Select (Select #1)(9)

I was embarrassed and wanted to cover. I didn’t think I’d ever wanted to really look at an outsider before. At least in that way.

Liv seemed fascinated also. “What do you think his story is?” she asked, finally facing forward.

“I don’t know—some guy here feeling sorry for himself. He’s wondering why his girlfriend hasn’t called.” I was just trying to sound dismissive, but as soon as it came out I knew with certainty it was true. I knew his girlfriend was cheating on him at this very moment. And that he was far too good for her.

Liv laughed at that.

“Since when do you care about outsiders?” I asked her, wanting to blow it off.

She shrugged. “Since never.” But she turned back around again and stared. Suddenly she looked like she was actually about to call out to him.

“Liv!” I said quickly.

“What?” she asked, annoyed, as if I’d just interrupted something.

“Emma’s trying to get your attention.” We could feel Emma and the other swan-like girls staring Liv down from across the substantial distance.

Liv looked over in her best friend’s direction but made no move to get up. Luckily I’d managed to distract her, and she was facing the water again. Her persistent interest in the person behind us was peculiar.

We both trained our eyes back on the boys.

I saw Ellis take a pull from a flask, in full view of the roving lifeguard now swiftly walking toward them. My eye caught the flash of silver traveling from one point in the circle of boys to another, but by the time the lifeguard approached, there was no sign anyone had been drinking anything. The lifeguard looked baffled, probably wondering if he was crazy and had never seen a flask to begin with. The boys blatantly laughed in his face, and the lifeguard instinctively backed away.

“Hey, man.” It was the boy behind us talking on his phone, his voice low and gravelly. I realized with a shock that if we could hear him, he could hear us. Liv and I had automatically switched to the way we spoke to one another in public, like we were supposed to. He’d most likely heard everything we had said, about a girlfriend, about “outsiders.” We were in a pocket where sound carried perfectly. It sounded like he was speaking directly to us.

Liv and I both listened. It was impossible not to. He spoke quietly, probably assuming—correctly—that we were eavesdropping.

“What’s up?” Pause. “I forgot. Sorry. I can be there in thirty minutes.” I surreptitiously looked behind me and saw him, phone in hand, head bent and looking at the ground, trying to be as private as possible. Then, reluctantly, he said, “Barton Springs. No, by myself.” It was like he was shy about revealing his location and that he’d come alone. “I don’t know. I haven’t been here since I came back….I’ll tell you next time. I gotta go—my phone’s about to die. I have one of your rackets in the car. Okay. Later.”

He checked his phone again before tossing it aside. He picked up his book, All the King’s Men, and acted like he wanted to shut out everything around him for just a few more minutes. After a second he gave up and closed it. I found myself wondering where he’d just come back from. I knew that had been his brother on the phone.

I knew information about this person. That had never happened before. My first instinct was to blow it off as a fluke. I mostly felt weak that some regular person had broken through the barrier I was so good at maintaining between outsiders and myself. Why him?

All of us had better senses than outsiders. Just like we were faster, stronger, and smarter than regular people. We were also healthier and lived longer. It had always been a fact of life that we were biologically different—better—and that this had to be kept secret.

We were also more perceptive. English felt like a secondary mode of communication. We were more like other animals—constantly reading body language for unspoken signals and information. Outsiders had no idea what they were always unconsciously conveying. In turn we maintained such a state of calm that it made it almost impossible for us to read one another.

Our contact with outsiders was typically brief and minimal—with teachers, housekeepers, restaurant servers—but if we wanted to we could tell you things about them that were lost on most people. We knew when a stranger hadn’t slept or was distracted, angry, in love. The rhythm of their heartbeat and their scent also gave details about them away. Mostly we’d been taught to block those signals out. Novak said outsiders were a bad influence—caught in their never-ending cycles of fear and desire.

But this was different for me. I was positive that what I knew about this person was correct. Jesus. I didn’t know if Novak could read anyone’s mind, if the other adults could….It felt hard to believe it was commonplace.

For the next several minutes, I tried to refocus on what was happening around me—on pretty, upstanding George staring at Liv like he owned her, on Angus, on needing to get Liv out of here.

“Let’s just relax. We’re making people nervous.” The exact moment I said it to Liv, it was like the boy behind me held up a hand and asked for it all to stop. All of the tension I felt, he was feeling too.

I instinctively sat up and turned to him. I knew I was looking at him like I was asking him a question. He didn’t respond like I was crazy. He took off his sunglasses as if his instinct was to let me see him. Just the two of us existed at that moment. I had never felt anything like it—as if he were looking into me and I suddenly wanted him to.