Pivot Point (Pivot Point #1)(14)

“Junior. You?”

“Senior.” His gaze goes back to the game. My attention is drawn to the sidelines, where a person dressed up in a large cougar costume runs circles around the cheerleaders. We have a mascot at Lincoln High too—a lightning bolt. And thanks to the Perceptives, I’ve heard most home games include an actual lightning show (probably to divert the attention from the boringness happening on the field).

I cringe when the play ends in a bone-crushing pileup.

“You don’t like football?” Trevor asks.

“Actually, I like this kind better. It’s more exciting.”

“More exciting than …”

“Um, than flag football,” I say, proud I remembered another version so quickly. This whole business of not letting things about the Compound slip is going to be harder than I thought. It had been my entire life, after all.

“You’ve watched a game of flag football before?”

“Well, no, but this is more exciting than that, you have to admit.”

“A lot of things are more exciting than flag football.”

“True.”

The rest of the game passes in comfortable silence interspersed with a few comments. By the end I’ve adopted his closed-off position of hands in my pockets, shoulders hunched against the wind. The final whistle sounds, and his friends rush toward him, a rowdy mass of painted bodies. I try to slip away, but one of them stops me with a loud, “Hi, who are you?”

I start to answer, but Trevor is faster. “Guys, this is Addison. She’s new here.”

“Just Addie is fine,” I say, but my voice is swallowed by their boisterous hellos.

He goes on to list several names. To remember names, I usually advance my memory by relating the person’s name to one of their physical features, but since theirs are covered in paint, I won’t remember who is who after tonight. “Nice to meet you. I’m sure I’ll see you on Monday.” Again, I attempt to leave. The same guy who stopped me before—Rowan, with red stripes of paint down his face—stops me again by saying, “We all party at Trevor’s after the game. You should come.”

I really don’t want to hang out with a bunch of Norm guys I don’t know. I check the time on my cell phone. Nine thirty. Still too early to claim tiredness or curfew restrictions.

“Didn’t you say your dad wanted you home early tonight to help unpack?” Trevor says, surprising me. Was my body language that obvious?

“Yes, he did. I’m supposed to meet him now, in fact. Next time?” I say to Rowan.

“For sure.”

I back away slowly. Thanks, I mouth to Trevor when the others get distracted by a shoving match.

He nods. “See you Monday.”





CHAPTER 7


PA?RAl?o?gize: v. to draw illogical conclusions based on assumptions I stare at the two doors. They both look so real. But I know one of them is an illusion that a Perceptive has made me imagine. When I figure out which one is real, I’m supposed to walk through it to Mrs. Stockbridge, who is on the other side, probably with her tablet already scrolled to her grade book. Imagining the big F she’s about to type there is not helping my concentration. I need a good grade in this class since I’ve been bombing Thought Placement. I wonder if she’ll highlight it red to emphasize my failure. I would.

Stop. Concentrate.

In my mind, I scan through the lessons we’ve had on detecting illusions. Inconsistencies in the image. My eyes go back and forth between both doors. They’re identical. Ripples, movement, or haziness on an otherwise solid surface. None. A thinness or transparency to the object. They both seem like perfectly solid pieces of wood to me. My time is running out. Then I see it, a small smudge of black in the center of one door. I smile and step toward the smudge-free door. I reach for the palm scanner, and my hand goes right through it. “Crap.”

After I walk through the right door, Mrs. Stockbridge clucks her tongue and types something into her tablet. The clip attempting to tame her frizzy red hair has been unsuccessful in its efforts, leaving several strands sticking out at odd angles. If I were a Perceptive, like she is, I wonder if I would try to make others see me at my best all the time.

“Reasoning?” she asks.

I almost answer my own hypothetical question but stop when I remember she can’t read my mind. “What?”

“Why did you pick the door on the left?”

“Oh. There was a black smudge on the real door. I thought that meant it was fake,” I admit.

“Sometimes perfection reveals the lie, Addie, not the truth,” she says. I nod and wait with the others who have already completed the task.

A memory involuntarily works its way into my mind, filling the corners and taking me back to that moment. I am a little girl of five. My father has taken me on a picnic to a beautiful park near the lake. After picking at my sandwich for a few minutes, I lie back on the blanket. Suddenly thousands of colorful butterflies appear overhead. They gently float downward, twisting and turning, like fluttering leaves. At any moment they will land on and around me. I can almost feel the soft touch of their wings on my skin. With a smile I reach up.

“Addie,” my dad says, “they’re just an illusion.”

I sit up, my brow drawn low. “They’re not. I see them.” They swirl between my dad and me, warping his image.