Free Levitating Las Vegas by Jennifer Echols

finally made it back to sleep. But all day he’d felt flashes of other people’s emotions—not nearly as strong and clear as they’d been that fateful night in ninth grade when he’d first come down with MAD, but stronger and clearer by the hour.
    And now, standing at the entrance to the hallway with Rob pounding on the bathroom door, Elijah was certain Holly had jumped out the window and run away across the yard.
    “Holly!” Rob’s face turned a frightening red. Elijah had worried about other men who looked this way, guys losing at his mom’s casino table. Sometimes when his mom dealt to a man like this, Elijah sat down and played at the table for a few minutes, just to make sure the guy didn’t take his frustration out on his mom. Rob pounded harder on the door. Elijah would have been thankful Holly had escaped, except he knew his feeling that he could read people’s minds was only a delusion.
    “Fuuuuck!” Rob roared, flattening his hand for one last slap on the door. He turned to Shane, who leaned against the wall with his arms folded. “Sligh. You call to her.”
    “Why should I call to her?” Shane asked. “You think your date might be avoiding you because you suggested she was a prostitute? Nah, she’ll come around. Pound on the door some more. She seems to like that.”
    Rob cursed at Shane, and the pounding on the door resumed as Elijah left the house. He glanced down the street. Only the streetlights stared patiently back at him through the still, hot night. No Holly. He knew his MAD caused delusions, but he couldn’t shake the certainty that she was gone.
    He had to be sure. He stepped off the porch and crunched through the gravel to stand beneath the small square of light from the open window. She might still be in the bathroom, hiding from Rob. Or something could have happened to her. She might be unconscious with her shiny brown curls spilled across the tile floor.
    He put both hands inside the window frame and, arms straining, pulled his whole weight up the stucco wall to peer through the tight opening. Now he could see into the bright, empty room, but not through the opaque shower curtain to the inside of the bathtub. The window frame scraped both his shoulders at once. He was too big to fit through, but he had to know. She might be in trouble. She might need him.
    He eased one shoulder through, then the other. He had nothing to brace himself against while he pulled his legs through. How had Holly done this in reverse? Maybe she hadn’t. Maybe she was still in the tub. He wiggled through the window, extending his hands, until he reached the toilet. He managed to break his fall that way. Picking himself up from the floor, he raked back the shower curtain.
    Empty. Nothing but water gushing from the faucet and swirling down the drain.
    He was relieved, and not. Relieved that she was okay, that she had left the house. Horrified that his instinct about her had been right. If he started to believe he could read minds, he was really crazy.
    He turned off the tap. The relative silence was filled up again by Rob’s pounding. Elijah crossed the room to unlock and open the door.
    Rob didn’t look surprised to see Elijah standing there instead of Holly. He looked furious, as if he’d expected Elijah all along.
    This thought stuck in Elijah’s mind as something important, but of course he was no judge while he was going insane again. To cover for himself, he uttered the sort of joke he would have made if he still had all his marbles. “Abracadabra.”
    “Where is she?” Rob shoved past Elijah into the room.
    Shane eyed Elijah, blond eyebrows raised in question.
    Elijah shook his head no: Holly wasn’t inside.
    Shane called to Rob, “Your little magician vanished into thin air.”
    Shane and Elijah jumped out of the way as Rob stormed out of the bathroom and down the hall. His bedroom door slammed.
    Elijah turned to Shane and lowered his voice. “Why do we room with him?”
    “I’ve been