteen. Mom told me over and over she was a late bloomer. I told myself for the hundredth time that the Moores simply changed late, and that I was the slowest of the bunch.

  The change could come any day. In the meantime, I would have to keep up in my classes any way I could. If the teachers were all mindtalking this year, then I’d get that hearing aid and make do. If I gave up now, I would have no chance at college, much less medical school.

  Students moved to their creaking metal desks, probably motivated by a thought instruction from Mr. Amando. Everyone pulled out their e-slates, and I peeked at my neighbor. We were starting with translations of Aeneid. Again.

  Although my thoughts sounded English in my head, I knew thought-waves weren’t a language at all. They could be read by any person over the change age, as well as by mindware interfaces. (Yeah, even the bus was better at reading minds than me.) But until the tech guys created a computer that could mindtalk back, the world would need written words. Latin was quickly becoming mesh, being a root language. All the latest mindware had a Latin option, plus Latin was required fo
r college, so mastering the ancient language wasn’t optional.

  I scribbled with my stylus, trying to decode Juno’s wrath against the city of Troy. Even after two years of Latin, my translations were still a literal jumble. Tantaene animis caelestibus irae? It meant Juno was wreaking her goddess anger on the Trojan people,yet the literal translation stuck in my head as vast minds of heavenly wrath. If I changed tantaene to deminutus, it could just as easily describe the small minds of Warren Township High.

  I let out a long sigh. At least we weren’t working in groups on the first day of class. I redoubled my efforts to force the translations into something better than gibberish.

  The bell gave a soft tone that disturbed the utter quiet of the room. I slipped past the other students, wrapped in their mental conversation. The crowds thinned at the back of school, but I kept to the edges until I reached my locker. By the time I had my gym bag stowed away, the metallic sound of my locker door slamming shut echoed down a nearly empty hallway.

  At the far end, a group of readers had formed a tight circle, all facing inward. I cringed, knowing some freshman changeling was in the middle, being harassed by the small minds of heavenly wrath that populated my school.

  I dragged myself toward them, not wanting to get involved, but I couldn’t stand to see another kid go demens, driven mad by the change. Some kids fuzzed out on obscura to escape the mental chaos of reading minds. But the three suicides last year were sent spiraling by more than simply the voices in their heads. As a zero, I endured dirty looks and menacing boys. It could get a lot nastier for the changelings.

  The girl huddled on the floor inside her ring of tormentors, clutching her head and squeezing her eyes shut, as if that would keep out the sims that surrounded her newly minted reader mind. What they were doing was a misdemeanor thought crime, but I couldn’t exactly turn the pravers in. The administrators might get their true memories under questioning, especially if they brought in a truth magistrate, but they wouldn’t do that based on the word of a zero.

  “Hey!” My voice cut through the quiet. “Go be evil somewhere else!”

  Their heads swung in unison, lit with astonishment. Of course they hadn’t sensed me. They glanced at each other, then turned as a unit and walked down the hall in the creepy synchronized way that readers sometimes did. Hassling me must not be worth the tardy.

  The changeling still sat with her eyes shut, clutching her knees and slowly rocking. I waited until the others disappeared into the chemistry wing before I edged over to her.

  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.

  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 demensward 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.

  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.