Chapter One: Mallory Cane's Point of View

Chapter One:  I Discover My Powers

            “Yeah!  Woo-hoo!” I scream as I speed down the icy hill on my trash-bin lid.  Who says Seers can’t have fun?

            My best friend, Colette, speeds up beside me.  Her adrenaline must be up because I get a minor headache when she looks at me.  “Eat my dust!” she yells, and speeds ahead.

            “Watch me!” I scream back.  My friend, Violet Dremeriquai*, levitates above me and uses her mind control to make Colette fly off her trash-bin lid and land face-first on a pile of leaves.  She glares at Violet, who grabs her right wrist and pinches her face into a painful expression.  She drops straight to the ground and lands on her butt, which causes her more pain, but as soon as Colette looks away, she stands up and starts levitating again.  I can see our roommates, Katie, Lois, Luna, and Scarlett, sliding down behind us.  A black boot comes into view and Violet sees it too and slams me to a stop, just centimeters from the boot.  Attached to this boot is our aviation trainer, Vickatecht, who is a Volt from Cuba.

            “What’s going on here, ladies?” he asks in a slightly slurred voice.  His eyes bore into me, like they’re trying to suck out my soul, which they may well be doing.

            “We were just . . . Katie said . . . we had permission . . . we just . . . ” I stammer.

            Colette looks at him.  He does nothing since the Volts are immune to the Agony, who can cause pain with a single glance.  “We thought, what the heck, so we just were taking advantage of the abundance of trash-bin lids around.  Got a problem with that?”

            Vickatecht pulls out a notebook and starts writing in it, murmuring, “Mallory Cane, Colette Peterson, Violet Dremeriquai, Katie Wilde, Lois Alden, Luna Speisshofer, and Scarlett Jones.  Going out without permission,  no counselors, no violence, no illegal food or drink” – I find this ironic because Vickatecht has a fair amount of liquor and cigarettes stashed in his room.  I heard this from his girlfriend.  No telling if it’s true – “no one above the age of eighteen.”  He tells us to line up and Scarlett, being a natural leader, is in front.  He pats his hands down her entire body – the entire thing – and finds the Swiss army knife given to all of us at twenty-fifth rank in her back pocket.  He doesn’t remember the right to privacy, apparently, and pulls it out like it was in his own pocket.  My breathing gets quick because my knife is in my chest pocket and we aren’t allowed to do anything but what the Commanders say.  Vickatecht told us to put our hands on the backs of our heads.  He pats down Colette, who is carrying a pellet pistol in her large front pocket.  He confiscates this and her knife.  By the way she’s looking at him, he’d be unconscious by now if not for the fact that he’s Volt.  I’m pondering what to say to him when I remember the case of thumbtacks from school in my own back pocket.  Shoot, I think.  He comes to me after confiscating Violet’s and Katie’s knives. 

            “I’ve got my knife in my chest pocket and a box of thumbtacks in my back pocket.  Touch me and you die,” I say, even though any type of threat to a Commander carries severe consequences.  Disregarding my threat, Vickatecht does the exact same thing to me.  Then when he gets to Lois, who is standing behind me, he vomits all over her shirt then passes out.  He must’ve been drunk.  On the pad he was writing on, there are only scribbles.  I pull out my radio and call our counselor, Aly, who’s an Ivy from Hungary. 

            “Aly, get out here.  Vickatecht threw up.  And bring a new shirt for Lois,” I say.

            “Got it.  But what were you doing out there?,” she says, and with her accent, it sounds like “goat eat”.

            “I’ll explain later,” I say.

              She runs out and tosses a white bundle at Lois, who catches it and goes to our cabin to change.  Then she hauls Vickatecht up and slings his arm over her shoulder.  She walks away.  Then Colette, of all people, starts laughing her head off and we all join in.

            “Can you – can you believe he touched me like that?”  Katie says, after she stops laughing.  We are all extremely disgusted because even mouth kissing is forbidden until you’re twenty-five and no one can have kids until they’re thirty. So that is why Colette’s and Violet’s parents are either forty-four or forty-five. Mine are forty-eight because I’m the youngest and my sister is eighteen. It’s controlling, but I love it here.

                                                            +          +          +

            I walk down to the cafeteria with Colette and Violet.  I thrust my hand into my pocket and pull out my money.  I was running late this morning and forgot to pack my lunch.  The cafeteria overwhelms me with its stench and sound.  At least two hundred fourteen-year-olds sit with their friends and talk, each group talking louder so that they are heard.  I walk up to the lunch counter while Colette and Violet sit at our usual table, where Scarlett is already sitting.  On the menu today: surprise casserole and mystery meat.  I slide my tray to the vegetable and fruit lady.  I ask for an apple and she gives me a soggy green lump with brown spots covering it.  I grab a soda and a little cup of chocolate ice cream and sit down. 

            “So I said, ‘Ever had a broken nose?’ and he said, ‘No,’ and so I ‘broke’ it for him!” Colette says as I plunk my tray down next to hers. 

            “Whose nose did you break this time?” I ask, a bit bored sounding.

            “That American kid named Lewis,” she answers.  I nod.  Then Isabel, or as we call her, the devil on heels, walks over.  She tosses her black hair over her shoulder. 

            “Where’s your lunch box, Mallory?  Oh, wait, you don’t have one!”  she says.  It’s true.  I don’t own a lunch box.  But only she does, along with her other Irish friends, Tiffany and Whitney.  The rest of us use paper bags.  Only the occasional person buys lunch.  It’s that bad.

            “Your point?” I ask.  Then Colette glares at her.  But she just raises her fingers and little lightning bolts travel between them. 

            “My point is, you’re poor!  Look at your clothes!”  I wear my sister’s hand me downs because she wore a lot of black, and black is the only thing I wear.  But the clothes are as good as new.  Isabel is the one wearing shabby clothes.  Her hot-pink shirt and khaki skirt both look like they were washed in mud and dried in the sand.

            “And that crybaby brother of yours?  He’s a horrible excuse for a Current,” she sneers.

            “Not that you would know.  After all you are a Volt,” Violet adds.  I feel anger rising inside me.  No one teases my brother.  Ever.  He’s got something called Autism.  He can’t function like a normal person.  But water is his therapy.  And I help him through it.  He still needs bedtime stories, even though he’s sixteen.  I love him to death, and so does Mary.  I feel my face grow hot and I feel . . . I feel like I could start burning until nothing is left except ash.  I feel something running down my hand so I look at my plastic spoon and see that it has melted and started to drip over my fingers.  Then I hold out my hand and there is a small flame in the palm.

            I am Ignited.

*pronounced dru-mere-uh-kw eye