“Ah.” His dad nodded. “With a healthy dose of ‘it’s not fair?’”
“Yeah.”
“Followed by your mom’s favorite saying?”
“You say it too, Dad.”
“Well, yeah,” his father admitted. “But I’m married to your mother. It’s sort of like being in permanent co-op mode on the same TV. But that’s not important right now,” he said with a shake of his head. “What about what you found out today?”
“You mean that I’m an Unusual?” Mark asked. His voice sounded bitter to his own ears. It probably was.
“You say it like it’s a bad thing,” his dad said.
Something inside him seemed to snap. “’Like?’” he asked, turning to look up at his father. “’Like!?’ I can set fire on things just by thinking about it! I’m a walking flamethrower, dad! I’m already a freak and an outcast at school just because I believe in God and like soccer; now I can set people on fire? I’ll be lucky if they don’t bring me up on arson charges!”
“Mark …”
He rose from his seat, throwing the soccer ball to the ground. “I mean, it was bad enough already! Now I’m going to set people on fire with my mind?”
“Mark.”
“And what about you and Mom?” The words were rushing out of his mouth now, completely unbidden, like it was shooting practice and it was his turn to stand in front of the goal but his feet were encased in the ground, completely unable to stop anything rushing past him. “What’s this going to do to you? What if someone blames you? What if I accidently start a fire, or hurt one of you, or—?”
“Mark!”
His dad’s shout broke his train of thought, and he realized that he’d been shouting, his words echoing around the canyon. The pressure was back too, and he shut his eyes, almost letting out a whimper as he felt it push against his system.
“Mark,” his dad said again, and he felt his dad wrap his arms around him in a tight hug. “None of that is going to happen, all right?”
“How do you know?” he asked, his head slumping against his father’s shoulder. “I’ve been having accidents all week. I blew up a volleyball, Dad. A volleyball.”
“It’s a sucky game anyway,” his dad said. “But don’t tell your mom I said that. Besides, under the circumstances, that’s actually a pretty good sign.”
“What?” Mark jerked his head up, wiping a blurred wetness he didn’t want to think about away with one hand as he looked his dad in the eyes. “What do you mean?”
“Son …” His dad let out a sigh. “How much of those pages on Unusuals did you actually read?”
“Enough,” he said. “Why?”
“I’d argue ‘not enough,’” his dad said, dropping his arms and stepping back. “You’ve been suffering from a pressure in your stomach, right?”
“Below.”
“Below. Right.” His father nodded. “And it builds, right? And then something happens—something catches fire, or gets burned, or really hot, the pressure goes away, and you’re left shaky and weak, right?”
“Exactly!” Mark said. “And that’s what the articles said happened to matches that are late bloomers!”
“Matches?” his father looked confused for a moment.
“Firestarters,” Mark said. “Lighters. People like me.”
“And did those articles say anything else?” his dad asked.
“About what?” he asked. Where’s he going with this?
His dad let out a sigh. “Mark,” he said, pinching his forehead with one hand and rubbing it. “Those are the symptoms of an Unusual coming into their powers … when they’re stressed.”
“What?”
“Let me guess …” his dad said, a flat look on his face. “You read the symptoms, saw the results, and then went off to look it up without reading the whole article.”
“Um …”
“And then when you googled up these large pages, you used control-F to go right to the part of the page talking about your symptoms, right?”
“Yes?”
His dad let out a sigh, and Mark pulled back slightly.
“Why?” he asked. “It wasn’t wrong! I’m a match!”
“You’re also stressed,” his dad said, emphasizing the last word. “If you’d bothered to read through the entirety of those articles, you’d have noticed that there was a section in most of them that talked about how many of those symptoms were generally associated with and enhanced by puberty and stressful conditions.”
“I …” Suddenly the words felt like they weren’t coming any longer. “I … what? But …”
“You are an Unusual,” his dad said, slapping one hand down on his shoulder. “But you’re also stressed. That’s why you’ve been setting things on fire and burning them.”
“But …”
“Well,” his dad said, shrugging. “Only one thing. And that was intentional.”
“Actually, I think I set fire to an assignment I threw away in school. Caught the garbage can on fire.” The words slipped out of his mouth before he could even catch them.
“See, that’s not so bad.”
“Not so bad—!?” He pushed himself away from his father. “What if that had been a person? So I’m stressed out? So what? I’m still setting things on fire with my mind! What if I set you or Mom on fire with my mind by accident? Or the house?”
“It’s actually really hard to set a person on fire, Mark,” his dad said. “If you’d done a bit more research, you’d have found that out. The most you might do is burn one of us if you were really trying, but that’s pretty dramatic.”
So what? “But what about the house? Or someone else? What if I really burn someone at school?”
“You’re not going to burn someone at school, Mark. And we can just buy a couple of extra fire extinguishers. It’s not a big deal—”
“How do you know!?” The shout echoed across the clearing, his dad’s eyes opening wide in surprise.
“Because … Because …” his dad began.
“You don’t know, do you?” Mark asked. “You’re just saying this.”
“No,” his dad said. “I do know.”
“How.”
His dad looked thoughtful for a moment. “Name someone at school you really hate.”
He frowned. “That’s a strong word, Dad.”
“Strongly dislike, then. Someone who’s never giving you a chance and always riding your ass.”
“Dad!”
“Sorry … Getting on your case. Can you think of somebody like that?”
“Sure. A.D. His real name’s Adam.”
“So he’s a jerk, then? Always harping on you?”
“One of the ringleaders,” Mark said with a nod.
“Uh-huh. And has he ever been there when you’ve had an attack?”
He thought back on the last week. “Yeah. He has.”
“Has he been involved in it?”
“Yeah. He has.”
“And has he been set on fire yet?”
“Well …” He shook his head. “No. He hasn’t.”
“And yet if you were going to pick one person to be on fire—?”
“Dad!”
“What, I’m just saying. I’m not saying you’d actually do it!” His dad shook his head. “Anyway, look. My point is that you’ve been having these attacks all week. And what have you set on fire?”
“A garbage can and a piece of paper,” he admitted. “The last one was deliberate though. The test. But I did char my notebook and leave a mark on my desk. Plus blow up a volleyball.”
“Really?” his dad asked, his eyes widening. “So you did blow up a volleyball?”
“It might have already been overinflated. I think I just heated it until it couldn’t take it anymore.”
“All right,” his dad said, taking a step back and sitting down on the foundation wall. “But at any moment, did you ever set anyone else on fire? Even subconsciously?”
“I … I don’t …”
“No,” his dad said. “You didn’t. And you know why, Mark? Because you’re a good person. You don’t want to set someone on fire. You’re not out to use any of your talents for horrible means. The fact that you’re so worried about it shows that.”
“But what if I—?”
“Mark,” his dad said, shaking his head. “You won’t.”
“But—”
“You won’t, Mark,” he said. “You’re just freaking out a little because of everything that’s been going on. Tell me, if we were still back in Arizona, and you’d just figured this out, would everything be as bad?”
“I …” It was hard to tell. Maybe it would? Mark thought. But then again, there wouldn’t be all the other things going on at the same time. There’d be soccer, and the team, and … He could feel a burning pressure inside him once more, but this time it was inside his throat rather than down below his gut, and it was a familiar feeling, less alien than the strange presence that had grown inside him during the last week.
“No,” he said, shaking his head as his vision began to blur. “It wouldn’t.”
“I know,” his dad said, holding out one arm. Mark sat down next to him, letting himself be tugged to one side as his dad wrapped his arm around his shoulder.
“It’ll get better,” his dad said. “And it’s not so bad. So you can set stuff on fire. Look at the positives.”
“Positives?” His voice sounded weak. He cleared his throat before speaking again. “Like what?”
“Well, for starters, we won’t have to buy matches again until you move out,” his dad said, dropping his arm and leaning back. “Better yet, we’ll have a perfect excuse to do a lot of barbecuing once the summer gets started. Or heck, this winter. You could start the thing through the window if there was charcoal in it.”
“I could?”
“Well, I don’t know about the window part, but the rest of it makes sense.”
“Yeah … I guess.” It was odd to think of the ability to set something on fire as helpful, but then again …
Isn’t that what some of the sites I looked at said? he thought. That it was supposed to be some kind of beneficial adaptation?
It was just like Brother Vilaro had said. It wasn’t him having the power that was the issue. It was what he did with it.
Well … mostly. There was still the registration to worry about. And everything that came along with that.
“Thinking again?”
His dad’s words shook him from his thoughts. “Yeah,” he said, pulling away slightly and then nodding. “Just … putting together what you said with what a few other people said.”
“Like Brother Vilaro?”
He nodded. So they’d noticed that too. Or Brother Vilaro had talked to them about it.
Still … “What about registration?”
“With the NSAU?”
He nodded. “Yeah.”
“Well …” His dad leaned back against the concrete. “Technically, you don’t have to register if you don’t want to. There’s no law requiring that you do—not yet at least, or unless you do something dangerous that pulls the NSAU’s attention or gets you arrested that happens to involve your newfound talent—”
“Like setting a forest on fire?”
His dad gave him a mock grimace. “Yes, like that. As long as you don’t do something like that, you don’t have to register if you don’t want to.”
“But aren’t I eligible for scholarships if I am registered?” he asked.
“I don’t know.” His dad shook his head, half-hiding a yawn as he did so. “I was up pretty late last night reading up on this stuff, but scholarships was one thing that didn’t come up. Suffice it to say, that’s a decision you can make on your own, and you don’t have to make it today. But it is something you’ll have to think about, especially since once you’re registered, you’re registered. And the school here has been nasty enough to you.”
“Speaking of which,” his dad said, rising as his expression brightened. “You won’t be going back tomorrow. You’ve got a stress problem to take care of, remember?”
“But … I thought—?” Mark began, but his dad cut him off.
“No,” he said with a shake of his head. “Especially after talking to you just now, Mark. You need the break. Some time to unwind and let things settle out.”
“Since I just found out I can set things on fire?” Mark asked.
“Not especially because of that,” his dad said. “You were already having a rough time of things. But that’s definitely going to be part of the reason I’m taking the next few days off.”
It took Mark’s brain a few moments to catch up with what his father had just said. “You’re taking time off?”
“Yeah,” his dad said, nodding as he bent down to pick up Mark’s ball. “I figured spending some time with your old man could be fun. Your mom thinks so too—she’s actually considering doing it herself and making it a family trip.”
“Doing what?”
“I don’t know,” his dad admitted, tossing him the ball. “Road trip? Camping? Fishing? Something fun, where we can all spend some time together and talk about whatever, not just the fact that you’re a budding wizard?”
“Dad …”
“We’ll have to come up with a new nickname for you,” his dad said, ignoring the tone. “Merlin’s too obvious—”
“Dad? Really?”
His father let out a short laugh. “We can talk about it, at least. But before we get to that, let’s say we get home and make dinner for your mom before it gets too cold out?”
A shiver ran down Mark’s spine, and suddenly the damp, sweaty clothes he was wearing felt far more than cool against the concrete. They didn’t feel comfortable anymore, either.
“All right,” he said, pushing himself up. “Can we talk about it while we make dinner?” He turned towards the overgrown driveway that led down to the road and began walking, his dad moving up alongside him.
“With your mom? Or without?”
“With,” he said, nodding. “And Dad?”
“Yeah?”
Mark smiled. “Thanks.”
* * *
It was lunch hour.
‘Hour’ wasn’t actually an accurate assessment, though the teachers still called it that, perhaps out of some misguided belief that if they just continued to call it that, the students would eventually believe it. But if there was a student it was fooling, Mark hadn’t met them. So far, the only people he’d seen remotely associated with the school that seemed to be buying that the lunch hour was, in fact, a lunch hour had been the school board itself. Who had, at the start of the year, made what was probably an old argument in order to cut the students’ already truncated thirty minutes down to an “extravagant” twenty-five.
Still, they were the ones who made the rules, and they didn’t have to live with them, being the school board, so twenty-five minutes stayed referred to as the lunch “hour” on the schedule despite its actual length.
Granted, it wasn’t that bad. Twenty-five minutes was still ten minutes more than some other schools he’d heard rumor of in the smaller towns, and the cafeteria had clearly been designed with more students in mind than the school had ever had, so there was plenty of space for him to find himself a spot far enough away from the other students that he wouldn’t be bothered unless they really wanted to bother him. Which did happen, but not often. After all, why spend the only twenty-five minutes you had free each day taunting someone you could push around a lot easier in class?
Mark pushed his seat back, tilting back on the rear legs as he drove his fork into the salad he’d brought from home. Salad. Yum. It wasn’t entirely sarcastic—the salad was pretty good—but it would leave him hungry later.
I can eat after my run, he thought, spearing a cherry tomato and tossing it into his mouth. It was one of the decisions he’d made over the week he’d had off. It was time to get back in shape, to lose the extra weight he’d picked up over the last two months. He’d a
lready started running a mile each day after school, and if he picked that up to two before the winter hit, he could probably be in shape enough to run in the snow once it started. If running in the snow was a thing. He wasn’t sure. Despite what he’d seen in Rocky.
There’s always a treadmill, he thought as he bit into the tomato, cool juices exploding in his mouth. I could get Mom and Dad to buy one. Or get one myself with the money from my old job.
Getting in shape had been just one of the things he and his parents had talked about during their vacation the week before. Running was a good stress outlet—better than just kicking a ball around—and he needed the release, since there was little chance the situation in the school would improve.
Doctor Diallo had been right, though. After a few days, the pressure had faded, and he’d had to start actively hunting for the feeling inside of him when he’d checked. Or when his mom had wanted him to set something on fire. It had actually been a little unnerving how fascinated she was by it, and more than once he’d suspected her of letting the campfire go out just so she could have a chance to watch him try to light it again.
Not that it had been easy. Even lighting paper or kindling left him feeling drained, but his mother had been adamant that he would improve with practice. His dad had done a little research and found that there was something called runecrafting he could use to boost his abilities somehow, but apparently it was also quite complex.
In any case, by the time Sunday had rolled around again, he’d almost felt like a new person.
“Hey church boy!”
Almost.
It was A.D., walking over towards his table from the small bank of microwaves, a group of followers in tow. “How was your family’s little pow-wow in the woods? You cry much?”
Mark ignored him. The worst anyone, least of all A.D., could get away with the lunch lady watching was shouting or getting in someone’s face. She didn’t care what they said, but contact was a no-no. As long as he didn’t react, A.D. would give up.
“Hey! Asshole!” A.D. shouted as he drew closer to the table. “I’m talking to you!” He slammed his hands down on the table opposite Mark, ignoring the glare the lunch lady threw in their direction.
Unusual Events: A Short Story Collection Page 7
