Homicidal Aliens and Other Disappointments Read Free Page A

much.
    “Ouch,” Catlin says. “Careful.”
    Others are looking at me.
    “Your anger,” she says. “It’s like you pinched me.”
    “You felt that?”
    “I didn’t feel anything,” Lauren says, her earlier disapproval sneaking back into her voice. “Or not much, anyway.”
    “You don’t realize how strong you are,” Catlin says. “You have to control your feelings, or block them from us at least.”
    “Sorry,” I say to those sitting closest to me.
    “Don’t worry about it,” one of them says. “You’ll learn.”
    “It was a whisper,” Lauren says stubbornly, “if it was anything.”
    This is hard for Lauren. She is used to being the smartest person in a room. She was going to be valedictorian at her school. But this telepathic kind of mind power is different from intelligence. If Albert Einstein showed up, he’d still be the smartest person alive, but he might be a telepathic moron. He’d be all, “But I discovered the theory of relativity. Ever heard of E = mc 2 ?” Wouldn’t matter. That would be hard on Einstein. It’s hard on Lauren.
    More people come into the clearing, including Doc and another old guy whose long white hair is tied back in a ponytail and who makes about two Docs in size. They stand on a raised platform backed up against a row of trees. The crowd gathers in front of them, filling up rows of split-log benches that form a semicircle around the platform.
    Doc is small and neat, with white hair and one of those pointy white beards, like Colonel Sanders had. His real name is Lorenzo Sergio de Cabeza, so it’s not hard to understand why I’m relieved he goes by Doc. He looks like a professor, which makes sense since he was one; his nickname comes from his two PhDs.
    “First, I’d like to welcome the newest members of our group to our town meeting,” Doc says. “Could the new members please come to the front?”
    Lauren, the great joiner, smiles enthusiastically and leads us toward the stage. Catlin has the same pained expression I imagine on my face, but we obediently follow. Two others — a young boy and an older girl who’s about our age — step forward from Doc’s right.
    As I follow Lauren up front, a buzz of inner voices says things like
New bloods
and
Not of the House of Jupiter and Clan of Wind
and
Jesse
and
The Warrior Spirit.
At least I hear a few dissenting voices. Someone thinks,
That can’t be the one with the Warrior Spirit in him. No heroic glow.
    The new boy and girl look like they might be siblings. They’re both tall and thin, with huge blue eyes and short, uneven blond hair.
    Doc says that before we begin we should have a moment of silence for the dead. “There’ll be a funeral service tomorrow at dawn,” Doc adds. “In the graveyard.” And then the silence. It’s the noisiest silence I’ve ever experienced. I hear everyone. I feel what others are feeling, too. It hurts. Losing someone hurts so much. I can’t breathe. I can’t think. I feel like I’m drowning, like there’s no way I’ll get back to the surface. It wasn’t this way back at Lord Vertenomous’s. It was never this strong, never so everywhere at once. More pain comes at me. It’s like being stung all over by bees.
    Doc touches me on the back, and the voices drop away to a whisper. I think he’s done something, and I feel relief and gratitude. I take deep breaths.
    You have to shield yourself, or the voices will overwhelm you. They think they’re shielded, but they aren’t. Not from you. So you’re going to have to shield yourself. Watch me, and try to do what I do.
    He shows me how to shield. It’s sort of like pulling a curtain, an invisible one, around myself, then thickening it to keep out the sounds. It takes me a few tries, and even then my shield’s not nearly as strong as his, but it’s a definite improvement.
    Good,
he thinks.
It will keep your thoughts hidden, too. You can control what you show and what is shown to you. You see?
    “I think so,” I say.
    As