by Nate Johnson
Nolan Reed
By
Nate Johnson
Copyright 2016 Nathan Johnson
All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book, or portions thereof in any form. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system or transmitted, in any form or by any means. This is a work of fiction. Names and characters are the product of the author's imagination and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Purple Herb Publishing
[email protected]
Dedicated to my Son
Keith
I am so proud of the person he has become
Contents
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Author Notes
Nolan Reed
Chapter One
“He looks like he eats kittens for breakfast, and puppies for lunch,” the blond in the corner thought.
Nolan winced, but refused to show any emotion as her thought filled his head. That was the problem with being able to read minds. You heard things that you wish you hadn’t.
He was used to it. Being able to read minds was disturbing, to say the least. Being surrounded by teenagers in the throes of hormones was more than disturbing. It made life impossible.
The classroom quieted as he stepped through the door. As always, Nolan did a quick mental scan as he entered. He knew what they saw. A bigger than normal seventeen-year-old with black hair, a previously broken nose, and a recently scrapped chin. With a nasty scar bisecting his left eyebrow and the beginning of a black eye. Not a pretty picture.
Wearing his dad’s old camo jacket, he didn’t have to read them to know the other kids found him menacing and a little unusual. Handing the teacher his note, he found a seat in the back and hunched down, trying to blend.
“We are out of books. I’ll bring one in tomorrow,” the teacher said. “Marla? will you share until then?”
Nolan looked at the pretty girl next to him. Long straight brown hair and chocolate colored eyes that looked deeper than the cosmos. She gave him a hesitant smile that sent a spear straight to his gut. He threw his shields up and tightened down. No leaks, he promised himself. He couldn’t afford the truth.
It was bad enough being the new guy. He didn’t have to start things off with knowing she despised him without even knowing him.
“But, guess what?” Mr. Davis said, interrupting Nolan’s daydream. “It is pop quiz time, so put your books away,” he said to a room of groans and moans. The teacher laughed as he walked through the class passing out the test.
When he got to Nolan, he looked down and said, “Don’t worry, I won’t count this for your grade. Do your best, and we can see where you’re at.”
Nolan took the test from the teacher, fighting to hide a secret smile.
It was easy to identify the smartest student in class; if you’re going to cheat, you might as well do it off the best. He let his mind open and identified a kid in the front. Paul Anderson seemed to know what he was doing. He focused on the boy’s thoughts among the fog of information flying around the classroom.
Once he’d narrowed it down and focused on the sights inside of Paul’s brain, he dipped his head and filled in the answers as Paul thought of them.
The guy was your typical nerd. So focused on doing well, that his mind didn’t wander too much. Although/, there was a passing thought about Erin Hall in the shower. But generally, he stayed on task. Nolan saw the answers projected on the insides of Paul’s forehead and quickly copied them onto his test while Paul prepared for the next question.
Paul, and therefore Nolan, finished early. Nolan sat back, folded his arms and let his mind drift.
His special gift – as he called it - had shown up a couple of weeks after his thirteenth birthday. His foster mom at the time, Mrs. Simpson, had been thinking about the FedEx delivery guy’s butt.
With a flash of light, The thought had come into his mind as sharp as a knife. The thought was so intense it had almost knocked him down. At first, he’d thought he’d made it up until he caught Mrs. Simpson’s guilty look when she saw him staring at her.
After that, it seemed to always be there. Whenever he was in the same room with a person, he could see their thoughts as they had them.
Every fleeting idea. Every sick secret want. Each forbidden desire. Intimate details about their lives, all of it was open to him. It had been an overwhelming shock. The degree to which people put on a different public façade compared to what they truly thought inside.
Not memories, thank God. Only what they were thinking at the time. Unless of course they were thinking about their memories. Then, they truly became open to him. He didn’t have to probe. Didn’t have to pry or even concentrate. Their thoughts just flooded into his brain.
At first, the special ability was scary and overwhelmed him. The constant influx of visions and thoughts pushed everything else out of his mind. He had no control and no way to get away from it. His only defense had been to avoid people like the plague they were.
He’d locked himself in his room and stared up at the ceiling for days. Fighting desperately not to go insane.
What made it even worse was that he couldn’t tell anybody. Under no circumstance could the system learn what he could do. He’d only been in the foster system for a short while, but he’d learned enough to know that the system was to be avoided at all costs. He’d seen enough movies, read enough books. He knew how it worked. They’d throw him into some secret lab and lock him up for years. All the while, poking and prodding him until he performed their tricks.
Or worse, kill him. Isn’t that what the government did when someone like him came along? Every book said so.
He spent weeks at the library trying to find out information about what was happening to him. But, there was very little. The internet was useless. There were enough crazy people out there to choke a horse. He couldn’t tell who was talking the truth and who had forgotten to take their meds.
By his fourteenth birthday, he had learned how to filter out other people’s thoughts. It was like when he was a little boy and would close his eyes on the theory that if he couldn’t see the monster, the monster couldn’t see him.
He’d learned how to open up a slight sliver and peek into targeted people, grab what he needed, then get out before becoming overwhelmed.
At first, he’d been shocked at the things people thought about. It seemed to center around food, sex, and money. Once he was able to control it, he started using it to learn things.
Some of it was surprising, others really fun. Like the fact, his social worker Mr. Carter was having an affair with one of the ladies in his office. It became harder to listen to the hypocrite about how important it was to follow the rules.
“You mean like you and Mrs. Crowley?” Nolan had blurted out after another moral tirade on one of his monthly visits.
Carter’s jaw dropped, and his face went white. Nolan thought for sure he’d screwed up, that he’d opened himself up to discovery. But the officious jerk gathered himself and brushed it off, pretending Nolan hadn’t meant what he’d meant. But Nolan was able to see the thoughts running through his mind as he tried to figure out who knew.
“Had Joan said something in front of the kid? Did his wife know?”
That had
been the closest he had ever come to giving away the secret. Nolan had come close to getting on their radar. He didn’t need guys in dark glasses and big cars chasing him across the country.
Nope, not going to happen. Not to him. He could keep a secret, especially this one.
Mr. Davis meandered through the class picking up tests as students finished. He stopped at Nolan’s desk and glanced at the paper. His eyebrows rose as he looked back down. Nolan didn’t have to scan him to see his surprise.
Nodding his head, Mr. Davis returned to the front of the room.
Marla scooted her desk over to his so that she could share her book.
“Did you get the number?” she asked.
“What number?” Nolan said his brow creasing in confusion.
“The number of the truck that hit you,” she said with a smile.
Nolan laughed, some of the tension left his shoulders. “You should have seen the other guys,” he said and noticed her raised eyebrows at the mention of “guys.”
“I’m Marla Jackson,” she said with a nervous little smile.
“Nolan Reed.” Interesting. He could tell she was nervous without reading her mind. Why was she nervous?
“Well Mr. Reed, welcome to our own little version of hell known as Mr. Davis’ Trigonometry class.”
Nolan laughed again and felt himself relax all the way. Or, at least as far as he ever relaxed around people. Maybe this place wasn’t going to be all bad. He rechecked his barriers, ensuring everything was in place to stop any wayward thoughts from creeping in.
He could not afford to know the truth about what this beautiful girl thought about him. He desperately wanted to know, but couldn’t afford to take the risk. If she saw him as some bumbling oaf or worse, a creep. It would just set him off, and there was no telling what would happen.
The bell rang, and Nolan felt a pang of regret as he moved his chair back to its proper place.
“Can you tell me where room 122 is? I’ve got chemistry next,” Nolan asked.
“Sure, it’s on my way. I’ve got History next to it. Here let me see your schedule,” Marla said, reaching out and taking the office slip from his hands. Her eyes narrowed as she studied the list then broke out in a smile. “
“We’ve got English Lit together at the end of the day. All of your other classes except for P.E. are in the same general area, you won’t have any problems.”
Nolan smiled and retrieved his list. “Thanks. Each school is different, but still the same, if you know what I mean.”
“Do you have a lot of experience with new schools?” she asked.
“Fifth in four years,” he said with a shrug.
Marla’s eyebrows shot up to her forehead in wonder.
He laughed and said, “I’ll tell you all about it someday.” Then, thanking her again, he held the door open to her classroom. She walked in looking back over her shoulder, her brow creased in curiosity.
.o0o.
Marla pushed her hair behind her ears. She’d spent the day thinking about the new boy from Trig. He looked like he had been in a fight. Was that why he went to so many different schools? Was he the kind of guy who was always getting into fights?
Something about him was different, interesting. The way he’d look off into the distance like his mind was somewhere else. She’d seen the way Mr. Davis had reacted at his test. Obviously, the guy wasn’t a dunce.
Sighing to herself, she thought about the potential. She knew she wasn’t beautiful or anything special. Her ears were too big and her nose too small. Her eyes were a plain brown and up until this last year, she had always been on the skinny side. At last, she had filled out, not a lot, but enough.
There had been something in the way he looked at her that made her feel special. It had been sort of weird walking through the school hall with him to her next class. He was excellent at steering around obstacles. He seemed to know where people were going before they did. She’d never had such an easy time getting to class.
She examined the lunch room, but there was no sight of him. Her heart betrayed her by feeling a little disappointed. This was ridiculous, she thought. She wasn’t into boys, too much depended on her getting excellent grades and a full scholarship, there’d be no college without it.
At the lunch table, she broke down and asked her friends Cindy and Jess if either of them had seen the new boy. She could feel the tips of her ears start to turn red when they looked at her in shocked surprise.
“Marla, did you just ask about a boy?” Cindy asked.
“I was just curious. Mr. Davis had me share my book with him. I’ve got English Lit with him later.”
“Yeah, sure …” Cindy said, shaking her head.
“Is that him?” Jess asked.
Marla looked up, her heart skipped a beat as he walked into the cafeteria pushing his hair out of his eyes. He needs a haircut, Marla thought.
“Yeah, that’s him,” she said, trying very hard not to seem interested.
“Hm, yeah, I can see it. Definite bad boy material, I’d do him.”
“Jess! I can’t believe you said that, ” Marla said.
“What?”
“You know,” Marla said, looking at the boy from under her eyebrows. “Show a little class.”
“Don’t waste your breath, Marla. She’s all talk, and you know it,” Cindy said.
Marla ignored her two friends as they began arguing amongst themselves and watched Nolan walk across the room to retrieve a small carton of milk and an apple. He paid for his stuff and left without ever looking her way. She felt a little let down, and became lost in thought as she wondered about him once again.
.o0o.
Nolan had picked up Jess’s thoughts along with almost everyone elses’ when he entered the cafeteria. You didn’t have to be a mind reader to pick up the vibe. New guy, weird, an outsider. Things never changed, he thought and sighed to himself as he left the room.
He’d made a point of not reading Marla. Her thoughts were there. Just like everyone else’s. He could have gotten them if he wanted. Instead, he’d blocked them. No way did he want to hear her telling her friends about the weird creep new to the school.
He plopped down on a piece of grass under one of the trees in the quad and tried to tune everything out. His eyes closed and head fell back to rest against the tree trunk when he heard someone mention Marla Jackson. He didn’t hear the actual sound. He heard someone say it in their mind as their voice spoke.
His eyes flew open, and his mind surfed, looking for the source. He found a group of boys off to the side. The boys appeared to be seniors, or big juniors. Two of them were wearing red and white lettermen jackets and had the shoulders of football offensive linemen.
Suddenly dark, sick visions overwhelmed Nolan’s barriers. He couldn’t hold them back and after a few moments, he stopped trying.
Freezing in place, he let his mind examine the weird thoughts. It took a few seconds to isolate the thoughts to a guy on the other side of the quad.
The boy was dressed in an oversized black T-shirt and raggedy khaki trousers. Long, lanky hair partially covered his pale face.
Nolan swallowed. The rage poured off this kid like a flooded rain gutter. It was almost a physical force that felt like a black fog coating the inside of Nolan’s head. At first, it was hard to get a hold of the exact nature of the thoughts until Nolan tuned everything else out.
The kid was thinking about stabbing, no cutting up, the football players. No, even worse, skinning them.
Nolan almost threw up in his mouth when the pictures forced their way into his mind. It was a vivid image tied to an emotion of pure joy. It wasn’t just the fact that the guy was thinking of skinning these football players, it was the joy he would have doing it. It was the details that were sickening.
Nolan shook his head, as he fought to get the picture to disappear. He’d seen some pretty disgusting things in people’s minds, but it was the pure joy that accompanied these thoughts that was the most dist
urbing.
He finally got his barriers back in place and tuned the kid out. What did he care if some jerk had some weird fantasies about some football jocks? They weren’t his responsibility, to hell with them.
Besides, it’s not like he could do anything about it. No one would believe him. He’d learned long ago not to let his mind reading lead him into other people’s problems. He had enough of his own.
He had gotten up to leave and only gone a few steps when the barrier was breached again. This time, it was sexual visions, and it wasn’t the friendly loving kind.
Nolan started to push through the door when a picture of Marla Jackson flashed into his mind. He froze as he prepared to step off the grass. The kid from before, the black T-shirt, khakis, Billy Carp, was fantasizing about hurting Marla. Nolan had to fight not to start shaking. He slowly turned to look at the kids. His eyes were closed, but Nolan could see every thought, every sick twisted desire.
Nolan was torn. He wanted to go pound the kid’s face in for thinking about Marla that way. Every part of him surged with adrenaline, his hands clenched into fists, and his muscles tensed, but he was able to bring his barriers up and regain control. Turning, he walked away, but this wasn’t over. A confrontation now could lead to rumors and stories squelching any chance he had of getting through this year.
That didn’t mean he wasn’t going to keep an eye on little Billy.
The rest of the day was pretty uneventful. English Lit was interesting, Marla was already there, but surrounded by her friends. She made his day, though, by smiling at him.
A flash of what Billy had been thinking washed through his mind. He couldn’t afford to look at her and keep his face from giving everything away. Nolan found a seat in the back. Best to keep his distance. This was a new school with people who would never understand.
Marla frowned for a second. No way, was she upset because he hadn’t sat close?
Nolan kept his head down and pretended not to notice the secret glances she threw his way. That creep Billy Carp kept getting in his skull.