Going Dark

by Robison Wells

  “Then would you like to show the class how to factor this polynomial?”

  My stomach fell. I wanted to get out of that room—to be anywhere besides standing at the board. I still felt like I was burning up, sweat dripping down my back and plastering my hair to the sides of my face. The last thing I wanted was attention.

  “Don’t worry,” he said. “This is all catch-up from last year.” He turned my notebook and inspected it. “And it looks like you’ve been doing math, even if you haven’t been following along.”

  He handed me a green dry-erase marker and pointed to the whiteboard.

  An equation was written in red.

  x2-2x-15

  Factoring. I knew how to do this. I’d done it a hundred times last year. Probably more than that.

  I held the green marker in my hand tightly and pressed its tip to the board.

  Why hadn’t I been paying attention?

  I drew two pairs of parentheses. That was how you always started.

  A drop of sweat broke free from the back of my neck and dribbled down my spine.

  Did factoring even matter? Papa didn’t factor at his job; I was sure of it. Celia didn’t have to factor to take tickets at the RealityFlux show at the Luxor.

  Focus. I needed to start with the fifteen.

  I wiped the side of my face. The marker felt wet and slippery in my hand.

  Fifteen was divisible by what? One and fifteen.

  I should just hand Mr. Vargas this marker and go back to my seat, or leave. Go home. Go to my aunt’s house. Go to the fire department and tell them what actually happened at the house. Go to a doctor and ask how my hand could have been in the middle of a fire—holding a piece of burning wood—and not get a single blister.

  “We’re waiting, Lucretia,” Mr. Vargas said.

  Fifteen is divisible by what? Three and five.

  I felt a drip on my arm, and for a moment it stung. I looked at my hand.

  The marker was melting, dripping plastic over my thumb and down my forearm.

  I shrieked and dropped it.

  And then it felt like I was flying forward, like all the weight of my body was hurtling through my arm and hand and out of my fingers, like a stopper had just been pulled from a drain. Like the gates at a horse race had snapped open, releasing the tensed energy of a dozen raging thoroughbreds. A blast of light burst right in front of me, arcing from my hand and across the wall.

  I fell backward into the desks, pain bouncing through my still-healing head as I hit the floor. There were screams all around me and I struggled to stand.

  Smoke was billowing up to the ceiling, and a moment later the fire alarm sounded.

  I put my hands over my ears and felt cold sweat on my face. Everyone around me was screaming and running.

  The whiteboard was split in two, charred black in a jagged curve. The left side of the board sagged, now held in place by only a single screw, and then it finally gave way and clattered to the floor.

  The brick behind it was cracked, exactly where the board had been cut.

  Someone grabbed my arm, and I turned to see Mr. Vargas pulling me up from the carpet.

  “Get out,” he shouted, and then left me to help another kid.

  Instead of running, I stood and stared at the devastation—the papers floating through the air, the crumbling brick clattering down from the black scar on the wall.

  “Lucretia Torreón,” Mr. Vargas shouted. “Evacuate. Just like a fire drill. Are you hurt?”

  I started to walk toward the door, and I looked down at my hand. Melted plastic had dripped and wrapped around my forearm, and it had hardened into a latticework that I quickly tore away. The plastic was cool now, and brittle, and it flecked off into bits. There was no burn underneath it, no blister or rash.

  I stepped into the hallway, where the usual chaos of a fire alarm was underway. Students were filing out of the building, talking and spreading rumors about the explosion. I heard someone say it was a fire, and I heard someone else say it was in one of the chemistry rooms.

  I didn’t see any of my friends—this school was so much bigger than my last one—and I sat down in the sparse shade of a tree.

  What had just happened? It wasn’t like the boulder—there had been no blast of heat then. And it wasn’t like the house—that had been a small fire in the palm of my hand. But it was all coming from me. Whatever it was, I had done it. There was no question anymore.

  SIX

  I DIDN’T GO HOME THAT afternoon, even though the school closed early.

  The fire department came, but I didn’t have to give a statement. There had been an adult in the room, and that was more important than the fifteen-year-old who was standing at the board. A paramedic checked on me, and aside from telling me that I had a low fever—99.5—she said I appeared to be fine.

  I was glad. I didn’t want to go back to the hospital. I wanted to go out to the rocks behind my aunt’s house. I hurried to the bus stop, joining a huge group of kids all heading home.

  “Are you okay?”

  I looked up to see Brittany, a girl I knew from middle school. She had been in my math class, and had seen it all happen.

  “What was that in there?” she asked.

  “I don’t know,” I said, shaking my head. Did she suspect me?

  “They’re saying it was an electrical fire,” Brittany said.

  “Who is?” I asked, finally meeting her eyes.

  She shrugged. “Just kids. I swear, it nearly blinded me. I don’t know how you’re not hurt.”

  I held out my hands, showing the undamaged skin. “I guess I was lucky.”

  “At least we got to skip math, right?” she said with a smile.

  I nodded, though I couldn’t get excited about anything. I was worried—terrified. I’d burned down my house, ruined my family’s finances, and now I was destroying the school. There was nowhere I could go anymore.

  I was starting to sweat again.

  The bus let me off two blocks from my aunt’s house, but I didn’t bother stopping there. I hiked into the desert, up a broad canyon on Sunrise Mountain. I didn’t have any water with me, and I knew that was stupid. It had to be over 100 degrees outside. I should have been lying down in an air-conditioned house.

  None of this made any sense. It was like something from a movie—only in movies they never showed the nausea or the fever or the ruined life.

  When I was out of sight of the last house in the subdivision, around a bend in the dry canyon, I slipped my backpack off and rummaged through it. There wasn’t much in there, but at the bottom I found a small bottle of lotion.

  I let the backpack fall and took a few steps from it, the lotion grasped firmly in my right hand.

  Now what?

  I held the bottle in my fist, the same way I held the dry-erase marker. I laid it flat on my palm.

  Nothing was happening.

  Was I doing something wrong?

  Or was there nothing to do wrong? Was I just crazy? Had what happened at school been a fluke? Had all of it been bizarre coincidence? A frayed lamp and an electrical fire at the school made so much more sense than . . . than whatever I was trying here. I felt my face flush. I was losing my mind.

  But what about the burns? I should have been burned back at the house—my hand had been engulfed in flame. And today a marker had melted in my fingers. I should have second- and third-degree burns all over my palm and down my arm, where the plastic had dripped.

  And what about the broken rock?

  That was completely different. There had been no heat, no fire. It was just a pop and a crack. I mean, it was loud—one of the loudest things I’d ever heard—but it didn’t match the other events.

  I was crazy. Crazy Krezi thought that she was making things burn and melt and break. She was living in a world of make-believe like a little kid.

  Ugh. I clutched my hand around the lotion and closed my eyes in tired disgust.

  I wanted to be in the shade, to hide myself un
der a rock and catch my breath, but I didn’t move. One part of my brain was telling me to calm down, while the other part wanted me to get upset. So far, I hadn’t done anything—anything weird—when I was calm and my fever was low. It was only when I was sick and panicked.

  Sick and panicked.

  I focused on the aching in my head, on the heat burning through my veins.

  I shook my head, feeling the sharp needles of pain in my broken nose and my cracked skull. I felt dizzy at the movement. Dizzy and angry and sweaty.

  There was a sudden swelling—almost too fast to notice—and I opened my eyes just in time to see the bottle explode, spraying lotion into the air.

  I didn’t pay any attention to the mess of steaming-hot droplets falling to the ground around me. The soft plastic was in my fist, burning in a small ball of flame, the bottle turning brown and then black, popping and bubbling on my palm.

  I reached out a tentative finger from my left hand and poked the melting goo, ready to recoil in pain.

  It was completely cool. I drew a long piece of plastic away, like cheese on a hot pizza.

  I was touching fire. I was completely unhurt. This wasn’t a concussion or a fever dream. This was real.

  No. It was unreal. It shouldn’t be happening.

  I balled my fist, mashing the hot plastic together, and then I threw the mess at a rock, where it splattered in a small, flaming glob.

  I checked my hands. Not a single blister. Not even red.

  Yanking my backpack up from the ground, I searched for something else I could use, but there were only textbooks. We already had plenty of money problems without needing to replace those.

  I grabbed a rock from the ground—an oblong, rough piece of sandstone. I couldn’t light this on fire, but what would happen if I held it in my hand, like the lotion?

  At first, it remained completely intact. Just a dirty hunk of stone. I put both hands on it, holding it like one of my brother’s video-game controllers.

  I tried to focus. I tried to clear my mind of everything but that piece of rock—its bumps and contours and dusty surface. I put my mind inside the stone, imagining I was looking at it from the inside out.

  Nothing happened.

  I dropped it on the ground, wiped sweat from my forehead, and then sat in the shade next to my backpack, exhausted.

  With one final, angry thought, I whipped my hand out toward the rock, like Spider-Man shooting a web.

  And the rock disappeared in a cloud of dirt and pebbles.

  I was too stunned to cover my face as the shower of dust fell over me. I had just . . . shot a rock?

  I looked for something else, and spotted another rock, about the same size.

  I flicked out my arm like a whip, but instead of just hitting the rock I blew a line through the dry, caked ground. As the dust settled I could see the path of destruction, a three-inch-wide channel in the earth that led to the spot where the rock had been moments before.

  I fired again, this time aiming two fingers like the barrel of a gun before I—what? Before I released energy? Before I pushed with my mind? Before I let go? It felt like something was leaving my body—something was building up inside me and being released. But what was it?

  I spent an hour in the canyon before I ran out of power. I could tell it was going—I was sweating more, cool shivers creeping over me.

  But I’d done it. I’d figured out how to do . . . it.

  Whatever it was.

  The next morning I missed the bus on purpose and walked to Our Lady of Perpetual Peace Church. I opened the door quietly, stepping into the cool, dark interior of the adobe building. The chapel was empty, and I made my way to the front. I was sweating down my back as I stopped in front of the array of votive candles. I put fifty cents in the box, whispering a prayer to Saint Godebertha.

  A fire had been sweeping through her town, ravaging everything in its path, and Godebertha, a nun, had stepped in front of the flames, made the sign of the cross, and the inferno was extinguished.

  I reached into one of the glass cups that held a candle, and I touched the wick between my thumb and forefinger.

  A flame flickered to life.

  SEVEN

  IT WAS NEARLY TWO IN the morning when Celia came home. Even in the dark apartment she looked tired, her silhouette hunched and slow.

  “Hey,” I said, my voice barely a whisper.

  She turned. “Why are you up?”

  “Can we talk for a minute?”

  She opened the closet and pulled off her polo shirt from the Luxor.

  “Sure,” she said. “What’s up?”

  “Don’t get undressed,” I said, and climbed out from under my blanket. I was still in my T-shirt and shorts. “Let’s go outside.”

  There was a pause. “Do you realize how late it is?”

  “I know you’re tired,” I said. “I just need to show you something.”

  Slowly she put her shirt back on. “This had better be important.”

  I led her out of the apartment, past my parents’ room, where Papa was snoring loudly, past the couch in the living room, where one of my brothers was sleeping. It was still hot outside, and I knew my fever was back. It never stayed away long.

  Celia closed the door behind her and crossed her arms. “What is this about?”

  I’d thought of about a million ways to try to explain this. I could beg her to take me to a doctor. I could tell her I was a freak show and she should be afraid of me. I could confess to burning down the house. But in my head all of those explanations ended with me locked up in a hospital, and my family faced with medical bills on top of mortgage bills. Bankruptcy. My fault, all of it.

  “You know how we need money? Our family, I mean?”

  She didn’t say anything. Her ponytail was coming undone, and her eyelids were drooping.

  “I think I’ve found a way to get some,” I said. “But I’m going to need your help.”

  Even in the dark I could see her roll her eyes. “Krezi, let’s go to bed.”

  “No,” I said, and started walking toward the corner of the building. “Let me explain.”

  “You’re fifteen,” she said. “I don’t think they’ll even let you work at McDonald’s.”

  I turned the corner and stepped into the center courtyard of the apartment complex. There wasn’t much there—a row of trees, a playground, a fenced-in pool. My heart was pounding out of my chest and sweat was dripping down my temples.

  As Celia came up behind me I retrieved a handful of items I’d stashed in the dry grass at the base of a tree. She frowned as I gave them to her.

  “Look at these,” I said.

  “You brought me out here to show me garbage?” she said, holding up a dusty beer bottle with two fingers.

  “Just look at them.”

  She rolled her eyes. “Oh, come on, Krezi. Please don’t tell me you’re going to do a magic trick. I get enough of that at work—”

  On her last word she froze, her mouth still hanging slightly open.

  “No,” she snapped. “No way. You think that you can do a magic trick and you want me to get you a job at RealityFlux.”

  “Will you just look at the stuff?” I pleaded.

  She glowered at me, and then turned her gaze down at the handful of garbage. An empty bottle, a paper Pollos Hermanos bag, and a plastic ballpoint pen.

  “They all look normal,” she said, a hard edge to her voice.

  “Thank you.” I took them from her and set each one on the short cement curb surrounding the playground.

  “You’d better make fireworks, Krezi, because I’m way too tired for this.”

  I reached out my hand toward the paper bag.

  It fell over.

  “Oh, please,” Celia said, and turned around.

  I grabbed her arm. “That was just the wind. Watch this.”

  It was easier now that I knew what I was doing. I’d been in the canyon all afternoon again, until my mouth was so dry and my face so hot that
I knew I was getting heatstroke. But after a quick dinner and a cold shower I’d gone out into the alley and kept at it until the sun went down.

  I counted down in my mind, and then pushed—like I was drawing every ounce of energy out of my body and forcing it through my shoulder, my bicep, my forearm; and as it moved farther along my arm it gained in strength, in intensity.

  There was a flash and the bag—the bag that was fifteen feet away—blazed into flame.

  “Speaking of fireworks,” Celia said. I knew that the RealityFlux show lit things on fire. She’d probably seen exactly that kind of thing from the aisles of the theater a hundred times.

  “Just watch.”

  I pointed at the bottle, focused, felt the surge building up in me, held it in until I couldn’t hold it anymore, and let loose. The bottle shattered in a burst of light, exploding into a thousand grains of brown glass.

  I waited for Celia to say something, but she didn’t. I could hear her behind me—heard the sharp intake of breath as she gasped at the explosion—but she didn’t say a word.

  Maybe she was amazed. Maybe she was scared. Maybe she was repulsed, wondering what I’d become.

  No—she still thought these were tricks. She was looking for the answer—an accomplice in the bushes with a BB gun or a slingshot. Celia saw magic every day, and she knew it was fake.

  But this wasn’t.

  Without turning back to her I concentrated on the pen. I was trying to show her, trying to convince her I could do different things. I didn’t launch it, or break it, or light it on fire.

  I melted it.

  It took a minute, and I wasn’t sure that Celia was watching—all I knew was that she hadn’t moved—but soon the white plastic flattened onto the cement. A moment later a splotch of dark ink appeared in the white goo, forming a little oval puddle.

  “What the hell are you doing, Krezi?”

  Her question shifted my concentration, and my careful melting turned into direct heat—the puddle flickered into a fire that quickly blackened and charred what was left of the pen.

  “I want a job at RealityFlux,” I said, turning back to her and letting the plastic burn out.