“Yes, he did. I’m supposed to meet him now, in fact. Next time?” I say to Rowan.
“For sure.”
I back away slowly. Thanks, I mouth to Trevor when the others get distracted by a shoving match.
He nods. “See you Monday.”
CHAPTER 7
PA-RAl-o-gize: v. to draw illogical conclusions based on assumptions I stare at the two doors. They both look so real. But I know one of them is an illusion that a Perceptive has made me imagine. When I figure out which one is real, I’m supposed to walk through it to Mrs. Stockbridge, who is on the other side, probably with her tablet already scrolled to her grade book. Imagining the big F she’s about to type there is not helping my concentration. I need a good grade in this class since I’ve been bombing Thought Placement. I wonder if she’ll highlight it red to emphasize my failure. I would.
Stop. Concentrate.
In my mind, I scan through the lessons we’ve had on detecting illusions. Inconsistencies in the image. My eyes go back and forth between both doors. They’re identical. Ripples, movement, or haziness on an otherwise solid surface. None. A thinness or transparency to the object. They both seem like perfectly solid pieces of wood to me. My time is running out. Then I see it, a small smudge of black in the center of one door. I smile and step toward the smudge-free door. I reach for the palm scanner, and my hand goes right through it. “Crap.”
After I walk through the right door, Mrs. Stockbridge clucks her tongue and types something into her tablet. The clip attempting to tame her frizzy red hair has been unsuccessful in its efforts, leaving several strands sticking out at odd angles. If I were a Perceptive, like she is, I wonder if I would try to make others see me at my best all the time.
“Reasoning?” she asks.
I almost answer my own hypothetical question but stop when I remember she can’t read my mind. “What?”
“Why did you pick the door on the left?”
“Oh. There was a black smudge on the real door. I thought that meant it was fake,” I admit.
“Sometimes perfection reveals the lie, Addie, not the truth,” she says. I nod and wait with the others who have already completed the task.
A memory involuntarily works its way into my mind, filling the corners and taking me back to that moment. I am a little girl of five. My father has taken me on a picnic to a beautiful park near the lake. After picking at my sandwich for a few minutes, I lie back on the blanket. Suddenly thousands of colorful butterflies appear overhead. They gently float downward, twisting and turning, like fluttering leaves. At any moment they will land on and around me. I can almost feel the soft touch of their wings on my skin. With a smile I reach up.
“Addie,” my dad says, “they’re just an illusion.”
I sit up, my brow drawn low. “They’re not. I see them.” They swirl between my dad and me, warping his image.
An old man walks by and smiles. “A gift for the little lady,” he says. My dad waves politely. When he’s gone, along with his butterflies, my dad takes me by the shoulders and points. A single butterfly rests on a flower five feet from us, its plain white wings moving slowly up and down. “That is real, baby. Isn’t it pretty?”
I curl my lip in disappointment. “It’s boring.”
A barking laugh pulls me out of the memory. I glance over my shoulder to where a few girls quickly stop whispering. I shoot them narrow eyes. Am I the only one who failed the stupid door test?
At lunch, Laila gives me one look and says, “What’s wrong?”
We walk toward the outdoor stage—our normal lunchtime hangout—and I give a frustrated grunt. “I failed an Illusion Detection test today.”
“Failure is so relative,” Laila says.
“No. It’s not. You either pass the test or you don’t. There’s nothing relative about it.”
She shrugs. “But you’ve aced all your other ones, so it averages out.” She sits on the cement stage, letting her feet dangle over the side. “So, therefore, it’s relative.” She jerks her head to the side. “Sit down.”
Seeing her so calm makes me think I’ve completely overreacted. I’m prone to do that. I take a deep breath, dig out my lunch from my backpack, and hop up beside her. A semicircle of grass fans out to surround the stage and soon it’s full of people.
As I open my bag of chips, Laila leans forward. “This stage isn’t very high, right?”
What is she talking about? I follow her gaze to the ground. “I guess not.”
“So it wouldn’t hurt too bad if someone got pushed off?”
I look to the left, where several other regulars are lined up along the stage, lunches on their laps, feet dangling. “Who’s getting—” Before I can finish my sentence, she grabs my arm and flings me off the stage. I gasp in shock, wondering what evil plan this act has accomplished. I don’t have to wonder too long when Duke practically trips over me.
“Are you okay?” he asks as I collect my scattered lunch.
“Fine.” I shove my sandwich and chips into my ripped lunch bag and straighten up.
“Addie,” Laila says, feigning concern and jumping down next to me. “Did you get hurt? What happened?” But her “concern” is instantly replaced with a smile for Duke. “Hey, Duke, we didn’t see you.”
More like I didn’t see him. Laila quite obviously saw him from a mile away.
Ray bends over and picks up my water bottle, which had rolled up against his massive foot. Seriously, he has to wear at least a size fifteen. The guy is huge. “Here,” he says, handing it to me.