After a moment’s pause, Hastings said, “I spent a lot of time in solitary confinement when I was in prison—not by choice, but…I always preferred it.”
“Did you…like prison?” She winced as she asked it, but her words didn’t seem to elicit the reaction she’d expected. Hastings’s face became pensive rather than perturbed.
“It wasn’t pleasant, but it was where I belonged. I would have been worse off anywhere else. I never would have learned how to control my Affinity.”
Eliana tapped her pencil on the table, biting her lip. “Did you, um, meet with Mr. Periculy yet?”
“Yeah, I stopped by his office after training,” was the only information he offered.
“How…was it?”
“Fine. We just talked.”
“You…you actually talked to him?” she spewed before adding, “I mean…you just…don’t seem like you enjoy talking to people.”
He leaned back in his chair and crossed his arms as he gazed out the window. The dying sunlight danced across the planes of his face, as if bidding him goodnight. “I don’t like crowds. It’s hard to…focus.”
“I agree. I…I like talking to you because I’m not bombarded by emotions…and I can tell you’re generally honest.”
The smile was vague on his lips but clear in his eyes as his vision settled back on her. “Generally.”
“Oh hey, Eliana,” a voice greeted, and they both turned to see Tray Stark had emerged from the aisle of books beside them. All emotion died on Hastings’s face, but Eliana was certain her disappointment radiated. “Oh and, uh, Hart—Hasty—”
“Hastings,” Eliana corrected.
“Right, hello,” Tray said uncomfortably. His light blue eyes wandered quickly back to Eliana. “Have you started studying yet for science?”
“Oh no, I’m not really…that studious. I’ll probably study last minute,” she confessed.
Tray’s disgruntlement flowed freely from his mind—and from his bemused facial expression. It only heightened when he turned to Hastings, who merely shrugged.
“I’ve never gone to school.”
“Right,” Tray grunted in disapproval. “Well, if you need any help, I’ll be around. Don’t ask Adara for assistance, though—she’ll give you the wrong answers purposely.”
“Noted,” Hastings said, his lips twisting like he was holding in a chuckle.
With a brief glance in Eliana’s direction, Tray hurried off. When she turned her gaze back to Hastings, he was visibly grinning.
“You’re…smiling,” she observed suspiciously. “It’s…creepy. Why are you?”
“You’re a mind reader,” he reminded her. “You don’t know?”
“Know…what?”
“That that twin likes you,” he clarified as he nodded in Tray’s direction.
“N-no—”
“I grew up in prison and I can tell he’s interested in you,” he persisted in a tone of immense amusement. Eliana squirmed, utterly frazzled—and then utterly relieved when he changed the subject. “What do you think his Affinity is?”
“I…I don’t know. Having an unnatural amount of hate for Adara, maybe?” He snorted but didn’t give his opinion. “Do you…really think he likes me? We’ve…barely talked—and it’s only been a day.”
“You’re the mind reader. You can find out for yourself.”
“Right…” she mumbled as she glanced back over her shoulder in the direction Tray had disappeared. “I can find out for myself…” Even as she said the words, she wasn’t really convinced that she could—or that she even wanted to.
“Ugh. All we do at this school is school,” Kiki Belven whined as she plopped into the purple chair next to Eliana in their Mental Class the next afternoon. Eliana had expected it, given she and Hastings were the only people in the class the blonde had previously conversed with, but she hadn’t expected the scent of vanilla that suffused her nostrils—or the complaints that permeated her ears—upon Kiki’s arrival.
“Well, Miss Belven, it is a school,” Aethelred said from behind his desk. Today, as usual, he wore a bright red suit that matched his hair and an affable smile that matched his tone. The ten students in his small classroom were considerably less enthusiastic, as Eliana could clearly sense. It was an understandable displeasure. After a full morning of classes, even she could empathize with Kiki’s discontent—perhaps just not the root of it.
“Where are the pep rallies—the parties?” Kiki griped as she slumped back in her seat. Glossy, blonde curls lay perfectly over her shoulders, and somehow, between Monday and Tuesday, she had acquired makeup. Her eyelids were now shadowed in silver, drawing out the cooler hues of her blue eyes, while her lips were the color of watermelon. Eliana would have thought her pretty if not for the sourness in her expression as she scanned the classroom. “Where are the hot boys?”
“I take offense to that,” one kid piped up from the other side of the room. With dark skin and a flashy grin, he actually was good looking, but what really caught Eliana’s eye were his cargo pants—his orange cargo pants.
Kiki barely even paid him a glance. “You should.”
“What’s your name?” Aethelred asked as his eyes flickered between the kid who had spoken and the papers on his desk. “I don’t see you on the roster.”
“Uh…gotta go,” the kid blurted before jumping out of his seat and scampering from the room. Hastings, who was chewing his nails on Eliana’s right, snorted. With the upward curve of Aethelred’s lips, it was apparent that he was just as amused.
“We have one student who can…shapeshift, for lack of a better term,” Aethelred informed them as he stood from his chair. “He enjoys popping in on various classes to cause a disruption. That is, actually, why we now have pictures next to all of your names on the attendance sheet.”
“What does he actually look like?” Kiki asked.
“Well, he has a few different forms he typically assumes, but his true appearance is a mystery to most. I once, accidentally, saw his entire past when we brushed up against each other in the hallway, so if you’re curious, I do know his true appearance.”
“What does he look like, then?” Kiki repeated impatiently.
“Speaking of Affinities, this segues nicely into our lesson for today,” Aethelred continued, disregarding the question. Eliana fought to suppress a smirk at Kiki’s affronted jaw-drop. “We will spend much of our time in this class discovering your individual Affinities and learning about what each of you can do within your own mind. Some of you, I see by the color of your hair, have already realized your Affinity, which is a good start. Mastering your Affinity is a harder feat, and it is the reason Mr. Periculy wanted to open this training school in the first place.
“Now,” he went on as he began to pace in front of his desk, “the best place to start, for those of you who don’t know your Affinity, is to think about your past. What impacted you in your youth? What did you struggle with or excel in? For those of you who do know your Affinity, it is also important to figure out what triggered it. Do any of you know your Affinity and its origin?”
Other than Eliana and Hastings, there were only three other students with oddly-colored hair, but they all shrugged. Every eye then fell to the two of them as Eliana’s cheeks burned and Hastings stared down at his desk. Even though his emotions were heavily guarded, she noticed the aggression of his nail-biting increase.
“Miss Mensen,” Aethelred prompted, “why don’t you begin by explaining what your Affinity is?” When she froze, her lips sealed tight, he added, “You’ll all have to speak at some point. This classroom of students, over the next few years, will become like your family. You can imagine the Mentals are far outnumbered by the other classes, and you can imagine we, generally, have the worst pasts. No one here will judge you.”
Her stomach flipped with trepidation, but after a long moment, she finally said, “O-okay. Well…my Affinity is mind reading.”
“A similar ability to mine,” Aethelred noted.
“Mind reading, of course, is as much of a curse as it is a blessing. A skilled mind reader can uncover whatever truths they please, but they can also uncover truths they never wished to know. Inexperienced mind readers are often bombarded by the emotions and thoughts of others, and it can become overwhelming. Do you feel this way, Eliana?”
She nodded, maintaining contact with him only so she didn’t have to acknowledge the relentless stares of her peers.
“In this class, we will work on controlling our Affinities. Training will also be a good time to practice these skills—especially for those of you whose Affinities can easily affect others.” Aethelred’s crimson eyes lingered on Hastings for a moment before he pressed on. “Before we begin that, though, would you mind sharing how you acquired your Affinity, Eliana?”
Her skin itched under the scrutiny. It wasn’t until Kiki nudged her that she finally managed to produce a sound. “Uh—well, my past wasn’t…so bad, really. My parents…they always lied to me about dumb stuff. I knew they were lying and I wanted to know the truth, so I slowly began developing the ability to tell when they were lying. Over time, I’ve learned to read others’ emotions pretty well, but…um, I don’t really know how to turn it off.”
“Hm. A predicament that plagues many of us. Anyone else wish to share?” Aethelred prompted. His inquisitive gaze fell directly on Hastings, who refused to look anywhere but at the desk in front of him.
“I can, uh, solve math problems really fast,” a boy with pale orange hair and eyes chimed in from across the room.
“Is that even a power?” Kiki scoffed. “That’s so stupid.”
“Your classmate’s Affinity might not seem like much now, but one day he might be able to solve problems no one’s ever solved before,” Aethelred countered. “Thank you for sharing—”
“So he’s a super genius. I’m so impressed.”
“What’s your Affinity, Miss Belven?” Aethelred questioned, tilting his head to the side patronizingly. She fidgeted, suddenly uncomfortable, but didn’t utter a word. “Right. Well, how about each of you who know your Affinity partner up with someone who does not and you can practice controlling your ability?”
Eliana immediately turned to Hastings but was yanked away by Kiki, who didn’t hesitate to haul her across the room. “Y-you wanna be…partners?” She cleared her throat as Kiki shoved her into a chair in the far corner of the classroom. “I, um—”
“I don’t wanna be partnered up with any of those losers. I don’t really want to be here at all, actually,” Kiki clarified as she claimed another chair and positioned it before Eliana’s, forcing them to sit knee to knee. For strangers, Eliana found it oddly intimate, but the blonde seemed to have no boundaries. “You know I used to be cool at my old school? Now I’ve been clumped with all of the weirdos—the Mentals.”
“Mental powers are…useful. You just need to discover what yours is.”
“Maybe you could pry through my brain and discover it,” Kiki suggested, eyes lighting up. There was greed in her inflection—and far too much eagerness for someone who continuously scorned Affinities. “Can you?”
“I-I can only really read emotions…and I can tell you’re, uh, irked.”
“Of course I’m irked,” she sneered, crossing her arms and sticking her nose as far from Eliana as possible. “What does your boyfriend do?”
“B-boyfriend?” she stuttered, but even as she questioned it, her gaze instinctively flitted to one person in particular. He’d been partnered up with a blond kid, but he was still biting his fingernails with no intention of doing this class exercise. “Hastings?”
“Yeah, sure, whatever you wanna call him,” Kiki grumbled. “What’s his power?”
“I…don’t know,” Eliana admitted as she pulled a few strands of blue hair behind her ear. “He won’t tell me.”
“You can’t read his mind?”
“I can only read emotions,” she repeated with a tinge of irritation, “and…he blocks his emotions from me, anyway.”
“Really? That’s possible?” Kiki asked, finally pivoting to face Eliana fully. “Tell me how.”
“I—well, I think you just need to pretend nothing makes you feel anything. So, if you’re annoyed…you need to convince yourself you’re not. That’ll make it seem, to me, like you’re not feeling anything…I think.”
“Hm,” she hummed as she eyed the blank wall. “Sounds like too much work. I’m too emotional—maybe that’s my Affinity.” Eliana blinked, confounded. With an exasperated exhale, Kiki added, “Being overly-emotional is my Affinity.”
“I…don’t know about that,” Eliana said as she scratched her head. “Was there anything that impacted your childhood?”
“No,” she replied as she began to study her purple fingernails. “My past was perfect.”
“I can tell when people are lying, you know.”
Kiki’s eyes rolled. “Of course you can. If you must know, my school life was perfect, but my family life was…less perfect. Don’t give me that sympathetic look—I don’t care. I just wish that people here were cool, so my school life could be perfect again. I don’t see life being very satisfying for me here. Maybe I don’t have an Affinity and they’ll just send me home—that would be glorious.”
“Yeah, maybe,” Eliana said. Even though she couldn’t read exact thoughts, though, she could feel something in Kiki’s mind—a force that was not an emotion but an ability, buried beneath her unappealing personality and waiting to be unearthed.
13
Corrupt Candidates
“Adara!”
Craning her neck, she found Ackerly stumbling into the doorway behind her. No one else in the classroom had heard him hiss her name. All of the primary Naturals eagerly awaited the start of their Natural Class, which would be led by the young, flowery Floretta. Adara had, obviously, chosen a seat in the very last row. She was surprised, and perhaps a bit satisfied, when Ackerly chose to sink into the green chair to her right.
“Greenie, hello,” she greeted tonelessly. “I was starting to wonder if you’d show up. Can’t imagine why you wouldn’t—you’re a school-lover. And look at who our teacher is.”
“I don’t care about that now,” he panted as he threw some papers onto the table in front of her.
“You don’t care that our teacher is the flower-power lady you’re in love with? I find that hard to believe—”
“Just look,” he urged as he shoved the papers under her nose. After rolling her eyes, she was about to read them, but their teacher spoke up first.
“Welcome, welcome,” Floretta greeted in a wispy voice. Today, her tall, slender body was in a green sundress that made her look like a literal flower with her lavender hair as the petals. As she waved her arms around, causing the flowers that draped the walls to grow exponentially, Adara noticed she had purple flower tattoos lining the insides of her forearms. “I am Floretta, chief of Naturals and lover of angiosperms.”
“She means flowering plants,” Ackerly whispered to Adara when her mouth opened to make a comment. “Now, can you read this—”
“As you can assume,” Floretta continued, unaware of the boy’s whispering, “we will spend an abundance of our time in this class talking about the wonders of nature, which you are all so connected with through your Affinities. We’ll begin each class with a bit of meditation, to feel at one with the earth. So, everyone, get on the floor.”
“You do realize we’re on the second floor of this building, don’t you?” Adara questioned loudly enough for the teacher to hear. The rest of the students got out of their chairs with a sense of uncertainty.
“Oh, but we can always feel the earth, no matter how far we are from it,” Floretta said as she turned off the lights, snapping the room into darkness. “That is the benefit of having a Natural Affinity. Everyone on the floor, cross-legged, and close your eyes.”
“It’s too dark to see anything, anyway,” Adara muttered as she and Ackerly joined the others by slumping onto the floor. T
he tiles were cool beneath her palms, but they didn’t chill her.
Once the sound of shuffling ceased, Floretta sucked in a deep breath and said, “Breathe in…breathe out… Think of nature, your happy place…”
“What if nature isn’t my happy place?” Adara demanded over the breaths of her peers. “What if my happy place is a landfill, where they destroy nature?”
“Ignore all of the negativity in the room,” Floretta said between her own dramatic breaths.
Adara rolled her eyes and then turned to the general direction she believed Ackerly was in. Vaguely, she could see his silhouette, but she reached out to violently tap him anyway.
“Ow—what the—what are you doing?” he whispered frantically as he scooted away from her. “Why are you hitting me?”
“What did you want to show me?” she asked in a low tone. Floretta and the gullible students were too engulfed by their own heavy respiration to react.
“Well, I wanted to show you some top-secret information I just discovered, but now we can’t see anything.”
“Just tell me, then.”
“Okay,” Ackerly sighed before inching back toward her. “I was…looking for Dr. Wright’s office in the Mentals Building because I wanted her to answer some of my questions for our science quiz, but then I passed Mr. Leve’s office—”
“Fraco,” Adara corrected.
“Yes, Fraco’s office—and, well, his door was open, but he wasn’t in it, so…I snuck in. He had an email open on his computer—did you know they have Wi-Fi here and they’re keeping it from us?”
“Just continue with the story, Greenie.”
“Right, well, the email was from the principal, Mr. Periculy. It had information about a recent Wacko attack.”
The boy paused, allowing more of Floretta’s words to fill Adara’s ears. She waited a moment before asking, “So…what did it say?”
“Oh, um—well, the Wackos blew up a building this time. No one was hurt, but Mr. Periculy told Fraco he thinks the media will claim the Wackos killed some Reggs in order to turn the public completely against us. With the upcoming presidential election, they want Americans to believe Wackos are evil—which is true—but they link us with Wackos. Mr. Periculy thinks they’re going to imprison us all because of them.”
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