Mind Games Read online

  Of course, being grounded has given me plenty of opportunity to contemplate the supernatural, as I have handed out Mars bars to ghosts and devils and witches and angels. All pretend, of course.

  It is easy to pretend. To pass a scientific test is not so easy. If there is one thing our research group has managed to prove, that would be it.

  The first experiment our group did was a pretest to increase our chances of finding somebody with ESP. We got as many people as we could to do the Zener ESP card test. We decided to do more testing on only the subjects who scored the best. That way we'd eliminate the definitely nonpsychic duds.

  The way a pretest works is, somebody shuffles the twenty-five cards and puts them in a box. Once the experimenter is ready, the subject is supposed to guess the order of the cards inside the box and write it on the answer sheet.

  Marina got some people from her ESL class to take the test after school in the library. One spoke Spanish, one spoke Mandarin. One spoke Korean, and she got very excited when she saw me. But I don't remember how to say anything in Korean besides the menu at No Da Gi and the Lord's Prayer, which you can't say in school anyhow.

  A girl named Kamala got a pretty good score, but it had to be luck. After all, she couldn't even understand the directions.

  Then there were the people Kathleen brought in from special ed. They couldn't understand the directions, either. Kathleen tried to explain to them. I am the head experimenter, but they listened to her way better than they listened to me. One of them was a hair-sniffer, like Kathleen. I actually had to wear a bun for the rest of the week. I hope everyone appreciates my sacrifice for the sake of science.

  Brandon couldn't get any of his friends (not that I've noticed him having any friends in Waverly) to come in for a dumb experiment, as he called it. He finally dragged in his little brothers. They were very cute, I have to admit, but little Michael was more interested in wiggling his front tooth than finishing the test. Hosea got a pretty good score, but you can't get useful results from just one run, and he never came back to do any more.

  Ben was even less successful at recruiting subjects than Brandon. He got none.

  Unlike Ben, I have tons of friends. In fact, I found seventeen people who agreed to be tested. I did most of them over the phone, since I have my own line. My parents were happy I was using it for homework for once. (I didn't tell them which homework.) Unfortunately, it wasn't much help. I have seventeen definitely unpsychic friends.

  That doesn't count my five unpsychic Mad Science acquaintances who also took the test. Check out our so-called Data:

  TOTAL CORRECT: 0/25 = 0 percent

  EXPERIMENTER COMMENTS: A historic moment—Ben's worst test grade.

  SUBJECT COMMENTS: Actually, Ji, the space above is intended for test-related observations. Examples of this would include ambient noise in the room (you talking to your friends), stomach growling (yours), etc. Also, I have previously scored 0 percent on a P.E. test on lay-ups. But I'm glad to know that you weren't paying attention during that class, either.

  May I also point out that my test results here are noteworthy for being significantly lower than those expected by chance (which would be five correct, or 20 percent). Could this abysmal score be significant in the case of a non-ESP believer like me? Perhaps I just wasn't trying very hard. Though if I had wanted to skew the results, believe me, I would have guessed the same symbol twenty-five times and been assured of attaining a decent score of 20 percent.

  TOTAL CORRECT: 2/25 = 8 percent

  EXPERIMENTER COMMENTS: Poor English does not count as an excuse when the whole test involves symbols.

  SUBJECT COMMENTS: I do not know why Ji should ask about my strategy for this test when I do so bad, but of course I will tell. For each question, when I try to make the right answer I think of a person in our Mad Science class. Who comes into my mind first, I pick and match them to their symbol. Ben, he is like the square,1 straight and even on each side. Kat, she is the circle, arms always open to embrace. The lines are Claire with the curly hair that is filled with static. The plus sign is like the gold necklace Ji wears when I first see her, and that she often moves to touch now since it is gone. And Brandon—he is the basketball star.

  Why have I not included myself in this list? Ji wants to know. Well, I did not once think of me. Now that she asks, I realize—how could I choose which symbol to be? On the basketball court, I put my arms out and make a square that no one can penetrate. I am energy, like those lines. Positive plus energy that I must give to Babushka, as Mama and Papa remind me plenty more often than they need to. The circle forms in my mind an Olympic ring, which is the symbol I would wish to choose for me when I go play on the basketball team for American women. I like to think I am humble and therefore will not call myself Star. But the Star of David pendant Babushka has hidden in her denture powders must be meant for me on my thirteenth birthday. Yes?

  TOTAL CORRECT: 5/25 = 20 percent

  EXPERIMENTER COMMENTS: Does this even count?

  SUBJECT COMMENTS: Ji said close my eyes and pick the symbol in my heart. My grandma would think I was being lazy and not trying here, but that's not it. This is the answer I get every time. The ESP books call it circle. I call it big, fat, empty zero. But at least that's not my grade—this time.

  TOTAL CORRECT: 2/25 = 8 percent

  EXPERIMENTER COMMENTS: Test scored by Ben Lloyd to prevent possibility of cheating.—BDL

  SUBJECT COMMENTS: AS if I care about my grade on this.

  TOTAL CORRECT: 10/25 = 40 percent

  EXPERIMENTER COMMENTS: Re-test and see if above-chance score is repeatable.

  SUBJECT COMMENTS: I wonder how I did that?

  TOTAL CORRECT: 12/25 = 48 percent

  EXPERIMENTER COMMENTS: Re-test. We will never hear the end of the first test where Kathleen got a higher grade than Claire.

  SUBJECT COMMENTS: Higher than you, too, Ji Oh.

  TOTAL CORRECT: 3/25 = 12 percent

  EXPERIMENTER COMMENTS: Took twice as long as previous test. Lots of daydreaming going on.

  SUBJECT COMMENTS: I had trouble concentrating. I could only think how much Kathleen was going to hate me if I did better than her the second time. Not that I believe I'm psychic or anything, but is it possible that worrying affected my score?

  TOTAL CORRECT: N/A

  EXPERIMENTER COMMENTS: Subject smart enough to quit while ahead.

  SUBJECT COMMENTS: I don't want to play anymore.

  ANALYSIS

  It was pretty weird when Claire and Kathleen got those good results the first time. A lot of their guesses were the same, too. If I wasn't watching them every second, I'd swear somebody was cheating.

  I tend to think along those lines because I'm an expert cheater. All those times Claire thought I was so good at Pictionary, she never guessed I was just looking at the card. Which is why I can't believe Claire could have extra-special powers of perception. Sometimes I don't think she even has regular powers of perception. I've tried so many times to clue her in—nicely—about what people are saying behind her back. About her poodle hair, and that hyena laugh, and the people (the ones who care, which is not many) who ask me why can't she just relax and have fun. Then of course there are the nonstop comments about Kathleen. Maybe Claire's just gotten used to blocking it all out.

  Teachers always call on Claire, which I guess she can't help, but it's also not a great thing when you're trying to make other people like you. Of course when Mr. Ennis wanted an update on our Mad Science experiment, he asked Claire.

  She told him what we had that was usable in our report, which was basically nothing. Kathleen did not like to hear that her results didn't matter, and she really did not like to hear it when Ben suggested that we had shown ESP was 99.9 percent unlikely to exist (or something like that). He'd worked up some statistics to prove it. Mr. Ennis said they didn't prove anything. But if we wanted to quit now, that was fine. We just couldn't take the project to the science fair—even the lame one at our school.
Because it wasn't any good.

  Mr. Ennis took a vote to see if we should keep going. The results were very surprising (at least to a nonpsychic person like me).

  Kathleen raised her hand first. "We like this experiment."

  "We do?" Ben asked.

  "We, as in me and Kathleen," Claire clarified. This was called appeasing Kathleen.

  "Ah," Marina said. "American democracy." She looked at Kathleen. "What the group wants—this is the way I vote."

  "You're so good to me, Marina." Kathleen hugged her. "Ooh, you smell so good. Sausage."

  Brandon saw Kathleen eyeing his flattop and used his legs to tip his chair backward. "If you're gonna sniff me, I'm voting no."

  Kathleen sighed. "But you have such nice hair."

  "I'm voting no anyway."

  "Chair legs on the floor," Mr. Ennis said. "What's your vote, Ji?"

  I had to think about it. I mean, I was pretty sure we would never find the evidence to prove our hypothesis. But I was still more curious about ESP than, say, the Hubble constant, which I could tell was the suggestion on Ben's lips. "I say we stay with our experiment," I said.

  Claire looked at me and smiled. Why was she smiling? If she really had ESP, she'd know I wanted to yell: Do we always have to vote the same way? Do the same things? Mad Science?! But I could never say that to her. So I just smiled back. Claire doesn't get the concept of the fake smile at all. At least you always know she means it when she's acting friendly. Not that that's too often lately.

  Anyhow, it was decided. ESP won. And this time it wasn't because of a roll of the dice.

  The dice did come in handy for our psychokinesis (P.K.) experiment, where subjects are asked to will the dice to fall a particular way.

  Claire's score sheet (the only one worth looking at) will demonstrate how this test worked—or didn't work, I guess we could say.

  You will note that things were going along pretty well through the twos. I was thinking that suddenly I didn't feel so bad about Claire always beating me at Sorry! and Monopoly and the Game of Life. (Why do you think I decided to start cheating at Pictionary?)

  But things started to go bad during the threes. That's when Mrs. Gershwin, the school librarian, came over to us. She was upset that we were using the library for gambling.

  Although we were of course not gambling and Mrs. Gershwin is of course clueless (she didn't notice our dice use for two weeks), she was right when she said that our project was turning out like crap. (Actually, what she said was craps. Hello?!)

  Since Marina thought this was a good thing (having recently learned about Maryland crabs in ESL class), we were then treated to an in-depth explanation of the digestive process by Ben Lloyd. It also marked the occasion of Marina's first English swear word. (Although she knew lots of Russian ones and even some Spanish ones, which she was happy to teach us in return. I wish I knew some Korean ones, but my parents don't believe in swear words.)

  Anyhow, by the time this was all sorted out and we were able to restart Claire's P.K. test in Mr. Ennis's room after school, she was no longer on a roll.

  We therefore remained without a shred of scientific evidence for ESP. No statistically significant results. Just a few glimmers of weirdness.

  I will now save myself some work by including an article from the Waverly Times that explains what happened next.

  A few days after the basketball game, we had a school holiday—Yom Kippur, I think. A whole bunch of us were going to go to a sidewalk sale at the mall in the afternoon. Claire loves the mall but she hates my new friends, so I was surprised when she decided to come. I prayed that Kathleen would not invite herself along and ruin the day for all of us. And, of course, that Claire would not get all moody and ruin the day just for me.

  Shockingly enough, Ben announced in Mad Science the week before that he didn't have any plans for the holiday. Therefore, he proposed that we use part of our day off to work on our experiment.

  Marina called him loco. (She learned that in ESL class, mistakenly thinking it was an English word.) Brandon applauded her for making everyone laugh. Everyone but Ben.

  "What if I pay you to come to my house and work on our project?" Ben asked us.

  That sure got our attention.

  Eighty-three dollars and thirty-three cents apiece, Ben said. More per person if not everyone showed. Leave it to Ben to come up with a ridiculous amount like $83.33. But when I asked him about it, he only shrugged.

  "You think you can bribe us?" Brandon asked Ben.

  "Yep."

  I looked at Claire. He could certainly bribe us—after all, we could make a mall trip anytime. "Where are you going to get that much money?" I asked Ben.

  "You'll find out on Wednesday morning," he said. And that was all he would tell us.

  Claire and I thought we'd go straight from Ben's to the mall. But we never did make it there. By the time I got the money, I wound up donating it to the food bank. I couldn't imagine myself ever wearing a sweater that would only remind me of everything that happened. But more on that later.

  Since I knew I would be responsible for the Experiment section of the report, I put my journalism skills to good use and took extremely neat and detailed notes on the meeting, as follows: (Please excuse my day planner—I ran out of paper.)

  Ben's dad bought our lottery tickets that same night. I watched the drawing while I was talking on the phone to Katie. The winning number was 362.

  "We got one digit correct," Ben noted the next day. Then he took more of our money. Two dollars apiece to play two numbers a day for six days.

  Altogether, we wasted a total of $15 that first week with a return of $0.

  "I can't pay my two dollars this week," Kathleen said the next time Ben asked for cash. "I'm saving my money to buy a ticket for the Halloween dance."

  "I'll pay your two dollars this week," Claire offered.

  Kathleen crossed her arms. "No."

  "You can pay me back."

  "No," Kathleen said again.

  "You know what?" I said. "I'm with Kathleen. I don't want to pay, either. It's a waste. We're never going to win the lottery."

  "Okay, wait. Let me see if I got this straight," Brandon said. "It comes down to some dumb dance or five hundred big ones, and you pick the dance? Think about it. Your future, Ji. Come on."

  "I am," I said. "Claire and Kathleen are not psychic, we are not going to win the lottery, and I don't want to waste any more money." Anyhow, who was to say my future wasn't with Brian Murtaugh? The dance could be very important to my future.

  "One more week," Ben said. "One more week, and if we don't win, we'll quit." He turned to Kathleen. "And I'll buy you a ticket to the dance. Okay?"

  "You mean like a date? You'll be my date to the dance, Ben?"

  "Um..." Ben blinked. Claire got out the tissues and gave Ben a look. "I ... Yeah, I'll be your date, Kathleen," Ben finally said. Kathleen threw her arms around him. "I guess that means I have to go, huh?" Ben gave a nervous laugh.

  Mom and Dad both had to work late the night of the dance, so they made me get a ride with Claire's mom.

  "This seems to be turning into a Mad Science field trip," Ben observed from the front seat.

  I hung my head, and the point of my witch's hat accidentally poked between his shoulder blades.

  "Ouch," Ben said.

  My sentiments exactly.

  School was decorated with scarecrows and cobwebs and scowling pumpkins. The lights were flickery and dim (thank God). Princess Claire and Kathleen the cat and Ben the astronaut (complete with authentic moon rocks from his astronomer father) and I almost managed to slip in unnoticed.

  Then Kathleen let out a bloodcurdling scream.

  "Blood!" she shrieked.

  Two hundred people turned to stare at us.

  But Kathleen was right. There was a trail of blood on the gold carpet outside the gym. And—much more gross—a tail. A lizard's tail.

  "Gosh," Claire said. "What ... interesting decorations."
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  Marina and Brandon (dressed with stunning originality as basketball players—complete with sweat) came over to us and peered at the tail.

  "Not decoration," Marina said. "When I am on Junior Olympic basketball team for Russia, we travel to Guam, and my grandmother accompany me. I practice and practice, and for two minutes I play in one game. Two minutes. Babushka chase gecko lizards with a broom in the night. The most exciting part of the trip. This tail..."—she pointed at the tail, which began to flop around on its own—"real."

  I had the weirdest creepy-crawly sensation all of a sudden. Like something slithering over my feet. I shivered.

  "Oh, no," Kathleen moaned. "Mr. Ennis's lizard can't be dead. Not like Alice. Not Lily the lizard, too."

  "Do not worry, Kathleen. Lizards lose their tails when they are frightened and run away," Marina said. "Probably Lily is fine."

  "Really?" Kathleen said. "But—" She grabbed Claire's arm. "Doesn't it hurt to lose a part of you?"

  "Sure does," Brandon said softly.

  Marina looked up at him. "I know, Brandon. I know." She paused. "But if small change lets you live, you can do it gladly." She sighed. "This I am telling Babushka all the time."

  As usual, I didn't have any idea what Marina was talking about, but the conversation was definitely headed in an even more un-fun direction. I decided this was a good time to make my exit. "Well, there's Katie and Brian," I said as I hitched up my skirt. "I'm going to go say hi."

  "Wait," Claire said. "I'll come, too."

  I almost screamed. Did she have to be so clingy all the time? Did she learn that from Kathleen? Did she even know how much they were alike that way?

  "Us, too." Kathleen pulled Ben behind her. The moon rocks swung around and hit me in the butt. I heard somebody start laughing. I saw somebody pointing.