No, I couldn’t lose control. I thought of other things, of home. School, friends, music…

Music! Yes, music! I played a song in my head, one that I’d heard on the radio.

Focusing all of my concentration on the song, I started singing and humming parts of it aloud. Somewhere faraway, Karon was saying something to me, but didn’t listen attention to any of it.

It probably looked a little funny, me lying there humming, him trying to talk to me. After only a minute or two of it, I stopped.

I heard scrawling on a notebook, and he said, “Interesting. You really are interesting, Regan.â€?

He said this with a sort of astonishment, as if by me singing, I’d prevented something previously… unpreventable.

He’d had to have been planning this… had to have known I would have reacted the way I did.

Not many people could control their thoughts unless something were at stake, and even then, many people couldn’t. Nothing was at stake for them. Their minds were a refuge, a retreat.

I had no safe refuge.