Mindspeak (2 page)

Jack choked on his drink. “Excuse
me?”

“You’re planning to be a doctor,
right? Most students are on a professional track of some sort at this school.
Mostly by their parents’ choice. Since you’re already part of The Program, I
assume you’re on track to become a doctor.”

He narrowed his gaze. “I guess.
Yeah.”

Figures. “Music or visual arts?”
Everyone at this school was required to be well-rounded. Academically,
athletically, artistically. I enjoyed the visual arts, myself.

“Music?” A grin reached all the way
to his eyes this time, and my belly did a little somersault.

I sucked in a deep breath, letting
it out slowly, as I struggled with what questions I could possibly ask. This
was an impossible task. I was forbidden by Wellington’s honor code to pose the
questions I wanted. Wellington had a “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy in order to
keep the students of this fine institution safe from outside harm. Nevertheless,
I always found myself wanting to know a person’s story. Their real story—why
they needed Wellington’s security, what their greatest fears were, their
greatest secrets, what they
really
wanted to be when they grew up and if
it matched what their parents wanted for them. “What instrument?”

“Um… Any of them?”

I set my pen down. Jack stared
straight ahead, distant, like his mind had wandered. “Any of them?”

After a couple of beats, his eyes
found mine again. “Yeah. Guitar, piano, fiddle, harmonica, and some others.”

“Harmonica?” I couldn’t suppress a
smile of my own.

“You’re avoiding the questions you
really want to ask.” He angled his body toward me, his knee brushed against
mine. “Do the students here really not know anything about each other?”

I shrugged. “Some stories surface.”
Many do, actually. “Some are hard to keep hidden when parents make the news. The
son of a famous actor gets photographed while home on Christmas break. A
senator is exposed due to some scandal. Rumors fly on a regular basis.”

That was putting it nicely.
Wellington students snooped constantly. I thought about the day Briana and Kyle
saw me eating breakfast with my father at a restaurant in Lexington. One of
them recognized him from a recent news article and knew he was in town for some
symposium. One meeting with the dean later, Briana and Kyle were sworn to
secrecy.

Mostly secrets were kept due to the
obscene amount of wealth in a family. Except in my case. My identity was kept
secret because of the highly confidential medical research my dad was involved
in.

Darkness swarmed in Jack’s eyes. “Do
you trust your classmates?”

I squirmed uncomfortably.
Goosebumps danced down my arms, and I reached to rub them. “I guess.” However,
this
guy was starting to give me the creeps.

“Aren’t you curious to know who the
people around you are?”

Yeah, like right now
. Why
was he asking these questions? I was sure the dean had told him the rules.

“Or worse, are you ever scared the
wrong classmate will find out who
you
really are, who your father is,
and what he does for a living? Put your life in danger?”

I jumped to my feet. Blood rushed
to my head, throwing me off balance. A throbbing pain pulsated behind my
eyeball. “Maybe we
can
do this later?” I rubbed my temple. “After I get
rid of this headache.” I tried to cover my sudden unease.

Jack stood, his brows squeezed
together. “You okay?”

“I’ll be fine. Like I said, just a
headache.”
And you’re freaking me out.

He studied me a moment before he
reached his fingers to my temple and brushed them from one side of my head to
the other. The gentleness of his touch temporarily distracted me from the
creepiness of the moment. The muscles in my legs tightened. I couldn’t move.

A cooling sensation spread from the
top of my head, across my temple and behind my eyes. Then the pain subsided.

He slowly retracted his hand,
dropping it to his side. His eyes never left mine.

Then I asked the forbidden questions.
“Why are you at Wellington, Jack? Who are you, really?”

He shrugged. “I’m just Jack. And I
was curious.”

“Curious? Curious people go to the
zoo or the FBI museum, not a high-security boarding school for over-intelligent
teenagers.”

“Yeah, but I wasn’t curious about
panda bears or gorillas, I was curious about
you
.”

Chapter
Two

“You should have seen him. He was
so… so…” I stopped pacing and faced Danielle Gray, whose head was upside down
in the downward facing dog pose. Her blond ponytail grazed the floor. “Are you
even listening to me?”

My roommate and keeper of my
darkest secrets dropped to her knees and placed her hands together as if in
prayer. Dressed in black yoga pants and a fitted red paisley tank, she took in
a deep cleansing breath and let it out slowly. Finally, her eyes popped open
revealing her light brown eyes. “Yes, of course I’m listening. He was so… what?”

I gave my head a little shake. “How
can you do yoga at a time like this?” I sat on my bed and put my head between
my knees. Breathed in… and out…

“Time like what? A time when one of
our imaginations is doing double time. Seems to me you could use a little
Anjali Mudra.” She closed her eyes again. “So? He was so… what?”

“He was so… mysterious,” I said, my
voice muffled between my legs.

“He sounds hot.”

I raised my head. I remembered the
coolness of his fingers and how my head stopped aching at his touch. The deep
blue color of his eyes. “He was not hot, Dani,” I lied, my voice rising,
because she was so missing the point. “He was weird… strange… creepy. I think
he knows who I am. Worse than that, I think he knows who my father is.”

Danielle shook her head. “No way. That’s
not possible.” A wrinkle formed between her eyes. For the first time, concern
registered. “What are you going to do? You need to talk to the dean. Get him
reassigned. Let someone else show him around.”

“On what grounds? Besides, I have
to find out what he knows.” I stood and began pacing the room again. “And why
he’s here. He’s already part of The Program. Which is weird.”

“You mean that new class or
whatever for you geeky medical types?” I nodded.
“Are you going to tell your dad?”

“And risk being moved to a
different school? Not sure yet.” I walked to my closet. “Speaking of my dad, I
almost forgot. He’s in town.” I pulled several dresses out, and with the wave
of a dramatic hand said, “My father, the renowned Peter Roslin, is speaking at
some fancy dinner.”

“And you’re going?”

I nodded. “Skyped with him earlier.
He didn’t want me to come, but I argued that only stuffy doctors would be at
this dinner. No one who is out to kidnap me for his money or for his top secret
medical advancements,” I laughed.

“What are you going to do about Mr.
Enigmatic?”

I wiggled a couple of dresses in
front of Danielle. “I’m going to throw one of these dresses on and go find him
before I leave for dinner.” Keep your enemies close and all that. “Which one?”

~~~~

Jack was nowhere to be found. He
had simply disappeared after only one day of school. It was strange that
classes started on a Friday, but it gave students, especially the new ones, a
chance to get settled into the dorm before everything kicked into high gear on
Monday.

Maybe it was good I didn’t find
him. Instead I could talk to Dad and see if he thought the new guy’s behavior
was strange.

Or not. Because if he thought the
behavior was risky, he’d move me.

I stared at Dad now, delivering his
keynote address to the Association of International Physicians and Research.

All eyes focused on him. All except
those belonging to the two men in suits—bodyguards, I guessed—on either side of
the stage, protecting him.

Seemed like overkill to me, but
what did I know? As long as they didn’t keep me from speaking with him after
his speech.

The topic of stem cell research and
reproductive cloning was morally divisive, but dad had delivered it
brilliantly. He had always kept me sheltered from his work. For good reason. He
knew I hated the thought of him playing around with human life.

“Embryonic cloning is not out of
the realm of possibilities any longer,” he said in his speech. “You could
already know someone who has benefited from the advances in medicine from stem
cell research.” While Dad acknowledged the ethical concerns of human cloning,
he touted the benefits that the technology would add to the treatment of many
fatal and debilitating illnesses. Or the growing of organs for transplants. And
advances would continue to be made by the medical community despite critics’
best efforts to stall them.

I had my questions and doubts. As
did the critics, whose buzzing now spread throughout the room like an
out-of-control forest fire.

“There’s no way he’s doing this
research in the U.S., is there?” a man one table over asked his neighbor.

“I heard he’s on the verge of cures
for some pretty serious diseases, like cancer and Alzheimer’s,” said another.

Dad backed away from the podium and
waved to the banquet hall full of doctors and other brilliant people. The
speech was over. Finally, he and I could have that talk he promised when he
called yesterday—after I begged him to let me come.

Some of the crowd stood in ovation
after the controversial address. The media flashed their cameras and started
moving in on the guest of honor.

Which meant it would take eons for
him to weave through the crowd and make his way to me. A picture of distinction
on the outside—designer suit, crisp white shirt with monogrammed cuff links, no
doubt—he stepped down from the stage. He shook the hands of surgeons, patted
the backs of pediatricians, and threw quick waves to every gastroenterologist.
Politicians could learn something from Dad’s glad-handing prowess.

“There you are,” Dad said when he
spotted me. He grabbed my elbow, and pulling me close, he leaned in and kissed
my cheek. The squeeze on my arm didn’t hurt, but the tightness of it made me
wonder if he had taken his blood pressure medicine. That and his reddened face.
He raised a finger to someone to our side, indicating he needed a minute. The
bodyguards stood just beyond the crowd around us.

“This was a mistake.” He glanced
over my shoulder again. “I shouldn’t have had you come tonight.”

I drew my head back. “Why, Dad? I
wanted to see you. I never get to see you.”

“I know, honey.” He leaned in again
and kissed my forehead. “You know I love you, right?”

“Of course.” I searched his face.
Despite the time we spent apart, we had an unexplainable father-daughter
connection.

He smiled at me now, but his eyes
continued to dart over my shoulder. “You also know that there are always people
in this world who disagree with the research I’m doing.”

I nodded. Like me at times. “But
you’re making a difference, Dad. I know it.”

His face relaxed, the lines
smoothing out. “Now, how’s the application for The Program coming?”

I sighed. “Fine.” When he cocked
his head, I continued. “I’ll get it done.” I squeezed my eyes shut, attempting
to hide the guilt hidden there. How could I tell him that I didn’t want to
learn more about all the controversial things he did with human life to advance
science and medicine?

“See that you do.” His fingers
tightened around my arm and he leaned closer to speak directly in my ear. “Now,
Sweetie, I need to know what you did with the furniture and personal items that
were in our house.”

My heartbeat picked up at the
urgency of his voice. His mood had completely transformed into something I didn’t
recognize. “I had everything moved when the original storage place closed,
remember? Why? Is something wrong?” My eyes drifted from his severe look to the
death grip he had on my elbow.

“I’m sorry.” He loosened his hold.
His gaze surveyed the crowd before it came back to me. “Can you write down the
address for me?”

“I don’t know it by heart. I’ll
have to look it up when I’m back at school. I’ll email it to you tomorrow. Why?
What are you looking for?”

His face relaxed again. He waved to
someone over my shoulder. “Just some old journals. No big deal.”

Sure didn’t seem like ‘no big deal.’
Dad dropped his hand to his side, and I rubbed the spot on my arm. People
hovered all around us waiting to speak to the guest of honor while the
bodyguards lingered close.

Unable to hold the people off any
longer, Dad shifted and reached a hand to someone behind me. “Lexi, you know Roger
Wellington and his wife, Brenda?”

I turned to find Dad shaking Dr.
Wellington’s hand. His wife, dressed head-to-toe in Chanel, linked an arm with
her husband. The fumes from her perfume reached all the way to the back of my
throat. “Of course,” I said as I shook hands with the President and founder of
Wellington Boarding School. His wife gave me her fingers in the daintiest of
shakes.

I made idle chit-chat with the
Wellingtons, nodding in all the appropriate places before Dad took over the
conversation. His demeanor was light and airy, not like his tone when he’d cut
off my blood supply while asking about some junk in storage.

I ran my tongue over my parched
lips and turned my head in search of a server who could locate a glass of water
or a Diet Coke. From my left, a bald man approached in a slow, purposeful walk.
His hands were balled into fists. His eyes were singularly focused on Dad with
a look that made me want to hide behind the nearest table.

Dad threw his head back and laughed
loudly at something Mrs. Wellington said, oblivious to the man stalking him
like a lion about to pounce on prey.