Broken Ties (Prequel to The Mentalist Series)

by Kenechi Udogu

our first adventure that I strayed into dark territories again. I usually never let my defences drop so much that I’d make two slips in one night, but Paul seemed to have a loosening effect on me.

  “I was two towns away by the time they found me,” I snorted, concluding the tale of the time I’d run away from home at the grand old age of eight. 

  “You hated home so much?” I didn’t expect to hear sadness in his voice. When I’d told the story to my girlfriends, we just laughed and ignored the seriousness of it. Kids ran away from home all the time, right?

  “Hey, don’t judge me. They made me call them Agnes and David and then forced me to join the track team. I was convinced my real parents were somewhere out in the world looking for me.”

  Again, he was supposed to laugh, but he didn’t. For the first time that night, I started to feel uncomfortable, like I’d finally shared too much. What had I been thinking? Telling him I accidentally killed my goldfish was one thing, but revealing I wasn’t always happy at home might have been too much for him to hear on our first…goodness, it wasn’t even a date!  I’d ambushed him at the back of a building and somehow turned the whole night into something it wasn’t supposed to be. This time, as my eyes flickered to my watch, my brain didn’t try to stop it.

  “Is that the time? I have to go.” I sprang up and dusted the seat of my dress. Paul started to rise with me but I held him down. “Don’t. I’ll be quicker on my own.”

  He got up anyway but made no move to follow me as I started to scurry away. My heart sank at the thought of not stealing a final kiss or hug from him, but I couldn’t dwell on it. I was already going to be in a world of trouble.

  I was halfway down the path when I remembered something I’d wanted to ask earlier.

  “Paul,” I called out as I turned around, but there was no need to. He was still standing, looking at me. “Are you going to be okay? You know, with Brandon?”

  Paul didn’t do much smirking so I was surprised when one broke out on to his face.

  “Yeah,” he nodded, “that’s been taken care of.”

  I wondered when he’d found time to resolve anything with Brandon. He couldn’t have doubled back to the party to speak to him and somehow made it back to the courthouse before I got there. But he said those words with a lot of confidence; maybe Cheung was sorting things out for him. Or maybe boys were more forgiving about punch outs than I’d thought.

  I couldn’t delay any longer so I nodded, then turned and legged it all the way home.

  SEVEN

  Paul

  “If you don’t stop grinning to yourself like a nutter, I swear I’m going to shove you off this seat,” Cheung threatened, poking me with the pencil he’d been chewing on.

  Laughing loudly, I snatched the pencil off him. “You mean, like this?” I asked, playfully punching him off the seat before he could work out what I was doing.

  “Ow! What’s gotten into you? Or should I be asking who you’ve gotten in…”

  I smacked him on the head to stop him from finishing his sentence. The elderly lady, who tortured herself by always sitting beside us, was full on gaping by then.

  “Oh my goodness, I’m right! You got off with someone.” Cheung now also stared at me with mild shock.

  “Stop it, Cheese Face,” I hissed, making eye gestures towards the woman. But I hadn’t denied his accusation. Even though I wasn’t prepared to share the gory details with my nosy and much too loud friend, a part of me didn’t want to lie to him about what had happened on Saturday.

  To be honest, I still wasn’t sure what had happened. There was a slight chance Brandon’s fist had made contact with my face at the party, and I’d banged my head on something as I went down, and then dreamt the whole courthouse scene. Everything.

  Down to the delectable way Nora’s skin had felt up against mine.

  I shook my head to clear the thought. For some inexplicable reason, the powers that be had heard my prayers and had let Saturday night happen. Why was I certain it hadn’t been a dream? Because I’d never felt as alive as I did when I got home and lay in bed playing over every single second of the evening in my head. It wasn’t just the fact that I’d surprised myself by kissing her; we’d talked for ages afterwards and I hadn’t been bored once. I’d always thought if I broke the rules which had been set out for me as an Averter, I’d feel a little pang of guilt, a tiny measure of remorse at least. Something to weigh my spirits down and put me in the proper frame of mind to right the wrong I had committed.

  Yet all I wanted was Nora.

  Who knew a kiss could do such amazing things to the soul? I all but woke up singing on Sunday morning and managed to hold on to the potent mood all day, even during my humdrum three hours shift at work. I realised I had to control myself a little better when the store manager tapped me on the shoulder and told me off for whistling as I unloaded milk cartons. I don’t think he’d ever seen me crack a smile before that day.

  The only thing I was really concerned about was my father finding out. If Dad noticed my excessive joy, he’d want to know what was making his recently glum son so cheerful. I didn’t plan on telling him how I felt about Nora; even if he claimed he understood what I was going through, he’d never approve of what I intended to do next. He would explain it away as a mistake that sometimes happened to our kind before common sense returned. He would insist I forget about Nora and focus on things I could control.

  So how could I make it clear to him that being with Nora was the only thing that made sense to me?

  My plan was simple, if he didn’t think there was anything to worry about, then there’d be no questions asked and I wouldn’t have to lie to him. I always felt like crap when I did, even though I knew he couldn’t tell I was being deceptive. Maybe Averters were all born with an amplified sense of guilt which others didn’t feel. Or maybe it was just the way I was wired. Either way, I figured avoidance of the discussion was technically not lying, so I’d dodged him most of Sunday. I wasn’t sure how much longer I’d get away with it though.

  “Who was it?” Cheung put his face right up against mine. He knew how much it pissed me off but it usually got me to focus on him when he wanted an answer. “Tell me. You know I’ll bug you until you do.”

  “Geez Cheung, back off. It’s not important. Don’t you have a Chemistry test to worry about? ”

  “Eh, I’d only worry if I didn’t study. Stop trying to distract me. Tell Brother Cheung all your secrets. You know I’d tell you mine if any girl decided I was worthy of making physical contact with. Is it someone I know? Someone from the party? Wait, did you go back after our big escape?”

  At least he was asking questions I could answer without giving away who I’d been with, so I indulged him a little.

  “Maybe.”

  “What does that mean? You went back to the party or she’s someone we know? Was she one of the soppy eyed girls cheering you on when you slammed your fist into Brandon’s face? Supreme move, by the way. Didn’t see that one coming.”

  I would have responded to one of his multiple questions if my gut hadn’t balled into a painful knot, a bright light blinding me as a vision took over my senses. I hadn’t carried out an Aversion in days (messing with Brandon’s mind twice didn’t count) and, with all the euphoria I had been feeling lately, the vision hurt like hell.

  It came from a curly haired guy sitting two rows ahead of us. He was one of the morning regulars on that route and, although I never spoke to him, he’d attended our school up until a few years ago. These days he left the bus about five stops before we did and probably went on to his job. I had no reason to care about what his job was until the vision hit me.

  A middle-aged man was sprawled on the floor in a high-ceilinged room with stainless steel worktops and shelves; probably an industrial kitchen judging from the white coat wearing, hairnet donning occupants of the room. His right leg appeared to be trapped under a fallen cabinet; his cries of pain suggested it might be crushed. But tha
t wasn’t the worst part. As his co-workers rushed to his aid, curly haired guy was amongst the first to reach him. Then I watched in horror as his coat sleeve caught on a pan of oil sitting on the hob above the man on the floor.

  I didn’t need to see any more. My brain latched on to the crucial factors. The clock on the wall said it was past three, the sleeves of the red stripped shirt he wore on the bus poked out under his white coat. The incident was probably going to happen that afternoon. Sometimes what we had to prevent was meant to happen days later. Weeks even. I didn’t have that luxury. More importantly, his stop was coming up soon so if I was going to act, I had to be fast.

  “You might know her; pretty girl, goes to our school,” I replied to Cheung’s drilling so he wouldn’t notice my attention was elsewhere. My hand slipped into my jacket pocket and found the slightly oversized pearl I always kept close by for situations like that.

  Maintaining eye contact and feeding thoughts into people’s heads isn’t the only way to carry out an Aversion. Since it is not always possible to look into the eyes of those we are meant to help without being obvious, every Averter is assigned an Orb. What the round objects lack in size, they make up for in astounding strength. The seemingly ordinary item I held had the ability to amplify my abilities and channel them towards curly haired guy even from the distance