The stink of despair? Fancy words for a kid who was recently hallucinating gorillas. I realized my mind was working better. Why wasn’t I totally numbed by the drugs? Bowdler had said something about me getting too high a dose. That didn’t explain how I felt. … Maybe this time they’d given me too low a dose. It didn’t matter why I was coming out of the fog. All that mattered was that I wasn’t drugged now. At least, not completely. I still felt dizzy. Stray sounds—clicks and whistles and hums—floated through my mind. If I stared at my hand, the lines of my fingerprints seemed to whirl and spin. But at least I knew it was an illusion.
I needed to get away before they gave me another dose. With my powers, and a clear head, it would be easy to slip out of here. If I could trust my powers. I’d had a hard time moving the marble. Maybe the medicine had something to do with that, or I’d been distracted by the flood of memories. Or maybe Bowdler just shook me up so much I couldn’t think straight when he was around. I looked at the chair. That would be a good test. As I was about to slide it across the room, the door opened again and a guy in a lab coat came in. I think it was the same guy who’d brought me the sandwich. He was carrying a small tray. No food. All I saw was a paper cup.
“It’s time for your medicine,” he said, reaching for the cup.
at that same moment …
TRASH, THE NAME slipped into Martin Anderson’s mind like someone had shouted it from two blocks away. Martin glanced toward the living-room window. But he wasn’t looking at the street. He was looking toward the past. The sadness lingered. But he couldn’t think about that right now. Someone else was shouting, much closer. Too close, and far too familiar.
“Are you listening to me?” his father yelled.
Martin turned his attention back to his screaming parent. “Sure. It’s my hobby. I love hearing you shout. I’m happy any time I can see your tonsils. Just like you’re happy when your boss yells at you for messing up.”
I gotta get out of here, he thought as the angry lecture resumed.
WILLIS DOBBS—“FLINCH” to his friends—paused in the middle of a sentence as the name flickered into his mind. Trash. Eddie’s nickname at Edgeview. Flinch lowered the microphone and stared at the ancient tape recorder in front of him, watching the cassette reels turning.
“How can I be funny now?” he said out loud. He swallowed against the lump that swelled in his throat. It still hurts.
But the best comedy sprang from tragedy. He knew that. He took a deep breath, and continued practicing.
DENNIS “CHEATER” WOO had been staring in the mirror, trying to work on his bluffing face, when the name hit him hard. Trash. Cheater was used to thoughts invading his head—both his own and those of other people. Just the simple act of looking at a mirror filled his mind with everything from the basic principles of optics to trivia about Through the Looking Glass. But he wasn’t used to thoughts arriving with the force of spoken words. He dropped the cards and blinked hard as he remembered his lost friend. Trash. It had all been so horrible. So senseless. So … stupid.
This was a dangerous world, full of violence and anger. He’d been inside far too many minds, and heard far too many angry thoughts, to believe otherwise. Maybe I shouldn’t go to the game. He didn’t know these kids. But he had to go. He had to prove he was the best.
PHILIP “TORCHIE” GRIEG was usually happy. Today, a rare frown crossed his lips. He paused in mid squeeze, letting the note from the accordion die in the air as he thought about his old friend. Trash.
Across the road, a stray dog stared at him, as if startled by the sudden silence.
“It’s okay, pooch,” he told it. He sighed, checked the dry grass around him to make sure he hadn’t accidentally set it on fire, then played a sad song.
THE VOICE WAS nearly lost among all the others. Dominic “Lucky” Calabrizi only noticed it because it was different. More urgent. More connected, somehow, to his life. Not hollow and masked by the medicated numbness that swaddled him like ten miles of bandages. Another voice was the last thing he needed. Even worse, this voice carried sad memories. Trash. He clamped his hands over his ears. It didn’t help.
medicine dropper
THERE WAS NO way I was going to swallow any more medicine. If my power was working, I could fling the chair at the guy and make a run for it, but I didn’t know how many people were here, and I definitely didn’t want to get shot in the back as I was racing down the hall.
I needed to get rid of him without raising any alarms. I had an idea, but my timing needed to be perfect. That wouldn’t be easy, since I still felt like someone had whacked my head a couple times with a two-by-four.