PodCastle

* Authors : Jenn Reese, Kate Heartfield and John Wiswell 
* Narrators : Tina Connolly, Kim Rogers and C. L. Clark
* Host : Ziv Wities
* Audio Producer : Peter Adrian Behravesh


“A Mindreader’s Guide to Surviving Your First Year at the All-Girls Superhero Academy” was originally published by Uncanny Magazine, Dec 2019.
“Chameleon” was originally published by Daily Science Fiction, Sept 2019.
“The First Stop Is Always the Last” was originally published by Flash Fiction Online, 2017.
 


Rated PG.
A Mindreader’s Guide to Surviving Your First Year at the All-Girls Superhero Academy
by Jenn Reese
The day you arrive at the academy, you spend just three minutes outside the car before begging your mom to drive you back home. There are too many girls. They’re too loud. They’re laughing. Some of them are flying. Even if you weren’t a mindreader, you’d be overwhelmed.
Your mother, who took a day off work and has driven eleven hours straight to get you here, refuses. She is the worst mother ever.
A girl approaches, her eyes so sharp you expect her codename to be DAZZLE or CHARISMA or SINGULARITY. You can’t stop yourself from reading her mind: she calls herself Meg.
You refuse to shake Meg’s hand and demand that she leave you alone. You tell her your superpower and that nothing she thinks is safe from you. You tell her you don’t want or need friends.
You’re grateful she’s not a mindreader, too.
Meg shrugs and tells you she can blow things up with a thought. She offers to show you to your dorm. Bewildered, you hug your mother goodbye, grab your duffel, and follow Meg, whose hair is brown and whose eyes are lighter brown and whose codename should be TEMPEST or HURRICANE or AVALANCHE based on how she’s making you feel.
For the next three weeks, the days are a blur of headaches and other girls’ anxieties.
I’m not strong enough to stop a train.
I’m too slow to defuse the bomb.
My witty rejoinders are not actually witty.
That creepy mindreader is probably reading my mind.

But there’s also girls kissing each other. So much kissing. Eavesdropping makes you feel more connected and more alone, both at once, like a tsunami that excitedly tumbles you to shore, while at the same time trying to drown you and smash your head on the rocks. You wish you could block out all their make-out sessions. And yet… if you could, you don’t know if you would.
You learn to get by, as you always have. You study in the stacks, which are almost always empty. You eat lunch in your dorm room when your roommate is making out with someone in the stacks. You do not attend parties or join clubs, and you do not participate in the Save-the-City simulations… not that anyone asked you to join their team. Don’t they realize you could read the other team members’ minds as well?
One day you’re walking to class along the path that maximizes your chances to see Meg walking to her class, and you run into her. She’s crying. You’ve been acing Controlling Your Powers class and do not immediately read her mind. Which is frustrating, because it forces you to actually ask her what’s wrong, and speaking to other humans as if you’re not a freak is a skill you’ve yet to master.
Meg doesn’t notice how you mumble,