The Powerless Series: Complete 5-Book Set Page 6

  Roselyn leaned against a tree along the sideline with her best friend, Mary, a flighty girl and something of a scatterbrain. Mary couldn’t take her eyes off of Vern, and Roselyn put her hand to her mouth and chuckled when she noticed it. “And I thought you told me everything. Figures you would leave out the juiciest detail of all.”

  “You’re crazy! Don’t be jumping to conclusions just because I happen to like looking at his face.” Mary protested, blushing and returning her eyes to the field.

  “It all comes down to this,” Fortst said, striking a thoughtful pose. “No surprises yet.”

  Vern worked through his strategy over and over in his mind. He cast his eyes around at all of his watchful classmates before returning them on the ground to focus. He needed to get this over quickly. The longer the match lasted, the more likely he would lose. He took his place on the end line of his own goal and caught the eyes of his opponent.

  “I’m so nervous!” Aoi said with malicious glee. Vern gulped and they both took a ready position. Fortst threw down his arm and the competitors began sprinting forward to the center.

  Extending his hand, Vern pulled the ball toward him. From its state of rest, it suddenly jumped into Vern’s hands. He turned to throw the ball into his own goal, but before he could release it Aoi’s hands were already on him. She freed the ball with a lightning quick motion, then extended her leg behind Vern’s and tripped him. His back hit the ground with a thud, and his feet shot up into the air.

  Aoi, with a smile on her face, turned to sprint back to her goal. Her feet dug into the ground and each step launched her forward. She crossed the center of the field and soon her goal stood within reach. But she slowed down drastically, and for a moment she was motionless. She moved backward, tumbling in the air without touching the ground. Vern, with his hand reaching out, got back on his feet. Aoi roared as she fell, her body completely out of her control. Vern cradled his head with his other arm before Aoi collided into his shoulder, knocking him back. Vern, Aoi, and the ball shot backward several feet, landing inside of Vern’s goal. All of the students ran out onto the field and crowded around them, cheering.

  “Well done! Well done, both of you!” Fortst yelled. “A razor-thin victory.” After Aoi scrambled off of him, Vern could clearly see the joy on everyone’s faces. A feeling of triumph came over him, and he felt his cheeks glow, basking in their excitement.

  “No one can stop us!” he hollered.

  The students, each of them elated or distraught after the result, hiked back to the schoolhouse. Vern led the group, as he’d become accustomed to, and in his mind he could see straight through to a string of glorious victories over the course of the year. When he heard the others behind him talking about the new girl and her abrupt exit, he felt it was his duty to weigh in on the subject.

  “You can’t blame her for losing or even feeling bad about it. She did have some tough competition,” he boasted.

  “But she just ran away! You saw it yourself. Seems a little weird to me,” said Will.

  “I don’t really get where she came from,” Roselyn said, with Mary on her shoulder. “How come I’ve never seen her around before? It’s like she just appeared out of thin air.”

  “And disappeared into it just as quickly,” Will added. “I bet we will never see her again.”

  “I hope she comes back,” muttered a large but shy, shaggy-haired boy named Chucky.

  “You could take a lesson from her, Mucky Chucky,” Vern snapped at him, turning to push him further behind them. Chucky settled in quietly with the other sulkers.

  “Why is she so shy about her power though?” Will said, speaking up again. “It’s not that big of a deal.”

  “We’ll find out eventually,” Vern said. “It’s not something you can hide.”

  “You better hope not,” Will laughed. “Who knows what her scream did? Maybe you’ll wake up tomorrow with your hair fallen out, or pudding will start flowing from your ears next week.”

  Running his hand through his stylish hair, Vern suddenly felt his heart skip a beat. What did she do to him? He forced a quick chuckle to hide his nervous feelings.

  Mira, out of breath and distraught, slammed the front door, passed her mother and father, and marched up to her room. She couldn’t bear to say a word to anyone after what had just happened.

  Closing the doors and drawing the blinds, Mira created an insulated space in which to act out her frustrations. Seething, weeping, and feeling the scorn of injustice, she couldn’t believe that she was so different from everyone else around her.

  She looked at herself in the mirror, tears running down her face. She remembered the motion that Vern made with his hands, and she looked at her own. It was so simple, just like reaching for a glass of water, and it had completely taken possession of her. Her own hands appeared so weak and useless. There must be something inside of them that she could trigger somehow.

  Extending her hand in the same way, she looked for some sign of an effect. She tried it with tense muscles and relaxed muscles, quickly and slowly. She extended her other hand, tried a flat palm, and pointed with her fingers. Every successive failure reminded her of her weakness and compounded her misery.

  She flailed about without purpose, hoping for something to happen. The mirror could fly off the wall and shatter against her skin, and she wouldn’t care. If the house burned down or the world disappeared, that would be fine too. She jerked her arms in all directions, spun around, and strained her eyes, rejecting the truth that she was different.

  Mira convulsed in hysterical agony, holding her sobbing head in her arms and sinking to her knees. Tears streamed from her puffy, red eyes. Her mind was incapable of coherent thought. Drifting onto her side, she felt the bare wood floor against her fingertips and her face.

  She struggled until the last bit of strength keeping her awake finally gave out.

  Jeana and Kevin listened to stomping feet and shaking ceiling boards. Every sound struck a sour note in their minds, as they were painfully aware that she meant to keep her meltdown a secret. It distracted them from their activities, and they wished that every rattle would be the last.

  “Shouldn’t we do something?” Jeana asked, unable to take it anymore.

  “Not if we want to help her,” Kevin responded. “If she doesn’t feel hurt, if she doesn’t feel all of the cuts and scratches in her heart, then she will have no reason to change.”

  “It still seems cruel to let her suffer like this,” Jeana said. “Why not just help her get through this, make her feel better, and then the pain will be gone.”

  “I wish it could be that easy. If she had fallen and scraped her knee, I’d be the first to distract her from it. But this problem won’t disappear tomorrow or the next day. She needs to learn she can never escape from it, and this is just the beginning of her learning.”

  He looked at his fretting wife and tried to change the subject. “Do you remember your senior year tournament trial?”

  “Oh, of course. I made it through the first few rounds and finished in the top third. As long as I could get my hands on them I was fine. You should have seen those kids running away from me. But as soon as I came up against someone with an external gift I was finished.”

  “I competed on the very same field Mira did today. It was tough, but I—”

  “Finished first,” Jeana said, cutting him off. “Let me save you the trouble of bragging since I actually remember the last time we talked about this. You played with your opponents, trapping them, disorienting them, and fooling them into giving you the victory.”

  “If you remember the last time we talked about this, why did you bother to repeat your story?”

  “I’m not going to pass up a good opportunity to talk about myself,” Jeana smiled.

  Chapter 6: The Toughest Medicine to Swallow

  Still unsettled from the first day at the academy, Mira refused to give up. While she acted shy before, she returned resolved to spend the day silently in the h
opes of blending in.

  Taking the wobbly seat in the back, Mira avoided eye contact with the other students. She kept her head down when Fortst arrived, and even closed her eyes when he read the results of the previous day’s tournament. Mira’s name came at the very bottom; mercifully, she didn’t hear any mocking aimed at her.

  During Fortst’s lecture, she squelched any temptation to answer questions, even when it meant no one would answer and Fortst would supply laughably inaccurate information. She stood behind the rest of the class at all times when they went out in the afternoon for field lessons, quickly slipping away before anyone else once class had ended.

  This pattern of behavior became routine for her. For a few days she had managed to avoid interacting with anyone at all. It dug at her when other students laughed and played together. Boys and girls flirted and held hands, but she wasn’t involved in any of it. It got to the point where Mira believed the other students were as used to ignoring her as she was to ignoring them.

  “OK, students,” Fortst said, beginning his lecture. “We’ve talked about knowing your surroundings, and we’ve talked about battle formations, but the most important thing you can know is yourself. You’ve got to know exactly what you’re capable of. You need to be aware of your strengths, and you absolutely must know where and how you are vulnerable—your weaknesses.

  “How about we try writing about this? Take out a piece of paper, and write a few sentences about what your power allows you to do and what you can’t do with it. Think about how someone might be able to get around your defenses and attack you. OK? Go to it.”

  Mira took out a sheet of paper, but it just sat there on her desk. Everyone else had begun writing, while Mira scratched her head. This assignment didn’t apply to her. She tried to think about who she was, and looked around at the students in her class. She wrote the words “helpless,” “hopeless,” and “useless.”

  “Let’s see if we can get a few students to share their ideas with us. Do we have any volunteers?” Fortst surveyed the class. One girl raised her hand. “OK, Dot, go ahead.”

  Dot, a dark-haired, strong-looking girl stood up to read her paper.

  “As you know, my gift is accuracy. My body knows how hard I need to throw something and in what direction to hit something else. That’s what I’m capable of. I’m not capable of starting fires with my mind or reading other people’s thoughts or turning water into apple juice or anything else. My weakness is chocolate cake. I just can’t stop myself from eating it. Thank you,” she sat down.

  “Wait, wait, stand back up again,” Fortst said. “That was great, but it wasn’t what I meant at all. So with accuracy, you can throw things and they will always hit what you aim for, but what are your limits? How far can you throw? What is the heaviest thing you can throw? And for your power to work at all, you have to have something to throw, right?

  “And by weaknesses I don’t mean all the things you can’t do or what food you can’t stop eating. I mean, how could someone turn your power against you? How can you avoid falling victim to it? You would be vulnerable in a place with no stones. Maybe a zigzagging target would be able to avoid what you throw. Do you understand what I’m saying?”

  Dot nodded and sat back down.

  “Who else wants a go? How about you, in the back? We haven’t heard from you in a while.”

  Mira, stunned, realized that he wanted her to speak. She looked at him incredulously but still rose from her seat.

  “But Mr. Fortst!” she said in a forceful whisper.

  “Oh, right. Sorry. I forgot.”

  Mira quickly sat back down, and Fortst called on another student, but that exchange aroused smirks and quizzical glances from her peers. A student named Kurt stood up with his paper in hand.

  “I don’t get tired. I can run around the world and never have to stop, but there are limits to how fast I can run. I still sleep a couple of hours a night, so somebody could catch me then. Otherwise, my muscles don’t get tired during a fight, so that’s a strength. It’s just too bad I don’t have that much muscle to begin with.”

  “Good, OK. That’s more what I’m looking for. Thank you. Let’s move on.”

  For the rest of the day, Mira felt anger simmering in her gut. She felt it bubble inside her every time Fortst spoke. He had almost broken his promise and revealed her secret. But time passed and it seemed like nothing would come of it. Just as she had become accustomed to, she bolted for the door as soon as Fortst told them to get out. She shuffled across the clearing on her way to the trail.

  “Mira, wait!” She recognized Vern’s voice, and he wasn’t far behind her.

  “What?” she asked.

  He scratched his head, unsure of how to begin.

  “I need to know what your power is. You need to tell me. I can’t figure out what you did and I need to know.” His forceful glare frightened Mira. The other students who trickled out of the schoolhouse took notice of this confrontation and collected around Vern.

  “Look, I don’t know what you did and it’s driving me crazy,” he said, taking another step forward. “Just tell me!” Some others echoed his calls. Trying to back up, she felt herself press against a tree. They had cornered her and were shouting at her to tell them. “Come on!” Vern yelled over the grating chatter of the group. His anger incited her own and she wanted to push him so far away that she would never have to look at him again.

  “I don’t have a power, OK? I just screamed and it didn’t do anything to you. I can’t do anything! Are you happy now?” She had shouted at the top of her lungs and then gasped for breath.

  Suddenly everything became quiet. Vern and the rest stared at her with blank faces. Mira looked at them, and she tried to comprehend their minds. Combinations of shock, disbelief, awe, confusion, wonder, and contempt crept over their faces.

  Mira took one more look at Vern as she motioned to leave. The edges of his lips curled upward, his mouth opened, and laughter spurted out. Soon all of the students were laughing together.

  “Pff, can’t do anything! That’s even worse than Mucky Chucky, and the only thing he can do is sweat oil!” Vern gawked, doubling over.

  “Hey!” said a deep voice within the crowd, but it could barely be heard over the laughter. Mira couldn’t tolerate any more, and so she elbowed her way through the crowd. Walking down the path, she could tell that no one followed her. She glanced back and noticed the students had formed something of a circle, and it pained her to imagine what they might be saying.

  The emotional toll of her revelation weighed on her more with every step she took. By the time she got home, her feelings of worthlessness and loneliness became the air she breathed and the blood pumping through her heart. Walking became difficult, and she wanted to collapse. She quietly snuck up to her room without drawing the attention of her mother, feeling too sad for tears.

  Mira didn’t leave her room that day. Her parents became concerned when the next morning rolled around and she didn’t come down. Kevin seemed ready to let her work it out on her own, but Jeana gave him a look that clearly told him Mira wouldn’t be the only one with a problem if he didn’t go up there and do something.

  He rapped his fist against the wooden door and heard a muffled voice telling him to enter. He found her sitting on the windowsill with her knees held tight to her chest. She still had her pajamas on, and she stared blankly at the world outside. He leaned against the other side of the large window.

  “What’s going on? Why aren’t you getting ready to go?”

  He spoke softly, afraid the slightest hint of criticism would make her break down.

  “I’m not going to school,” she said. Some of her brown hair drifted in front of her eyes, but she seemed too forlorn to do anything about it.

  “Why not? What’s the problem?”

  “I can’t do it. I have to quit. I hate being there. The other students hate me. The teacher doesn’t know what he’s talking about. It’s just so unfair and so awful to be a fool at
everything, no matter what.”

  Kevin sighed and held his hand out to his daughter. She squeezed it.

  “You were right, Dad. You were right before, when you said I’d be making a mistake if I wanted to see the truth. This is worse. It’s so much worse. How could I have wanted something so terrible so badly? Please, make the walls again. I never want to leave. It’s just unbearable.”

  She brushed away the world outside her window. Looking at her, Kevin remembered the curious and adventurous girl she used to be. That image of her seemed so distant in this moment.

  “Believe me, Mira, you were the one who was right. Living in a fantasy land isn’t living. We all have to live with what’s out there, and there’s no way we can hide from it. Sure, I could make the walls again, but you’d still have to live with what you’ve seen and what you know. It wouldn’t change anything, least of all your special place in the world.”

  “So what am I supposed to do, go back out there so people can laugh at me and terrorize me? Why bother when I’ll never do anything more than take up the last space on a list of class rank?”

  “I’d say you have two options,” Kevin said, speaking more firmly. “You can give up, hide in your room, and let yourself become exactly what you’re afraid of. Or, you can fight as hard as you can, and find out exactly who you are and what you’re made of.”

  “But I did! I tried as hard as I could,” Mira scowled. “And I ended up in the dirt. I never had a chance.”

  “I hear you, but I’m going to teach you something right now. Trying as hard as you can doesn’t mean just pushing your muscles until they give out. Every problem and every situation has an answer. If you’re smart enough and aware enough, then you can figure out what the solution is.

  “You see, just because you don’t have a power doesn’t mean there isn’t something you can do to give yourself an advantage. Take me, for instance. You might think because I can influence water molecules that I’d be a great swimmer, but I sink like a rock and your mother beats me every time. That has nothing to do with her power. Now, let’s see if we can apply this to your situation. How would you describe your classmates?”