“What are you going to do, then?” Jackson Jones wanted to know. “I’d let you stay here, but Ma’s sure to notice you sooner or later.”
“I guess I’ll go try to find those other kids,” Katie told him and didn’t remember until she saw his startled face that he didn’t know about the others.
“You mean there are more kids like you? Can they do magic, too?”
“It isn’t magic. I mean, I think it’s telekinesis. And I don’t know if the others can do it or not, but maybe they can. Oh!”
She broke off, because through the mist that obscured her vision Katie saw a figure coming along the street, on the other side. Or, rather, two figures. A tall boy with a big dog.
She reached into her pocket for her glasses. In her eagerness, she forgot to push them on with her fingers, and she didn’t notice that Jackson Jones allowed his mouth to fall open as the glasses settled comfortably, all by themselves, onto her nose.
It was the boy from the park, the one who might be Eric VanAllsburg, being dragged along by the huge Airedale, and Katie rose to her feet, wondering how to approach him without scaring him off again.
And right then, while her mind was occupied with something else, Mrs. Jones came out onto the porch and saw Katie with her glasses on. She put a hand to her mouth.
“Good heavens! It’s the little girl the police are looking for!” she said.
But before Mrs. Jones could do anything about it, Katie fled down the steps.
13
SHE HEARD JACKSON JONES CALLING after her, but Katie didn’t stop. Her flight had been unthinking, propelled by sheer panic, and it was only when she began to feel winded that she realized she’d run in the opposite direction from the boy with the big dog, the boy who might be Eric.
She turned and looked back, hoping that by some miracle the boy had turned, too, and was approaching her. There was no one, however, no one at all. No one was chasing her.
Would Mrs. Jones call the police? Katie had to assume that she would, which meant that Katie would have to find a place to go, a place to hide. Yet she couldn’t hide forever. Maybe she couldn’t even hide for a day or two.
Jackson Jones thought she ought to contact her mother because Monica was worried about her. Only was she worried because she thought Katie was dangerous or because she wanted to protect her?
Katie’s instinct was to keep on running, but she had a stitch in her side, and she was breathing heavily through her mouth. She couldn’t run any more for a while. So, instead, she walked. She didn’t take the bus, although she had a few coins left in her pocket, and eventually she came to a place where things looked familiar. She was only a block from Dale Casey’s house.
Could he help her? Probably not, Katie decided; she didn’t even think he would be home, but he was the only hope she had. If he really was like she was, and she was convinced that he was, then he would at least understand about her, and that was more than anyone else had ever done.
The Casey house sat in the middle of the block, looking normal and not at all frightening. Yet after the way Mrs. Casey had yelled, “Stop that child,” at her husband, Katie was leery of approaching it again.
She stood, pressing a hand to her side, trying to think. And after a few minutes it occurred to her that a car was sitting in front of the house, the car Mr. Casey had driven up in when Katie was there.
Of course, that didn’t prove anything. Some families had more than one car. But maybe the Caseys had come home early; maybe Dale was around.
Katie did something then that she’d never tried before. She reached out, with her mind, into that house. She didn’t know what it was like inside, nor where Dale would be if he were home. But she sent currents of air moving, air that would give the curtains and draperies a life of their own. If there were papers lying loose, they, too, would shift position. If she’d known which room Dale was in, she’d have flung a few small stones against the windows as well.
Dale had indicated that he could read minds. Could he read hers, from half a block away, if she tried very hard to catch his attention?
She stood there in the warm summer sunshine until her upper lip was beaded with perspiration. Lots of people had ESP; she knew that, she’d read about it often. So maybe if Dale had a little more than ordinary people, he would feel that she was there. She tried so hard that she squeezed her eyes shut and held her breath until it suddenly exploded in a small gasp when she couldn’t hold it any longer.
Katie opened her eyes.
And there he was, coming out of the front door of the big house. He paused on the front steps, looking around very casually, as if he had come out for nothing more important than to see what the weather was like. And then, without looking at her at all, he crossed the street and started walking in Katie’s general direction.
For a moment she thought it was just coincidence that he’d emerged from the house while she waited, because if he stayed on the far side of the street his path wouldn’t cross hers. After a moment, though, she realized that he might be taking precautions, in case anyone was watching.
When he was almost opposite her, Katie turned and went around the corner, so that no one from the Casey house could possibly see her. And sure enough, a moment later she heard the padding of Dale’s tennis shoes on the sidewalk behind her.
It made her feel peculiar to look into those silver eyes, so different from any she’d ever seen except for her own. Peculiar and excited, all at once.
“Boy,” Dale said, “you’re sure creating a ruckus. Do you know they showed your picture on TV last night and told people to call the police if they saw you?”
Katie licked her lips. “Did they say what for?”
“No.” He hesitated, then blurted out, “My mom called them. They just talked to her. They didn’t send a police officer out to the house.” He hesitated again before he added, “My dad picked up a piece of paper you dropped. It had some names on it, mine and two other ones.” He pulled a crumpled slip out of his pocket and handed it to her. “The police wanted to know about it, but Dad couldn’t remember what the names had been, except for mine. He doesn’t know I have it.”
Katie took the paper, although she didn’t need it any more. She’d memorized the names, and it didn’t tell her how to find Eric VanAllsburg.
“Did you read my mind?” she asked. “When I wanted you to come outside?”
For the first time she saw Dale grin. It made some of his freckles disappear into the creases. “Boy! You almost overdid it. With the wind, I mean. My dad was reading the Sunday paper, and it flew all over the room, and the financial section blew into the fireplace and burned up before he got to read it. And it knocked over a bud vase onto a letter Mom was writing and spilled water all over her desk. She thought maybe I did it.” The grin faded. “I get blamed for everything like that, even if I don’t do it at all.”
“But you really heard me asking you to come out?” Katie was intrigued by that; it seemed a handy ability to have.
“Not heard you, exactly. I was alerted when the wind began to blow inside the house, because I used to do that sometimes, before I decided it caused more problems than it was worth. So then I sort of went looking for you, or whoever was causing the wind. You know, mentally. And I felt you waiting, somewhere close by.”
“I don’t know exactly why I did it,” Katie confessed. “Except that I didn’t know what else to do. Can you read the whole story in my mind, or shall I tell you about it?”
“It’s easier if you tell me,” Dale decided. “I can’t read everybody’s minds. I’m just learning, you know. It sort of makes my head ache to try too hard, or for too long.”
So they walked over to the park, where the same old man was again feeding the pigeons, and they sat on the edge of the pool and talked.
It was strange and exciting to talk to Dale, because it was the first time in her life that Katie had felt able to admit to anything that came into her head without being afraid of the consequences.
And Dale, it was clear, was having the same experience.
“They’ve kicked me out of three schools,” he admitted. “They said I was a disruptive influence. Actually, I didn’t do anything to anybody who didn’t do something to me first. I don’t know why the other kids picked on me, except that they always made remarks about my funny eyes. And one day I realized that this kid was planning to trip me when I walked past him, so I thought how neat it would be if his milk carton tipped over in his lap right then, and thinking about it seemed to make it happen. So he forgot about tripping me. And after that, I always seemed to know if they were planning something mean, and I could counteract it. Only the teachers said I caused trouble. Anyway,” he concluded, “I guess being kicked out of school isn’t as bad as having the police after you because they think you killed your grandmother.”
Katie was glad she’d found an understanding friend, but that didn’t change her basic problem. She came back to it with a sigh.
“Do you think you could read Mr. C.’s mind and find out for sure what he intends to do about me? So I’d know if I could go home or not?”
Dale looked toward the fountain in the middle of the pool, and suddenly the water sprayed over his outstretched hand and arm, cooling them. When he put his hand back in his lap, the fountain returned to normal.
“Well, I could try. If people don’t want to let anyone know what they’re thinking, it’s harder. Like I said, I’m just learning.”
“Do you have to get close to him to do it?”
“It helps. I picked you up from half a block away, but that was probably because I was looking for you, and you were trying to send a message to me. This Mr. Cooper won’t be trying to do that.”
Katie was feeling very warm, and she decided to try Dale’s technique with the fountain. It was actually quite easy to make the water blow over her in a fine, cooling mist.
“Can you send messages, the way I did to you, as well as read minds?”
Dale considered. “I don’t know. I never tried it. There was never anybody to send a message to who wouldn’t have thought he was going crazy.”
“Try to send me a message now,” Katie suggested.
So they sat there on the concrete edge of the pool, and both of them concentrated. And into Katie’s mind, almost like the impressions she’d received from Lobo the cat, came an image. An image of food, steaming hot, and a glass of cold milk.
It reminded her that Mrs. Jones’s pancakes had been eaten a long time ago. Katie swallowed. “I can almost smell the hamburgers,” she said.
Dale grinned. “Me, too. With onions.”
Katie nodded, but she knew there was something more important than eating at the moment. “If you could send me a message about the food, can you send a message to Eric? I think he saw me and realized I knew he had made the Frisbee act up; he was afraid of what I might do or say about it, so he hurried away. Can you reach him and tell him we’re friends and that we need to get together?”
Dale shrugged. “I never tried it, but what do we have to lose? Tell me again what he looks like, as much detail as you can remember, and I’ll think about that as well as the message.”
So Katie told him, and Dale closed his eyes and tried to project his thoughts to the boy they had yet to meet. And on the off chance that she, too, might be able to use her mental powers in this way, Katie did the same thing.
After about ten minutes, they found they had to rest. “It sort of gives me a headache to try so hard,” Dale admitted.
It was Katie who saw him coming and rose slowly to her feet, the electrical trickle of excitement somehow being communicated to Dale so that he, too, turned and stood up.
He came straight toward them, a tall dark-haired boy wearing glasses, carrying a white paper sack. He didn’t have the dog this time, but otherwise he was the same as Katie had described. And behind the lenses of his glasses, his eyes were silver-colored.
“Are you Eric?” Katie asked tentatively, although she felt quite certain that he must be. The delicious aroma of hamburgers with onions wafted from the paper sack, and she knew they’d done it. She and Dale had called up this boy they’d been searching for.
Eric spoke slowly. “Then there are more like me. I always thought there must be.” He handed Katie the sack, regarding her seriously with the silvery eyes. “I assume these are yours. How did you do it? Find me, and make me buy your lunch?”
“Dale did it, mostly,” Katie volunteered. “I saw you here in the park, moving the Frisbee, and I guessed who you were; only I didn’t know how to find you when you ran away. Dale can read minds, though, at least some of them, and he can send messages without speaking. Can you do that, too?”
“Not that I know of. I’ve concentrated more on not letting anybody know what I was thinking, instead of the other way around.” Eric studied their faces, and particularly their eyes. “I wouldn’t have run, if I’d been close enough to see you like this. I’m not telepathic enough to figure out what’s going on, I’m sure of that. Is anybody going to explain?”
Katie dug into her pocket for coins and a crumpled dollar bill to pay for the lunch, then passed one of the foil-wrapped hamburgers to Dale. They ate them sitting on the edge of the fountain pool, taking turns talking. Eric wasn’t eating, so he was the one who began.
“First I got this strong feeling I should come to the park,” he said. “And then, after I decided maybe I ought to do it even if I didn’t know why, I felt a compulsion to stop and buy two hamburgers with onions. It was crazy, but I did it anyhow.”
Dale started to laugh. I guess you can project as well as I can, Katie. “I wasn’t thinking about the food any more.”
“Who are we?” Eric asked. “I’d decided I must have been born on some other planet, maybe brought here in a flying saucer and left for human beings to raise. I thought maybe some day the aliens, my own people, would show up and ask me to rise up against normal humans, and I’d have to decide whether to do it or not.”
Dale stopped chewing. “Would you go against humans? If you were an alien from outer space?”
Eric considered. His dark hair had fallen forward into his eyes, and Katie noted that he made it move back into place and smooth itself out without touching it or thinking about it.
“I hadn’t decided. Mostly, they’ve been pretty good to me. My folks have, anyway, even if they don’t understand me. I guess you don’t think we’re aliens?”
So they explained to him that they thought it had something to do with the dangerous drug their mothers had worked with, before any of them were born. Sometimes all three of them talked at the same time, but it didn’t seem to matter. Nobody got confused. Katie had never felt so exhilarated in her life.
And then she remembered.
“The police are looking for me,” she said. “They think I pushed my grandmother down the stairs. And Mr. C. moved into our apartment house to try to find out things about me. I don’t know for sure if he is the police, but I’m afraid to go home until I find out.”
“That shouldn’t be too hard,” Eric said. “If Dale can read minds, we can just get close enough to him to find out what he has in mind.”
“I can’t read everybody’s mind,” Dale said, wiping his mouth on a paper napkin. He sounded apologetic. “But I can try. It does seem to help if I get close to them. Shall we go see what we can do?”
Katie drew in a long shaky breath. “All right,” she agreed. “Let’s go.”
14
THERE WAS NO POLICE CAR in front of The Cedars Apartments this time. But they didn’t take any chances. Katie led the way around the back, through the alley, and they crept up through the shrubbery to look around.
A few minutes later an unfamiliar vehicle pulled up, and when the people got out of it, Katie felt Dale’s fingers digging into her arm. His whisper was more felt than heard.
“It’s her! The other one, Kerri Lamont!”
The girl was about their age, and even smaller than Katie. She had da
rk curly hair and horn-rimmed glasses. As she stood on the sidewalk, waiting for her parents to get out of the car, she seemed to look right at the three children mostly hidden behind the little cedar and bonsai trees.
Mrs. Lamont was tall and thin and would have been pretty if her mouth hadn’t looked as if it was always twisted crossly. “Come on, Kerri, they’re waiting for us,” she said.
Mr. Lamont was older than his wife, with a fringe of graying hair around a bald spot that he didn’t bother to try to cover up, the way Mr. P. did. He wore work pants and a plaid shirt and heavy boots, and he looked just as cross as Mrs. Lamont.
“This still sounds crazy to me,” he said. He had a very deep voice, that rumbled out of a stout chest. “Just because somebody else has got a kid as peculiar as ours, why do we have to come rushing over here right in the middle of the ballgame? Why couldn’t we have waited until I found out how the last inning came out?”
The family group was moving toward the building. Katie and the boys remained frozen into position, and only Kerri seemed aware of them. She didn’t say a thing, though. Katie knew they ought to try to send her a telepathic message, but between her own fear and excitement, she couldn’t think of anything that made sense.
“I told you,” Mrs. Lamont said, in a tone that sounded as if she said the same words often. “Monica called and said that Sandra Casey had found a note with Kerri’s name on it, and Dale’s, and another boy’s. And it’s just as I suspected, those other kids are as peculiar as Kerri is, and now Monica’s little girl has disappeared, and we have to find out what’s going on.”
“Why?” Mr. Lamont asked, kicking at a rock on the sidewalk. “Is knowing about those kids going to make Kerri any different?”
They talked about Kerri as if she wasn’t there, or was deaf and dumb. Didn’t they know what it made a kid feel like to know she was considered a freak even by her own parents?
“You don’t care about anything but your stupid ball-games,” Mrs. Lamont said. She was close enough now so that Katie could really see how pinched her mouth was. “You don’t care about what’s best for your kids.”