Tangled Minds (Society of Exalted Minds Book 1)

by A. M. Mahler

  I made my way to the cafeteria where it was already loud and noisy. My girl swore that we didn’t have the same lunch hour, but our connection was usually strong in there, and I thought she was lying to me. One thing I had picked up on over the years was that our connection grew stronger and weaker based on our proximity. It was always stronger in school, weaker when I was at home, and even weaker when my family went on vacation. I could hear her okay, but I couldn’t feel her when I was far away, and that was not a good feeling at all. There was an emptiness that stayed with me until I was back in town. Truth be told, I also got a little depressed and anxious. My family just thought I was too much of a homebody because I was the only one that didn’t look forward to vacation. Of course, it gave my father one more thing to hate me for.

  I headed toward the table with the in-crowd, filled with all the athletes and cheerleaders that had lunch this hour. Not that cheerleaders weren’t athletes. Hell, sometimes I thought they were more athletic than I was. At least I didn’t have to fly in the air or literally throw a person around.

  Reluctantly, I pulled my earbuds out as I sat down. They were all chattering about the prom. Not for the first time, I questioned why I was compelled to sit with these people day after day. Only recently did I realize the staggering differences between me and my so-called friends. It seemed convenient to keep my friendships with people I spent the most time with, but lately, it was occurring to me that being an athlete was the only thing we actually had in common. Outside of that, I didn’t care about the same things they did and we didn’t have the same interests either.

  Senior year forced me to take a good hard look at my life and the direction it was going in. Without the knowledge of who my Supergirl was, I couldn’t move forward though. I was stuck.

  I settled in for an hour of food and not paying attention.

  Olivia

  There was nothing more miserable to a teenage girl than listening to the boy she had a crush on accept a date with someone else—and the fact that he didn’t even want to go on it somehow made it worse. Stupid Chloe Michaels had thought of nothing all day than what she was going to say to Jagger DeWinter. She wasn’t the only one either. Daphne Carter, Jenna Howard, Melissa Johnson, and Sherry Walker had all been mooning over Jagger, too. Three of them were not even in his circle of friends. Not that I was either. I was just in his head.

  Jagger was everything—good looking, popular, smart, athletic, funny, and my best friend. Is it strange to have a best friend you never talk to in person? I know the real Jagger because he couldn’t hide from me. When I’m connected to him, I can hear everything he’s thinking—the good, the bad, and the ugly. Sometimes it was definitely something I would rather not have heard. Especially when he was looking at girls.

  There was nothing in this world I wanted more than to tell him who I was, but I couldn’t. For both his protection and mine, my real identity had to stay a secret. My parents were murdered for their abilities. The only person standing between myself and a government research facility was my grandfather and his ability. Nobody got past him. Nobody could.

  I was homeschooled for years until my grandfather was confident that I could keep my secret. Even while I was at school, I always knew he had a line on me.

  My grandfather about hit the roof when he had discovered I could link to Jagger telepathically. He almost moved us away. He all but had the new house picked out when he realized that if we left, Jagger would be unprotected. Jagger had not been able to link to anyone else, but that did not mean he never would. If he could link to me, it stood to reason he would eventually be able to hear others, as well. So, my grandfather kept track of both me and Jagger. Sometimes I was scared of the things he might hear Jagger and me talking about. It was sort of like when you were talking on the phone, hearing someone else’s conversation going on faintly in the background. Eventually you start to wonder if they can hear you, too—kind of creepy and annoying.

  The first time we learned I could heal somebody was when I was three years old. My father had been outside sawing wood. He was going to make me a tiny house to play in. He was distracted and cut his finger with the saw. He came into the kitchen holding his injury. My memory of the event was limited to just an image of him sitting at the table holding his injured hand while blood poured through his fingers. My grandfather said I had climbed into my father’s lap, closed my hand over his, and said, “Don’t worry, daddy. I’ll make it better.”

  When my father realized what was happening, he’d screamed for my mother. She came running into the room. My parents had watched in horror as I closed the wound, leaving my father’s finger without so much as a scar. Since neither of my parents had this ability themselves, it came as quite a shock.

  My grandfather, on the other hand, could cause pain—blinding, agonizing pain. He couldn’t actually cause an injury, but he could make you think you were about to die. That’s how he protected me. He would cast his power out and affect multiple people at a time—debilitate anyone who got too close with bad intentions for as long as he needed to.

  The first time I’d healed Jagger remotely was when my grandfather knew I must never be discovered. Someone would be invincible with me and my grandfather by their side. If our enemies were able to get past my grandfather’s defenses, I would be there to heal any injury at no known cost to myself—other than my basic freedoms and allowance to live my own quiet life. My life would not be my own to decide, which brought me to a bigger problem.

  My grandfather couldn’t live forever. I could heal him, but not stop the aging process. I could not make him immortal, at least I didn’t think so anyway. I had never actually tried it. He was in his eighties. His mind was still sharp as a tack, but how long his body would hold up was anyone’s guess. When he was gone, I would be totally exposed. If anyone actually knew about me. My parents had been killed while my grandfather and I were out of the house. That was when we moved and ended up in Alpine Valley to start over. I don’t know if anyone had tried to come at us here, but my grandfather was adept at blocking his thoughts. It was a talent not easily mastered.

  Jagger was distracted today. He had got in a fight with his parents last night over college and the house was still filled with lingering tension this morning. He had not made any decisions about what schools he might want to apply to or even what he wanted to do for a career. The reason for that was because he was waiting for me to decide. Jagger had decided that he would go wherever I went, and since he was a straight A student, that should not be a problem.

  Except I didn’t know where I wanted to go. I wasn’t even sure attending college on a campus was an option for me. I considered looking into online degrees. The problem was I didn’t know what I wanted to major in. Should I work in the healthcare field so I could help sick people? Should I find something that was completely unrelated to my powers, better my chances of blending in? Find something I could do from home? What was my future? Maybe law enforcement. The possibilities were endless, yet at the same time, limited.

  I could never really be parted from Jagger. Our connection was there no matter where he was. He had gone to Florida with his family for vacation one year, and we had no trouble keeping in touch—mentally that is, physically, his connection was not as strong. Though maybe we should stick together. What if Jagger were somehow exposed? Was there safety in numbers? These were things I constantly struggled with. What would we do? How would we survive?

  “I say we save our money, pool our resources, and buy an RV. That way we can travel around and work random jobs around the country, never staying in the same place for too long.”

  Go away, Jagger.

  “Can’t do it. You’re thinking too loud. Stop worrying about my parents.”

  How was I supposed to do that? He had been depressed all day. There were some days his sadness over not knowing my identity was so overwhelming I was tempted to run up to him in between classes and out myself.

  Concentrate on your teacher. You have
a test tomorrow.

  He was in Calculus and once again, not paying attention. How he coasted through on the grades he had was beyond me.

  Also, in Calculus was one of his friends, Mason Tucker. I had tried to keep my feelings about Jagger’s friends well-hidden. Mason was a fellow football player and, to be frank, he was an asshole. He used girls, and what was worse, they let him. They knew he was only after the big “one thing.” Despite that they all thought they would be the one to change him, to make him see the error of his ways. Mason was such a player. The thing was, not all the girls were totally innocent either. Some of them only used Mason to get closer to Jagger. They all wanted to nab my bestie. I couldn’t say I blamed them. He was pretty awesome.

  Jagger was a serial non-dater. He would take girls to dances or parties, but he wouldn’t take on a girlfriend. Half the girls in school were crazy about him. They wanted to change his mind, too. It wasn’t very likely, considering he was waiting for me. Knowing that secret was a bit of a power trip, to be honest. The most popular guy in school was saving himself for me. Of course, there were girls who claimed to have been intimate with Jagger, which made me crazy, especially since a few of them weren’t lying. Jagger was, after all, a red-blooded, horny, teenage boy, not a monk. He also wasn’t a virgin.

  Unfortunately.

  I could own him though, which was precisely why I didn’t. I never wanted to change him, conquer him, or use him as a status symbol. I wanted to curl up on the couch with him in the same room and watch a movie. I wanted to hold his hand. See him waiting for me outside of class, smiling in anticipation of the moment I appeared in the doorway.

  Although more than anything I wanted to keep him protected. If we were together, we would have to make a point of speaking out loud for the benefit of others. Wouldn’t it look strange to watch a couple who didn’t speak to each other but yet seemed so in tuned with one another? We would have to train ourselves to look normal to the outside world. I firmly believed our chances of discovery were greater if we were a couple.

  I tried not to follow Jagger too closely during the day. I had my own classes to pay attention to. The hardest thing to do was not stare at him in the cafeteria. I sat on the other side of the room, but if I didn’t sit with my back to him, I found that I couldn’t stop looking at him. He sat with the happening crowd, so naturally, people tended to look at him. I could handle some ribbing from friends I sat with about having a crush on Jagger. What I did not want was Jagger to scan the cafeteria, as he often did, and catch me openly staring. It was the same issue I had in the two classes we shared, but that was a little more manageable as I usually sat behind him.

  This was my daily life, and it was pretty exhausting.

  The cafeteria was my least favorite place to be. Unlike Jagger, I could hear anybody I decided to tune in to. The things teenagers worried about were ridiculous. I had actual problems and did not have time to worry about clothes, hair, and makeup. I was not trying to catch a guy and didn’t care if my usual uniform of jeans and sweaters or t-shirts was or wasn’t acceptable. On the other hand, I did not want to stand out in a bad way either. I’d perfected the art of blending in. It was imperative that I was not remarkable. I showed up to school, went to my classes, did my work, and went home. Occasionally, I stayed after to work on one of my art projects, but I mostly did that at home.

  Unlike the other girls who were worried about their hair, clothes, and ability to get a date for the prom, I wasn’t even going. I’d attended Jagger’s games, but that was as far as my extracurricular participation went.

  Now, I was listening to Chloe Michaels blather on and on to Jagger about being her date to the dance. She’d wanted to get to him before the other girls, so she cornered him. She had been stalking him all day.

  Jagger decided to accept her offer, which was another pinprick on my heart. Each time he did this, it was because he was trying to get a rise out of me. He was hoping if he instilled enough jealousy in me, I would out myself. To be honest, he could be a bit of a jerk like that.

  Listen, I never said Jagger was perfect.

  Instead of following my normal routine of sitting with my back to him in the cafeteria, I sat directly facing him. It was risky, but I was worried about him today. He was not acting like his normal self.

  “And there she goes,” Megan Richards said. “Drooling after Jagger DeWinter.” I shook my attention away from Jagger and back to my friends. I even had the good grace to blush. That was exactly why I usually sat with my back to him—less temptation that way because I could literally look at that beautiful boy all day.

  “Girl,” Stacey Martin said. “He is way out of our league.” She turned to look over her shoulder at Jagger’s table. “He’s even out of their league.”

  “You’re never going to catch him,” Megan said, sympathetically. “He doesn’t even know you exist.”

  Oh, but he did know. Besides if I wanted him to fall to his knees in front of me to claim his undying love and devotion, he would. Not that I would ever make that kind of scene or use his feelings for me that way. I loved him too much for that pettiness. Moreover, that is something that none of these girls will ever have—the love and absolute loyalty of the most popular boy in school.

  “It’s a shame, really,” Megan continued, shaking her head. “He’s hot, and by staying in his little group of friends there, he’s missing out on some really great people.” The thing was, lately, Jagger didn’t really like those people very much, but he seemed stuck and unable to break away from them. Who would he go to if he couldn’t come to me? Jagger DeWinter suddenly having no friends? It would be a scandal.

  Stacey jumped in next. “It’s like you know if they just gave you a chance, you’d be great friends. But I don’t wear the right clothes so instead I’m weird.”

  That was a surprise to me. I didn’t know Stacey longed to be in with the in crowd. With the exception of Jagger, they all appeared pretty shallow and fake to me. I could see into their minds and could say with authority, there was not much going on in there. Not to say that they weren’t intelligent. Some of them were in honors classes and straight A students. Other than that, they constantly thought about boys or girls, clothes, hair, what to wear to the prom or if they should get a limo so they can all ride together.

  There was actual depth to Stacey. She was an artist like me, and introverted, which was why I could not understand why she would want to be in with the popular crowd. They were always doing things, going places, and they were really chatty. That wasn’t Stacey’s scene—or at least so I had thought.

  Stacey only had me and Megan as friends. There were some people she associated with in her art classes, but she never socialized with them outside of school or sat with them at lunch. I thought about taking a dip into Stacey’s head to see what was up, but I tried very hard not to do that to people I was close with unless I absolutely had to.

  I followed a certain set of ethics when deciding whether or not to invade someone’s privacy. Sometimes I found it necessary—and those particular reasons have changed as I have gotten older. Sometimes someone was projecting so loudly I didn’t have any choice. I’ve learned to block things out, so I didn’t go crazy, but I hadn’t learned how to sever a link.

  Another thought occurred to me. “Stacey, do you have a crush on someone over there?” Her cheeks heated with embarrassment and she looked down at her lunch to avoid eye contact with us. Please don’t say you have a crush on Jagger, please don’t say you have a crush on Jagger ...

  “Brett Cooper is taking art this year. He sits at my table and actually talks to me,” she said, throwing a pained expression over her shoulder. “He’s nice to me in class, but it’s like I don’t exist outside of the art room.”

  Then Brett Cooper is a jerk and not nice at all.

  Then again, Jagger didn’t know my real identity yet. Once he found out I was quiet, lame, average Olivia Miller he might prefer to only talk to me in his head, too. After all, in high school
image was everything.

  In the grand scheme of life, high school was only a blip on the radar. Why waste my time on the perfect clothes, perfect haircut, right friends, or flashy car when there was somebody in the world that hunted me and wanted to study me in a lab like a rat?

  People lived until they were ninety years old or older. What you did or did not do in high school was no longer relevant once you were out of it. When you go off to college and leave your friends behind, you could be anyone. College was much more accepting than high school—or so I was told.

  High school was a special sort of hell. You had friends that you knew in kindergarten and you all got along with each other. You kept those same friends through elementary school and then came the black hole of middle school that sucked you in, ripped you apart, and then sent you spiraling to whatever level of the social atmosphere you’d be parked on until high school graduation. I was currently in the stratosphere where nothing happened. It was a good place for me all things considered.

  “He doesn’t smile at you or acknowledge you in any other way ever?” Megan asked. “Do you have any other classes together?”

  Stacey shook her head. “No, just art. I’m pathetic, I know.”

  “You are not pathetic,” Megan insisted. “He’s the pathetic one if he thinks it’s cool to talk to you and be friends in art where his friends can’t see and then treats you like a pariah the rest of the day. You’re better than that, Stacey.”

  It was true, she didn’t deserve that treatment. No one did, but the hive mind of the clique was an enigma. Not only did the popular crowd act like they were better than everybody else, but other kids were so unsure of themselves that the clique could make them think they were better than everybody else. Eleanor Roosevelt said, “No one can make you feel inferior without your consent.” Clearly, she did not have to tackle high school as we know it today.