Mind Games Read online

  Problem

  Kathleen "Kat" Phelps

  (as told to Whitney Phelps, mother*)

  MY ONE PROBLEM IS ALICE. SHE'S—WELL, SHE WAS—a snake. Mr. Ennis's milk snake, but she didn't eat milk. Just mice and small reptiles. She was a present from our principal, Mrs. Mathews, for Mr. Ennis's classroom. That's why he named her Alice. After Mrs. Mathews.

  Mr. Ennis is my homeroom teacher. He's this very nice man with glasses. He says hi to me and listens when I talk to him, and he smells very good. He doesn't wear cologne or aftershave. I think it's his deodorant. Spring Fresh scent.

  I'm glad I'm in Mr. Ennis's homeroom. The only bad part is that they do homerooms by the alphabet. That means my sister Claire is there. We don't usually have classes together, except homeroom and P.E. and special stuff like club. We don't like to very much, either.

  My problem started on club-picking day. See, I wanted to be in the WCTV club. That's the Clearview News Channel. I wanted to read the news on TV like Diane Sawyer. She's famous. I even dreamed about it the night before. I was a famous anchorperson on TV like Diane Sawyer.

  But Claire doesn't like me getting attention. She always tries to put a stop to it. She wouldn't like me to pick that club, not one little bit. I even thought she might change my club paper when I wasn't looking. I wouldn't put it past her.

  So on club-picking day, I tried to sit far away from Claire. Only, away from Claire happened to be near the snake cage. I usually try to avoid the snake cage area because it makes me so sad.

  Alice was a nice snake—charming. Ha—charming snake. That's funny, isn't it?

  Here's another good one. What did one strawberry say to the other? If you hadn't been so fresh, we wouldn't have gotten into this jam.

  Alice had shiny eyes. And nice skin, for a snake. But she looked sad. Sad and smushed.

  "Let me out!" it seemed like she was saying. "I don't belong here."

  I knew how she felt. Exactly precisely.

  But I couldn't help her. I told her I couldn't. It was against the rules to let her out. Mr. Ennis said.

  But Alice didn't take no for an answer. No, she didn't. She slithered off her log and looked me in the eye. RIGHT IN THE EYE.

  Old Claire was watching me with her beady eyes. And that friend of hers, Ji Oh, too. Ji tries to act like she's my friend, but I'm not stupid. She treats me like a baby, just like Claire.

  I stood up and bent over the cage so Claire couldn't see everything I was doing. Then I lifted up the lid to Alice's cage. I thought I could just scratch her between the eyes the way Sunshine likes.

  "It's okay," I whispered to Alice. "Don't be afraid."

  Alice hugged me. She hugged me and kissed me and sniffed my hair with her tongue. Snakes are cold-blooded, but she was real warm.

  I let her crawl around and stretch a little, so she could unsmush. She's the one who decided to crawl out the window. She wanted to be free. I thought it would be the best thing for her.

  That's when we got caught, me and Alice.

  Ji tried to pull Alice back through the window. But Alice was too slippery for her. Then Ji started crying that Alice bit her. It was just a little tongue lick, though. Ji is such a baby.

  I was real happy for Alice, that she was free. I was happy for a little while, because I didn't know yet.

  I didn't know a milk snake isn't made to live in Maryland in the woods in the wintertime. Or even the fall. That's why Alice is dead and gone. It hurts me that it happened. But I didn't mean to let her die. Don't listen to what other people say.

  Claire kept asking me why did I let Alice go out the window. I started breathing real hard and hyperventilating like. I couldn't say anything. She got real mad because I wouldn't answer her question.

  That's when Mr. Ennis sent us all to the office—me and Claire and Ji. Ji put cold water on her finger. Claire made me breathe into a paper bag that smelled like McDonald's french fries. Mrs. Mathews called my mother to say I killed her snake that was named after her. That's when the WCTV club got filled up. The death of the snake was their first main story. But I never thought I'd get on TV that way.

  So that's how we ended up in Mr. Ennis's Mad Science Club. Mr. Ennis signed us up without asking us. That's okay. But why he'd want to spend more time than he has to with Claire and Ji is a big mystery to me.

  Mad Science isn't as bad as it could be. For one thing, there's this girl named Marina. She has the nicest-smelling, prettiest hair. It's thick and curly and black. But her eyes are blue—just like a cat's. I like cats. I would like to be called Kat, but nobody ever remembers to. Except Marina. Marina lets me smell her hair when Claire isn't looking. It makes me feel all warm and fuzzy inside.

  Another good thing is that our project is about ESP. Nobody knows this, but I've always thought I have ESP. Like how I dreamed about Diane Sawyer, and then my name got to be on the first WCTV show. Also, I can always tell what my dog, Sunshine, is thinking. Like when she stands by the cupboard and whines, and Mom thinks she wants a dog biscuit and Claire thinks Kibbles 'n Bits, but I know she's asking for a spoonful of peanut butter. I'm good to Sunshine, and she's good to me. She always knows when I'm sad. Then she'll curl up next to me and lay her chin across my face and kiss me so that it tickles and I have to laugh. Claire says tears taste good because they're salty and that's why Sunshine pays attention to me. But Claire's just jealous because Sunshine likes me best.

  Claire thinks she can read my mind, but she can't. I can read hers, though. I know she wishes she didn't have a dumb old twin like me.

  How's that for a problem?

  Oh, about the science fair problem. ESP.

  Is there ESP? That's the problem. It's not a very hard one, is it? We solve lots harder ones in special ed. Every single day.

  Exhibit D: Paranormal Pursuits: Clairvoyance

  Benjamin D. Lloyd

  TASK: Each time the phone rings, guess the name of the person who is calling. Count the number of correct guesses.

  PURPOSE: To document evidence of clairvoyance if it should happen to appear.

  TOTAL CORRECT: 8 out of 19 (42.1 percent)

  EXPLANATION AND ANALYSIS: I would not admit this except for the sake of science, but here goes. After my mother moved out, I would on occasion focus on the phone and will it to ring.

  I remember in elementary school how anxious Mom felt that my friends should call me. That my friends should exist. I'm afraid I proved a terrible disappointment to her in this regard.

  Mom now has a female infant who will assuredly satisfy her needs for unexceptional, socially interactive offspring. Her interest in my life has waned accordingly.

  While my brain is powerful, it cannot do the impossible—it cannot make my mom call me when she does not want to. This fact is clearly documented above.

  I am accustomed to people not wanting to talk to me, and that is perfectly acceptable. It has afforded me tremendous opportunities to focus on my scientific pursuits, uninterrupted and without distraction.

  However, I began to be distracted by the phone eighteen months ago, when the probability approached 90 percent that a given caller would be Rick Robles. I have remained distracted throughout Mom's leaving us and marrying Rick Robles and causing the probability to approach 0 percent that our phone would ever ring again.

  This has changed in the month of October, when I have received an unprecedented nine calls from classmates and Mom has demonstrated a renewed interest in my life as of the twenty-seventh. Due to the superficial nature of her concern, I will not tell her of my sudden popularity. 1 At any rate, it would be unwise to get one's hopes up. The callers will go away. So will my mom. One does not need paranormal powers to know these things.

  Hypothesis

  Brandon Kelly

  THE PROBLEM IS, IS THERE ESP?

  We took a vote to figure out what our hypothesis would be. It was three to three. Me and Marina and Kathleen, we said yes. Claire and Ji and Benjamin D. Lloyd, they said no.

  Since Kathleen
is retarded and Marina doesn't speak English and my grandma says I don't use the sense the good Lord gave me, we didn't figure it was worth bothering to have a tiebreaker.

  But Claire said we should be fair. So she got dice, and I called it even, and she rolled. Maybe it was an intuition on my end, I don't know, but she threw a two and our side won.

  So we had our hypothesis. But Mr. Ennis said we had to have a reason for our hypothesis—more than just a two of dice, or whatever you want to call it.

  I told him I'd take care of the reason.

  To tell you the truth, I don't care too much for this whole Mad Science deal. For one thing, I signed up for the basketball club. I bet I'm the only person in the whole school who didn't get in the club they signed up for. I'm also the only person in the school who's grandma is the principal. Coincidence? I don't think so.

  For another thing, ESP is just about the dumbest subject we could've picked for a project. Benjamin D. Lloyd would've done all the work for us if we'd played it right. But no, we had to go and vote for the only experiment he didn't want to do.

  Personally, I'd like to have seen us do bread mold. Just to see the look on Grandma's face. She's against dirt, dust, and green things growing in the refrigerator. She's not too used to having a boy in the house yet.

  Mr. Ennis, he's cool. He gives me tips sometimes on how to handle Grandma. For example, she's particular about things like grammar. I admit my grammar needs some work. But Grandma needs a little vocabulary help, too. Like when I said "hang time," she thought I meant on the corner of Fayette and Paca. And when I said "run and gun," she about had a heart attack. That's when Mr. Ennis took us both to see a Wizards game. It helped some.

  I thought Mr. Ennis might talk to Grandma about getting me in the basketball club. Talk to her yourself, he said. Like I didn't try that already. Grandma said I could play winter ball and rec league and summer league, too. But school is for learning. And I need science help. Besides, I like spending time with Mr. Ennis, don't I?

  It wasn't Mr. Ennis I was worried about. It was those other five people who wanted to study science in their free time.

  ***

  I have a hypothesis, I told Mr. Ennis. I have a hypothesis that this science club is gonna suck.

  Prove it, he said to me.

  I didn't care to bother.

  Like I said, ESP is about the worst topic we could've picked for a project. Especially for me.

  See, my little brother is named after a prophet in the Bible. Hosea. I think Ma must've had ESP when she named him, because he's just like that. Always thinking he knows what he doesn't have any business knowing.

  When Ma told him about Santa and the Easter Bunny, he didn't believe her. They're not real, he said to her. Oh, honey, but they are, Ma said.

  Finally Hosea went and found my baby teeth in Ma's jewelry box. He was like four years old then. Maybe even littler. Grandma took him to the library, and he asked for a book about the Tooth Fairy. Wanted to do research, he said.

  Ain't no such thing as the Tooth Fairy, he told me that night. No Santa or the Easter Bunny, neither.

  Now I guess I really knew before he told me. But it still wasn't any of his business to say it out loud. If he told Michael, I said I was going to beat him up good. For once he kept his big mouth shut.

  Hosea and Michael used to sleep in the same bed when we lived in the old row house on Greenmount. Hosea was real restless. Always talking and kicking and pushing Michael out of bed in the middle of the night. Michael wouldn't even cry. He'd just sleep right there on the floor. He can sleep through anything.

  Michael slept through it that night Hosea sat up in bed, screaming about Ma dying. Ma's dead, Ma's dead!

  I jumped up so fast, I whacked my head on the basketball hoop Ma stuck up over my bed.

  Darius—that's Hosea and Michael's dad—he went in and shushed him. Ma was at work, he said. On the late shift at Mercy Hospital.

  Hosea kept on crying. Couldn't Darius go out and find Ma? Make sure she was okay? I felt the hair stand up on my arms. I felt like something was really, really wrong. Because we all knew how Hosea could feel things and know things he shouldn't be able to.

  Then we heard these footsteps in the hallway, real soft. I about jumped a mile.

  It was Ma.

  We didn't hear you come in, Darius said. That's when I saw his hand up by his waist like he was gonna pull his gun. But he was wearing his boxers, of course, so the gun was locked away in the secret hiding place. I thought, Darius is a cop and he was scared, too.

  Ma said she was trying to be quiet so she wouldn't wake us up. She took out a tissue from her pocket—a good nurse is always prepared—and wiped Hosea's nose. He kept sniffling and snotting all over her uniform.

  Ma rocked Hosea so he'd go back to sleep and give the rest of us some peace. But he wouldn't. He said he was afraid he'd have the same dream over again. The dream that she was dead.

  The next day we went to Kim's market and it got robbed. Mr. Kim handed over all the money from the register. Then the robber ran away, and Mr. Kim chased after him. Next thing I knew a bullet came right through the glass, went flying by my head. Busted open a jar of pickles on the shelf next to me. Kosher dills. Ma always hated pickles, but she kissed all that pickle juice off my forehead.

  That's when Darius said he was moving us out of the city. We didn't want to go, none of us. But he got us a nice little house in Woodlawn. Just like it sounds, with a little lawn in the front, a little woods in the back. Little basketball court in the driveway.

  It wasn't so different from the city. Except Ma learned to drive so she wouldn't have to change buses fourteen different times to get to work. They signed up Hosea for a soccer league where he could put his kicking foot to good use. Michael got his own bed and his own room. As for me—my life didn't change too much. Not till the day somebody hit Ma's car on the JFX and she died at Mercy Hospital where she worked.

  Obviously, I don't live in Woodlawn no more. I live in boring old Waverly with my grandma. You could take the bus for a hundred stops and never make it to the city. The bus doesn't even come way out here.

  Darius doesn't have any obligation or anything since he's not my real dad, but he probably would've kept me if I acted respectful. A cop's son can't be in trouble for shoplifting and stuff, he kept on saying. I understand why Darius was mad. He said he wanted to help me, but he didn't know what to do. He said I was almost a teenager and needed to learn some rules, some respect. If anyone could teach me about tough love, it was Grandma.

  Grandma said she got where I was coming from, but it wasn't Darius's fault, or Hosea's, that Ma's dead. I know it wasn't. But I can't help thinking, Darius is the one who moved us out to Woodlawn, made Ma get that beat-up old car. And if it wasn't for Hosea making us all so jittery with that dream, we'd still live in the city.

  Ma died this past January 13. That's one year to the day after Hosea had his dream. To the day.

  And that's why it's my hypothesis that there is such a thing as ESP.

  Exhibit E: Paranormal Pursuits: Out-of-Body Experiences

  Kathleen Phelps

  (as told to James Ennis, teacher)

  I LIKE TO IMAGINE WHAT IT WOULD BE LIKE TO BE somebody else. Well, not somebody, exactly. I would like to be a dog. Dogs are smarter than most people think. But even with having brain damage, I'm smarter than a dog. Dogs are just more huggable and kissable and lovable. Especially Sunshine.

  Sometimes I think I'd like to switch places with Sunshine. She has red hair like mine. She likes to share Popsicles, and she sings with me in the shower. We're like real sisters.

  Still, there are some good parts about being human, like being able to sing words and ride roller coasters and laugh at a clown. It is also good to live longer than ten or twelve years.

  That's why I thought it would be nice to be Sunshine for just a minute. To get away from being me and be Sunshine instead.

  I started practicing at night when I was sleepy. I woul
d put my hand on Sunshine's head and feel her nose go from wet to hot. I would feel her whiskers tickle under my fingers and her eyelids flicker so the whites showed under her red eyelashes. Then I would bury my face in her fur and imagine her dream. Myself in her dream.

  Pretty soon, I could wag my tail. I could smell Penny the barn cat from inside my bedroom. And see how the moonlight looked different, with new colors in every single thing—my Beauty and the Beast curtains and the freckles on my hands and the sheep I would count when my eyes were closed. And I could see Claire in the new light, too, with the moon shining on her hair so it looked as sparkly green as her eyes.

  It was a long time ago when I started dreaming with Sunshine, maybe even before special ed. But I never told anybody about it until now. You know Claire would just say it was dumb and weird. I finally told because of the science project.

  I don't think Ben believed me, but he said if it did really happen with Sunshine, it's called an out-of-body experience, which is a pair of normal [sic] phenomenon. I knew it. I knew it was normal. I guess it's called a pair because it's both of us—me and Sunshine.

  Ben says we need to do an experiment on me and Sunshine so we can have evidence that this out-of-body thing happens. I don't know what he's talking about. It happens. Would I make up something like that?

  So I said no to the experiment. Anyhow, how was he planning to do it? I don't think you can prove what's in a person's dreams, or even a dog's. Sometimes you just have to trust someone, and that's all there is to it.

  Experimentation: Part One

  Ji Eun Oh

  TONIGHT IS A SATURDAY NIGHT. HALLOWEEN NIGHT, and I am sitting at home. I am sitting at home because I am grounded, and it is all because of our stupid science experiment for which I am now writing this stupid report.