Tales From Beyond the Brain Page 9

  “You’re the other one who’s been tearing out all the stuffing,” said the driver.

  Jerome slowly turned around. Ms. Grumpy-Butt was still squashed into her seat, but he could see her reflection in the rearview mirror. There was a sinister gleam in her eye.

  “I’m sorry. Really, really sorr—”

  “Throwing it around the bus like it’s popcorn or something.”

  “Please,” Jerome begged. “It won’t happen again. I won’t—”

  “And that stuffing costs money. Do I look like I’m rolling in dough?”

  “No,” Jerome managed. “But I can pay for this.”

  “Exactly,” Ms. Grumpy-Butt said, getting out of her seat. Jerome noticed she had something in her hands. A thick roll of black hockey tape, the kind she patched the seats with. She pulled off a big strip. “You’ll definitely be paying for those seats.”

  Jerome dug into his pockets. He only had a couple of dollars in change on him. But he had more. A whole bank account full of money! However much she needed…

  “And as you can see,” the bus driver cooed, “I have a lot of seats to fill.”

  THE READING GROUP

  Mr. Wexler could disguise it all he wanted to. He could call it Group 1, or Red Group, or even “Wexler’s Buddies,” which he’d tried. Once. But Maya knew what everyone really called it. The dumb group. The can’t-read group. The never-get-good-grades group. The losers.

  It was just Andrew Kim, Noah Lazar and Maya. Even among the no-gooders, she was the only girl. Every other reading group had at least four people. The high group had six people in it—and Maya knew it was the high group because every one in it got straight As. Madeleine Beltzner made sure to let everyone know that every time they got a test back. An A! Again! she would always shout, waving her test like it was a golden ticket. Mr. Wexler only worked with the high group once in a while, because they didn’t need to be taught.

  Not Maya. Apparently, she’d needed one-on-one time with every teacher she’d had since kindergarten. She didn’t mind the extra help. What she couldn’t stand was the way everyone looked at her, like she was some kind of broken thing.

  One day Mr. Wexler sat Maya down and asked her to read a booklet about flowers and bees.

  Flowers and bees were okay, but Maya couldn’t focus on the words, even when she held the booklet close to her face. Even when she moved her finger across the words. They just looked like symbols, not even letters she could recognize. Sticks and lines and curves and circles.

  She knew Mr. Wexler was watching her every move. He was timing how fast she read, scribbling notes in his pad. The longer she took to decode a word, the faster his pen scratched against the paper. The faster the pen scratched, the more she could hear the Sound.

  It was a sound that was only in her head. Maya often heard it when she tried to concentrate really hard on something, like doing well on a reading test. It was a low drone, almost as if a bumblebee was hovering just beyond her ear. The Sound had been with her ever since she was a little girl, but it seemed to be growing louder and louder these days.

  Maya concentrated on the booklet Mr. Wexler wanted her to read. She tried sounding out the words, moving her mouth and lips to form what she hoped was written on the page, but the Sound was louder than she’d ever heard it before. Forget the buzz of one bumblebee going on inside her head—it was like a whole hive of them!

  Suddenly Mr. Wexler pulled the booklet away from Maya, catching her off guard. She gasped and then realized Mr. Wexler was saying something.

  She rubbed the sides of her head. That seemed to make the Sound fade. It was still there, but now it was only a dull murmur nipping at the back of her mind. Mr. Wexler spoke again. “You can stop now, Maya.”

  Maya glanced over her shoulder. The rest of the class was supposed to be doing quiet reading, but most of them were looking at her with wide eyes and open mouths. Had she screamed? Said something stupid?

  “Are you okay, Maya?” Mr. Wexler asked, trying to catch her attention.

  Maya turned back to him. Her face went red. She felt hot. She nodded.

  Mr. Wexler stared at her. He opened his mouth like he wanted to say something else, but stopped himself. He waited for the other students to stop staring. Then he reached down to the suitcase by his feet and fished out a piece of paper. He handed it to Maya.

  It was more like a piece of cardboard than paper. It was laminated too. Maya could see a clear border around it, as well as fingerprints from other kids who had obviously used it before her. Maya tried to focus on the words on it. The letters were much larger than she was used to seeing in books. They were the size of letters in books for little babies. She narrowed her eyes. “What’s this?”

  “It’s something I think you should read,” Mr. Wexler said. His voice was quiet. Almost a whisper. He motioned to the study corner. There was a desk set up there with a barrier wall so you could work privately. Usually Mr. Wexler sent the troublemakers over there so they wouldn’t disturb the rest of the class.

  “I want to go back to my desk,” Maya said.

  Mr. Wexler shook his head. “I’d like you to go read this over there,” he said firmly. “And take your pencil with you.”

  Maya didn’t want to make Mr. Wexler angry, and he was using the tone he saved for the kids who liked to push his buttons. Still, a pencil? “Is it a test?” Maya asked.

  “Go read it and find out.”

  Maya didn’t say anything else. She got up from the horseshoe-shaped table she’d been sitting at and walked over to the study corner. The rickety desk was covered with graffiti and had all sorts of bad words carved into it with staples and unfolded paper clips.

  Maya pulled the chair out, sat down and looked at the paper. She had to blink a few times before the words came into focus.

  As they did, the Sound came swimming back into her head. Only this time the Sound didn’t make the words look wrong. The Sound seemed to help now, working almost like a pair of glasses.

  The letters were so big that they took up most of the page.

  MAKE THE PENCIL FLOAT.

  Maya blinked. That’s what it said.

  She looked over at Mr. Wexler, hoping for some kind of explanation. But he was sitting at the horseshoe-shaped table with another group of students. Maya turned back to the paper. The buzzing in her head was growing louder. It was almost a kind of itch, and the only way she could scratch it was to—

  The pencil.

  She focused on her pencil lying on the desk. The Sound buzzed in her head. She traced the outline of the pencil in her mind, like she was taking a mental picture of it. But her mental picture was so real that she could almost feel it. Like she could touch it. Not with her hands, but with her thoughts.

  The pencil wobbled.

  Maya gasped. She looked over her shoulder. Mr. Wexler was still busy with that group of kids. He hadn’t seen. She glanced over the barrier and scanned the class. Nobody else had seen either. She was sure of it.

  She looked back at the pencil. Her heart was racing. She swallowed, stared at the pencil and heard the Sound. It washed over her like a cold ocean wave. She trained her mind on the pencil again.

  The pencil rolled toward her hand.

  Maya made it stop just before it touched her pinky.

  She glanced at the words on the page again.

  MAKE THE PENCIL FLOAT.

  Why not?

  She was still tracing the pencil with her thoughts. Now all she had to do was think, Float. The pencil wobbled and then, very gently, very slowly, lifted into the air.

  Maya leaned in close to make sure no one else could see the floating pencil. It was only a few inches off the desk. She held it there for a minute, and then let go.

  The Sound died away. It was still there, nibbling at her thoughts, but she didn’t mind it as much.

  When Mr. Wexler had finished with the kids at the horseshoe table, Maya brought the paper over to him, still not sure how to explain what had happened. Mr.
Wexler spoke first. “Did you enjoy the text?”

  “I… I…”

  “I can see you are making excellent progress so far.” He didn’t smile, but somehow Maya got the feeling Mr. Wexler was very, very pleased.

  He took the paper from Maya’s hand and put it back into his suitcase. Maya caught a glimpse of other papers in the suitcase, all neatly arranged. She had the feeling Mr. Wexler wanted her to see all the papers, but then the bell rang, and the other kids rushed out of the classroom.

  “Have a good recess,” Mr. Wexler said without looking at her.

  He didn’t mention the pencil or the paper for the rest of the day.

  Maya tried lifting the pencil again when she got home from school.

  She didn’t need to read the words on the paper. It wasn’t just because she’d memorized them. It was something about the way the words had appeared. Up until now the Sound in her head had been locked up, but the paper had acted like some kind of key.

  It was easy to lift the pencil—and other objects too. She tried an eraser and then a piece of paper. It was tricky at first, but she got the hang of it quickly enough.

  After a few hours of practice, Maya was able to lift the paper into the air, write her name on it in pencil and then erase it. She kept all three things in the air with her mind, like a juggler using their hands.

  There was a knock at the bedroom door.

  All three objects fell to the floor.

  The door opened. It was her father, home from work. He frowned. “Didn’t you hear me knocking? I’ve been calling you for dinner for five minutes.”

  Maya nodded vacantly. “Oh.”

  “Are you okay?”

  Maya stared into her father’s eyes. Was her special talent genetic? Did her father or mother have the same ability? Did other people?

  Maya could tell her dad had no idea his daughter could make pencils float in the air. She wasn’t sure how, but she knew. Just as she was certain that Mr. Wexler had picked up on her “talent” earlier that day.

  She decided not to tell her father or her mother about the pencil.

  The next day Mr. Wexler called Maya’s reading group to the horseshoe table at the beginning of class.

  He set one pencil down in front of the three of them. He did not give any of them sheets of paper to write on or any other pencils.

  “Go on, Maya,” Mr. Wexler said. “Show us what you learned yesterday.”

  Andrew and Noah stared at Maya. She focused the Sound, traced a thought bubble around the pencil and rolled it toward Andrew without even looking at it.

  The pencil rolled so fast that Andrew had to snap his hand against the desk to keep it from falling off.

  “I see you did some homework,” said Mr. Wexler.

  He opened the briefcase by his feet and fished out three more pieces of laminated paper, all identical. Maya stared at the words on the page: TURN THE LIGHTS ON AND OFF.

  Immediately the lights above her head flickered off. Maya shot a glance over to Noah and saw a big grin spreading across his face. A second later the lights flicked back on, and Maya turned to see Andrew with the same smile on his face, nodding.

  “What’s going on?” someone said.

  Maya turned and saw a few of her classmates staring up at the lights.

  “I’m sure it’s just a power surge,” Mr. Wexler said, raising his voice so the others could hear. “Nothing to worry about. Everyone back to your desks, please.”

  The lights flicked on and off a couple more times. Maya noticed that Mr. Wexler was staring at her intently. “Well?”

  Maya tilted her head to look up at the fluorescent bulbs overhead. At first she thought about wrapping her thoughts around the light switches and flicking them on and off. But what if the other kids saw the switches moving? They’d freak out.

  No, there had to be a better way. Using her mind, she traced lines around the long tubular bulbs themselves. She could feel the gases inside. She squeezed her thoughts around the slender bulbs, pushing at the gases, coaxing them—

  The lights blazed to brilliant life, as if someone had stuck flares inside the tubes.

  Around her, Maya heard screams.

  She gasped, feeling the crackle of electricity in her head, and let go.

  The lights faded.

  Mr. Wexler got out of his chair, flicked the lights on, off and then on again. He stared at them with a puzzled look on his face, obviously putting on a show for the class. “Just what I thought,” he said loudly. “A power surge.” He gave the briefest of glances at Maya.

  Then Mr. Wexler sat himself back down at the horseshoe table. He took back the three pieces of laminated paper and pulled out another set. He passed one to each of the students.

  Maya noticed that hers was not laminated. It was a plain piece of paper with the word TEST handwritten on it.

  “Huh?” Maya asked. “You want us to do a reading test?”

  Why do you need to read words, Maya, when you can read minds?

  Only then did Maya notice that Mr. Wexler’s lips were not moving. She could hear his voice in her head.

  I’ve been waiting for this moment, Maya. I’ve been watching you ever since kindergarten, because you’re one of us. Mr. Wexler’s thoughts were beaming right into her head.

  One of us? Maya asked, only her mouth didn’t move. But Mr. Wexler could hear her just fine.

  There aren’t many of us around, Maya. Because we’re special. We have a gift.

  A gift, another voice echoed. It slithered around her mind, trying to probe its way in. Maya turned to see Noah smiling at her in a way that set her hairs on end.

  “Read the paper,” Mr. Wexler said.

  “I did read it,” Maya said.

  “You looked at the word, but you didn’t read it,” Mr. Wexler continued. As he talked, Maya realized there were other words being said, only those words were traveling directly from Mr. Wexler’s head into her own. The test isn’t this paper, Maya. It’s the people behind you, sitting in their desks.

  Maya turned.

  “Read the letters on the paper carefully. Sound them out one by one,” Mr. Wexler said out loud. But in his mind he added, Choose one of them. Use your gift, Maya, and dig into their thoughts.

  “T-Est,” Maya sounded out.

  “Again,” Mr. Wexler said, but in her mind, Maya heard, Why not Madeleine?

  “T-Est.”

  Mr. Wexler’s voice entered her mind. I know how you feel about her. The way she looks at you like you’re a piece of trash. I can hear what she says, too, and it isn’t very nice.

  You didn’t have to be a mind reader to know what Madeleine Beltzner and her friends said about Maya. It wasn’t anything new.

  But even thinking about the things Madeleine whispered about her made the back of Maya’s neck itch and her ears get hot. Maya looked down and noticed that her hands were clenched into tight fists.

  They torment you, don’t they?

  They do, Maya heard Andrew and Noah think together. Had Mr. Wexler been saying other things into Andrew’s and Noah’s minds? Things Maya couldn’t hear but they could?

  They make fun of you. They’ve always made fun of you.

  Yes, they do!

  The voices battered around Maya’s head.

  They do not know the powers we possess, thought Mr. Wexler.

  Maya’s heart began to beat faster. She could hear the horrible things that were brewing in Andrew’s deepest, darkest thoughts. His head was full of thoughts of revenge for all the times kids had picked on him. He was thinking about picking students up as easily as Maya had the pencil. Thinking about sending Madeleine Beltzner flying across a room. Maya thought about how Madeleine would look, the horror on her face. She pictured her in the air, coming closer and closer to the wall, and—

  No! Maya thought privately.

  But there weren’t any private thoughts between the members of the reading group.

  No? Mr. Wexler repeated.

  You can’t hurt
them, Maya thought.

  Who said we were going to hurt them?

  I saw what Andrew was planning.

  What did you see?

  Maya tried to bury her thoughts deep within her. She turned up the Sound in her mind. It buzzed and whirred like a dryer or washing machine, making white noise. She turned the Sound up loud enough that Andrew, Noah and even Mr. Wexler could not hear her.

  What are you thinking, Maya?

  She does not agree with us, thought Andrew.

  Not with our plan.

  Their thoughts swarmed around her brain like angry hornets. Their voices were growing more and more angry. They stung at the layers of her brain, trying to get into her thoughts. Maya bit down on her lip so hard that she tasted blood.

  Mr. Wexler’s thoughts surged above the others. Do you think I invited you into this reading group to help the other students? They are beneath us, Maya.

  Beneath us! Andrew or Noah echoed. Or maybe it was both of them.

  There are others out there like us. Can’t you hear them?

  Maya could hear other thoughts. They were distant, to be sure, but they washed back and forth across the back of her mind like waves at some far-off beach.

  It begins today. It begins now, thought Mr. Wexler.

  Maya was suddenly aware that the horseshoe table had begun to vibrate. She cast quick glances at Andrew, Noah and Mr. Wexler. Their palms were pressed against the table. Their eyes were rolled back in their sockets. Their jaws hung slack, and their tongues were rolling out of their open mouths like tentacles.

  She looked over her shoulder. The entire class was staring at them.

  “Mr. Wexler…?”

  The horseshoe table kept vibrating. It made a low tone like the Sound in Maya’s head. The vibrating was the same Sound—it was their sound—and it was making the whole table shudder and rock. The bolts and screws started to pop out of the table, and as it rose a few inches off the floor it began to wobble uncontrollably.

  Maya stood up. Mr. Wexler and the other members of her reading group still remained firmly in place, their hands braced against the table.