HEAR (5 page)

In unison, all heads turn in Pankaj's direction.

Well played, Dan
,
I think.

But Pankaj isn't ruffled in the least, or at least he's very good at hiding it. He rests his stick against the side of the table. “For the record,” he says, holding his hands in front of him, a gesture of surrender, “that is not exactly true. Though for the record, yes, I do have a criminal record. But only for another six months, at which point I turn eighteen, and all my youthful indiscretions will be wiped clean.”

“And your permanent record can begin,” I mutter.

“ You sound like my sister.” His face brightens for a brief moment. “Though it's not like Nisha can talk . . . Just like us, Nisha's had her fair share of trouble with the law.” He turns back to Dan. “I'm curious, Dan,” he says, “do you know about my sister too? I mean, it seems a fair question considering how much you know about me. And by the way, how
do
you know so much about me?”

Dan is unfazed by the sharpness of Pankaj's tone, or at least he appears to be. “I did my homework. On all of you. If there was a public record, I found it.” He turns his blank stare to me. “I didn't turn anything up on you, though, Kass. Then again, I didn't look that hard because I assumed you were invited because you were Professor Black's niece.”

How reassuring.
“So what did you do to get yourself arrested?” I ask Pankaj.

“I was in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

“Spill it,” Mara demands, impatient. “Come on, Kass just gave her confession.”

Mara seems much less annoying to me at this point than she did at the beginning of the evening. I'm starting to wonder if we might even become friends.

“Fine,” Pankaj says, lining up his next shot. “I spent a week in a hotel in New York. Now the hotel
may
have been under the mistaken impression that I was the son of one of their guests, and that error may have allowed me to stay at no cost to myself . . .”

“Why would they think that?” I ask.

“Because I
may
have slipped into his room when he was out, called the front desk, and said I needed another room for my teenage son. Then I
may
have described what I looked like and said the boy would arrive shortly to pick up his key.”

“That's, like, the perfect plan,” Alex says.

“I know. I still
can't believe I got caught. But the man had a suspicious wife back home, and when she saw the extra charge on the credit card, she assumed he was putting up a mistress. She called hotel security to ‘have the home wrecker booted,' and they found me sleeping in the bed.” Pankaj examines the remaining pool balls on the table and tries to find his next shot. “It was all sort of funny. A little less amusing when they carted me off to jail.”

I shake my head, not sure what to make of his story. Is it even true?

“What, Legacy?” Pankaj asks.

“I'm just wondering how you got here.”

“Before deciding how they were going to charge me, they did a psych workup.”

“Did they think you were criminally insane?” I ask.

His coppery eyes glitter at me in the soft lamplight. “They didn't tell me what they were trying to diagnose,” he answers, which makes Alex laugh. “It was just two straight days of psychiatric evaluation. At the end they offered me a deal. Professor Black appeared with my court-appointed lawyer and said I could come here or take my chances in juvie.”

“It makes sense,” Dan says. “In all the decades that Professor Black's lab has been open, this is the first time he's handpicked his test subjects.”

“How do you mean?” I say.

“Normally he uses Henley students, but he reached out to all of us, made the opportunity virtually impossible to turn down, didn't he?”

Before anyone can answer Dan, we hear voices and laughter in the hallway. A moment later three Henley students walk in; I'm guessing by their comfort level—and their surprise at seeing us—that they're Hounskull members. The first through the door is a pretty brunette with porcelain skin and drink-flushed cheeks. Two large guys trail her, one with his baseball cap facing forward, the other with his turned back.

“Oh!” the girl exclaims.

Alex nearly drops his pool stick. “Um . . . hi,” he stammers.

My eyes flash between him and the girl. For a second, I wonder if they know each other, but her glance skims past Alex without any sign of recognition. As he continues to stare at her with unguarded, almost childlike fascination, his veneer of confidence fades. The reaction has the bizarre double effect of endearing him to me
and
making me grateful our dinner wasn't a date after all. Had he become so blatantly infatuated with another girl while we were alone, I would have been
pissed
. And with everything else that's going on, the last thing I need is to start spinning in an angry jealousy spiral.

“Sorry!” the girl says, her English accent turning the word singsong. “Didn't think anyone was up here.” The boys at her side move through the space to grab pool sticks from the wall mount, not seeming to register we're here at all. One of the guys starts pulling the billiard balls from the table's pockets and rolls them to the other, who racks them.

“Were you playing?” she asks with an apologetic smile.

As Alex continues to gape at her, his whole struck-dumb-by-Cupid's-arrow thing starts to become less than adorable. Mara gets up and starts moving toward the stairwell.

Dan points to the wall clock. “We have to go anyway.”

Pankaj rolls his eyes. “ You're really worried about violating curfew?” he asks quietly.

“ Yeah, I'm worried,” Dan replies.

Pankaj shakes his head dismissively. “It's not like we have room check or like anyone's watching us.”

“Someone's always watching,” Alex says. A smile plays on his lips. “The question is if that someone is looking for anything in particular.”

Before I can ask him what he means, Mara is already halfway out the door. Dan is right on her heels. Pankaj reluctantly follows, as do I, and Alex brings up the rear. But midway down the staircase, Alex hesitates.

“ You know what? I'm not even a little tired,” he says. “I'm going to stay and hang out here for a while.”

“Don't stay too late,” Dan warns.

“Thanks, Mom.” Alex and Pankaj exchange a glance, as if sharing an inside joke.

Mara is also staring at Alex, and I can see she's wondering if she should offer to stay out with him. But as she's weighing her options, Alex turns and walks back up the stairs.

“Have fun,” she yells after him, not sounding like she means it.

“How was your evening?”
Brian calls out as I unlock the front door. “I'm in the kitchen. Come have some ice cream.”

I close the door behind me, loudly. I march in to find my great-uncle reaching into his freezer.

“ You run an ESP lab?” I demand.

“Here, I got your favorite,” he replies cheerily, ignoring my brusque tone. He pulls out a carton and peels the top off the bucket of Edy's Slow Churned and then tips the green mint chocolate chip in my direction. I have to hand it to him: if he's trying to distract me, it's working. Green mint chocolate chip ice cream is what heaven tastes like.

“My dad told you my favorite flavor of ice cream?”

“No,” he says.

As I take the frozen tub from my uncle's hand, a chill runs through me. “Then how did you—”

“Just a guess,” he interrupts. He motions to the table. “Have a seat. It's my favorite too. And to answer your question, yes, I do run an ESP lab. You know, Kass, those with closed minds are always suspicious of those at the forefront of science.”

I remain standing. “I wouldn't say that I have a closed mind. I would just say a lot of the people who claim to have psychic abilities are big phonies.”

“And by extension ESP can't be real because we don't have proof; is that your thought?” He takes two bowls down from the cabinet above the table and then reaches into a drawer for spoons. “But before people learned that the Earth was round, what did they think? Automobiles, airplanes, the Internet—none of these things were even conceivable until one day, ‘suddenly,' they were. So to think that we already know everything that we're going to know about how
this
works”—he sets the spoons down and taps his head—“is, if I may say, pure folly. And my job as a scientist is to explore and explain that which is not understood.”

I'm worried I'll fall into a trap if I try to argue. Instead, I offer cautiously, “Do you hate it that people must think you're crazy?”

“Kassandra, I couldn't care less about that. The doubters are the ones who need to worry. I feel sorry that they are so lacking in imagination, but I have bigger concerns.”

“Like what?”

He sits and scoops some ice cream into his bowl. “I believe that I'm on the cusp of a truly important discovery, an innovation that could allow anyone to access these abilities. But there are still some critical steps we need to get through. One of those is making sure my test group here can perform reliably. For that to happen, you all must first be released from the bonds of conventional thought.” He looks up expectantly, waiting for me to join him at the table.

I feel the confusion settle on my face, screwing up my features, and I sit. “The bonds of conventional thought?”

He nods. “Here's an example. Picture a month on a wall calendar. Now, what comes after any given Monday?”

“Tuesday.”

“And after Tuesday?”

“Wednesday.”

“ Yes, of course. On a calendar it's very clear that each day follows the next in a straight line going from left to right, correct? That's the ‘conventional' way of thinking about time, like an arrow hurtling across a flat plane.” Brian sets down his spoon and sticks his finger in the air and then makes a fist. “But what if you think of time as a sphere? So even on Monday”—he points to the back of his hand—“Wednesday already exists over here.” He points to the front. “Now imagine that the sphere is transparent. If Wednesday already exists, if it's already present at the beginning of our week, we should be able to access it Monday morning. We
should
be able to see into our ‘future.'”

“That's . . . Whoa.”

“Damn straight,” Brian says with a laugh, picking up his spoon again.

As I pick up my own spoon, I have a moment of insight, or maybe I should call it foresight. My uncle has gathered his group here this summer to send us hurtling through his spherical notions of space and time. We are his crash-test dummies. He's going to probe our heads in an attempt to make these mental connections and leaps. The HEARs are his latest, greatest hope.

For him, “teenager” is just another word for “guinea pig.”

CHAPTER SIX

“Eight fifty-eight
a.m.
,” Dan says, spinning on his stool in the lab when Uncle Brian and I arrive the following morning.

The lab is spacious, even more impressive than what I imagined, knowing what I do about Henley. Several workstations, topped with thick black slate, are scattered throughout. Along the back wall hangs a twelve-foot whiteboard scribbled with intimidating formulas and a doodle of a bulldog barking,
Let Me Atom!
The other walls are lined with built-in glass-and-wood cabinets. Their shelves are neatly arrayed with books and scientific equipment: microscopes, scales, beakers. In one corner, a mid-century modern lounge chair sits next to a stereo system. I wonder if the people who designed this place were Swedish. It sort of has the feel of an IKEA catalog come to life.

Dan is wearing exactly what he wore to dinner last night. From the redness of his eyes and the patchy stubble around his face, it looks like he pulled an all-nighter.

“Dan,” Brian asks him point-blank, “were you up the whole evening?”

“ Yeah.”

“Unacceptable.”

“But I was back in time for curfew,” Dan protests.

Brian sighs. “Curfew is not my attempt to prevent you from doing things, or to keep you safe from the creatures of the night. I've established a curfew to get you to bed sooner because you need to get at least eight hours of sleep.”

“Eight hours?” Dan snickers. “I haven't slept that much since I was a baby.”

“Then that changes now,” Brian states firmly, setting his briefcase down at his desk. “Brain function is dependent on the quantity and quality of rest you get. The brain simply doesn't work as effectively if it's tired.”

Dan shakes his head. “I've done the research too, Professor. Believe me, I only need four hours of sleep.”

“That's just not true. You may be functional at four hours and still sharper than your peers, but sleep makes us all more mentally agile.” He flips open his briefcase, and he glances up, his face softening. “It boggles my mind that high schools start so early in the morning, forcing you out of the REM sleep you all so desperately need. It's as if those running the show are trying to keep you stupid.”

Keep us stupid?
Was Uncle Brian trying to be offensive, or did he just get lucky? I try to catch Dan's eyes, but he's gone back to spinning.

There's laughter in the hallway, and a moment later Alex and Mara walk in together. Mara playfully hits Alex on the arm.

“ You are so bad,” she says, taking a seat on one of the stools and flirtatiously crossing her legs. In that instant, last night's fleeting thoughts of possibly befriending her melt away. I can't get a read on this girl. Then again, I can't get a read on anyone here. Dan seems like he might have Asperger's syndrome; Alex is a smooth talker; Pankaj is a juvenile delinquent at best and a budding criminal at worst. That's as close as I've come to forming any insight on the HEARs, my fellow guinea pigs.

Alex offers Brian and me a smile. “Morning, everyone.”

“How are you today?” Brian asks.

“Great,” Mara replies.

“Me too,” Alex adds. I can't help but wonder what I missed when I went back to Uncle Brian's last night. Did Alex not stay at Hounskull? Did he and Mara meet up?

Dan looks at his watch. “It's 9:01. Where's Pankaj?”

As Brian eyes a clock on the wall, Pankaj sweeps into the room.

“Speak of the devil,” Brian murmurs.

“I can't tell you how many times I've heard that line as I walk through a door,” he replies, raising his giant coffee cup in greeting.

“Nice one,” Alex laughs.

“Pankaj Desai,” Brian says, “this is Kassandra Black, my niece.”

“ Yes, the niece. We met last night.”
The niece
,
he says, as if I'm not sitting ten feet away from him. He takes a sip of his coffee, shifting his eyes to me.

“Good morning,” I say, but he doesn't respond. “Looks like ‘the rocket' could use some stronger fuel this morning,” I hear myself add, as I imagine dumping the drink over his head.

To my surprise, he lowers his cup and smiles at me.

In that split second, I'm jolted by a disorienting sense of familiarity. It's like that feeling of bumping into an old friend in an unexpected place, or seeing someone you know on the news. You do a double take, thinking it's not possible yet sure you saw something you recognized. But I shake it off. I must be imagining the sensation with Pankaj, caught off guard by how friendly he suddenly appears.

I turn away, toward Mara. She's taken a deck of cards out of her bag, and though I think it's an odd choice to play some version of solitaire right now, no one else seems particularly surprised. She shuffles, draws six cards from the deck, and sets them down in a cross pattern in front of her. Then she pulls four more cards and places them to the right of the cross in a vertical line. As she bends over the spread, Mara's lips twist in a frown.

“Whatcha got there, sister Mara?” Alex asks.

“Hmm?” She sounds like she's just been roused from sleep. “Just wanted to see something.”

Alex catches me looking and cocks his thumb in Mara's direction. “Our girl here is deep into tarot cards. Does readings every day.”

I have no idea what the correct response is. I glance at Uncle Brian for a cue, but he's perusing something in a folder, his face hidden.

“Oh, cool,” I say, though I'm thinking something far less generous.

“Or spooky, depending on your outlook,” Alex says with a chuckle.

“So, Mara, what's the outlook for today?” I ask, playing along. At least it's better than silence. “Do you see rain this afternoon?”

“Hilarious,” Mara replies, unamused. In one fluid movement, she scoops up the cards on the table and pushes them deep into the deck.

Brian snaps his folder shut and clears his throat.

“Good. Now that the introductions have been made, let's get down to business, shall we? I need you to clear your minds of any distracting thoughts.”

“What if there's nothing else left, Professor?” Alex jokes.

“I'm hoping for nothing left,” my great-uncle answers seriously. “I'm going to lead you through a guided meditation before we begin the experiment. So I want you to relax and turn inward. Feel free to stay in your chairs or take a seat on the ground and make yourself comfortable. Just be sure to keep your head and spine upright.”

“Eyes open or closed?” Dan asks.

“Half open,” Brian replies. “Gaze down the line of your nose. Start shuttering out exterior interference without shutting down entirely. Then start concentrating on nothing but the sound of your breathing.”

Ugh, the focus-only-on-your-breathing business.
I've never been able to do that successfully. Even in yoga class I'm always too keyed up to calm down. Whenever the instructor announces in her most soothing voice that we are to balance on our “sit bones” and “think about nothing but your breath,” my brain revolts, and goes into overdrive, thoughts spinning fast and furiously. I sneak a peek at the other four HEARs, perched on their lab stools, already motionless.

Needless to say, I'm a thousand times more relaxed at yoga than I am here now.

Twenty minutes later I
wonder if I've fallen asleep.

Brian brings me back to the antiseptic reality of the lab room with a quiet command: “ You may open your eyes.”

I blink at the others. They're all wide awake.

“Now, who's familiar with the term ‘remote viewing'?” Brian asks.

An impish smile comes to Pankaj's face, but my great-uncle shakes his head. “I do not mean watching TV and using a remote control.”

Pankaj rolls his eyes.

Dan raises his hand. “It is a technique used to gather information about an unseen or unknown target.” The words sound memorized.

“A target?” Mara repeats, curious. “That seems aggressive.”

“It's not,” Brian says. “Think of it as the bull's-eye you're trying to zone in on. I'm going to give you three prompts. They will vary—a string of letters and numbers like a license plate number, or a proper name, or an object. Write the prompt down first. Then record whatever comes to mind afterwards. Ignore no detail that comes to you. This is vital: you must record absolutely everything. If it's easier to sketch what you see, by all means feel free to draw it instead.”

Nobody asks any questions. Again, I feel as if I missed some orientation or was denied some introductory packet of information—something that has put me at a competitive disadvantage with the others. Then again, aside from the admissions gold card to Henley, it's not clear what I'm competing with them for.

Brian hands each of us a graph-paper notebook and colored pencils. “Write your names on the front of your books. I'll just add one more time, please be as specific as you can be in your descriptions. But if nothing comes to mind, write ‘NA' on the page. The goal isn't to create something out of thin air or to use your imagination. What you want is for the prompt to lead you to the target, and for that target to give you feedback. Clear?”

I raise my hand.

“ Yes?” Brian says.

“Can I speak to you in the hall?” I ask, scooting off my chair.

His lips turn down, as if he's disappointed. But then he nods and follows, shutting the door behind us. I feel the others' eyes on me, even out here.

“Is there a problem, Kass?” he asks. He sounds genuinely puzzled.

“I'm just not clear on exactly what you want
me
to do.”

“It's just as I explained: I want everyone to—”

“I know, I know.” I shake my head. “But it's not like I think I have any extra-special talent for this stuff, so I don't know how my responses are supposed to help you. Am I the control or whatever you call it?”

He sighs and pats my shoulder. “ You simply need to keep your mind open. That's all I ask of you. Can you do that?”

“Really?” I press. “Just keep an open mind?”

“That's it,” he says.

If that's all it takes to get the gold card from my uncle, an open mind I shall give him. “ Yeah, I can definitely do that.”

“Good. Let's go back inside then.”

Keep my mind open. Keep an open mind.

How hard could it be?

As soon as brian
gives the first prompt—“9492MD”—my brain starts spinning in concentric circles. I scrawl the numbers and letters on the page, but all I “get” is a null set: zero, zilch, zip, bupkis. I glance around the room, and see Alex's hand is in motion, as is Dan's. Mara quietly taps the edge of her pencil on the table. Pankaj just sits there, his eyes half closed.

I stare at my notebook:
9492MD.

And then something happens.

To my utter surprise, my thoughts stop swirling. A picture begins to emerge in my mind's eye: two men in white lab coats walking down a hallway. I can't explain it, but it doesn't feel like I'm just imagining things, or being creative for the sake of the experiment . . . It feels more like a memory. Which is weird, since I can't place it in space or time. I start jotting notes.

Bright light re
fl
ects on the shiny tile
fl
oor. The men wear green scrubs underneath their lab coats. They're talking quickly and quietly to each other as they rush through a set of doors.

I stare again at the numbers and letters, but nothing more comes. My thoughts whirl: to Mara and her tarot cards; to the mysterious pictures on Uncle Brian's mantel; to Pankaj and his eyes, hidden behind that scrim of black hair. After a few more minutes, everyone sets their pencils down. I glance back at the prompt and then reread my description. I actually think I got it.

“All finished?” Brian asks, and we murmur assent. “Good. Now how many of you saw something to do with doctors or a hospital?”

I raise my hand. I can't help but feel relieved and happy when I see Mara raise her hand too. A moment later Alex also raises his hand.

“ You guys saw the gunshot victim?” Alex asks. His expression is uncharacteristically grim. He glances between Mara and me. “That old guy bleeding out as he was being rushed into the ER? That's what I saw. Came through really clearly, like the opening scene in a TV medical drama.”

I shake my head. “No, mine wasn't—”

“I saw nothing so tragic,” Mara says, cutting me off.

“Me neither,” I add, quickly trying to reassert myself. “Just doctors walking down a hospital hallway.”

Brian nods. “ Yes, that's a fairly common reaction to this prompt, since it ends with the letters ‘MD.'”

“Oh.” This comes out more loudly than I intended. My eyes fall back to my notebook. That momentary feeling of pride crumbles into embarrassment.

“That's not a value judgment, Kass,” Brian soothes. “It's a trap that I want everyone to be wary of. Our brains rely on patterns to make connections and assumptions. That's how we conserve energy and get through daily life—and survive. You see something slithering on the ground ahead, its tail rattling, you don't get up close to investigate. You just start moving away from that rattlesnake. But the trick here is to try, as best you can, to empty your mind of preconceptions. To register nothing but the target's inherent feedback, aura, or pulse.” He takes a breath. “Okay, your next prompt: 4NFUSQ.”

After I scribble the string of numbers and letters, an image forms once again, with the same immediacy as the last. I see an airport security line, the X-ray scanner ahead of me. Several bored TSA agents chat with one another across the carry-on bag conveyor belt and pat-down area. A visibly relieved-looking man collects a briefcase containing the components of an explosive device. I stiffen.