The teacher was droning on about parabolas, and I was staring at the boy who sat in front of me. Brandon had always sat there, but recently I had started noticing something different about him. Perhaps it was his new haircut, or that his posture had changed making him seem more impressive. The thought had crossed my mind that it could be that I was falling in love, but that was ridiculous. I would never date someone who doesn't bother to know my name.
The school bell rung, “knelling classes to a close” in the words of my English teacher. Ms. O’Brien likes to make us think she is a poetic genius, but I know she is just quoting poems. She isn’t even subtle about it, because she made us study Seamus Heaney, who wrote most of her quotes. I was half-way to my next class when the unthinkable happened.
“Hello.” said a deep voice behind me.
I jumped, and had to resist the urge to punch the person. It was a tall boy with warm brown eyes and curly caramel hair.
“Oh, Brandon. Hi?” I was quiet in case he wasn’t talking to me.
“You’re April right?”
“Um, yes. And you’re Brandon. Just stating the facts” my voice was too high pitched, because OMG, OMG, OH MO DHIA!
“I have something to show you. Would you like to meet me at the gates after school.”
“Of course. See you then?” I tried, and failed, to look mature and datable.
He waved goodbye and walked to his classroom, which was two down from mine. I quietly slid into my seat before the teacher walked in.
“Dia daobh, a daltaí” Mr. Coveny started every class like this.
“Dia is Muire duit.” the class chorused back.
I pondered whether Brandon was really going to ask me out. Probably not. He was just going to ask me to give him the maths homework. After all what would he want with little old me.
By the end of the day I had given myself a headache thinking of every possibility of what could happen at the school gate. I practically ran to my locker and pulled out and dumped in books at random. Then I zipped up my bag, flattened my hair and walked to the gate. I could see him, looking at his phone. He glanced up and saw me staring. He smiled and my heart melted a bit.
Keep it together, April.
“April, would you like to walk in the park with me?”
I blushed, and nodded because I couldn’t voice the words I wanted to say. We walked side by side, chatting and I thought maybe I could actually fall for him.
The park was beautiful. It was early spring and the daffodils bloomed all ‘round. Brandon started to walk in circles.
“I have something important to tell you. My family have... a long history. We were gifted special powers by the gods. They allow us to read minds. I have listened to the mental chatter of everyone in the school and you were the only one that seemed.... What's wrong?” he paused his walking around the field to look at me.
I stood absolutely still, smile frozen in place, my hands twitching. Twitching to get around this dunce’s neck for implying I could be indoctrinated into his family’s little cult.
“What?”
You heard me reader. You dare to think that everybody wants the “Gods gift”? Do you know what happens to readers? They start getting less and less human. They become monsters in a person’s body as the spirit of the gift starts to take over.
“How do you know of the gift? And what are these lies you are thinking?”
Your first question first. I have a variation of the gift, one that is more mind wiping than reading. And those “Lies” are the actual effects of the gift. I’ve spent the last fifty years finding off shoots of your family around and curing them. I just wanted five years of normal life, is that so wrong?
“You’re her,” he whispered.
“Excuse me?” speaking aloud.
“Never Mind...”
Is this guy actually stupid. Accusing me of being someone, then telling me to “Never mind”? I’m rather dangerous, boy, so don’t try my patience.
“Mind, you are an enemy of my family. We always thought a person with the ability to wipe memories could not exist, but if they did we wouldn’t know would we?”
I paused. Then I started laughing. I couldn’t stop, I could barely breathe.
“Oh my Lord, oh gods on high! You guys nicknamed me Never Mind! Oh wow!” I managed to wheeze out.
I’ve had a couple of nicknames in my time, it comes with the memory wiping territory. But never before had I gotten a more stupid one. Or one where the namer looks so dumbfounded when I laugh about it.
Brandon, seeing my physical pain from laughing, had taken a step back. He raised his arms, and made the visible decision to try and attack me.
Those thoughts had barely entered my mind, when his punch was already in motion. I sidestepped, and boy if you expect me to think about what I’m going to do next, you have made a grave mistake. You made one by picking a fight with me in the first place, but that was just a rookie mistake. May I introduce some of the rules of mind powers?
“Shut up,” Brandon was huffing and puffing, and I hadn’t even started attacking yet.
So rule one, if you don’t have to do it, don’t. People generally don’t like their minds being read, and old people like me can feel you looking through our thoughts. Rule two, physical contact. It makes a power 100x stronger. For example from here I can do this from here...
He gasped as I reached into his brain and deleted his memories of everything we learnt in maths class so far this year.
“Why would you do that? What purpose does it have?”
“None, just wanted to show I can delete memories from a distance. It just is painfully obvious to the person that they have forgotten something. And I have some limitations if the memory is highly interconnected to other ones that it could fill itself back in”
Now if I was to touch your skin, I could show you the host of other things I can do.
“But if I touch you, I would be able to read all that goes on in your head, the firing muscles, the slight memories of your training you are using now. I would also have a certain amount of mind control.”
We’ll see.
Brandon hit the floor hard, and I bent down to look at him.
“Hey little buddy. I’m willing to let you off the easy memory wipe if you just bring me to your family. If you don’t I’ll just have to do it the hard way.”
I felt a cold hand around my ankle. My head empties of thoughts. I could hear a whisper of Brandon's voice echoing around in my head.
"Show me where you got your powers and how you know my family."
A blur of memories, of my parents and the day they left me behind. A green glow filled out house, and I rememberer the glow making my parents disappear. Then the pain as it touched me and I could feel the thoughts and personalities of everything around me. The years I spent flinching if a bird so much as fluttered too close to me. And the monster I found in the forest. It had once been human, but now its limbs were too long and bent at weird angles. I thought of the way its mindless eyes followed me, and its pained moans, and the pity I felt as I put it out of its misery. I recalled the family insignia in the scraps left of its clothes. Brandon's family symbol. I didn’t lie boy, now leave my mind before I force you out.
“No.”
Well then.
I stood up straight and grabbed Brandon's hand. His eyes flashed white as I knocked him out, not before I collected some information about his family’s hideout. In a cave. Very classy.
I picked up the body of my once date, and said goodbye to life as April. Nobody would notice I was gone even if I didn’t remove myself from their records. Another person bites the dust I guess.
Now it’s time for some monster hunting.
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