Chapter Text
Class ended in five minutes, and all I could think was, an hour is too long for lunch.
Mr. Gladly wrapped up class and made to leave the classroom soon afterward. Before he fell out of my range and my connection to his frequency could be forcibly severed, I manually cut my connection.
An intense wave of static filled my ears to the point I could barely hear the normal cacophony of noise my classmates were making by talking to each other. I plugged my earphones in and started playing Beethoven’s 5th in a moderately successful attempt to drown out the sound.
Crowds were the worst.
I could see Madison talking with her friends, and made a snap decision to tune into her frequency. We’d likely be seeing each other face-to-face soon, anyway, so there wasn’t much risk she would move out of my range.
The static stopped immediately, a familiar voice taking its place.
I can’t be the only one creeped out by “Mr. G”. You guys can’t seriously tell me that moron is the sort of guy you’d go for. Could you shut the fuck up about that pedo for one second?
I rolled my eyes. The unapologetically caustic tone was almost nostalgic at this point. I didn’t disagree with the sentiment, though I knew for a fact Mr. Gladly was only desperate for approval and had no interest in teenage girls. He even had a girlfriend, alien as the idea seemed to me.
I rifled through my bag and took out my lunch.
Julia is trying way too hard to impress today. Boob tubes, really? Don’t tell me she has a thing for him…
I sighed and took a bite of my sandwich. Here we go again.
She’s still in the classroom, all by herself. Guess I shouldn’t be surprised a creep like her doesn’t have any friends.
It took a moment to realize Madison was talking about me, and I clenched my fists despite myself. Whose fault does she think it is that no one wants to be around me?
I looked up from the table, noticing most of the students had vacated the room aside from Madison, Julia, and a few of their friends.
Our eyes met, and Madison smirked at me.
If only she knew Emma and Sophia were paying her a visit today.
I sighed again, more angrily this time. They never quit.
Sophia, I understood, but Emma’s motivations remained something of a mystery to me.
And Madison…well, I didn’t need to delve into the inner workings of her mind to figure out why she does what she does, but it was certainly an enlightening experience.
At least it meant I didn’t need to worry about Madison falling outside my range.
It wasn’t long before I saw Emma standing at the door with a smug smile, flanked by Sophia. I unplugged my earphones before they got a chance to yank them. Better to get this over with quickly.
I took another bite of my sandwich as the two of them and Madison’s group formed a clot around me.
I’d gotten out of the ordeal losing nothing more than half my lunch, but I was drenched in fizzy drinks Emma and Sophia had aimed at me while Madison and the rest laughed.
Clearly they’d felt the need to change tactics, since the name-calling and dead mom jokes had gotten old. They weren’t as hard-hitting when I’d plumbed the depths of Emma’s frequency long ago and already heard the absolute worst things she’d been holding onto for a rainy day.
And they certainly didn’t land when I knew, at least in part, the fragile motivation driving all of those barbs. They rang hollow.
I got up from the floor and picked up my school bag.
I’d had the presence of mind to put some distance between my bag and me when I saw the grapejuice bottles come out, so fortunately my art project was still submittable if you ignored the big dent in it.
All things considered, it wasn’t a bad outcome.
Still, this was…really frustrating. I ran my fingers through a few strands of my hair, absentmindedly squeezing some of the juice out. I was so sick of it. And the look on Emma’s face was an ominous sign of worse to come.
She wasn’t happy with my unamusing reaction. She’d go harder, more creative, more physical next time. It’d been a few months since her last big “prank” which had saddled me with this power…she was probably thinking it was about time for something else at a similar scale.
And there was no way I could let that happen.
Madison must have still been at the edge of my range, thankfully. I was still patched into her frequency, but her transmission was quiet enough that I couldn’t hear her thoughts unless I really listened for them.
A half-formed plan I’d been kicking around for a few weeks had suddenly fallen into place. Maybe it was time to try something more…extreme.
I walked out of the classroom, making my way to the source of Madison’s frequency. The transmission got louder as I got closer, until Madison’s voice was as clear as if she were right next to me.
Maybe if I stopped feeling sorry for myself for one minute, I’d—
I opened the door to the bathroom.
Damn it, someone’s here. I’ll just pretend I’m not here until they go away.
I knocked on the second stall.
“Madison,” I called out.
Fucking Taylor? Seriously? Of all the—
“Madison,” I said again with less enthusiasm in my voice. “We need to talk.”
Hasn’t she had enough today? Fine! This is just the distraction I need.
The door opened, and I was met with Madison’s withering glare.
“Taylor, you’re still here?” She said, her voice dripping with ice. “I figured by now you’d—”
“I know about Julia,” I said abruptly. Madison flinched.
There’s no way she means what I think she means. Calm down, Madison.
Madison quickly fired back with, “yeah, she’s in a lot of our classes together. I’m sure even you would remember her after 2 years of seeing her face—when you actually bother to show up to school.”
“I mean,” I said, voice clipped, “I know how you feel about Julia.”
Madison’s eyes bulged.
Why the hell does she know? I never told anybody!
“You’re the one who told me,” I continued. “Every day, all I can hear is you worrying over whether Julia likes girls or not. Constantly looking for signs. Thinking about dropping hints, but too terrified to actually do anything. Then you try to convince yourself that you don’t really like girls, or that it’s just a phase, or really, that it’s totally normal to appreciate the female form and it doesn’t mean anything.”
Madison’s cheeks reddened considerably.
That doesn’t make any sense! Like I would ever tell Taylor anything—
I tapped my forehead. “I can hear your thoughts.”
The brief confusion and incredulity gave way to scorn. Madison looked at me like I was scum on her boot.
“So you’re a cape. And you’ve what, been reading my thoughts at school every day? And you never said a word. God, how long have you been rooting around in my head, Taylor?”
Taylor, if you can hear this, you’re a total fucking creep.
My eyes narrowed. Of course Madison would use this revelation as a new opportunity to insult me. I shouldn’t have expected any less.
But I knew it was just another of Madison’s facades. I could feel her unease and panic.
I’d thought Emma was arrogant, but Madison had the gall to try to pull the wool over the eyes of a mind reader. Who did she think she was fooling?
“A few months,” I said. Then, I muttered, “you can thank Sophia for that.”
Why is Sophia responsible? The hell are you on about, Taylor?
“Doesn’t matter,” I said. I shouldn’t have said that. That wasn’t part of the plan.
Madison seized onto the moment. “Okay, so what if you know? You can’t prove anything,” she said with a wave of her hand, finding some momentum. “Not without revealing you’re invading the thoughts of every person in your vicinity. And hell, what’s stopping me from telling about your powers? That’s gotta be some kind of crime, invading the privacy of other people like that.”
Fucking creep.
God, I hated her.
Except I didn’t, really, even when I had every right to. I knew far more about Madison than her friends, I’d bet. She was a total bitch, to be sure, but my stupid power had basically forced me to sympathize with her. She didn’t deserve it, but she had it anyway. That was a big reason why I’d been trying to have a civil conversation with her.
Of course, Madison had to make things difficult. And yeah, she wasn’t wrong about my power being creepy, but I refused to feel bad about invading her privacy when she was one of the people who would never leave me alone.
But if Madison thought she had the upper hand here, she was dead wrong.
“Don’t you want to know how Julia feels?” I asked as evenly as I could. It came out more bitterly than I intended, but it got the point across.
She…she would know, wouldn’t she?
Madison took the bait. She stayed silent for another half a minute while she stuffed her pride down far enough to speak to me.
“You’ll tell me, in exchange for my silence?” Madison asked. She sounded desperate.
I knew she would be.
“In exchange for you and your clique to stop fucking with me,” I said. “And for you to tell me ahead of time when Emma and Sophia are planning something big.”
If I could see it coming, maybe I could do something about the Dreadful Duo’s plans. I knew better than anyone how much difference foresight could make. Problem was, Emma and Sophia were in different classes to me, so it was rare for me to have an opportunity to tune into either of their frequencies for an extended period of time.
I knew Madison, on the other hand, would be looped into their plans.
She’s ambitious.
“That’s a bit much to ask, don’t you think?” Madison fired back, less confident than before. “I just found out you’ve been in my head all semester! And you think you can start making demands of me?”
I knew what she was doing, but that pissed me off.
“It’s too much to ask you not to acknowledge my presence?” I said, my voice rising. “I’m sorry, is it too ambitious of me to just want to be left the fuck alone?”
Madison just glared at me.
“That’s the deal,” I said firmly. “Take it or I’ll start thinking about what other secrets of yours I can weaponize. Maybe Akane would be interested in what her boyfriend was up to last month.”
“Fuck you,” Madison said. She huffed. “Fine. Fine! Tell me how Julia feels, and I’ll lay off, okay?”
I took a step toward Madison, and she took a step back even as she glared daggers at me.
“And you’ll tell your clique to stay away from me,” I said, making sure Madison wasn’t going to weasel her way out of this. “And if Sophia and Emma tell you about some big plan to screw with me, I want to know.”
“Okay! Yes, I’ll do that too! Back off already,” she said, pushing me away with both hands.
I’ve never seen Taylor that menacing before…Damn it, she can hear this too, can’t she?
I gave Madison some space and let her wash her hands. She threw a paper towel in the bin and looked at me meaningfully.
“So, spill,” she said, her voice less prickly now. “Tell me how Julia feels.”
I looked away from her. “I don’t know yet,” I said. An uncomfortable silence followed.
“What?” Madison bit out. “You told me all that and you don’t know?”
“Yet,” I said. “I can find out. It’s not like Julia’s constantly thinking about whether she’s gay or not!”
Madison recoiled a little when I said that word. Then she turned thoughtful for a moment.
So, it’s not like she knows everything. Just what I’ve been thinking about. That’s her weakness.
I didn’t like where that train of thought was going.
“Okay, so how do you find out?” Madison asked.
“I need your help for that,” I said. I didn’t, in truth, but I really didn’t want to talk to Julia. “You need to somehow bring up the topic of girls liking girls while I’m connected to her frequency.”
Her what? Oh, right. Of course Taylor has her own dumb terminology for reading people’s minds.
My eye twitched.
Madison sighed. “Fine, I guess that makes sense,” she said, combing a hand through her hair. “So, we’re doing this tomorrow?”
“Yeah,” I said. Then I told Madison how we were going to set this up and what I needed from her.
“Are we done here?” Madison asked impatiently after we’d agreed on the plan.
Can’t keep my mom waiting in the car much longer…
The reminder made me wince. The grapejuice was starting to harden, and I needed to wash all this off before dad got home.
“Yes, we’re done,” I said, and started hurrying to make the bus. That took longer than I expected.
The last thing I heard before I hastily disconnected from Madison’s frequency was,
Ew, why the hell did I push her? Now I’ve got grapejuice on my top and—
I sighed, and plunged myself into the world of unrelenting static.