The Ables (18 page)

Tucker didn’t seem swayed in the least. “And what if the enemy lies at the end of a dirt road or on the beach? How will you reach him to read his thoughts, Mr. Gardner?”

Looking back on it now, it’s easy to see why my father was so upset at President Tucker after the hearing—and he was livid. The man was openly mocking Henry’s disadvantage from behind the thinnest of veils and doing so from a position of authority. No amount of country charm could disguise the condescension behind his words.

“I’ll get my friend James to teleport me there,” Henry nearly shouted. It was shocking to hear, despite his reputation for speaking his mind. This was a kid so desperate to hang onto a dream that he was willing to talk back to one of the most powerful people in Freepoint in front of a huge audience.

Finally, Tucker shut Henry down. “I think you’d better reevaluate your tone of voice, young man, or you can spend the rest of the hearing outside in the hallway.” It was the trump card the school board president held that had loomed over the entire hearing. He had all the power in this building, and we had none. He had only to flex his muscles to get the rest of us cowering.

“I think you’d better reevaluate your attitude, you sour old crank!”

I gasped but managed to cover my mouth immediately. As Henry’s words sunk in, I was struck with the oddest sensation. I suddenly knew that he hadn’t actually said what I had heard. Not out loud, anyway. It’s hard to describe to a sighted person, but my ears were just very well trained. And the voice I heard lobbing that insult back at President Tucker had not come from Henry’s mouth. There was something different about the way his voice sounded, almost like he was far away.

I looked around to find no one else reacting in shock to Henry’s backtalk.

In total, it only took about two seconds for me to realize that I had just heard Henry’s thoughts.

And it only took a couple seconds more for me to realize what that meant—Henry’s powers did work both ways!
Bentley was right!

Henry must have been so agitated with Mr. Tucker and this sham of a hearing that he just stopped concentrating on his powers—he
had
said they tended to activate on their own during times of stress. That was the only explanation I could think of for why I’d just heard his thoughts. Maybe he’d been trying too hard the night before.

And I suddenly had an idea. Without thinking things through, and before I could stop myself, I leaped to my feet and shouted, “Your Honor—Your Grace … Mr. President, sir, may the petitioners have a moment to confer?!” My mind was already three steps ahead, and I struggled to spit out the words without trouble.

I felt Bentley lean in closer on my right. “Phillip, what are you doing?”

“Sit down, Phillip,” Henry snarled softly out of the corner of his mouth—this time actually speaking.

“I know what I’m doing,” I reassured them, despite the fact that it was most certainly not true. “President Tucker? Will you grant the petitioners a moment to discuss things in private?”

I had no idea if this was allowed. I’d seen enough legal shows on television—or heard them, at least—to know that these kind of requests were common in a court of law, but this being my first school board meeting, I wasn’t sure the same ground rules applied. I just knew I needed to talk to my teammates right away because I’d thought of a way to prove to the board that we were just as capable as the non-disabled students.

“I suppose so,” President Tucker said with a sigh. “I don’t see any harm with it. You have three minutes.”

“Thank you, Your Honor, sir,” I said graciously, putting an arm around both Bentley and Henry.

“He’s not a judge, Phillip,” Bentley reminded me as I pulled him in closer. “You don’t have to call him ‘Your Honor,’ you know.”

“Shut up,” I said as politely as possible, knowing that time was of the essence.

We huddled together in private, just the three of us, as I rapidly explained how Henry’s thoughts had found my brain just a moment earlier. I then laid out my idea for turning this hearing from a loss into a victory. They were skeptical—especially Henry, who did not yet trust his powers to come through in the clutch. But both agreed the hearing was a total loss to this point and that something dramatic was required in order to get the board’s attention enough to sway their opinion to our favor.

I stood up out of the huddle, too nervous to be excited and too excited to be nervous. I felt my father’s hand on my shoulder. “You sure you know what you’re doing, big guy?” He spoke as my father, not our official petition sponsor.

“Yeah, I think so,” I said. I’m sure he could tell I was faking confidence. “But it’s not like things were going all that well to begin with, you know?” It had to be obvious to anyone with half a brain that the entire hearing had been a farce. Even if my idea constituted a parliamentary Hail Mary, it was the best shot we had against an otherwise certain defeat.

“Mr. President,” I began.

“Are the young lads ready to continue again?” he asked, sounding like an impatient man who regretted having allowed us a brief conference.

“We are, sir,” I replied dutifully. “And with the board’s permission, I believe we can demonstrate that our disabilities do not impede our ability to use our powers.”

He took a few seconds to contemplate my suggestion and then replied, “I assume this demonstration involves the use of super powers, son?”

“Yes, sir,” I said, “it does. But only briefly.”

There was a great pause, and I could picture the various board members, hands over their microphones, whispering and muttering amongst themselves.

Finally the man in charge announced, “Very well, then, Mr. Sallinger. But you’d better be on your best behavior here. This board does not look kindly upon your generation’s brand of funny business.”

I knew what came next in the plan, but I still needed a beat to compose myself … and to say a few quick prayers in the hope that God was somehow real and would forgive my general ambivalence toward church up until this point in my life.

“President Tucker,” I began, “I need you to choose an object near you. Like your gavel, for instance.” I was shaking, and I gripped the table’s edge between my fingers to try and steady my balance. “Would it be safe to assume I’ve never seen or handled your gavel prior to this evening?”

“It would, young man. I keep my gavel with me in my office whenever we’re not in session. No one spends time with the president’s gavel without also spending time with the president,” he said with the charming precision of an oft-repeated campaign promise. Throughout the entire evening, from his opening pleasantries to his surprising reprimands, the speed of his sentences never increased. His Southern drawl remained steady.

“Very good, then, sir,” I continued. “And … as you may know, I’m a telekinetic, sir. But I’m also blind. Which means that I can’t see the things I need to see in order to take advantage of my abilities. I have to have spent time handling an object in order to be able move it with my powers.” I swallowed, knowing there was no turning back. “And my good friend Henry, here, well … he can see just fine. And he’s also telepathic.”

“Young man, I do hope there is a point to all this, and more specifically, I do hope you’ll be getting to it sooner rather than later. This board doesn’t have all evening.”

“Yes, sir,” I said deferentially, momentarily distracted by the interruption. “We’ve … well, we’ve experimented a bit here and there with the possibility that Henry’s form of telepathy might go in both directions. Well, sir … I guess what I’m saying is … that by combining our powers …”

“Mr. Sallinger,” the old man warned, clearly losing patience with my rambling.

I cut the rest of my backstory and went straight for the big finale. “Sir, please pass the gavel to one of the other board members—it doesn’t matter whom, just do it quietly and don’t tell me who has it.” My knees began to wobble, and for the first time, I started to worry that I might not pull this off.

“Okay, son,” he said, letting me know he had done as requested.

“Okay, then,” I said, probably sounding as crazy as I felt. I raised my right arm in the air, my hand open and facing the board members.

And I waited for Henry to show me something.

And waited.

But nothing happened.

“Mr. Sallinger, have you fallen asleep?”

“No, Mr. President, I have not. Just … one second, please! I turned and kicked at Henry’s wheelchair with the side of my foot and let out a hushed plea, “Henry, go!”

“I’m trying,” he whispered back at me.

“No, you idiot, don’t try! Stop trying! Think about something else.” I wondered if the board could hear us—they were several yards away, and we were whispering, but the room was awfully quiet.

Henry started to crack under the pressure. “Like what?!” It sounded as though he might cry.

And then an unexpected inspiration hit me. “Think about what an idiot you are, you big idiot,” I snarled at him with fake anger. I remembered how upset he was at Mr. Tucker when he’d managed to send a thought to my brain and figured it was worth a shot to try and get him riled up again. I was out of options anyway. “Never mind, you stupid fool,” I snapped. “I should’ve known you couldn’t do it!”

I was no saint, mind you, but saying mean things to friends wasn’t something I was practiced in. I winced inside at my own words, regretting them as soon as they’d come out of my mouth. But only for an instant.

Because my needling had worked. Suddenly an image flashed inside my head … a clearer picture than any image I had ever created from my own dreams or imagination. I saw a long wooden desk with the board members seated behind it. It was raised on a platform several feet above the floor, and they were looking down on us.

For only the slightest moment, I was tempted to just sit back take it all in, drunk on the very notion that I was technically “seeing”—it was the very first time in my life I had seen something not invented in my own mind, and it was beautiful! You’ve heard people talk of mountain vistas or life-altering sunsets, I’m sure, and this felt every bit as gorgeous to me, because it was … live. It was
real
. It was happening at this very minute, and I could see it.

But I knew there would be time for that later.

“I’m losing patience and interest, Mr. Sallinger.” I got the feeling this would be my last warning.

It’s tough to explain the picture I received from Henry. It wasn’t like video. I wasn’t able to see movement. He wasn’t transmitting a live video feed to me but was sending something more like a simple still photograph. But I could still sort of hold Henry’s image in my head for a while and search it for the one thing I really needed it for. I found the gavel in the hands of Mrs. Billings—I could see her nameplate, too. She sat three positions to the right of President Tucker and held the item in front of her face loosely with both hands as she peered down at me behind her bifocals.

I focused in on the gavel and tried to block the rest of the picture from view. I concentrated as hard as I had ever concentrated in my life. I visualized it leaping forth from her grasp and flying straight into my outstretched hand.

And that’s exactly what happened.

Before I knew what hit me, the gavel smacked into my open palm, as though I’d handled it all my life. The audience shared a collective gasp of surprise and awe.

And if I had simply sat back down in silence, if I had only let it end there, I would have been fine. I’m just certain of it. But for some reason—I’m still not sure what possessed me—I got it stuck in my head that sending the gavel back into the hands of Mrs. Billings would be the icing on the cake of my little visual demonstration.

I guess I got cocky.

It never even occurred to me to consider that Mrs. Billings and her hands may have moved since the time Henry’s image had first been created or that she might not have the sharpest reflexes for a game of catch the heavy gavel.

I had considered the act of getting Henry to send me an image to be the hard part of my little plan and hadn’t counted on my own hubris getting in the way. So I visualized the gavel leaving my hand and traveling the short distance back to Mrs. Billings’ hands. I was still using the original image Henry sent me—that should have been the clue I needed … seeing Mrs. Billings behind the bench,
still holding the very gavel I was about to zap back over to her!

But I didn’t see it.

As you have no doubt guessed, Mrs. Billings’ hands were not in front of her face anymore. They were on her cheeks, where she’d placed them in surprise after seeing my powers in action. The poor woman had also leaned forward in her chair several inches to try and see me better. But not knowing these things, I tried to show off and sent the object flying back in her direction.

All I heard was a sickening thud—a sound that would clearly not be made by two hands gently catching a wooden hammer. The gavel hit her square in the face, and she flew back into her chair as the crowd cried in horror.

***

After the pandemonium died down—and believe me, it was absolute bedlam when Mrs. Billings went down—I was immediately escorted from the hearing and banished to the hallway. Henry, too, since he’d used his powers to aid my little accidental assault on a lovable old grandmother.

Two teachers from the school were sent to act as guardians, and they sat on a bench across the wide hallway from us. They were babysitters to the two of us troublemakers while the president tried to restore order and wrap up the hearing.

An ambulance was called, and ultimately, Mrs. Billings was given some ibuprofen and a heating pad, and that was it. She was going to be all right. The gavel hadn’t broken the skin, and her forehead took the brunt of the blow. She even stayed on and continued participating in the hearing after a bit of a delay. She’d end up with some serious bruises, though, and a massive headache, I’m sure. And probably an innate mistrust of blind children for the rest of her days.

I was crushed.

The fact that I had just cost my teammates and myself a chance to compete in the SuperSim—not to mentioned how badly I’d embarrassed myself in public—made this one of the low points of my life.