Open Minds

Title Page

Copyright

For my mom,

who always believed in me more than I did.

And who never once tried to mind control me.

I think.

praise for OPEN MINDS

“
Open Minds
pushed me to the edge of my imagination and then tossed me over the edge as I screamed for more. Quinn has created an intensely dangerous world both inside the minds of her characters and outside—a world that left me asking myself questions I would never have asked before. When you can literally control the thoughts of others, how far will you go? Quinn takes the reader to this reality with breathtaking control and sparkle. Read this and you’ll never look at your thoughts the same again.”

—
Michelle Davidson Argyle
, author of
Monarch
and
Cinders

“
Open Minds
boils with action, adventure, and surprises. I was fully invested in this inventive world and the protagonist. A story that had me imagining
what if
, long after I finished it.”

—
Terry Lynn Johnson
, author of
Dogsled Dreams

chapter ONE

A zero like me shouldn’t take public transportation.

The hunched driver wrinkled a frown before I even got on the bus. Her attempt to read my mind would get her nothing but the quiet of the street corner where I stood. I kept my face neutral. Nobody trusted a zero to begin with, but scowling back would only make the driver more suspicious. I gripped my backpack and gym bag tighter and climbed the grime-coated steps. The driver’s mental command whooshed the door closed behind me.

Yeah, junior year was off to a fantastic start already.

Students crammed the bus, which stank of too many bodies baking in the early morning heat. I shuffled past the dead-silent rows, avoiding backpacks and black instrument cases. Two years of being the Invisible Girl had taught me a few things. As long as I didn’t touch an exposed arm or speak out loud, the blank spot of my mind would go unnoticed in the swirling sea of their thoughts. Which was great, until I needed a seat on a crowded bus.

With a soft hiss of water exhaust, the bus lurched forward. I grabbed a sticky seatback to keep from falling on three girls deep in mental conversation.

Two senior boys leered from the back row. The whole bus was within range, so they knew there were no thought waves beaming from my head. Yet, instead of ignoring me, they stared like hungry sharks. Last year, looks like those would have gotten them pummeled by my six-foot-two brother, Seamus. But Seamus had graduated, and the protective shadow he cast over me was gone.

Whatever sims the boys were thinking, students four rows ahead of them turned to watch. Shark Boy tipped his head to his friend, obviously discussing me as they stared. His friend’s lips parted to show a sliver of teeth, and he gestured to the only open seat on the bus.

Right in front of them.

I could complain to the driver, but she wouldn’t believe anything a zero told her. Shark Boy’s thoughts wouldn’t carry over the mental chaos of the bus, and speaking out loud would only get me thrown off.

I turned away from the wide grins on the boys’ faces and slowly sank into the seat. My cheeks burned with the expectant stares from the back half of the bus, but I kept my gaze on the suburban houses ambling past the window. The heat of Shark Boy’s hand reached me just before he brushed my bare skin, right below my t-shirt sleeve. I jerked away and clutched my gym bag like it was a shield.

Shark Boy and his friend rocked back with noiseless laughter, as if touching a zero was the height of funny. I shivered in spite of the heat and decided to take my chances with the unfriendly driver. By the time my shaking hands found handholds to the front, we had rounded the corner to the school parking lot. I ignored the driver’s insistent stare. As soon as the bus stopped, I pounded the button on her dash to manually activate the door and scurried out.

Once inside the main entrance of school, a scuffle of feet warned me to step back as a group of girls sailed past, looking all mesh with their band shirts and synced steps. One—Trina—cut too close and knocked shoulders with me. At first it seemed intentional, but then she acted as though I was something she would never touch on purpose. Heat rose in my face.

Harassment from readers shouldn’t get a rise out of me anymore, but I’d fallen out of practice, sticking close to home over the summer. Trina’s snub wouldn’t have hurt at all if her sweater wasn’t still hanging in my closet, a casualty from a time when we traded clothes and secrets. I guess she didn’t miss it.

I dug my schedule out of my backpack. At least the administration hadn’t put me in Changelings 101 again. As if a class on mindreading etiquette and self-control would help a zero like me. An anger management class would be more useful.

My first-period Latin class beckoned from a dozen yards down the hall, its blue plasma lights gleaming like a lighthouse in a hurricane. I narrowly avoided a pair of students air-kissing and skittered to the classroom door.

The new Latin teacher tried to be mesh with his shiny
nove
-fiber shirt. A circle of admiring students laughed silently at some mental joke. Seamus had warned me that I would need a hearing aid this year so the teachers could whisper their lectures to me while instructing everyone else via mindtalk. I had put it off, waiting for my brain to finally flip a switch and become normal, and hoping to get by in my classes until then. Meanwhile, to the teacher and his fans, I might as well be a dusty trashcan in the corner. I found a spot in the back, and a knot of certainty tied tight inside me.

I will never be like them.

My chair gained gravity and sank me deep into my seat.

Long ago, everyone used to be zeros. When those first reader kids hit puberty and discovered they could read minds, the world didn’t know what to make of it. That first wave of Reader Freaks grew up to have more Reader Freaks.

Now the only freaks were the few people who never changed.
Like me.

I physically shook that thought from my mind.
Don’t give up
. Just because most kids changed by the time they were thirteen or fourteen didn’t mean
everyone
did. Seamus didn’t change until he was fifteen. Mom told me over and over she was a late bloomer. I told myself for the hundredth time that the Moores simply changed late, and that I was the slowest of the bunch.

The change could come any day. In the meantime, I would have to keep up in my classes any way I could. If the teachers were all mindtalking this year, then I’d get that hearing aid and make do. If I gave up now, I would have no chance at college, much less medical school.

Students moved to their creaking metal desks, probably motivated by a thought instruction from Mr. Amando. Everyone pulled out their e-slates, and I peeked at my neighbor. We were starting with translations of
Aeneid.
Again.

Although my thoughts sounded English in my head, I knew thought-waves weren’t a language at all. They could be read by any person over the change age, as well as by mindware interfaces. (Yeah, even the bus was better at reading minds than me.) But until the tech guys created a computer that could mindtalk back, the world would need written words. Latin was quickly becoming mesh, being a root language. All the latest mindware had a Latin option, plus Latin was required for college, so mastering the ancient language wasn’t optional.

I scribbled with my stylus, trying to decode Juno’s wrath against the city of Troy. Even after two years of Latin, my translations were still a literal jumble.
Tantaene animis caelestibus irae?
It meant Juno was wreaking her goddess anger on the Trojan people,yet the literal translation stuck in my head as
vast minds of heavenly wrath.
If I changed
tantaene
to
deminutus
, it could just as easily describe the small minds of Warren Township High.

I let out a long sigh. At least we weren’t working in groups on the first day of class. I redoubled my efforts to force the translations into something better than gibberish.

The bell gave a soft tone that disturbed the utter quiet of the room. I slipped past the other students, wrapped in their mental conversation. The crowds thinned at the back of school, but I kept to the edges until I reached my locker. By the time I had my gym bag stowed away, the metallic sound of my locker door slamming shut echoed down a nearly empty hallway.