Mind Games (Mind Games 1)

“If a tree falls in the forest and no one is around, does anyone give a crap?” I mutter.

“Now, please.”

I glare at her. We are murderers together, Clarice and me. I point to the box on the far left. “I’d take that one.”

She smiles. “Very good.”

“What’s in them?”

“It doesn’t matter.”

“Of course it doesn’t.” I lean back in my chair and stare at the ceiling. “Can I be done now?”

“It’s interesting,” she says, carefully picking up the boxes and stacking them in the corner of the big, cinder-block walled, windowless basement room. Annie has never been down here. Most of the girls haven’t. Only Eden and I are left from my original class, anyway. “I have the hardest time seeing you. Some people are easier than others, of course, but your constant ability to react without thinking makes it very, very hard to see anything in your future.”

I wonder if she could still have visions with her eyes clawed out. Annie loves her. Annie thinks she’s the best thing that ever happened to us. Annie needs her. They are running tests and diagnostics, and every three months there is another bit of hope for Annie’s sight.

I can’t leave anyway because I am a murderer and they would send me to jail and I couldn’t take care of Annie if I were in jail.

“Did you know we had no idea you existed?” She walks over to the door and taps on it three times. Tap tap goes my finger. Two taps. Two lives. “It was only Annie we were interested in. She’s proved less than exceptional, but you were the real find. At first we thought you were a Reader, or maybe a Feeler, since you knew this school wasn’t all it was set up to be. But you’ve proved far more interesting than any of that.”

“Goodie for me.” I could pick up the chair. I could smash it into her face. I wonder if I’m going to. Would she have already seen it if I was going to? Guess I’m not going to, then. Or she just can’t see it. I’m bored. I want to go sleep.

Sleep, sleep.

Tap tap. I don’t know what their faces looked like. I never really saw them. Would knowing what their faces looked like make the nightmares better or worse? I know their names. I looked up the story online, later, much later.

I killed a senator. Does that make it murder and treason? I’m scared. I’m scared in here, and I’m scared out there. I can never leave.

The door opens and three men dressed in gray sweats come in. They each have a small black thing in their hands, like a boxy cell phone. I don’t know what it is, but every sense is on alert and my heart is racing and my focus is narrowing, getting sharper. This is bad. I need to get out of this room. I stand and put the table between us, gripping Clarice’s chair. It’s heavy. Too heavy for much, I wish it were lighter, but I can take out someone’s leg.

Why do I need to take out someone’s leg?

“Sofia, these gentlemen are going to help you with some training. They’ve all got stun guns. Your job is to get out of the room.”

“Without getting shocked?” I stare at her, aghast. We haven’t done one of these in so long. I thought we were done.

“No. Your job is to fight back and get out of the room in spite of getting shocked.” She smiles pleasantly. “Consider it an exercise in focusing through pain.”

I should have smashed her head in with the chair, seen how well she could focus then.

Don’t cry, don’t cry. Annie can hear if I’m crying. She can’t see me curled in a ball on the couch, every part of my body in pain. She can’t see that I’m biting my wrist as hard as I can. I got out of the room. Oh, it hurts s

o much.

“So, what’s new?” she asks. She sounds nervous. She should be. She hasn’t tried to touch me today.

“Nothing.”

“You haven’t been here much.”

“Busy. School stuff.”

“Oh.” There’s a long pause and I hope she is done trying to talk to me. “I’ve been getting better. That’s good, right?”

“Better at what?”

“Seeing things. Clarice thought I should focus on you, and it helps. A little. But lately I haven’t been seeing things exactly how they will happen. I’ve been seeing…I don’t know. Bits and pieces that feel like they mean something more. Like maybe they’re still shifting and not set. It feels…big. Not like what I used to see, where it was something that really was going to happen exactly like that, and I only had to figure out how to understand the images. These visions are more like puzzles. Lots of little pieces. Like a recent vision, there was a guy with light hair and one with dark hair, opposite each other like they were two sides of a mirror. And a flash of you, and one of Clarice, and the color red, and a room all filled with tables and chairs but really fancy looking, official…I don’t know. It’s kind of scary, and I don’t understand it yet. But some are good. I’ve even started dreaming them. Sometimes they’re happy.” She gets a sort of dreamy smile on her face.