Mindscape

by M. M. Vaughan

  Chris waited silently with Daisy by his side, both of them dripping wet as paint of every color poured down over them. They watched as the colors slid down the sides of the building’s walls, revealing the doorway.

  “How long have we been in here?” asked Chris as he walked up to the door and turned the handle.

  “I don’t know,” said Daisy. “Maybe ten minutes?”

  Chris opened the door. “We’d better be quick, then. Ms. Lamb’s going to kill us if we keep them waiting.”

  He stepped back to let Daisy through first.

  “Chris—look!”

  Chris stepped inside and looked around. The room was crisp and white, with only a single bookcase that curved around the room from one end to the other. Unlike in any other building Chris had entered, here the memories were stored in folders of different colors that ran from the lightest shade, white, to black at the other end. And, Chris noticed immediately, there was not a single label to be seen. He turned to Daisy and realized that she wasn’t looking at the room but down at herself—now miraculously clean, her dress back to its original pale pink and her blond hair clean and dry. He looked down at himself and saw that all traces of paint had also disappeared from him.

  “I love this place,” said Daisy, smiling. She walked up to the bookshelf. “Now, what’s the name of the stolen art? The Guilt of the Rich, is that right?”

  “Yes, but that’s not going to help you much,” said Chris. “They’re not labeled.”

  “Oh . . . you’re right,” said Daisy, inspecting the spines of the folders. “So, how do we find it?”

  “Um, I’m not sure,” said Chris, pulling out a folder at random—a deep green one with, he saw to his surprise, a picture of a car drawn on it. He opened it up, and immediately, the room around them darkened. At first, it wasn’t clear to Chris what he was looking at, but as the memory began to move, he saw that Valentino was hiding under a table in a large, bright classroom decorated with painted handprints, numbers, and letters pinned to the walls. In the far corner, Chris watched as a small boy, about five years old, left the room. The door closed behind him, and Valentino jumped out and ran over to the wall of coats and bags. The memory scanned the name tags above the hooks until Valentino found what he was looking for: a dark-blue backpack with a train on it. The room spun round quickly as Valentino checked he was on his own, then, satisfied the coast was clear, his two chubby little hands came into view and reached out to unzip the bag. He peered inside, and there, wedged between a half-eaten sandwich and a banana was a bright-green toy car. Valentino reached into the bag, pulled out the car, and carefully tucked it in his gray trouser pocket. He raised his hands and zipped the bag closed. A little giggle filled the room as Valentino chuckled to himself and then skipped off in the direction of the door.

  “Oh, I get it!” said Chris, closing the folder. The light returned to the room, and Daisy appeared before him, looking rather cross.

  “What? That he’s a thief?”

  “Well, he was only little,” said Chris.

  “That’s no excuse,” said Daisy indignantly.

  “Anyway,” said Chris, “that’s not what I meant. Did you see the color of the car?”

  “Yes, green. Why—oh!”

  Chris smiled. “He doesn’t file things alphabetically, he files them by color.”

  Chris put the folder back onto the bookshelf and walked up to the lighter end of the bookcase.

  “Do you remember the exact color of the bread sculpture?” he asked. “I think it was kind of orange, right?”

  “Not that dark,” said Daisy, looking at the file Chris was reaching toward. “Maybe this one?”

  Chris nodded and watched as Daisy pulled out a folder. She looked at the picture on the front, a pencil, and shook her head. “Not this one. How many things has he stolen?” asked Daisy.

  Chris didn’t say anything. He was thinking about the time he had stolen the twenty-pound note from his teacher and that there were surely quite a few files in this building in his own mind. He made a mental note never to allow Daisy to have a look around there—she’d probably never speak to him again.

  “Here it is!” said Daisy, shaking Chris from his thoughts. She held out a pale-orange, almost brown, folder with a picture of a loaf of bread on the front. Chris watched as Daisy opened it. The room darkened, and before them appeared the gallery entrance, exactly as they had seen it earlier, except darker.

  Chris watched as Valentino crept past the sleeping guard whose mind Chris had accessed earlier and then sneaked into the main gallery room, closing the doors behind him. Once inside, he turned around and looked at the four spotlit pieces until his eyes came to rest on his own creation—This Is the Center of the Universe—the large white canvas with a single black dot in its center.

  “My baby,” he purred softly, walking over to his work. Chris watched, confused, as Valentino began to stroke the canvas gently.

  “That’s a bit weird,” said Chris.

  “Very,” agreed Daisy.

  Valentino stroked the canvas a while longer and then, finally, turned to face the winner—the ceramic loaf of bread standing in the middle of the room on a square white plinth. The room immediately turned cold.

  “So this,” he hissed, “is what those judges think is art?”

  Valentino approached the loaf of bread and stood over it with narrowed eyes, his mouth twitching. “What do those silly little people know about art? They wouldn’t know genius if it hit them in the face. How dare they judge my work to be inferior to this . . . this . . . monstrosity!”

  Chris watched carefully as the artist began to circle the plinth until, suddenly, he reached over and grabbed the sculpture.

  “He’s stealing it!” said Daisy. Chris was about to nod his head in agreement when, without warning, Valentino raised the ceramic bread up with both hands and smashed it against his forehead.

  Chris and Daisy gasped.

  “That’s why he had the bandage on his head!” said Chris as Valentino surveyed the large fragments of sculpture lying on the floor amongst the hundreds of sparkling diamonds.

  Then, with a low growl, Valentino lifted his foot and began to stomp on the pieces.

  “This,” snarled Valentino, “is not”—he brought his boot down again with a thud and a crunch!—“art!”

  “He’s crazy!” said Daisy.

  Chris couldn’t believe what he was seeing. He and Daisy watched in quiet fascination until the last piece of pottery was completely disintegrated, the diamonds now sitting in a pile of fine dust.

  “That’s better,” said Valentino finally, his voice back to normal. He bent down and began to scoop the dust and diamonds into his hand and then into the pockets of his trousers until all the evidence had disappeared. Then, having checked the floor for any missed diamonds or fragments, he walked over to the room’s double doors and opened them.

  “I’VE BEEN ATTACKED!” he screamed, quite believably, Chris thought.

  The sleeping guard jumped up, startled. “What?”

  “I’ve been attacked by robbers! Call the police!”

  The guard looked horrified as the enormity of what was happening hit him. He looked through the double doors at the empty plinth in the center of the room and rushed toward it, leaving Valentino alone.

  Valentino looked around to check that he was on his own and then ran over to the entrance of the restrooms. Chris and Daisy both gasped as they watched the artist slide his hands into his trouser pockets and empty out a few million pounds’ worth of diamonds into a bin.

  The last thing Chris heard as he closed the folder was the quiet sound of giggling, the same giggling he had heard when the five-year-old Valentino had run off with his classmate’s prized toy.

  “I can’t believe it,” said Chris, turning to Daisy as the image disappeared.

  “I can,” said Daisy. “He was a horrible boy—I’m not surprised he turned into a horrible, jealous man.”

  “He didn’t even k
eep the diamonds,” said Chris.

  “No—he just wanted to be spiteful. I’m glad he didn’t win.”

  “Me too,” said Chris, placing the folder back on the shelf and walking over to the door. “I wonder what will happen when we report back?”

  “Well, maybe he’ll finally learn his lesson,” said Daisy with a forcefulness that surprised Chris.

  “I like tough Daisy,” he said, smiling.

  Daisy blushed. “I’m not tough. It’s just about right and wrong. Come on,” she said, quickly changing the subject, “let’s go back.”

  Chris nodded, then followed Daisy back out into the torrential rainbow-colored rain.

  • CHAPTER FOURTEEN •

  “I did the world a favor!” screamed Valentino Brick as he was led out into the Kitchner Gallery’s foyer in handcuffs. The two policemen jostled him toward the door, where a police van was waiting on the other side.

  Chris and the other pupils stood silently against a wall and watched as Valentino was dragged past them, completely unaware that it was these twelve-year-olds who had uncovered his spiteful crime. Valentino was bundled out of the building, down the steps, and into the waiting police van, his screams of protest suddenly silent as the van doors shut behind him.

  Chris looked round to see the commissioner approaching them, smiling. He waved them into a circle so that he could speak to them without anybody else hearing what he was saying.

  “That was truly marvelous,” he said, shaking Chris’s hand, then Daisy’s. “Not much surprises me, but this—well, this is something I won’t forget.”

  Chris grinned and looked at Daisy, who was beaming also.

  “You’ve outdone yourselves,” continued the commissioner. “I look forward to the next assignment.”

  This time, he shook hands with all of them, then with Ron and John and, finally, Ms. Lamb, who, Chris noticed, was actually looking quite pleased.

  • • •

  As they drove back to the school in silence—John’s usual blasting of country music having been banned by Ms. Lamb—any hopes that Chris might have had that his success at the gallery would earn him even one day of peace from Ms. Lamb were dashed.

  “Wipe that smirk off your face,” she said, turning round to glare at Chris. “It was the luck of the draw. Any of the other imbeciles would have found the same information if they had entered that man’s mind instead.”

  Chris didn’t say anything, but in the only way he could be defiant without getting into trouble, he didn’t apologize for his success either; after all, he didn’t feel he had done anything wrong.

  “I demand an apology,” said Ms. Lamb. Chris looked over at Philip, who was leaning forward so that Ms. Lamb wouldn’t see him as he pulled faces. Although nobody said anything in his defense, and he couldn’t blame them one bit—it would only have made the situation worse—he was nevertheless grateful to know that he had their support, and it made him feel stronger.

  “I don’t know what I’m apologizing for,” said Chris as calmly as he could manage.

  “You are apologizing for your smugness, you disrespectful little . . .” Furious, she stood up suddenly from her seat and immediately noticed Philip pulling faces. Caught red handed, Philip leaped back in his seat.

  There was a moment of tense silence as Ms. Lamb glared at Philip, her eyes narrowed and her lips pressed tight in anger.

  “How . . . dare . . . you,” she said finally.

  “I’m—I’m sorry. I wasn’t copying you . . . I had an itch on my face . . . it was . . .”

  “I know exactly what you were doing, boy,” said Ms. Lamb, seething with anger.

  “Can you sit down and put your seat belt on please?” called out Ron from the front.

  Ms. Lamb ignored him as she turned to address the pupils.

  “You are all,” she said slowly as she stared at each one of them in turn, “disrespectful, lazy, good-for-nothings. I have given every one of you a pretty easy ride up until now, but from this moment on, I give you my word that I am going to make this year the least enjoyable, most unpleasant time that any of you have ever experienced in your pathetic, pampered little lives. And I’ll begin by giving you all detention every day this week. Except for you . . .”

  Nobody said anything as Ms. Lamb leaned down to face Chris. “I haven’t liked your cocksure attitude from the day I set eyes on you. For that, you get three weeks’ detention.”

  Ms. Lamb’s heavily made-up face moved in closer, and Chris instinctively turned his head away in the direction of Philip and the window.

  “Look at me when I’m talking to you!” she shouted, a bit of spit flying from her mouth onto the side of Chris’s face.

  But Chris didn’t respond, for at that very moment, something caught his eye. He squinted as Ms. Lamb’s voice faded out and everything around him disappeared—all except the face of a pale young boy standing by a lamppost, staring directly at him, his eyes following him as the bus moved slowly forward. Was it true, he wondered, or was he just seeing things? Perhaps he wasn’t as fine as he had thought. He blinked and shook his head, but the boy was still very much there. Chris’s heart stopped, and then, realizing they were going to lose sight of him, he reached down, undid the buckle of his seat belt, and jumped up across a startled Philip to look out the window behind them as the minibus drove on.

  “WHAT ARE—” shouted Ms. Lamb.

  “It’s the boy!” said Chris, ignoring her. “John! Stop the bus! It’s that boy.”

  Chris jumped up onto the seat and looked out the back window, and he saw the boy suddenly turn and begin to run as the minibus slowed.

  “What boy?” asked John, pulling over onto the side of the road and turning on the hazard lights.

  “The boy—the boy whose brother I killed. The son of Dulcia Genever.”

  Chris barely heard the gasp from the other children as he ran to the front of the bus, his heart pounding.

  “Turn around!” he shouted. “He was back there, by the parked cars!”

  “Hold on,” said John as he suddenly pressed down on the accelerator and spun the steering wheel around.

  “Quick!”

  • • •

  After fifteen minutes of driving around with no sign of the boy, John finally sent Chris, shaking and pale, back to his seat.

  Chris looked around at everybody as he sat down and saw that they didn’t look nearly as concerned as he thought they should be. He knew it was because nobody believed that he had really seen him.

  “It was him!” he said, protesting to nobody in particular. “I swear.”

  Ms. Lamb, who had insisted this was a waste of time from the moment John had followed Chris’s instruction to turn around, looked delighted. “You are more troubled than even I had realized. I think I’ll have a talk with Sir Bentley on our return—I’m sure he won’t want any pupils at Myers Holt who believe they can see dead people.”

  “Not the dead boy!” said Chris, furious, “his brother. His twin brother.”

  “Don’t you talk back to me,” said Ms. Lamb. “You’re in enough trouble as it is for wasting our time.”

  “The boy only said what he thought he saw,” said John. Chris was grateful that John was standing up for him, but he couldn’t help but feel annoyed that John didn’t believe him either.

  “It was him,” he said, mostly to himself.

  Ms. Lamb just sneered, and Chris, too angry to say anything, turned to face the window. He didn’t say another word as they pulled up outside Myers Holt and went inside. As soon as the elevator hit the floor of the facility, Chris stormed off into his bedroom.

  • CHAPTER FIFTEEN •

  Maura had prepared an early evening picnic under the tree in the Dome for the students, which Chris ate in silence while Daisy and Philip made awkward attempts at conversation.

  “This is my favorite time of day in the Dome—early evening,” said Daisy brightly, looking up at the dusky-orange sky above them.

  “Mine too,” sai
d Philip. “What about you, Chris?”

  Chris didn’t answer. He picked up an apple and took a large bite.

  “Mum sent me the new Hunter Reid album. Anybody mind if I play it later?”

  “Who’s Hunter Reid?” asked Philip.

  “A singer that Daisy’s in love with,” said Lexi.

  “I’m not in love with him!” said Daisy, her face turning red.

  “Well, better than being in love with a fictional character,” said Rex.

  Lexi glared at him.

  “What about you, Chris—you want to listen to the album later?” asked Daisy.

  Chris shook his head and took a sip of his drink as the group went silent again.

  Chris was surprised at how normal they were acting—as if nothing had happened, as if one of their good friends hadn’t just seen the brother of a boy he had killed watching him. They should have believed him—they were his friends—and he thought that was what friends did. No—they had all dismissed him as crazy. Perhaps they had thought that all along but it was only now coming out into the open.

  He was about to stand up and leave when Ron and John came out from the classroom wing, deep in what looked to be an argument.

  “What’s wrong with them?” asked Daisy, clearly shocked. Although Ron and John were constantly bickering between themselves, none of them had ever seen the two men genuinely angry with each other.

  “Call me that one more time and I’ll . . .” shouted Ron.

  “And you’ll what?” replied John, his voice thunderous.

  Chris watched, shocked, as John then leaned down so that his face was within inches of Ron’s.

  “L-I-A-R. LIAR!” he shouted.

  Ron didn’t move. Instead, he lifted the sunglasses from his face and placed them on top of his head. Then, in a move Chris was sure he hadn’t learned in the military, Ron raised his index finger and jabbed John in the eye.

  “ARGH!” yelled John, clutching his face in his hands. Ron watched silently as John lowered his hands. Then, without warning, John leaped forward on top of Ron and the two men fell to the ground, wrestling each other.