Authors: David Lubar

B005N8ZFUO EBOK (13 page)

BOOK: B005N8ZFUO EBOK

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T
he smart thing would have been to just forget what I knew. There was no way they’d want to hear this. But, if I’d been good at doing the smart thing, I wouldn’t have ended up at Edgeview.

I waited until that evening, when Flinch, Lucky, and Cheater were in the room with Torchie and me. Then I waited until they started talking about science class. That didn’t take long.

“You know,” Cheater said, “I’d bet that Mr. Briggs could get fired for that experiment.”

“You’re crazy,” Torchie said.

“No, he’s right,” Lucky said. “Any of that kind of different stuff, they get real funny about it. In my last school, this teacher explained some things to us about witches. It wasn’t bad stuff, just how some people had certain beliefs. She didn’t swallow any of it herself—none of us did. She just told us about it. And she got fired.”

“Exactly,” Cheater said. “Mr. Briggs could get in big trouble.”

“But it was worth it,” I said.

They all turned toward me. I pulled the printout from my notebook and scanned it again to boost my courage. Now that I’d started, I had to convince them. If I failed, they’d probably hate me forever.

“Think about this,” I said. “What would your score be if you answered the same thing each time? What if for each of the twenty-five guesses you said ‘square’?” Suddenly, I had a very good idea how a
parachutist felt the first time he jumped out of a plane. I could almost feel myself hurtling through the air. My stomach sure seemed to believe I was plunging toward a canyon filled with jagged rocks. I waited for my parachute to open.

“But there aren’t twenty-five squares,” Torchie said.

“Right,” Flinch said. “There are five. So you’d score five out of twenty-five. That’s one out of five, or twenty percent. You’d be right at the average.”

I took a deep breath.
Here it comes
. This was the leap of thinking I had to help them make. It was obvious to me, but I was good at math. So was Flinch. Cheater was, too, but I knew he wouldn’t do anything to help me. Torchie might have trouble following the explanation. But if I could convince the others, he’d go along with them.

“Now,” I said, looking at Cheater, “is there any way to make sure you’d get a lower score? Can you think of anything you could do to make sure you’d only get four right, or three, or two?”

“You could …” Torchie started to say. Then I guess he stopped to think. Cheater remained silent. So did Lucky.

“Can’t be done,” Flinch said. “There’s no way to average less than five hits in the long run. Whether you just said ‘square’ each time, or if you mixed them up, you’d still hit one out of five, in the long run, no matter what.”

“So,” I said, not taking my eyes from Cheater, “how could someone miss every card, not just in one test, but six times in a row?”

“That’s impossible,” Flinch said. “You’d have to get some of them right just by chance.”

As Flinch spoke, Cheater looked away from me.

“Unless you knew what the right answer was,” I said. “If you knew the right answer, but you wanted to prove you didn’t, it would be easy to get every answer wrong. Easy, but not a good way to hide your ability. Mr. Briggs was interested in kids who got more than five right. He didn’t bother to look at the other side—
kids who got less than five
.” I held up the printout and pointed at Cheater’s scores.

“Wow. You’re right,” Flinch said, grabbing the printout from my hand. “It would be impossible to miss every one, unless you knew what the right answers were. Maybe—just maybe—you could miss all the cards on one test. But on
every
test? Give me a break.”

Even Torchie saw that I was right. “Cheater, you
can
read minds.”

Cheater shook his head. “No, I can’t. Mr. Briggs didn’t say anything. He would have said something …”

“Mr. Briggs was looking for hits, not misses,” I said. “You should be glad he was. If he’d noticed your score, he’d have known right away that something was wrong.”

“But …” Cheater looked around the room. “Lucky, you don’t believe this nonsense, do you?”

Lucky just shrugged.

“Flinch,” Cheater said, “you can’t swallow this stuff?”

“It makes perfect sense to me,” Flinch said. “Numbers don’t lie.”

Cheater turned to Torchie. “Come on, Torchie,” he said, “at least you believe me. I can’t read minds, and even if I could, I’d never tell anyone about your secret hiding place.”

Torchie gasped. “How’d you know? That’s just what I was thinking.” He stared at Cheater for a moment, then looked around at the rest of us. “I was worried that Cheater would read my mind and know where I hid my favorite comics.”

I could see it in their faces. They believed. Torchie was sure now—there was no doubt in his face, just wonder and amazement. The same with Lucky and Flinch.

I watched Cheater. I expected him to be angry or happy. Instead, he looked like he was about to cry. “I don’t want to be different,” he said quietly.

“But you are,” I told him. “Hey, everyone is different in some way, right?”

“Not this different,” Cheater said.

“No choice,” Flinch told him. “You are what you are. You gotta live with it.”

“There’s this guy in my town,” Cheater said. “Everyone called him Crazy Wally. He walked around talking to himself. He heard voices. People laughed at him. Kids teased him. One day, the voices told him to get even. He killed three people before the police shot him.” Cheater stared right at me. “I’m not crazy.”

“Hey, nobody said you were.” I began to understand his anger and fear. “You don’t hear voices. You aren’t walking around talking to yourself. That’s not what it’s like, is it?”

Cheater shook his head. He started to speak again, but it took several tries. “I didn’t want to believe it.” He looked down at the floor.

We all waited quietly. Finally, he went on. “Sometimes, I guess I just know stuff. It’s not like I hear it. I can’t pick through people’s brains. I guess I only get what someone is actually thinking. It’s like their thoughts show up in my mind.”

“Like a memory?” I asked.

“Yeah, that’s it,” Cheater said. “But I know stuff on my own, too. I’m really smart. Ask me anything. Anything at all.”

“Hey, relax. We know you’re smart,” I told him. “You’re probably the smartest kid I’ve ever met.”

Cheater smacked his leg with his fist. “But sometimes I can’t tell it apart—the stuff I learned and the stuff that pops up.”

“So you’re not even sure where it’s coming from,” I said. That explained his problems in school. “When you’re taking a test, you think the ideas are from your own mind. You don’t hear the thoughts of the kid next to you—the thoughts are just there in your mind.”

“Yeah. I guess …”

Flinch started to laugh.

“What’s so funny?” Cheater asked.

“All your life, you’ve never cheated, right?” Flinch asked.

Cheater nodded. “Never. Not until the experiment.”

“So after all that, after a whole lifetime of being honest, when you finally decide to cheat you’re so bad at it you get caught right away.” Flinch rolled on the floor, laughing so hard he started to gasp for breath.

Cheater laughed, too. Then his face grew serious and he looked around the room. “I don’t try to spy on anyone. I really can’t.”

“We know,” Lucky said. He put a hand on Cheater’s shoulder. “I trust you.”

“Hey, don’t worry,” Torchie said. “We aren’t afraid of you or nothing. Honest.”

“You aren’t crazy. And you aren’t the only one with special powers,” I said.

They all turned back to me. I felt like I was jumping out of another plane.

“You aren’t going to start that again, are you?” Torchie asked.

“No,” I said, “I’ll just sit here and let you set your chair on fire.” I pointed toward his left hand.

“Youch!” Torchie jumped up from his seat. On the arm of the chair, where he’d rested his fingers against the wood, a smoldering spot gave off a small wisp of smoke. “Who did that?”

“You did, Torchie,” I said. “Somehow, you can start fires. There’s no other explanation.”

Torchie stepped away from his chair as the glowing area dimmed and then vanished, leaving a charred blotch. He didn’t say anything. I turned toward Flinch. “What do I have to do? Throw stuff at you? Come on, Flinch, this is the time. Cheater has stopped lying to himself. So has Torchie. Well? As you just said, you gotta learn to live with it.”

“You’re right. And I guess I gotta talk about it. Stuff speeds up sometimes,” Flinch said. “I see something about to hit me, so I jump out of the way. Then everything slows down until the world catches up. But I’ve already gotten out of the way. That’s how it’s been my whole life. I figured it was kind of like that for everyone. Or else I was some kind of freak.”

“You’re seeing into the future,” I told him. “Not very far, but definitely into the future. That’s why you always have the flipper ready in time when you play pinball.”

“No, that can’t be it. I’m …” Flinch stopped. He couldn’t seem to think up another explanation.

“And you have a talent for finding things,” I told Lucky. “I’m not sure what it means. Maybe you sense the objects. Or maybe you sense some sort of mark left on the object by the owner. I don’t know. But it sure isn’t a skill everyone has.”

Lucky shrugged. “I’ve always figured I was just lucky.”

“You are,” I said. “You all are.” As much as I should have been thrilled that they finally believed me, there was a sad side I couldn’t ignore. I guess I felt left out. They had these wonderful abilities. I had nothing. But at least I could help one more person—someone I’d treated pretty rottenly. “There are others,” I said.

“Who?” Lucky asked.

“Well, I’m not positive in some of the cases, but there’s one person I’m absolutely sure about. Hang on, I’ll go get him.” I went down the hall and knocked on Trash’s door.

“What?” he asked when I stepped inside.

“There are some kids down the hall who want to meet you,” I said.

“Is this your idea of a joke?” he asked.

“No joke,” I said. “Promise.”

“Why would they want to meet me?” he asked.

“Let’s just say you have a lot in common.” I turned toward the door, then stopped. “Well?”

Trash shrugged and got up. I could understand that he’d want to be cautious. But as he crossed the room, I thought I saw the slightest hint of a smile on his lips.

UNFINISHED LETTER FROM DOROTHY ANDERSON

PART THREE

POWERS

NOW WHAT?

T
he others accepted Trash pretty quickly. I guess it wasn’t hard for them to realize they shared a rare and common bond—especially Torchie and Trash. Since the two of them had the most destructive powers, they’d gotten into the most trouble. For the first week, I had to walk down the hall and invite Trash to our room each evening.

“Hey, why don’t you come over and hang out with us?”

“You sure?”

“Yeah, come on.”

But then he started popping in by himself. I guess it had been a long time since anyone had welcomed him anywhere. I knew what that felt like.

Trash certainly added some excitement to our lives. We were never sure when he’d launch a book across the room or tip a chair, dumping out whoever was sitting in it. I learned to keep an eye on Flinch. As soon has he ducked, I knew it was time to hug the carpet and cover my head.

The word we heard the most from Trash was, “Sorry.”

I finally told him to knock it off. It was Friday, but we’d decided not to sneak out of the school. We didn’t want to ditch Trash, but we didn’t think the town of Edgeview was ready for a visit from him. Besides, one of those bitter-cold mid-February storms had made the trip less appealing than usual.

So we were hanging out in the room. Torchie was playing the harmonica. All of a sudden, his chair jolted as if someone had given it a hard kick. It didn’t move far enough to knock him off, but it sure got his attention. “Whoa!” Torchie shouted as jumped from his seat.

“Sorry,” Trash said.

“No big deal,” Torchie told him. He sat back down and returned to the thirty-ninth chorus of “Red River Valley.”

A minute later, Cheater screamed and leaped from the floor where he’d been sitting. As he twisted around, I saw the back of his underwear hanging over the top of his jeans.

“Wow,” I said, amazed at the sight. “That’s got to be the world’s biggest wedgie.”

“Sorry,” Trash said.

“Did you do that to him on purpose?” Lucky asked as Cheater straightened out his clothing.

“No way,” Trash said. “I’d never touch anybody’s underwear on purpose. Not even with my mind.” He shuddered.

“Yeah,” Flinch said. “If you did that, you’d need to get brainwashed.” Before I could laugh, a pencil flew from my desk and plunked against the side of my head just hard enough to make me say, “Ouch.”

“Sorry.” Trash picked up the pencil and put it back on the desk.

“How about you just say sorry once a day?” I suggested. “Say it in the morning, and that’ll cover whatever happens during the next twenty-four hours. Okay?”

“I’ll try.” He dropped his gaze to the floor for a moment, but then looked back up. He reminded me of a puppy who’d just been scolded.

I glanced around the room. “Everyone happy with that?”

“Sure,” Torchie said. “Fine with me.”

The others nodded.

“And you,” I said, staring at Flinch. “Stop it with the sneezing thing. Someone is going to figure out what’s happening. You did it again this afternoon in science.”

Flinch had fallen into a habit of saying “Gesundheit” right before
any of us sneezed. That afternoon, he’d even handed me a tissue. He must have been keeping it ready, just waiting for an opportunity. He’d reached over and thrust it into my hand during class and whispered, “Bless you.” A half second later, I’d sneezed. It’s a good thing Mr. Briggs hadn’t been looking.

“You have to knock it off,” I said.

Flinch grinned and, doing a great imitation of Trash, he hung down his head and said, “I’m sorry.”

“It’s not funny,” Cheater said. “If they find out about us, bad things are gonna happen. People hate anyone who’s different.”

“Yeah. They could cut us up to figure out how we work,” Lucky said.

“That’s”—I almost said crazy, but I caught myself in time—“not going to happen.”

“Or lock us in a room,” Cheater said. “You know, use us for weapons. Or as spies.” He walked over and blew out a small fire that had started smoldering in the wastebasket.

“They wouldn’t do that,” Torchie said. “But we’d probably get split up if they found out.”

“It’s like a secret weapon,” Lucky said. “It works best if nobody knows about it. We can’t tell anyone.”

“It’ll work even better if you learn to control it,” I said. As those words left my lips, Torchie’s pillow shot across the room and whizzed past Flinch’s head. Naturally, he’d dodged aside a second earlier.

“Sor—” Trash started to say. “Oops.”

“How can we control it?” Torchie asked.

Trash shook his head. “I can’t. I’ve tried.”

“Me, too,” Cheater said.

“There has to be something we can do.” Torchie looked at me as if I had all the answers in the world.

So did the others.