Mindscape

by M. M. Vaughan

  • • •

  Chris knew, straight away, that John was right, and he went back into school feeling lighter knowing that he wasn’t alone. By bedtime, Chris had made up with everybody, even Rex. He hadn’t had to say much. In fact, Chris had been shocked at how quickly they had forgiven him and he had forgiven them. The next morning, they all played in the pool before breakfast, as if nothing had ever happened.

  Less forgiving was Ms. Lamb, who kept to her word about giving them a difficult time. In the days that followed their visit to the art gallery, her unpleasantness, as difficult as it had been to put up with before, was now intolerable. She rearranged the school timetable (on the pretense that they needed extra training for their upcoming assignments) so that they now spent most of every day with her shouting at them, ordering them to repeat work over and over again (“The pen is too black! The corner of the page is creased!”) and keeping them all in after their lessons were over to write out pages and pages of lines. Finally, and most upsetting for Chris, who had got used to the shouting and the tedious chores, she tore up Chris’s newspaper with the picture of Valentino Brick in handcuffs on the front page, sent to him and signed with thanks from the commissioner.

  By lunchtime on Friday, after a particularly brutal session where Ms. Lamb had spent three hours drilling them relentlessly over how to extract truth from fiction in a person’s dreams, Chris and the others had just about had enough. They sat in the dining room, eating their soup, and griped about Ms. Lamb.

  “There’s only one good thing about leaving here—and that’s never having to see that witch again,” grumbled Philip.

  “I agree,” said Chris.

  “I cannot envisage her ever having been a child, can you?” said Sebastian.

  “Yep,” said Lexi, “she would have been the one snitching on everybody.”

  “And ripping up other people’s work if it was better than hers,” said Philip.

  Chris was about to join in when Miss Sonata appeared in the doorway.

  “I hope you’ve got enough energy for a new assignment,” she said brightly. “Something’s come up.”

  Chris, who had been wondering when they would next get to solve another crime, sat up and nodded. The others did the same.

  “Wonderful,” said Miss Sonata. She pulled out a chair at the head of the table and sat down.

  “There have been a series of fires started at post offices around North London in the last week,” began Miss Sonata. “An appeal last night on television brought a number of possible suspects to our attention, but we have no evidence to charge any one of them and they all deny any involvement. We’ve got them all at a police station not too far from here—we’ll take you there and see if you can find anything. I’ll give you all the details on the way.”

  “What about dinner?” asked Rex.

  “It shouldn’t take too long,” said Miss Sonata. “You really don’t have to come, though, Rex if you’d prefer to stay here.”

  Rex jumped up, alarmed at the thought of being excluded. “No—it’s fine. I’ll grab a snack from the dining room.”

  “Excellent. Everybody else coming?”

  They all nodded enthusiastically.

  “Good, let’s go!”

  • • •

  The case was solved within twenty minutes of their arrival. This time, however, Chris was not the one responsible for solving the crime—it was Lexi and Sebastian, who happened to access the mind of the culprit, a man harboring an unnecessary amount of anger for a parcel that had been lost in transit. Lexi and Sebastian gave their information to the commissioner, who sent his men immediately to a storage locker that the pupils had identified. There, the police found a mountain of canisters filled with gasoline and a laptop containing photographs of every one of the targeted post offices. Not long after that, the man confessed.

  By the time they left the post office, three hours later, Chris and the others were all starving—something that always happened after intense use of their Ability. Even the snacks that Maura had packed for them hadn’t been enough to stop their stomachs growling. They bundled into the minibus, eager to get back to Myers Holt.

  Chris listened as next to him, Lexi, who was giddy with excitement at solving her first real crime, chatted with Miss Sonata and Daisy. Meanwhile, over at the front of the bus, Ron, John, Sebastian, Rex, and Philip discussed the best way to subdue a shark with bare hands.

  Chris leaned his head against the window and looked out at the charcoal skies of London, the streets glistening from the rain that had fallen earlier that day. They moved slowly, the traffic thick with people trying to get home to start their weekend, and Chris distracted himself by watching the pedestrians on the sidewalk. Occasionally, for no good reason other than to kill time, he would access the mind of somebody when the minibus stopped at a red light, but he found nothing of interest—just a lot of people thinking about food, much like he was.

  The minibus drove slowly past the British Museum, and Chris entertained himself by trying to spot the tourists, then he would access their Receptions to find out what language they were speaking to find out whether he had been right. He had just correctly identified a group of Italians when, out of the corner of his eye, he spotted him.

  Chris sat up abruptly—was he imagining things again? He pressed his face up against the glass and stared as the minibus moved slowly forward. There, standing just round the corner from the museum entrance was the pale young boy whose brother he had killed, wearing a dark-blue jacket, his black hair slicked down. He knew what John had said, about seeing the face of someone you killed everywhere, but this was different. The boy was just a few feet away, and his face was unmistakable. He was talking to somebody, a clean-shaven man dressed in a suit and a long black overcoat. Suddenly, the minibus started moving, and Chris was jolted out of his stupor.

  “Stop the van! It’s that boy again!” yelled Chris.

  Everybody in the bus immediately stopped talking to look at him, except for John, who kept on driving as he argued with Ron, who was sitting beside him.

  “I tell you, Ron, jab it in the eye first. . . .”

  “Stop!” shouted Chris, who could now only see the faint figure of the boy beginning to walk away from the man.

  Miss Sonata, alarmed, leaned over to Chris as John, who had heard Chris now, pulled over to the side of the road.

  “What’s the matter, Chris?”

  “Dulcia Genever’s son! He was there—back there by the museum—talking to a man. It was him!”

  Chris’s eyes darted around the bus and found that everybody was staring at him as if he had lost his mind.

  “Over there—back there. John, please, turn around!”

  John hesitated. “Chris . . .”

  Chris’s could feel his face turning red. “I know what we talked about, but I promise you—I’m not imagining this! It’s him.”

  “You’re sure?” asked John.

  Chris nodded. “I really am.”

  “All right.” John turned back to face the road. He indicated right and pulled out into the traffic at a frustratingly slow speed.

  “Hurry! He’s going to get away,” said Chris, running to the back of the bus and pushing himself in between Rex and Philip. He peered out the window, but he couldn’t see either the boy or the man, both lost within the crowds of commuters and tourists.

  By this time, everybody on the bus was looking out the window to search for the boy, and then Chris found him once more.

  “There!” said Chris, pointing to the back of a boy with a dark blue jacket on. “Quick!”

  “Are you sure it’s him?” asked Miss Sonata.

  “Yes! I saw his face. Please! Quick!”

  John looked in his mirrors and pulled out into the opposite lane, causing the oncoming cars to honk their horns loudly as they swerved to get out of the way.

  “I see him—over there!” shouted Chris.

  “Let me out, John,” said Ron. He leaped over to the door
of the bus.

  John, who was still on the wrong side of the road, suddenly veered back to the left, finding a gap that hadn’t really existed between two cars, and pressed a button. The doors flew open, and Ron leaped out, deftly swerving out of the way of an oncoming bicycle, then ran down the road toward the boy.

  Chris, his heart pounding, turned, and ran down the length of the bus and out the doors after him, closely followed by the others, despite Miss Sonata’s protests.

  Chris gasped as he saw Ron, up ahead of him, leap forward. Chris watched as Ron grabbed the boy by the collar and began to turn him round when a large group of tourists suddenly emerged from the museum, obscuring his view. Chris pushed his way through them, ignoring their angry shouts, and emerged to see Ron looking very pale as he talked to two furious-looking adults standing beside the boy. Chris ran forward, and as he did so, the boy turned to look at him.

  Chris’s heart sank. The boy facing him had an olive complexion, and his hair, though also black, was short and spiked at the front.

  “I really do apologize,” Chris heard Ron say as he approached. “A case of mistaken identity.”

  “We must call the police,” said the father of the boy, in a thick Spanish accent.

  “No, really. No harm done. Just a misunderstanding,” said Ron, trying to calm the situation.

  “A stranger grabs my boy—this is a crime here, too, no?” asked the mother, waving her hands in anger. “I should slap you.”

  Interrupting them, Sebastian stepped forward and then, in Spanish, began to apologize for the misunderstanding. Chris, who now had a good grasp of Spanish from his studies, listened as Sebastian explained that one of the pupils from the school trip had gone missing and they thought it was him. Calming slightly, the parents huffed but seemed to accept the explanation. And then, to Ron’s relief, the father suddenly grabbed the confused boy’s hand and led him off down the street.

  Chris was suddenly very aware that everybody had turned to look at him.

  “It wasn’t him,” he said.

  “No, Chris, it wasn’t,” said Ron, his arms folded and a deep frown on his face.

  “I mean I did see the boy, it’s just that that wasn’t him,” said Chris, but he could tell by the look on Ron’s face that he didn’t believe him. Chris turned to the others. “You believe me, right?”

  Sebastian, Lexi, and Philip all looked down at their feet awkwardly, but Rex just spun his finger by his temple. “Cu-ckoo,” he said. Chris imagined it was what everybody else was thinking.

  Chris opened his mouth to argue, and then he changed his mind. What was the point? he thought. They had obviously made up their minds that he was crazy the first time he had seen the boy. This time, however, Chris knew without any doubt that it had been him. The only question now was why.

  “Come on everybody, excitement’s over,” said Miss Sonata. “Let’s all get back to school.”

  Chris, followed the group back across the road and into the waiting bus.

  “It’s all right, son,” said John as Chris walked past him, his head hung low.

  • • •

  Chris waited on the ground floor of Myers Holt with Miss Sonata and the others for the elevator to arrive. He didn’t know what to say, and clearly, neither did anybody else. They waited in silence until the doors of the elevator opened and Ms. Lamb stepped out wearing a tight green coat and holding her purple umbrella. She looked at Chris and immediately curled her lip at him before turning to Miss Sonata.

  “Successful?” asked Ms. Lamb, referring to their assignment.

  “Yes, thank you, Gertrude.”

  If Chris hadn’t felt so awful at that moment, he would have almost certainly burst out laughing at hearing Ms. Lamb’s name for the first time.

  “No incidents at all?”

  Miss Sonata shook her head. “None at all. The children did a superb job.”

  Chris couldn’t have been more grateful that she didn’t mention the incident with the boy.

  “Surprising,” said Ms. Lamb, “considering they are all so useless.”

  Miss Sonata didn’t respond. Instead, she let Ms. Lamb pass and wished her a lovely weekend.

  “Yes, and you,” said Ms. Lamb without looking back.

  • CHAPTER SIXTEEN •

  At nine o’clock the next morning, Chris was summoned to have a chat with Sir Bentley and Miss Sonata. Any hopes that he might be able to convince them of what he had seen vanished as soon as they started talking and made it clear that they were concerned not for the whereabouts of the boy but for Chris’s state of mind. Chris figured that continuing to insist that he had been right might make them question if he was mentally able to cope with the work at Myers Holt, and so he decided to keep quiet. Instead, he did his best to appear embarrassed about the misunderstanding, and finally, reassured, they let him on his way. Chris decided right then that the next time he saw the boy—and he was certain he would—he would investigate it himself.

  Once he had come to that decision, Chris relaxed slightly. Although it played on his mind constantly, by Sunday he was, in the eyes of the others, back to his normal self. And, in a sense, he was. Chris had spent a long time thinking about the situation and decided there was nothing he could do until the next time they left the school. He knew that while they were deep underground in the facility nobody would be able to make their way in physically—Ron, John, and the tight security would make sure of that—or by using their Ability. As Sir Bentley had explained to them on their first day, the entire place was lined in lead, completely blocking anybody from using the Ability to look in to, or out of, Myers Holt.

  So sure was he of this that by Monday morning the only thought on Chris’s mind was how he would survive another full day of lessons with the odious Ms. Lamb. The pupils all walked slowly into her classroom, dreading the inevitable shouting and name calling that they were about to be subjected to, but Ms. Lamb wasn’t there. They took their seats, surprised, and waited in silence.

  And then, after ten minutes of waiting, something miraculous happened. Something that had not once happened in all the time that the pupils had been at Myers Holt. Ms. Lamb walked into the classroom . . . smiling.

  “Good morning, children,” she said brightly, not mentioning, if she noticed, that all the pupils were staring at her with a look of total bewilderment.

  “I hope you’ve all had a pleasant weekend.”

  Nobody answered.

  “Good, good,” she said, the heels on her knee-high leather boots clacking on the floor as she made her way over to her desk. She bent down, the skirt of her tight green suit stretching painfully as she searched through the drawer for something.

  “Aha!” she said, pulling out a stack of white paper. “Here we go.”

  Chris looked over at Philip. “What’s wrong with her?” he mouthed.

  Philip raised both hands and shrugged his shoulders.

  Chris watched, expecting Ms. Lamb to snap back to her old self at any moment as she handed each pupil some paper.

  “I thought we could brighten up the classroom,” said Ms. Lamb, carrying over a large box of colored pencils that Chris himself had sharpened during his time in the Dunce Corner.

  Chris watched as Ms. Lamb placed a handful of the pencils on each pupil’s desk before finally coming to his. Chris looked up, wondering if she was going to find some way to insult him even in her good mood, but no. She placed the pencils on his desk, just as she had done for the others, and walked away with a smile on her face, not once having looked at him.

  “I’m not in the mood for teaching today,” she said, sitting down at the chair behind her desk. “So why don’t you all use this lesson to draw the most interesting mind you’ve entered during your time at Myers Holt. Make it detailed and, um, colorful—whatever will keep you entertained.” She pulled out the newspaper and folded it over so that the crossword was faceup, then picked up a pen. “Off you go,” she said, waving her hand at them dismissively. As Chris picked up
his pencil to draw Valentino Brick’s mind, he wondered what on earth was going on. It wasn’t that he wanted to be shouted at, obviously, but this change in Ms. Lamb was so out of character that it had completely unsettled him. The more he thought about it, the more convinced he was that this was a ploy to catch them out in some way and that any minute now, she would somehow reveal this to be a cruel trick. He looked round at the others, who were beginning to draw in silence, and saw from the looks on their faces that they were all thinking the same thing. In fact, the class had never behaved so well.

  Half an hour later, having worked in total silence, Chris approached Ms. Lamb’s desk nervously. He stood by her side as she scribbled a word into the crossword until, finally, she noticed him standing there.

  “Yes?” she asked, not sounding in the least bit angry at the interruption.

  “I’ve finished my work,” said Chris, placing the paper on the desk, aware that the eyes of all the other pupils were on him.

  Ms. Lamb picked up the paper and inspected it. Finally, she looked up and placed it on the corner of her desk.

  “Good. Do you have a book to read?”

  Chris nodded. “Yes, in my bag.”

  “Very well, then, go and do that for the rest of the lesson.” Ms. Lamb looked back down, picked up her pen, and began to work on her crossword once more.

  Chris was too shocked to move. No tearing up of his work, no shouting, no insults—it just didn’t make any sense.

  “Yes?” she asked, realizing that Chris was still there.

  “Um, nothing,” he said, about to turn and walk away when Ms. Lamb suddenly sighed and looked up at him.

  “Look. I don’t like any of you any more than I did last week, but I’ve decided, you stay out of my way, and I’ll stay out of yours. Understood, Chris?”

  The whole class gasped as Ms. Lamb, oblivious to the shock on everybody’s face, looked back down and continued her crossword puzzle.

  • • •

  “I can’t believe she said your name!” said Lexi as they all ran up the hill to sit under the tree.