Excerpt 

“Sorry, it’s the smallest I’ve got.” This statement came from the mouth of Seth Bracken.

“The price is six ninety-two,” said the shop clerk. “Your five is hardly enough.”

“Five? You better look a little closer.”

The clerk glanced at the bill again. His eyes grew wide and apologetic. “I’m sorry. I must be blind today.” He rang up the amount tendered and counted out Seth’s change from the fifty. He then placed the large bill under the change holder in the drawer of the register.

Seth picked up the bag and thanked the clerk before leaving.

“Man, dude. What’s with the nice routine?” Ace asked once they were out of earshot.

“I didn’t want to burn this bridge. We may want to return sometime.”

“We ain’t nowheres near our turf, Seth.”

“That’s the whole idea. By the end of his shift, he won’t remember us. And when he pulls that fiver out, we’ll be farthest from his mind. We’ve got the chips, now we grab the booze.”

“Where we stoppin’ for that?”

“We’ll get it from our neck of the woods and use the change we got from the shop we just left.”

“Ain’t no one gonna be the wiser.”

“Exactly. And we support our local establishments.”

“Man, ya sure do talk proper like.”

“That’s what happens when you grow up in the burbs.”

Since moving to this part of New York City a year ago, Seth had slid right in with the local youth organization. That was his term for it. The rest of the world would call it a gang. In an extremely short period of time, he was able to go from greenhorn peon to the self-titled Minister of Finance. In other words, he held the purse strings for the leader. His position didn’t require stealing, protection money, or even drug dealing. Those activities were the responsibility of others. Seth had the ability to use his mind. He’d found early in life that he had a gift. He was able to sense things. He knew what those around him thought. Not physically, as the word implied, but he could tell with ninety-eight percent accuracy what a person was about to do, based on the situation. But his talents didn’t stop there. He hadn’t really tried to see where they ended once he found he could temporarily alter a person’s perception of reality. It was a quick way to make a buck without the slightest possibility of getting caught. That was how the store clerk mistook a five dollar bill for a fifty. Anything beyond that ability didn’t seem important. He was able to get what he wanted. That was all he cared about.