Covet (Clann)

already there and they were in line getting food.
    I knew I should buy my usual chili cheese fries and a soda, or at least a salad to pretend to eat. But the thought of having to even fake eating was too much at this point. I buried my head in my hands, closed my eyes, and prayed everyone’s thoughts would just shut up.
    Last year when I’d started to sense the emotions around me, I’d learned that the ability grew worse when I was upset. Hearing everyone’s actual thoughts was so much worse than sensing their emotions. But maybe the ESP worked the same way. I tried to calm down, focusing on my breathing as if I were doing tai chi. Slow breath in. Hold it. Slow breath out. I pictured myself back home doing tai chi in my room, how the controlled movements made me feel like water flowing in slow motion.
    There. The voices were fading away now. I could handle this. I just needed to stay calm.
    “There’s our Vogue girl,” Anne greeted me as my friends returned to our table.
    They took their seats, each one setting down a stinking tray or carton or plastic bowl full of food. My eyes told me their food was perfectly fine and should smell good. But my nose and stomach screamed an entirely different story. It was like someone had just plunked me down in the middle of a landfill during the dead heat of summer. The stench of rotting things seemed to fill my nostrils, tempting me to gag.
    I made myself smile for their benefit while I tried not to breathe through my nose.
    Michelle squealed and reached across the table to grab my new bracelet. “Oh my God, did your dad get this for you?” She looked up, her eyes wide and bright. Then she spotted my purse on the table beside me. “No friggin’ way. A Coach bag, too? Let me see!”
    Dutifully I passed the purse over to her.
    “And the heels?” Anne asked, her eyebrows arched.
    Finally I could give a sincere smile. “After you and I got off the phone, I discovered Dad surprised me with some other shoe choices.” I held up a foot so she could see my new ballet flats.
    Anne made a face. “I might have had to stick with the heels. Those would look like fairy shoes on me.”
    Michelle ducked under the table to see, raised her head back up and squeaked, “Jimmy Choo doesn’t make fairy shoes. Besides, those are black.”
    “So they’re for goth fairies.” Grinning, Anne cracked open her soda.
    “Oh stop,” I said with a laugh. “You’re just jealous that my feet have been super comfy all morning, while you’re stuck wearing those sweaty twenty-pound sneakers.”
    A clatter of plastic. I looked up in time to see Carrie take off.
    “What’s the matter with her?” I asked.
    Michelle’s face scrunched up. “She’s probably upset about the poor children in Africa. At least I think it’s Africa this time. She’s probably wishing they all had cute shoes like that.”
    Anne leaned around the curved table and whispered, “I think it’s more that Carrie’s folks might be having trouble coming up with enough money for medical school.”
    Carrie had wanted to be a doctor for as long as I’d known her. But I’d never stopped and thought about how expensive it would be for her, or whether her parents could afford it. I’d always assumed, since they lived in a brick house by the lake, that they had plenty of money.
    “What about scholarships and grants?” I said, accepting my purse back from Michelle and tucking it under the table in my lap.
    Inside my head, everyone else’s thoughts grew a little louder.
    “She’s going to try, but her grades this year and last year are going to factor in on what she gets,” Anne said around a mouthful of food. She took a noisy slurp of soda. “And apparently they haven’t been all straight A pluses like she wanted.”
    And here I’d been flaunting my dad’s money like a complete idiot. It was just so weird to suddenly have money after never having enough all my life. But that was still no excuse.
    “Wow. I didn’t know. I’m sorry.”
    The voices ratcheted up a bit more in my head.
    “If you’d stuck around a little longer at my party, you would have heard all about it,” Anne muttered. She said it so quietly that she probably never intended for me to hear her. But I did, and it stung. She knew why I’d had to leave early.
    “Are you feeling better now?” Michelle asked. “I know Anne said you were feeling sick and all, but you still could have said goodbye, you know.”
    The voices ramped up still louder.