Lost in Thought (31 page)

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This was a revelation. Made all the more shocking because he’d kept it from me. I understood, academically anyway, that Thought Movers existed. That they could move objects, or a person’s thoughts, with their minds. But seeing someone actually use an ability that, until a few months ago, I’d considered the stuff of science fiction, was amazing. Seeing it used by someone I loved, the same person who’d
hidden
the ability from me, was mind-scrambling. I couldn’t understand it.

“How…” I trailed off again.

“Are you sure that ladder didn’t hit you? You haven’t finished a sentence in the last four tries.” His tone was light, but it didn’t match his expression. If possible, he looked even more miserable at this moment than after Jill kissed him.

I thought about smacking him for joking, but this was too serious for me to make light of, even if Carter was trying. Instead, I went for one more incomplete sentence. “Please,” I murmured. “Explain.”

He sighed again. “My mother was a Thought Mover. My father was a
Lumen
. I won the gene lottery and got both. Plus great hair.”

“This isn’t funny, Carter!” Angry, as well as confused, I shouted at him for the first time ever. “How can you make a joke about something like this? And why the hell didn’t you
tell me?”

The great hair got more of a workout. It was sticking in every direction, which actually
would
have been funny, if not for everything else that had just happened. “You’re right,” he said. “It’s not funny. And I didn’t mean to tell you at all. It’s a secret, and if you weren’t so damn clumsy, I’d have kept it.”

I glared at him. I might have been clumsy, true, but this was so not my fault. He had no right to be angry at me for something that he’d done. I’d thought we were having it earlier, but
this
was our first real fight. I leaned back from him even further and crossed my arms. My own anger was helping clear my fuzzy brain.

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“I didn’t do this, Carter. You did. If you want to be angry at someone, be angry at yourself. And as for me, I’ll be mad at you too.” His words clicked into place then, and it dawned on me that this secret was not only from me. Color me shocked again. “When you said ‘secret,’

you mean…
no one
knows? How is that possible?”

Carter’s anger drained, replaced by agitation. He hopped up and paced back and forth several times before abruptly dropping back into his chair and looking at me. “My family knows, and now you know too. No one else. I didn’t think, when I saw that ladder about to hit you. I shouldn’t have done it, but now I have, and I can’t take it back as much as I wish I could, even if I’d be carrying you to the infirmary right now instead. In fact, that would have been far more romantic than what I’m about to do, which is beg you not to tell anyone, or,” he added very quietly, “force you not to, if I have to.”

For a moment, I didn’t breathe. Had he just threatened me? I looked at his face, completely serious, and I knew that he had and that he meant it too. I added scared to my list of angry and confused.

“But…why? They might be rare, but there are other Thought Movers, or so you tell me. Why are you a secret, a secret you have to
threaten
me to keep?”

“Because Lainey, I can move anything I’ve seen at least once before.”

“I don’t understand.”

He rubbed his hands over his eyes, those beautiful blue eyes, and like that, I
did
understand. There was something else he’d been keeping from me, though it was a connection I should have made long ago. I saw it the first time I met him, and several times since. When the ladder fell, I’d seen it again. When he used Thought, his eyes flashed, for the briefest moment, becoming deep blue on the inside, with the light blue line around the outside.

“Oh my God,” I whispered.

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He looked up at me sharply and smiled a bitter smile. “So maybe you do understand after all.”

I went for the lesser question. Much like when I had the worst of my visions, I was starting to feel the blackness at the edge of my thoughts that signaled I was going to pass out. I needed to give my brain time to cope before it shut down completely. “Your eyes,” I said.

“Your eyes…invert when you do it.”

“Yes. Though only other Sententia can see it.”

“Why is that?”

“It’s kind of like subliminal messaging, I guess, or a defense mechanism. A way that we can recognize each other. It’s so fast, most people would never be able to notice it, or if they did notice, they’d write it off, think their eyes were playing tricks on them. Sententia are special. We can see it and recognize it for what it is.”

“Do mine do it?”

“Sure, though it’s hard to tell.” His face softened. “They’re such an equal mix of green and brown.” He reached out as if to touch my hand or maybe my cheek, but I recoiled. I wasn’t ready for affection.

“Why didn’t you tell me about it? So that I could defend myself,” I demanded. “It was your job to tell me about our world and I trusted you to do it.”

Putting it like that wounded him, I could see it. His dejection was almost palpable by now. But instead of answering me directly, he asked, “How did you figure it out?”

“At the bookstore,” I said, “the first time I met you. I saw your eyes, when your Aunt knocked over the box downstairs. But I guess she didn’t knock it over. You did. I thought I was going crazy.”

“Guilty. I was pretty sure she was about to say something you shouldn’t hear, so…” he shrugged. “I stopped her.” He took a deep breath. “I’m sorry. I didn’t tell you because…well, I thought you hadn’t noticed. You never asked about it. And I thought…if you

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hadn’t noticed, didn’t know about it, it would make it easier to keep my secret. I…I wanted to tell you, Lainey.
Everything,
I mean. I really did. You’re the only person outside my family I’ve
ever
wanted to tell, even been tempted to tell. It’s just…I’ve been keeping it secret for so long, it’s second nature. I would have told you eventually though, I swear.” He shook his head. “God, when am I going to stop having to apologize for my screw-ups? I can’t do anything right when it comes to you.”

I mulled that over. It wasn’t exactly true. Carter did most things right in our relationship, as far as I was concerned. But at the same time, we had been in this position a few too many times, me on one shore of Carter’s ocean of regret. Secrets really were the epicenter of most harmful things, I thought. I hoped we’d finally exposed all of the ones between us.

I ran my palms over the smooth surface of the oak table. It suddenly seemed enormous, like a giant, comforting shield. I wanted to put my head down on it and not think, but that wouldn’t get us anywhere. The dark, fuzzy feeling had dissipated, so it was time to face reality. It seemed like I was doing a lot of that today. I looked at Carter closely. He was on edge and uncertain, the complete opposite of his usual cool and confident. I wasn’t sure if he was more worried about his secret or about me forgiving him. Probably it was a tie.

Finally, I asked, “When you said you can move anything you’ve seen once, you meant anything,
anywhere,
didn’t you? You don’t have to be near it, or looking at it, at the time?”

He nodded infinitesimally.

“Oh my God,” I said again. “How far?”

“As far as we’ve tried to test it. I don’t think there’s a limit.”

I nodded, like what he said made perfect sense, but my brain was working feverishly to rewrite its definition of
possible.
If anything

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should be impossible, this was it. “What did you mean by ‘almost anything’?”

“I can’t move things anchored by God.” I raised my eyebrows at him. “Fancy Perceptum talk for alive,” he clarified. “I can’t move anything that’s rooted by life. But pretty much anything else is fair game…rocks, boxes, old library ladders…”

I thought about these limitations. I already knew it was quick, simple movements—changes of intention—that Thought Movers could produce. Earlier, he’d changed the direction of the ladder from knocking me out to cracking on the floor. But even small changes of intention or direction could produce big consequences.

Finally I asked, “Could you move an airplane?”

“It wouldn’t be easy, but yes, if I’ve seen it or parts of it that might matter, like the control panel. And there’s no one in it.”

So no crashing airplanes out of the sky, at least. “Could you stop bullets?”

“Possibly. If I’ve seen them.”

“Could you
fire
bullets?”

He hesitated and looked away. “If I’ve seen the gun.”

I repeated my new favorite phrase. “Oh. My. God.”

“So do you understand? Why this has to stay a secret?” He stared at me adamantly, then added, “Do you understand what would happen to me if it doesn’t?”

I nodded. The possibilities of his power were practically limitless.

And awesome. And frightening. “There’d be no end to how people would try to use you. To be a humanitarian. To be a weapon.”

“Yes, that’s possible,” he agreed. “But it’s not what I meant.”

“What could be worse than that?”

He gripped my hand and I let him, his intensity was so absorbing.

“Don’t you see, Lainey? If the Perceptum knew about my abilities, they wouldn’t try to use me. They’d send
you
to find me.”

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“You…you can’t be serious,” I stammered. How could anyone want to hurt Carter? How could anyone think that
I
would hurt Carter? I realized he was holding the hand the Perceptum would send to hurt him, if they could, and I snatched it back.

“Deadly,” he said with a wan smile. “And that’s not even a pun, so don’t get angry.” He sighed before saying, “Every once in a while, maybe once a generation, a person comes along whose gift is too powerful to exist…This time, it’s me.”

I shook my head. Now I understood how he’d been willing to threaten me. Carter’s very life hung in the balance of this secret. And his own
uncle
was head of the Council. There’s no way he’d let that happen, would he?

I was outraged at the thought. “How could your uncle do that to you?!”

Carter shrugged. “I don’t think he would. But this is why there’s a council. They’re supposed to be objective, not emotional…I’d have to pray for a tie vote, where the President is the tie breaker.”

I’d already feared the Perceptum, but now I hated them. I could recognize how they thought what they did was for the greater good, but I couldn’t support them, especially not when Carter himself was at their mercy. And I didn’t trust them. The Council was made up of human beings, and humans were fallible. We’d already talked about how being Sententia didn’t necessarily make someone a good person. I was sure that applied to Council members too. Plus, power corrupts, right? For all I knew, the Council was
more
prone to temptation, not less.

Of course, maybe I wasn’t giving them, the whole organization even, a fair chance. I didn’t know. All I was certain of was I would do whatever was in my power to keep Carter safe. I’d have kept his secret anyway; knowing the severe consequences of not keeping it made it easier to do.

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“Does…does your uncle not know? Your Uncle Dan, I mean. If he knows…” I trailed off. If he knew, wouldn’t the Perceptum already know too?

I was surprised by his response. “He does know. And no, he hasn’t told the Council,” Carter added quickly. “It could get him voted out of the presidency, but he hasn’t told them. I guess he loves me enough to risk it.”

“Why did you tell him at all? I thought you hardly ever see him.”

“Because I had to talk to someone!” he nearly shouted. The extreme intensity was back. This time I reached out and took
his
hand. It was a big gesture from me, considering how he’d been threatening me a few minutes before. But for perhaps the first time, he needed
me
to support
him
. He gripped my hand tightly and managed to give me a small smile.

In control again, he continued in a more subdued voice. “I was thirteen, which is hard enough, when I did it the first time. It was the silliest thing. I was down in the store, getting ready to go to school, when I realized I’d left my TV on. I thought about turning it off. I was late, and I didn’t want to run back upstairs, and I…I
felt
it. I hadn’t just thought about turning it off; I’d
Thought
about it.”

He cleared his throat, and I squeezed his hand to encourage him to go on. “I told you before how there’s a physical sensation to using Thought in that way—God, I’ve almost slipped up with you so many times before; it would have been so much easier if I’d just told you the truth. Anyway, it’s difficult to describe. Like electricity, maybe. But it’s real and I felt it then. Just like that, I knew I was a Thought Mover.

And what I knew about them scared me. I
shouldn’t
have been able to use Thought to affect something so far away.
That
was not right and I was in trouble.”

“Your uncle?” I prompted. He’d started this story with needing to talk to someone, and his Uncle Dan had been it. I guessed I knew

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what that meant about him, and about Carter’s mother, but I wanted to let Carter tell me the whole thing.

“Yeah, my uncle…There was no one else. Obviously my mother was gone—she really was dormant, by the way; I didn’t lie about that—and my dad didn’t know how to help me. He was more freaked out than I was. My grandfather—my mother’s father, I mean—was already gone too. Besides which, they’d lived in Canada and kind of hated me…pretty much thought my dad stole their daughter and then I killed her. Anyway, despite their differences, Uncle Jeff thought his brother was who we needed and he trusted Dan to help and protect me. And he has.”