HEAR

Copyright © 2015 Robin Epstein

 

This is a work of
fi
ction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author's imagination or are used
fi
ctitiously, and any

resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

 

All rights reserved.

 

Published in the United States by Soho Teen

an imprint of

Soho Press, Inc.

853 Broadway

New York, NY 10003

 

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

 Epstein, Robin

H.E.A.R. / Robin Epstein.

ISBN 978-1-61695-581-6

eISBN 978-1-61695-582-3

1. Psychic ability—Fiction. 2. Extrasensory perception—Fiction.

3. Love—Fiction. 4. Murder—Fiction. I. Title. II. Title: HEAR.

PZ7.E72518Haae 2015

[Fic]—dc23 2015014948

Interior design by Janine Agro, Soho Press, Inc.

Printed in the United States of America

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

For Raymond Pero, a man of vision

“There is no logical way to the discovery of these elemental laws. There is only the way of intuition, which is helped by a feeling for the order lying behind the appearance.”

—
Albert Einstein

Author's Note

O
ver almost three decades, a small laboratory at Princeton University managed to embarrass university administrators, outrage Nobel laureates, entice the support of philanthropists and make headlines around the world with its efforts to prove that thoughts can alter the course of events.
—
The New York Times
, February 6, 2007

When I read that
first sentence in Benedict Carey's front-page article about what sounded like an ESP lab, I shook my head in disbelief. A laboratory that studied psychic phenomena? At Princeton University? Impossible!

But after racing through the article, then tumbling down a Google hole of curiosity, I discovered that not only did the Princeton Engineering Anomalies Research lab (PEAR) exist, it was modeled on similar laboratories at Stanford and Duke. And the more I read on the subject, the more fascinated I became, especially after learning that the Department of Defense, CIA and US Army Intelligence had spent millions of dollars studying parapsychology, the quantum physics of consciousness, and training their officers to become psychic spies. They weren't the only ones; the Soviets had a psychic warfare program, too.

The lab and university I write about in
HEAR
are entirely made up. But though the study of ESP is real and well funded, the subject itself remains controversial: Is it true science or science fiction? The doubters know their answer. Yet a lesson I've learned over the years is that just because I don't fully understand something doesn't mean it can't exist. If that were the case, I wouldn't trust math or believe in love either.

—Robin Epstein, New York City

PROLOGUE

“ You're cheating.”

Pankaj laughs at me, flicking his hair away from his eyes. His hair is jet black, and his amber eyes broadcast the confidence of a criminal who believes himself bulletproof.

I look at the three others and wait for them to respond. Surely they know he stacked the deck; they must.

But Mara just sighs, pretty-girl-speak for “Enough, loser, you're boring me.” Alex slowly turns away to face the sun, which is dropping out of view beyond Sinclair Lake. Dan at least gives what I think is a nod, but he won't meet my glance. His light-blue eyes remain inexplicably focused on the building to our left, the Henley University boathouse.

“Come on, you didn't catch the way he manipulated the cards?” I ask them.

Alex stretches out on the dock, resting on his elbows. Maybe he does this on purpose to show off his biceps. Of course he does; seeing that doesn't take a mind reader. Guys like Alex know exactly how good-looking they are. He closes his eyes. “Sorry, Kass, I didn't see anything. My head's not really in the game.”

“He's thinking about the action he's going to be getting at the party tonight. Aren't you, tiger?” Pankaj flings a card at Alex, making him smile.

“Should be fun,” Alex says.

I shake my head. “Not if our one great hope here keeps playing this badly.”

“Me?” Pankaj points to himself with one hand, sweeping his winnings out of the center of our circle with the other. “Correct me if I'm wrong, but didn't I just beat you? Why, yes, I did! In fact, I
schooled
you. I think you're just jealous you're not as good as I am.”

“Jealous?” I snort. But as much as I hate to admit it, I am impressed. I know how hard it is to pull off an artful sleight of hand, and to put one over on this group requires more than just skill: it takes
huevos
. Hard-boiled
huevos
. “ You're just lucky that no one here was paying attention. But if you start screwing with the deck tonight and someone catches you, the only action you'll see is an EMT giving you mouth-to-mouth.”

Pankaj smirks. “For someone who thinks she knows it all, it's amazing you don't realize how dumb you sound, Kass.”

I take a cue from Dan and turn away, toward the campus, toward the view of the towers and spires. Thanks to the university's prosperous alumni, Henley maintains the well-groomed look of country club awash in sunshine and green.

“Mara, back me up,” I say in the silence. “ You know as well as I do that those weren't the cards he was dealt.”

She curls a lock of hair around her ear, thinking, and leans forward to examine Pankaj's hand. Then she takes the cards and lays them in front of her. After a moment, she replies, “These are the cards he was supposed to get.”

This gets Alex's attention. “ You're basing this on what?” he asks. “Regular playing cards or your special voodoo deck?”

“Tarot is not voodoo,” Mara says, an edge in her voice. “And you can get a reading on someone with any deck of cards if you know how.”

“Wait.” Dan's eyes dart to Mara before quickly looking away again. “ You just said those were the cards he was supposed to get. What does that mean?”

“Means I didn't cheat.” Pankaj sounds as cocky as ever.

I shake my head. “That's not what she means.”

“Kass is right,” Mara concedes. “Regardless of how
you got those cards, Pankaj, they suit you.”

“I'm
suited
by three sevens and a pair of queens?”

Dan's eyebrows knit together. “Three is a prime number, and seven is a ‘happy prime,' but when you combine them with the queens, it's forty-one. So what's the significance? What does that mean?”

“Let's just say the sevens and queens fit his path,” Mara says.

For the first time all afternoon, Pankaj looks rattled. “Say what?”

“If your perception's so great, shouldn't you be able to see it?” I tease. When I give Pankaj a “gotcha” glance, there's a flash—a clip in the reel of real life that shouldn't be there. Just like that, a murky vision there and gone. But something still blazes between us, and I know this means we both saw the image, that we both just shared the same disturbing glimpse of the near future.

What the hell?
I ask silently.

I don't know
, he answers.
But we don't tell anyone about this.

No, we do not
, I agree.

“What's going on?” Alex asks us.

“Nothing,” we answer at the same time.

Mara, Alex, and Dan glance between Pankaj and me. And though they're all tuned in enough to sense we're lying, they're not on our frequency. So they don't yet know the hazy, partial vision we just shared: that three members of our group will form a powerful union, and one will die.

CHAPTER ONE

There's no announcement when we arrive. Everyone else just seems to know we've reached the final destination. I wait for a moment before I stand and watch those around me hoist their suitcases and backpacks. They all look calm and confident. Even the ones who are forced to turn around when they see the train conductor's “wrong way, asshole!” gesture. But I'm as nervous as I am excited, and I'm so excited I feel like I might throw up.

I still can't believe I'm here. I'm lucky, I know it. I always have been. Henley University's footprint is small, but its reach and reputation make it one of the most prestigious liberal arts colleges in the country, a staple on those U.S. News and Blah-Blah-Blah lists. And though my father took advantage of the system to get me here, I'll do whatever I have to do to stay.

When I step off the train, the sticky-hot summer air assaults me. It's as if the atmosphere itself is testing me by turning up the heat.

“Kassandra?”

I turn to see a tall elderly man striding in my direction. He's dapper in a crisp Oxford shirt rolled up to the elbows and green-and-white-striped seersucker pants. Though I haven't seen him since I was little, I recognize Great-Uncle Brian right away because the family resemblance is striking; he's the much older image of my dad.

“Kassandra?”

“Kass,” I say with a nod.

“Welcome to campus, Kass.” He scans my face as if doing a computer analysis. “Well, you look nothing like your father.”

“Thank you,” I reply quickly, before realizing the potential offense. “I mean—”

But Brian laughs. “Come, let's go. I'm afraid we have quite the hike back to my office. They built the engineering quad on the other end of campus, presumably to prevent our majors from trying to escape.”

Uncle Brian is the reason I'm here, and I need him to like me. He only let me into his summer workshop because my father begged him—and though Dad wouldn't tell me the specifics of how the deal was struck, he did let me know that the favor was costly. So if my great-uncle wants me to take that hike barefoot on glass, off go the shoes.

He threads his way through the people loitering on the train platform. As we trek across Henley's campus, I gawk at the buildings and their cool mash-up of designs. I didn't appreciate the details when I was here as a kid, but there's a heavy dose of Gothic architecture interspersed with hypermodern stuff, which makes it all feel vaguely CGI. It's like it's a movie-set version of a college, not the real thing.

“Not far now!” Brian says over his shoulder. I approach the curb where he's waiting for the light to change. “Once we get to Greaves Street, our quad is right there.”

“And how much farther is Greaves Street?” I ask.

“A mile or so.”

“What?” I gasp.

“That's not so bad, is it?”

Maybe this
is
a test. “No, no, that's fine,” I say as I try to rebalance the beast of a bag I'm carrying before it cuts off the circulation to my right arm.

Brian smiles. “Okay, green light. Let's roll.”

Twenty minutes later, my
arm feels as if it's about to fall off.

“We have arrived,” Brian announces. “Welcome to our SEAS, the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences. We're big on the acronyms here at Henley.”

I have no idea what Brian's specific area of study is. All I know is that he's the J. J. Dyckman Distinguished Professor of Applied Engineering. He opens the glass doors of the Merion Building, and we enter a two-story atrium. The space is open and bright: floor-to-ceiling glass partitions, white walls, oak doors.

There are a few indoor picnic tables, and he points to a fancy-looking hot-dog truck with a Henley blue-and-gold umbrella in the corner of the lobby. “If you're hungry, the Snack Wagon has all manner of sugary supplements as well as a large selection of healthy items. Too many healthy items if you ask me. But we're very fortunate here.”

I nod, struggling to keep up.

“Most of the other buildings in the SEAS quad were designed in the nineteen seventies, by people I assume were blind,” he continues dryly. “They were constructed almost entirely out of cinder blocks, giant fortresses of ugly. The Merion Building, however, was built by architects who knew something about aesthetics—it even features drywall.” Brian raps on one of the walls with the knuckles of his right hand. He seems genuinely enthusiastic about the white drywall. Before I can wonder why, he adds, “ You can tell how important a professor is by how much drywall he has in his office. Onwards.”

His office is almost too predictable. There are papers and books piled everywhere; models of an anatomical cross section of the human head, the solar system, some sort of chemical structure. What's surprising is how sunny it is. Of course, this might have something to do with all the bright-white drywall. There's a lot of it.

“Sit, sit, please!” He removes the stack of papers from the visitor's chair. Pile in hand, he walks behind his desk then promptly dumps it on the floor. “It's my own system of organization. I call it ‘dis-organization.'”

I try to smile, try to feel at ease. Not so easy. Dad gave me the impression that Uncle Brian was, in essence, a brain with teeth. Someone so brilliant he couldn't relate to normal people. “Peculiar,” “cold,” “never been married”—those were the descriptors overheard at the family gatherings Brian didn't bother to attend. The party line is that for all his eminent genius he isn't “quite right in the head.” On the other hand, by letting me come here, he's saving my ass, so I'm trying to give him the benefit of the doubt.

“Kass, close the door, will you?”

“Sure.” I turn around in my chair and swing the door shut. On the back of the door is a poster with four class photos attached. At the top someone has stenciled
hear summers
, and underneath each head shot, names are printed.

“What are HEAR Summers?”

“Ah yes,” Brian says. “They're the Henley Engineering Anomalies Research team. Meet Mara, Alex, Dan, and Pankaj—pronounced like punkedge.”

“Punk edge?”

“Run it together like one word,” he corrects. “Punkedge. They're the students you'll be spending your time with while you're here. Now look at me.”

As I turn back from the door, his phone's flash snaps in my eyes.

“Not bad.” He nods and hits a few buttons on the screen. The picture begins to materialize from his printer. “An action shot. Here.” He hands me the printout along with a thumbtack. “Will you put that up there with the rest? I'll print another to use with your Henley ID.”

I glance at the photo, and he's right: it's not terrible. Thankfully I'd plucked the Birchbox out of the mail just before leaving, so while on the train I'd busied myself by applying some of the samples: Midnight Blackest liquid eye liner, the Smashbox Intuitive O-Gloss. It took some effort in the tiny bathroom mirror, rocking back and forth on the tracks. Still, in the end, the makeup looked sharp. But as I'm about to tack the photo to the poster, I look more closely at the pictures of the others. They are not an average group of teens. They're all gorgeous. Like, modeling-agency attractive.

“Truly an extraordinary group of young people,” Brian says.

“They certainly look extraordinary,” I hear myself say as I attach my photo at the bottom of the bunch.

“ Yes, they also happen to be good-looking; it's true. So you'll fit right in, Kass.”

I turn and laugh. “Thanks, but I don't think—”

Brian holds up his hand in a “spare me” gesture. “As I was saying, your peers all have some marvelous qualities. Mara's an excellent artist. Alex speaks multiple languages. Dan is well known in the tech community for having created an alternative programming language. And Pankaj . . .” Brian pauses. “Well, he's what I'll call a character. He—”

There's a knock at the door.

“Professor Black,” a voice says, “ You home?”

“ Yes, come in, come in.”

I open the door, and one of the poster boys is in the hallway. He's even hotter than his picture: chestnut hair, slate-grey eyes, and swimmer's shoulders.

“Hi.” He extends his hand to me. “I'm Alex.”

“Kass.”

“Kass is our newest HEAR Summer,” Brian says. “She just arrived this morning.”

“Glad you made it.” Alex touches my arm just below the shoulder.

“Thanks.” I awkwardly lean against the wall. “I was just learning about your group . . . Are you the computer guy?”

Alex shakes his head. “No, that's Dan. My claim to fame is that I can speak a couple of languages.”

“He's being modest,” Brian interjects. “He speaks
fi
ve
languages. And not just your standard slacker Romance-language fare. In addition to Spanish, this young man is fluent in Arabic, Mandarin, Greek, and Hindi. He can communicate with at least one of every three people on the globe in their native tongue. He's bound for Harvard in the fall. The State Department nearly had me killed for taking him out of their intensive language program so he could join us here this summer instead.”

I try not to stare at Alex, opting for his photo instead. “That's . . . amazing.”

Now Alex leans against the wall, managing to appear much less awkward. “Languages are easy for me. So it isn't a big deal. And I'm sure people would kill for you too. I mean, just
look
at you.”

I feel a bright, hot blush spreading across my cheeks. “Speaking five languages sounds like a good party trick at the very least,” I say quickly.

He laughs. “Trust me, where I'm from in Texas, it's considered only slightly cooler than juggling fruit. So I'm curious, Kass: What's it like to have an uncle like Professor Black?”

I try to think of the most diplomatic way to explain it. I catch Brian's gaze but can't read his expression. “We haven't really spent much time together,” I reply honestly. “I'm glad that's going to change this summer.”

“We did spend
some
time together when you were a young child, right here on campus,” Brian clarifies. “I have pictures somewhere around here . . .” He picks up one of the avalanche-worthy piles on his desk, looks underneath it, then shrugs, acknowledging the futility of the effort. “Well, I'll find the photos at some point. Your parents would bring you when they came back for reunions. And you were also here for one of the many summer enrichment programs my colleague Chris Figg and I used to run on campus.”

Dad had reminded me of that too. But I only have the vaguest memories of the camp and the ponytailed man who ran it. Mostly I remember that it wasn't very camp-like. Not much fun, no swimming or volleyball, but lots of puzzle matching memory game type stuff. What stands out most vividly, still, is one mean little boy stomping on a popsicle-stick house I'd built. My first reaction was to cry; then I punched him. I think I was “excused” from the rest of the day's activities. I don't recall going back to camp after that.

“My parents met as students at Henley,” I tell Alex, mostly to fill the sudden silence. “At a Hounskull party. It's one of the Concord Clubs.” I hear myself spouting the story of my parents' romance, and I feel slightly ill.

“ You wouldn't think so looking at me, but there are some very good genes in the Black family pool,” Brian adds.

“Obviously.” Alex smiles agreeably and gives me a wink. “So, Kass, are you staying in the dorms with the rest of us?”

I look at my uncle.

“She'll be residing with me,” Brian explains. “My nephew, Kass's father, made that a condition of her stay here.”

“Well that's too bad,” Alex replies.

When our eyes meet, I wonder if he has a girlfriend. He must . . . though maybe they have a “what happens at Henley stays at Henley” policy?

Brian wags his finger at Alex. “We might have to watch out for this juggler.” Before either of us can reply, he continues, “Kass, I know your dad hasn't told you much about what's expected of you this summer.”

I nod, feeling Alex's eyes on me.

“As I mentioned, HEAR stands for Henley Engineering Anomalies Research,” Brian explains. “It was established in the nineteen forties as an interdisciplinary department, comprised of engineers, physicists, neuroscientists, and psychologists.” He pauses and I feel like he's waiting for me to ask a question.

“So . . . what do you study?”

For some reason, this makes Alex laugh. I can feel my face getting hot again.

“As the name suggests, we study anomalies,” says my uncle, shooting a stern glance at Alex. “Phenomena that deviate from the common order.”

“Let me translate,” Alex says wryly. “He means they study random stuff that no one can seem to explain.”

“ You could do your research at my high school,” I say, hoping to redeem myself.

Brian arches an eyebrow. “Really? What makes you say that?” He leans forward across his desk.

“I, um . . .” I summon my confidence. “A lot of kids pride themselves on being ‘anomalies' . . . you know, bizarre and unknowable creatures. But most of them are just basic, trying to act cool. Then there are the kids who are far from normal but have no idea that's the case.”

Alex laughs again. “That's every high school, isn't it?”

“Indeed.” Brian nods. “And what we also find is that many young people who possess truly extraordinary minds try to hide their gifts. They're worried they'll be thought of as different, even freakish. But even average teenagers have fascinating brains from a neurological standpoint, far more interesting than the average adult brain.”

I picture the lunch line in my high school cafeteria. I'm not sure I can agree with that statement. “What makes them—us—so interesting?”