Speak No Evil

Carter didn’t answer, and Dr Paley didn’t seem to expect him to. He continued talking without a pause.

‘The big question, of course, is why? It’s possible that you have a condition known as amnesia, an inability to remember. You don’t even seem to know your own name.’ He shuffled through some papers on his desk. ‘According to your history, you were found here in this city on Carter Street, and brought to a hospital. The authorities there needed to give you an identification name, and this was what they decided to call you.’

Carter gazed at him steadily and waited for him to say something Carter didn’t already know.

‘There’s no indication as to how this amnesia developed,’ Dr Paley went on. He picked up another folder and opened it. ‘The authorities finally sent over your medical records, and I’ve studied them. Some cases of amnesia occur when the subject receives a severe blow to the head, but the scans you were given show no indication of any trauma. It’s possible that you experienced some sort of an infection — a high fever perhaps, or a virus that affected the part of your brain that stores memory. But blood tests gave no indication of recent illness.’

He turned a page, and continued. ‘You were given a battery of tests to determine general intelligence and motor skills. You responded appropriately. Your hearing was tested, and it appears to be normal.’ He looked up. ‘But you can’t speak. This puzzled the examiners, since they couldn’t find anything wrong with your vocal cords or your larynx.’

Dr Paley studied Carter thoughtfully. ‘But now we know that you are physically capable of speaking. A classmate witnessed this. You spoke to a woman. .’ he glanced down at the paper. ‘Serena Hancock.’

The mere sound of the name made Carter want to flinch. Serena. . yes. She could make him speak. He didn’t know how she did it, but he remembered the ease with which the words left his mouth. He wished he couldn’t remember what he said.

He hadn’t intended to answer her questions, but he didn’t seem to have any control when he was with her. And he wasn’t capable of lying. So when Serena asked him about his classmates, he told her what he knew, despite the fact that the information was supposed to be kept secret. In class, Madame was always telling them not to reveal anything about their special gifts. Carter didn’t have to worry about himself — he had no gift. But they weren’t supposed to talk about each other. That’s what he’d done, and he knew it was wrong. He had disobeyed.

Dr Paley closed the folder. ‘Your teacher has told me that this woman, Serena Hancock, is a member of a group which has a special interest in your gifted classmates. These people have some sort of plan to use the students for criminal purposes. Now, I have a question for you, Carter. Do you want to help these people?’

Want. . It was one of those words that puzzled Carter. He knew what it meant, because he’d wanted things before: food when he was hungry, water when he was thirsty, warmth when he was cold. But the way Dr Paley had just used the word — he didn’t understand.

Dr Paley sighed. ‘Let me ask you something else. Do you like your classmates? Or do you dislike your classmates?’

Like, dislike. . Carter just looked at the doctor blankly. What was he talking about? He knew the words, he knew the dictionary definitions, he’d heard people use these words in conversation. But they didn’t apply to him.

‘Carter, I want to know what you’re feeling.’

Feeling. . Carter knew the feeling of hunger, thirst, cold, heat, pain. He wasn’t having any of those sensations at that moment.

‘Are you sad? Are you angry? Are you sorry?’

Now Carter sort of understood what the doctor was asking, and he knew he couldn’t provide an answer. Dr Paley might just as well have been asking a blind person what he was seeing.

Carter Street didn’t have those kinds of feelings.

CHAPTER TWO

IF AMANDA BEESON WAS forced at gunpoint to say something nice about the gifted class, she’d have to admit that it was rarely boring, unlike geography or algebra. This class was unpredictable. Sure, sometimes Madame would go on and on about how they had to control their gifts, how they shouldn’t reveal the nature of their gifts, blah, blah, blah, but there was always the chance something could happen during the class. Jenna might reveal something truly bizarre that she’d read in someone’s mind. Like the time she told them she’d read the mind of a waiter in a fast-food hamburger place who wanted to pluck a strand of hair from his head and mix it into the ground beef. Or Emily could tell them who would win that season’s American Idol or X-Factor. Something exciting or even dangerous could happen. Charles might decide to rearrange the desks with his telekinetic powers. Someone might tease Martin and he’d respond by kicking a hole in the wall. In a room full of people with extraordinary talents, there was always the possibility of a surprise or two.

Of course, this didn’t mean Amanda liked the class. Her main objection to it was the fact that she didn’t belong there. She’d known this the first time she was sent into the room, and she became more and more convinced of this every day. Nothing that went on in this class really applied to her.

For example, at that very moment, Madame was encouraging them to participate in a discussion that was completely irrelevant to Amanda.

‘Class, we’ve spent a lot of time talking about how you can control your gifts, how you can stop these gifts from emerging and interfering with your own lives. You’ve practised techniques involving concentration, meditation, special breathing rhythms. Some of you have made excellent progress. Martin, you’ve seen changes in your behaviour, haven’t you?’

Amanda glanced without much interest at the wimpy kid she’d never paid much attention to, and it dawned on her that he was becoming less wimpy. He’d grown over the past few months, his face had lost its babyish look, and he hadn’t been whining so much lately. When he spoke, she realized his voice was deeper now, too.

‘Well, yeah. My grandfather nags me a lot, and sometimes I can feel a lot of anger building up inside me. I know I could let it out and really hurt him. But I don’t.’

‘That doesn’t count,’ Ken declared. ‘I mean, he’s your grandfather, for crying out loud. You’re not going to hit your own grandfather.’

‘You don’t know my grandfather,’ Martin retorted. ‘And right this minute, I’m not feeling very kindly towards you.’

Amanda hid a smile as Ken seemed to flinch slightly. Ken was a former athlete, still in great shape, but he knew as they all did that Martin could send him flying out of the window with a single blow.

‘But,’ Martin added, ‘the point is, I can control my gift when my grandfather teases me.’

‘Very good,’ Madame said with approval. ‘There’s another aspect to your gifts that we need to take into consideration. From our discussions, it seems that most of you — maybe all of you — were not born with these gifts. The gifts seem to have emerged as a response to a situation, an experience, or a feeling. Tracey, you understand this, don’t you?’

Tracey nodded. ‘People ignored me, so I felt invisible. And I felt it so strongly, I started to disappear.’

‘Charles, would you like to comment on how feelings brought about your gift?’

Charles shrugged. ‘It’s not a feeling, it’s the situation. I’m in a wheelchair. I can’t walk, so I move stuff with my mind.’

Madame smiled. ‘A lot of people are in wheelchairs, Charles, but they don’t develop telekinetic powers. Do you remember the first time you were aware of your gift?’

‘Yeah, I was in bed, and I wanted this comic book that was on the other side of the room. And I was too lazy to get into my wheelchair, so I made it come to me.’

‘And how did you feel when you realized what you could do?’ Madame asked.