Mindspeak (6 page)

Suddenly, the idea of confronting
Jack overwhelmed me. My hands began to sweat. Maybe Jack was right. Maybe I
wasn’t ready for whatever it was he could tell me.

The bell rang, and I panicked.
Overcome with nausea and intense fear, I darted from my seat and out the door.

Not quick enough.

Jack’s fingers slid around my elbow
as I rounded the corner. “We need to talk.” His voice was low, steady as he
followed close.

I stopped. Even I could sense the
rapid rise and fall of my chest. “Why?”

“Are you serious?”

I pulled my arm from him. “Why now?”
I lowered my voice, looking around to see if anyone was listening. No one was.
My fear slowly began to morph into something different. A tight ball of fire
churned in my stomach. Heat traveled up the back of my neck. “I mean, I plow
you over, we hit heads, I break my arm, and magically my arm is all better?
Then, you just disappear for like three days. So, why now?” I hated how much I
sounded like a whiny four-year-old.

He gestured with a hand for me to walk.
“Let’s go. I’ll buy you a Coke or something.” He placed his hand in the small
of my back and we wove our way through classmates congregating in the hallway. Their
faces were happy and light, unaffected by the way Jack led me away from them.
To others looking on, we probably seemed like a couple.

Heat from his palm seeped through
my thin blouse. His calmness compared to the anxiety bubbling in my chest made
me want to scream, but I buried it.

“What would you like?” he asked
when we arrived at the campus store.

I examined my choices. “A green
tea?”

He waited patiently behind a couple
of our younger girls, who cupped their hands over their mouths, giggling.
Eventually, he grabbed a cold green tea and a Mountain Dew from the display
case, paid for both and led me back outside.

We walked without speaking. For
someone new to Wellington, he knew exactly where he was going. I followed him
to the bleachers overlooking the multi-purpose ball field where the boys’ lacrosse
team was practicing.

“How’d you do on the trig test?” he
asked as we climbed to the top and sat. He handed me the tea.

I cocked my head. “Is that why you
bought me a drink and dragged me all the way out here? To talk about the trig
test?”

A crease formed between his eyes. “I
just wondered if you were able to study for it after what happened the other
night.” He frowned, sucking in a deep breath. “You need the grades to get accepted
to The Program.”

“Ah, yes. The Program.”

Jack’s eyes narrowed. “Why did you
leave the infirmary so soon? You really should have stayed until the doctor
said it was safe for you to leave. Concussions can be very serious.”

I nodded, then looked away toward
the Kentucky farmland that stretched behind the small stadium. He was right, of
course, the concussion could have been serious, but as it turned out, it wasn’t.
A slight breeze blew a wisp of hair across my face. I pushed it back behind my
ear, and when I got up my nerve, I faced Jack. “What
was
that? Did I
imagine my broken arm?” I couldn’t suppress the shakiness in my voice. Did I
really want to know?

He kept his gaze on me, never
breaking eye contact. “You didn’t imagine it. Your arm was broken. In two
places.”

I sucked in a deep breath and
whispered, “How’d you do that?”

“The short and easy answer is I don’t
really know.”

“You don’t know?”
That’s just
perfect
.

As if he could hear my
exasperation, his tone became defensive. “How do you alter people’s feelings?”

A blush crept onto my cheeks, and I
turned away. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Oh, sure you do. At the dinner the
other night. My father. You tried to calm him before he hit your dad… And what?
You thought I wouldn’t notice Briana’s sudden coolness toward me. You jealous,
Lexi?”

I snapped my head toward him. “I
most certainly am not.”

The corners of his lips lifted. “Then
why go to the trouble of giving yourself a nosebleed? That’s what happens,
right? When you think too hard at someone else.”

I broke eye contact again. “You
know how crazy that sounds, right?”

“Crazier than fixing broken bones?”

“Which makes you violently ill.” It
was not a question. I thought of him racing to the toilet in the girls’ locker
room. “For three days?” He nodded. My heart sunk just a little. He’d made
himself sick and revealed a huge secret over my broken arm?

“It was a pretty bad break,” he
said, his voice regretful.

I doubled over and gasped for a
breath as if I had been hit in the stomach with a soccer ball. This was all too
much. I’d spent my whole life hiding my ability, pretending it wasn’t happening
at first. Then I found a way to kind of enjoy it and use it to my advantage. However,
healing a broken bone is a far cry from altering someone’s thoughts. “You’re
not answering the question.” I reached a hand to massage the spot over my heart.
“How is it possible that you fixed my arm?”

“Are you ready to hear this?”

“Do I have a choice?” How could I
possibly know if I was ready? “Who are you, Jack?” I spoke softly, almost a
whisper. I should have asked,
what are you
? What was I, for that matter?
Except that sounded too much like I thought we were aliens or something.

“You know who I am. I’m the son of
your dad’s ex-lab partner.”

“From eighteen years ago. What does
that have to do with me now?”

Jack scooted closer to me and
leaned in like he had a secret to tell. He rested his elbows on his knees and
dangled the Mountain Dew can in front of him. “Do you know much about the history
of your father’s research?”

“The history of it? Like the fact
that he and your father cloned some goat more than twenty years ago, the goat
died, and the lab and all evidence of the research burned to the ground?” That
was all in the papers. “Or, Jack, are you talking about the time he spent after
that attempting early retirement? When that didn’t work, he returned to the lab
to study stem cells, which turned out not to be good enough for my mom. So, she
left soon after I was born, and Dad took off for Europe or somewhere while my
grandmother raised me? To which part of this history are you referring?” I
hated myself for letting my emotional family scars creep into the conversation.

Jack’s mouth opened like he was
about to speak, then closed. His stare made me shift where I sat. Finally, he
said, “I’m speaking of the embryonic cloning part of the history.”

“The stem-cell research?”

“That’s part of it.”

“Are you trying to tell me that
their research has something to do with the fact that you have healing powers?”
I shook my head in disbelief.

“And you, apparently, have some
sort of ability to control people’s minds.”

I stood up and continued to rub my
chest, trying to ward off an impending panic attack. “Do you hear yourself?
This is nuts.”

Jack wrapped his fingers around my
hand and pulled gently, urging me to sit back down. “Crazy, maybe. Not unbelievable.
Hasn’t part of you wondered if there were others out there who wouldn’t find
your ability unusual?”

I looked up at the sky, then down
at him. His eyes were as warm as I had seen them since meeting him. “No, I
haven’t,” I lied. I was fine believing no others existed like me, and even more
fine that no one knew about my ability. Some might call that naïve. I liked to
think of it as safe.

“Please sit down. I need to tell
you more.”

I didn’t know how much more I could
take. I sat and pulled my hand away.

“Did you know your father stayed
with us after the dinner the other night?”

“How did that happen? Did your
father extend the invitation before or after he clocked him?” Of course I didn’t
know my father had stayed with them. My father hadn’t bothered to call me.

“After, I presume.”

I studied Jack’s profile. He
watched the guys scrimmaging on the lacrosse field. His lips did not twitch. No
hint of a smile at my sarcasm. Neither the sweetness, nor the coolness of the
tea helped the dryness in my mouth.

Jack lifted a leg behind the
bleacher and faced me, inching uncomfortably close. “Our fathers’ research went
way beyond the cloning of a goat. They were on to something really big many
years ago.”

“What do you mean by ‘big’?”

“Cure-for-terminal-disease-big.”

“Yeah?” I said. “I thought curing
diseases was the whole idea of medical research.”

“Yes, but our fathers worked for a
lab that didn’t mind how controversial their methods were.”

“What are you saying? Did they
break laws?” My heart tightened into a ball of rubber bands. Any minute one
would snap from too much tension. Was my father in trouble?

“Do you know if your father keeps
journals of his research?”

I narrowed my gaze. “Why do you ask
that?” I thought about Dad’s request for the storage address.

“My father has always claimed that
journals of the research surrounding the cloned goat were lost in a lab fire
soon after the experiment failed. But I wondered if maybe your father kept
some.”

I swallowed hard. Was Jack asking
about the same journals my father hoped to get out of our storage?

“Your hands are shaking.” He
reached a hand and grabbed both of mine. My nerve endings fired up like a
blowtorch.

I started to pull away, but his
fingers closed over mine. “I know you don’t trust me. But I’m here to help.”

“Help me how? I don’t need help.
Why should I trust you, Jack? I don’t even know you.”

“Your dad’s in trouble, Lexi.”

My eyes drifted from where his
thumb rubbed my hand to his eyes. “What kind of trouble?” My voice barely
climbed above a whisper.

“Father didn’t arrive home with
your dad the other night until two a.m. They looked tired, disheveled. I had
fallen asleep playing Xbox, and I heard them come in. It was no accident that
your dad was back in Kentucky. He wanted to meet with my father. Your dad
called mine a week ago to let him know he’d be in town. That’s when my dad
cancelled his trip.”

“But you still haven’t told me what
kind of trouble my father’s in.”

“Jack, there you are,” Briana’s
voice broke through the quiet conversation Jack and I were having.

I winced. Jack muttered something
under his breath I couldn’t make out. Briana climbed her way up the bleacher
steps, her smile as big and lipstick red as a painted clown’s face. Okay, maybe
not that big, but…

I pulled my hands away and folded
my arms across my chest.

Jack stood. “Hi, Bree,” he said
with a pleasant tone. Very different-sounding from the conversation we’d been
having.

“I’ve been looking everywhere for
you,” she said.

“And lookie here. You found him.” I
screwed the cap on my iced tea bottle, stood and swung my bag over my shoulder.

Jack’s eyes pleaded with mine. Our
conversation wasn’t over. What was I supposed to do? Bree wasn’t there to see
me. Besides, I wanted to make a phone call. I needed to hear Dad’s voice, his
explanations. I had to ask him about these journals. About Jack.

“I’ll catch you later?” Jack asked,
his tone desperate.

Bree stepped up beside Jack and
leaned into him. “She won’t have time. She needs more practice and rest for the
swim meet Saturday, don’t you, dear?”

“Absolutely. Otherwise I might be
forced to grab onto another swimmer in order to stay afloat. I would hate to
accidentally drown someone.”

The coldness of Bree’s glare froze
my spine vertebrae by vertebrae as I turned my back to them and stepped down
the bleachers.

~~~~

I ended the call after leaving
another voicemail for Dad and headed toward the library. I’d check my email
again. Maybe Dad had replied to the message I sent him with the storage
address.

The library was quiet. I ducked my
head and refused to look over at the circulation desk. I didn’t need or want to
get stuck in a conversation of idle chit-chat with whoever was working today.

I took the stairs to the upper level
two at a time and went straight to the computer lab. I had left my laptop in my
dorm room that morning. Since Wellington didn’t have Wi-Fi in the dorms the
computer lab was quite convenient. The lab was empty except for one team of
computer geniuses in the back. Probably only one was working the computer lab,
and the others showed up for moral support or something.

I logged onto my email account. No
message from Dad. I had a message from Danielle with a link to a big sale at Anthropologie.
Plus, another message from an address I didn’t recognize.

The subject line read:
Sarah
Alexandra Roslin...
Someone knew my real name.

My pointer hovered over the email.
My hand shook. Finally, I opened it and continued reading.

Hi, Lexi.

As you can see, I know the name
you’re hiding under and the email address you use. How long do you think it
will take me to learn your whereabouts?

The little hairs on the back of my
neck stood at attention. My eyes darted around the room as if the person who
wrote the email was hiding under the desk across from me.

Someone had found me. How? More
importantly, why?

The only other female in the room
climbed into the lap of one of the boys and proceeded to type on the computer
in front of them. “Here, let me,” she said and started typing furiously. They
all laughed.

I forced my attention back to the
computer and the email that had my leg bobbing up and down.

Don’t worry. Your physical
location isn’t important, yet. What is important if you want your father to
remain out of prison (or worse) with his reputation intact is the location of
the journals your father kept of his research when he worked for Wellington
Labs. Locate them ASAP and I won’t expose you for the lab rat you are or your
father for working with an International Intelligence Agency director on a
secret medical and scientific program. Do you know what your Dad did to you
before you were born, Sarah? I’ll be in touch.