I hung up the phone on the cradle. I had called in sick for the day, though I still planned on heading in after lunch; I’d make up my French test the next day during lunch or something. The entire phone call, I was standing there turning the flame in my hand on, then off. On, then off. I flipped open my phone and typed a text message to Brent.
Jesse: Something weird came up, I’ll tell you later. Missing the morning.
I stood there, leaning against the kitchen counter, for about five minutes, flicking my hand on and off, waiting for some sort of response from Brent. My pocket buzzed, and I almost reached into it with my hand aflame before I realized and put it out with a small wave, halfway to my pocket.
Brent: K… You okay?
Jesse: Yeah, I’m okay. I’ll tell you later.
I left my phone on the counter and went up to my room. I wasn’t sure what would happen if I let myself be consumed by the flames, since they didn’t burn me at all. I pulled off my shirt, and let the flames grow up my arm and over my chest. It was definitely warm, and looking in the full-length mirror, it looked pretty interesting.
There was no burning sensation at all, almost like the flames were tickling me, licking upwards from wherever I was letting them get to—they were going from the bottom up—but they only reached a few inches in height, so I still looked humanoid even though my face was covered in flame. I could sort of manipulate the flames, too, so I wasn’t really blocked, sight-wise, most of the time.
That’s something to work on, I thought, and then stopped myself. Okay, is that something to work on? Should I be working on these powers?
Fire seemed a lot more dangerous than electricity—and like it could much more easily get out of hand. It also worried me that, for whatever reason, I had the ability to raze most of a town if I wanted to…probably.
I guess I do need to work on this. If I had that sort of power, I needed to learn to control it. The question was how to do that safely.