“Well yeah, but—”
“The jury will note the witness answered in the affirmative.”
“What the hell?”
“She’s on this lawyer kick.”
“I’d make an awesome lawyer. And then could afford many important shoes. But that’s besides the point. I’m thinking maybe small doses of sense, administered daily? Maybe it’ll have an effect over time.”
“Worth a shot,” Heather said. “Did you get that, Joss? None of it was your fault. None.”
“I hear you.” I couldn’t look at her.
“Oh, look who’s here,” Heather said.
Kat and I looked around. “Who?” she asked.
“Well, almost here.”
Kat rolled her eyes and bounced up to look out the window. “Ooh! Eric’s car. He was going to visit Dylan.”
“Yeah, Dylan’s with him,” Heather confirmed. She looked like she was about to say more, but she shut her mouth.
“You know, I should totally get Eric to start hanging out with Rob more.”
“Kat…” Heather said in a warning tone, “no meddling. You promised.”
“I promised that? That doesn’t sound like me. Does that sound like me?”
I smiled. It felt weird on my face. “No, it really doesn’t.”
Dylan gave the open door a double-tap and walked in cautiously. “Hey.”
Kat pushed him aside to jump on Eric. Kind of like the way I wanted to jump on Dylan only with more enthusiasm and less angst. He made a show of blowing Kat curls off his face and said, “Hi, Joss,” over her shoulder. “Doin’ okay?”
“Sure. I, uh, hear I owe you yet another thank you.”
“Oh, did Kat tell you we…took out the trash last night?”
“Yeah. Trash collection: way above and beyond. Seriously. Thank you. Both of you.”
Dylan gave me a weird look. Actually, he’d been giving me a weird look since he thought he had to knock on my open door. Eric smiled at Dylan, saw it too. He looked from Dylan to me. “You want to thank me? Tell me you’ve got popcorn. I could go for some popcorn.”
“Yeah, sure, I guess so.”
“No, no. Don’t get up. Woman,” he said to Kat, “get downstairs and pop me some corn.”
“Ooh, I just love it when you’re all forceful and sexist. Later,” she said to the rest of us as she took his hand and pulled him out of the room.
Heather shook her head as she followed. “Is it just me, or are they, like, really disturbing?”
“Not just you,” Dylan and I said in unison.
“Yeah, okay, you guys are a little creepy too these days,” she told us as she walked out.
Dylan stuffed his hands in his pockets and rocked back on his heels. “So you’re doing okay?”
“Yeah, you?”
“Sure.”
The silence between us was incredibly awkward. What was I supposed to say? Why was he standing across the room? Why didn’t he even want to look at me?
To be fair, you realize you’re a little lax on the eye contact yourself, right?
“Okay,” Heather said, striding back into the room, jolting us both, “that’s it. Lookit, this is totally against the rules, but you won’t talk to me, you won’t talk to Kat, and now I’m pretty sure you guys won’t talk to each other either. So I’m going to do some talking.”
“Heather—”
“No, I don’t need to back off. You guys are thinking horrible stuff. And a lot of it is the same, shared, horrible stuff. You’ve got all this crap, and you’re both thinking it’s your fault! And damn, that ought to be the stupidest part of it. But it’s not! You’re also both thinking maybe you shouldn’t act like you want to be around the other. Maybe you need to give them some space. Maybe being around you is going to remind them of the bad stuff and you should just keep your distance for a while.”
“Joss…”
“Don’t ‘Joss’ her, idiot, when you’re thinking the same thing.” I’d never seen Heather so wound up before. “Both of you don’t want to talk to anyone else, don’t want to be with anyone else, don’t want to do anything else except be with each other. Both of you think that’s the only thing that’s going to make you feel better. And both of you think you’re being selfish and need to back off. How two people can be so completely in sync and so completely clueless about each other at the same time is absolutely beyond my ability to comprehend. So to recap, both of you are traumatized, both of you don’t want anyone but your honey to comfort you. Neither of you wants time off from this relationship. And if you’re stupid enough to try that out of some misguided sense of helping the other one, you’re just going to hurt the one you love who’s going to be stupid enough to let you go.” She fixed each of us with a glare. “Don’t. Fuck. Up.”
There was a long moment of silence while we absorbed all that, Heather included, I think. Finally, Dylan said, “Wow. Um…thanks.”
“You’re welcome. Crisis averted. But don’t get used to it.” She shook her finger at us as she backed toward the door. “Now Kat thinks she and Eric should stay and chaperone you guys until your mom gets home. I’m going downstairs to chaperone them before they get all PG-13 in front of your sister.”
“Thanks, Heather,” I told her.
“Don’t mention it. Seriously. Like, ever. And now I need a drama detox. I’m gonna go play Barbies.”
“Better her than me,” I said as Dylan closed the door behind her.
“What you said. Come here.”
I practically flew off the bed and leapt at him. He caught me, gripping me tight against him. So much exactly what I needed that I wanted to cry.
“We’re gonna be okay.” His voice was rough, uneven.
“Yeah,” I answered, just as shaky.
He cleared his throat. “Did Kat and Heather fill you in on all the news? They’re all gone. Every one of them.”
“Yeah, I heard.”
“It’s really over. Maybe we could…I don’t know, go see a movie or something.”
I pulled back a little and grinned up at him. “You mean, like, a date?”
“So I haven’t been a dream boyfriend is what you’re saying.”
“I’m not saying that. We’ve been busy.”
“Maybe we should start over.” He pursed his lips like he was thinking. Then he smiled. Evilly. “Joss, do you ever think of me as more than a friend?”
I gave him my most potent narrow-eyed glare. “Nope. Never.”
And then I kissed him.
The End
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[email protected] An excerpt from
Impulse Control
A Talent Chronicles Short
The natives were getting restless.
Natives?
Classmates?
Inmates.
My fellow inmates were getting restless. The class we were waiting for should have started two minutes ago. Doesn’t seem like much, two minutes, but classes were always on time. Everything was always on time. And any deviation from routine generally meant some kind of trouble.
It was unusual for them to leave us unsupervised. Well, how unsupervised can you be with two cameras mounted in the room? But it was unusual not to have any NIAC—National Institutes for Ability Control—personnel physically there to eyeball us. I’d heard stories from kids who hadn’t been at State School #15 as long as I had, who’d come from normal schools an
d normal lives on the outside. They said kids acted up at school sometimes, caused trouble just for the sake of causing trouble. Took the consequences just to get attention, or for the thrill of breaking rules and the possibility of escaping with no consequences at all.
It was hard to wrap my brain around that. But then, Detention doesn’t mean the same thing to them. Out there.
My pencil snapped in my hand. Damn.
Ethan, Karen’s voice soothed its way into my brain, you need to relax. It’s probably nothing.
I glanced over to throw her a smile, reassure her that I was fine and not a danger to myself or others…except for the pencil. She was fiddling with her long, black hair, and while her mental voice was calm as ever, she couldn’t hide the apprehension in her grey eyes.
Then those eyes flicked to Elle who, a moment later, turned in her seat and reached across the aisle toward me. I put the two pieces of the pencil in Elle’s hand. She closed her fist around it, opened her hand, and I retrieved my pencil, good as new, from her palm. My fingers brushed her skin and I felt a tingle all the way up my arm. I had to clear my throat to whisper “Thanks,” at her. I doubt she heard me. I barely heard me. She was already facing front, and I was looking at her honey-brown braid again.
You know what you learn when you can read minds? Karen “asked.”
I heaved a heavy mental sigh. Lots of things that aren’t your business, I’d imagine.
Boys are idiots.
Don’t you have anyone else to pick—?
They’re coming.
The door opened and three people entered the room. One was the armed guard who would stand in the corner and look bored the entire time our instructor was in the room. One was the instructor for this class. The class was called Mental Defense, but the instructor had never told us his name. Lots of NIAC personnel didn’t give us their names. We called him Sir. The third was a guy about the same age as Karen and me.
He was on the tall side, pale and really skinny, and his hair was cropped so close to his scalp you could hardly tell what color it was. Brown, I guessed. He walked kind of strangely, one foot dragging a little with each step. The instructor didn’t tell him to take a seat. As the kid stood at the front of the room, it seemed he had a tick that caused his head to tilt to the side a few times a minute.
“This,” the instructor said with a tone of suppressed excitement in his voice that made me kind of nervous, “is Anderson. He’ll be helping us test the telepathic blocking techniques we’ve been working on.” I definitely didn’t like the sound of that. “Anderson has come to us from Delta Facility.”
That announcement broke through even our rigid discipline. There were a bunch of gasps, even whispers. The instructor pounded his fist on his desk, looking really pissed off at the outburst. What did he expect? Delta Facility was the proper name for what the NIAC personnel more casually referred to as Detention. It was the worst threat of punishment available to them, the nightmare of every kid in State School. It was a place few kids ever came back from, and no one ever left the way they went in. It was a place of free experimentation where life had no value and pain wasn’t a concern. Rumors of unending torment, yet a territory vastly unknown. It was Talent Hell. We called it Everlast.
Across the room, an empath groaned loudly and his chair scraped against the floor. From the corner of my eye I could see him grab his head and twist in his seat.
“Use your blocking, Kenneth,” the instructor snapped.
I tried to pull my emotions back, to calm down, to put Everlast and the concern about what the Anderson kid was here to do aside for the moment. I hoped the rest of the class would do the same and give Kenneth a break, poor guy.
“Can you continue without disrupting us?”
“Y-yes, Sir,” Kenneth gritted out. He folded his hands on the desk in front of him, arms trembling, knuckles going white. They told the public that they took us from our families to train us to control our abilities, protect us as well as them. Since we were never allowed to communicate with our families, since no one ever went home, it’s hard to believe that anyone on either side of the electrified fence believed that. We were training to be government operatives and they didn’t like to see weakness. If you couldn’t handle the strain, you weren’t going to hack it as a soldier. And if you couldn’t hack it as a soldier, the next best use was lab rat.
“Glad to hear it,” the instructor said curtly. “Anderson has been a successful part of an experimental trial involving an important new technology that may someday aid all Ability-Affected persons. What brings him to our Mental Defense class, however, is his inborn ability: Compulsion.”
Even I could feel another shift in the energy in the room. Compulsion and Influence Talents were pretty rare. At least they were in the State Schools. NIAC didn’t trust kids who could affect their thoughts. No wonder he’d ended up in Everlast.
“As we have discussed on numerous occasions, there may be a time when you will be faced with an Ability-Affected opponent or even, at some point in the future, a technology that may attempt to force you off-mission through some form of mind-manipulation. Today we’re going to be getting real-world practice in using the blocking techniques we’ve been learning. All right, Anderson, let’s start with something simple. Choose your subject and make that subject…walk to the front of the room.”
Anderson and the instructor went a few rounds of trying to make us dance—literally in one case. The instructor pointed out Rand and Karen and told Anderson to force Rand to strike his older sister. The poor kid got a nose bleed and almost passed out, but he held his own. No big surprise to me. Rand and Karen were really tight and even at twelve, Rand was shaping up to be a strong guy. Even Anderson broke out in a sweat on that one, looking kind of embarrassed and pissed off, but the instructor was pleased.
“All right, take your seat, Rand, and keep your head back. We’ll do one more and then we’ll call it a day. Your choice Anderson.”
Anderson’s head kept snapping that little sideways jerk as his narrowed eyes looked us over. When he looked down my row, I glanced away. Nope, no challenge here. The last thing I wanted was to find out that I lacked the mental fitness to stand up to him and end up giving Rand a busted lip to match his bloody nose. Anderson’s expression looked mean and I figured that’s what he’d go for. Better he pick on one of the smaller guys.
Elle pushed her chair back and stood. She grabbed the back of it and swayed on her feet, as though trying to pull herself away from invisible hands. Her hand jerked away from the back of the chair as one foot slid forward. Then another. She was shaking her head as she moved haltingly forward, grabbing at the sides of desks in an effort to hold herself back, sometimes pulling them away from their owners.
Anderson waited for her at the front of the classroom, lounging negligently against the instructor’s desk. He was smiling now, a predatory smile that made my blood boil. I heard the scrape of my own chair before I was even aware of what I was doing.
Stop it! Karen’s thought was forceful, edged with urgency, and made me pause long enough to see the instructor’s attention directed my way, his expression half warning and half challenge. Yes, he’d love an excuse to go after you. Don’t give it to him, Ethan.
Help her, I thought.
You know I can’t get involved any more than you can. She’s gotta do this on her own.
Some best friend you are. Unfair, but I wasn’t feeling a lot of fairness just then. Elle’s no match for him. She was already near the front of the classroom now.
I know. Ethan, you need to calm down. Sir’s watching you. The violence pouring off you is about to make Kenneth sick, and there’s nothing to be done. It’s humiliating, yeah, but she’ll live.
He won’t.
Cut the macho crap. You’re always going to be on probation here. You can’t afford a show of temper, so just cool it. Close your eyes and think of your happy place or something.
But I couldn’t close my eyes. I had to watch Elle being
pulled and jerked by Anderson’s Talent until she seemed to throw herself against his chest. He caught her lightly around the waist and waited for her to raise herself on her toes and press her mouth to his.
I think I growled.
Careful, you’re about to out yourself on the whole secret crush thing.
If that was supposed to lighten my mood, it was total fail.
Karen? Shut. Up.
I hoped you enjoyed reading this beginning of Impulse Control. If you would like to continue reading the story of these State School Talents, please find it at the following web address: http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/48526.
An excerpt from
Red
A novel by Kait Nolan
Elodie
I was thirteen when I found out why my mother left me.
It seems important to start my story there. The moment when everything changed and my life became a nightmare. The moment when my mother’s madness began to infect my father. Infect me.
The letter that came on my birthday that year was such a shock to my poor dad. So many times, I’ve wished I’d thrown it away. That I’d never let him see it. But at thirteen, I couldn’t wrap my brain around the enormity of what my mother was imparting. I thought it was a joke at first. A cruel one.
Dad didn’t. Instead of believing that she was mad, he took her words as the cold, hard truth. That I am a monster, just waiting for the proper catalyst to be unleashed. That I am cursed as she was.
Today I know it’s true.
I stared at the final line, the period a blotch of blue ink that bled into the page until I lifted my pen. It was worse, somehow, putting my fears into words. Words made a thing real, and I’d spent so long in denial. My ancestors all wrote of the curse in the weeks and months before they died, so it seemed fitting that I begin documentation of my own story to slip beside my mother’s letter, behind the final pages of the thick, leather-bound journal that held my gruesome family history.