Chapter One

The noise from the party raging downstairs seeped into my quiet space. I palmed my blue and red bouncy ball as I lay on my bed facing the wall. I threw it in the air a few times to watch the colours blur together before bouncing it off the wall above my headboard.

It was ten o'clock at night on a Thursday, and the party was just getting started. My parents said that having people over tonight was unavoidable. We were leaving for cedar Ridge, Texas – a town too small to register on most maps – in a few days, and people wanted to say good-bye. Any other seventeen year old would probably be excited about sneaking a drink or having an excuse to buy a new dress, but not me. I wasn't much of a party person. Or a people person.

With my stuff already packed up and the TV's unhooked, I was beyond bored. Still, there was no way I was going downstairs. I'd disappeared to my room as soon as the caterers arrived. Since then, I'd found the end of the internet. Apparently there were only so many .gifs a girl could enjoy. Unless I wanted to pay for crappy re-runs, I was out of things to watch and left with only a bouncy ball to aid in my entertainment.

It'd been a bad idea to pack everything but essentials to early. Twenty-three small boxes were stacked against the side of my room. Most of them were filled with books. The only stuff that I'd left unpacked would fit into a small duffle bag and my backpack.

But a bouncy ball was better than nothing, and much better than braving the crowd downstairs. I threw it to the beat of the music and counted down the seconds. Those would turn into minutes, and eventually back into quiet so I could go to sleep. I was really looking forward to a fresh start. The sooner I could go to sleep, the sooner it'd be tomorrow.

Only three more nights until Texas. Until everything would change. I smiled at the thought. This girl would use some change.

A knock came from my door.

"Bathrooms downstairs," I yelled. I held my breath as I listened, hoping they heard me.

The knob turned. Shit. I should've locked it.

I hopped off the bed. "Hey-"

"Whatcha doin', Tessa?" My older brother, Axel, swung open the door.

I sat back down on the bed. He knew exactly what I was doing.

"What do you want?"

He leaned against the door frame. He was well over half a foot taller than me, but that didn't mean much to my five feet and almost nothing inches. We had the same wavy dark brown hair – when he let his grow – and the same dark brown eyes, thanks to our Latina mom. "Dad wants you to come downstairs, even if it's just for a minute. People are asking about you."

I made a face. "I'd rather not. Cover for me?"

"What if I said a certain celeb was down there?" He waggled his eyebrows. "The one who I saw you drooling over last week."

I threw the ball at him and he caught it, laughing. The jerk. Dad's combo of PR work and law degree made him a hot commodity in Hollywood. He now had an enviable number of high profile clients. If I were more into the LA scene, then maybe the guest list would've been appealing.

I chewed on my lip, unable to deny the draw of my latest actor crush – James MacAvoy. Nothing hotter than a guy with a sexy Scottish Accent. "He's really downstairs."

Axel Nodded.

I thought for a second and then signed. "Still can't do it. I don't want to destroy the illusion that my favorite Scotsman is absolute perfection. What if he has a zit? Or spills something on himself? Or worse – what if I accidentally touch him and get a vision? The dream will shatter. And that, big brother, is not worth it. Even if I was willing to risk having a million other random visions, which I'm not."

He rolled his eyes at me and stepped into my room.

"Hey!" I jumped off the bed. "Don't come in here. This is a clean zone." He knew I wasn't referring to the fact that I was a neat freak, but that everything in the room was new. Touched by a minimal amount of people. It was my only defense. A quick brush of skin-against-skin, or even skin-against-other-person's-property, was sometimes enough to give me an in-depth view into their mind. As much as that might sound fun, it was usually more icky that cool.

He held up his hands. "Please, Tess. I know the drill." He moseyed his way to my bed and collapsed. "Come here." He patted his side.

I looked at him suspiciously. "The shirt's new?"

"Yes."

I lay down on my side next to him, resting my head on his chest.

A quick vision of a factory in some Asian country filled my mind. The humid heat has me sweating as the clacking of hundreds of sewing machines echoed in my head.

"Are you sweating?" Axel's voice brought my back to my room. "Christ. It's like lying next to a furnace."

I elbowed him as I rolled away. "Yours fault. That's a sweatshop shirt your wearing."

"Shit. I actually liked this shirt."

He pulled it away from his chest, making a face as if it'd suddenly grown mold. "I should let you touch my stuff before I buy anything."

I wiped the sweat from my brow. "If you like it, then wear it. You already did whatever damage you were going to do by buying it in the first place. You never would've known if you didn't have a freak for a sister.

He was quiet for a second. "You're going to have to come out of this room at some point. You can't hide forever."

He did this at least once a month, but he hadn't gotten the family "gift." I had.

"You're not rouge, you know," he said.

Oh God. He was on variation five B of the speech also known as The Comic Book Rip-off. "You're not going to kill someone if you touch them," I finished for him, mimicking his deeper voice.

"Right. Well. I still think that if you learned to block it out instead of trying to avoid it, then you'd be able to have some kind of normal life."

Maybe he was right. But you couldn't wash your mind or un-see things. "Yeah, well, believe it or not, too much information is an actual thing. Like getting the glimpse of when you and Bambi- "

"Blair."

"Whatever." I gagged.

"I don't know why you're so stubborn. Not letting anyone touch you isn't the answer."

I elbowed him again. "Gross! You want people to touch me. That's so messed up."

"Shut it. You know what I meant." He messed up my hair. "I'm gone in a few weeks, and I'm worried about you."

I glanced up at him. We looked like twins, except he was all angles, whereas my face was round. Axel was only two years older than me, and was, without a doubt, my best friend. "I'll be fine without your butt stinking up the house."

He smiled like I wanted, but I wasn't so sure that I'd actually be fine. Even if he wouldn't admit it, I knew he'd picked a Texas college because we'd still be within driving distance. I hated that he'd turned down other schools, and hated myself a little for being glad that he'd done it.

He nudged me. "I dare you to find out what the deal is with Dad's new job."

"What do you mean?"

"He's leaving his celeb-filled job in LA to work for some random boarding school in Texas. That doesn't strike you as odd at all?"

I shrugged. "I guess I hadn't thought about it. I'm just looking forward to not going back to school here. I don't think I could take another year of those monsters." I paused. I shouldn't have brought that up. "Look. The gloves will work fine in a school that's clueless as to what they mean. I'm old enough not to talk about what I see anymore. Plus, I'm getting better at minimizing the number of visions I get. It'll be a fresh start, and I'm not about to pole holes in something that might actually be a good thing."

"Aren't you curious? Even a little?"

I thought about it. "Well, I wasn't…"

Axel sat up so quickly that I almost fell off the bed. "You have to go downstairs, to Dad's office, and touch some of those papers from St. Ailbe's."

"That's a terrible idea." Going downstairs during the party where people might actually want to hug me good-bye was a disaster waiting to happen. Add messing around in Dad's office, and I'd be begging for a grounding. Only a moron would agree to this.