Open Minds (8 page)

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 was 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.

“Practice,” he said, standing and moving away. I scrambled to my feet and wondered why he was leaving. “I’ll see you tomorrow,” he said quietly. He leaned casually against the locker wall and gazed down the hall as if we hadn’t spent the last hour hunkered on the floor together.

The final bell rang, and students flowed into the hallway, a silent stream of faces glad for the end of the day. I pressed flat to the wall, trying not to let my heart contract simply because Simon was acting like I didn’t exist. A dark-haired boy greeted him with a head nod, and Simon turned to walk with him. Two steps later, a pretty blonde sidled up to Simon. Close, but not touching, like Raf’s Pekingese fangirl. Simon left me standing outside the library without another glance.

Tears pricked my eyes, and I told myself not to be an idiot. Of course Simon couldn’t admit we had been together. As far as anyone knew, I was a zero and he was a senior reader, too mesh to hang out with the likes of me. I stumbled upstream through the human river, heading toward the band room for practice.
Practice.
That was what I needed to leave my zero status behind.

I rounded a corner and ran smack into Shark Boy.

He looked as surprised as I was to find himself entangled with me in the hall. That didn’t stop him from running his hands over my bare arms.

“What have we here?”

His fingers curled into my flesh and he dragged me up flush against his chest. I tried to pull out of his grasp, but he just dug in more painfully. I jacked hard into his mind.
Let me go!

He dropped my arms like they were red-hot pokers and took a step back. He teetered, uncertain, and his hateful thoughts filled my throat with a burning sensation.

Go to the principal’s office!
I ordered him.
Turn yourself in and confess to…
my mind spun, trying to think of something that would pay back Shark Boy but leave me out of it.
Confess to harassing a changeling on the first day of school!

Shark Boy spun and strode purposely toward the principal’s office, my command echoing through his mind. As I pulled back, I caught his name.
David.
Sickness churned in my stomach. Maybe he would come to his senses before he reached the principal’s office. Maybe my command would fade. If not, he deserved whatever he got there.

I couldn’t bring myself to regret what I’d done.

My shaky legs carried me down the hall, and I made it to band rehearsal before the bell rang. The rich sound of our instruments vibrated through me, soothing out the tension. My fingers found the notes on my saxophone while other students tapped their feet or swayed to the music filling our ears.

Here, I was still a zero. Everyone ignored me, like usual.

Practice.
Simon’s instructions rang in my head. The first chair saxophonist trained her eyes on the bandmaster and fluttered her fingers with perfect timing. She was Janice from math, the one that I had jacked to write nursery rhymes. I reached toward her with my mind. I could jack her, make her miss her perfect notes. Make her blow every song for the rest of practice.

I shrank back inside myself. What kind of person does that?

I focused my eyes on the sheet music swimming in front of me and pretended to be a zero, instead of a dangerous freak lurking in the third-chair saxophonist seat.

chapter THIRTEEN

I dragged myself into the house and my insides squirmed, sourness from the day’s events eating me from the inside out. I trudged up the stairs to find Mom in the kitchen. She was digging around a low cabinet and had pots, pans, and strange kitchen gadgets evicted and strewn all over the floor. She backed out of the long-neglected cabinet, her hair spotted with furry dust worms.

A strangled laugh erupted from me.

“Hey,” she said. “Good day at school?”

“Um, yeah.” Part of me wanted to tell her everything—Shark Boy, jacking, Simon.
Simon.
He would want me to jack into my mom’s mind and control her like the students in the library, but jacking my mom summoned the same internal cringing I felt about controlling Raf.

“How is Raf doing?” she asked, as if she had read
my
mind.

“Raf?” I repeated. “Uh, yeah, Raf’s fine. Great.”

She smiled and brushed back a strand of dusty hair that had fallen over her face. I could practice like Simon wanted, link in and mindtalk and make her think I had finally changed. But I would have to do it all the time or she would know something was wrong, and I wasn’t sure I could pull it off.

Or wanted to.

I couldn’t decide which was the worse lie—that I was still a zero, or that I could read minds like everyone else. Either one was better than the truth—that I was a mindjacking freak.

“I need to study,” I said and fled to my room before she could ask me anything else. A vision of Raf, with his stony looks, chased me up the stairs.

~*~

The next morning I escaped the house before Mom could grill me, using mouthfuls of breakfast and a manufactured scowl to keep her questions at bay. The empty halls of school smelled of overnight cleaning. I rounded a corner and found Simon leaning against my locker, wearing a
Tactus Dura
t-shirt. I was starting to think he had a collection.

“Good morning,” I said carefully, opening my locker.

He rained a brilliant smile on me. “Good morning. How’s your practice going? Did you link your thoughts to anyone?”

I bit my lip, pretty sure I didn’t want to tell him about Shark Boy. “Well, no.”

He leaned against the lockers again and studied me. “What about your parents?”

“I don’t know. It just doesn’t feel right. You know, jacking into my mom’s head.”

He let loose an exaggerated sigh. “Kira, you’ll have to jack into
everyone’s
head.”

“I… I’m not sure I want to.” I looked away from his disappointment.

“Hey.” His hand tucked under my chin. “I know it’s hard. But you’re going to have to make a choice, Kira. Do you want to be a zero your whole life?” I shook my head, my chin rubbing gently against his fingers. “Then you have to learn how to jack everyone. Even your mom. You’ll make her happy when she thinks you can read minds like everyone else. I promise.”

I nodded, but the uncertainty must have shown in my face. Simon dropped his hand away. “It’s all or nothing, Kira. Because if you pick and choose, someone’s going to figure it out. And you’re not the only one with a secret here.” I nodded more vigorously. What would Simon do if someone found out our secret? I didn’t like the tight feeling that came with that thought.

His voice flipped back to soft and tender. “We’re in this together, right?”

“Right.” It sounded weak, so I backed it up with a tentative smile. I wanted Simon to trust me, and not only because his mood swings set my nerves on edge. I needed his help.

He brushed his fingers against my hair. “I’ll see you at lunch, okay?”

As students began to trickle in, he turned away—before anyone saw us together. I ignored the twinge in my chest and headed to Latin with renewed purpose.

Once there, I realized the difficulty of what I was facing. I had only mindjacked two people at the same time before. How could I juggle thirty minds at once? Instead, I stuck in my hearing aid and listened to Mr. Amando conjugate the verb to teach:
doceō, docēre, docuī, doctus
. I needed Simon to
doce
me how to jack an entire class before I attempted it on my own.