Ultraviolet by R. J. Anderson Page B

younger than I’d thought at first—I guessed mid-twenties, though there was something ageless about him that made it hard to be sure. His gaze met mine directly, and as a smile deepened the corners of his long mouth I surprised myself by smiling back.
    “Sorry to keep you waiting,” panted a familiar voice, and the man and I turned in unison as Dr. Minta hurried toward us. I braced myself for the inevitable hearty greeting, but for once my psychiatrist didn’t even seem to notice my presence. “Konrad Minta,” he said, gripping the visitor’s hand. “Welcome to Pine Hills. Would you like a tour, or shall we go straight to my office?”
    This obviously had nothing to do with me, so I gave the two men a wide berth and walked on. But I could feel those violet eyes on me all the way to the cafeteria, and as I picked up my tray I couldn’t help wondering who the stranger was, and what had brought him here. To o old for a patient, too young for a parent, too sloppily dressed to be interviewing for a place on staff . . . a journalist, maybe?
    “Hallo, bay-bee,” murmured a lecherous voice in my ear, and I jerked back, spilling iced tea all over my tray.
    “Kirk, I swear—”
    He gave me a look of wide-eyed innocence. “What? I didn’t say anything. It was him.” He pointed to Roberto, who was laboriously tweezing carrot sticks onto his plate. “I know he looks innocent, but when it comes to women, he’s the devil.”
    “Uh-huh,” I said. “And he can throw his voice, too.”
    “A man of many talents,” agreed Kirk. “So where you gonna sit?”
    I shrugged, and headed for the nearest empty table. I was glad to see Kirk acting more like his old self again, but I didn’t want to encourage him too much in case he started bouncing off the walls. “How was Red Ward?” I asked, as we sat down.
    “Suuuuuuucked,” said Kirk in a tone so low it was half belch, and then in his normal voice, “But Ray told me to say hi.”
    No wonder everybody loved Ray. I’d only been in Red Ward for two days, more than three weeks ago, and he still hadn’t forgotten me. How did he do that? Not just remembering the names of all the patients he’d worked with, but the faces and personalities that went with them. It made me feel guilty that I wasn’t more like that myself.
    “So what’ve you been up to?” asked Kirk.
    “Exams, mostly,” I said. Now that my mind was clearer, it hadn’t taken me long to catch up on the schoolwork I’d missed. “Today was World History.”
    “Oh, yeah? How’d that go?”
    “I think I did okay,” I replied, and took a quick sip of my iced tea. Truth was, I knew exactly how I’d done. Seeing everything I read in color made it easier to remember, and if I’d thought about it hard enough I could probably have quoted the textbook word for word. But I didn’t want to be that obvious, so I’d thrown in a few deliberate mistakes. The last thing I wanted was to be singled out as a prodigy—or worse, a cheater.
    “There’s no way you wrote that poem,” said Tori.
    I turned, startled. Floating out of class on the lilac-scented cloud of my teacher’s praise, I hadn’t even heard the Noise until Tori was right behind me. “What?” I said.
    “You copied it from somewhere,” she told me, her voice barely audible above the familiar drone. “I don’t know exactly where, but I bet it won’t be hard to find out. So if you don’t want everybody to know you cheated—”
    “I didn’t cheat!”
    Tori put her hands on her hips, which made her look annoyingly like an ad for designer jeans. “This isn’t just about you, you know. Lara’s pretty upset that her poem didn’t get picked for the competition, and I don’t blame her.”
    Until now I’d avoided Tori as much as I could, not even looking at her if I could help it—it was the only way I could stop her Noise from driving me crazy. At times I’d felt guilty for treating her so rudely, but now that Tori had finally lived up to