True Talents(38)

That was it, then. Scientific proof that I had been wrong.

I heard Cheater snicker. When he caught me looking at him, he said, “Sorry.” I guess he hadn’t meant to laugh at me. That was okay. I sort of deserved it.

“As a matter of fact,” Mr. Briggs said, “the average for the entire class, once we throw out the bad data, is just a bit better than four and a half hits. I suspect it would be a lot closer to five if we ran more tests. But we’ve done enough to learn a few things. And that, my friends, should always be the point of one of these exercises.”

The class spent the rest of the period discussing the test and the results. Mr. Briggs talked about ways to design a better experiment, and ways to prevent cheating. Apparently, that was a big problem. Sometimes people wanted to prove something so badly that they cheated when they ran a test.

In a way, I was relieved that we’d run an actual scientific test and it had shown no evidence that anyone could read minds. I could get on with my life and stop driving myself crazy with wild ideas about that kind of stuff. As I left class, I shook my head, thinking about how stupid Bloodbath had been when he’d tried to get away with those perfect scores. It was funny how he’d given himself away by cheating too successfully. But that led me to another thought. It came to me so suddenly that I wanted to dash right back into the room.

Instead, I waited until Mr. Briggs left. The program was still up on the computer. Even better, the file with the results was open. I pulled down the menu and sent the data to the printer. It was the old kind that makes a lot of noise and spits out a single line at a time. I watched the pages as they inched out, revealing something I’d almost missed. My hand shook so badly I ripped the edge of the last sheet as I tore it from the printer.

There was no doubt about it. No mistake. I had definite proof. I wasn’t sure if I wanted it, but I had it.

The question was: What should I do with it?





NOTHING BUT THE PROOF

The smart thing would have been to just forget what I knew. There was no way they’d want to hear this. But, if I’d been good at doing the smart thing, I wouldn’t have ended up at Edgeview.

I waited until that evening, when Flinch, Lucky, and Cheater were in the room with Torchie and me. Then I waited until they started talking about science class. That didn’t take long.

“You know,” Cheater said, “I’d bet that Mr. Briggs could get fired for that experiment.”

“You’re crazy,” Torchie said.

“No, he’s right,” Lucky said. “Any of that kind of different stuff, they get real funny about it. In my last school, this teacher explained some things to us about witches. It wasn’t bad stuff, just how some people had certain beliefs. She didn’t swallow any of it herself—none of us did. She just told us about it. And she got fired.”

“Exactly,” Cheater said. “Mr. Briggs could get in big trouble.”

“But it was worth it,” I said.

They all turned toward me. I pulled the printout from my notebook and scanned it again to boost my courage. Now that I’d started, I had to convince them. If I failed, they’d probably hate me forever.

“Think about this,” I said. “What would your score be if you answered the same thing each time? What if for each of the twenty-five guesses you said ‘square’?” Suddenly, I had a very good idea how a parachutist felt the first time he jumped out of a plane. I could almost feel myself hurtling through the air. My stomach sure seemed to believe I was plunging toward a canyon filled with jagged rocks. I waited for my parachute to open.

“But there aren’t twenty-five squares,” Torchie said.

“Right,” Flinch said. “There are five. So you’d score five out of twenty-five. That’s one out of five, or twenty percent. You’d be right at the average.”

I took a deep breath. Here it comes. This was the leap of thinking I had to help them make. It was obvious to me, but I was good at math. So was Flinch. Cheater was, too, but I knew he wouldn’t do anything to help me. Torchie might have trouble following the explanation. But if I could convince the others, he’d go along with them.

“Now,” I said, looking at Cheater, “is there any way to make sure you’d get a lower score? Can you think of anything you could do to make sure you’d only get four right, or three, or two?”

“You could …” Torchie started to say. Then I guess he stopped to think. Cheater remained silent. So did Lucky.

“Can’t be done,” Flinch said. “There’s no way to average less than five hits in the long run. Whether you just said ‘square’ each time, or if you mixed them up, you’d still hit one out of five, in the long run, no matter what.”