Chapter Three

Even after discussing it for the whole week – and avoiding physically seeing Cecilia at school, and having Axel do the texting to pick a meeting time because I was too nervous – we still hadn’t come up with a game plan for today. I’m standing in the middle of the mall next to the fountain, Bluetooth earpiece in place and covered by the beanie. It’s a good thing it turned out to be really cold today.

“I’m not sure I’m ready for this.” I say aloud. Axel’s voice responds to me,

“It’s okay, I’ll have you in view at all times and I’ll be sure to give you answers and ice breakers when you need them. I got your back.” Somehow I’m still not filled with confidence. I look up and see her approach me, the outfit, though completely normal, took me by surprise. I’d never seen her wearing red skinny jeans before, the black thigh highs and baggy jumper really pulled the look together – thankfully she was also wearing a red beanie, which meant I could probably keep mine on too. She looks around for a moment before noticing me, and timidly walks toward me, clutching her over-the-shoulder bag tightly.

“H-Hi.” She says in that miraculously quiet voice. I attempt to respond but nothing comes out,

“Just tell her she looks nice.” I hear the sound of what could have been an angel at the time.

“You look,” I choke, “, really nice today.” Her blank expression grows a smile,

“So, what shall we do?”

“Um, my sister said there was a new book place open.”

“A bookstore?” Wait, what word did I use?

“Oh, yeah, that. Sorry.”

“Nervous?” She asks.

“Busted!” I hear him chuckle.

“A-A little.” I respond, with not much choice other than the truth. She giggles, a sound I’m not sure I’ve ever heard her make before.

“Me too.” She latches on to my arm, “Lead the way.” She smiles. I’m not sure why but her touching me was the first moment I felt comfortable. Even though I knew Axel was following close behind us, she ended up telling me a lot about her while walking through the bookstore, and even recommended a few books for me. I learnt she has a sister who is two years older than us at nineteen, they live with their father – her mother passed away about five years ago, but they don’t talk about it that much. Going through a pet store I found out that she has a fondness for every creature no matter what it is, I was quite impressed that she actually wanted to hold the snake that was being displayed.

“This is going well,” Axel’s voice pops up again, “, maybe suggest looking for a dress now.” It’s not something I was looking forward to persay. I was just having fun, I completely forgot there was someone in my ear whispering second intentions.

“So,” I say, now feeling less timid talking to her, “, do you have a dress for the dance? You haven’t been before, right?” She furrows her brow while she thinks,

“No, I don’t have one.”

“We could go look for one now if you like.” She smiles at me and nods, grabbing onto my arm again as we walk towards other shops. She suddenly stops outside one of the electrical stores where the televisions in the window are showcasing the most recent news. Since they were silent, I could only tell what was happening based on the headline. ‘Serial killer who has eluded police strikes again.’ – only this time, based on the live feed – it was in this town. “Um,” I begin, “, I heard he was killing people that are one of the Abnormals. What do you think of them?” I ask, curious more than ever by her answer.

“Well,” she sighs, “, is having asthma abnormal?”

I look at her curiously, “No?”

“Then why are these people Abnormal? They can’t control if they do or don’t have these powers. Just like someone with asthma. It’s just unfair.” I smile at her for that one, she’s completely right.

“Come on, let’s go look for that dress.”

I’m not very good at shopping, and by the seems of it neither was she. We both got scared by the woman who approached us in the shop asking if we needed help – she was a very pushy saleswoman.

I end up walking her home, given that she was only a few blocks from myself, it worked out really well. Her street is a little more upmarket than mine despite being really close. A lot of two-story décor homes with white and cream finishings. Rather posh. Eventually we stop at one of the homes,

“This is me.” She says. Turning towards her I get a quick glimpse of Axel behind us, keeping out of her sight. “Um, you could come in if you like?” The idea blew my mind and I lost all ability to speak.

“Yes! Say yes!” His voice almost echoed

“Oh-um, that’s okay, I don’t want to intrude.” I end up responding with.

“It wouldn’t be an intrusion, are you sure?”

“Positive.” My stomach clenches, feeling like I made the wrong decision, but I stick to it anyway. She remains standing nearby, despite being at her house.

“Okay, well, I’ll see you at school.” She smiles and takes a step closer towards me, up on her tiptoes she kisses my cheek – which scared the hell out of me because I wasn’t prepared for anything remotely close to that, so I’m almost glad it wasn’t…the other thing. When she pulled back I noticed how red in the face she was, so I guess she wasn’t ready for that either. Nervously playing with her hair she says goodbye again and goes into the house.

What. Just. Happened. I run over to where Axel was hiding, and he comes out from behind a fence.

“Dude, you should have totally gone for it. She’s like, heaps into you.” He exclaims, overly excited.

“I honestly wasn’t ready for that.” I sigh, not sure how dumb I really am.

“That’s okay. We can find out some other time.”

“I really prefer not to be doing this kind of recon on her. If she’s into me and we end up becoming a thing, surely I’ll find out eventually right?” He contemplates that thought for a moment.

“Yeah, makes sense.” He shrugs it off, and for a moment he looked normal but then his face drops. “Saw the news, too. If that guy is here, we should find him.”

The idea took me by complete surprise, “What?”

“If there is someone hunting us, we should hunt him instead.”

“I understand the thought behind this but we have no idea how to search for someone or what to do when we find him.” Axel crosses his arms for a moment, contemplating.

“I think we should find out who he is, so that we can at least point the authorities in the right direction. What if he finds us?”

“What if while trying to find him, the government finds us and locks us away for experimentation purposes?” He rolls his eyes, as if I was being less ridiculous than him. Technically our existence was still illegal. We start walking off towards our street when a campervan rushes down the street, honking its horn and pulling up to the curb where Cecilia lives. Keeping our distance, I see Cecilia and another woman, who I only assume is her sister rush out the door. The sister wasn’t much taller than Cecilia, had similar length hair only red, and wore a rather fancy going-out-to-town type black dress. I couldn’t hear anything, until a man and woman came out of the campervan and everyone embraced each other with family-type hugs. Out of town relatives was my first guess. We were too far to make out any particular features so we keep walking back home.

It appears my Sunday was pre-planned for me as well. At the crack of dawn, I awake to Axel shaking me to get out of bed in a hurry.

“How’d you get in my room?” I grudgingly ask, not fully awake yet but knowing he doesn’t have a key to the house.

“Really? I can go anywhere I want, no doorknob required.”

Axel ended up taking me to his hideaway, insistent that there was a big day ahead of us, although I’m still not sure why I had to wake up so early on a Sunday morning. In truth, I was up most of the night struggling to get to sleep. The thought of Cecilia kept me distracted as I replayed scenes in my head over and over…

Standing in the shed I can see that he’s been busy with a new project, not researching people, but researching powers?

“Okay,” he starts, “, so I’ve been googling a whole bunch of powers which could relate to the sun. So I’ve gone with things like heat rays, plasma balls – that kind of stuff. Today, we’re going to see if we can figure it out.”

I groan and sit on a chair I’d only just realized existed, “I got up early for this? I’ll find out eventually, why rush it?”

“If the out of town dude with a vendetta against all Abnormals really is here – I don’t want to be face to face with him and have no method of escape.” He did have a point, so I nodded and let him continue. “We can test out possible scenarios where you feel a need to use your powers. I noticed that my mark came when I did something abnormal for my personality, and to trigger its use I have to know how to feel that emotion at will without something happening – so yours should be the same.” It sort of made sense, but by no means was I understanding anything. He then proceeds to discuss the possible powers I could have, drastically he went as far to say and I could turn night to day. For some time, he suggested ways where I could put myself in danger and force myself to be brave to trigger something. After about an hour of his suggestions, rants and stories I was getting extremely tired, I could just do with a bowl of cereal and everything would be fine.

Even in my groggy, half-asleep state I know how to eat cereal, so I take the spoon in my hand and attempt to put it…I look down and notice that I’m not holding a bowl, there’s no cereal, just a spoon in my hand.

“Where did that come from?” Axel asks, noticing my confused expression,

“I’m not sure.”

“Were you holding it before?”

“No, I’m sure I wasn’t. To be honest I thought I was about to eat something though.” He puzzled brows crease and I wonder what he’s thinking – for the first time in this hour I’m finally waking up.

“What if,” he pauses, “, you can conjure things with your mind?” He concludes,

“That seems a bit odd, I wanted food and I got a spoon.” I chuckle, clearly not taking this very seriously.

“I’m serious, I’m thinking the sun could just represent a bright mind, and bright minds have mind powers – so what if you can make things you want, appear?” It was an interesting concept, and I had to admit, I was very intrigued by it.

“How do we test that?”

“Easy, you have a spoon, still hungry?” He points at the spoon then crosses his arms, as if waiting for something to happen. I sigh, then attempt to concentrate on my hand. For a few moments nothing happens, but then I’m starting to see an image in my mind. It’s not physically in my hand, but I’m starting to see a bowl of cereal. In my head I told myself I wanted a different kind of breakfast food. I’m starting to see bacon and eggs in my head, as I blink I realize my hand is burning, and I drop a very hot plate of sizzling bacon and fried eggs.  I stand in a rush – clutching my hands together to defuse the burning sensation. Axel grabs his messy hair with both hands. “I can’t believe it.” He exclaims, then smiles, “You can make stuff appear with your mind!”

“I’ve never seen you this excited before.” I had to admit, my excitement wasn’t well hidden either.

“We need to test this out more. You need to control it better.”

“How do you propose we do this?” I ask, voice full of skepticism.

“Wouldn’t you like to surprise Cecilia with something on Monday? What if you think of something to conjure and give to her?”

“Wait.” I say. I have heard previously that with every action, there’s a re-action, meaning, “What if the things I conjure aren’t that real or they disappear?” Axel bends down and investigates the now smashed plate of eggs and bacon.

“I don’t know, feels pretty real to me.”

“Have you ever had backlash from the use of your powers?”

He looks at me like I just spoke French, “Um, never? I feel they are given to us for a reason, so I’m using mine how and when I want.” It was brave of him to say something like that, but what repercussions were destined to follow us? Surely this can’t be it. We are given supernatural abilities to do whatever we like with? I consider this and remember there is something that could stop all this: The government who wish to use us for unknown experiments, and the serial killer that just rather we all didn’t exist and is trying to make sure we don’t.

“Has anyone ever found you in this shed before or came close?

“Nope, never, it’s a shed inside a deep ditch, why?”

“I’d rather practice where I can see better.” I smirk.