Graceful Read online

  I shake my head. On the other side of the street, a squirrel scampers down a tree with a pinecone in its mouth. A second later, the dog breaks free from its leash and races into the street toward the squirrel. The dog is short. The bus driver does not see it and isn’t slowing down enough. We are going to hit the dog. Or worse, we are going to hit the dog and the woman about to rush into the street after him. The bus will stop short and all the kids will fly forward, smacking their faces on the seat backs in front of them. This won’t end well.

  Bailey gasps as she sees the dog leap over the curb. She grabs onto the top of the seat in front of us and tries to stand.

  She won’t have time to alert the driver, and she knows it.

  With a wave of both hands, I send the dog and the woman flying back onto the sidewalk and the squirrel back up its tree. The bus keeps moving forward, all but two of its passengers unaware of what almost happened.

  The dog and the woman keep right on walking.

  Bailey sits back down, her hand still gripping tight to the seat in front of us. “Okay,” she says, breathing quickly, “that was insane.”

  I am surprisingly calm about the whole thing. It all felt so natural and instinctive. I saw the scene like a movie unfolding behind my eyes, and then I knew what to do.

  The bus pulls up to the next stop and Amanda gets on. Her eyes are red-rimmed and puffy. Bailey opens her mouth to call her name, but I put my hand on her arm to stop her. I know when someone doesn’t want to talk. “It’s okay,” I tell her. “Let her go sit with her friends.”

  As Amanda passes our row, she gives us a strained smile and heads toward the back, where the other eighth graders sit. I wish I knew what she was upset about and if there was any way I could make it better. I watch as she sits down next to Connor. He greets her with a cheerful grunt, then buries his face in the book he’s reading.

  Bailey is trying to talk to me, but something is happening and it’s hard to hear her. The words filling my ears start off softly, not more than a low murmur. Then the murmur turns almost immediately into a roar. It sounds like someone turned on thirty different radio stations at once. It takes a few more seconds until I realize I’m hearing the thoughts of everyone on the bus!

  I put my hands over my ears and scrunch down in my seat. Bailey starts shaking my shoulder, but I close my eyes and slide lower. The noise only stops when the bus empties.

  I slowly open my eyes and pull my hands away. Bailey is standing over me.

  “This has been a REALLY WEIRD BUS RIDE!” she shouts. “What’s going on now?”

  “Time to get off, girls,” the bus driver calls back to us. Bailey grabs both our bags and pushes me down the aisle ahead of her.

  “I didn’t mean to scare you,” I tell Bailey as we make our way into the school. With kids all around us, the noise in my head is deafening. “I can hear everyone’s thoughts now. That hasn’t happened since the first few days after I woke up from the coma thing.”

  “You’re kind of shouting,” Bailey says, glancing around us anxiously.

  “Sorry,” I reply in a lower voice.

  She points to a boy pulling a book from his locker. “What’s that kid thinking?”

  I try to focus on one voice, like tuning in one song on the radio still blaring in my head. My brain hurts from the effort but eventually I can quiet all the other sounds. “He’s hoping his mom didn’t see him feed his scrambled eggs to the cat.”

  She points to a girl at the water fountain. “And her?”

  “Worried about a spelling test,” I reply.

  We’re in front of Bailey’s locker now. “What about me? What number am I thinking of?”

  I try to zoom in on her, but I can’t. I widen the range and feel around for Connor and the other Team Grace members. I can sense them in different parts of the building but that’s all. “I can’t read your mind,” I tell her, confused. “Or anyone on Team Grace. I can always see a glow around you, but it’s like it’s more solid now, like a bubble. Oh! Wait! It is a bubble! I put it there when I was doing the forgetting spell. It was supposed to protect you.”

  “Guess it’s working!” she says, grinning. “Even if it’s only protecting us from you!” She twists open her combination lock. “I wouldn’t mind if you could tell my future, though, like you did with the dog running into the street.”

  “I think that’s a different thing,” I tell her, forcing myself to focus on just her and not all the background noise. “Stopping the accident felt more natural, like it’s what the vortex gave me the power for in the first place. All this …” I wave my arms wildly at all the people around us. “All this is overwhelming. I feel like my head is going to split open and everyone’s secrets are going to spill out of my ears and onto the floor.”

  “We’ll have to figure out a way to stop it, then,” she says, grabbing her books.

  “I don’t think it’s going to be that easy.” I struggle to find the words to explain what I’ve never been good at explaining. “When I first got my powers on my birthday, instead of hearing thoughts, I saw the way everyone and everything was connected to one another. It was beautiful and scary and amazing. But Angelina had to put me in a coma to make it stop before I lost my mind.”

  I can practically see the gears turning in Bailey’s brain as she tries to figure this out. “Okay,” she finally says. “Did you do anything to make it start, whether on purpose or not?”

  I think for a second and am about to shake my head when I remember something. “Right before it started, I thought about how I wished I knew why Amanda was so upset.”

  “Maybe it’s that easy!” she says. “You just wish for something and it happens.”

  I shake my head. “Trust me, I’ve wished for a lot of things these last few months and mostly what I get is pizza.” We’re heading toward my locker now, and the halls are starting to thin out. It’s getting a little easier to think. Might as well give wishing a try. “Okay,” I whisper out loud, “I wish I couldn’t hear anyone’s thoughts anymore.”

  I hold my breath for a second, hoping. But no. I can still tell that Suzy from my English class left her book report on the floor of her bedroom and her dog peed on it.

  “Did it work?” Bailey asks, leaning forward eagerly.

  “No, it did not. And now I have the smell of dog pee in my nose.”

  “I won’t even ask,” she says, making a face.

  “It’s my own fault,” I tell her as I struggle to focus on my locker combination. “I wanted my powers to come back stronger, and now that they seem to be, it’s more than I want. What if this never goes away? What if Angelina experienced the world this way and just never bothered to mention it to me?”

  Bailey reaches over and undoes my lock for me since I seem incapable. “I don’t think so,” Bailey says. “She would have gone crazy. Even crazier than she is already, I mean. But maybe you can train yourself to only see what you want or need to see.”

  Angelina said something really similar about training, but I haven’t done the gratitude offering that she suggested, or tried to find any ways to either increase or control my powers. “You up for a trip to the library after school?” I ask.

  The warning bell rings. “Can’t,” she says, hurrying toward her homeroom. “Mom’s picking me up early for a dentist appointment. Sorry!”

  “That’s okay, Rory’s going to come with me,” I blurt out, surprising both of us.

  She tilts her head at me. “She is?”

  I nod. “I see us walking in together.”

  “Oh,” she says. A flicker of jealousy crosses her face, but she quickly turns it into a smile. “Okay, gotta go! Don’t tell anyone their future today.”

  “Scout’s honor,” I say, holding up two fingers.

  “You aren’t a scout,” she says, running off in the opposite direction. “And no, being a Sunshine Kid when you were six doesn’t count.” She gives a final wave and turns the corner.

  I feel a little better. It helps that the