Open Minds (2 page)

At the far end, a group of readers had formed a tight circle, all facing inward. I cringed, knowing some freshman changeling was in the middle, being harassed by the
small minds of heavenly wrath
that populated my school.

I dragged myself toward them, not wanting to get involved, but I couldn’t stand to see another kid go demens, driven mad by the change. Some kids fuzzed out on obscura to escape the mental chaos of reading minds. But the three suicides last year were sent spiraling by more than simply the voices in their heads. As a zero, I endured dirty looks and menacing boys. It could get a lot nastier for the changelings.

The girl huddled on the floor inside her ring of tormentors, clutching her head and squeezing her eyes shut, as if that would keep out the sims that surrounded her newly minted reader mind. What they were doing was a misdemeanor thought crime, but I couldn’t exactly turn the pravers in. The administrators might get their true memories under questioning, especially if they brought in a truth magistrate, but they wouldn’t do that based on the word of a zero.

“Hey!” My voice cut through the quiet. “Go be evil somewhere else!”

Their heads swung in unison, lit with astonishment. Of course they hadn’t sensed me. They glanced at each other, then turned as a unit and walked down the hall in the creepy synchronized way that readers sometimes did. Hassling me must not be worth the tardy.

The changeling still sat with her eyes shut, clutching her knees and slowly rocking. I waited until the others disappeared into the chemistry wing before I edged over to her.

I kept my voice soft so it wouldn’t travel. “It’s okay. They’re gone.”

Her eyes snapped open. She scrambled away from me, banging into the locker wall. She braced herself up from the carpet and slowly backed down the hall.

Even the harassed knew who was lowest on the social ladder.

I shook my head. The changeling was on the wrong side of the pravers today, but if she survived the change, she might do something important one day, like heal people or rescue them from burning buildings.
It’s still possible
, I told myself.
The change could still come.
But I wasn’t sure I believed it anymore.

And no one would trust a doctor whose mind they couldn’t read.

chapter TWO

Mr. Amando may be mesh, but Mr. Chance was
the
teacher to have in junior year.

I shuffled past him into second-period English. He was already filling the minds of the students circled around him with the sights, sounds, and smells of exotic sims I would never experience. Mr. Chance looked half-demens with his old-fashioned patched jacket and feathered hat, but his students were clearly entranced.

I had as much chance of passing his class as the chair I was sitting on.

Life wasn’t always this bleak. Back in junior high, Trina and I had talked for endless hours about nothing, everything, and boys. Raf tried for a year to convert me to that screechy synchrony music he likes. Then Trina went through the change and Raf wasn’t far behind. Nearly everyone had their change parties by the end of freshman year.

The longer I remained a zero, the more likely I would be that one-in-a-thousand who would never change. Zeros didn’t attend college—no one trusted them to do real work, so what did they need college for? I’d have to get some low-paying job where I wouldn’t have to mindtalk or be trusted. At least I didn’t live in a country where they sent zeros to asylums. In Chicago New Metro, I’d just be relegated some job that readers couldn’t stand, like guarding the demensward of a mental hospital.

Raf, in his fitted soccer jersey and oversized shoes, blew into class on the final bell. Female attention swept down the aisle with him, and he glided into the chair next to me. When we won the State Championship last year, Raf became the Portuguese Soccer God, and girls still swarmed around him like bees in a field of clover and honeysuckle. He eased his backpack to the floor and flashed me a grin. I returned it, powerless to resist when he was the only one not treating me like furniture.

“You’re going to wreck your image, sitting next to me,” I said quietly.

He caught two girls ogling him. “I need something to take the shine off.”

I smirked. “I’m just the zero to help you out with that.”

A stormy scowl crossed his face. “Don’t call yourself that, Kira.” His Portuguese accent got stronger when he was riled. I’d missed it while he was away at soccer camp.

I shrugged and traced the non-slip pattern on my desk. The world and I were at a standoff, waiting for me to change, but the world didn’t care. If I never changed, it would move on and leave me trying to catch up in a race I would never win. How long would Raf hang around? How long would I keep hoping, not giving up?

Sooner or later, we would both have to face the truth.

My face must have shown the pity party in my head, because the storm on Raf’s face gentled into a soft flurry of concern. I concentrated on twisting a strand of my hair. Thankfully, some unspoken thought from Mr. Chance commanded everyone’s attention.

He was scribbling on the same wireless board the teachers used last year, when they still taught out loud for the readers who hadn’t mastered their skills. If only he had a mindware board, he could focus his thoughts on that and transmit them straight to our e-slates. Instead, students had to mentally focus to hear his thoughts. Great for them, to increase their mindreading skills, but it wasn’t making my life any easier.

Mr. Chance’s board notes claimed that his grandfather had taught with antique paper books, and he proceeded to walk between the rows and pass some out. I didn’t understand why we weren’t using regular books. I tried not to break my copy when I cracked the pages open. Bits of paper dust floated up from the yellowed pages and smelled musty, like dried grass. I peeked at Raf’s book, and he showed me the pages we were supposed to read. I sped through the opening chapter of
The Scarlet Letter
, careful not to crumble the pages to dust.

When I finished, Rafael was still bent over his book, dark curls hanging off his forehead as he plumbed the depths of Hester’s pain. A summer of running drills had tanned his light olive skin, and his lips pursed in concentration. I wondered if his thick eyebrows were soft or bristly. His blinding smile sent me scurrying back to my own book.

It wasn’t fair that every other girl in school knew his thoughts better than I did.

If I changed, things might be different. Until then, well, zeroes simply didn’t date. Some pravers like Shark Boy might enjoy feeling up a zero girl, but no normal boy would want a mental-reject with a pre-adolescent brain. It was like dating your friend’s twelve-year-old sister.

If I didn’t change, boyfriends would be like college—an experience other people would have while I figured out my life as a zero. I pushed that thought from my mind.

Students swung their seats around, and I realized we were breaking into groups. I had lucked into having Raf nearby, since no one else would want to pair with me.

“What’s up?” I asked.

“We’re supposed to discuss the symbol of the rosebush outside Hester’s prison door.” Raf kept his voice low, but he still gathered annoyed looks from two readers next to us.

“Even the author says he doesn’t know what it means.”

“Well, I guess we’re supposed to be smarter than him.” Raf scooted closer so we could whisper. I flipped through the paper book and tried to ignore the nearness of Raf’s arm on my chair, but it was hard to focus with him so close.

“So what’s your theory, Soccer Cyborg?”

“Hey!” Raf pretended to be affronted. “I’m more than just an athletic machine!”

“Yeah. You have awful taste in music, too.”

“As if you don’t have
Cantos Syn
on your player.”

“Whatever.” But I smiled. “So, the rosebush?”

He leaned closer and spoke in a mock grave voice. “I think it means she likes flowers.” My strangled laugh didn’t distract Mr. Chance from his animated sims up front. When we were done, we spent the rest of class in more reading, with only the flipping of paper pages and rustling of seats to disturb the silence. Raf smiled his goodbye, and a cluster of girls captured him up front. I didn’t watch, not needing that particular torture, and slipped out the rear classroom door.

My ex-friend Trina and a dark-haired girl hunched over a shared mindware phone by the girls’ bathroom, like it held the answers to the universe’s most pressing questions. If I had the ability they took for granted, I wouldn’t waste my time conjuring holographic unicorn games.

My snort carried across the hall, but didn’t attract their attention. Unfortunately, I did catch the notice of another couple of students. They leaned against the wall five steps down from Trina and smiled at me like I was their next meal.

Shark Boy and his friend, Shark Junior.

chapter THREE

I spun away from Shark Boy and Shark Junior and their leering grins.

Raf and his gaggle of admirers were still working their way down the hall. I scurried up to blend into his group of fans. No one noticed me, not even Raf. Shark Boy’s thoughts must not have carried over the mental clamor of the hall. If he touched me out in the open, he would be violating the No Touching Rule, but that hadn’t stopped him on the bus. If he tried anything now, at least Raf would help me fend him off.

Seamus had explained the No Touching Rule shortly after he changed—how readers shared feelings when they touched. That was all the information I got before my brother had turned red and bolted from the room, but it explained why everyone became bizarre about their personal space after they changed and why air-kissing was as far as things went in public.

Not that I knew much about what happened in private.

I didn’t hazard a look back until our ragtag group had rounded the corner. Shark Boy and his friend seemed to have given up, probably waiting for a time when fewer witnesses would be privy to their nasty thoughts. My heart didn’t stop pounding until I was safely in my seat in biology.

I managed to muddle through the rest of my morning classes. The soaring humidity of the Chicago New Metro suburbs was like an extinct rainforest simulation, and my jeans were sticking to my legs.

All right, wearing jeans in August—that was my fault.

After lunch, I had high hopes for Algebra II. I was Mr. Barkley’s top student in freshman Algebra I, and I managed to pass Geometry. Being all written work, it leveled the playing field.

I strode into class right before the bell and smiled at Mr. Barkley as I passed his desk. His unexpected smile in return distracted me, and I stumbled over a backpack, left like a land mine halfway down the center aisle. Then three things happened in rapid succession: I fell forward, I grabbed the edge of a desk to catch myself, and I pivoted down into Simon Zagan’s lap.

Falling and catching myself: fine. Landing on Simon Zagan: a tragic catastrophe.

Our arms tangled, all sticky from the heat. He jerked back, dumping me off his lap.

“Watch it, zero!”

 I scrambled to avoid face-planting on the floor, but my backpack spewed its contents under occupied chairs on either side. I was glad no one could hear the elaborate profanities coursing through my mind. The nearby students stared as though I had gone demens and leaned away as I retrieved the items under their seats.

As if I might jump them next.

When I had finally gathered my scribepads and stylus, my thankfully intact e-slate, and Mr. Chance’s battered paper book, I slung my gaping, empty backpack over my free shoulder.

I paused to shoot a daggered glare at Simon.

Under normal circumstances, I wouldn’t have been so bold. With his black, arrow-straight hair and dark, intense eyes, Simon seemed slightly dangerous. He never got in any real trouble that I knew of, but he hung out with the kids voted least likely to graduate.

Unfortunately for Simon, I had reached my quota of self-righteous pravers for the day. So I glared at him, and he glared back like he was trying to drill into my head. Then the strangest look came over him, as if he was puzzled by something I said, although I had been successful in biting my tongue and not saying anything at all.