“Oh yeah, that’s exactly what I’m writing about.” I rolled my eyes but snapped the journal shut all the same.

“What do you care anyway?” I asked, swiveling in my seat to look up into his dumb, smug face. “You know everything I’m thinking and feeling—you don’t need to read my diary for that.”

“Diary?” He took a step back, leaning against the counter. “What are you, twelve?”

I stuck my tongue out at him for lack of a witty retort.

“Besides,” he continued, “I don’t know what you’re feeling. I’m not an empath, I’m a mind reader.”

“Thank god for that,” I muttered.

“I don’t know, I wouldn’t mind trading one for the other,” he said, taking another large chunk out of the carrot, like he was freaking Bugs Bunny or something.

“Really?” I asked, genuinely surprised. Aaron and I never talk about his ability in depth. Mostly because I’m too afraid and nervous to ask and he seems to have people to talk to about it, between our parents, his psychologist, his doctors, his group therapy. I don’t really know what little old me, non-Atypical Atkinson, could really contribute to the conversation. Even thinking stuff like that puts me on edge because I know that Aaron could hear it and maybe feel weird or pressured to say something or pity me for being the one person in the family without abilities but he’s not here now, so I’m going to think whatever I want to think.

It’s like this: two years ago, Aaron started acting really weird. Like, really weird. He was getting really distracted all the time, kept having these random outbursts, these really intense headaches … it caused a lot of family drama. I really don’t like thinking about it, honestly, whether he’s in the room or not. It was a really awful time. I was a rising senior, and I was already stressed enough as it was. We were all pretty on-edge at first, not really understanding what was going on with him. We couldn’t tell if it was some kind of mental break or the appearance of his ability. Both my parents first showed signs of being Atypical when they were around fourteen, so when Aaron and I skated by that deadline, they kind of just assumed we were normies. All that said, my mom started to suspect that Aaron was a precognate like her—that he was getting visions of the future and didn’t know what they were yet so it was totally bugging him out. Long story short (too late) and a few trips to the good old Atypical Monitors later, and the truth came out: Aaron is Atypical. He’s a mind reader.

Can you imagine? I have no powers—ZERO—and on top of that, I get stuck with an older brother who can HEAR MY THOUGHTS.