Zapped Read Free

then snapping out broad wings before zooming up against the clouds, so graceful that your heart catches at the sight.
    When the music ended, Mercy took a quick little bow, skinny and knobby again, but there was loud, genuine applause.
    â€œYou are in,” said the teacher in charge.
    Mercy ducked her head, and though I was barely twenty feet away, I scarcely heard her “Thank you.”
    â€œYou’ll need a costume,” the teacher said.
    â€œI know. I’ll have one,” Mercy replied.
    â€œGood. Next!”
    The next day in math class, Kyle acted the way the really angry bullies act, like it’s a personal insult when someone they’ve pushed to the bottom doesn’t stay there. He walked by Mercy’s desk and knocked all her books to the floor, then kicked her notebook to the back row.
    The teacher looked up sharply, and Kyle said in a fake voice, “Sorry, Mercy .” He sneered her name, then said with exaggerated politeness, “I’ll pick it up.” He bent to pick up her notebook, managed to open it so all her papers spilled all over, and with his back to the teacher, hawked a loogie into the papers.
    His buddies in the back row nearly died with laughter. Half the class looked like they were going to laugh. Some looked away. He set the mess down on Mercy’s desk with exaggerated care, and turned away, smirking and making a covert thumbs up.
    Instinct made me act. I zapped a pencil to the floor just before he took a step. His foot came down on it, and he began to slide. I zapped the pencil my hardest, which was just enough torque to turn the slide into a total pratfall.
    Everyone in the class burst out laughing.
    â€œWhose pencil is that?” Kyle muttered as he got up. “I’m gonna kill you.”
    â€œCare to speak up, Kyle?” the teacher asked. “Have you any more entertainment for the class, or may we get to work?”
    Kyle looked around furiously. I sat where I was, feeling his gaze go right past me. At the end of class, he said to the boy who sat behind me, “Michael, you suck-meister—”
    Michael cut in. “Wasn’t me. I never use anything but these.” At the edge of my vision, I saw a scrawny hand holding out a mechanical pencil.
    Kyle loomed over him. “You were laughing the loudest.”
    â€œBecause it was funny,” Michael said. “Everybody else thought so, too.”
    Kyle shoved past Michael and practically leaned across my desk to glare at the blond boy with the peeling nose who sat at my right. Before Kyle could even speak, the kid protested, “Hey, it wasn’t me. I was texting under my desk.”
    Kyle grunted. “Did you see who did it, Jason?” And when the blond kid shook his head, Kyle finally moved away from my desk to glower at the rest of the boys in the back. “Who saw? Anyone?”
    I got out of there. Obviously girls were invisible in Kyle-Land, except as targets.
    I gloated to myself the rest of the day. Until the next morning, when I got to math class, and there were two empty seats: Kyle’s and the seat right behind mine. The atmosphere in the room was really creepy, kind of tense, with people whispering excitedly the way they do when something terrible happens.
    Mercy sat at her seat, her head so low it was like she was bowed over her notebook, as behind me, someone whispered to the kid I’d followed in, “Did you hear what happened to Michael Abrams?”
    â€œNo.”
    â€œSomeone jumped him after school. He’s in the hospital.”
    â€œIn a coma, that’s what I heard,” someone else put in.
    One of the boys said, “And Kyle is in juvie, being questioned—“
    The door opened, and the teacher walked in. Everyone fell silent.
    She looked around, then said in a terse, low voice, “If any of you witnessed the altercation, please go to the office, or you can call the police directly. No! I don’t want to hear