Psychic

I was standing in a dark room. The walls were bare and the curtains were drawn. The only light came from a fire blazing in a pit in the middle of the room. Its flames danced in the darkness, giving the appearance of a wildfire in the forest.

I was standing near a boy, who was standing across from a taller man in a cloak on the other side of the fire pit. The taller man’s features were darkened by the hood of the cloak, so his identity was hard to make out. Though what I could see by the firelight didn’t look very nice.

“I haven’t found her yet, Sir.” His voice was unmistakable, even though I’d only heard it a couple times.

The man in the cloak sneered. “How hard can it be, Magnus?”

“Well, on the knowledge that you and your goons couldn’t find her for ten years, I expect that I shouldn’t be expected to find her in one day.”

The man snarled. “If her mother hadn’t hidden her from me all those years ago, it wouldn’t have taken ten years.”

Magnus replied nervously, “Why is she so important? She’s just a teenage girl after all.”

The man sneered this time, “She may look like an innocent little girl, but she holds more power than she understands. It would be . . . safer for her if we had her here. She needs to be . . . trained.” He said in a voice that suggested that ‘she’ would most definitely not be trained like he claimed. He didn’t seem to want to protect this girl.

“What if your source was wrong? What if she isn’t here?” Magnus shrugged.

The man walked around the fire until he was face to face with Magnus, his face and features were now in clear view.

The man had olive toned skin and dark hair. There was a big scar running along the side of his face, going through one eye. That eye was pale and cloudy, meaning that he was probably blind in that eye. The other one was so dark brown that it appeared black. He definitely looked like a Disney villain brought to life.

“She is here, she has to be. My source is rock solid. You find her, and then you tell me as soon as you have confirmation. I’ve waited too long to lose her now. I can’t lose her, not when the end is near.”

Magnus nodded and swiftly left the room. The man however stayed and leaned over a desk I hadn’t noticed before in the dark room. This must’ve been some sort of office, but why did an office have a fire pit? “Let’s hope my sources are right.” He pulled a picture out of his pocket and spoke to it, “We only have until the equinox to find you.”

I woke up with a start. That was a very weird dream.

I had woken up thirty minutes before my alarm clock usually rang because of the strange dream, which meant I would have too much extra time this morning. I decided to use it for research.

This dream was so realistic that I just couldn’t stop thinking about it. It also had someone I knew in it, Magnus. I knew I didn’t like the new kid, but having a strange dream about him and a Disney villain? That was extreme even for me.

I knew that an equinox was the solstice for fall and spring, which is what got me curious. I searched when the next equinox would be on my phone, and was not disappointed.

March 2oth, otherwise known as the day I would turn sixteen.

I headed downstairs for breakfast per usual, even with the strange dream on my mind.

“Hello, Amy.” I greeted my foster mom, Amy Andrews, as she worked in the kitchen.

She smiled as she wiped down the stove, “Good morning, Liv.”

I sat at the counter and started pouring myself cereal from the cabinet, obviously I chose Lucky Charms. No milk though, they made the marshmallows all soggy and disgusting.

(And for anyone frowning at the no milk thing, just go look at those people who put water in theirs. They are the real sickos.)

“Anything cool in the news, Rick?” I asked my foster father, who sat at the end of the counter reading a newspaper.

“Well, apparently some sports guy thinks the Cubs are going to make a comeback when baseball season starts.” He answered in a gruff voice.

I nodded, even though sports wasn’t my strong suit, I did know that the Cubs were Chicago and that they hadn’t won the World Series in over a century. And I also knew that Rick absolutely hated them.

Amy and Rick were pretty old, late fifties. Their own kids moved out a little over ten years ago, and they’ve been fostering ever since. They were that elderly couple at the end of the street who always gave the sugary treats at Halloween and would bake fresh casseroles for any new family on the block.

(They had baked me a cake when I first came out of hospitality.)

I didn’t really think of them as parents, but more of an aunt and uncle. They were nice enough, but I knew that they could never replace my real parents that were out there somewhere.

I still had hope.

“Well, Liv, I hope you have a good day at school today,” Amy says with a smile.

I grinned back, “Thanks.”

And by the time I finished breakfast and by the time Amy drove me to school, I was early for once.

Bella was a dancer, which meant before school practice almost every day. Today was no different. This left me alone in a school that didn’t officially start for thirty more minutes.

In a ploy to try and escape the pounding thoughts in my head, I went to the library, a place where all the thinking was about things that mattered. Which meant I would hopefully not be bombarded with thoughts of the simpletons and idiots who roamed every school. In the library, kids with real thoughts lingered.

I sat down, pulling out my headphones and putting on my head, so no one would approach me about anything for the next thirty minutes (You never really approach someone who can’t hear you). But, I wasn’t playing music through the headphones, I was listening to the thoughts of the people around me.

Besides the fact that I normally hated the constant bombardment of thoughts in my head, I was a sucker for good gossip from the people who hung out here.

I still can’t believe he doesn’t have the guts to admit what he did with Meredith last night, came the thoughts of a girl sitting a couple tables down, Angela, staring down her on and off again boyfriend, Eric, from across the table.

They were that one couple from where a lot of drama started. Every school has one. They’ve been on and off since elementary school. The last time they broke up she spilt a strawberry milkshake over his head in front of the whole school.

The boy’s thoughts weren’t as angelic. I can’t believe how good Meredith was lastnight. It was complete with images that I mentally cringed at before blocking them all out.

Okay, maybe that was enough gossip today.

And, yes, this ability meant I saw a lot of . . . things that I would be better off not seeing. Inside the teenage mind is a horrid thing, especially the teenage boy. The stereotypes were true in this circumstance.

Man, that new kid is weird. No one asks if this library has a supernatural section except for those indie kids. Ms. Lynch, the librarian thinks, staring at Magnus’s retreating figure in the fiction section.

Hmm, maybe not everyone’s thoughts are useless.

I quickly took the headphones off and stuffed them in my bag, following Magnus’s footsteps. I go through the isle next to him, making sure I can view him through the slits in the cheap cabinets that the school uses as bookshelves.

He gathered a couple books from the shelves and I caught a couple titles, Supernatural beings: a guide, Magical Beasts and where to find them, and Mythology for Dummies.

What a strange collection of books.

And I was pretty sure one of those was by J. K. Rowling.

(I did not peg Magnus for a Harry Potter fanatic.)

“If they won’t tell me,” He muttered, “I’ll try and find out what she is by myself.”

Okay, definitely just got weirder.

My heart dropped as I considered the dreaded option. Did Magnus know what I could do? I couldn’t even read him, so how would he even know in the first place? I stopped. He couldn’t know. But, still.

Then a thought occurred to me. Was I who he was talking about in my dream? But, wait. It was just a dream, wasn’t it? It was a dream, it didn’t actually happen, right?

Or did it?

It would kind of explain why he was looking at books about imaginary creatures, wouldn’t it?

But, who says they’re imaginary? I tiny voice in the back of my head thought. After all, who am I to judge, reading minds isn’t exactly normal. Normal people would call me imaginary.

But there was no way for him to know what I was, was there? I couldn’t even read him in the first place.

But in the dream . . .

No.

I forced myself to walk away and stop thinking about the impossible. Yeah, I was the perfect definition of something that should’ve been impossible, but dreaming about somebody’s life in the present? It was a little unbelievable, even for me.

I read minds, not whatever that was. Even if I was somehow reading his mind from afar (which was impossible seeming as he was a blank slate to me) I would’ve seen it from his point of view, unlike how some TV shows portray mind reading. And it wasn’t from his point of view if I saw him in the dream. That’s all it could’ve been, a dream.

I ducked out of the library before Magnus knew I was spying on him and left to go find Bella. Sure, she was technically supposed to be in dance practice, but the teacher normally let everyone out early to fix their hair and change clothes before school started anyways. By now they would be in the bathroom.

I found her in the girls’ bathroom that was in the Fine Arts hallway, which was crowded with at least twenty girls all trying to change and get cleaned up before the bell rang.

They weren’t allowed to change in the girls’ locker room unless they were in a sport, per school rules. Apparently dance didn’t count as a sport in a town obsessed with football and ‘manly sports’.

(Advice: Avoid the Fine Arts hallway girls’ bathroom in the morning as to avoid the chaos)

“Bella, are you done yet?”

Bella grunted as she applied a quick brush of mascara, making a weird facial expression as to not get any of the mascara on her eyelids. “Almost. You know, it takes work to look as beautiful as me.”

Bella wore tons of makeup, which never really bothered me much. She looked pretty either way in my opinion. But, still. If she wore less, or none at all, she wouldn’t have to rush as much to get ready for school after practice.

Bella finished a minute later and zigzagged her way through the other dancers and their bags to join me on the other side.

“Okay, what’s so important that you interrupted my makeup routine?” She said once we were on our way to first period.

“Well, I had a weird dream last night, and Magnus was in it.” I went on to explain the dream and what happened with Magnus in the library, all the while hoping that I didn’t sound like a crazy person.

“So, let me get this straight,” Bella said, “You had a really realistic dream about the new kid, who you just happen to be unable to read, and he just happens to be reading about imaginary creatures in the library the next day?”

I nodded and she shrugged. “Maybe the dream is just your subconscious worrying about the fact that you can’t read him. I mean – maybe the guy just really likes to read up on mythology.”

Suddenly, all my conspiracy theories flew out the door. Maybe Bella was right, maybe he was just weird. It was no explanation for why I couldn’t read him.

I pouted. “Fine, but tell me if he does anything weird in your art class. Even if he doesn’t know about me, he still rubs me off the wrong way. There’s just something . . . mysterious about him, and not in a good way.”

In history class, Magnus was even more distant than yesterday. He absolutely refused to even look in my direction, like if he pretended I wasn’t there, it would become true.

Even though I had accepted the fact that I couldn’t read him a while ago, I still tried.

(You wouldn’t believe how frustrating it was for me not to know what was going on in someone’s head.)

Mrs. Lu noticed my disinterest in the lesson about halfway through and threatened to throw me out if I didn’t pay attention. Magnus smirked, showing the slightest bit of emotion since coming into the classroom. It bothered me that it was because I was being scolded. But at least he showed that he at least noticed me.

I huffed and started to scribble notes, pretending not to notice him, but secretly pushing all my energy into trying to read him.

By the end of class, I was fed up with him altogether. Magnus’s stupid brain was impenetrable and it gave me a headache. And I didn’t fare well with headaches.

I caught up with him after the bell rang, thanking our school for its impossibly long passing periods.

“Magnus, I need to talk to you.”

And he completely ignored me.

I sighed in frustration and grabbed on the straps of his backpack, stopping him in his tracks. “Magnus, I really need to ask you something.”

He turned, quite unwillingly and gave me the resting bitch face. I was impressed that he could pull it off so well. Actually, I shouldn’t have been surprised. His entire attitude screamed ‘bitch’.

“What is your problem with me?”

He shook his head. “I don’t have a problem with you.”

“Then what is it?”

He raised his eyebrows, “Are you really that blind? We’re not friends – we will never be friends.”

“So?” I question.

“I just don’t like you is all. In fact, you can stay just about as far away from me as possible. Trust me, I’m not someone you want to know, not now anyways.”

I went to argue, but he was already walking away, leaving me dumbfounded and upset. Was I not nice to him? Was I insulting his culture in anyway when we first met? No. Magnus was just a hypocritical jerk.

Maybe he was just weird, but something told me that he wasn’t telling me everything.