chapter 5

CHAPTER TWO

Ben slept fitfully that night, dreaming of sinister surgeons and students shackled to operating tables and awakening with a start before sunrise. He tried to go back to sleep, but he couldn’t. He decided he might as well get ready for the day.

He brought his change of clothes into the bathroom and set them down on the counter. A fresh undershirt, a burgundy sweater, and some new jeans he’d bought a week before school started in a size 36. He hadn’t been a 36 since he was fourteen, and he’d been shorter then, so a shopping trip had been inevitable.

Once he brushed his teeth, he showered, relaxing under the water as he opened up the soap bottle and worked on cleaning himself up. While he was in the shower, he heard someone using the toilet and running the sink. Stupidly, he assumed it was Felicity. He turned off the shower and dried himself off, wrapping the towel around his waist before stepping out.

“Whoa! Ok. Dead puppies, dead puppies and naked grandpas,” said Chloe as she turned around with her hands pressed to her temples. She must have been staying in the dorm on the other side of the shared bathroom. She instantly retreated past the other door and slammed it shut. Ben got dressed and knocked. He remembered her picture with the disappeared girl and didn’t know when he and Felicity would get a chance to speak with her again. “Chloe? Can me and my friend ask you something?”

***

Chloe felt bad.

Okay, seeing Ben Taylor-Moore shirtless was a feast for her eyes, but she already knew he didn’t like her like that. She could pull the thoughts straight out of his mind. Anyone’s mind. What’s more, her attraction made him uncomfortable. So she was working on curbing it. She wasn’t a monster.

Her roommate was still asleep as she dressed herself in a conservative ensemble: red sweater, matching red belt, tan capris. She toed into a pair of sneakers before going back into the bathroom and knocking on the opposite door. She already knew her suitemate and her lover had questions about Rivington. She didn’t have all the answers they were looking for, but she would try to help. All she knew was she missed her best friend Gina, and something was wrong at her old school.

“Are you guys decent?” she asked.

“Yeah,” said Ben.

She hadn’t even met her suitemate yet, but she could see her in Ben’s mind. It was the attractive blonde girl he had sat with last night while she was arguing with Malcolm. What a lucky girl.

Chloe tentatively pushed her way through the door. “What do you guys want to know?”

"Please, sit," said the girl, offering her a chair. Chloe knew what was coming a second before she opened her mouth again. "We have some questions about Rivington…about Gina Flowers."

***

For a moment, Chloe squirmed in her seat. Ben could tell she was trying to calm herself, which he appreciated. The last thing he needed was an accidental misfire first thing in the morning.

He paced. That made her nervous, but he couldn’t help himself. She tamped it down again. He looked over at Felicity and saw that she was boring into Chloe with her gaze.

Finally, Chloe turned to Felicity to answer her question. “Gina’s been my best friend since freshman year. When I lost my place on the cheer squad, she was the only one who would still talk to me.”

“Why’d you get kicked off the cheer squad?” asked Ben. Chloe turned as red as her sweater. There was that thread of guilty, giddy glee over her controversial craving again, but she seemed to push it aside once she got that it wasn’t sitting well with Ben.

“It’s irrelevant. Let’s just say something embarrassing happened in my social life. I was thinking about transferring last semester, but Gina convinced me to stay. Then one day she just stopped showing up to class. She was dating a guy named Nathan Villanova, but even he hadn’t heard from her. And then other people started disappearing. I couldn’t stay there anymore; the entire atmosphere was tainted with hysteria. The whole student body rang with a constant, high-pitched squeal of fear. It wasn’t a stream of coherent thought. More like...just...internal screaming that went on and on. It was too painful for me to stay there, as a telepath.”

“And that’s when you left?” asked Ben. “If not for that, you would have stayed?”

“I wanted to find out what happened to my friend. But it was too overwhelming, having to hear everyone’s panic. And we were all scared. A few other people transferred over here, too, before they could be next.”

“Like Malcolm Jimenez?”

Chloe scoffed. A white-hot flash of resentment charged through her before she reigned it in. “Malcolm didn’t leave Rivington by choice. He was expelled.”
***

This was it. A real mystery, a call to arms, even, and...was she interrogating a suspect?! Felicity's adrenaline couldn't have run higher.

Since she had started compiling those names, she had been waiting for this case to unfold, and she wanted to be front and center of it all. If she could save all those people, Mom and Dad would have to eat their words about her.

The world would know her name.

But first, she needed more pieces of the puzzle. Any small detail might prove of importance. "Why'd Malcolm get expelled?" she asked the girl in the hot seat.

"I don’t know.”

“But you could find out, right? Being a mind-reader and all?” said Ben.

“Am I like, officially being invited into the detectives' guild?”

Ben glanced at Felicity. "It's your call, you're the one that made the list."

Felicity didn't know that she could trust in Chloe's complete innocence, and she didn't like the way she looked at Ben sometimes, like he was a piece of meat. But she was surrendering information, and if she were lying, Ben would be able to detect it. Besides, if she truly wanted to help, her telepathy would be a major asset to their team.

"Alright, let's deal you in! Your first mission: get the 411 on Malcolm. He strikes me as super sus. I want to know what he's hiding."

“I could try," said Chloe, "but Malcolm thinks almost exclusively in Spanish. The way mind-reading works--in my case, at least--think of deliberately probing someone’s mind for information like unspooling thread. Now imagine unspooling that thread and finding it too thick for your needle. That’s what the language barrier does to me.”

“Guess we’ll have to interrogate him ourselves,” said Ben, turning back to Felicity. "He don't seem like too bad a guy to me, though. A troublemaker, sure...but not evil or anything. Here's what I'm thinking: he probably just got kicked for stealing, or cheating on tests, or indecent exposure, or some other Malcolm-y thing. But there's something fucked up going on at that school, and there's an off chance they threw him out 'cause he knew too much."

***

"Well, now that you're in the band," said Felicity, "why don't you join us at breakfast, Chloe?"

"Sure! And why don't I buy? I know you guys hate the coffee in the dorm caf, but the cafe by the science building does a good job, right?"

"Uhh, sure." Was Ben ever going to get used to her being able to jump into his head like that?

Now that she was part of the task force, he supposed he would have to.

"You know, Felicity, with your power set, I'm surprised you didn't get into Rivington," Chloe ventured as they departed across campus for the cafe.

"I was offered a full ride scholarship from there, but I turned it down," said Felicity. "I wanted to stay with Ben." She wrapped both arms around one of his and his heart leapt with excitement. "Though of course, looks like I'm gonna have to go there anyway, only as an infiltrator instead of a student."

And just like that, his bubble burst.

She was so confident in her ability to run this rescue mission, confident enough to jump right in at a galloping speed. And why shouldn't she be? She could no doubt beat up fourteen men without breaking a sweat.

But if she expected him to be her trusty sidekick, she was severely overestimating him. He didn't know how to fight. He'd be more a liability than an ally to her.

He'd be dead weight, a ball and chain to her, impeding her from being the hero she could be.

They arrived at the cafe and Chloe stepped into line, handing her credit card to the cashier, this senior named Drake who had a reputation as a careless womanizer. “Woo-whee! I could use a coffee; this hangover’s starting to kick in. Let me get a double caramel latte with whipped cream, a hazelnut croissant, and these two are with me; he'll do a solo Americano and she'll have what I'm having, except she wants almond milk and sugar free syrup, no whip, and instead of the croissant she'll have a protein power box."

“He'll have a what now?” asked the cashier.

Chloe rolled her eyes. “He wants a shot of espresso topped off with hot water.”

The cashier swiped Chloe’s card, staring steady at her, his lust so strong it was palpable, at least to Ben. “Chloe Nguyen, huh?" he read her name on the card before handing it back to her along with her receipt. "Ask me, you should be called--”

“‘Chloe Dang,’ how original,” she beat him to the punch. Ben wasn’t sure if she’d used telepathy or if it simply was that obvious a joke; both Nguyen and Dang were common Vietnamese last names. With a flourish of smug indignation, she signed the receipt, wrote her phone number on it, and said, “Give that to your coworker.” The cashier looked from Chloe to his coworker, the kinda hefty guy making the drinks, and gave her a sour look, handing her a plastic number card on a thin metal stand for the table.