by A. E. Clarke
“What are you doing?”
One, two, three four, five; hold, two, three—
“Holly?”
—four, five; out, two, three, four—
“Hello?”
—five. “I’m trying to calm down.” Not that it worked very well.
“Where’d you pick that up?”
“Jesse.”
“Oh, right.”
“Anyway. You don’t need to hide that you have female friends from me, Alex. I love you, and I trust you.” I do. Honestly. Sort of. Which is why I’m going to tell you about my powers.
“So how are you feeling, anyway? I texted you earlier, but you never responded.”
I’m going to tell him.
“I’m fine. Nothing really remarkable.” It sounded like something Jesse would say, not me. And hell, even then, he would probably be lying.
Tell him, you idiot!
“‘Nothing remarkable’? Why does that sound like you’re hiding something from me?”
“I…I don’t know. I’m not.”
Then why aren’t you telling him?
“Are you sure, Holly?”
Don’t you trust him?
“Look, I’m sorry for jumping on you, but you’re trying to figure out what I’m not telling you when I’m not not telling you anything.”
I killed my brother.
“Come again?”
And blew up a bus. “I’m not keeping anything from you, babe, I promise.” And killed a half dozen other people.
“Okay, then, hon. I…I hope you don’t ever feel like you need to hide something from me, okay?”
I raised my eyebrow. “Why do you say that?”
“Well, because…you really shouldn’t ever feel like you have to.”
“I know that, but why do you feel the need to tell me?”
“Because I do, okay?” He was starting to sound agitated again, and his breath was catching.
Okay, time to calm him down. That’s probably not the best way to look at things, is it? “I’m going to make dinner, okay? Call me when Lily’s gone home?”
“She, uh, might be staying a little late. We’re studying for an exam next week.”
“Oh. Okay, well, text me to see if I’m up first, then, I guess.”
“Okay. Love you!”
“Love you too.” With that—not nearly our normal extended goodbye—he hung up the phone.
I sighed.
“Okay, that didn’t go as planned. At all.”
Chapter Twenty-Four: Jesse
My phone woke me at seven in the morning—almost an hour before I normally got up for school. It was the same sound I used for my alarm, so it took a second for me to realize someone was calling me.
“Hello,” I mumbled into the phone, not having thought to look at the caller ID before hitting “accept.”
“Jesse.” Brent. My mind immediately cleared, and my heart started racing; I could feel the gears turning properly in my head.
“What’s wrong?”
“I…I fucked up a bit.”
“How so?”
“Well…you know how you didn’t name your video anything more than video zero-zero-one?”
I yawned. “Uh-huh.” I hadn’t changed the default name the camera gave it, figuring it didn’t matter what it was called as I was only sharing it with Brent.
“Well, that was what the video I was uploading to YouTube for my presentation this morning was called. So…I uploaded the wrong one.”
I sat up. “Say that again?”
“I uploaded—”
“The video of Holly is on YouTube?”
“I swear that I didn’t mean to upload it.”
“Can you take it down?”
“That’s the thing…it would look really weird if I took it down.”
“To who? Who follows your channel?”
“I…I set it to post to a couple places when it uploaded, so my group would receive the link right away.”
I let my head fall back against the headboard. “Well, fuck! Has anyone seen it yet?”
“There’ve been forty-one views, last I checked, and ten comments.”
“Holy hell, that’s a lot.”
“Yeah, tell me about it.” He sounded a lot more worried than I was.
“What did the comments say?” I stepped out of bed, pulling at my boxers so that they’d stop clinging to me, and got dressed while we talked.
“Well, see, that’s the good news.”
“Oh?” I sat at my computer, which was pretty much always on, so I just needed to open up a browser and find the link.
“Everyone just kind of assumed I’d uploaded the wrong video, and…well, you know how I’ve been working on CGI…?”
“You’re kidding.” I laughed, running a hand through my hair. “No offence, babe. You’re good at making CGI, but you’re nowhere near that good.”
“Apparently people think I am. The comments are pretty much divided between ‘this is stolen from somewhere’ and ‘this is amazing, good job.’”
“Well, then…” I thought I needed to tell Holly. What the hell was I going to say? How the fuck could you not make sure that it was the right video before you uploaded it, dude?
“I hit the file with the name of my video! I figured that would be enough!”
“Am I speaking what I’m thinking again?”
“Glad to hear you think so highly of me.”
“No, I—” I sighed. “I just woke up, okay?”
“Yeah, well—”
“No, seriously, it’s okay. I’m exasperated because I can’t really do anything about it.”
“I’m sorry.” He choked off the last two words, and I blinked at the phone. What was with everyone crying at me lately? “What are you doing after school, babe?”
“I…I dunno, I didn’t really have any plans. Why? You want to hang out?”
“Can I stay the night?”
I grinned. If he was asking, he’d almost definitely already cleared it with his parents. School nights were not common for us to spend together.
“Yeah, of course. Holly won’t care. I assume.”
“I figured we probably wouldn’t need to make sure she was staying at Alex’s anymore.”
I snickered. “Nah, probably not. I’ll clear it with her anyway. It’s an English day, right?”
“Yeah. Why?”
“Just checking.” I shoved a binder into my backpack. I still needed to find my French textbooks—I was pretty sure I had a test I hadn’t yet studied for. “Trying to pack for my day.”
“Well, I need to leave soon. My group is getting together before school to prepare for our presentation, and we’re going to need to figure out what to do with my video if it’s not on YouTube.”
“You can’t just play it from a computer? Use the flash drive I gave you last week.”
“Oh, yeah! Thanks, babe, you just saved my ass.”
“Hey, I like your ass. No reason for me not to save it.”
“Pervert.”
“You love it.”
“I’m gonna go.” I could barely understand him through his laughter.
“Okay. Love you, hon.”
“Love you, too.” I pulled the phone from my ear. Okay, so that didn’t go ideally, but it could have gone much, much worse. Now I needed to convince Holly of the same thing.
I walked downstairs to make my coffee and breakfast but had to stop at the foot of the stairs, clutching my stomach, as I had a sudden bout of nausea.
“Ah, hell. I don’t want to stay home from school today.” I gritted my teeth and continued towards the kitchen. Something definitely felt kind of off, but I couldn’t tell what it was.
Maybe staying home from school might be a good idea after all. I gave the coffee maker a glare as if it were to blame for my sickness. Hell, for all I knew, my caffeine intake was the problem.
I reached out and flipped the heater element on; Holly had already made and gulped down half a pot before she le
ft for work a couple hours earlier. I waited a minute, then poured my coffee into a mug. I took a sip and nearly spit it out again. The coffee was lukewarm.
“Well, fuck.” I was having a hard time keeping my emotions in check, which was doubly strange considering the same thing happened all the time, to no real consequence beyond having to heat my coffee in the microwave.
Come on, Jesse.
I closed my eyes and tried to breathe deeply. While I could control my breathing—and to some extent, my heart rate—I couldn’t control feeling warm all over, especially around my hands.
Ploonk! Suddenly, I was hearing the sound of water boiling.
I opened my eyes and dropped the mug I was holding. The boiling had been my coffee, and my arms were engulfed in flames up to my shirt sleeves, smokeless orange triangles licking from my fingers. I held them up to my face, surprised to discover I felt no pain at all.
“This is so cool!”
Chapter Twenty-Five: Holly
I flipped open my phone and looked at my text inbox. Nothing from Alex yet, and it was eight a.m. I was on my break, and he should be awake for work. This was getting ridiculous, and I needed to get to the bottom of it.
It would have to wait until the end of my shift, though. Gus was testing me out as a supervisor before officially promoting me. Being a supervisor was surprisingly similar to, well, not being a supervisor. The main difference seemed to be that now, if I told someone to do something—like take over on cash—I could pull rank and force them to do it. No more cash register shifts for me!
But the downside to taking the promotion was the paperwork and the task of trying to schedule breaks, as four of us needed to take them around the same time, so I had to figure out schedules that meant we were never understaffed.
The real kicker was that all the while, I could feel the extra energy inside me, the electricity just beneath my skin as if it were crawling around inside of me, trying to break out, and it was driving me insane. More than once I’d made a stupid mistake because I was so focused on breathing deeply and trying to keep the blue marks from appearing on my hands. I couldn’t possibly let it out during work. While I’d only ever done stuff like turn appliances on and off at work, I couldn’t risk having something go completely haywire and explode.
Again.
“Uh, Holly? Earth to Holly?”
I was rubbing my face, trying to distract myself, and stopped to peer through my fingers at Angela. Whoops. I dropped my hands at my sides.
“What’s up, Angela?”
“Well, uh, there’s a guy outside, and he says he needs to speak to you.”
“A customer?”
“No…at least, he hasn’t bought anything yet.”
Who would be waiting for me? “Is it Alex?”
“Your boyfriend?”
“Oh, yeah, you haven’t met him yet, have you?” I put the clipboard I was holding down on the counter—probably not the best place to keep it, but I was more concerned with figuring out why Alex would come to get me at work. I opened the door—Angela had already gone ahead of me—and smiled a little awkwardly at Alex standing there. He looked like he was about to cry.
I opened the counter and walked over to wrap my arms around him. He buried his face in my hair. “What’s wrong, hon?”
He said something, but I could barely tell if he was speaking English.
“Let’s go to the back. I can take my break now so we can talk this out, okay?” He nodded into my temple, and I grabbed him by the shoulders and steered him towards the back.
Angela raised an eyebrow at me, and I shrugged, putting on my best I have no idea face. I had a bit of an idea, but I was kind of hoping I was being paranoid.
Hoping it’s just that you don’t trust him isn’t exactly great.
I ignored the nagging voice in my head and the crawling feeling underneath my skin—this was an amazing distraction from the electricity, as horrible as I felt for thinking it—and instead focused on Alex’s face.
“You know,” he said, “I hadn’t cried at all until I saw you.” There were tears on his cheeks, but when he looked up at me, I could see he had set his jaw, determined to tell me whatever it was that was bothering him without it affecting his speech.
“What happened? Something with Jesse?”
He shook his head and laughed through his tears. “No, not…not anything to do with Jesse. It was…it’s Lily.”
Thunk. There went my stomach, plummeting to about calf height. All I could think, though, was if I’d been keeping my energy on the outside again, I wouldn’t be able to deal with this. I would have exploded, literally. I would have killed him and possibly everyone else in the store.
“Oh, of course you’re angry—what am I thinking?”
“No, explain. I want to hear what happened. I’m not angry.” Yet.
“Well, she…she was over for the project—I swear that was the only reason I invited her over—and then we had a drink with dinner, and…and she kissed me.”
“You know I’m going to kill her, right?”
“Believe me, I’ll be right there with you, but it’s not completely her fault.”
I closed my eyes and sighed. “You had sex?”
No response, except that he started sniffling again. I opened my eyes to see him nodding, a pained look on his tear-stained face.
“Fuck. I can’t…I can’t believe you’d do this to me, Alex!”
“I…I’m so sorry.”
“That’s it? ‘I’m sorry,’ and suddenly all of this goes away?” I took a couple steps back and breathed in and out as deeply as possible. I looked down at a metal rod sticking out of the wall. It used to be a cover for electrical wiring until they’d remodelled the bakery and that placement didn’t make sense anymore, but they’d left the rod. It led to the ground, though, which meant it was grounded.
I put my hand on it, focused on that—the sensation of cool metal against my palm—and let out the electricity clamouring beneath my skin, trying to direct it out only through my hand.
I need to keep this under control… It’s like I’m addicted to this feeling, this…way of getting excess energy out.
“Holly?”
Before I could react, there was a hand touching my shoulder, followed by a fairly loud crack! Alex took a quick step back, yelping and shaking his injured hand. I let go of the metal rod, sucking the energy back into my skin.
“W-what happened? Are you okay?”
“It was static.”
He looked at me strangely, like he was trying to read into what I’d said. I guess he wasn’t expecting any sort of sympathy this close to telling me he was cheating on me. Had cheated on me.
“It was only that once, then, I take it?”
“What— Oh, Lily? Oh, god, of course!” He stepped towards me again, arms opening to either give me a hug or hoping I’d hug him—I couldn’t quite tell which—but stopped before he reached me, looking at my eyes to see if I was open to the possibility.
I swallowed the rage and pulled him to me. It would be difficult to not think about him and Lily sleeping together.
He still felt like Alex. He felt exactly like he had two days prior and still was his normal self for the most part, but at the same time, he was…well, different.
We both sighed, and he pulled away, hugging his arms to his chest.
“So…what now?” he asked. “Would it help at all to hear I was a little drunker than I’d—”
“Don’t.” I held up my hand. “I don’t need to hear anything about it anymore. I’d just…really, I’d just like to pretend it never happened for now—until I figure out how we’re going to deal with this.”
“But we’re going to deal with this?” His eyes were threatening to spill over again.
I was screaming at myself mentally—reach out and comfort him, you ass!—but I couldn’t make myself move to even put a hand on his shoulder.
I couldn’t shake the almost slimy feeling that I wasn’t good enough be
cause he’d turned to another woman to get what he wanted.
“I’m gonna kill her.” It would be easy, too, and there wouldn’t ever be any way for anyone to tell it was me.
“Holly, it…it was mostly her fault, but not entirely.”
You wanted to be a superhero, not a supervillain.
I sighed. “Well, I can’t exactly kill you for this, can I?” I made a feeble attempt at a smile, then looked up at him and realized how terrified he was. “No, I… Never mind. Was trying to make an awful, awful joke, to break the tension.”
“Oh.” He laughed half-heartedly.
Yeah, that helped. Shaking my head, I turned towards the counter and picked up my clipboard, staring at the break schedule for the day, but the names swam in front of my eyes. I couldn’t focus on it at all.
“Holly?”
That would be one of the problems.
“Alex, you need to go. I need to get back to work, and I…I need to think about this without you being here. I need to clear my head a bit.”
He’d started crying again at some point, tears spilling onto his cheeks, and I couldn’t believe that I was only noticing it now. There was definitely a time when I wouldn’t have gone even a few seconds without noticing Alex was crying while I was talking to him. That was enough for me to move closer and force myself to put a hand on his shoulder. Once that initial contact was made, there was a lot less holding me back. I pulled him into a hug, and he nuzzled my head for a moment.
“I’m so sorry, Holly,” he said as he backed away. “I don’t…I don’t know what I was thinking.”
“You weren’t, obviously. I’m not going to say it’s okay, because I don’t know if it is. But I don’t think there’s anything you can do at this point. Even if you could buy me something or give me a gift that somehow changed how I feel about this, what would that say about us?”
He swallowed and nodded, but I could see the hint of a scowl in his pursed lips.
“Anyway, go to the bathroom there—” I pointed at the ajar door on the other side of the rather large room “—and splash some water on your face.”
I usually liked the fact that I didn’t cry, but the past few days had drained me, and I wished I still had enough in me to cry about this.