PA•RAl•o•gize: v. to draw illogical conclusions based on assumptions I stare at the two doors. They both look so real. But I know one of them is an illusion that a Perceptive has made me imagine. When I figure out which one is real, I’m supposed to walk through it to Mrs. Stockbridge, who is on the other side, probably with her tablet already scrolled to her grade book. Imagining the big F she’s about to type there is not helping my concentration. I need a good grade in this class since I’ve been bombing Thought Placement. I wonder if she’ll highlight it red to emphasize my failure. I would.
Stop. Concentrate.
In my mind, I scan through the lessons we’ve had on detecting illusions. Inconsistencies in the image. My eyes go back and forth between both doors. They’re identical. Ripples, movement, or haziness on an otherwise solid surface. None. A thinness or transparency to the object. They both seem like perfectly solid pieces of wood to me. My time is running out. Then I see it, a small smudge of black in the center of one door. I smile and step toward the smudge-free door. I reach for the palm scanner, and my hand goes right through it. “Crap.”
After I walk through the right door, Mrs. Stockbridge clucks her tongue and types something into her tablet. The clip attempting to tame her frizzy red hair has been unsuccessful in its efforts, leaving several strands sticking out at odd angles. If I were a Perceptive, like she is, I wonder if I would try to make others see me at my best all the time.
“Reasoning?” she asks.
I almost answer my own hypothetical question but stop when I remember she can’t read my mind. “What?”
“Why did you pick the door on the left?”
“Oh. There was a black smudge on the real door. I thought that meant it was fake,” I admit.
“Sometimes perfection reveals the lie, Addie, not the truth,” she says. I nod and wait with the others who have already completed the task.
A memory involuntarily works its way into my mind, filling the corners and taking me back to that moment. I am a little girl of five. My father has taken me on a picnic to a beautiful park near the lake. After picking at my sandwich for a few minutes, I lie back on the blanket. Suddenly thousands of colorful butterflies appear overhead. They gently float downward, twisting and turning, like fluttering leaves. At any moment they will land on and around me. I can almost feel the soft touch of their wings on my skin. With a smile I reach up.
“Addie,” my dad says, “they’re just an illusion.”
I sit up, my brow drawn low. “They’re not. I see them.” They swirl between my dad and me, warping his image.
An old man walks by and smiles. “A gift for the little lady,” he says. My dad waves politely. When he’s gone, along with his butterflies, my dad takes me by the shoulders and points. A single butterfly rests on a flower five feet from us, its plain white wings moving slowly up and down. “That is real, baby. Isn’t it pretty?”
I curl my lip in disappointment. “It’s boring.”
A barking laugh pulls me out of the memory. I glance over my shoulder to where a few girls quickly stop whispering. I shoot them narrow eyes. Am I the only one who failed the stupid door test?
At lunch, Laila gives me one look and says, “What’s wrong?”
We walk toward the outdoor stage—our normal lunchtime hangout—and I give a frustrated grunt. “I failed an Illusion Detection test today.”
“Failure is so relative,” Laila says.
“No. It’s not. You either pass the test or you don’t. There’s nothing relative about it.”
She shrugs. “But you’ve aced all your other ones, so it averages out.” She sits on the cement stage, letting her feet dangle over the side. “So, therefore, it’s relative.” She jerks her head to the side. “Sit down.”
Seeing her so calm makes me think I’ve completely overreacted. I’m prone to do that. I take a deep breath, dig out my lunch from my backpack, and hop up beside her. A semicircle of grass fans out to surround the stage and soon it’s full of people.
As I open my bag of chips, Laila leans forward. “This stage isn’t very high, right?”
What is she talking about? I follow her gaze to the ground. “I guess not.”
“So it wouldn’t hurt too bad if someone got pushed off?”
I look to the left, where several other regulars are lined up along the stage, lunches on their laps, feet dangling. “Who’s getting—” Before I can finish my sentence, she grabs my arm and flings me off the stage. I gasp in shock, wondering what evil plan this act has accomplished. I don’t have to wonder too long when Duke practically trips over me.
“Are you okay?” he asks as I collect my scattered lunch.
“Fine.” I shove my sandwich and chips into my ripped lunch bag and straighten up.
“Addie,” Laila says, feigning concern and jumping down next to me. “Did you get hurt? What happened?” But her “concern” is instantly replaced with a smile for Duke. “Hey, Duke, we didn’t see you.”
More like I didn’t see him. Laila quite obviously saw him from a mile away.
Ray bends over and picks up my water bottle, which had rolled up against his massive foot. Seriously, he has to wear at least a size fifteen. The guy is huge. “Here,” he says, handing it to me.
“Thanks.”
“Where are you two headed?” Laila asks.
Duke points in the general direction of the parking lot. “Off-campus.”
“Really?” Laila says as though this is the biggest coincidence ever. “We were just going to get something from my car. Mind if we walk with you?”
I could murder Laila right now. If only I could get my hands on a weapon—a size-fifteen shoe might work.
“Of course not.”
And of course Laila squeezes herself between Duke and Ray, leaving me with no other option but to walk next to Duke. After only a few steps she has managed to become so engrossed in a quiet conversation with Ray that Duke and I are left in awkward silence.
“Sorry,” I finally say, because unless he’s an idiot, it’s pretty obvious what Laila just did.
“I’m not. Now I don’t have to make up some sorry excuse to talk to you.”
I’m confused. “Don’t you have man code?” I don’t know why I said it; it just flew out, but I can’t take it back.
“What do you mean?”
Now I have to explain and I don’t want to. I let myself get distracted for a moment by a backpack floating through the air in front of me. Eventually it lands in its owner’s arms, and I look over at Duke, who is waiting for me to speak. “You and Bobby are good friends.”
“Yes.”
“Bobby asked me to homecoming.”
“And you said no.”
“So don’t you have that thing where if your best friend likes a girl, she’s off-limits?”
“If every girl Bobby liked was off-limits, I’d never get to go out with anyone. The only girls Bobby restricts me from are those he’s kissed. You haven’t kissed him, right?”
“No!” At least not in my real life. I had in my Search, but Bobby didn’t know that. I feel my face go bright red.
Duke lowers his brow. “Are you sure?”
“Yes, I’m sure. I haven’t kissed him.”
“Well, then there you go. Man code does not apply.”
I’m trying my best not to be flattered, but it’s hard. This is Duke Rivers. He smiles, and I find myself smiling back.
“What do I have to do to get you to come to one of my games?”
“Play on a Norm team,” I say before thinking.
He tilts his head. “Really? So that’s what this is about? You don’t like people using their abilities to win at sports? Are you a Naturalist? Do you want us to merge with Normal society?”
We round a brick building and walk down a wide hall toward the parking lot. “No, not at all. I fully support abilities. People can use them to advance in any areas of their lives. I know mine has helped me. I can’t imagine life without abilities. I just personally find Para-football boring.”
“Ouch. So you want to see more bodies slamming into each other? Is that it? Wait,” he says, before I can answer. “Are you telling me you regularly watch Norm football?”
“Not regularly.”
“This is getting worse. Tell me one thing: Have you ever seen me play?”
I rub my forehead. The welt has long since disappeared, but I wince for his sake.
He laughs and nudges my arm with his elbow. “That doesn’t count. I mean, in a game.”
“No. I haven’t been since my freshman year.”
The contagious smile is back on his face. “You’re not very good for my ego.”
“I think I’m perfect for your ego.” I smile sweetly.
“Addie, you’re a different girl, aren’t you?”
Rude. I try to nudge my shoulder into his arm, like he had done to me. Only it doesn’t work and the act of trying almost causes me to trip.
He reaches his hand out. “You okay?”
“Yeah.” I look over my shoulder, pretending to search for what tripped me.
“How has your ability helped you advance?” he asks.
“What?”
“You said earlier that you’re perfectly fine with people using their abilities to advance. You said yours has helped you. How?”
“Sometimes I’ll see which classes I’m better at, which projects work out better. Things like that.”
“So you’re Clairvoyant?”
“Oh.” I’m surprised because I assumed Bobby had told him my ability. “Yeah. Sort of.” My ability is actually called Divergence, which means extending in different directions from a common point. It was one of the first words I looked up back when I Presented. But I don’t feel like explaining that to Duke. I stopped correcting people a long time ago. Clairvoyance is a Time Manipulation ability as well, so close enough.
“With an ability like yours, you’ve probably never made a mistake in your life. You always know what you want.” He meets my eyes.
That’s mostly true. I generally know exactly what I want, and the steps I’m going to take to get it, but not necessarily because of my ability. “I don’t Search everything. I’ve made plenty of mistakes. But you’re right, I’ve avoided many.” Like Bobby, I want to say.
“Have you ever Searched me?”
“No. I’ve never had to make a choice regarding you.”
He stops abruptly, and I watch helplessly as Ray and Laila keep walking. He steps in front of me, putting his back to the ever-increasing distance between our friends and us. “What if I gave you a choice? How long would it take to Search it?”
“It depends on what it is,” I say, instantly nervous.
“Maybe I want to ask you out.”
“Don’t.” I grip tightly to the straps of my backpack and rock back on my heels a little.
“That was fast. What happened in the Search?”
“I didn’t look. Like I said, I don’t need to Search everything to know what I want.”
He takes a step closer and leans down. “I didn’t mean right now anyway. Just one day.”
My eyes dart to his lips and tingles spread down my neck. “I have a personal rule.”
“What’s that?”
“I refuse to kiss a guy who’s kissed more than five girls.”
He raises his eyebrows, a playful gleam coming into his eyes, and I realize what I just said. My cheeks catch fire.
“Date! I meant date!”
He laughs a deep throaty laugh. “That’s the most ridiculous rule I’ve ever heard. Did you make it up just now?”
I laugh. I had. But it was a good rule. If I had it before I met Bobby, it would’ve saved me a lot of trouble.
“That’s what I thought. But that’s okay. Keep the rule. It doesn’t affect me.”
I freeze in shock, trying to decide if I heard him right. The Duke is implying he hasn’t kissed more than five girls? Or maybe he’s saying he hasn’t dated more than five.
“That surprised, huh?”
I nod slowly.
“Duke!” Ray yells from where he and Laila have stopped by his truck.
Duke lifts his hand, acknowledging Ray, but doesn’t take his eyes off me. “Stick around. I’m full of surprises.” He turns and walks away. I watch Duke retreat, noticing the width of his shoulders and the confidence in his stride. It’s then I know I’m in trouble.