by Brent Meske
Michael looked around at them, around the little soundproof room with its single desk, single lamp and single venetian blind drawn so nobody could see in. Aside from that there were two chairs, and two adults standing there, watching him.
“Is he supposed to be looking around like that?” Lily asked. “I thought they got, like, hypnotized…”
“You do your job, I do mine,” Terrence replied coolly. “I don’t tell you how to stack books.”
“Is that all you think of me, Mr. Jackson? Well, I wouldn’t expect anything differently out of an Active who couldn’t even make it in the Alphas.”
“Get out of here,” he snarled.
“Or what, are you going to make me go? Mess with my head and get me to leave?”
“Perhaps you’d rather be blind then,” he said.
“You wouldn’t!”
Mr. Jackson shrugged and turned back to Michael. He was frowning, but not in the usual frowny way. Mr. Jackson always, as far as Michael knew, had what his mother called ‘a bug up his bottom’, like he’d just been sucking on super atomic sour balls for the last four hours straight, and hadn’t figured out yet if his face would ever get back to normal. This frown was different.
“If you stay in this room, Ms. Burkholtz, the consequences are going to be on your head.”
“In my head, you mean. What are you going to do to him?”
“I will count down from five.”
Lily stormed out before he even started, and Jackson turned that lemon-sucking face on Michael. “You’re here and now you know what you shouldn’t. Part of growing up, I remember: knowing things your mother and father don’t want you knowing, and doing things they think you ought never even consider. Yes, absolutely the nature of growing up. And now, what will we do with you?”
Michael just stared. It was like Harry Potter facing down Voldemort for the first time. Only Michael didn’t have the strength to do anything. No magic wand, no anger, no spells to throw at him. He was just a boy, and Terrence Jackson was a mind-reader. It was like playing poker against a guy who had a forty card hand, and he could see the two cards you were holding.
“Because let’s face it, boy, ignorance is bliss, isn’t it? Before you know about danger, you ride your bike all over the place, just as fast as you like. Wind whips through your hair, the world is just a blur and you’re completely free. Nothing can stop you. Wear a helmet, elbow pads, wrist guards? Yeah right. All those things are for babies, you tell yourself.
“Then you skin your knee, or you hit the brakes wrong way and what happens? You snap a bone in your wrist. Only it’s not just a bone that’s broken, it’s the illusion that everything is absolutely perfect. You swim out of the kiddie pool and into the deep end, where you can barely see the bottom, and what’s down there? Well, you could be hit by a car in your bike. You could smash into a tree. Your chain could come off or your brake cables stop working, and you’re out of control. First time you taste fear.
“You’re better off not looking where you aren’t invited to look, Michael Washington. Be happy learning the history that’s in the history books, learn your x and y axes. And while you’re at it, you might as well learn what you can about girls. Do it early. Make some mistakes and figure out where you can and can’t go, what to and what not to do. And for the sake of all things holy stop thinking about superheroes and super powers. Do you understand me?”
Michael nodded, just staring. He was trying to figure out when the mind power was going to hit him. Or would he even feel it? He didn’t know how it felt to have his head mucked around with. Was he just going to wake up in the hospital again?
“I mean it. Because you keep skirting around your mother and father, don’t you? You’re not telling them what’s going on. You’re on some little private detective kick. Well, you’d best watch it before it kicks you back. There's some chance that you're going to be synergistic. Nobody knows the future, and if that happens, you turn out to be a synergist, you're going to love that: Activating the powers of others while you just sit there and hope that the Activation doesn't get you killed. You know how many synergists we've had?”
“No sir,” Michael droned.
“Five. And do you know how many we lost while activating some poor kid? No you don't. The number is four. One of them we had to scrape off the walls. So leave it be. Let this garbage go. Whatever you think you know, better to go and play video games until your brain's mush and you've forgotten all about it.”
Yeah, like forgetting about Charlotte was ever going to happen. Still, Michael kept his best stone face on.
“Yes sir,” he said.
“Bull,” Terrence said. “I haven’t convinced you. You’re just going to keep down the path you’re on, and you don’t believe me. Where you’re headed, Michael, is a place that’s going to scramble your brains better than I could.”
“Yes sir,” he said again. Maybe if he just agreed with this evil madman, he wouldn’t die right now. He could still find a way to convince his mother and grandfather about Terrence Jackson, how he was…
Something huge and hot smashed into Michael’s forehead, rocking him back in his chair. He smelled ash. He didn’t see stars, but some sort of invisible lava stuff over his vision that crept down and made Mr. Jackson a wavy ghost man. No, it was tears. He was crying from the pain.
“Okay, I’ll stop!” he shouted.
“Not good enough,” Terrence whispered.
Claws raked down Michael’s spine. He fell out of the chair and tried to crawl away from whatever tiger Terrence had magically teleported into the room, but couldn’t. The thing on his back weighed five hundred pounds, and Michael’s muscles were jelly.
“Swear to me,” Terrence whispered.
“Huhaaaaaagggghhh—”
“Nothing about this place leaves this room.”
Was the man right next to him or in his head? The pain slashed at his body, and he realized something as he tried to flee to a nice secluded place in his brain, away from the pain: Terrence couldn’t kill him. His father was the leader of the Alphas, and his grandfather was the head of the town somehow, and his mother was a Key. Even the leader of the Omega Syndicate couldn’t just kill him.
But just because he couldn't be killed didn't mean Terrence Jackson couldn't do something terrible to him. Some things, even.
“You’re never going to know what I’ve put in your head, Michael,” Terrence whispered. Sweat dropped down onto Michael’s face, plink! “One day you’ll just attack your father. Or someone will call on the phone and say pink daisy, and you’ll get a shotgun out of the cellar and shoot your grandfather. You’ll watch the whole thing and you won’t be able to control yourself. Now do you understand?”
“Yeeeeesssss,” he hissed. Had he bitten his tongue, or was Mr. Jackson putting the taste of blood on it?
“You keep that mind to yourself. Don’t talk to anyone.”
“Noooooohhhhh,” he groaned.
“Or I’ll know. Maybe you’ll wake up with the phone in your hand and you won’t know who you’ve just called. What do you think of that? You’ll be Michael Washington one minute, and you’ll be strutting around clucking like a chicken the next. For the rest of your life.”
Another bead of sweat dropped on Michael’s face.
“Think about it. You don’t have to dig further. You don’t have to break yourself. Do as I say and everything will be just fine.”
He didn't remember Terrence Jackson leaving, or Lily coming in afterwords. He didn't remember sitting in a back room with a juice box and cookies, or having Lily check in on him every several minutes. Eventually, Lily told him the next day, he had drifted out of the library, picked up his bike (unlocked, but not stolen, of course not) and ridden home. His mother was still angry at him but he didn't notice that much either. He skipped dinner, which she said was fine with her, and slept for the next fourteen straight hours.
He took some headache pills the doctor had prescribed, but they didn't work. School drifted by in a
painful haze. The only thing he became aware of, at the end of the day, were the extra homework slips each of his teachers had given him. There was a landslide of homework waiting to bury him when he got home. It wouldn't matter for long, but when Susanna Washington was angry she became the most efficient person in the world. By extension, of course, everyone around her was expected to perform just like her. So while she was scrubbing the stove and the fan hood thing above it, Michael was cleaning up the porch, refolding and rearranging all the clothes in his closet, repacking his remaining toys and video games in boxes, and even organizing the files on his computer as per her instructions.
Michael found it amazing that the body and the mind could be in two places doing two completely separate things at once, but his did. As he did his lot of chores, Terrence Jackson did not once fade from his mind. He was always there breathing orders and threats into Michael's ear and telling him how his life was going to end just as soon as Michael went snooping again.
In between folding clothes, he came to the conclusion that, in all the books, the hero never gave up when he was forced into a corner that he couldn't see a way out of. He might not have his mind for very much longer. Terrence might have planted some sort of... what was the word? Oh, now it would bug him, like a song that got stuck in your head all day long. They’d just studied sleep and dreams at school. Michael rushed over and ripped his science book out of his bag. Subconscious, that was the word. Terrence might have set up a subconscious bomb. With hypnotists, they put you into a dream-like state, and they worked on your subconscious directly. People almost always used hypno-therapy to get rid of bad habits. The hypnotist could make you chew gum instead of pick your nose, or do something silly every time you were about to go to McDonald’s. There was even this theory about triggers, like if you saw a yellow flower, suddenly your subconscious would activate and you’d do a handstand or juggle axes or something. Michael hadn’t felt hypnotized. But then again, Mr. Jackson was supposed to be the expert’s go-to guy. He could fiddle with your subconscious while you were lying on the floor in agony, for instance. He could probably read your mom’s mind and put thoughts into your head at the same time.
But there were a few things he felt were true: one, that all these super kids weren’t accidentally going nuts around him. Either someone was Activating them (the synergist Jackson told him about?) or he was one, and that meant Actives were just drawn to his Active Activating power.
So he had to investigate synergists, and synergy, whatever that meant.
The second thing he felt to be true was that this thing was more serious than the adults realized. All of them were safe. They knew the town had never collapsed. There were too many shields protecting the city, too many Actives for any of them to be afraid. Well, Michael was afraid. He’d nearly died a bunch of times. His mother was taking it seriously, but only threatening to take him away. What about all these people?
The third thing he felt to be true was his dream visions. Charlotte was a prisoner, his mother and grandfather had had a shouting match, his father was in Bangladesh surrounded by people that probably hated him, and most importantly: Terrence had warned Mr. L to leave town.
One other thing was true that he hadn’t thought of since the hospital: Charlotte had been there in the Marcus Patterson gym. She was there.
These things were all true for Michael. So he couldn’t just sit here and do nothing. Anyway who knew? Maybe they had other telepath people who could turn him back to normal after Jackson made him think he was an alligator.
He began to search on the internet for synergy, but only found it was a word that meant two things working well together. Next, he searched synergism, but found nothing. Third, he brought up synergist.
The computer screen immediately flashed red and told him that he was searching through classified information. His computer had sent a flag to the United States Homeland Security office, and that this was a warning. If he continued searching about this sort of thing, he would be fined.
Now he felt absolutely alone. The screen had made it clear there was no one about to help him. There was no one who believed in him, and no one he could trust, not even himself. Lily hadn’t helped him in the slightest, just added to the list of things he hadn’t known, and then she’d brought in Terrence Jackson.
Wait a second.
Wasn’t Michael’s mind supposed to be erased? If Jackson could turn him into a human chicken, then surely he could scoop out a few memories, and maybe even put new ones back. Instead, he remembered every second of his confrontation with the evil teacher. Of course, that meant remembering all the pain, all the threats, himself screaming and crying and powerless.
“You’ve got to finish your homework, dear,” his mother called out.
“Huh?”
“You’ve been cleaning your room for almost an hour, and MICHAEL EDWARD!” He hadn’t realized she was coming into his room. “What have you been doing? The place still looks like McKorsky tore through it with one of his mini-tornadoes.”
“I—”
“I’ll take the video games out of here,” she warned.
“Mo-om,” he said.
“And the e-book contraption.”
“I wasn’t—”
“And the computer.”
“Okay!”
“Get it done before dinner time. After dinner you’ve got homework. And don’t tell me you don’t, because I called about your extra readings. I know you’ve got loads.”
He sighed and set to work.
“And don’t throw it all in the closet either! I swear I’ll open it and check. If I’m killed in an avalanche you’ll be grounded until you’re thirty.”
Dinner was meatloaf and cheesy potatoes, one of his favorites. He knew this was a white flag. His mother was trying to tell him she wanted a truce. No more fighting. No more cheap shots about secrets, and no more shouting at him. Time to be normal, the meatloaf said. It was the most boring thing you could bake in the oven. Sure it was nice, but there wasn’t anything special about it.
After dinner she announced that it was homework time, and she would be watching over his shoulder when the doorbell stopped her.
“Who could that be?” she asked.
Unless it was Trent or the girl who’d broken the school coming to apologize, Michael could bet safely on one of his mother’s friends.
It was Grandpa.
“Harold,” she said. “You didn’t call.”
“Apologies, mm, uhh, Susanna,” Grandpa said. “Might I come in? Bit chilly out here.”
“Sure, yes, sure, come on in.”
Grandpa stomped the snow out of his boots, shook some more snow out of his hat, and came inside. Before his mother was finished putting Grandpa’s coat and hat in the coat closet, Michael saw him look up and wink.
“Well what brings you over here so late?”
“Ah, well, you know, like to get out and stretch the old legs a bit. I’d like a word with Michael if you don’t mind.”
“Sure, sure thing,” she said.
But she stayed in the room, still looking awkwardly at Grandpa and Michael.
“Well why don’t we head on in to your bedroom then?”
“Um... okay.” Michael had a sudden stab of hope. Maybe Grandpa had found out about Terrence and was going to call in his other telepath to sort out all the issues with Michael’s blended brain.
“Won’t be long!” Grandpa said, and did something Michael had never seen him do: not so much run, but jump up a tiny bit and sort of rush to Michael’s door. His hopes fell through the floor at that point, and he wondered just how long it was going to be until this ‘Grandpa imposter’ left. He did have some serious homework. The countries involved in the 1990-something treaty that made the European Union weren’t just going to magically implant themselves into his cerebral cortex, unless Terrence implanted that bit of information. Which he doubted. Jackson would never do him a favor.
Grandpa shooed him in, smiled to Susann
a, and shut the door. As soon as Michael turned around to ask just who the heck this fake grandfather was, he was greeted by the sight of Charlotte standing there with a finger over her lips. She was frantically shaking her head at him.
Luckily for Michael, he was stunned speechless.
Charlotte cleared her throat, and when she spoke, it was with Grandpa’s voice. Not just a girl’s imitation voice, which sounds as much like a man as a dolphins sound like helicopters. This was really Grandpa’s voice coming straight from her throat.
“Well son, I know you’ve had a hard time of seventh grade and all…”
She pulled up a flash card. It read, in big black marker: JUST TYPE ON YOUR COMPUTER.
She went on. “I guess you’ve been sick lately. That must be awful. Well, I called your teachers and they told me that you’ve got to do some sort of report about the Twin Towers.”
Michael sat down and started to type furiously, until Charlotte tapped him on the shoulder.
This time a new card read: ANSWER ABOUT THE HISTORY PROJECT!
“Uh... yeah. We’ve only got a few days to do it. I... uh, I don’t know what I’m going to write about.”
On his computer he typed: What, erased it, then When did, deleted that, and finally what the devil?
“Well,” she went on, perfectly in Grandpa’s voice. “If you really want to know what it was like, you come and talk to your old grandfather. Have I got stories to tell you.”
She held up a third card: I GOT OUT OF THE TRAINING FACILITY TODAY. THIS IS MY ABILITY.
“You’re kidding!” Michael blurted before he could stop himself.
“No sir,” Grandpa’s voice replied. Charlotte gave him a stern glare. “I see you’re getting ready to start typing your presentation. That’s great son.”
He typed you don’t talk anything like him. Mom’s going to come in any second. Then he deleted it. When he turned back, Charlotte wasn’t there anymore. It was Grandpa again.
WE SERIOUSLY NEED TO TALK, the card read.
“So what angle do you think you’ll talk about? The families of the deceased, or the Bush administration? Something else?”
The next card read: WE NEED TO TALK. TONIGHT. BEHIND THE LIBRARY.
No good, he typed. town ambulance always parked there.
“Well?” Grandpa asked.
“Sorry,” he said, “I haven’t had much time to think about it.”
“Well, there were tons of people watching. They watched the whole thing, just like your gramps.”
How do you know where my gramps was? he typed. He said, “Really?”
She leaned over and typed Pick a place and time. You do your report on your own time.
Duh, of course. She couldn’t waste time here. If his mother was suspicious, she might already be calling Grandpa now to see if he was at home, and then probably freak out and bust in at any moment.
North side of the school, there’s a dark area people don’t usually look at. Closer to Patterson building. This double conversation thing was straining his brain. He couldn’t keep it up much longer without saying something he should be typing, or the other way around.
“Really,” Grandpa finally said at last. “But I got to let you get back to your work. You’ve got a busy night ahead of you.” Tonight at 12, she typed. Grandpa typed. Somebody typed it anyway.
Michael cleared the document on his computer and stood up to show Grandpa Charlotte out. It was really strange watching Grandpa move with the energy of a middle schooler. In a way, this was much less real than his encounter with Mr. Jackson.
There was no studying after that. Still, his mother made him stare at his books and write things down. It was just like being at school for the last number of days. He couldn’t read, he couldn’t concentrate, he could barely deliver papers without drooling and shrieking for a banana like a chimp. Winter could be over and he would have no real idea.
He was getting to be an old hand at creeping out of his house. Again, he took his bike, and again pedaled down the lesser used little streets. His heart was thudding loudly in his chest, but his fears were wasted. There were like three cops in the whole town.
The area just north of LADCEMS was the only scary place at the entire school. For whatever reason, it felt neglected. Students didn’t leave school out the doors that way, they didn’t hang out in that little patch of grass in between the building and the fence that separated LADCEMS from Marcus Patterson. Nobody had picnics there, but somehow there was always more trash than anywhere else around the school. If there were houses, their backyards would butt up against that fence, and you could bet there’d be at least one nasty dog that would startle people out of nowhere, barking and rattling the fence.
When Charlotte appeared as herself this time, Michael almost squealed. He did rush up to her and throw his arms around her. He backed off again pretty quick, burning with embarrassment. He was glad nobody from school was here to see them.
She’d been gone for so long he was starting to wonder if he remembered her the right way. But no, she was the same as before, which meant totally different. She had on thick plastic glasses and her hair was cut real short. She almost looked like a boy, with her tight black jeans and thick vest.
“Wait, let me guess,” he said. “The Rat Catchers.”
She smiled. “You’ve probably never heard of them. Weezer.”
“You get me every time. Like tonight. Whoa, what the heck was that all about? You can, I mean, you’re a... whoa, right?”
She grinned. “Tell you the truth, Michael, I don’t really want it. So far the only thing it’s done for me is get me in trouble and keep me away from my parents and my friends... well, you.”
“So are you allowed to get back to school and everything?”
She waved it off. “Listen, something’s wrong. The people who had me under Patterson kept talking about it. They didn’t think I heard, but I did.”
“WAIT A SECOND!”
“Shh! Could you be a little louder at our, um, secret meeting?”
“You were Santa Claus weren’t you?” he couldn’t help himself.
She grinned. “Okay yeah, that was fun, but listen, we have to keep quiet. I’m not supposed to be out of the house. I’m not supposed to be talking to you.”
“What’s going on?”
“Something’s wrong. The guards and the doctors were talking about it.”
“Oh, I know all about what’s wrong.”
“Huh?” she seemed very surprised.
Michael told Charlotte everything in a rush. It didn’t take long, after all. He wanted to make sure he told her everything in case his brain was going to explode or he’d suddenly get the urge to move to Idaho.
“So listen,” he said after it was all over. “If I attack you or something, it’s not my fault. Mr. Jackson did something to my head today.”
“I never liked that guy,” she said.
“You’d think a guy who could mess around with your mind would have a million and one friends.”
“You’d think.”
“Ask people for all their money, or just walk into a bank or something, and get everybody to fall asleep. Read the bank manager’s mind and find the combination to the vault.”
Why wasn’t Terrence Jackson a rich evil mastermind, come to think of it?
“Well, your grandfather believes in him, otherwise he wouldn’t have hired him.”
“He’s lying low, waiting to change everybody’s mind in town before he sets off a subconscious time bomb.” He was proud that he could use that word in front of Charlotte.
“Listen, we have to do something,” she said.
Like what? Go to Terrence Jackson's house and see if there was any evidence he was a villain? Get caught and tortured again? Watch Charlotte get more of what he'd already gotten? No way, no how.
“I don’t know…” Jackson was going to scramble his brains in a frying pan and serve them up with ketchup. He thought briefly of the card with Mr. Springfiel
d’s name on it, and then wondered if Jackson had messed with his mind already. Ugh, with Jackson able to control everybody, there wasn’t anyone he could trust.
“Don’t be afraid. He’s never going to find out.” He said he’d know, Michael thought, but didn’t say.
“I’m not afraid.” He lied. He was afraid. Only he couldn’t look weak in front of Charlotte. It wasn’t like he was so strong and she was just a girl, but... it was just the rules. You couldn’t be a weakling.
“Good, then there’s a teachers meeting on Thursday. For the whole district. We have a half day, and the teachers have to stay to do some training thing.” When she saw that he had no idea where this was going, she explained. “We’re going to sneak in and keep an eye on the teachers. Jackson’s going to be there. All the teachers are going to be there, and like fifty or sixty of them are Actives, Michael.”
“Okay, so what do we do?”
“See who Jackson talks to. I think he really has to be close to somebody to mess with their heads. We can see if they do anything funny.”
“He doesn’t have to talk to them... he can just put a thought inside your head.”
“Probably,” she said, “but he has to look at them and concentrate. I should know.” He suddenly wondered how exactly she had turned into his grandfather... or where she’d gotten the picture of him.
“So we watch who he looks at?” he asked.
“You don’t really have any better ideas…"
The only thing Michael was sure of, when he thought of all those teachers in one big room, was that there would be trouble. As if one teacher in the classroom wasn’t bad enough.
Chapter 14 - Johanna Lane