Authors: EJ Valson,Michelle Read
He held one hand flat over the smoldering candle and the flame retracted into his palm. After throwing Charlotte and I a sly grin, obviously hoping that we would be impressed, he stepped out from behind his desk.
“I’ve heard enough.” He waved his hand through the air flippantly as if he were swatting a fly. “You clearly have no desire to be here, and I have no use for you anymore. Unless, of course . . .” He stepped directly in front of me and leaned so closely that I could feel his breath on my face. “ . . . I could change your mind.”
For the first time since our arrival in the office, I was completely free of fear and found a well of courage. I raised my chin so that I looked him directly in the eye.
“You’re crazy,” I breathed.
Gabriel cocked his head to one side and perked up his brow.
Saucy
, he thought.
I smiled at my newfound ability. My audacity to smile evidently caught him off guard and, if I weren’t mistaken, made him a little nervous. A darkness flashed through his eyes and he stepped back.
“Enough. Take them,” he ordered angrily.
Without hesitation, the two guards moved around the desk. The smaller one grabbed my arm in one of his giant hands and Charlotte’s arm in the other. Azura and Manny simply followed the other guard into the hallway. We were close behind.
We walked in silence through several more stark hallways and made our way to one of the many unmarked steel doors. My heart thudded wildly as I waited to see what could possibly be waiting for us on the other side. Within moments, however, I regained control of my fear and used the few seconds before we entered to practice my new gift.
I focused, first, on Charlotte. Her thoughts were so easy to read I didn’t even really have to concentrate. She was horrified, of course, and thinking of every scary movie she had ever seen. The images flashing through her mind were mildly disturbing, but I had already decided that fear wasn’t going to overtake me, so I quickly pulled my concentration from her. I looked, instead, to the guard clutching my arm.
“Oh!” I shouted, clapping my hand to my mouth. Azura, Manny, and their burly escort all turned at once – but all I could do was stare at them while tears flooded my eyes so that I could hardly see out of them.
If I thought that warning them would have done any good, I would have warned them. The guard holding my arm had been thinking about
exactly
what was on the other side of that door.
“No,” I whispered. The heavy door opened without anyone knocking and Azura was able to take in what I had seen through the mind of the guard.
Elizabeth sat cross-legged in the middle of the floor . . . next to her was Claire . . . and Danna. Every teacher was there, as far as I could tell, along with a small group of children. All of them huddled together. The children were fidgeting and Janice the gym teacher was trying to get them quieted down.
Around the edges of the room were nearly twenty guards, all standing with their arms behind their backs and staring blankly into oblivion. All except for the guard nearest the children. He was glaring at Janice, whose efforts were fruitless in trying to get the children to stop talking amongst themselves. She was noticeably frazzled, and frustrated that her usual knack for motivating people to do something wasn’t working.
“In.”
The oversized guard leading Azura and Manny spoke cheerlessly and Charlotte and I were shoved past them into the room. Manny followed us and gestured to a clear spot on the floor where we would all fit.
Azura turned to say something to the two guards. They both looked at each other, then the door closed loudly, leaving the three of them in the hallway. I looked at Manny, confused.
He took my hand in his and winked. Outside, I heard two weighty thuds against the wall, but when I looked around, no one else seemed to have noticed anything. I must have been the only one who heard them, and I looked again to Manny, unsure what to think.
“She’s going to prepare a place for us,” he said calmly.
“But she just told the guards—”
“You heard her?” he asked, taken aback. “I couldn’t even—”
“
Yes
, I heard her. It’s a recent development.” I smiled weakly. “She told them she had changed her mind. That she wanted to help Gabriel.” I could almost understand her sudden change of heart, working for the bad guys instead of dying. It made sense, really.
Manny met my eyes earnestly and whispered, “Does that sound like something Azura would do?” He was staring at me, squeezing my hand to comfort me. But at the same time, I felt like his face was saying
Isn’t it obvious
?
“No,” I answered quietly, embarrassed.
“She wants to find him first, then prepare somewhere for us all to gather when it’s over.”
My heart leapt, and it was my turn to raise an eyebrow. “So she’s pretty confident that this will end well, then?”
“Not for everyone. But yes.”
“Quiet,” a voice boomed from behind us. Manny and I turned our faces away from each other, and I took Charlotte’s hand.
“Do you know where this place is . . . where she’s headed?” I traced a pattern on Charlotte’s palm as I waited for his answer.
“Yes,” he answered almost inaudibly
, looking the other direction.
“Think of it.”
“Hmmm?” He started to look at me, but thought better of it and bowed his head instead, so as not to alert the guard again.
“Think of where it is,” I instructed, barely moving my lips. “And how to get there. So I can see it.”
Manny pulled his head up and looked me in the eye. “Good girl,” he said, smiling.
“I said
quiet
.” The guard began to step away from the wall he was leaning against, but stopped when he realized we were listening this time.
Manny bowed his head again and I closed my eyes to concentrate on him. Within seconds, I could see myself crossing the room, walking out the door, and weaving through the hallways. He went slowly and I tried to memorize the rights and lefts until he was done.
SIXTEEN
While we waited for Azura, I busied myself with practicing my new abilities. I found that I could only hear one person’s thoughts at a time, and only if I was really concentrating on them. It was the same with my very sensitive hearing.
My favorite subjects to test my mind reading on were the children. It soothed me infinitely how simple their thoughts were, and it often made me laugh. They were not afraid. They were mostly bored. Some were hungry, a few needed to use the restroom, and several of them were noticing things like the funny way the guards were dressed.
The adults in the room, however, were another story. Almost all of them were thinking of the children, hoping they would remain quiet enough not to disturb the guards.
Claire was thinking of her husband, who I had never seen before I read her mind. He was very rugged looking, very manly. He had scraggly hair that looked like Claire had cut it herself, which she
probably did. She was leaning on Danna’s shoulder with her knees pulled up to her chest, completely unaware that every guard on the far wall was staring at her.
The guards were, not surprisingly, thinking of nothing at all. Their blank stares were literally a window into their minds. I had always been baffled by John in that way. His response to my occasional “What are you thinking?” was always “Nothing”. How could they be thinking about nothing at all? I was
always
thinking of
something
.
I made my way around the room until I eventually got to Elizabeth who, at the moment, had taken to staring me down. I dreaded peeking into her mind, afraid I might find some evil plot to maim me.
I quickly began fiddling with my shoelaces as I concentrated on her. What I finally saw was myself – fiddling with my shoelaces from across the room. She was furious that I was here, because that meant that I was now one of them. She wanted to know what Azura had made me able to do, and if I would be more beneficial in a fight than her.
What a silly thing to be thinking about right now
, I thought.
Of course she would
, Elizabeth was thinking.
My greatest talent is organizing and multitasking. Little Miss Can’t Keep Her Nose Out of Everyone Else’s Business is probably going to show us all up. When she’s principal, she’d better become aware of the ranks real fast. She’ll probably run the place right into the ground.
I laughed out loud and raised my head to look straight at her. She gasped, batted her eyes, and stared vacantly at me. I smiled wide and choked back another laugh as I went back to playing with my shoes.
In light of the current circumstances – the fact that we were all huddled on a concrete slab deep underground awaiting execution – I had almost forgotten that everyone hated me because they thought Charlotte was leaving and I was taking over. Just the thought of me being in charge of a bunch of grown women made me laugh again, which made the guard nearest me clear his throat deliberately.
In the far corner, the children were becoming restless. Ten or twelve of them were chatting amongst themselves again, and getting louder by the minute. Janice and a few other teachers were doing their best once again to quiet them, but the kids were growing hungry and tired of sitting still. I wanted to tell Janice to focus – that if she would just focus her energy on using her skill of motivating, she could convince them to settle down.
I had convinced myself that all it took to bring our abilities out full-force was to focus on them. To focus on what made each of us special, but I couldn’t tell anyone else of my theory, I didn’t want to risk talking again because the guards were growing impatient with the noise. They were used to telling someone to be silent and having them do it.
“Keep them
quiet
,” one guard boomed. Janice looked at him, her eyes wide because she was frightened for the children. She was thinking of their safety, or course, and hoping that the guards would take out their frustration on her rather than the kids.
Focus
, I thought….but no one could hear me. Even
I
was starting to become nervous now. How would we get out of here? Would Azura be ready for us? What good were my new talents, and the supernatural talents of all these amazing women, if we had no weapons? What use was Claire’s matchless beauty, or Elizabeth’s ability to organize? We needed to
escape
. We needed direction. Or a distraction.
I delved into possible means of diversion, but found nothing solid enough to work on a room full of trained guards, not to mention the legions of sentries sure to emerge if we ever made it out of the room and into the hallway.
Manny gave my hand a gentle grasp without looking at me and whispered, “She’s ready for us.”
“Hmmm? Really?” I murmured back.
“Yes, there will be no opposition in the hallways. Our only challenge is in here.”
That explains the thud I heard when the door shut behind us.
“She must have really kicked some butt. But why couldn’t she have just gotten us all out of here in the first place?”
“She can only fight one or two men at a time. Any more would have been a real challenge, and too risky. So she took them two at a time, from the guards that dropped us off here all the way to the gathering place.”
“And how do you know she’s ready?” I asked.
“We can hear each other . . . the same way you can hear what I’m thinking.”
“But I can only hear your thoughts if I can see you – and only when I really try.”
“You will get better,” he promised. It excited me to think about refining such a unique skill. “Azura and I are connected no matter how far apart we are.” Manny’s eyes sparkled, and for the first time, I imagined Azura in love.
“Oh,” I sighed, smiling. “What an amazing gift.”
Manny just grinned, untouched by the fear that was holding most of the room captive. He was totally at ease, and I fed off of his composure.
“Quiet, children.
Please
.”
I recognized the voice behind me, near the group of little ones, as Sherry Richardson. The PTO President. She looked worried, and apparently decided to join the attempt to shush the crowd. She looked around the room, searching for anyone else who could help, and caught my eye.
I released Manny’s hand from mine and held it close to my stomach. Slowly, I spelled F-O-C-U-S in sign language. Sherry tilted her head a little, and I signed it again. F-O-C-U-S. She nodded and looked again to the group of upset children.
“
Children
,” she scolded quietly. She held out one hand over them and snapped loudly. Everyone in the room turned at the same time to her, because we all felt it when she snapped. The kids looked at Sherry, wide-eyed and ready for instruction, totally absorbed in whatever she would say next.
“Be
quiet
please.”
For a moment, it seemed to work. Every one of them turned off their whining and took to drawing in the dust on the floor. Soon enough, though, they began to bicker again. Sherry cleared her throat authoritatively and, once again, they were redirected momentarily.
Frustrated for them, I unconsciously began to rock back and forth and hum the lullaby that always calmed Violet down for bed when she was a baby. Music, of course, was forever a source of placating
myself
whenever I felt restless. So it was natural to me to hum to calm myself down.
Immediately, I felt Charlotte’s quivering hand begin to steady. A few seconds later, she released her nervous death grip on my hand, allowing the color to return to my fingers. I looked at her, and her face was notably more calm. She turned to meet my gaze and smiled. She had been trembling since she sat down at my kitchen table, so to see her smile surprised me. She was totally relaxed.
Pleased that my humming helped calm her down, I hummed louder. When I looked over to see how the kids were doing, I was caught off guard by ten or twelve pairs of eyes fixed on me. The people nearest me, including the cross guard that had gotten on to Manny and I earlier, were also staring at me. It made me self-conscious, wondering what they were staring at, like when you walk into a room with toilet paper stuck to your shoe and don’t realize it. So I stopped humming and swaying like an idiot.
Immediately, every pair of eyes flitted a time or two and looked away. The guard went back to frowning in our general direction, and everyone else went back to what they were doing. Mostly staring off into space or keeping their eyes down and away from the guards. Charlotte, I noticed, returned to trembling.
I wanted to tell her not to be afraid. Manny was confident, I was
mostly
unconsumed by fear, and that there was really no need to waste her energy worrying yet. The guard, however, hadn’t stopped looking at me for quite some time, convinced I would talk again. So I didn’t dare lean over and tell her to calm down.
Instead, I rubbed the back of her palm with my thumb and started humming again. Once more, her hand steadied, and her fingers uncurled. I paid attention to her breathing, which was slowing down and evening out.
I wondered if there was an end to what I would now be able to do. As if super sensitive hearing and reading someone’s thoughts weren’t mind blowing enough, I now could calm down my best friend in her time of greatest need. It was very satisfying to be able to help her relax, since she was so often a source of comfort for
me
. I wondered if everyone – Elizabeth, Danna, Sherry – acquired this much pleasure from using their abilities. It was really like a high, comparable to after a workout or a run, when your body is energized and satisfied all at the same time. The feeling of fulfillment was tangible, akin to Sherry snapping the children to attention earlier.
I closed my eyes and continued to hum the lullaby, which was the only thing stuck in my head at the moment, and listen to Charlotte’s breathing. After I made it one time through my own version of the song, I opened my eyes. Again, every eye within hearing range of my soft humming was set on me. Every woman, and the same guard, was totally transfixed, completely motionless and absorbed in the tune they could barely hear.
Curious, I looked over at the guard and, still humming, tried to crawl into his mind. No surprise, it was blank. It was silly to start with one of the brainless guards, anyway, so I focused on a woman near me instead. I recognized her as Jane, the librarian, and smiled at her as I hummed. She was near enough to hear me, and I slowly honed in on her thoughts. This time I
was
surprised.
It is my strong belief that no woman is capable of thinking nothing at all. There is always a thought floating around in there somewhere. But that’s exactly what she was thinking.
Nothing
. I couldn’t find
any
thing to grab hold of, her mind was actually clear.
I rolled my eyes over to Charlotte, then to the others sitting around me, even Manny. Each time, I found the exact same thing; nothing. Experimentally, I stopped humming while focusing on Charlotte. Instantaneously, images of her children, the school, the other women, and the guards flooded her mind. It was almost overwhelming how much she was dwelling on the possible negative outcome of our situation, and I pitied her. Her inability to concentrate on the fact that we didn’t
know
it would turn out badly would only exhaust her and cause her heartache. I wished she could think of something else.
I moved out of her mind and into Jane’s, whose head was now filled with the fact that she hadn’t made enough time in her life to have children, start a family, or pamper her husband. She wasn’t filled with fear, only regrets. I thought that was a very interesting thing to be thinking, in light of our locale.
I inquisitively turned to the guard, whose head had been empty since our arrival, and probed his thoughts. The same as always – not a thing. I wondered if Gabriel had made Azura give him the ability to wipe their minds clean. Clean and ready for molding. Molding into horrible, heartless, emotionless killing machines.
I looked for the first time to the guard’s hands, which he brought from behind his back and hung rigidly at his sides. His knuckles were battered and scarred, and the skin on them looked six inches thick. I felt sorry for him that all he knew of life now was probably fighting and anger.
While thinking about all the ways the guard could possibly kill us with his bare hands, I scanned the room for more people to probe. Humming louder, I tested my third newfound ability to see how far it would reach. Apparently, it went across the entire room. One by one, as I hummed louder, each pair of eyes drifted up to meet mine. And each time, the people in hearing range were completely mesmerized by the tune.
Eventually, though, I found that I couldn’t hum any louder. I wanted desperately to reach the last row of guards, just to see if I could. So I started singing.
“Hush, little baby. Don’t say a word . . .”
Amazing. The last row of guards satisfied me with their glazed-over eyes and I felt a sense of accomplishment. What good did captivating an audience do with my glorious voice if they were dumbfounded in the process? Would they even remember what they were listening to? Probably not. I imagined myself going through life in a musical as soon as I got out of this place. I would dance around the house singing to Violet to clean her room or do her homework – and she would march to it straight away. She would
have
to listen, obviously. Everyone here was listening to me.