Read Online Open Minds by Susan Kaye Quinn - Free Book Online Page A

was a zero and he was a senior reader, too mesh to hang out with the likes of me. I stumbled upstream through the human river, heading toward the band room for practice.
Practice.
That was what I needed to leave my zero status behind.
    I rounded a corner and ran smack into Shark Boy.
    He looked as surprised as I was to find himself entangled with me in the hall. That didn’t stop him from running his hands over my bare arms.
    “What have we here?”
    His fingers curled into my flesh and he dragged me up flush against his chest. I tried to pull out of his grasp, but he just dug in more painfully. I jacked hard into his mind.
Let me go!
    He dropped my arms like they were red-hot pokers and took a step back. He teetered, uncertain, and his hateful thoughts filled my throat with a burning sensation.
    Go to the principal’s office!
I ordered him.
Turn yourself in and confess to…
my mind spun, trying to think of something that would pay back Shark Boy but leave me out of it.
Confess to harassing a changeling on the first day of school!
    Shark Boy spun and strode purposely toward the principal’s office, my command echoing through his mind. As I pulled back, I caught his name.
David.
Sickness churned in my stomach. Maybe he would come to his senses before he reached the principal’s office. Maybe my command would fade. If not, he deserved whatever he got there.
    I couldn’t bring myself to regret what I’d done.
    My shaky legs carried me down the hall, and I made it to band rehearsal before the bell rang. The rich sound of our instruments vibrated through me, soothing out the tension. My fingers found the notes on my saxophone while other students tapped their feet or swayed to the music filling our ears.
    Here, I was still a zero. Everyone ignored me, like usual.
    Practice.
Simon’s instructions rang in my head. The first chair saxophonist trained her eyes on the bandmaster and fluttered her fingers with perfect timing. She was Janice from math, the one that I had jacked to write nursery rhymes. I reached toward her with my mind. I could jack her, make her miss her perfect notes. Make her blow every song for the rest of practice.
    I shrank back inside myself. What kind of person does that?
    I focused my eyes on the sheet music swimming in front of me and pretended to be a zero, instead of a dangerous freak lurking in the third-chair saxophonist seat.
    chapter THIRTEEN

I dragged myself into the house and my insides squirmed, sourness from the day’s events eating me from the inside out. I trudged up the stairs to find Mom in the kitchen. She was digging around a low cabinet and had pots, pans, and strange kitchen gadgets evicted and strewn all over the floor. She backed out of the long-neglected cabinet, her hair spotted with furry dust worms.
    A strangled laugh erupted from me.
    “Hey,” she said. “Good day at school?”
    “Um, yeah.” Part of me wanted to tell her everything—Shark Boy, jacking, Simon.
Simon.
He would want me to jack into my mom’s mind and control her like the students in the library, but jacking my mom summoned the same internal cringing I felt about controlling Raf.
    “How is Raf doing?” she asked, as if she had read
my
mind.
    “Raf?” I repeated. “Uh, yeah, Raf’s fine. Great.”
    She smiled and brushed back a strand of dusty hair that had fallen over her face. I could practice like Simon wanted, link in and mindtalk and make her think I had finally changed. But I would have to do it all the time or she would know something was wrong, and I wasn’t sure I could pull it off.
    Or wanted to.
    I couldn’t decide which was the worse lie—that I was still a zero, or that I could read minds like everyone else. Either one was better than the truth—that I was a mindjacking freak.
    “I need to study,” I said and fled to my room before she could ask me anything else. A vision of Raf, with his stony looks, chased me up the stairs.
    ~*~
    The next morning I escaped the house before Mom