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Tasering.”
    Amanda gave Jake a dirty look and then turned away, starting the car.
    â€œThat was cool of you,” Jake said to me, smiling. “Just don’t brainwash us. Okay?”
    â€œI won’t, I promise,” I replied, with a solemn tone that made it sound like I was making some major pledge. Jake was only joking around with me, but I took it seriously. I was going to stay out of his mind for good.
    Even if every time Amanda said something mean to me or did something casually intimate like pick a piece of dead animal fur off Jake’s shirt, I thought to myself . . . I could make him like me .
    That wasn’t me. I really, really didn’t want that to be me. But I could do it, if I wanted to.
    Amanda still hadn’t pulled back onto the road. She caught my eyes in the rearview again, a bit of mischief glittering there.
    â€œSo . . . ,” she said, “what other tricks can you do?”

JAKE
    IF YOU EVER MAKE FRIENDS WITH A GOVERNMENT-TRAINED psychic, I highly recommend getting them to steal awesome stuff for you. It’s the best.
    The nearest place to test out psychic shoplifting was the sleepy burg of Pipestone, Minnesota. It was named for the local Native Americans’ tradition of turning the area’s magic rocks into pipes that allowed communication with the spirit world when you smoked from them. I read that in a brochure.
    A town literally named for getting stoned. How could I resist?
    Unfortunately, Pipestone turned out to be a buzzkill. And not just because there wasn’t a giant sandstone bong rising up from the horizon.
    â€œThis place is like a diorama,” Amanda said.
    â€œNo kidding,” I replied. “Do you think we might see a real-life tumbleweed?”
    I’d never been to a place like this before, where it seemed like you could stand at one end of Main Street and see clear through to the other side of town. I’d never been to a place where Main Street was synonymous with Only Street. It was flat, the buildings no higher than two stories, the main road wide enough for a dozen covered wagons to pass side by side. Hell, we were in a place where it wouldn’t be strange to see a covered wagon in the first place. Everything was so weirdly spread out. I suddenly missed the clutter of New Jersey.
    There were a few people on the sidewalks and all of them turned their heads to watch us drive by. I think some of them even ducked into buildings and closed their windows, like when the bandit gang rides into town in one of those old westerns.
    â€œIs there something off about this place or is it just me?” Amanda asked.
    â€œIt feels kind of like a ghost town that people forgot to leave,” I said.
    Amanda parked our car outside the Pipestone Trading Post and Gift Shop, an actual log cabin with signs advertising local crafts and hiking supplies. Apparently there was a big, rocky quarry and waterfall nearby, presumably where the ancestors of this town once mined for magic rocks before they died of boredom.
    I turned around to look at Cass. She’d been pretty quiet since working her psychic mojo on that cop, although I’m sure Amanda replying to her every word with nuclear-level sarcasm didn’t exactly encourage conversation attempts. She smiled weakly at me.
    â€œSo how does this work?” I asked her.
    â€œUm . . .” Cass thought about my question. I could tell it wasn’t so much that she hadn’t worked out an answer, but that she wasn’t totally convinced she wanted to tell me. “We’ll go in and you’ll take whatever you want up to the register. When the cashier asks you for money, just say . . .” Her voice dipped suddenly into spaced-out surfer territory. “Uh, hey, dude, I just, like, gave you a hundred, man.”
    I squinted at her. “Is that how I talk?”
    â€œYeah, actually,” Amanda put in.
    Cass smiled a little. I