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splooshing out her ears, and she might only be able to shove it a few inches across her desk. That was
on a good day. On many, she couldn’t even flutter the pages.
But there were other things she could do, and in many cases far better than she’d been able to as a
little kid. Looking into people’s heads, for instance. She couldn’t do it with everyone—some people
were entirely enclosed, others only gave off intermittent flashes—but many people were like windows
with the curtains pulled back. She could look in anytime she felt like it. Mostly she didn’t want to,
because the things she discovered were sometimes sad and often shocking. Finding out that Mrs.
Moran, her beloved sixth-grade teacher, was having AN AFFAIR had been the biggest mind-blower so
far, and not in a good way.
These days she mostly kept the seeing part of her mind shut down. Learning to do that had been
difficult at first, like learning to skate backwards or print with her left hand, but she had learned.
Practice didn’t make perfect (not yet, at least), but it sure helped. She still sometimes looked, but
always tentatively, ready to pull back at the first sign of something weird or disgusting. And she never
peeked into her parents’ minds, or into Momo’s. It would have been wrong. Probably it was wrong
with everyone, but it was like Momo herself had said: You can’t blame human nature, and there was
nothing more human than curiosity.
Sometimes she could make people do things. Not everyone, not even half of everyone, but a lot of
people were very open to suggestions. (Probably they were the same ones who thought the stuff they
sold on TV really would take away their wrinkles or make their hair grow back.) Abra knew this was a
talent that could grow if she exercised it like a muscle, but she didn’t. It scared her.
There were other things, too, some for which she had no name, but the one she was thinking about
now did have one. She called it far-seeing. Like the other aspects of her special talent, it came and
went, but if she really wanted it—and if she had an object to fix upon—she could usually summon it.
I could do that now.
“Shut up, Abba-Doo,” she said in a low, strained voice. “Shut up, Abba-Doo-Doo.”
She opened Early Algebra to tonight’s homework page, which she had bookmarked with a sheet on
which she had written the names Boyd, Steve, Cam, and Pete at least twenty times each. Collectively
they were ’Round Here, her favorite boy band. So hot, especially Cam. Her best friend, Emma Deane,
thought so, too. Those blue eyes, that careless tumble of blond hair.
Maybe I could help. His parents would be sad, but at least they’d know.
“Shut up, Abba-Doo. Shut up, Abba-Doo-Doo-For-Brains.”
If 5x - 4 = 26, what does x equal?
“Sixty zillion!” she said. “Who cares?”
Her eyes fell on the names of the cute boys in ’Round Here, written in the pudgy cursive she and
Emma affected (“Writing looks more romantic that way,” Emma had decreed), and all at once they
looked stupid and babyish and all wrong. They cut him up and licked his blood and then they did something
even worse to him. In a world where something like that could happen, mooning over a boy band seemed
worse than wrong.
Abra slammed her book shut, went downstairs (the click-click-click from her dad’s study continued
unabated) and out to the garage. She retrieved the Shopper from the trash, brought it up to her room,
and smoothed it flat on her desk.
All those faces, but right now she cared about only one.
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