Out of My Mind

Chapter Two

"Can she hear what I'm thinking?" He thought. I stared at his back. He stopped short and slowly turned to look at me. I dropped his gaze immediately, took Aspen's hand and went the opposite direction. I'm the only one who knows and it will stay that way. I'm the eyes and ears of this school, I know everything and if some of that information got out, social hell would break loose. "What's wrong?" Aspen asked wearily as I hauled her outside. "We're going home," I signed to her. "But what about the rest of school?" She said innocently. I bet you half the kids went home crying their eyes out anyway. Tomorrow I would determine which one of them was the most unfortunate. I shook my head and kept walking. She stalled for a minute then caught up.
Sitting back at home in our once full living room, my sister and I just stared at each other. "What am I supposed to do now? I'm not ready to go that far with Huck. I don't want this, not yet. Do we just move in together, are we supposed to get married?" My sister looked like she was about to cry. All her happiness from earlier was gone and was replaced by anxiety and reality. I was still in intense thought about the Asian kid, the other mind reader. It made me wonder who else could do this. I always thought that I was the only one. Out of the corner of my eye, I spotted the manila folder with my name on it. I opened it up again just to look. There was another page that I didn't see earlier.

Halsey Wetzel, because of your status, you have not been paired. You are still expected to contribute to your country or face loss of citizenship. As of this time you are currently unemployed. You are required to find work in a years time or face deportation.
Sincerely,
The US Secretary

This didn't really come as a shock to me, I knew that in order to keep our house and life as we knew it, I would have to find work. So would Aspen. And in reality, Huck should be helping us out too. Aspen told me that Huck still has his mom and dad. They're both scientists, so they knew about the virus ahead of time and became germophobes for like a year and a half. Guess it worked out alright for them. I decided to get started on the whole job thing right away. I knew that as reality started to set in on all these idiots at school, the jobs would run out fast. I walked into town and filled out applications like it was my job. (Lol). I used to babysit kids in mid school, so I used my only customer as my reference on every single application. Sorry for blowing up your phone Mrs. Hagen.

The next day at school was really strange. The air was tense, you could physically feel it. The hallways were dead silent all day, but there were a hundred thoughts a minute racing through everyone's heads. Including my own. I managed to evade the Korean exchange student all day. It was after the last class of the day and I was going to meet my sister at her class when I saw him. "There she is," I heard him. I ducked inside Aspen's classroom where she was still shoving books in her bag. I walked up to her and yanked on her arm. Let's go. Now. "Hey wait, I still need to talk to the teacher," Aspen complained. I gave her a pleading look with my eyes. "It'll only take a minute," she said. My heart started racing. Maybe he left. I cautiously walked up to the doorway and peeked outside to the right. Whew, he left. I swung my head around to the other side. "Yeah, I'm still here," he said irritably. I let out a yell of surprise. "How come you can hear me? What do you know about me?" He got right to it. He looked almost angry with me, like it was all my fault I could do what I do. "I am angry with you. I wanted to talk to you and you've been avoiding me all day. I think it's a pretty reasonable response to someone that's been combing through my head since school started and could know God knows what," he said more forcefully. I anxiously looked back at Aspen. She was still in deep conversation with the teacher. "Um sorry, but you aren't going anywhere until you say something. Why are you blatantly ignoring me? Are you just that dumb? Can you hear anything I'm telling you other that's in my mind?" He started yelling. "Hey! Leave her alone!" Aspen said angrily, coming up behind me. She walked right up to him and put a fist right up next to his face. "Don't ever talk to my sister like that again. The only stupid, ignorant person here is you!" She yelled at him. This time she grabbed my arm and we stalked off together. I looked back at him over my shoulder once and his face was clouded over with this kind of dark anger. We were too far away for me to hear what he was thinking, but I definitely didn't want to know.

"Halsey, I know I've told you again and again, but just don't listen to people like that. You don't have to stand and take that from them," she was telling me back at home, "I don't even understand why he was yelling at you. You've never done anything to anyone at school." Yeah, except learn all their deepest, darkest secrets. To be honest, I don't know anything about the Korean exchange student. I've probably heard him think before, but either the information melted away or blended into the sea of everyone else's thoughts. If I can, I'll definitely be keeping tabs on him now. "I don't think he knows about me," I signed to her. "That doesn't even matter, people just shouldn't be that rude," she scoffed. If only she knew about the intense, intricate mind game at play. Now I wished I had paid more attention to him. He seemed really upset and worried that I knew something about him. What did he not want me to know so badly?

Huck was over at our house talking to Aspen about their very immediate future. "I don't know what to do! I care about you so much that this just hurts me!" Huck was saying exasperatedly. I was just sitting in the living room, watching them, the worthless, silent blob I am. It kills me just as much as Huck. Just looking at him, you can see in his face when he looks at Aspen that he has found everything that he wants in this world, that is his world. While I mostly stick to myself and wouldn't dare get that close with anyone other than Aspen, I can't help but desire that kind of security from another person.

Hick and Aspen's conversation soon turned into an argument. I walked out the front door just as the yelling intensified behind me. I had to get out of there, I can't see Aspen like this and I trust Huck to take care of her. I was anxious about leaving them since I didn't really want Aspen contributing to the country just yet. All these kids were just too young for this. I can't believe they're actually making us, well, them do this. "Yeah, me neither," said a voice from the trees off to the side of the road. I jumped, pressing a hand to my chest. Surprise, surprise, it was the Asian kid. Had he been following me? "No, I haven't been following you. I happened to be walking past your house. I was out getting a job. I didn't get picked either, remember?" He said flatly. He kept staring at me, straight into my eyes. It was kinda creeping me out. I slowly started backing away. I guess I did it consciously. "Hey, where do you think you're going? You haven't told me anything yet," he said nervously, grabbing my arm. I become hypersensitive of the whole situation and started panicking. "Stop! Jeez, just calm down, can you just- just be quiet!" He hushed me. I flailed more and more away from him. "What is your, problem?" He said struggling with me. When I started yelling, he grabbed me around the waist and threw a hand over my mouth, hauling me into the trees. The fear really started to set in now. I was amazed at how he could contain my explosiveness. "Just shut up already! You're fine! JUST SAY SOMETHING GOD!" He yelled, just scaring me more. I wrestled my hand out of his grip and abruptly brought it up to his face. He released me and I fell to the ground. He was cupping his nose, trying to stop the blood flowing from it. I scooted backwards frantically trying to get away from him. I got up quickly and turned to run the other way, but I think I only made it a foot before smacking my head against a low hanging branch.