I slipped out onto the deck, shivering in the cold night air as I closed the glass door behind me. I stood there for a second, scratching my head. This was too similar to Holly practicing and how I had walked in on her, but she was asleep and wouldn’t wake up for another half hour—when she needed to get up to go to work.
This is so fucking cool!
I drew a breath and felt the energy inside of me—actually felt it this time. It wasn’t like before, when I knew it was there, but it was completely intangible. Now I felt it bubbling up, bursting outwards. I didn’t want it to get out of control, and it was that simple: I didn’t want it to, so it couldn’t. I grinned and let myself feel a little haughty at my sister’s expense.
Okay, so I’m a bit of a jerk for thinking this, but hey—fuck you, Holly. I can do this, and you can’t. I’m not gonna be blowing up a bus anytime soon.
I snapped my fingers and cupped my hand, the underside instantly aflame. It was interesting. The flames were warm but nowhere near uncomfortably hot. They just kind of tickled.
I let them rise up a bit and drew a few random, nonsensical shapes in the air, amused by the way that, if I moved quickly enough, the fire left streaks in my vision. It was like playing with sparklers as a kid.
I closed my hand suddenly, and the fire went out. I tensed it, and the flames rose from the top of my fist. I let the fire grow around my hand and then focused on making it bigger and brighter until it was so bright, I was worried someone would see. Holly might have been awake—Alex had gone home, and Brent was an extremely heavy sleeper—but it was possible one of the neighbours would look out and notice our yard was more well-lit than usual.
“Flame on,” I whispered. Even I had to wince at just how big of a geek I was for making the Fantastic Four reference, but I couldn’t help it. What I could do was way too similar to one of my favourite superheroes.
I let the flame die down a little and then turned my hand over, cupping it so the flame turned into a small ball of fire hovering just above my palm. I focused on trying to move it away from me. I’d played around with my powers earlier, but I wasn’t sure exactly what I was able to do.
Okay, so I can sort of do that, I thought, as, inch by inch, the tiny fireball drifted away from me. And hell, Holly had managed to get a lot more control over her powers in the past couple days, so there wasn’t any reason I couldn’t, right?
This was…amazing. I wondered how bright I could make it, figuring the easiest way to find out would be to make the flames themselves bigger.
Within seconds, I had almost two-foot-tall flames—instead of the usual two or three inches—balling around my hands. It still looked like I had two fists, but they happened to be made of fire and were about the size of my head. Keeping them that large took a lot of concentration and energy, so I let them shrink again, and when the flames had almost gone out, I focused on containing the fireball between my palms.
I wasn’t sure if it was possible—it definitely didn’t make any sense, but neither did anything else that had happened in the past week or so—but…
Let’s see if I can huck fireballs.
I leaned against the railing of the back porch and looked up at the house. The windows were in the way, but I could aim away from them. I was pretty sure the bricks weren’t flammable or at least were heat-proof. Even if they caught on fire, I should be able to control it.
Mental note: double-check to see if you can put out fire you’re not touching. That would be a very, very useful power.
I threw a fireball at the house. It made a weird squishing noise as it hit and didn’t even leave a mark. A successful test.
Impressed with myself, I breathed in deeply, thinking about the techniques I’d taught Holly a couple days ago.
“Okay, Jesse.” I snapped my fingers, activating the flames again, and this time, I focused on them instead of my hand and tried to make them longer. I watched, heart racing, as they lengthened as if travelling down a wick.
I was basically holding a tube of fire. I can’t believe it’s this easy. How the hell does Holly not have this much control over her powers yet?
“What the fuck?”
I startled and stared at Holly, standing just inside the house. “Oh— You’re…up early.”
“Yeah.” She stepped out into the chilly night air. “I saw flickering lights in the backyard—idiot.”
I smacked my head, and she yelped. It took me a moment to realize why. I’d forgotten my hands were covered in fire. It didn’t really matter, though, since the flames I created didn’t hurt me.
“I kind of forgot I was doing this outside your bedroom window.”
“Yeah, that wasn’t the smartest thing you’ve ever done, dude,” she said through a yawn.
“No, definitely not.”
“So how long have you had your powers? You seem better with them than I am—not that I have to tell you that.” She seemed a little hurt to admit it.
“Crap, did I say that aloud?”
“Yep.”
“Sorry, Hol. It wasn’t supposed to leave my head.”
“But you thought it, and…well, it’s true, I guess.” She shrugged. “There’s absolutely no way I’d be able to do that sort of thing with my electricity.”
She lifted her hand, then clenched it into a fist and folded her arms. “Not that I’m going to be using it again. Ever.”
“Oh, Holly, come on. You know how I feel about that.” I held out my hand, palm up, and let the little ball of flame sit there crackling in the still night. “This is something we can do that no one else can. You said it yourself. If we’ve been given these powers—through biological mutation or by God or aliens from Planet X, whatever—then what’s the point if we don’t use them to make our lives better?”
“To make our lives better?”
“Well, I mean—”
“You want to use this…what, to rob a bank or something?”
“No, you idiot! I want to use it to help people. I want to be a superhero.”
She laughed bitterly. “Really? Because I wanted to be a superhero too, when I was standing right there using my powers to attack that evil, dastardly side of the fence.” She made a few fake martial arts poses. “And I wanted to be a superhero on the bus, when the guy was pointing a gun at the baby. What better superhero moment is there than that?” Her voice was getting louder and louder as the rant went on.
I shushed her. It slipped out when I realized she could wake up the neighbours while talking about her electric superpowers.
“And instead, I blew up the bus.”
I looked up, and she was crying again, which might not have been odd if it had been anyone else, but Holly had stopped crying six years ago, the moment she was told she was the oldest living person in the family. Now, in the span of three days, I’d seen her cry twice, and it was as unnerving the second time as the first.
“And then, superhero that I am—that I was,” she corrected herself, pausing to swallow. “I tried to show off my awesome superpowers and—hey, look! You’re still alive, I guess, but barely. And only because—”
“Because you made a mistake and then you fixed it.”
“How the hell did you manage to make that sound okay in your head, Jesse?” She gave that bitter laugh again. “Obviously, you’re one whole hell of a lot better at controlling your powers than I was.”
“Holly, don’t—” She slid open the glass door and disappeared inside the house. I followed her, and since I was faster than she was, I caught hold of her shoulder and spun her around to face me. Her cheeks were still wet, but she seemed to have completely steeled herself against the flow of tears.
“I know you don’t want to use your powers anymore, but that doesn’t mean they’re evil or that you’ll never be able to control them. If I can do it, so can you.”
“You can’t know that! Maybe it’s like…it’s like an art, or something.”
I raised an eyebrow. “How d’you figure?”
“Well, it’s like when you’re playing the sax. You kind of furrow your brow—this is the only time I’ve seen you with that same expression on your face.”
“Even still, there are people with no musical talent who are amazing musicians, and they get by on simple hard work.”
She shook his head. “Put it this way. The one opportunity I had to act like an actual superhero, I killed a half dozen people. You really think any superhero in any of your comic books has that sort of background?”
“Actually, there are a number of them who have things like that in their backstories. It makes them more like normal human beings.” I realized, a couple words from the end of the sentence, that Holly was trying not to laugh. Well, at least it broke that tension. “Okay, that was a bit nerdy, even for me.”
“Yeah, I was thinking the same thing.”
“You didn’t hear me earlier, playing with my fire powers,” I said, blushing and lighting the flames on my hands to cover up my embarrassment.
“I don’t want to know,” Holly said.
“Probably not.” For a second, we were just two siblings, as normal as we ever were. Then she looked down at my hands.
“I don’t think you should use them, but it’s up to you, dude.” She shook his head and walked towards the kitchen. “I need to make food and then head off to work.”
“And I should probably go to bed, eh?”
“Yeah.” She paused and turned back. “Tell me something.”
“Okay?”
“Why can…” She stopped, breathed deeply, and let it out. She looked up, and I lit my hand again so I could see her face properly. “Why can you use them and control them, and I…I can’t? Why can you be a superhero, and I’m only—”
“A sidekick?”
She jerked backwards, blinking. “Dude, I am so not your sidekick.”
“You make a better sidekick than a supervillain. Dude.” I held up my hand and rolled my eyes, hoping she was able to see the gesture.
“But why?”
“You’ll get there. This is, I guess, the silver lining of my anger management classes.”
She looked at me for a moment, like she was studying my face, trying to figure out how I could do what I did. I clenched my fist, and the flames went out. “Anyway,” I said, “neither of us should be wasting time standing around here, should we?”
“Probably not.”
I headed for the stairs, putting my hand on her shoulder as I passed by. “Have a good day at work, okay?”
She nodded and offered a small smile. “I’ll do my best.”