Elijah’s boss stopped in surprise. “How’d you know?”
“Know what?” Elijah asked.
“That Mr. Diamond wanted to see you.”
“You just told me,” Elijah said.
“No, I didn’t.” His boss jerked his thumb backward over his shoulder. “I got the call in the break room. I came to find you.” The faster he got rid of this kid and went home, the sooner he’d get inside his wife.
“TMI!” Elijah exclaimed. The guys on the job said filthy things under their breath about the buxom tourists strutting through the casino, but not about real people.
“What?” His boss frowned.
“Your wife,” Elijah explained.
His boss’s lips parted. His stomach dropped to the floor. There had to be a logical explanation. The kid was only screwing with him somehow—disappointing, because this one didn’t have a single tattoo or piercing and always came to work on time.
Elijah stared right back at his boss. A pleasant tingle spread throughout his body, which was offset by the horror that he could read his boss’s mind. Suddenly he was sweating in the cool corridor. “How do I get to Mr. Diamond?” he asked quickly.
His boss pointed one finger straight up. He thought, Top floor.
“Thanks. See you tomorrow.” Elijah slung his backpack over his shoulder, pocketed his phone, and hurried down the hall, away from those strange feelings and toward the elevator. Maybe he should find his mom behind a blackjack table on the casino floor and tell her he was coming down with something. But then he’d be acting like a baby. She couldn’t do anything for him that he couldn’t do for himself. Buy some cold medicine. And if Mr. Diamond wanted to see him, he’d better go.
He tripped over his own feet as the periodic table popped into his head.
He looked around. A showgirl in full costume sat cross-legged against the wall, an unladylike position considering how little she was wearing, with her feather crown balanced on her head and her UNLV chemistry book open on the floor in front of her. The showgirls’ standard line to tourists who tried to pick them up was that they held this job only to save money for medical school. The irony was that in her case, it was true.
She looked up at Elijah, blinked her false lashes at him just to give the teenage kid a thrill, and looked back down at her book. The group-six transition metals were chromium (Cr), molybdenum (Mo), tungsten (W), and seaborgium (Sg). Molybdenum. Molybdenum. She never could remember how to spell molybdenum.
Elijah passed his hand over his sweating brow as he walked on and the showgirl’s thoughts faded from his head. Clearly he was ill, but the elevator wasn’t far away. He could see it, and when he entered it, he could rest for forty stories.
The closer he got, the less sure he became that he could make it. A dealer passed him, fuming silently about a gambler who’d sat at his table for two hours and pretended not to know the rules. The customer was always right, his ass! A janitor pushed a wide broom in front of her, pining for her four-month-old baby and hoping he might be awake this time when she got off work. Each thought increased the tingling through Elijah’s body. He’d never felt this good in his life. It was so good he could hardly stand it.
One of the elevators opened. Twenty people poured out and headed straight for him. He flattened himself against the cinder-block wall as best he could with his backpack on. He closed his eyes and held his breath, waiting for them to pass. A cashier was going to divorce his wife if she wasn’t home when he got there tonight. A tourist had gotten lost and taken the wrong elevator, but as long as she was down here, she might as well explore until security kicked her out. A dealer recognized Elijah. Wasn’t that Jasmine Brown’s kid? Lord, he’d grown a foot since the last time she’d seen him. He looked sweaty and pale, on the verge of fainting. She reached out to him.
Elijah saw all this in his head, even though his eyes were closed. He saw the way he looked to this friend of his mom’s. It couldn’t be real. If she actually touched him, he was going to freak out completely.
He felt a hand touch his forearm.
He yelped and jumped.
“Hon, are you okay?” The lady leaned close to Elijah, gazing into his eyes with concern.
Elijah’s body tingled so delightfully that it almost hurt. Reading people’s minds was tearing him apart. “I’m fine,” he breathed. “Thank you, but I’m fine.” The crowd had passed. The elevator doors stood open, waiting. He tore away from the lady, dove inside before the doors shut, and pressed the button for the fortieth floor.
His stomach left him as the elevator sped upward, but his mind cleared, and the tingles subsided. Taking a deep breath, he noticed his ghostly reflection in the clear plastic sheet protecting the portrait of white-haired, dignified Mr. Diamond. Elijah wiped more sweat from his brow, yanked his wavy hair into place as best he could, and hoped he would pass for healthy, at least until his interview with the owner of the casino was over.
He knew he hadn’t done anything wrong. If he was being kicked out of his apprenticeship, his boss would tell him, not Mr. Diamond. Maybe Elijah had done such a great job that Mr. Diamond was promoting him. Elijah had very carefully refurbished the elaborate gold paneling in the Peacock Room. But he was fourteen. He couldn’t officially work even part-time until his fifteenth birthday in the summer.
The doors slid open before he was ready. Tentatively he stepped onto plush carpet and looked around. There were only three doorways in this short hall, and Elijah knew one of them led to the penthouse. Mr. Diamond’s door must be the one with two men in dark suits stationed outside. The guard with a beard daydreamed about his trip to the beach next month. The red-haired guard noticed Elijah. Tall kid, fourteen years old, light brown wavy hair, green eyes. Yep, that was him. The orders were to scare him to soften him up. The guard planned to open the office door for Elijah and shove him inside.
Realizing this, Elijah stopped five paces away.
The red-haired guard glared at him and moved his jacket aside with one hand to expose the gun on his hip, though he had no intention of using it on an unthreatening kid. He barked at Elijah, “What the fuck do you want?”
“You know I’m Elijah Brown,” Elijah burst out. “Open the door for me. Don’t you dare shove me. I’m having a really bad day, and so help me God, I will kick your ass.”
The red-haired guard froze. The kid was one of those, and Mr. Diamond hadn’t warned him!
The bearded guard was unimpressed. Elijah might be a mind reader, but he didn’t know how to control his power yet. The guard hoped Elijah did try something, and then he would show Elijah how to kick somebody’s ass. He pushed open the door and shoved Elijah twice as hard as the red-haired guard had planned. Elijah reeled across the carpet, his backpack throwing him off balance. The door slammed shut behind him.
He stopped himself in the center of the room, in front of a single chair. Beyond that was the biggest desk he’d ever seen. Mr. Diamond himself sat behind it. Floor-to-ceiling windows displayed a killer view of the Strip at night. Other casinos glowed every color. The red and white lights of traffic crawled by a million miles below.
Beside Mr. Diamond’s desk, waiting for Elijah with his arms folded, was Holly Starr’s dad. Elijah hadn’t recognized him at first without his magic cape. He wore a normal business suit, had a black eye, and scowled at Elijah.
Uh-oh.
“Sit down,” Mr. Starr spat. He tried to make this sound authoritative, but he was distracted. Elijah looked exactly like his father had looked at that age. It was uncanny that two people could look that much alike, father and son or not.
Hearing this in his head, Elijah forgot to follow the instructions. He placed his hand lightly on the back of the chair and watched Mr. Starr.
Mr. Starr pointed at him. “This is exactly the attitude that’s gotten you in hot water. And you’re not taking Holly with you.” After his experience earlier that night, Mr. Starr now thought Holly might be more dangerous than Elijah. But that didn’t matter right now
. His mission was to scare this kid. “Stay away from my daughter.”
“Bullshit,” Elijah said as calmly as he could. His voice broke, but he pushed ahead, heady with power and high on the tingling sensation in his limbs. “You’re scared of me and of Holly. You’re trying to hide something from both of us, and I won’t let you.” To make good on this threat, Elijah turned to Mr. Diamond for help.
But Mr. Diamond was the only person Elijah had encountered in the last few minutes whose mind he couldn’t read at all. Elijah would have suspected the old man was a cardboard cutout, another reproduction like his portrait from the elevator, if it weren’t for Mr. Diamond’s middle finger tapping the opulent desk.
Mr. Diamond stopped tapping and cleared his throat. “Peter, it’s happening for Elijah right now. He can hear everything you think.”
Mr. Starr looked at Elijah in surprise, then at Mr. Diamond. “Do you have a shot?”
“Not here,” Mr. Diamond answered in a kindly, rumbling voice. “You’ll have to take him down.”
Mr. Starr grabbed Elijah by the throat. He hadn’t moved a step toward Elijah. He hadn’t uncrossed his arms. But with his mind, he took Elijah by the throat and squeezed.
Elijah fought back. He knew now that he was powerful. If Mr. Starr was scared of him, surely Elijah could crush people’s carotid arteries with his mind, too. He focused all his energy on Mr. Starr’s throat, just as Mr. Starr focused all his energy on Elijah’s. But Elijah only tingled mightily from the effort, his mind bursting with Mr. Starr’s violence, as the room faded to black.
He woke not fifty feet from where he’d started—in the basement of the casino, at the employee health center, with his mom and a physician named Dr. Gray in chairs on either side of his bed. His memory of what had happened was so ridiculous that he immediately doubted it. His mom confirmed that much of it had been a delusion. Mr. Diamond really had called Elijah up to his office because Mr. Starr had complained about a lowly apprentice carpenter asking Holly out. Mr. Starr had not attacked Elijah with his telekinetic powers, duh. Elijah had wigged out and punched Mr. Starr. Funny how Elijah’s malfunctioning mind had turned that around to make him think Mr. Starr already had a black eye when Elijah stepped into the room. If he’d held out hope that Holly’s parents would reverse their decision and let him date their daughter someday, that was pretty much over.
His mom and Dr. Gray listened to his story of what he’d imagined Mr. Starr had done to him. When he finished, his mom and the doctor stared at him for a few moments. He wished he knew what they were thinking, but all of that was gone.
Finally his mom smiled. “Well, no wonder you’ve got an A in English. That makes a great story!” She looked at Dr. Gray. “His advanced English class is reading Romeo and Juliet right now.”
“Ohhhh.” Dr. Gray nodded. “We see this a lot. All teenage boys want to save the girl and take on the world. The only difference between other boys and you, Elijah, is that you, unfortunately, have a hereditary mental disorder that pushes your delusions of grandeur into the danger zone and makes you think you can read minds.” He chuckled.
It wasn’t funny. Tamping down his panic, Elijah turned to his mom. “Hereditary? Did Dad have it?”
His mom took a deep breath and held it.
“Dad didn’t die in a drunk driving accident like you told me, did he?” Elijah asked. “He had this disease and he did something horrible.” His mom had always been vague about the details of his dad’s untimely death. Now Elijah knew why. It had been a lie, for good reason. The truth was worse.
His mom let out her breath slowly. “He wasn’t on medication. You’re in much better shape.”
Dr. Gray patted Elijah’s arm and handed him a glossy pamphlet. “This will tell you more about the disease. Just take your medicine, Elijah”—he picked up the prescription bottle on a nearby table and rattled the pills inside—“and I think you’ll be fine. If you’re not, we’ll move to the next step.” He rose, and Elijah’s mom followed him to the doorway of the examining room, where they talked softly together.
Elijah opened the pamphlet, which was decorated ironically with butterflies, rainbows, and stick people hugging each other. Somebody down at the crazy people’s print shop had a sense of humor.
LIVING WITH MENTAL ADOLESCENT DYSFUNCTION
The news that a patient has mental adolescent dysfunction (MAD) can be devastating, both for the family, who had expected a normal, healthy life for their child, and for the patient amid an already turbulent adolescent period. Patients and their families should take comfort in the knowledge that a diagnosis of MAD no longer mandates a lifetime in a mental institution. A new drug makes normal life possible in many cases. Mentafixol suppresses the symptoms of the disease and enables most patients to enjoy an average lifespan. In fact, all known assaults by patients with MAD were committed when the patient was off medication.1
1 JA Gray, “Mental Adolescent Dysfunction: Long-Term Prognosis,” Journal of Mental Illness.
Elijah frowned at the pamphlet and ran his thumb over a rainbow. He’d been on a wild ride, a strange mix of fact and fiction, he realized now. If only the whole thing were his imagination. Especially the part where Mr. Diamond and Mr. Starr ganged up on him to keep him away from Holly.
Elijah’s mom returned alone and sat at his bedside again. “I’m so sorry, honey.” She picked up his fist and kissed it.
He looked down at his hand in hers. Shouldn’t his knuckles be bruised from punching Mr. Starr in the eye? Maybe the adrenaline from the disease had given him superhuman strength and resilience, like an addict on crack.
Then he looked up at his mom, still young and pretty, with long black hair and dangling turquoise earrings that showed pride in their Native American heritage. Yet for some reason, she was terrified they’d have to live on the reservation—she called it the “Res”—and he sensed one of those lectures coming on.
“You’ve got to be careful now,” she said. “People are prejudiced against the mentally ill. Don’t tell anybody about your disease.”
“I won’t,” Elijah promised. If he did, he would never hear the end of it from the lacrosse team. Worse, what would Holly think? He was almost glad she’d broken their dates. She deserved better than a mental patient. What if he’d gone out with her and hurt her?
“And for God’s sake, stay away from that girl,” his mom said. “Don’t even talk to her. Mr. Starr and Mr. Diamond were understanding of your condition and promised to keep it quiet. But that’s it for you and me, Elijah. Mr. Diamond says if you have another episode, I might have to withdraw you from Holly’s school, or I could get fired altogether, and then I wouldn’t be able to take care of you. You might end up at the Res. You don’t know what the Res is like, Elijah. Promise me you won’t pull any more Romeo and Juliet shit on me. There are plenty of pretty girls you can ask out. Let this one go.”
The next morning, Elijah had trouble getting out of bed, but his mom shook his shoulder incessantly and hissed at him that he had to go to school so no one would suspect anything was wrong. He walked into first-period English on the bell, as usual. Holly was the brightest point in his day, as always, her shining brown curls cascading over her shoulders, her dark brown eyes wide. But she cast them down at her desk the instant she saw him.
He crossed to the opposite side of the room and sat down, all the while reaching over the rows for her thoughts. He tried to read her mind, jonesing for the tingles that had spread through him when he’d read minds the night before. He wanted that feeling from her. But she kept her head down, poring over their Shakespeare textbook, with hardly a sideways glance at the guy she’d just dumped.
He opened his own book. His life wasn’t over, he assured himself. He would keep his grades up, pull his weight on the lacrosse team, make the most of high school despite his illness, and try his best not to worry his mom. Only one thing had changed irreparably since yesterday: there was nothing left between him and Holly but regret.
2
r /> PRESENT DAY
Kaylee Michaels saw Holly walking toward her across the casino floor and felt her face light up. When Mr. Diamond had taken in Kaylee a year ago, he’d made her head of security at the casino though she’d been only twenty-one years old at the time. She was at the height of her mind-changing powers, the strongest person seeking refuge at the casino besides the many teenagers and twenty-somethings drugged with Mentafixol. The burden of the responsibility weighed on her every second, but she accepted it, seeing her job as a way to atone for the terrible things she’d done while she was at the Res.
Holly was her window onto the carefree life of a college girl. When Kaylee had first arrived, Mr. Diamond had encouraged her to befriend Holly and rent an apartment with her. He pointed out that, during her senior year of college, Holly would get the freedom from her parents that she’d longed for, yet Kaylee could still keep her safe. What had started as a business transaction had unexpectedly turned into Kaylee’s closest relationship ever. Despite herself, Kaylee had let her defensive walls crumble in front of this bubbly girl, and they’d been the unlikeliest of best friends since.
Now Holly glimpsed Kaylee and galloped toward her between two rows of slot machines, long brown curls bouncing, somehow looking even more glamorous in jeans and sandals than she ever did in her magician’s-assistant getup. She was leading a man by the hand. A handsome, clean-cut man about their age, but still. Even as Kaylee switched her bag of Thai food to her left hand and put out her right to greet him, her senses went on alert.
She poised to strike him with her power if she detected the slightest danger, ready to change his mind about getting close to Holly. Just because a guy had asked Holly on a date didn’t mean he was from the Res, but the timing was suspicious. For the past few days, the mind readers on the casino floor had whispered that they’d sensed people from the Res passing through, plotting to take over the casino.