Chapter Two: Mallory Cane's Point of View

Chapter Two: Something Overdue Happens

            For a moment Isabel stares with her mouth in a perfect O.  Then a smile so big it must make me look insane creeps onto my lips.  Isabel runs to the counselors’ table and says something I can’t hear.  She occasionally glances at me or points and she frequently makes hand gestures.  Aly and Jared, the counselor for Malcolm and a few other troubled kids, come to the table.

            “So you just started summoning fire?” Jared asks.  I nod and I see that each of my fingertips have a little flame floating above them.  Jared reaches out and touches a flame, then jerks his hand back.  Scarlett, who is playing with a ball of water that she summoned, looks up.  All of a sudden, I feel uncomfortable around her.  Like she could hurt me.  And I don’t want to be around her.  I want to pop her water bubble.  I want the water to go away.  I want to kill water.  I want to kill Scarlett.  No, I think.  Stop.  If I keep thinking like this who knows what will happen?

                                                            +          +          +

            I look in my closet.  I own one dress.  It will have to do for my Ceremony.  I put it on.  It is made of black silk and comes to just above my knees.  At my waist, it sticks out the tiniest bit, and it has under layers of blue and green.  It’s a traditional Current Ceremony dress.  It was Mary’s.  I sit down to put on my small black ballet flats.  Then I grab a colored pen and color my fingertip.  When it sets on fire, the flames flicker green for a moment, then return to their normal shade of orange with blue tips.  I showed my flames to Malcolm earlier.  He tried to touch them and he burned himself.  My parents are mad.  They called me crazy.  Am I crazy?  Who’s to say?  Maybe I wasn’t.  But I might be now.  I forget about the little flame on my finger and stroke my dress.  It’s soft.  I grab the novel I’m reading and open it to where I left off.  I smell smoke.  I look down and I see that there is a smoking hole in my dress from where I touched it.  I feel that strange feeling again and I start crying, except when the tears fall, they turn into steam.  I throw my book onto the floor and run to my bathroom.  I turn on the cold water and let it wash over my fingers.  I look at my reflection, into my own green eyes.

            “What am I?” I whisper to myself.  Then I strip the dress off and throw it in the garbage.  I pull on some knee-length jeans and a black shirt that falls below my shoulders.  Then I walk into the Court.  Everyone stares but I ignore them.  In Room 5, Mom and Dad are sitting on the front row of seats with Scarlett, Violet, Colette, Malcolm, and Mary.  An official motions me to stand at a podium in the front.  Then Mr. Hitler himself comes up with a needle full of black liquid and draws something on my shoulder.  It hurts.  Then, I look at it.  It’s the Ignited symbol.  A flame surrounded by a triangle.  The flame is slightly tinted orange.  I look straight into his eyes.  Then I run.  Out of the Court.  Past the cabins.  Into my own.  Then I throw myself onto my mattress and sob.  My arm throbs and I feel a tickling sensation that accompanies any flame that I summon.  My feet must be on fire so I shove them under the blankets to snuff out the flames.  It works.  I cry myself to sleep. 

            “Mallory,” I hear, but it’s distant and echo-y.  “Mal? Are you awake?”

            I open my eyes.  Everyone stands around my bed.  They look concerned. 

            “Go away.”

            “No.  It’s our cabin, too.  We’re sorry we didn’t tell you about the Ceremony,” says Luna. 

            “Will this go away?” I ask, pointing to my arm.

            “No.  It stays forever,” says Lois.  I feel cold.  I pull the blankets up and see my bare arms.  I’m wearing a tank top and shorts.  I must’ve changed and been really out of it.  Then I pull out my arm and concentrate.  My arm lights on fire.  There isn’t even the tiniest bit of green over the drawing.

            “Shoot.”  I try again and again, but nothing happens.  I run out of energy and fall asleep again.

            This time when I wake up I’m in a room with flower murals on the walls and plants hanging from the ceiling.  I know this room.  It’s the Ivy’s.  Seven Ivy children and their counselor were put in here accidentally.  We’re not supposed to have more than one of each type in cabins.  It maintains balance.  None of the cabins has all of the elements.  There are ten or twelve elements and only eight cabin members.  The reason I was put in with Scarlett, who’s a Current, is because no one knew my power so it was safe, unless I turned out to be a Current, which was the likely thing.  But I’m safe and can stay with my friends.  For now.  Our cabin is considered good luck, since we have no Volt in ours.  The Volt are the most reckless.  Our cabin is an Agony, an Ivy, a Balanced, a Hypnosis, a Telekinesis, a Current, a Psychic, and an Ignited.  No Volt.  But they seem to have the biggest population around our society, which is hidden by a ring of impassable mountains.  Only one way in, and one way out.  Our scientists say that the biggest population is Currents, in and out of our ring.  It explains the amount of riptides that appear without warning.  The technology here is about a hundred years ahead of normal society, so the scientists can trace people by their blood, if there are powers in their blood.  But they only trace people with O- blood, they say because most Seers have that blood type.  Only the Volt are different.  They usually have AB+.  An Ivy walks in, her name’s Rosie I think, holding a teapot.  I sit up.  

            “What am I doing here?” I ask. 

            “You’re crazy,” she says calmly, but it’s not her voice.  It’s Colette’s. 

            “No, I’m not,” Rosie says to herself, but it sounds like Katie.  “I think she’s dead.”

            “Katie, you know she isn’t.  She’s breathing, for God’s sake!” Rosie/Colette says. 

            “Prove it,” Rosie/Katie says.  Then Rosie glares at me, her green eyes transforming to piercing blue and her hair growing twelve inches and turning blond.  And I feel pain, immense pain.  Then I get out of bed to hit “Rosie” and then I wake up.  Colette stands just above me, so that her face is near me.  Still keeping my eyes closed, I summon a flame in my hand and slap her.  I’m in my own cabin and Katie and Colette are standing by my bed looking worried.  Colette jerks back out of reflex, but I know it didn’t hurt her because the Agony are immune to pain.  I see that it’s night time, judging by my clock, it’s 3:00 a.m.  Weird. 

            “Why did you wake me up at 3 a.m.?” I ask.

            “Well, your blankets were smoking and they set of the smoke alarm, and then the sprinkler system came on and soaked us all.  Then everything stopped, sadly for Scarlett, who was having a ball,” says Colette.  “And Katie thought you were dead, which is crazy because you wouldn’t just die.”

            “No it’s not crazy,” says Katie.  “It’s possible!”  Then Katie flips over and does a handstand on her pinkie finger with her toes touching her head.  She does crazy stuff when she’s feeling nervous.  She walked on the wall one time.  I think the Balanced should be called something more like the Anti-Gravity.  Or the Strong.  Something like that.  In her other hand, she holds her Notepad, which is really a four-inch-tall touchscreen telephone.  She plays some sort of game on it where she drags her thumb across the screen repeatedly. 

            “Hey, Colette?” she says.  “Where’s your Notepad?  I need you to take a picture of me.  This is a new personal record!”

            Colette blushes, or I think she does.  “Um, well, I um…” she grabs mine off my nightstand.  “Here it is!  Now what’s the passcode again?” she looks at me.  I mouth out my middle name and she types it in.  “Aha!  Now let me see . . . Mal, I need some fire, okay, stay still Katie . . . got it!”  She shows Katie.

            “Give me that,” I say, and snatch it out of her hands.  I go to my messages and send it to Katie.  Then I put it on my nightstand.  I get out of bed and go to our “pantry”, which is a little storage area inside my closet where we store a secret stash of goodies that Mary brings us, and grab a bag of miniature powdered donuts.  Colette gives me the stink eye, and I hand her one and give one to Katie, who is still doing a handstand.  We have our little midnight snack and I tell them to leave.  So they do.

            In the morning, I am a bit drowsy, since the last time I was up so early was when I was eleven and still living with my parents, and I had the stomach virus.  But Colette and Katie are fine.  Katie is older than us, so she goes to her classes and I walk with Colette to mine.  In the classroom, the teacher has written the words ‘field trip’ on the board, and as I put my lunch into the cabinet, he comes in and tells everyone to line up.  We line up and he leads us out to the bus, which has mini televisions that play whatever you like and heating, thank goodness.  I sit in the last row of seats, positioning myself between Violet and Colette.  Scarlett is sitting in the next seat up, since the row next to us is occupied by three annoying boys named Thom, Ralph, and Joe, who are talking about whose bra they are going to snap or whose soda they’re going to steal.  I pull out my favorite movie, which I carry with me everywhere, and put it into our DVD player.

            “Do you mind this one?” I ask as I put on my headphones. 

            “No,” says Violet as she and Colette pull their headphones on.  When the movie ends, I look out the window.  We are no longer in the ring of mountains.  We are outside, where we can be considered witches, insane people, satanic.  We are no longer safe.