White Cat (Curse Workers 1)

He nods like that makes sense, fishing around in a drawer until his gloved hand emerges holding a fistful of electrodes. He begins attaching them to my forehead, their sticky sides pulling at my skin. “Now we’re going to measure your gamma waves.” He switches on a machine and it jumps to life, needles skittering across paper in the pattern that’s mirrored on a screen to my left.

“Gamma waves,” I repeat. I’m not even asleep, so I don’t see the point in measuring my gamma waves. “Is this going to hurt?”

“Quick and painless.” The doctor peers down at the paper. “Any reason why you think you’re hyperbathygammic?”

Hyperbathygammic. That long medical term for worker. HBG. Heebeegeebies.

“Wh-what?” I stammer.

His eyes narrow. “I thought—”

I think of the woman I heard in the reception area. She was complaining about getting worked, and she sounded like they’d done a test on her to prove it. But he’s not asking me if I think I’ve been worked. He’s asking if I think I’m a worker.

This is the new test, the one that they keep talking about on the news, the one that conservative politicians want to make mandatory. Theoretically, compulsory testing will keep HBG kids from breaking the law by accident when using their powers for the first time. Theoretically, the results are supposed to stay private, so there’s no harm, right? But no one really thinks those results are going to stay private.

They’ll wind up with the government, which loves to draft workers for counterterrorism and other odd jobs. Or—legally or not—those results wind up in the hands of local authorities. If mandatory testing happens, the rest will be hard on its heels. Yeah, I know the slippery slope argument is a logical fallacy, but occasionally a slope feels particularly greased.

Supporters of the proposition have urged nonworkers to go get tested. The idea is simple. Even if workers don’t get the test, they’ll be the only ones to refuse it. That way, even if compulsory testing doesn’t pass, it’ll still be easier to figure out who’s hyperbathygammic.

I hop off the table, ripping the electrodes off my skin. I might not get along with my family, but being part of some database of nonworkers used like a net to trap Philip and Barron and Grandad is horrible. “I have to go. I’m sorry.”

“Sit back down. We’ll be done in just a moment,” he says, grabbing for the wires. “Mr. Sharpe!”

This time when I head for the doors, I don’t stop until I’m through them. Keeping my head down, I ignore the nurse calling after me and the people in the waiting room staring. I ignore everything but my need to be somewhere other than here.

I keep telling myself to breathe as I drive. My foot pushes harder and harder on the gas pedal and my fingers fiddle with the radio just to have some sound to drown out the single thought: I screwed up.

I was supposed to be inconspicuous, but I’d become memorable. Plus, I used my own name. I know where I went wrong: when the doctor said he knew what I was there for. I have this problem. Sometimes I’m too in love with the con; even when it goes wrong, I’d rather let it turn on me than walk. I should have stopped the doctor and corrected him, but I was too curious, too eager to play along and see what he would say next.

I still have the stationery. I can still make the plan happen. With recrimination pounding in my ears louder than the music, I pull into the Target parking lot. The front displays are all pastel baskets with chocolate eggs in them, even though it seems like they’d get stale before Easter. I walk to electronics and pick up a disposable cell phone. My second stop is a copy shop, where I rent computer time. The steady hum of the copiers and the smell of printer ink remind me of school and calm, but when I take the file out of my bag, my heart starts racing all over again.

The other mistake I made. Stealing a file. Because I was memorable enough now that they might think of me when they consider all the ways the file could have gone missing.

All I need is the sleep center’s logo—the resolution on the one from the Internet is so bad I can’t use it for anything but a fax. I don’t need a file. A file could get me in real trouble. But when I saw the folder on that counter, I just grabbed.

And now, letting it fall open on this counter, I feel even more stupid. It’s just some woman’s name, her health insurance, a bunch of numbers and charts with jagged lines. None of it means anything to me. The only good thing is that Dr. Churchill signed one of the pages; at least I can copy his scrawl.

I flip though a few more pages, until I see a graph labeled “gamma waves” with red circles around the spikes in the jagged line. Gamma waves. A little Googling explains what I’m looking at. Apparently dream work puts someone into a sleep state that’s like deep sleep, except with gamma waves. Gamma waves—according to the article—are usually present only during waking or light REM sleep. On the chart, gamma waves are present during the deepest sleep stages, when there’s no eye movement and when both sleepwalking and night terrors occur. That’s what proves she was sleep worked.

Apparently, according to the same site, gamma waves are the key to determining if you’re a worker too. Worker gammas are higher than normal people’s, asleep or awake. Much higher.

Hyperbathygammic.

I stare at the screen. This information has always been available to me with only a few clicks of a mouse, and yet I never really thought about it. Sitting here, I try to figure out why I handled the situation in the doctor’s office so badly. I wasn’t cunning. I panicked. My mother instructed me over and over again not to tell anyone anything about the family—not what I knew and not what I guessed—so it’s awful to realize that nothing needs to be said. They could know through your skin.

And yet. And yet there’s a pathetic part of me that wants to call the doctor and say, You almost finished the test. Did you get a result? And he’d go, Cassel, everyone’s wrong about you. You’re the awesomest worker on Awesome Street. We don’t know why you didn’t figure it out. Congratulations. Welcome to the life you’re supposed to have.

I have to push those thoughts out of my head. I can’t afford to get any more distracted. Sam’s waiting for me at Wallingford, and if I want to do more than visit the campus over and over again to sort out his messes, I have to fix a letter.

First I scan in the stationery. Then I find the font that the address is in, use the photo editing program to get rid of the old information, and type in the phone number of my new prepaid cell. I erase all the text about the office’s holiday hours and type my own words in their place. “Cassel Sharpe has been my patient for several years. Against the strict orders of this office, he discontinued his medication, which resulted in an episode of somnambulism.”

I’m not sure what to type next.

Another quick Google turns up a bit of likely doctorish mumbo jumbo. “The patient indicated a stimulant-dependant sleep disorder that induced bouts of insomnia. He has been prescribed medication and is sleeping through the night with no more incidents. As insomnia is often causal for sleepwalking, I believe there is no medical reason for Cassel to be restricted from classes or to be monitored at night.”

I smile at the screen, wishing to grab hold of one of the businessmen getting pie charts printed and show him how smart I am. I feel like bragging. I wonder what else fake Dr. Churchill could convince Wallingford to believe.

“Furthermore,” I write, “I have eliminated any outside assault as a cause for the patient’s sleepwalking.”

No point in them worrying about something that’s probably just my crazy self-immolating guilt. No point in my worrying about it either.

I print my letter out on the fake stationery and print myself a fake envelope. Then I lick it and pay my bill at the copy shop. As I drop the letter into the mailbox, I realize that my plan better have a second prong if I’m going to stay unsuspended.

Stop sleepwalking.

I get to Wallingford around four, which means Sam’s at play practice. It’s easy to slip into the Carter Thompson Memorial Auditorium and sit in one of the seats in the back. The lights are dim there, all of them flooding the stage, where the cast are blocking Pippin murdering his dad.

“Stand closer to one other,” Ms. Stavrakis, the drama teacher, says, clearly bored. “And lift that knife high, Pippin. It’s got to catch the light so we can see it.”

I see Audrey standing next to Greg Harmsford. She’s smiling. Even though I can’t see her face clearly, memory tells me that the blue sweater she’s wearing is the color of her eyes.

“Please try to stay dead,” Ms. Stavrakis calls to the kid playing Charles, James Page. “You only have a few moments of lying there before we bring you back to life.”

Sam walks out on the stage and clears his throat. “Um, excuse me, but before we do this again, can we at least try out the effect? It looks lame without the blood packet and we need the practice. Uh, and don’t you think it would be awesome if Pippin shot Charles instead of stabbing him? Then we could use the caps and it would really splatter.”

“We’re talking about the eighth century here,” Ms. Stavrakis says. “No guns.”

“But at the beginning of the musical they’re in different historical costumes from different time periods,” he says. “Doesn’t that imply—”

“No guns,” says Ms. Stavrakis.

“Okay, how about we use one of the packets? Or I could attach a blood capsule to the end of the retractable blade.”

“We have to run through the rest of the scene, Sam. See me before rehearsal tomorrow and we’ll talk about this. Okay?”

“Fine,” he says, and stalks backstage. I get up and follow him.

I find him standing by a table. Bottles of red liquid rest on it next to scattered condom wrappers. I can hear Audrey’s voice somewhere on the other side, yelling something about a party on Saturday night.

“What the hell goes on back here?” I ask him. “Drama club parties hard.”

Sam turns around suddenly. I don’t think he had any idea I was there. Then he looks down at what’s in front of him and laughs nervously.

“They’re for the blood,” he says, but I can see red creeping up his neck. “You fill them up. They’re pretty sturdy, but they pop easy too.”

I pick one up. “Whatever you say, man.”

“No, look.” He takes it from me. “You rig a small explosive charge onto a foam-covered metal plate, and then you cover the charge with the blood pack. It’s powered by a battery, so you just have to tape it and thread the trigger down the actor’s body to somewhere out of sight. Like, with gaffer tape. If it’s for a video or something, seeing wires doesn’t matter so much. You can just edit them out. But onstage it’s got to look neat.”

“Right,” I say. “It’s a shame they won’t let you do it.”

“They’re not big on my prosthetics either. I wanted to give James a beard. I mean, has Ms. Stavrakis even seen paintings of Charlemagne? Totally bearded.” He looks at me for a long moment. “Are you okay?”

“Sure. Of course. So who won what?”

“Oh, yeah, sorry.” He goes back to putting his equipment away. “Two teachers were spotted hooking up—practically no one bet on it, but three people did. Your payout is, like, six hundred bucks.” He corrects himself. “Our payout.”

“I guess the house doesn’t always win.” I miscalculated my odds in a big way, but I don’t want him to know how big a hit I’m going to take. I rely on people making bad bets. “Who?”

He grins. “Ramirez and Carter.”

I shake my head. Music teacher and the freshman English teacher. Both married to other people. “Evidence? You better not be handing out any winnings without—”

He flips open his laptop and shows me the picture. Ms. Carter’s got her hand on the back of Ms. Ramirez’s neck and her mouth on the front of it.

“Doctored?” I ask hopefully.

He shakes his head. “You know, people have been acting really weird since I took over your operation. Asking my friends about me.”

“People don’t like to think of their bookies as having friends. Makes them nervous.”

“I’m not going to give up my friends.”

“Of course you’re not,” I say automatically. “I’ll go get the cash. Look,” I say, and sigh. “I’m sorry if I seem like a hard-ass or whatever, asking you for evidence.” My skin itches with discomfort. I’ve been acting like Sam’s a fellow criminal.

“You aren’t being weird,” he says, looking puzzled. “No weirder than usual, anyway. You seem fine, man.”

I guess he’s used to suspicious people with crappy tempers. Or maybe I’ve never seemed as normal as I thought. Trudging down the path to the library, I keep my head down. I’m pretty sure that if Northcutt or any of her lackeys see me, they’ll consider my roaming around campus a violation of my “medical leave.” I manage to avoid looking anyone in the eye or walking into anyone on the way to the library.

Lainhart Library is the ugliest building on campus, constructed with a musician’s donated funds in the eighties, when apparently people thought that a round building tilted at a weird angle was just the thing to update all the grand old brick edifices surrounding it. But as ugly as it is on the outside, the inside is couch-filled and comfortable. Bookshelves fan out from a central parlor with lots of seating and a massive globe that seniors try to steal year after year (a popular bet).

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He nods like that makes sense, fishing around in a drawer until his gloved hand emerges holding a fistful of electrodes. He begins attaching them to my forehead, their sticky sides pulling at my skin. “Now we’re going to measure your gamma waves.” He switches on a machine and it jumps to life, needles skittering across paper in the pattern that’s mirrored on a screen to my left.

“Gamma waves,” I repeat. I’m not even asleep, so I don’t see the point in measuring my gamma waves. “Is this going to hurt?”

“Quick and painless.” The doctor peers down at the paper. “Any reason why you think you’re hyperbathygammic?”

Hyperbathygammic. That long medical term for worker. HBG. Heebeegeebies.

“Wh-what?” I stammer.

His eyes narrow. “I thought—”

I think of the woman I heard in the reception area. She was complaining about getting worked, and she sounded like they’d done a test on her to prove it. But he’s not asking me if I think I’ve been worked. He’s asking if I think I’m a worker.

This is the new test, the one that they keep talking about on the news, the one that conservative politicians want to make mandatory. Theoretically, compulsory testing will keep HBG kids from breaking the law by accident when using their powers for the first time. Theoretically, the results are supposed to stay private, so there’s no harm, right? But no one really thinks those results are going to stay private.

They’ll wind up with the government, which loves to draft workers for counterterrorism and other odd jobs. Or—legally or not—those results wind up in the hands of local authorities. If mandatory testing happens, the rest will be hard on its heels. Yeah, I know the slippery slope argument is a logical fallacy, but occasionally a slope feels particularly greased.

Supporters of the proposition have urged nonworkers to go get tested. The idea is simple. Even if workers don’t get the test, they’ll be the only ones to refuse it. That way, even if compulsory testing doesn’t pass, it’ll still be easier to figure out who’s hyperbathygammic.

I hop off the table, ripping the electrodes off my skin. I might not get along with my family, but being part of some database of nonworkers used like a net to trap Philip and Barron and Grandad is horrible. “I have to go. I’m sorry.”

“Sit back down. We’ll be done in just a moment,” he says, grabbing for the wires. “Mr. Sharpe!”

This time when I head for the doors, I don’t stop until I’m through them. Keeping my head down, I ignore the nurse calling after me and the people in the waiting room staring. I ignore everything but my need to be somewhere other than here.

I keep telling myself to breathe as I drive. My foot pushes harder and harder on the gas pedal and my fingers fiddle with the radio just to have some sound to drown out the single thought: I screwed up.

I was supposed to be inconspicuous, but I’d become memorable. Plus, I used my own name. I know where I went wrong: when the doctor said he knew what I was there for. I have this problem. Sometimes I’m too in love with the con; even when it goes wrong, I’d rather let it turn on me than walk. I should have stopped the doctor and corrected him, but I was too curious, too eager to play along and see what he would say next.

I still have the stationery. I can still make the plan happen. With recrimination pounding in my ears louder than the music, I pull into the Target parking lot. The front displays are all pastel baskets with chocolate eggs in them, even though it seems like they’d get stale before Easter. I walk to electronics and pick up a disposable cell phone. My second stop is a copy shop, where I rent computer time. The steady hum of the copiers and the smell of printer ink remind me of school and calm, but when I take the file out of my bag, my heart starts racing all over again.

The other mistake I made. Stealing a file. Because I was memorable enough now that they might think of me when they consider all the ways the file could have gone missing.

All I need is the sleep center’s logo—the resolution on the one from the Internet is so bad I can’t use it for anything but a fax. I don’t need a file. A file could get me in real trouble. But when I saw the folder on that counter, I just grabbed.

And now, letting it fall open on this counter, I feel even more stupid. It’s just some woman’s name, her health insurance, a bunch of numbers and charts with jagged lines. None of it means anything to me. The only good thing is that Dr. Churchill signed one of the pages; at least I can copy his scrawl.

I flip though a few more pages, until I see a graph labeled “gamma waves” with red circles around the spikes in the jagged line. Gamma waves. A little Googling explains what I’m looking at. Apparently dream work puts someone into a sleep state that’s like deep sleep, except with gamma waves. Gamma waves—according to the article—are usually present only during waking or light REM sleep. On the chart, gamma waves are present during the deepest sleep stages, when there’s no eye movement and when both sleepwalking and night terrors occur. That’s what proves she was sleep worked.

Apparently, according to the same site, gamma waves are the key to determining if you’re a worker too. Worker gammas are higher than normal people’s, asleep or awake. Much higher.

Hyperbathygammic.

I stare at the screen. This information has always been available to me with only a few clicks of a mouse, and yet I never really thought about it. Sitting here, I try to figure out why I handled the situation in the doctor’s office so badly. I wasn’t cunning. I panicked. My mother instructed me over and over again not to tell anyone anything about the family—not what I knew and not what I guessed—so it’s awful to realize that nothing needs to be said. They could know through your skin.

And yet. And yet there’s a pathetic part of me that wants to call the doctor and say, You almost finished the test. Did you get a result? And he’d go, Cassel, everyone’s wrong about you. You’re the awesomest worker on Awesome Street. We don’t know why you didn’t figure it out. Congratulations. Welcome to the life you’re supposed to have.

I have to push those thoughts out of my head. I can’t afford to get any more distracted. Sam’s waiting for me at Wallingford, and if I want to do more than visit the campus over and over again to sort out his messes, I have to fix a letter.

First I scan in the stationery. Then I find the font that the address is in, use the photo editing program to get rid of the old information, and type in the phone number of my new prepaid cell. I erase all the text about the office’s holiday hours and type my own words in their place. “Cassel Sharpe has been my patient for several years. Against the strict orders of this office, he discontinued his medication, which resulted in an episode of somnambulism.”

I’m not sure what to type next.

Another quick Google turns up a bit of likely doctorish mumbo jumbo. “The patient indicated a stimulant-dependant sleep disorder that induced bouts of insomnia. He has been prescribed medication and is sleeping through the night with no more incidents. As insomnia is often causal for sleepwalking, I believe there is no medical reason for Cassel to be restricted from classes or to be monitored at night.”

I smile at the screen, wishing to grab hold of one of the businessmen getting pie charts printed and show him how smart I am. I feel like bragging. I wonder what else fake Dr. Churchill could convince Wallingford to believe.

“Furthermore,” I write, “I have eliminated any outside assault as a cause for the patient’s sleepwalking.”

No point in them worrying about something that’s probably just my crazy self-immolating guilt. No point in my worrying about it either.

I print my letter out on the fake stationery and print myself a fake envelope. Then I lick it and pay my bill at the copy shop. As I drop the letter into the mailbox, I realize that my plan better have a second prong if I’m going to stay unsuspended.

Stop sleepwalking.

I get to Wallingford around four, which means Sam’s at play practice. It’s easy to slip into the Carter Thompson Memorial Auditorium and sit in one of the seats in the back. The lights are dim there, all of them flooding the stage, where the cast are blocking Pippin murdering his dad.

“Stand closer to one other,” Ms. Stavrakis, the drama teacher, says, clearly bored. “And lift that knife high, Pippin. It’s got to catch the light so we can see it.”

I see Audrey standing next to Greg Harmsford. She’s smiling. Even though I can’t see her face clearly, memory tells me that the blue sweater she’s wearing is the color of her eyes.

“Please try to stay dead,” Ms. Stavrakis calls to the kid playing Charles, James Page. “You only have a few moments of lying there before we bring you back to life.”

Sam walks out on the stage and clears his throat. “Um, excuse me, but before we do this again, can we at least try out the effect? It looks lame without the blood packet and we need the practice. Uh, and don’t you think it would be awesome if Pippin shot Charles instead of stabbing him? Then we could use the caps and it would really splatter.”

“We’re talking about the eighth century here,” Ms. Stavrakis says. “No guns.”

“But at the beginning of the musical they’re in different historical costumes from different time periods,” he says. “Doesn’t that imply—”

“No guns,” says Ms. Stavrakis.

“Okay, how about we use one of the packets? Or I could attach a blood capsule to the end of the retractable blade.”

“We have to run through the rest of the scene, Sam. See me before rehearsal tomorrow and we’ll talk about this. Okay?”

“Fine,” he says, and stalks backstage. I get up and follow him.

I find him standing by a table. Bottles of red liquid rest on it next to scattered condom wrappers. I can hear Audrey’s voice somewhere on the other side, yelling something about a party on Saturday night.

“What the hell goes on back here?” I ask him. “Drama club parties hard.”

Sam turns around suddenly. I don’t think he had any idea I was there. Then he looks down at what’s in front of him and laughs nervously.

“They’re for the blood,” he says, but I can see red creeping up his neck. “You fill them up. They’re pretty sturdy, but they pop easy too.”

I pick one up. “Whatever you say, man.”

“No, look.” He takes it from me. “You rig a small explosive charge onto a foam-covered metal plate, and then you cover the charge with the blood pack. It’s powered by a battery, so you just have to tape it and thread the trigger down the actor’s body to somewhere out of sight. Like, with gaffer tape. If it’s for a video or something, seeing wires doesn’t matter so much. You can just edit them out. But onstage it’s got to look neat.”

“Right,” I say. “It’s a shame they won’t let you do it.”

“They’re not big on my prosthetics either. I wanted to give James a beard. I mean, has Ms. Stavrakis even seen paintings of Charlemagne? Totally bearded.” He looks at me for a long moment. “Are you okay?”

“Sure. Of course. So who won what?”

“Oh, yeah, sorry.” He goes back to putting his equipment away. “Two teachers were spotted hooking up—practically no one bet on it, but three people did. Your payout is, like, six hundred bucks.” He corrects himself. “Our payout.”

“I guess the house doesn’t always win.” I miscalculated my odds in a big way, but I don’t want him to know how big a hit I’m going to take. I rely on people making bad bets. “Who?”

He grins. “Ramirez and Carter.”

I shake my head. Music teacher and the freshman English teacher. Both married to other people. “Evidence? You better not be handing out any winnings without—”

He flips open his laptop and shows me the picture. Ms. Carter’s got her hand on the back of Ms. Ramirez’s neck and her mouth on the front of it.

“Doctored?” I ask hopefully.

He shakes his head. “You know, people have been acting really weird since I took over your operation. Asking my friends about me.”

“People don’t like to think of their bookies as having friends. Makes them nervous.”

“I’m not going to give up my friends.”

“Of course you’re not,” I say automatically. “I’ll go get the cash. Look,” I say, and sigh. “I’m sorry if I seem like a hard-ass or whatever, asking you for evidence.” My skin itches with discomfort. I’ve been acting like Sam’s a fellow criminal.

“You aren’t being weird,” he says, looking puzzled. “No weirder than usual, anyway. You seem fine, man.”

I guess he’s used to suspicious people with crappy tempers. Or maybe I’ve never seemed as normal as I thought. Trudging down the path to the library, I keep my head down. I’m pretty sure that if Northcutt or any of her lackeys see me, they’ll consider my roaming around campus a violation of my “medical leave.” I manage to avoid looking anyone in the eye or walking into anyone on the way to the library.

Lainhart Library is the ugliest building on campus, constructed with a musician’s donated funds in the eighties, when apparently people thought that a round building tilted at a weird angle was just the thing to update all the grand old brick edifices surrounding it. But as ugly as it is on the outside, the inside is couch-filled and comfortable. Bookshelves fan out from a central parlor with lots of seating and a massive globe that seniors try to steal year after year (a popular bet).