True Talents(34)

“How about mind reading?” the voice asked.





WHY I LIKE BEING ME

DENNIS WOO





WHAT’S ON YOUR MIND?

I stared at Cheater, who’d just made the suggestion. For an instant, I felt hope. Maybe he believed … . Now that he’d had time to think about it, he must have realized I was right.

Cheater smirked at me and my hopes vanished. I realized this was his own private joke. I didn’t think he was very funny. At least there was no way Mr. Briggs would go for something like that. A science teacher wouldn’t mess around with psychic stuff.

“Excellent suggestion, Dennis,” Mr. Briggs said. He strolled across the room to give Cheater a pat on the head, then returned to the board and wrote MIND READING in big letters.

Whatever Cheater’s motives, this was perfect. If the whole class proved I was right, Cheater couldn’t blame me.

“That’s not science,” Lucky said. “Let’s pick something else.”

“Anything can be investigated scientifically,” Mr. Briggs told him. He turned back to the class. “I want each of you to try to come up with an experiment that we could use to test for mind reading.”

“Is this homework?” Torchie asked.

Mr. Briggs nodded. “Sure. Let’s say that’s your assignment. Take a few days. We’ll wait until Monday to see what everyone comes up with. To help you out, I’ll tell you about some famous experiments that scientists have carried out in the past.”

He spent the rest of the period talking about Newton, Galileo, and other scientists. But I had a hard time paying attention. I was thinking about what would happen when the class started running the experiments.

On the way out, I caught up with Cheater and asked, “What did you do that for?”

“Just to show you how wrong you are,” he said.

“I’m not wrong. You’ll see. Why can’t you accept the truth? What are you scared of?”

“I’m not scared of anything,” he said. But there was something in his eyes that told me he was lying. Before I could say anything else, he rushed away.

I continued my search for other kids with special powers. I saw a lot of strange stuff during the rest of the day, though most of it was just bad behavior.

But I did see a couple of things worth writing down. Lucky found two pencils, three dimes, and a candy bar—all in a single afternoon. That’s just when I was watching. Who knows what else he found? He never acted surprised. It seemed like he just knew where stuff was.

By the end of the day, I had a list of seven more kids who might have some kind of psychic powers. By Friday, the list had grown to over two dozen. I had plenty of time to study my notes on Friday evening—Torchie had skipped into town with his friends. He hadn’t said a word when he’d left the room.

I couldn’t understand them. If someone told me I had a special ability, I’d be thrilled. It would be great to know what people were thinking, or to know what was going to happen. It would be extremely cool to move things with my mind or see the future. But there was no point daydreaming about that. I didn’t have any special talents, except maybe the power to get my teachers so angry they’d strap me to a chair and shock me or slam my head against a wall. I’m sure Dad would have approved of that form of education. At least I’d finished my week of detention without further pain.

I was still awake when Torchie came back from town. I had to do something. I couldn’t keep living like this. “You guys going to stay mad at me forever?” I asked.

He sat down and looked at the magazines on his desk. Then he glanced out the window. His eyes flickered in my direction once or twice, but quickly bounced away. I realized it might be as rough for him as it was for me. He was so eager to be friends with the whole world, he must hate having to be enemies with anyone. Especially someone he had to share a room with. “We aren’t mad,” he finally mumbled.

“Yeah, you are.”

Torchie shrugged and studied his picture of Mars. “Well, maybe a little.”

“Look, don’t expect me to start begging.”

He stared down at his sneakers. “Maybe if you knocked off all that crazy stuff about mind reading—”

“It’s not crazy, it’s …” I stopped. Did I want to be right, or did I want to have friends? It didn’t seem fair that I had to choose, but that’s the way it had worked out. I couldn’t look somewhere else for friends. I was stuck at Edgeview. Stuck here for good now, thanks to Mr. Briggs and the other teachers. Was it really that important to prove I was right? “Can we just forget the whole thing?” I asked. I wouldn’t say another word—until the experiment proved I was right.