Open Minds (4 page)

I practiced my tough-girl skills at school the next day.

I glared at anyone who crossed my path and refused to cower on the sides of the hallways. If Shark Boy thought he would get a free feel, I was determined to leave marks on him for trying. But he never showed. In fact, no one noticed but Raf. His wrinkled looks of concern hindered my scrappy new attitude, so I ditched the crowded lunchroom to run.

The blistering noontime sun burnt toughness into me. I flew through the side streets, an invisible ninja warrior in training. There was barely enough time for a shower before class, so lunch was a small, scarfed-down apple. I hurried into algebra and remembered just in time to check for land mines in the aisle.

Preoccupied with skirting backpacks, I didn’t notice Simon until I got close. His dark eyes locked on me like search beams and he frowned. I scowled right back and cast
Don’t mess with me!
body signals. Simon smirked when I passed him, but I was too busy being hostile to care.

Without the hearing aid, I was completely lost in all my classes, even math. Raf offered to bring his notes to the chem lab during our free period to keep me from getting too far behind. It was a good place to spread out, and people seldom studied there.
Which means no one will see him hanging out with me
. That thought scratched at the edge of my mind, but I pushed it away.

I arrived first and dropped my backpack onto the black stone benchtop. The lab smelled of acid experiments gone wrong, but had the benefit of plenty of room. Raf sauntered in with one of his Pekingese girlfriends on his tail. Her name was Jessica, or possibly Ashley, and she wore her skirt tight and her hair loose. Her Second Skin gloves had sparkle dust on them, and she swung her arm close to his, as if hoping he might suddenly decide to hold her hand.

“Hey, Kira.” Raf tossed his backpack on the benchtop next to mine. “You know Taylor?”

Okay, Taylor. Whatever. “Hi.” It sounded reasonably polite.

She paused, as if she had forgotten there was a cripple in the room. “Oh, right. Hi.”

“So, we’re going to study,” Raf said to her. “I’ll see you after school?” Raf still talked out loud whenever I was around. Which was very nice of him, but didn’t help the heat rising in my cheeks.

She must have answered him in her thoughts. Then she added, “Right. After school.” She leaned in to air-kiss him, but Raf dipped his head away from her public display of almost affection. At least they didn’t actually touch. I didn’t want that mental image with me for the rest of the day. When she was gone, Raf pulled out his e-slate and scribepads.

I couldn’t hold back. “So the Pekingese are still hot on your trail?”

“You shouldn’t call her that.” He avoided my gaze, arranging his things on the benchtop.

“Well, you didn’t like it when I called your girlfriends Shih-Tzus.”

He threw me a grimace. “What is with you and the little dogs?” His accent transformed
little dogs
into
littal dugs
. I had to stop myself from smiling.

“I don’t care for the yippy ones, but you seem to like them, Wolf Boy.” The Portuguese have an excess of names, and Rafael Amaro Lobos Santos was no exception. Wolf Boy was an old nickname, and Raf didn’t seem to appreciate it.

“She’s not my girlfriend, anyway.” He pulled out his ancient
Scarlet Letter
paper book. “Are we going to study?”

The annoyance in his voice made me soften my tone. “Only if we have to.” We settled on the stools. “So, not your girlfriend? And she knows this?”

He tapped his temple twice. “She knows.”

Huh.
Mindreading must leave less room for misunderstandings in the relationship department.“So, why’s she guarding your rear flank?” If a boy wasn’t interested in me, I wouldn’t go sniffing after him. Not that I had any actual experience in this, just as a matter of principle.

“We have a disagreement about the future of our relationship.”

“Sounds complicated.”

He set aside his scribepad and searched my plain blue eyes. “You have no idea. Sometimes I think you have it easier. Not knowing what everyone is thinking all the time.”

“Easier?” My voice soured. “Really? Maybe we can trade places and you can see what a joy it is to be a zero.”

His face softened in a way that made my stomach flutter.

I couldn’t stand the sad looks Raf gave me sometimes, his pity about my bleak future written in the lines on his face. But the look of longing he wore now, as though he wanted to touch me or maybe even kiss me, twisted me into knots. Because he and I couldn’t be
that,
not while I was still a zero
.
No decent person would prey upon a mentally impaired freak like me. And Raf was… normal. Perfect. Destined for a life brilliant with possibility.

I ignored Raf’s stare and pretended to scroll through my scribepad. Eventually, he gave up and transferred his class notes. “Thanks,” I mumbled. Quiet had fallen around us. I studied the notes. He read his paper book. We shifted in our seats as the minutes passed, silent and separate. This wasn’t how I wanted to spend the short time I had with Raf. I would rather live vicariously and avoid any actual work, like we normally did. But almost half the period disappeared into a wasteland of studying.

I was absently tapping my stylus against the scribepad when warmth stole over my hand. Raf was
touching
me. I should have pulled my hand away, but I couldn’t make it move. There was no surge of intimate emotion sharing, like readers apparently had when they touched. But having Raf’s hand on mine was like a drink of cool water after a hundred days in the desert.

My breathing tried to match the pounding of my heart. I searched for something witty or sarcastic to say, but I couldn’t unscramble my brain. I dragged my eyes to his dark brown ones. The longing look was back in force.

A war raged in my mind, a battle between the side that desperately wanted to know what Raf’s lips would feel like pressed to mine, and the better side that knew kissing Raf was something I could only keep if I was normal. If I changed. And if I didn’t, losing it would only tear me apart.

Please stop
, my better side begged.
Please don’t make me tell you to stop.

But he didn’t stop. He leaned toward me, and I saw as clear as the half-grin on his face that Raf was going to kiss me. Before I could make my lips move, I thought,
STOP!

And then my brain exploded. Electric shocks seemed to sizzle through it, and tiny phantom stars flew past my eyes.

Raf crumpled. He folded in on himself like a marionette whose strings had been cut by an evil puppet-master. His head hit the bench, and my arms automatically shot out to catch him as he slid off the high stool. I couldn’t stop him, couldn’t even slow him down as he headed for the floor. I managed to get under him, to cushion his fall and keep his head from hitting the stone tiles of the chem lab floor. Pain stabbed my ankle as it twisted under Raf’s dead weight.

My head swam with dizziness. Had I hit my own head on the way down? Those tiny stars danced in and out of my field of view. I wrestled with Raf’s body, trying to move him without dumping him on the floor. I finally wriggled free and rolled him on his back. His wide-open eyes stared unseeing at the ceiling. A chill ran through me like a ghostly wind.

Oh my god
.
I killed him.

My hands fluttered, useless, over his body. After a terrifying stretch of seconds, it occurred to me to check his breathing. I bent my ear to his mouth, and a warm draft brushed it.

Oh thank god.
My hands trembled as I gently shook his shoulders. “Raf! Raf!” He just lay on the floor like a perfectly sculpted mannequin. I pressed the heels of my hands to my eyes and tried to think.
Oh, please, Raf, wake up!
I decided I should check his pulse, so I bent over him again, only to find him blinking back at me.

“Raf?” I gaped.

“What happened?” he asked.

Water pooled in my eyes. “Wh… what happened? You almost scared me to death, that’s what happened!” I shook from head to toe. My hands did that fluttering thing again. He struggled to get up, only to press a hand to his head and roll back down again. He made a noise that sounded like “ugh” and closed his eyes.

My panic surged. “Raf! Are you okay?”

“
Merda
… my head.” He didn’t move.

A rush of relief calmed my hands, and I let out a shaky laugh. If Raf could curse, he would probably live. I gently pried his hand away from his head. The angry red lump on his forehead was turning purple as the blood pooled under his skin.

“You’ve got a serious bump, Raf.” The visible sign of his injury was oddly soothing. He winced when he found the growing bump. “What the… How did I end up on the floor?”

I didn’t know what to say.
Sorry, Raf, I nearly killed you with my incredible mind powers?
It was ridiculous.
No. Stick to the facts.
“Well, you took a head-dive into the lab bench.” I gestured behind us to the abandoned homework station. “And then you fell off your stool, and I kind of cushioned your fall.” My right ankle throbbed, but I ignored it.

“Did you say something, right before…” He struggled up to rest on his elbow. I felt the blood rush out of my face. “I think I heard you, Kira. In my mind. You said something, but I know your lips didn’t move, because…” He gave a tiny smile. “Because I was kind of staring at your lips at the time.”

“Wh…” My voice faded away. “What did I say?”

“That’s just it, I can’t remember.” He frowned. “Maybe it’s the bump on the head.”

“Yeah,” I agreed quickly. “I mean, you can’t hear what I’m thinking now, right?”

He peered at me. “Are you thinking I’m some kind of idiot that faints during homework?”

I laughed but it sounded choked. My hand shook again. “Yes. That’s exactly what I was thinking. That, and we need to get you to the hospital. C’mon.” I stood, and my twisted ankle screamed its displeasure. A wave of dizziness made me sway.

“Are you okay?” He tried to find the source of my pain.

“Yes, but you might want to lay off Mama Santos’s desserts.” I groaned dramatically as I pulled him to standing. Cautiously putting weight on my injured foot, I pretended to inspect his strong, lanky form. “I don’t know where you put it, but you weigh as much as Seamus.”

He lit a brilliant smile, then went serious when he saw me favor my right foot. “Maybe you need to go to the hospital with me.”

“Oh, I’m going with you. Someone needs to keep you from taking another header into the pavement.” I limped to the bench and hastily stuffed our things into the backpacks. He took both packs from me and slung them over his shoulder. I slid my hand around his offered elbow to support my treacherous ankle, glad to feel him warm and alive. Everyone was still in class, so our conspicuous bare-armed grip went unnoticed as we hobbled to the nurse’s office.

I clenched my free hand the whole way to keep it from shaking.

chapter SIX

I think Raf’s mom caused him more pain than the lump.

Ana Amaro Santos clicked into the office on her high heels only minutes after the school nurse called. Mrs. Santos hovered over Raf, petting his hair with her manicured hands and mindtalking to him in a way that made the nurse grin and Raf’s face flush deep red.

I couldn’t hear any of their thoughts, like always. I hugged the edges of the cramped nurse’s office, keeping my distance. I tried to think about good things in case my thoughts came to life again, like a nightmarish wish come true. Maybe it was only a coincidence. Maybe Raf happened to faint at the same time that my mind ordered him to stop trying to kiss me. But a quiver had taken hold of my stomach, and I knew it wasn’t simply chance. That electric storm in my brain had done something to Raf. Everyone said that when they changed, they felt
different
inside their brains. I knew something had shifted inside me, but it wasn’t the change I had been waiting for all these years. I had turned into something dangerous instead.

I was afraid everyone could see the guilt on my face. But no one did.

Mama Santos took Raf to the hospital to make sure the bump was all show and no concussion. His mom would have the doctors run tests until she was satisfied he didn’t have a brain tumor, but I was pretty sure Raf would recover from his encounter with the benchtop. The nurse insisted on bandaging my ankle until I could barely shove on my shoe.

I limped through the heat on the walk home, taking my chances with the ankle rather than risking a ride on the bus. Mom was out, probably dropping Dad off at the base, although he could have taken the autocab. I was thankful she was safely away from whatever was wrong with my brain. I ditched the bandage as soon as I got home, hoping to avoid any questions. It jammed up the kitchen trash bowl, and I had to punch the button three times to flush it away.

My hands still shook from the trauma with Raf, and my stomach grumbled from the lack of lunch. I craved something warm and glared at the mindware interface for the flash oven, wondering why I had never bothered to learn the manual controls. Navigating the touch pad instructions was like translating Latin. After a minute, I gave up and slammed my hand down on the stone counter. The satisfyingly loud smack felt like it would leave a bruise.