Outlier: One mistake can destroy everything. by Jacob Mesmer Page A

their paperwork, the stuff they’d said to save, in a special envelope. Maybe it said something in here about what he had done tonight. He read through everything. Some was on color paper that was smooth and glossy. Others were on paper that looked like it had come out of a regular printer.
     
    He brought it to the living room and spread it all out on the coffee table in front of him. He tried to make sense of it all. Lower stress. Blood pressure. Secondary and tertiary consequences of subconscious anxiety. What did that mean? None of it made sense.
     
    He sat back on the couch, trying to think of what to do. Maybe if he tried to break the glass on the window next to the door. That was about the same size as the window at the ice cream place. No, his mom would find out and get mad. He thought some more. He jumped up, ran into the kitchen, and got a plate from the cabinet. He got a glass and filled it halfway with water. He brought them both back into the living room. He poured a little bit of water onto the plate. He looked at the water and tried to make it move. It didn’t.
     
    What was he thinking of at the park? The girls. The laughing girls. He imagined that there were three girls standing around him, laughing at him. He pictured them, right there, in his living room. Stupid laughing girls. He started thinking of them and rocking back and forth while looking at the water. The water started to move! Only slowly at first, but as he got more excited and really concentrated, it moved even more!
     
    It started to jump around like it was shaking. It started to splash the papers around it on the coffee table. Jay jumped up and paced back and forth. Was this really happening? Maybe he should tell the doctors. NO! They would tell him he wasn’t supposed to do that, and they’d give him different white pills and make it stop. No, Jay. Don’t tell anybody.
     
    He remembered his mean gym teacher. The same gym teacher that was at the school now. “The only way to get stronger is to practice! If you don’t practice every day, you will become weak! You are all weak now, and if you don’t practice, you will stay weak!” Jay decided to practice. He got something else. A pencil. He carefully moved the papers aside and put the pencil in the middle of the coffee table. He imagined the stupid laughing girls again and made the pencil move. All the way off the table!
     
    His mind spun in all different directions. He could do things, and nobody would know it was him! He could push people, like some of the mean boys had done to him. He could embarrass people like they’d done to him. And if he saw real laughing girls at school, he’d make them stop laughing. He would make everybody stop laughing. The best part was that nobody would know it was him. That meant he couldn’t tell anybody. Not his mom, and especially not Sean, that guy who hated him but pretended to be nice to him.
     
    Jay was smiling. He needed to practice. He needed to practice a lot.
     
    This was going to be fun!

Chapter Twenty-Two
     
    Thursday Morning
     
    “Yes, this is Mr. Bancroft calling for Ms. Weismann.”
     
    “Please hold.”
     
    Bancroft held.
 
    “What can you tell me?” she demanded. No greeting.
     
    “The Rockport Subject is a potential unintended benefit. I’m still in the early stages, but this looks promising.”
     
    “Explain.”
     
    Bancroft went over the details of what Jay had done from the park. Breaking the glass. He’d already placed micro-cameras in his home and could watch at any time via his laptop from his secure location. He explained that Jay was becoming aware of his abilities and was attempting to strengthen them.
     
    “That is significant. Continue watching, expand operations as needed, and let it play out however it plays out. Do not interfere under any circumstances. We already have sufficient biometric data on the subject, so we’ll not need his further cooperation. Be sure to continue to record all