Don't Even Think About It Read Online Free PDF

anything.”
    “Yes you did. You said Bennett was a user,” Mackenzie said.
    Not out loud! Tess thought.
    What the hell is going on? they both thought.
    At that second, just down the hallway, the door to Mr. Roth’s public speaking class was thrown open.
    “Get Nurse Carmichael!” Lazar yelled as the entire class cleared out of the room.
    Voices came from everywhere.
    “Give her space!”
    That must have hurt.
    “She needs to breathe!”
    She looks kind of dead.
    Mackenzie grabbed on to Tess’s hand. “I don’t understand what’s happening.”
    “Me neither,” Tess said. “And it’s so loud.” They pressed their backs against the row of lockers to try to stay out of the way—of the people, of the voices. So many voices.
    I’m hungry. Is it lunch yet?
    I think I’m wearing different-colored socks.
    Pi came out of the class last. Her eyes were shining as she walked by Mackenzie and Tess. She was muttering silently to herself. I could hear her. I could hear what she was thinking. She could hear what I was thinking! How did that happen? Is she the only one?
    Mackenzie crossed her arms in front of her chest. No, Mackenzie thought. She’s not the only one.
    Pi stopped in her tracks and stared at Mackenzie. You too?
    Me too.
    And me, Tess piped up.
    Pi started to laugh. How is it that we can hear people’s thoughts?
    We have no idea, Mackenzie and Tess thought at the same time.
    Jinx, Mackenzie thought.
    Now someone better buy me a Diet Coke.

CHAPTER SIX
It’s a Puzzle Out There
    Pi was the first one of us to get it. She got it before school, at seven a.m. We aren’t sure why. She thinks it was because she’s the smartest. We think it’s because she was swimming at the time. Working out. More blood flow to her brain.
    She was swimming in the downtown community pool on Warren, a few blocks from school. She swam every morning. It cleared her head. She’d read an article in New York Magazine saying that daily exercise increased one’s IQ by about ten points. She would not let ten points get away from her. She did all kinds of things that were supposed to increase IQ—ate fish with omega-3, practiced writing with her left hand, listened to classical music, taught herself chess and poker. Did sudoku. She did sudoku a lot. Sometimes she imagined boxes of numbers on white walls.
    Pi had the second-highest GPA in our grade, just behind Jon Matthews. But Pi wanted to be number one. Harvard would never take two kids from one public school. And she wanted to go to Harvard. She wanted to study physics and be a physics professor. She wanted to understand the universe.
    Her father was a doctor. Well, he was a researcher at Mount Sinai. He’d lost his license after a malpractice suit. It hadn’t been his fault at all, but that was what happened in New York. Greed and bureaucracy got in the way of brilliance. Her mom had left him and taken a job at a hospital in Indiana when the whole thing went down. Pi had refused to move with her, and decided to stand by her dad. They didn’t need her mom. She didn’t need her mom. Pi would be fine—no, exceptional—without her.
    On Wednesday morning, Pi was underwater swimming laps when she kept hearing Black-Speedo Guy talking to himself about the memo he was supposed to send to his boss by noon. Times or Arial? What says “promote me”? She saw him there often; he always wore the same Speedo.
    At first Pi stopped mid-stroke. “Excuse me!”
    The guy ignored her and kept swimming.
    But he also kept talking. I need a raise. At least a hundred bucks a week. Then I could eat out more often and get cool stuff for my apartment. Like a high-def TV. Better speakers. A custom-made bobble head that looks like me and is wearing a Speedo.
    Everyone had the right to voice his ideas, Pi thought, but not when they intruded on someone else’s personal space. And this was Pi’s personal space. This was her morning swim.
    When she reached the end of the pool, she stopped to tread water.