Open Minds

by Susan Kaye Quinn

  His irresistible smile was back. I considered feigning illness to avoid sitting face-to-face with him, where he might see the difference inside me. The way my stomach was twisting, claiming sickness wouldn’t have been far from the truth. We turned our desks and he searched my face. I focused on my paper book and tried to interpret Mr. Chance’s halting instructions.

  “Kira.” Raf’s voice was heavy with patience.

  I wondered how long I could avoid looking at him. “Yeah?”

  “Kira, what is it?”

  “Nothing. I just…” I tried to muster the smile I usually had for him. “What are we supposed to discuss again? Because I’m pretty sure I know nothing about Hester Prynne’s life.”

  Raf scowled to show he didn’t appreciate my dodge.

  Mr. Chance’s voice was a staccato message, “…Hester …the women…” Raf glanced up front. “We’re supposed to discuss what punishments the women of Hester’s time would have given her.”

  A fitting topic. What was the right punishment for almost killing your best friend? The scraping sounds of turning desks faded as the other students silently engaged in their literary discussions via mindtalk.

  “Wait.” Raf’s eyes refocused on me. “Didn’t you get the hearing aid?”

  “How did you know?”

  “Word gets around.”

  Of course, the speed-of-thought rumor mill at Warren Township High would be buzzing about my new hearing aid. “Well, yeah, I have it.” I glanced over my shoulder at our hapless English teacher. “But Mr. Chance doesn’t know how to use it.”

  “Good thing you still have me to translate.” His eyes captured mine.

  “Good thing.” I broke the stare and pretended to concentrate on the book. “So, what do you think would be a proper punishment for Hester?”

  “I don’t think Hester deserves any punishment,” he said.

  I resisted the urge to glance at him. “I don’t think Mr. Chance will take that for an answer.”

  He sighed and I nervously thumbed through the pages of the book. Then he reached across our desks to lay his hand on mine. I flushed at the sideways snickers we were garnering and flashed back to the chem lab. I jerked my hand back. He slowly dragged his away.

  “Is this about what happened… before?” he asked. My heart nearly leaped out of my chest and fell dead on the floor. Does he know? I peeked at him, but his face only held frustration.

  “N-nothing happened before.” I forced a grin. “People faint all the time during homework. Just thinking about my homework makes me wish I could pass out.”

  He had that stubborn look that I knew too well, the one he wore when he insisted I taste Mama Santo’s arroz doce or listen to his new favorite synchrony band. He would press on until he got what he was after. “I’m not talking about that. I’m talking about before…” Then I finally understood: the near-kiss.

  Which was why my brain had exploded in the first place.

  Why couldn’t he have left things alone? Waited until I changed? Then maybe none of this would have happened. And why was he bringing it up now, in the middle of English, where everyone could overhear his thoughts? Everyone except me.

  I stared at Raf, unable to speak.

  “Please, Kira. Say something.”

  I gripped my paper book harder. “Nothing happened, okay?” I said. “Just… nothing happened, and I think we need to do our work now.”

  Raf’s face fell.

  I was tempted to jack into his head and erase the look that was shredding my heart. But I banished that idea in an instant. There was no way I would ever mindjack Raf again. Even if I could do it without hurting him, the idea of forcing Raf to do something against his will creeped me out. It was wrong. And sick.

  We concentrated on our work and concocted some lame answer. By the end of class, Raf’s face had transformed into a mask of carved stone, a poor imitation of the true Rafael.

  My heart shrank as Raf left English without saying goodbye.

  I skipped lunch again and went for a run in the August heat.

  I told myself I needed to get away from the curious eyes and lightning-fast rumors, but I was really avoiding Raf and his stony looks. By the eighth time around the track, sweat drenched me. I headed for the showers, eager for a chance to talk to Simon in math.

  I arrived early to find Simon standing two classrooms down the hall, having a pointed silent conversation with a balding, portly man that I vaguely recognized as Mr. Gerek, the shop teacher. I leaned against a wall scarred from rubbed-out graffiti and waited for Simon. Mr. Gerek caught sight of me and Simon turned around. He wore his mesh nove-fiber jeans like the day before, but today he sported a band t-shirt for the Melders. It sounded like something Raf would like.

  Simon left Mr. Gerek and quickly strode down the hall. “Hey,” he whispered when he got close.

  “Hi,” I said. “I didn’t know you took shop.”

  He seemed puzzled. “I don’t.”

  I raised my eyebrows, but Mr. Gerek had already disappeared. Then I tried to remember my burning questions, but Simon beat me to it.

  “Have you been practicing?” He brushed a lock of hair from my face, and his fingertips swept across the top of my ear. That simple touch seemed to light my ear on fire. I pulled away from him and glanced around to see if anyone saw us. The students down the hall seemed to be averting their eyes.

  How did he do that?

  Simon’s head-turning trick brought all my questions back in a rush that tangled up in my throat and made my voice disappear into a squeak. “Practicing?”

  “Don’t be afraid, Kira.” His hand lingered by my face. “I’ll help you. We’re in this together, remember? We’ll practice in class. I want to see what you can do.”

  “I don’t know what I can do,” I protested. He was supposed to help me.

  “Time to find out,” he said. “Don’t worry. If anything happens, I’ll fix it.”

  My eyes went wide. If anything happens? He only smirked and stepped back. A couple of students walked past us into Mr. Barkley’s class. Simon tilted his head toward the door. I gritted my teeth and filed into class with the others.

  Mr. Barkley checked in with me on the mini-mic, because he’s mesh that way. “Good afternoon, Ms. Moore.” I smiled my acknowledgement. I tried to focus on his introduction of tangents, but I was hyperaware of Simon in the seat behind me.

  A few minutes later Simon whispered, “I’m waiting.”

  The boy sitting in front of me was as tall as a basketball player and had to hunch over his scribepad. Ignoring the soft-spoken math instructions in my ear, I leaned forward and stretched my mind toward him. The distance between us shrunk until I pushed into his mind.

  It was like Jell-O that was not quite set—solid, but gooey and on the verge of turning liquid with a few good stirs. I shuddered. His thoughts and an echo of Mr. Barkley’s played at the same time, like a harmony. The tangent is the ratio of the cosine to the sine…

  Nathan—his name popped up like a nametag on the back of his head—translated Mr. Barkley’s lessons into magnetic ink on his scribepad. The scent of freshly mowed grass tickled the back of my throat, and I remembered the overpowering flowery mind-scent of the girl on the bleachers. I wondered if every person had their own flavor.

  For no reason at all, I decided to have Nathan draw a smiley face. Before I could form the words in my head, a crooked face smiled from the middle of his notes like a sinister hiccup in his writing. I pulled back out of his mind, which cut off his thoughts like a switch.

  Simon laughed quietly. “Is that all you’ve got?” His words were soft, so they wouldn’t carry over the shuffling sounds of the room. I gave him a dirty look and twisted forward, jacking back into Nathan’s mind. After a moment, the first three verses of Mary Had a Little Lamb scrolled by on his scribepad. While still in his mind, I reached to the student ahead of him. Janice. Soon she was writing nursery rhymes as well. Then I noticed something in both of their minds, a hard pr
esence, like a marble. I pushed at the marble but invisible forces held it firmly embedded in their gelatin brains.

  Simon.

  I looked back and his face had gone deadly serious. I held Simon’s gaze while I gave the marble another nudge. It didn’t move. The barest smile parted Simon’s lips. I lost my focus, causing Nathan and Janice to return to copying the lesson.

  Simon grinned, and my face grew hot.

  I turned my back on him and reached into mind after mind. Students twenty feet in every direction had the cold, hard spot of Simon infiltrating them.

  He must be jacking all of them. At the same time.

  I finally found a girl up front who didn’t have a hard marble suspended in her head. She only half listened to Mr. Barkley and the echoes of the other students, with the rest of her thoughts occupied by a dark-haired boy. Her mind lingered on his curly hair and how she’d like to run her fingers through it. I was about to leave, feeling like a voyeur, when I recognized the boy… Raf!

  Taylor. Raf’s Pekingese fangirl. I clenched my teeth and wanted to jack those thoughts out of her head, but her next ones froze me. I wish he’d stop hanging around that pathetic zero. He should just do whatever he wants with that little charity case and get over it…

  My fingernails dug into my palms. A tornado swept all thoughts out of my mind and drove them toward the soft jelly of Taylor’s brain. Her head flopped forward and a sudden force shoved me out of her mind. Her head popped up and shook, as though she had nodded off and snapped back awake.

  At the same time, Simon launched out of his chair, grabbed me by the arm, and hauled me out of my seat. I sputtered, but couldn’t get any words out as he dragged me past Mr. Barkley’s desk toward the door. Before we left the classroom, Mr. Barkley whispered in my ear bud, “I hope you feel better soon, Ms. Moore.”

  In the hallway, I finally had enough wits to resist. I pulled against Simon’s iron grip on my upper arm, but I didn’t even slow him down as he dragged me down the hall. Once we were around the corner, he let me loose. I backed against the lockers, a surge of horror washing over me. I had nearly knocked Taylor out. It was like Raf all over again, only this time Simon was there to save her before I sent her crashing to the floor.

  “I… I…” I couldn’t breathe. “I didn’t mean to…” But it was a lie. I did mean to. I wanted to shut her up; I just didn’t mean to hurt her.

  Simon leaned on the locker next to me, his arms folded. “Well, it’s a good thing I was there to stop you. Next time we’ll have to be a little more careful.”

  No. This was crazy. I was dangerous. I couldn’t do this anymore…

  Simon unfolded his arms at the look on my face. “Hey, it’s okay. It’s fine now.” He leaned close. “I took care of it.”

  “How…” I stopped to clear the quavering in my voice. “How did you stop me?”

  “I pushed you out of her mind.” He ran a finger down my cheek. “You felt it, didn’t you?”

  There was no one in the hall, and even if there had been, Simon would have jacked them to avert their eyes. His touch calmed my pounding heart a little.

  “But what if next time…”

  “Next time I’ll be there,” he said. “We can practice some more before we try the math class again. You just need to work on your self-control.”

  A shiver ran up and down my arms. I was definitely not in control. Not like Simon, who seemed unfazed by the whole event. He was right—I had to stick close to him until I figured out this jacking thing.

  My shaky nod brought a gentle smile to his face.

  “Come on. I’d better take you to the nurse, since you felt so horribly sick in Algebra that you had to leave.” He took my hand and pulled me away from the lockers. “Stick with me, Kira, and everything will be fine.”

  I wasn’t so sure.

  Simon jacked the nurse into believing I had a math anxiety attack, and she let me go with some instructions on how to meditate.

  By the time we reached the library, my shakiness had diminished to a nervous jerkiness. Simon seemed to think the library was the perfect spot to practice my nascent mind control skills. Of course he wanted to know what Taylor had done to bring out my fury—he hadn’t been in her mind when she took the head dive. I only told him that she didn’t think much of zeros. He touched my cheek and said my days as a zero would soon be over. That settled the last of my nerves.

  I wanted this to work.

  We huddled on the hard, tiled floor by the library door while students filled the hallways between classes. Simon said he regularly skipped his last-period biology class and that he jacked the teacher to believe he had chemo treatments in the afternoon.

  I wasn’t sure if he was kidding or not.

  I kept my legs tucked out of the flow of students filing by while Simon jacked them to ignore us. He made it look so easy, having everyone do as he wished, all the while thinking he was a reader like them. By the time the next period started, I was ready to dive into practicing.

  My exuberance pulled a grin out of him. “Easy there, changeling. Don’t want you killing off the library patrons.”

  I made a face and reached past the peeling paint of the library wall, searching for the nearest mind. Not seeing my target was tricky, like fumbling in the dark until my hand sunk into a plate full of goo. Kind of gross, but not too bad once I knew to expect it. Of course the hard lump of Simon was already firmly in place.

  “That’s, um,” I fished for the name, and it popped into my head. “Anthony. Soccer player, sophomore.” Anthony’s thoughts were focused on summoning historical research from the mindware interface of his workpod. His mind-scent hinted of freshly shaven wood chips.

  “And what would you like Anthony to do?” Simon asked.

  “I suppose the Chicken Dance would be too disruptive?”

  My eyes were closed to make it easier to concentrate, but I heard the smile in Simon’s voice. “A little showy.”

  “Maybe have him move books around in the stacks?”

  “Subtle, yet subversive. I like it.”

  Anthony leapt to his feet, determined to carry out the directive I had implanted in his mind. He strode past the multimedia pod and Literature Lab to the librarian’s desk. She gave him the passkey to the climate-controlled paper book pod tucked in the back. Once he was on his way, I searched for another Jell-O to mold. Naturally Simon was already there.

  “Okay, she’s, uh…” Names were integral and came unbidden, but with some probing I could call up a lot more. Name? Rank? Serial number? They popped up like displays on a console. “Sheila, junior, has a strange affinity for grape-flavored gum. What should Sheila do?”

  “Anthony’s in the stacks, right?”

  “Yup. He’s undoing the Dewey Decimal system. Mixing the goldfish with the geraniums.”

  “Maybe he and Sheila can be subversive together.”

  My eyes popped open at his lowered tone. “What are you saying, Simon Zagan?”

  “I’m saying no one will notice them kissing in the paper book pod.”

  I leaned away. “You’re not serious.” Jacking two strangers into lip-locking in the library didn’t have much appeal to me.

  “I am.” His eyes glinted like obsidian, and I narrowed mine.

  “Come on,” Simon said. “Jacking two people to write the same nursery rhyme isn’t much of a stretch. Handling a true interaction between two minds takes more control. I want to see if you can do it.”

  “Can’t they just hold hands?” Considering how intimate touching was for readers, even that seemed a bit much.

  Simon huffed. “Fine.”

  I jacked Sheila to go check out the paper book pod. After getting another passkey and a furrowed look from the librarian, Sheila stepped into the tiny room. She hesitated as the door sealed behind her. I jacked her to make eye contact with Anthony. He flushed, having been caught rearranging the ancient books, and he wondered what possessed him to do such a thing.

  Jacking both at once wa
s like seeing double. Plus the commands were reverberating through their minds. With some difficulty, I twisted Anthony’s embarrassment into attraction, while at the same time jacking Sheila to admire Anthony’s soccer physique. Once their mutual appeal took hold, they found their way to each other. It took some additional jacking to get them to breach their personal space and hold hands. As soon as they touched, their thoughts twined together, which helped with the double vision.

  “See. Nothing to it.” Then I realized the emotions resonating between Anthony and Sheila were getting out of hand. There would be kissing, if I didn’t stop it. I ordered them to return to their workpods.

  “Yes. Just like a pro.” Simon barely kept his laughter from carrying through the open library door. When I resumed my mind control experiments, I stuck to less intrusive things like dropping styli or making unnecessary visits to a different learning pod.

  After a while, Simon’s voice interrupted my focused efforts. “Kira.” His touch on my shoulder made my eyes fly open again. “It’s not only about making them do what you want. You need to link your thoughts to theirs.”

  “Huh?”

  He ran the back of his fingers down my cheek, which completely distracted me. “The only way you can escape being a zero is by convincing them they can read your mind.”

  “But, they can’t, right?”

  “No.”

  “So, how do you…?” This was the one thing I didn’t understand. I knew that Simon could control other people’s thoughts. But the people around him weren’t all puppets on strings. Were they? How did he convince them he was a reader?

  “Instead of jacking in to control them, just link in and tell them your thoughts,” he said. “It’s a small difference. You can do it, you just have to practice.”

  “But how?” The students in the library were packing up to leave.