Open Minds

by Susan Kaye Quinn

  “You’re not like them.” He touched my cheek to bring me back. “You’re much better.”

  Considering we lied to everyone about who we were, I didn’t feel much in the way of superiority. “How do you do it?” I asked. “Lying all the time?”

  His face hardened into a mask that sent a shiver through me. “You get used to it.” He glanced at his crew, still silently dipping to get their fuzz. “We’ll never be like them, Kira. Besides, we’re just marking time here. We’re meant to do greater things.”

  “What do you mean, greater things?” I was only hoping for normal, but somehow normal always escaped me.

  He lifted his gaze to the trees in the distance. “My birthday’s in two weeks,” he said with great solemnity, as if that were some fabulous pronouncement. The boy was definitely demens.

  “Um, happy birthday?”

  “I’ll be eighteen,” he elaborated. I was just as lost. “Then I’m going to walk into the principal’s office and get my diploma. I’m not going to sit around wasting my time in high school.”

  Could he really graduate as soon as he had reached the age? Of course. I had yet to hear Simon boast. It made me wonder if there was anything he couldn’t do.

  “What will you do? Get a job?”

  “I’ve been doing some small jobs. If things work out, I’ll have something lined up by then.”

  My suspicions came running out. “Like what?”

  “Something better than hanging out here, pretending to be like everyone else.”

  “Like what?” I repeated, disentangling from his embrace and stepping away. “More petty larceny at the local convenience store?”

  He snorted and rolled his eyes. “I’ve been doing that since I was fourteen, Kira. That’s kid stuff. I want to do something more serious.”

  “What, serious like grand theft auto?”

  He crossed his arms. “I can see you don’t think much of me.”

  “Just leave me out of whatever criminal master plan you have.” I threw my hands on my hips and matched his rigid stance.

  A two-foot gulf opened between us. “After all I’ve done to help you, this is what I get?” he asked. “Criminal mastermind?” His stare became an ice dagger that plunged into my chest. Echoes of Raf’s departing words rang through my head. I’ll leave you alone, Kira. Since that’s what you want. Simon was the only one that understood the bizarre power unleashed in my brain. And I was insulting him to his face. Driving him away. Just like Raf.

  I let my hands drop to my side, and my gaze sank to the prairie weeds surrounding us. I shifted from one foot to the other. “I’m sorry…,” I mumbled. “I just… the whole beer thing kind of threw me.” It sounded lame, even to me.

  “I was only trying to help you fit in.”

  The sound of breaking glass reminded me that Martin was still pitching beer bottles. “Hmm,” I said. “I’m hoping we are better than that bunch.”

  Simon blazed a smile. “You, at least, are better looking.”

  “Yeah, well, you’re not too bad yourself.”

  His face went serious, his jaw cutting a sharp line in the moonlight.

  “I am sorry,” I said. “You know, about calling you a criminal.”

  He studied my face. “Do you trust me?”

  I didn’t trust Simon, but I knew I needed him, a thought that made my face burn.

  I whispered, “I’m not sure what I’d do without you,” and pulled his face down to mine. He gripped my waist and pulled me up so that my toes just kissed the prairie grass. His lips branded mine, and by the time he set me down, I wasn’t sure I could stand straight.

  My head rested on his chest. I couldn’t read his mind, or feel his emotions when we touched, but the way his heart pounded, it seemed like our kiss affected him too.

  “So, I was wondering…” His words rumbled under my ear.

  I lifted my head. “Yes?”

  “…if that boyfriend position was still open?”

  “I think it’s just been filled.”

  The next week was an endless blur of too many minds.

  The first few days, I gripped Simon’s arm to combat the dizziness of the hallways, brought on by having to constantly shift focus and link with dozens of minds. Simon wore Second Skin gloves for a while so we wouldn’t be conspicuous.

  The cafeteria was worse.

  Ground zero for thought-wave-rumors, people buzzed about the zero-turned-changeling, and why I was dating Simon and not Raf. Our drama was better than the latest big screen sim-cast.

  I caught whispers of Raf’s thoughts passed from mind to mind. It was like our childhood game of mindtalk, where we pretended to read minds by whispering messages around a circle. The message had been distorted beyond reason by the time it circled back, which had caused us fits of giggles. Only Raf’s messages of anger and pain were far from making me laugh.

  Raf kept his promise and kept his distance. He couldn’t hear my thoughts, unless I jacked other people’s minds and sent my thoughts ringing through the room for everyone to hear.

  I kept the mindjacking to a minimum in the cafeteria.

  Besides, knowing I was a jacker wouldn’t hurt Raf any less. It would only put him in danger. If he knew my secret, so would the other reader minds. It wasn’t impossible for readers to keep a secret—just very, very difficult. Like trying to not think of pink elephants. The bigger the secret, the harder it was to keep your thoughts away from it.

  And Simon and I had a mastodon-sized secret.

  Somehow, the thought-rumors hadn’t reached my mom. She must be even more isolated than I knew.

  My mom still thought I was a zero, Raf thought I was a changeling, and Simon thought I was jacking them both. It was official: I was lying to everyone I knew.

  I didn’t have much choice about being a liar, but I didn’t have to cheat too. In class I could easily pluck the virtual answer key from our teachers’ minds for our take-home tests, but I resisted. Cheating wouldn’t help me catch up in that race for normal that suddenly seemed within reach.

  But to Simon, it wasn’t enough for me to pass for a reader. He wanted me to hone my jacking abilities too. Which I did, until I finally was in control—not of other people, but of myself.

  Except when Simon kissed me.

  There, control eluded me in a fierce way that found me brazenly kissing him at every opportunity, which wasn’t often. Readers did their lip-locking in private or at dipping parties where everyone was doing it. Even kissing in front of the crew would have caught us grief unless we jacked them to look the other way. Which Simon occasionally did, leaving a grin on my face that lasted long after the warmth from his lips had faded.

  It was all mesh, but by Friday I was exhausted.

  Simon and I waited for the crew to ditch class and join us on the bleachers. All my free periods and after school time had been spent with Simon or his crew or practicing my skills. I wanted to catch up on schoolwork over the weekend. Passing for a reader wouldn’t count for much if I failed my classes.

  Simon caught me off guard by asking me out on a date.

  “I have a ton of homework.” I whispered so the couple students at the bottom of the bleachers wouldn’t overhear. Simon put his hand over his heart and feigned heartbreak.

  “You’re turning me down for homework?”

  “And how would I explain being gone on a Saturday night?”

  He shifted to serious. “You haven’t told your mom about me?”

  I squirmed in my seat. “Well, no.”

  “But you are jacking her?”

  “Yes.” The lies were getting easier every day.

  “So, tell her you have a date.” His eyes sparkled. “Besides, I’d love to meet your mom.”

  A warning siren blared in my head. “No, uh, that’s not a good idea.”

  “Why not?”

  He wasn’t buying this nonsense. It was time to go big and lie large.

  “Because my family is very strict. We’re Catholic, and m
y dad’s a Navy man, through and through. He always said I could date when I’m, like, thirty.”

  “Well, let me meet your dad. I’m sure I can convince him otherwise.”

  The gleam in Simon’s eyes made my stomach clench. “My dad’s on deployment right now. If he found out I went on my first date while he was gone, he would skin me alive.”

  Simon threw his hands up. “You’re the one in control here. Just jack in and tell them it’s okay. You don’t have to do what they say.”

  “I can’t jack my dad over the phone 7,000 miles away! Unless you have some super-secret power you’re holding out on me?”

  He narrowed his eyes. “Sneak out.” He was challenging me now. I could probably sneak out of the house, but I had to focus on school or all of the lying would be for nothing. And his order didn’t sit well with me.

  “Maybe I’ll tell my mom I’m going out to meet Raf. She’d probably be fine with that.”

  “What?” His eyes went wide. “I thought you were staying away from him.” Zach and Katie started hiking up the steps. Simon followed my gaze, but snapped back to stare me down. “Well?”

  I dropped my voice. “I’m just saying it would be one way to get out of the house.”

  He exhaled a long, low breath, and I was glad I couldn’t read his mind at that moment.

  As they came into thought range, Katie frowned at Simon. Trouble in paradise?

  Everything’s fine. Simon’s thoughts boomed in her head.

  Oh, everything’s fine, she and Zach echoed, serene smiles relaxing their faces. Jacking feelings was the same as jacking thoughts, but my stomach twisted every time Simon made me do it. I nudged the hard presence of Simon in Katie’s mind, a warning. As my skills had improved over the week, I found I could push that marble after all. And I’d push him right out if he kept manipulating Katie.

  Simon’s eyes flashed, and he nudged back, but the creepy smiles disappeared.

  Tell Simon I need to study this weekend. My command rang loud and clear through Katie’s mind.

  Tell Kira she better not sneak out to see someone besides me. As Katie echoed Simon’s words, I threw my hands out in frustration.

  Katie, let them fight their own battles, Zach interrupted. You’re killing my fuzz, here.

  Simon pulled out his black mindware phone and bent over it. He must have sent a scrit, but when I gave him a questioning look, he pocketed the phone and ignored me.

  The four of us chatted idly, pretending the tenseness didn’t exist. Right before the final bell Simon’s phone buzzed and he checked and re-pocketed it. He ignored my questioning look again. When the crew got up to leave, Simon shook his head, indicating I should stay. I seriously debated marching off with Katie, but decided I had already angered Simon enough for one day.

  When they were out of mind range, he glared at the bleachers for a moment before speaking. “People like us don’t follow the rules, Kira,” he said. “People like us make them up.”

  I had spent an entire week passing for a reader. I was finally getting a taste of normal, and I liked it. A lot. I didn’t want to think about the freaks that we really were.

  When I didn’t respond, Simon asked, “What are you thinking?”

  “That I’d rather not be a mutant?” I tried to say it with a smile, but it came out sour.

  “We’re not, Kira.” He pulled me up from the bleacher seat. “Come on, there’s someone I want you to meet. If I can’t get you out of the house, then we’ll have to meet him at school.”

  “Who is it?” I followed him down the steps.

  “Mr. Gerek.”

  “The shop teacher?” I vaguely remembered him talking to Mr. Gerek in the hall. But why would Simon want me to sneak out to meet his buddy, the shop teacher?

  Simon gave a short laugh. “I wasn’t sure if you’d recognize the name.” His voice had lost its seriousness. “You never took shop, did you?”

  “No.” Mr. Gerek’s class was famously popular, second only to Mr. Chance and his animated sims of the past. But I was seriously disinclined toward tools of any kind. I had taken Advanced Topics Biology instead, which was more useful to a doctor anyway.

  “I wondered how you had escaped his notice.” The grass crunched under our feet as Simon led me toward the building for our strange after-school meeting with the shop teacher.

  “Wait, what?” I said. “What are you talking about?”

  “Just come see him?” His voice softened. “He wants to talk to you. It won’t take long.”

  I sighed, but kept following him into the building and out of the heat. The shop class was near the back of the school, crammed with tool chests and instruments that seemed designed to torture wood. Mr. Gerek teetered on a stool next to a giant laser saw and swept a thick-fingered hand over his prematurely balding head. He seemed too large for his seat. Everything, including Mr. Gerek, was covered by a thin film of sawdust.

  I reached toward his mind, hoping to get a heads up about this bizarre meeting, but I was shoved away before I could even link in. I whirled to Simon, wondering why he was trying to keep me out of Mr. Gerek’s head, but he was busy pulling over a tall stool. I tentatively climbed up, my feet not quite reaching the floor.

  “Mr. Gerek, this is Kira Moore,” Simon said with great ceremony. Why was he speaking out loud, when everyone at school thought I had gone through the change?

  “It’s a pleasure to finally meet you, Ms. Moore,” Mr. Gerek said. A polite smile graced his face, but his stare was intense and kind of creepy, like he was trying to drill a hole into my head.

  “Hello,” I said carefully. Something was wrong with this entire situation.

  “Simon has some very flattering things to say about you.” I shot a look to Simon. He had already retreated to the shop entrance, like he wasn’t planning on being a part of the conversation.

  “Um, okay,” I said. “He hasn’t told me anything about you.”

  Mr. Gerek broke his stare to give Simon a short nod. “Well, if he had, I would have been disappointed in him.”

  It seemed like I should be asking questions. “What is this is all about?”

  “I’m a jacker, Kira,” he said. “Like Simon. There are more of us than you probably realize.”

  My jaw dropped. Simon’s face was blank. He had known Mr. Gerek was a jacker all along, but he had let me believe we were the only ones. “Who else?”

  “I can’t tell you that.”

  My hands clenched the stool. “Why not?” Mr. Gerek appeared about thirty-five, and if he was a jacker, anyone could be. There could be hundreds, maybe thousands of them. “Are there more at our school?”

  “No. At least,” he glanced at Simon, “not that I’m aware of. We’re rare. But there are many of us in the New Metro area. I can’t tell you any more until you’ve joined the Clan.”

  Clan? Alarm bells started ringing in my head. “What is that, like, your secret club?”

  “The Clan is like a family, Kira,” Mr. Gerek said. “We know what it’s like to be different.” He spread his hands wide. “We only want to extend our welcome. You don’t have to be alone anymore.”

  The alarm in my head cranked to full alert. Simon had lied to me. Mr. Gerek was a jacker, which meant he was a liar too. I didn’t know what this Clan was all about, but I doubted they were only concerned about my loneliness. I slid off the high stool and put it between me and Mr. Gerek. I didn’t know if either of them intended to let me go, but it was definitely time to leave.

  “Okay.” I edged away from the chair. “That’s a very nice invitation, and I appreciate it, but I should be going now.” A quaver had found its way into my voice.

  Mr. Gerek remained in his seat, which eased my panic a little. I backed into something solid and let out a yelp.

  “Kira, it’s okay,” Simon said, his face unreadable. “There’s nothing to be worried about.”

  His words didn’t reassure me at all. “I’m leaving!”

  “It was nice to meet you, Kira,�
� Mr. Gerek called from his seat. “That invitation is open, whenever you’re ready for it.”

  I slipped around Simon and shoved open the shop door. Simon shuffled behind me.

  “Kira, stop.” He tugged at my elbow.

  I wheeled on him and pounded my fists into his chest. “You lied to me!” He shrank back from my blow, which certainly didn’t injure him. But he still seemed wounded.

  “I didn’t lie,” he said harshly. “I just didn’t tell you everything.”

  “What’s the difference?” I held my fists at my side and resisted the urge to hit him again. Of course he lied to me. Simon was an expert liar.

  “You know the difference.” His face hardened. “Besides, I couldn’t tell you about the Clan. The code of silence is real, and the Clan takes it very seriously. They don’t let just anyone in. They have to be careful.” He looked me up and down. “I told Mr. Gerek that we could trust you. That you wouldn’t tell anyone.”

  I swallowed. What would the Clan do if I said no to their offer? What had Simon gotten me into? “What do they want with me?”

  Simon studied the floor for a moment, and then looked into my eyes. “It’s like Mr. Gerek said. It’s a family. We take care of each other. It’s a place where everyone understands what you are.”

  What I am? I was just a girl who wanted to be a reader like everyone else. I would take being a zero any day over these layers upon layers of lies. The tears started to tickle my throat, and I clenched my teeth against them. They spilled out anyway.

  Simon reached to wipe away a tear that had run down my cheek, but I leaned away before he could touch me. “Are you okay?” he asked.

  “I don’t want to be like this.” I couldn’t keep the words in. “Why are we like this?”

  “I don’t know.” His voice was soft, almost kind. “I know you don’t like it. But in time, you’ll see. We have to stick together. And you know you can’t tell anyone about the Clan, right?”

  “Code of silence?” My voice was bitter.

  His smile was grim. “Yeah.”

  I left him standing in the hallway, unsure if I ever wanted to see him again.

  I ignored about a dozen scrits from Simon.