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I blinked. “How did you do that?”
“Oh, this? Just a simple particle destabilizer. It’s a prototype I’ve been working on. It temporarily changes the frequency of an object’s particles, making them vibrate so fast the item becomes invisible. Once I turn the wavelength off, you can see it again.” He had that falsely modest expression I was coming to recognize. He knew he was a freaking genius. Why did he even bother to pretend at this point?
“Now that I’ve impressed you with my toys, want to grab some coffee? There’s an excellent coffee shop in town. We can make it a study date. I’ll even let you play with it.” He gestured at the remote, and I rolled my eyes.
“I think I’ll pass.”
“Not smart, Lexicon. I can help you with your physics equations. You know I won the Best New Physicist Award when I was thirteen. I even designed Joan here.” He nodded toward the robotic librarian standing at the other end of the room.
Okay, now he was really showing off. I could play that game, too.
“Really? Then how did you miss tweaking the titanium socket screws in their ankle joints? They’re cut at the wrong angle. Another few degrees and an install two inches lower and it’d take care of the lurching.”
He blinked, his gaze flicking to Joan and then back to me, and I bit back a smile at his expression.
His voice was almost strangled as he asked, “How did you do that? We worked on that design for weeks and still couldn’t get it quite right.”
I grinned. “May I should help you with your homework.” Part of me wanted nothing more than to say yes to his invitation for coffee. To his sparkling blue eyes and the dimple in his cheek. There couldn’t be any harm in being friends, could there? Except I was pretty sure he had a girlfriend, and I didn’t know how long I’d be able to stay ‘just friends’ with someone who looked at me like that.
Like I was a genius.
I shoved my tablet and notebook into my bag before standing up. “I should be going. My dad promised he’d remember me today. We’re supposed to meet in the lobby.”
Asher got up and walked with me to the library doors. “You know, if he’s too busy, I can always take you home. It’ll be like a carpool. Or taxi service. You can pay me in coffee dates.”
“Thanks, but it’s time my dad took some responsibility for me. At least, for however long I’m here.” I froze, chewed my lip. Where had that come from?
He furrowed his eyebrows. “What do you mean? Where would you be going?”
I laughed, trying to play off my slip-up. “Nowhere in particular. I just mean if I can’t cut it here, maybe they’ll send me back to Ohio.”
Maybe Mom would come back and we could find somewhere else to live, just the two of us. We could go back to being normal. I could forget about the lies and the drugs and the general mess that was my life.
Asher’s jaw tightened. “You belong here with us, Lexie. No matter what you think.”
I shrugged and pushed through the doors to the hallway. “Honestly, Asher, I appreciate the pep talk, but you barely know me. You don’t know anything about whether I’ll fit or not.”
He put a hand on my arm to stop me, and I turned, held frozen by his suddenly serious expression. And then he looked away, scuffed his shoe against the marble floor. Finally, he said, “I know about the drugs.”
His words sucked the air from my lungs with a whoosh. “What did you say?”
“My dad was the one who helped develop them in the first place. That could have been me, Lexie. If things had been different.”
Horror, shame, anger all surged through me, and I put out a hand to steady myself against the wall. Bad enough I knew my own parents had drugged me to keep me average, but knowing Asher had heard about it, too? I wanted the floor to open and eat me whole. What must he think of them? Of me?
No matter what my dad said, there had to have been another way to protect me from Branston.
He touched my shoulder. “Hey, it’s okay. I’d never say anything.”
I shook my head, too devastated to even respond. The hallway went fuzzy, and I forced myself to breathe in and out, despite the icy clench of my lungs. Just the thought of what my new classmates would do to me if it ever got out that I’d been drugged to stay average made my stomach roil. I’d witnessed enough bullying at Columbus to know that it would be social suicide. I could hear the taunts already — Lobotomy Lexie.
I jerked away from his hand and sprinted away toward the stairwell.
“Lexie!” Asher called.
I shook my head and pushed through the emergency doors to clatter down the stairs. My eyes stung with unshed tears. What had been so wrong with me that my parents would do something like this? They’d taken away a part of me, and now, I was lost. I’d hoped QT might be a chance to become who I wanted instead of being always afraid. Now it had become another prison.
9
The only thing that got me through the rest of the week was being able to hide in the library. I even skipped Avery’s class. I was terrified of seeing Asher. Knowing that he knew about the drugs was bad enough, but having to see the pity in his eyes was something I couldn’t face.
I spent hours plugging away at my ultraviolet catastrophe research. It was my one chance to prove myself to them, and I wasn’t going to screw it up by slacking off, not matter how freaked out I was. I wanted to show them all that, even if they’d drugged me, I was still smart, still belonged here. I was still me.
But I’d never been so glad for the weekend in my life.
When I got up Saturday morning, I found a note from Dad in the kitchen:
Gone to QT for an emergency. Will bring home dinner.
I crumpled it in my fist before tossing it in the garbage. Great. Another day alone.
The only sound in the empty house was the hum of the refrigerator and the tick-tock of Dad’s grandfather clock. I couldn’t handle it. I’d spent Friday night locked in my bedroom — I wasn’t doing that again.
Maybe it was time to explore Oak Ridge.
I locked the door behind me and wandered toward downtown. The September air was still sticky with the summer heat, and a bunch of kids played baseball in their front yards. I watched a boy with spiky hair pull back and pitch a softball to a girl across the street. She swung, the bat connecting to the ball with a loud crack. It soared back toward him, and I cringed as it headed toward an upstairs window. But instead of crashing through the glass, it slowed down until it hung frozen in mid-air. One of the outfielders pressed a button on his baseball glove, and the ball dropped into his hand.
