by Leslie Rule
“Kyle’s granddad was the first Mettley millionaire,” Mike Willoby said. “Kyle here is still coasting off his grandfather’s inventions.”
Kyle didn’t seem to mind when Mike teased him. “Eat your heart out, buddy,” he said and tossed an apple at him.
“Too bad you didn’t inherit your grandfather’s brains,” Mike said. “Maybe you could come up with some inventions of your own.”
“What did your grandfather invent?” I asked Kyle.
“Several money-making gadgets,” Mike answered for him. “Kyle’s grandfather was a famous inventor. Didn’t you notice his picture hanging in the lobby of Twin-Star Labs?”
“No, I didn’t really get a chance to look around much,” I admitted.
“We’ll fix that!” Kyle said. “If you’re not doing anything after school, I’ll take you on a tour.”
We met in front of the school after my last class and headed straight for the lab. “Twin-Star Labs has been rebuilt since my grandfather’s time,” Kyle explained. “It used to be brick. That was before they built with fiberglass. The old building didn’t make it through the earthquake in 2064.”
“What’s it like to own a whole building?” I asked, taking in the towering, cream-colored structure.
“I don’t own the whole thing. Just a share my grandfather left me. He developed most of his really successful inventions before he was twenty-two.”
Kyle showed me around, and I admired the photos of his grandfather and the spacious labs filled with fascinating inventions.
“Do you know anything about PK?” I asked him.
“Sure. My grandfather is the one who started the PK experiments at Twin-Star.”
“Do you know that I have—“ I stopped in midsentence. I wasn’t sure I wanted him to know about my supposed PK ability. He might think I was strange.
“Were you going to ask if I knew about your PK skills?”
“You do know!”
“I’m a shareholder! I keep up on everything. I know about your abilities, Jenna. I’m impressed.”
“Really?”
“Really.”
“I’m not sure I can actually move things with my mind. I’m a scientist’s daughter and have a hard time believing in PK.”
“Remember, I’m a scientist’s grandson. Telekinetic abilities are real. And you have them.” He sounded so sure.
“Everyone around here seems to think that. It’s like they know things about me I don’t know about myself.”
“Don’t go paranoid on me,’ Kyle teased.
“I just wish I could get someone to answer my questions.”
“That’s easy enough. Let’s see if Dr. Grady is in his office.”
He was there, seated behind a massive shiny desk, conversing with his computer. He leapt up when he saw me. “What a surprise! I was going to call you, Jenna.”
“Sorry to barge in on you, Dr. Grady,” Kyle said. “Jenna has some questions for you.”
“Yes, of course,” he said, and nodded at the two chairs against the wall.
“You’re busy,” I said, edging back toward the doorway. Dr. Grady’s intensity always made me nervous.
“I’m never too busy for you, Jenna. I’ve been wanting to talk with you too. I was going to give you time to recover from the weekend.”
“Recover?"
“Suki told me about your neighbor. It’s a terrible shame! I thought you might need some time to get over it.”
“Everyone in the neighborhood is still in shock. We all liked Mr. Edwards. It was awful for Kyle too. He saw him fall.”
“So Suki told me,” Dr. Grady said, shaking his head. “Terrible, terrible thing.”
“He was really old,” Kyle said. “At least he didn’t die a slow death like my grandfather.”
Dr. Grady nodded, his mouth twisted in a grim line as if he was remembering Kyle’s grandfather. They must have worked together. I wondered if they’d been friends.
“Well, Jenna,” Dr. Grady said, smacking his hands together abruptly. “You had some questions for me?”
“Lots of them. I’m having a hard time believing this PK stuff.”
“That’s understandable. PK goes against everything you believe in. Our solid world, for instance.” He rapped sharply on the wall. “You think the only way to touch things is with your hands? In a sense, your mind has hands and your thoughts are its fingers.”
I must have looked as confused as I felt, because he began to speak slowly as if trying to explain something to a small, dense child. “Do you know what brain waves are, Jenna?”
“My thoughts?”
“Actually, brain waves are rhythmic shifts of voltage between areas of the brain which result in the flow of electrical currents.”
“Oh.”
“Even though you can’t see these brain waves, they are there. They are real. Some people have a natural ability to control these waves.”
“You think I can do that?”
“You were amazing with the dice,” Dr. Grady said, his dark eyes sparkling. “Your scores indicate a success level far higher than statistics could account for. In other words, it is statistically improbable for the dice to consistently land on the numbers you were concentrating on.”
“So it wasn’t a coincidence?” I asked, not completely convinced.
“A coincidence? Highly improbable. As Kyle mentioned, Twin-Star Labs has been involved in researching psychokinesis for many years. As a young man, Kyle’s grandfather began experimenting on a device that can actually amplify PK abilities. Once you become more comfortable with your abilities, we’d like you to utilize this device.”
“What kind of a device?”
“It’s a visor you wear on your head!” Kyle said. “It makes your brain waves stronger.”
“Does it hurt?” I asked.
“Of course not!” Dr. Grady said hurriedly. “You know we wouldn’t do anything to harm you.” He leaned over to the wall safe and punched in a code on the computer lock. When the door popped open he retrieved something that looked like a pair of plastic earmuffs with glasses hooked to the front.
“That’s the visor?”
Dr. Grady nodded, slipping it onto his head so it smashed down his wiry brown hair. “I don’t want you to be afraid of this. I wouldn’t ask you to do anything I wouldn’t do. It’s important you feel confident.”
“If I wear the visor, my PK will be even stronger?”
“Exactly!” Dr. Grady said, his eyes glittering. “The visor is fueled with a unique substance that Twin-Star Labs has spent decades perfecting. When in an active state, this substance appears as rays of light with an energy all their own. These rays pull the electromagnetic energy from your brain waves. This energy is then recycled through the visor, and in the process strengthened by the rays. The rays—now combined with telekinetic energy—shoot out in the direction you choose to focus them. This whole process sounds complicated, but it takes less than a quarter of a second.”
“When can I try it?”
Dr. Grady chuckled. “I like your enthusiasm. Soon. Very soon. First I want you to do a few more PK exercises.”
He handed me a sealed cardboard box. “There are a dozen metal paper clips inside this box. Without opening it, try to twist the clips into knots.”
“You’re kidding!”
“I never kid, Jenna. The paper clip experiment has been around since the twentieth century. People with far less ability than you have successfully twisted the paper clips through psychokinesis.”
“And some of them made them disappear?” I said, thinking of Tarynn’s remark about my sister making a paper clip vanish.
“Yes, there was a case where a paper clip seemed to disappear. But I don’t believe it really did. Our research indicates that the paper clip was simply moved.”
“Moved? You mean to a different place?”
“Not necessarily a different place. More likely, it was transported to another time via telekinetic energy.”
&nbs
p; “Is that possible?”
“We believe so. You see, when you’re dealing with telekinetic energy, you’re dealing with a force that is very different from the tangible matter that scientists have long been comfortable with. Less open-minded scientists than myself prefer to study matter that they can get a grip on, so to speak—things with melting points and measurements that react predictably with the world around them. I’m getting way ahead of myself. Let me just say that as we’ve learned more about telekinetic forces, we’ve also learned it’s time to throw out some of the scientific theories we’ve lived by for so long.”
He was rattling on and on, as if to distract me from asking about my sister. I wasn’t going to let him get away with it. “These other people with PK that you mentioned?”
“Yes?”
“Some of them were pretty talented,” I said, fishing for information. “They were talented like my sister!”
Dr. Grady smiled slyly. “Is that a question or a statement?”
“A question. Do I have a sister?”
“Jenna, there are some questions I am not at liberty to answer. It’s not that I have a problem with you knowing the facts. It’s simply not my place to divulge certain things to you.”
His secrecy was annoying. “Whose place is it to divulge these things?” I snapped, surprising myself with my anger.
Dr. Grady seemed unfazed, and Kyle was staring at his shoes. Did Kyle know? Did he know about my mysterious sister?
“I suggest,” Dr. Grady said slowly, “that you have a talk with your mother.”
8
Apparently mom was the only person “at liberty” to tell me the truth. As usual, she was lying down with one of her migraines when I got home. It wasn’t very nice of me, but I stomped around slamming doors when I realized she was avoiding me again. She doesn’t have a headache! I told myself. She just wants to keep me in the dark!
Despite my anger, a chill crept over me. Whatever she was hiding must be pretty horrible because everyone acted so strangely whenever I tried to get answers. Why did Mom keep lying to me about my sister? Did something terrible happen? Was my sister dead? Why didn’t I remember her?
Suddenly, I wasn’t so sure I wanted to know the truth. I decided to let Mom sleep and slipped quietly up the stairs to the sanctuary of my room. But my room no longer seemed like an escape from the awful things in the world. For it was here I had learned of Rita’s murder. And it was here I would finish her story.
I was afraid to open the diary, afraid to come to the end of her life. I placed the musty diary on the window seat beside me, wondering what secrets it held.
Did she know? Did she have any hint at all of what Ben was going to do to her?
My fingers brushed the withered cover. The red vinyl had cracked and flaked off in places, revealing faded cardboard. Cardboard.
Is that what Ben was? A cardboard character as one-dimensional as a paper doll? No depth. No love. Only a smiling face with nothing behind it.
Nothing behind it but a violent, murderous streak!
Suddenly, I had to know. I had to know if she had any inkling—if it was really possible to be so deluded by love that you would put your heart in the hands of a killer.
I knew reading Rita’s words would no longer be enjoyable. It was painful knowing there were no happy endings for the girl so much like me. But reading her diary was the only way to get the answers to the disturbing questions crowding my mind. Hands shaking, I opened the diary and began reading where I’d left off.
Dear Diary,
Tonight I’m sneaking out of the house to be with Ben. I’m going to stuff pillows under my blanket so it looks like I’m there in case Mom peeks in. Then I’m going to crawl out the window and climb down the tree. Grounded or not, I need to see him. I need his arms around me again! We’re meeting on the beach. Diary, I’ll fill you in on all the details when I get home.
The rest of the page was blank. Devastatingly blank. “Oh, Rita! Be careful!” I whispered. "Don't let him hurt you!"
It was like reading a book where someone has told you the outcome. Yet, as I read Rita’s words they sounded so immediate. It was almost as if she were there with me—talking to me.
She was going to be killed. And there was nothing I could do to stop it.
My stomach knotted as I turned the page, fully expecting to see more blank pages. I laughed with relief to see the pages crammed with Rita’s familiar flowing handwriting.
Diary, sorry I didn’t write more in you yesterday. I was too mad. Would you believe Ben stood me up??? I risked getting grounded for the rest of my life to sneak out to see him and he didn’t even show up! I sat on our log for two hours, shivering because I didn’t bring my coat. (I thought Ben was going to keep me warm!)
Well, I got madder by the minute. I finally gave up and headed for home. Somebody followed me! It was too dark to see who it was, but someone was definitely there. And it wasn’t little Chucky or any of the other neighborhood boys. I heard his footsteps, and when I looked back I got a glimpse of him before he ducked behind a tree! I couldn’t tell who it was, but he wasn’t a little kid. I had the eeriest feeling that whoever it was wanted to hurt me!
The guy was twisted. Instead of meeting Rita he’d watched her from the shadows and then followed her home. You couldn’t get any weirder than that.
Poor Rita! Obliviously in love. Never suspecting that Ben had such a horrible black spot on his soul. Was he so jealous of her that he would spy on her even while she waited for him?
I shivered, remembering the footsteps I’d heard on the beach. Was it Ben’s ghost, following me as he’d once followed Rita?
Maybe he’s mistaken me for her, I thought and instantly chided myself. Like I told Suki, I don’t believe in ghosts. My imagination was rushing off with me again.
I could not bear to come to the end of Rita’s story. As long as there were pages yet to read, she was still alive. At least, I could pretend she was still alive. By not finishing the diary, I could look forward to more conversations with her. Maybe the conversations were one-sided—with her doing all the talking and me doing all the listening. But I liked listening to her. And I felt somehow, if the tables were turned, she’d be just as glad to listen to me. She wouldn’t babble on and on like Suki does.
I gently closed the diary, tucked it under my mattress, and began concentrating on the box of paper clips.
Bending paper clips with your mind is quite a different thing than controlling moving dice. Though it was fun to give myself credit for affecting the dice, I didn’t entirely believe I’d really done anything. Despite what Dr. Grady said, I still thought it could have been a coincidence the dice landed on the numbers I’d concentrated on.
I probably wouldn’t have even tried to bend those paper clips if it wasn’t for Kyle. I closed my eyes, relishing the memory of his kiss. When he brought me home after the tour of the lab, I’d hoped he’d kiss me again. I was so distracted I almost forgot the box of paper clips. He had reached over and touched my elbow as I climbed from the car. Handing me the box of paper clips, he’d said softly, “I know you can do it, Jenna.”
It seemed important to him I help with this experiment. He was obviously proud of his grandfather. It made sense he’d want to see his grandfather’s work continued.
I wanted Kyle to be pleased with me, to give him a reason to kiss me again! So I cleared my mind of all thoughts—even Kyle—and set the box on my bedside table and began concentrating.
I imagined my mind had a pair of invisible hands. Hands that could reach from my skull and finger the metal paper clips. I visualized those hands caressing the metal, softening the clips with their warmth. Then I pictured the fingers of my mind gently bending the ends of the paper clips before twisting them into mad, pretzel-like shapes.
I concentrated for half an hour, focusing so hard my head throbbed. Afterward I lay limp and drained on my bed, staring at the box and wishing I could open it to see if I’d had any effect.
> My logical side said such a thing was not possible. “What a waste of time,” I muttered aloud. “I should have been doing my homework.”
As the words left my mouth, the box suddenly teetered on the edge of my nightstand. All by itself, it fell to the floor.
* * *
I spent the rest of the night reading about PK. My computer accessed every book and article ever written on the subject. There was a guy with PK ability in the 1960s who was called a “thoughtagrapher” because he could imprint his thoughts on the film inside a Polaroid camera. When it developed, the images he had pictured appeared on the film.
Another guy fixed broken watches simply by concentrating. And a woman claimed to have actually transported herself instantaneously to another city. It was hard to believe, but witnesses swore it really happened.
Scientists documented a case of a ten-year-old Idaho boy in 2040 who could transport his teddy bear at will. The article said he put the bear in his closet, concentrated for a few minutes, and the bear appeared on his grandmother’s sofa in New York.
“The toy’s molecules were apparently altered, rearranged, and transported via the child’s psychokinetic energy,” parapsychologist Abraham Sloan said. “Frankly, we do not yet know how this feat was accomplished—only that it was. I was quite skeptical when asked to participate in studying this youngster, but am now convinced this is no hoax.”
Other cases documented people who healed broken bones with a touch, made plants flourish through concentration, and “mentally tripped” Olympic runners as they dashed toward the finish line.
“At first,” Abraham Sloan continued, ”I did not believe mind over matter was possible. But a fellow scientist pointed out skeptics once felt the same way about electricity. They couldn’t see it, so they didn’t believe it existed.
PK is similar to electricity in that they were both unfocused forces before scientists discovered them. Once harnessed, they can make an impact on more solid substances. If we can achieve a better understanding of PK, we will be able to accomplish many things.”