As far as Ken was concerned, the only thing they all shared was this class. The gifts — and the students who had them — didn’t have any connection at all.
Sometimes, like now, he wondered if Madame had a gift like Jenna’s. At that very moment she was looking at him, and she could have been reading his mind.
‘I realize that you might not think of yourselves as a team, but that may well be how our enemies think of us. Surely I don’t need to remind you of your most recent adventure?’ When there was no response to that, she shook her head wearily. ‘Or maybe I do. Amanda, would you please refresh our memory?’
Martin piped up. ‘Why are you asking her? She wasn’t even there!’
‘Yes, I was!’ Amanda snapped.
Martin glared at her. ‘Hey, I ’m not stupid. I would have noticed if you were there. It was me, Tracey, Emily and Sarah. Oh, and Carter was there for a while at the beginning.’
Sarah spoke gently. ‘I wasn’t really there, Martin. Amanda had taken over my body. I didn’t get there till the very end.’
‘I can’t believe you didn’t know that, Martin,’ Tracey declared. ‘Didn’t you notice Sarah wasn’t acting like herself?’
Jenna snorted. ‘Are you kidding? Martin never pays attention to anyone but himself.’
Charles laughed. ‘I’ll bet Martin was too scared to notice anything.’
‘I wasn’t scared,’ Martin replied hotly.
‘You sure acted like you were,’ Tracey said.
‘Tracey!’ Madame said in a warning tone, and the other students frowned at Tracey too. Teasing Martin was a big no-no. That was when his ‘gift’ came out, and nobody was eager to see mass destruction or suffer personal bodily injury, which might easily happen if Martin’s super-strength kicked in. Of course, Tracey wouldn’t have to worry if Martin went on one of his rampages. She could always disappear. Personally, Ken thought she had the most interesting gift of all of them.
‘Let’s get back to the subject,’ Madame said. ‘Amanda, could you give us a brief synopsis of what happened to some of you?’
‘We were kidnapped,’ she said, ‘by this woman named Clare and two men.’
Tracey supplied the names. ‘Howard and George.’
‘Yeah, whatever,’ Amanda said dismissively. ‘They were just flunkies. Clare was in charge. Anyway, they wanted us to rob banks for them. They took Carter first, then Tracey, Martin and Sarah. And Emily.’
Madame nodded. ‘And they chose each of you for a reason. Emily could predict the scene at the bank, Martin could break down doors, Tracey could sneak into the vault without being seen. And Sarah could force people to do whatever the robbers needed them to do.’
‘Except they didn’t really have Sarah,’ Emily noted. ‘They got Amanda instead.’
Jenna laughed. ‘I almost feel sorry for the bad guys. Can you imagine getting stuck with Amanda? It’s not like she could help anyone rob a bank.’ She paused. ‘Actually, I take that back. Maybe she would have helped with the robbery if she thought the vault contained shoes. Or handbags. Otherwise her gift is pretty worthless.’
Amanda’s obsession with fashion was well known, and everyone laughed — except Carter, of course, who never smiled or laughed or showed any emotion at all on his face. Which made Ken think about something that had puzzled him ever since the kidnappings.
‘Why did they want Carter?’ he asked out loud.
The room fell silent, and everyone turned to look at the figure sitting right at the back. As usual, the pale, round-faced boy wasn’t perturbed by the sudden attention. His expression was as blank as it always was. Ken knew everyone had to be thinking the same thing: did Carter even have a gift? Or was he only in this class because he was — well — weird?
Charles broke the silence. ‘I want to know why they didn’t kidnap me. I’ve got real power.’
Charles was known for his bragging, but no one could deny the truth in what he was saying. Being able to make things move with his mind could have made him very useful to someone with criminal intents.
Emily had an answer for him. ‘The house didn’t have disabled access, Charles. The doorways were too narrow for a wheelchair and you wouldn’t have been able to get up the stairs.’
‘Clearly the kidnappers had done their homework,’ Madame said. ‘They knew who they wanted, who they could use. This is what I want to impress upon you. There are people out there who know all about you. And if those people ever got together and pooled their information. ’
Sarah spoke. ‘You’re saying we’re all at risk.’
‘Exactly,’ Madame replied.
‘Except Ken,’ Charles piped up.
Madame frowned. ‘Why do you say that, Charles?’
‘Dead people talk to him — big deal! How is that going to help a criminal?’
Martin joined in. ‘Yeah, his gift is totally useless.’
‘You don’t know that,’ Madame declared. ‘I’m sure there are people who would find Ken’s gift extremely interesting.’ She looked at Ken, as if she wanted him to back her up.
Ken just shrugged. Because in all honesty, he pretty much agreed with both Martin and Charles on this subject.
Madame continued. ‘Now, I’d like you all to share your thoughts on how you can best protect yourselves from exploitation.’
Several hands went up, but Ken’s wasn’t one of them. As far as he was concerned, he’d rather learn how to protect himself from his own gift.
From the very beginning, when he realized he had this gift, it had been nothing but a headache. At first he thought he could use it to help a certain dead person with a problem left unresolved on earth, and he had tried — he’d really tried — to respond to this person’s needs. But the result had been disastrous, and now he, Ken, had an ongoing problem to deal with. He hadn’t been bothered by it much lately, but there was no telling when that problem would pop up again. Just thinking about the possibility gave him a headache, and he pushed it out of his head.
OK, maybe there had been a couple of times when his gift had been useful. He’d been able to alert Jenna to the fact that the man who claimed to be her father was a fraud after Ken got a message from beyond the grave that confirmed it. And he’d learned the whereabouts of a guy who’d helped kidnap some of Ken’s classmates when the kidnapper’s late mother told Ken where to find her son.
But events like that were rare. Most of the time the voices made demands. And ever since that first demand, the one that turned into a mess, he’d made every effort to ignore them. It wasn’t easy. There were so many dead people, so many sad stories. Many of them wanted him to communicate a message to someone left behind. A man might ask him to apologize to a friend for something he’d done when he was alive. A woman would ask him to tell her husband that she’d loved him. A thief who’d repented might want him to return money he’d stolen, and other people asked Ken to deliver souvenirs. One time, there had been a man who wanted him to tell the police that his death wasn’t an accident — that his ex-wife had killed him.
But Ken didn’t want to get involved. He’d done that once, and he was still paying the price. Besides, how could he do what they asked?
Excuse me, Miss, but your dead grandfather thinks your boyfriend is no good.
Excuse me, Officer, but do you remember the man who died when he fell down the stairs? And you thought it was an accident? Well, I know for a fact that his wife pushed him.