Worldwielder, page 2
And it was impossible to forget about him. Unfortunately, it was just as impossible to think of him without a numbing depression coming over her. For all she knew, he could be dead.
She pushed herself away from the lockers and started down the hallway. School had ended half an hour ago, leaving the corridor mostly deserted. Even so, she kept to the edges and searched for the path that would pass the fewest humans possible. Her mind-sensing allowed her to sense when people were nearby, even if she couldn't see them. The sensation was faint, like a hair brushing across her neck, so she had to focus on it to make it out. If she’d been around someone enough, she could even recognize them by their mental signature alone.
Near the exit, a familiar sight in a passing classroom caught her eye. The chess club. She slowed to glance in on the gathering. A dozen students, their ages ranging from five to eighteen, were paired up at the tables, all absorbed in their games.
A girl was sitting in her old chair, the one in the far corner of the room, and opposite her was a boy, not much older than Kyle had been on that fateful day some ten years past.
Melissa had been undefeated in the club, despite being a decade younger than the oldest player. Perhaps it was because she had natural talent, or perhaps it was because she had nothing to do with her time but read books on chess strategy and practice endlessly. In either case, when the small blond boy sat opposite her, she foresaw an easy win.
“Hi, I'm Kyle,” he'd said, smiling and extending a hand.
She hadn't taken it. She hadn't come to chess club to make friends. She hadn't even wanted friends. She'd been afraid, then as now, of what they would think of her if they knew the truth about her mind-sensing.
“Let's just play,” she'd said.
So they had, and somehow he'd beat her, despite having no knowledge of formal chess strategy. She'd opened, as she always did, with pawn to E4. He'd replied with pawn to E5, the beginnings of an Open Game. Her next move was knight to F3, an attempt to lure him into the Giuoco Piano. But he hadn't responded with knight to C6, as he ought to if he knew anything about chess. Nor had he countered bishop to C4 with bishop to C5. He made the most bizarre, nonstandard moves, but they were good moves. She recalled wondering, for a brief moment, if he could read her mind, because that was the only explanation she could contrive for his feat. The game had concluded in a rook-versus-knight situation, she with the knight and he with the rook. It should have been, at worst, a draw, but he'd cornered her and she'd lost the knight.
She hadn't known what to say to him after that. She'd stared at the board for what felt like minutes, trying to make sense of what had happened.
“Nobody beats me,” she finally stammered.
He'd shrugged. “Wanna play again?”
Rather than replying, she'd simply begun to set up the board. Again they played, but this time it was as if she were playing a completely different person. The bizarre moves on his part continued, but now they were bad moves. Maybe he hadn't known what he was doing before. Maybe it had just been an accident. But she'd suspected otherwise. Giving him a stony glare when the game was over, she'd said, “You let me win.”
His helpless sigh had nearly melted her contempt. “I thought that's what you wanted.”
It was the first time Kyle Lamb had baffled her by doing something so stupidly kind and thoughtful, in a certain frame of mind, as to be idiotic. It was far from the last time.
“Melissa, wadup!”
The voice wrenched Melissa from her recollections, and she flinched. She'd been too distracted to notice someone approaching her.
That someone, as it turned out, was none other than Brock Young, all 6'5” and two hundred-odd pounds of him, wearing athletic clothes and an inviting smile. In one hand he carried a gym bag, in the other a basketball.
He was a well-meaning sight, but Melissa sighed. If she'd known he was coming, she would have turned and hurried in the other direction. Brock was kind enough, insofar as she knew him from their brief interactions in biology class, but she had no desire to talk to anyone right now.
“Hi Brock,” she mumbled.
“Thinking about joining chess club?”
Brock had only moved to Willowfork a year ago. He hadn't been here long enough to know she had been in chess club… before Kyle left.
“Nope.”
“Huh. I bet you'd be awesome at chess if you tried it! Hey, how'd that essay turn out for you?”
“Fine.”
“What'd you write about?”
“Osmosis.”
“Word! Me too. I love osmosis. Hey, we should hang out sometime. You free later?”
Apparently, he wasn't getting the hint from her one-word replies. She felt bad about it. He was being so nice. But she guessed he wouldn't be as nice if she told him she knew just how attractive he found her based on the yellow shade of his mind, or that she knew he was lying about the topic of his essay based on the amber flicker she'd seen a moment ago. No, there was no hope of being friends with Brock.
“I'm kinda busy later,” she said.
He nodded. “For sure! Maybe some other time when you're not busy.”
She didn't have the heart to give him an unequivocal no, so she mumbled, “Maybeigottagoseeyoutomorrow,” and placed herself several steps nearer the exit before he could reply. As she left the building, she caught a slight twitch of purple—disappointment—in his mind. If only I weren't… me, she thought for the millionth time in her life.
TWO
Melissa lived near enough Willowfork Academy to walk to and from school. It was a long walk, but anything was preferable to riding the bus. Mind-sensing made being in close proximity to large groups of people a bit like standing next to a blaring lawnmower. It was for the same reason that she decided, after a moment's consideration, not to spend the remainder of her afternoon at the park, much as she would have enjoyed the sunshine. Being around people at school was enough of an ordeal for one day, especially when one of those people was Mr. Rook.
She stared at the ground as she walked, making sure to avoid stepping on any cracks in the cement. By the time she realized she was about to walk by Kyle's old house, as she always did on this route, it was too late to divert her course. She didn't even want to look at the place right now. Didn't need another reminder of him. But, try as she might, she couldn't stop her eyes from drifting upwards to the blue house, nor could she stop the flood of memories its sight unearthed.
Kyle had been sitting on the porch that second eventful day, tending to his flower pots. He must have had a dozen of the things—chrysanthemums and heucheras and nemesias and snapdragons and calendulas. Most of them were orange, his favorite color.
Following their encounter at chess club, she'd been mad at him, made worse by the fact that he hadn't returned despite knowing she wanted a rematch. Yet he'd had the gall to say hi to her at school, compliment the art on her binder, or worst of all, invite her over to play. She didn't want to be his friend. She just wanted to beat him at chess.
As she'd passed his house that day, he must have seen her dart an envious glance at the flowers, because he'd called out to her. “You can have one if you want!”
She'd been sure he was just taunting her. Hadn't he noticed how impolite and unsociable she was? No doubt he was rubbing in the fact that she was the last person he ought to give his flowers to.
She'd ignored him, but he persisted. Finally, her annoyance flared into acrimony, and she'd run over and swept every one of the flower pots off the porch in one blow, smashing them upon the ground. Before he could do or say anything, she sprinted home. She regretted the action immediately, seeing it for the senseless wrong it was, but the damage had been done. On top of that, she knew she'd be in a world of trouble as soon as her parents found out.
But they never found out. Instead, every day for the next several weeks, she'd received an envelope in the mailbox. Inside was a pressed flower.
It was the second time Kyle Lamb had baffled her by doing something so stupidly kind and thoughtful, in a certain frame of mind, as to be idiotic.
Melissa pushed aside her memories, having arrived at the front door of her house. She gripped the knob and braced herself for a mad dash up the stairs to her room. She could sense three members of her family in the living room, and she had no desire to be waylaid in conversation. Or criticism, as every discourse with her family tended to devolve into. A nap sounded nice right now. Then a nice, long chess game.
She flung the door open and ran. Her left foot had just crested the first stair when she heard her name called. Grimacing, she halted and turned.
Her mother, Minnie, was standing beside the mantelpiece dusting a ceramic gnome. The twins, thirteen-year-old Chase and Chance (who Melissa didn't bother to distinguish most of the time), were planted in the entrance to the kitchen, chugging chocolate milk. It had been Minnie who'd called to Melissa, and the color of her mother's mind—red—told her why. Mr. Rook had made good on his threat.
“Again, Melissa? Seriously?” Minnie made a show of sighing and rolling her eyes once she had Melissa's attention. “I just… I don't even know what to say.”
“It's not true. Lucas is lying!” Melissa insisted, though she knew her efforts were futile. Like Mr. Rook, Minnie wasn't interested in listening.
“Honestly, I don't know what your problem is. Have we not taught you better than this? Have we not been loving and supportive of your educational efforts? Do you want to be a deadbeat?”
Melissa knew such questions were a trap, so she said nothing.
Minnie pressed a palm to her forehead. “And then there's your hair. Green, again? My goodness.”
The twins snickered in unison. “She probably spilled sharpie in it,” one of them said.
“Or fell in a vat of toxic waste,” added the other.
“That would explain a lot.” They snickered again.
It's supposed to look like the aurora borealis, you nitwits. Melissa felt her temperature rising and, with it, the necessity of escape.
“Boys,” Minnie said in a tone whose disapproval clashed with the smirk she wore on her face. She returned her gaze to Melissa. “I think it's time we talked about your strange behavior. It's been getting worse ever since…”
Melissa tensed.
“…Kyle left. I don't think that's a coincidence. I know you two were good friends, but you have to move on. He obviously doesn't care about you, otherwise he would’ve—”
That did it. Melissa turned and dashed upstairs. Minnie's voice, however, followed her. “Don't think you can run away when I'm talking to you, young lady!”
There would be no peace here.
Melissa grabbed her chess set and let herself out the bedroom window, stepping onto the lip of the roof and making her way to the driveway via the family minivan, a move experience had made her adept at.
A block later, at the edge of the park, she found a shaded spot beneath a willow tree, far enough away from the swathes of spring park-goers to be tolerable, and sat. There she set up the chess board and began to practice openings—the Slav defense, the Danish gambit, the Vienna game, and of course the Giuoco Piano, her favorite.
She drilled the moves over and over, analyzing the development allowed by each, taking note of pawn majorities, center control, open files, and spacial advantages. Before long, the game succeeded in drawing her mind away from the troubles of the day, as it always did. It was the only thing she could count on to distract her. It was also the only arena in which she wasn't helpless to defend herself from attack.
For reasons more emotional than logical, she'd stopped playing it with anyone else since Kyle disappeared. It just wasn’t the same with anyone else. And it was too easy. If she couldn't beat an opponent by skill alone, she could beat them by looking into their mind, seeing the faint flutters of color that told her how they felt when their eyes scanned a certain area of the board and, in turn, told her what they were planning.
It was how Kyle had beat her that first game. Her outlandish suspicion had been right—he could read her mind. It was how he'd known she liked his flowers, known she regretted smashing them the moment after she'd done it… and known she could sense minds, too. Anytime someone told a lie, even a well-disguised one, she knew, and she didn't like it, causing her mind to turn purple for a moment.
Never in a million years would she have gone so far as to assume he could mind-sense, though, having concluded long ago that her ability was some singular anomaly. And if it hadn't been for Kyle's persistent efforts, she never would have found out.
Following the incident with the flowers, he'd arrived at her house one day and announced he was there to see her, which must have been quite the oddity to Minnie since Melissa never had visitors. Kyle was ushered into her room, where she sat on the floor going over the moves from Robert Fischer vs. Pal Benko, New York, 1963.
She didn't particularly want to see him, but she couldn't very well tell him to leave after his unsolicited and undeserved act of kindness regarding the flowers. So she said nothing as he sat opposite her and reset the chess board, said nothing as they began a game, and said nothing as he proceeded to tell her, with surprising accuracy, what moves she was planning to make before she made them.
Halfway through the game she understood, her jaw dropping as several kilotons of explosive realization detonated in her head. She wondered how she'd been so thick-headed as to miss it this long. Kyle's actions made perfect sense now. He hadn't wanted to come right out and say it, on the off chance he was wrong, concerned as she was what others would think if they knew. But at that moment, staring at each other, or into each other, they both realized they wouldn't have to keep their secret to themselves any longer.
“We should stick together,” he'd said.
“Yes,” she'd replied.
Well, so much for that, she now thought, trying with little success to ward off inclement worries about what terrible things might have happened to her friend in the last two years. However, they were soon driven out by something else, something happening here and now.
A strange sensation had tickled Melissa's mind. It was like an icy wind on a blistering summer day, the voice of a woman in a room full of men, or a speck of blood on a white sheet. It was the presence of a person, that much she was sure of, but a person somehow different from everyone else.
She looked up from her game, eyes darting to the source of the presence: a man, tall and stick-like, mid-thirties, bald. He was ambling down the sidewalk on the other side of the willow tree she sat behind, a massive black duffel bag over his shoulder. His baggy clothes were several sizes too large for his gaunt frame, and he had on the thickest pair of glasses Melissa had ever seen. Through them he glared at the world, the strange combination of hunger and derangement in his face giving the impression that he wanted to cut up and eat everything in sight.
Her eyes remained glued to him as he galumphed on past the tree and into the grassy expanse of the park proper. She caught herself wondering what a man like this would keep in a bag like that. Was he a bird watcher? A landscape painter? A croquet aficionado? When she looked straight at the bag, she thought—though it was surely a figment of her imagination—she could sense another kind of mental tickle, unique from that of the bald man himself. Something in the bag had an ever-so-faint color of its own, a sky blue. But it couldn't be. She'd never in all her life sensed anything that wasn't alive.
When the bald man was halfway across the grass, he threw up his arms, hurled the duffel bag aside, and sprinted off as though pursued by a bloodthirsty monster intent on ending his life. The monster, as it turned out, was a dog. A golden retriever, unleashed, bounding towards him.
Melissa watched, amused, as the bald man was pursued all the way across the park. The chase ended when he scampered up a tree, below which the dog planted itself and started barking. Its owner, a young woman carrying a disc, raced after it.
He must have thought the dog was going to attack him, Melissa realized. But who in the world thinks golden retrievers are dangerous?
Then the smile vanished from her face.
She'd remembered the duffel bag, resting unattended in the grass, the question of its contents gnawing away at her thoughts. And now, the opportunity to answer it was staring her in the face.
Her first reaction was to forget this ludicrous idea and snap her eyes back to the chess board. But they didn't stay there long. The young woman was only halfway to her dog, which remained below the tree, barking at the bald man, who remained quivering in its branches, his mind a lime green. All three were on the opposite side of the park.
You've got time…
Nope. You're crazy. Not gonna happen.
Melissa pulled her attention back to the game and snatched up a bishop. The Knight on C6. That's what she'd attack with it. There she'd be in a perfect position for—
Her eyes, quite contrary to the wishes of her rational mind, wandered back over to the bag. Then her hand threw aside the bishop. Then her legs stood her up and marched her across the grass.
I’m losing my mind. Looking through a strange man's bag? This isn't normal. If he catches me—
Shhhh. Not gonna happen.
She couldn't remember the last time she'd done something so spontaneous, not to mention risky. Maybe she never had. But the mystery of the bag wasn't going to let her rest. Dealing another glance in the bald man's direction to ensure he was still in the tree, she crouched before the bag. Then she pulled open the zipper.
And gasped.
Staring her straight in the face were these words:
MELISSA TAKE THE BOOK
They were scrawled across the cover of a book—Ladis the Lutris by Borut Zlatko. It was small and leather-bound, the sort you'd find in a museum. Melissa was frozen a full minute, trying to piece together how her name had ended up in a sloppy message on the cover of a book carried by a bald man who didn't know that golden retrievers were harmless and was definitely from some weird place like Europe. Then she thought to open the cover, wherein she saw another message:
