Post by thecurtain on Jan 9, 2012 14:24:14 GMT -5
The house was still empty when Mac left for school. He had heard nothing from the hospital, which he figured was a good sign. He had found himself wondering about his future little brother the past few months, determined not to let his parents’ clear favoritism color his feelings, but he had no interest at the moment in dealing with his father to find out details. The idea of speaking to him after what Mac read last night seemed foreign, inconceivable. And in any case he already had an up-coming conversation he was not looking forward to.
He had to go in early, today, before the other students and even some of the teachers arrived. A few weeks ago a letter had summoned him at this hour to the principal’s office, and while at the time he’d been sour about the earlier wake-up, the point was kind of moot considering he hadn’t fallen asleep.
With his backpack slung over one shoulder, he walked in from the approaching morning, the sun having hardly risen above the horizon, to meet with her in her office. He was surprised to find that she had a kind-looking face, round and pale and framed with short, dark hair. “Macbeth Farrow?” she pronounced as he peeked his head inside her office.
He nodded, “Mac.”
“Please come in and have a seat, Mr. Farrow,” she said, gesturing to the upright chair across the desk from her. “I’m Principal Kim.”
“Nice to meet you,” he murmured, coming inside to do as he was told. He hoped that would continue to be the case after their meeting was over.
“I called you in early just to fill out a couple forms.” She had two sheets of paper and a pen on her desk, already facing him, and she slid them forward. “They should take little time. Once we’ve processed them I’ll send you on your way to your first class, though you’ll have to miss homeroom today.”
Shrugging, his bag dropping to the floor, Mac reached forward for the papers. Principal Kim stood and gathered another stack of forms from her desk. “I’ll be back in a little while. Make sure you fill in everything completely.”
He watched her go, then turned back to the forms. After the expected “Name:; Birthdate:; Sex:” spaces, the questions were so startling that Mac had to go back up to the top and read the heading on the forms he had initially ignored.
So this was it, Mac thought, his lips tightening. He had to let them know what he could do. Well, fine.
With this in mind, he reread the first question, 1. What is your N.E.X.T. ability? “Magnetic,” he answered, in his thin handwriting, and it seemed weird to write it out, to sum it up in one simple word.
2. When did your N.E.X.T. abilities first awaken?
“October NC 1962”
3. In the past, have you intentionally used your N.E.X.T. abilities for criminal or otherwise dishonest purposes? If yes, please explain.
Mac scowled and, pressing harder than before with the pen, wrote, “NO” on the first of the following three blank lines. The heavy word stared back at him, as if accusing him of lying, until he looked away, up at the word “intentionally,” then onto the next question.
4. In the past, have you caused harm to yourself through use of your N.E.X.T. abilities? If yes, please explain.
He stared at the three lines that followed the question and wondered how he could summarize nearly a decade’s worth of harming himself within their boundaries.
“Yes,” he wrote, and leaving the rest blank for now he moved on.
5. In the past, have you intentionally or unintentionally caused property damage through use of your N.E.X.T. abilities? If yes, please explain.
Three more lines. “Oh come on.” Fuck this, next question.
6. In the past, have you intentionally or unintentionally caused harm to others through use of your N.E.X.T. abilities? If yes, please explain.
_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
7. In the past, have you been arrested, locked up, taken in for questioning, placed in front of a school judicial board, or otherwise disciplined or held accountable for something concerning your N.E.X.T. abilities? If so, please explain.
_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
That was the end of page one. With a grimace permanently etched on his face, Mac flipped to the second page, morbidly curious as to what else they could possibly ask him. But there were no questions left.
I, _______________________, do hereby maintain that all answers given to the preceding questions are complete and accurate to the best of my knowledge. I understand that if any of these claims are found false, I will face expulsion from Second Sternbild City Public High School NS and a potential inquiry by the city police.
For the protection and safety of those around me, I hereby grant permission to the Second Sternbild City Public High School NS school board to distribute the information offered herein to the staff, my fellow students, and their families.
I understand that failure to answer any preceding questions and/or failure to sign this document will result in my immediate expulsion from the Second Sternbild City Public High School NS campus, I will be barred from attending classes now and in the future, and a police inquiry may be implemented.
I acknowledge that I have understood and that I agree to the above, and I understand that the completion and signing of this document in no way protects or excludes me from school judiciary and/or police involvement should a future incident concerning my N.E.X.T. abilities occur.
________________________________[/center]
______________________
(Name - please print)
This was too fucking much. Mac dropped the pen on the unsigned page and got to his feet, peeking his head through the cracked-open door. The principal was sorting some papers in a file cabinet, but she looked up when the door opened.
“Finished already?”
Mac ran a hand through his hair, but his expression remained neutral. “No. I have a question about the paperwork.”
“Yes?”
He looked around the office space; several secretaries were working diligently on paperwork and, in one corner, a system of electronics. He took a step back into the office. The principal’s eyes narrowed a little, but she followed him, shutting the door behind her.
“What seems to be the problem?” Her voice was agonizingly calm.
Mac steeled himself, trying not to allow his fury at the papers to cause him to say something he’d regret. “These forms are awful.” He couldn’t think of another way to put it, without resorting to words that would probably get him in trouble.
“Awful?”
Briefly, he squeezed his eyes shut. “I just want to go to school, Ms. Kim,” he said, slowly. “Why does that have to involve sharing my secrets with the entire school?”
“These forms aren’t asking for your ‘secrets,’ Mr. Farrow,” she answered, her voice suddenly so hard that Mac wondered how he had ever considered her kind-looking in the first place.
“I’ve done some bad things in the past!” Mac admitted, his voice rising a little. “But they were accidents! I’ve gotten better, I swear, so there’s no reason to--”
“The people at this school--the people around you--have a right to know what you’re capable of,” the principal interrupted. “That is why this Act was implemented in the first place, and why I elected to have our school participate. If you are going to attend here, you will need to fill out this information, now.”
A lump caught in Mac’s throat. “My parents--”
“Your parents,” she said, “were aware of the Act when they enrolled you here. They have already signed their paperwork. Now it is your turn.”
For a long time, Mac didn’t move. They watched each other, he with growing horror at her unreadable face.
Finally, he sat heavily back in his chair, his head falling forward in defeat. “I’m going to need more paper,” he said.
“I’ll get you some.”
---
Mac walked to his first period class feeling like he’d been punched in the gut--a sensation he was quite familiar with. He couldn’t even remember half of what he had written about; he’d just tried to get it on paper as quickly as possible. Other than insisting in several places that he’d gained more control over himself, he didn’t attempt to sugar-coat what he had done. Filling out the forms was enough work as it was, by the fifth or sixth question he had just about run out of steam. Homeroom had had to be extended while he finished up the forms so they could be typed up, copied, and distributed--or so a tall secretary had informed him when he ventured to ask why he was still sitting in the office so long after he had finished.
He was used to silences falling when he entered classrooms. Class had not quite started, and the usual pre-lecture chatter of the students already sitting at their desks seemed sucked out the door when he entered. He kept his expression steady as he walked to an empty seat in the back corner of the room, trying to pretend he wasn’t bothered by the way they looked at him or by the distinct, goldenrod transcripts of his confession littering their desks, or by the way they looked between the papers and him as if physically connecting the two.
Mac didn’t even have a chance, he realized, busying himself with pulling a notebook from his backpack. His hand brushed against the plastic frames of his shades, shoved into the bag at some point over the summer when he no longer needed them to cover injuries on his face. With eyes forcibly hardened to dissuade interested parties from approaching him, he shoved the shades onto his face, unfolded the notebook on his desk, and didn’t move one muscle more. The room remained silent until the teacher entered, a goldenrod page sticking out of the briefcase he set on his desk.
“Good morning, everyone,” he said, pulling out a stack of papers. At least he had the decency to not sound bored or put upon on the first day of class. “I’m Mr. Gelhart, this is Introduction to Chemistry, and...if Mr. Back-of-the-Room could please remove his sunglasses...? We can get started.”
Scowling, Mac slipped the shades from his face and shoved them into his pants pocket, amidst a scattering of uncomfortable snickers. The teacher began passing out the syllabus for the chemistry class, and Mac, in order to tune out the stares at him from his classmates, had to tune him out, too.
---
“What’s your deal?!”
That was it. All his careful planning on his walk home, the many starts to this conversation, trying to map out the infinite ways it could go, had all come to a head when Mac walked into the kitchen and saw his father’s back, and had been completely abandoned. At that moment, he could think of nothing else to say that summed up his feelings any better.
The dark blonde head turned slowly to reveal his father’s severe face, and Mac instantly regretted it--regretted ever considering speaking to him, in fact, because speaking wasn’t really a thing they did. Not since he was five, and conversations revolved around simple things like little league tee-ball and teaching him how to read.
“Excuse me?”
Mac swallowed. The urge to run was strong, but he had already moved in and he couldn’t back out now.
“Your deal,” he repeated, unwilling to show weakness. Not anymore. Not about this. “You’ve been writing anti-NEXT propaganda since...since before I was born!” Careful research on the library computers during lunch had offered this information quite willingly when he’d searched for his father’s name.
“Someone needs to inform the public of the dangers NEXT present to society,” his father answered, unnervingly calm. Mac’s chest tightened.
“You kept writing them after my powers showed up!”
“NEXT were no less dangerous after you became one.” His father’s dark blonde eyebrow raised a little, sternly appraising. “I daresay they were more.”
Mac’s fury began seeping into his expression, despite his every attempt otherwise. “I want to switch schools,” he asserted, surprising himself with the strength of his own voice. “One that didn’t agree to this stupid Act--”
“That Act is going to spare the people around you a lot of pain and suffering,” returned his father, matching his hard voice with an even harder one. “If we had gotten that Act approved earlier perhaps we could have greatly reduced the amount of people you hurt.”
Mac snapped his mouth shut, speechless.
“You will stay at this school, for as long as you can manage to keep yourself under control,” He began to turn back around.
“No one said a word to me.” The pressure in his chest had moved up to his throat, and it strangled the words out of him. “No one would even go near me. They’re all terrified.”
Mac’s father gave him a long, flat look out of the corner of his eye before returning to the newspaper on the table in front of him. “That should help keep you out of trouble,” he said.
Mac completely forgot to ask after his new brother as he slowly, silently turned to walk out of the kitchen and sequester himself in his room.
---
Rather than remove them from his bag, Mac kept his shades on him and wore them any time he wasn’t expressly told not to. Somewhere in his father’s bigoted proclamations, he had made an important point, Mac had realized; as long as no one wanted to go near him, his objective to stay out of trouble would prove much easier. But sooner or later, the initial fear instilled in his classmates was going to wear off, and when it did, curiosity would get the best of them. One girl in his first period class was already watching him with an expression that seemed intrigued. What if his training weren’t enough? He would just be proving his father right all over again--and worse, this time he would face being sent away.
With the shades, he could be an enigma. A mystery. An intimidating wall that had no wish to talk to anyone, ever. One that neither wanted nor needed friends. One that dragged himself through a solitary life.
It was killing him.
From the backs of classrooms, he watched his classmates work together to solve problems, giggle at teachers behind their backs, ask each other to borrow paper and pencils. From the corner of the cafeteria he observed them eating and talking and laughing together. From behind dark lenses and a flat mouth he watched them learn, mature, date, make bad decisions and mistakes and something inside of him was dying.
---
The occasional group projects were just about the only times he spoke to anyone, and first period was the worst offender. Group labs had begun for chemistry class three weeks into the semester, and normally, having nothing to contribute to the group’s work, Mac would remain impassive, silently doing his part with clear plastic goggles strapped over his shades. It wasn’t until late October that their group work required them to multitask, and after a quiet discussion amongst his three group-mates, two went off to work on the other side of the room, leaving him staring through dark lenses at a slender, blonde girl with wide, searching hazel eyes. She was the girl Mac had caught watching him every once in a while since their first day.
“Are you...um. Are you ready?” she asked. Despite the hesitation her voice, it had a nice smoothness to it, a...texture, thick but soft, that reminded Mac of custard for no explicable reason. He just nodded and joined her at the counter. They were supposed to accurately measure out some chemicals and stir them together to demonstrate chemical changes, or something. It seemed like a waste of time, just like everything else in this class, but Mac would not complain and shatter the fortress he’d built up around himself.
He let the girl measure out liquid into one of the beakers, watching her hands move with certainty. “My name’s Julia,” she offered, watching only what her hands were doing.
Fear struck powerfully through Mac’s chest. Shit, shit, did this mean his facade was wearing off? “I know,” he replied, as deadpan as he could muster. “I’m not deaf.”
That seemed to work for a time. She bit her lower lip and fell silent and Mac, feeling like a gigantic asshole, stepped forward wordlessly to try and prepare another part of the test. You could get a lot out of watching people, he’d learned, and when someone made a habit of watching you, you tended to watch them back. From the clothes she wore, the crowd she moved with, the way she acted, Mac could tell she was well-off, used to having whatever she wanted. In her group she was like the sun around which the others revolved, and she had the smile and radiance to match. Julia liked talking to people, engaging them in conversations, finding out about them. If he were not a NEXT, or if the entire school didn’t know he was, maybe they could have been friends. And maybe I’d hurt her, if we were. It was a nasty thought, he knew, but not impossible. No--it was terribly, completely possible.
“You, um. You don’t talk much, though,” she quietly tried, after a time.
Goddammit.
“No one cares much for talking to me, either,” he returned, pointedly. Please stop trying. Please.
“That’s because everyone’s afraid of you.” She was staring at the third beaker intently, instead of looking at him. Her voice was almost too soft to hear.
“They should be,” he forced out, grabbing at the fourth and final beaker.
He watched her mouth morph into a frown with some weird sense of satisfaction twisted around regret. Silently, she placed the beaker marked “#2” on the combination hot-plate/stirrer resting on the counter and flicked on the second switch to set the white plastic-coated magnetic stirrer spinning. It didn’t move.
“Oh...” Mac watched her face fall further, having never recovered from what he’d said. “Guess we’ll have to ask for another one. Mr. Ge--!”
“Hey.” Reaching for the beaker, Mac stepped between Julia and their teacher, quieting her instantly. She gave up the glass container but blinked at him hesitantly.
“What? We’re supposed to have them stirring while we add--...oh.”
Her lips closed slowly. The bar in the clear liquid began spinning just above his palm when Mac transferred his field from the hot plate to the small magnet. It was a precise, controlled movement and it took up a lot of his concentration. With his eyes on the objects in his hand, he missed what her face looked like as she silently poured the clear contents of the #1 beaker into the one in his hand. The two liquids together turned a deep, wine red as the bar slowly spun to mix them. For a while, the two of them watched the now colored liquid in silence.
“...We’ve gotta pour that into the third beaker,” she offered slowly.
The magnet stopped moving immediately, and Mac placed it back in her hands, taking up the one marked with a “#3.”
“That’s incredible,” she breathed, preparing to pour it into the liquid being stirred in the beaker in his hand.
“No,” Mac replied, acutely regretting that he’d done it in the first place.
“My power isn’t nearly as useful.”
This time, when she poured the red liquid into the clear, the mixture turned a cloudy white. Mac stared at it, eyes widening slightly behind his goggles and shades.
The stirring stopped abruptly, and he set the beaker on the counter with a quiet thunk. After a quick glance at Mr. Gelhart, who was busy leaning over someone’s set of beakers on the other side of the room, Mac pulled his goggles off with one hand and took Julia by the wrist with the other.
“Hey, wai--”
“Shh.” He pulled her, gently, to an empty corner of the classroom and did what he had never done in this school: removed his shades without having to be told to. Her hazel eyes were wide and filled with apprehension as they stared at each other, for what seemed to Mac like hours. But her expression was anxious, and otherwise unreadable.
“You’re lying,” he finally determined lowly, replacing his shades. “Pretty sure they never sent out any yellow flyers about you.”
She bit her lip, her eyes trying to pierce his shield. “That’s because they don’t know. No one knows,” she whispered, earnestly. “Not even my parents know!”
With his blue gaze peeking over the frames of his sunglasses, Mac watched her silently for a while. She was clearly uncomfortable talking about it, fidgeting, with her eyes wider than usual, and Mac found himself wondering how long she had been keeping this secret. Maybe some NEXT powers were easier to hide than others.
“What can you do...?”
She broke their gaze, quickly looking down at her feet. “I don’t...I can’t tell you,” she said, quiet. Any grain of trust that may have entered into Mac’s heart before was quickly filtered out by her avoidant answer. Eyes which had briefly softened grew hard again.
“Yeah, okay.”
“You don’t believe me?”
“You can’t even make up a good lie for that?”
“I’m not lying!” she whispered, with such familiar desperation that Mac took a step back. “It’s just...embarrassing. Okay? It’s not useful like yours, not at all.”
Mac’s lips pressed into a thin line, torn, but before he could answer, Mr. Gelhart called from the other side of the room, “Mr. Farrow! Miss Fontaine! Back to work, please!”
“Maybe I’ll tell you someday,” she whispered, as they hurried back to their spots.
---
“--And then suddenly the bar was spinning, all by itself! I mean, he was making it spin, it was incredible!”
The fair skin of Mac’s cheeks reddened considerably, and his shades were not large enough to hide it all. No one had ever expressed appreciation for what he could do before, and now here Julia was, relaying to a crowd of attentive listeners the story of what had happened in chemistry class that morning. She had dragged him over with a fearlessness that startled him into going with, abandoning the lunch he had no interest in eating anyway. From behind the walls of his shades, he’d watched the crowd’s face go from apprehension, to morbid curiosity, to full-blown interest.
“Show us something, Mac, go on!” Julia urged, smiling up at him so brightly that he had to clench his teeth and steel himself from the staggering intensity of her request.
Eyes darting over to where one of the teachers stood nearby, Mac quickly responded, “No.”
He looked back in time to see her face fall. “Come on, just something small! Like before. We won’t tell...right?”
The crowd nodded and chattered at him, trying to encourage him with their curious interest.
Mac had to work hard to fight them, to quash the urge to show off. In the three months since he’d been here, he’d kept tight reign over his powers. In times of stress, when before his field would rise up like hackles, he’d merely dragged a hand through his hair and squashed it back down, leaving both property and people in tact. He’d been good. He’d been perfect. All his training over the summer had been for this, and until this morning no one and nothing in this school had felt the effects of his powers. And now all of the sudden, because of them, there were ten sets of eyes watching him expectantly, interestedly. Unafraid.
He gave up fighting the strong urge to show off. After all, what were these powers for, if not to use them...? What had all his hard work been for otherwise?
The teacher became distracted, and Mac seized his opportunity. There was metal, a dull ping, but still extant, in the pocket of one of the boys closest to him. He drew it out slowly, raising it up into the air before his face. The boy watched his expensive-looking pen float, adjusting his wire-rimmed glasses as if he couldn’t believe his eyes. Carefully, it traveled over to a folded napkin sitting abandoned on the lunch table, and wrote, messily, How’s this?
It was a gamble; Mac had never tried anything like that before, and it was much harder to read than his own narrow handwriting. Apparently it was legible enough, though, and those who were close enough to see the message took in awed breaths and two of them even clapped, almost noiselessly. Some of them were grinning.
Julia reached forward and picked up the napkin, once Mac had returned the pen to its owner. Her eyes were bright and sparkling as she looked up at him and said with amusement, “You should work on your penmanship.”
His mouth twisted into a frown, briefly, until she brazenly reached up to pull his shades from his face. “Sit with us,” she said, her voice warm with an emotion he couldn’t name, and he did as he was asked.
---
“So there were three nurses in there with me by the fourth day, and I said to them--I was five years old, remember, and I said--‘I guess I’m a chick magnet.’”
The collection of listeners dissolved into laughter, but the only giggles Mac heard were the ones from the girl with the wide hazel eyes, tucked comfortably within his arm. “You’re horrible,” Julia told him, but that warmth in her look and the way she snuggled closer to his side opposed her words.
---
“Thanks,” she said, tying off another garbage bag and setting it aside. “I can’t imagine trying to clean all this up by myself.”
“No problem.” Mac landed a quick kiss on her cheek as he passed by with a stack of empty pizza boxes. “I wasn’t about to just leave you hanging.”
Julia smiled, her eyes following after him as she shook open another bag. He set the pile by the front door and stopped for a moment to stretch. The clock on the wall rang an absurd hour.
“Can you grab those cans for me?” she asked, nodding over at the collection of empty soda cans and the occasional beer can on the table across the room.
“Huh? Oh, sure.” Stepping carefully over a pile of plates they’d yet to pick up, Mac headed for the cans and only noticed her confused expression when he headed towards her open bag with an armful.
“...What?”
“Why didn’t you just...you know?”
Mac chuckled, dropping the cans into the bag and going back for more. “Aluminum’s not magnetic.” She blinked, which made his smile turn sheepish. “Wish it was, though.”
“O-oh. Well, that’s okay,” she insisted after a moment, and watched with a faint smile as he crossed the room three more times to finish collecting the cans. “You’re still amazing.”
She seemed to delight in making him blush; he’d stopped wearing his shades so much these days, so to hide it he had to turn back to finish collecting the trash into a final bag. But he was still grinning a little when he straightened to tie it off.
“That’s everything.” Julia glanced around the room, but their cleaning had been thorough. “I can vacuum tomorrow. Thanks, Mac.”
“Any time.” He wrapped her in his arms briefly, pressing another kiss to the top of her head before letting go. “It’s pretty late, though. I should--”
He stopped. Julia was biting her lower lip, glancing hesitantly between him and her feet. “Mac, could you...could you stay? It’s my birthday, and I don’t want...”
“It stopped being your birthday about three hours ago,” Mac teased gently, to buy himself some time.
“You know what I mean.” She looked up at him with those wide hazel eyes brimming with sadness, and he felt his insides turn into jelly. “I just don’t want to be alone.”
He looked around the room as if he could detect somewhere in it a reason why he shouldn’t. Her parents were gone until Wednesday, a common occurrence for two high-ranking employees at Poseidon Line, and her house felt big and empty now that her party guests had all left.
“Unless your parents would...?”
“They won’t even notice,” Mac answered quickly; as long as he caused no trouble in school, they were content to spend their time and attention doting on his baby brother, and Mac was perfectly fine with that. “I...” Really, there was no reason not to, except that the prospect sort of excited and terrified him at once.
“Okay,” he finally said, her instantly bright smile quite convincing.
She found him a pair of sweatpants and a T-shirt to sleep in from a box of her father’s old clothes, and, stepping into the bathroom to change, Mac took a moment to breathe. Her parents were not aware of his existence, and it had never seemed appropriate for him to spend the night before. The look on his face in the mirror was admittedly a little panicked. It had been almost ten years since he’d had proper friends, and Julia was his first girlfriend, and here he was about to spend the night in her house, and...
...And why was he freaking out about this now? Mac shook his head swiftly and ran both hands through his hair. The prospect of dating a rich girl had been intimidating at first, but it was hard not to be comfortable around Julia. Really, he had no reason to worry.
“Mac...? Is everything okay?”
“Y-yeah,” he stammered, trying to force his expression into something less anxious. Julia’s father’s clothes hung large and heavy from his smaller frame, and they felt to Mac as if they were weighing him down. He turned away from the mirror and tried to pretend he was holding them up, instead, though they lacked any sort of metal by which to do so.
“Well hurry up, aren’t you tired?”
Maybe that was what had him on edge. It was pretty late, and he’d been here for hours, ever since school let out for the weekend. “Sorry. Bet you’re exhausted.” Mac left the bathroom, absently flicking off the light with a turn of his magnetic field. She was waiting for him on the other side, yawning as if to prove him right.
“Yeah. I’m gonna sleep for a week.”
“Maybe two, just to be on the safe side,” he laughed, but the cheerful sound tapered off as he took her hand in his own. “Hey, you’re freezing.”
“It’s cold in here, after everyone left,” she answered, clutching at his arm. Despite the pink-and-white-striped flannel pajamas swaddling her, she was shivering minutely. “Can we just sleep the whole month? Wake me up when it’s March.”
“That’s more than a month.” Mac pulled her into his arms and began leading her towards the door at the end of the hall.
“Only a little.” Her murmur was muffled with sleep as she pulled open the door to her room and they slipped inside, flipping on the light. Mac had been in her room many times before; he was familiar with the pink and white color scheme, the fan that hung now uselessly from the ceiling, the extensive collection of music boxes lining her walls. But he never had cause to pay much attention to her bed. The covers seemed inadequate, suddenly, for how cold she was.
“You know what I think?”
“...Hn?”
Mac shut the door behind them. “I think you don’t have enough blankets.”
Julia’s sleepy eyes were slow to comprehend his meaning, but by the time he had helped her into bed and she looked up at him, she seemed to understand, giving a simple nod of her head. “I think you’re right.”
His earlier hesitation already forgotten, Mac nudged her aside and slid under the covers, squeezing into the twin-sized bed along with her.
“Wait, the light--”
“Shh.” He grinned at her, then lifted a hand and drew his focus across the room at the light switch--a small target, plastic-coated, and far away, but he could still feel, vaguely, the mechanism inside. As Julia watched with sleep-lidded eyes, the switch shuddered--and snapped down. The lights went out, and the fan began spinning.
“Oh--!”
“Shit,” Mac muttered under his breath; as the fan picked up speed, cold air began to swirl down on them. He must have hit both switches at the same time. “Okay, hang on...”
In the darkness, he concentrated again, feeling out the switch panel despite the fact that he could no longer see it. Moments later, the fan slowed to a stop, the lights came back on, and the music box closest to the door, a smaller figure depicting a tiny blonde head with long hair peeking out of a tower window, lifted up into the air briefly before dropping back down with a clatter onto its shelf.
“Oh--!” Julia repeated, more panicked. “Careful...!”
“Sorry--sorry.” Frustrated, and with a frown twisting his mouth, Mac reluctantly slid off the bed again and went to manually turn the lights off. While he still went to the park to practice every once in a while, most of his weekends these days were spent with Julia and her friends. He had sufficient control over his powers now, such that no one at school would have any reason to complain about him, but his precision could still use a lot of work. In little time, with a flick of his hand, darkness once more descended, the fan stilled, and Mac began to pick his way back over to the bed.
“Over here,” said Julia, helpfully, from the direction in which he moved.
“I know.” Chuckling, Mac returned to his spot beside her, tucking the blankets around them both. “I can feel where you are.”
“...Huh?”
“The metal in the bed frame, I mean, it sort of responds to me. Like radar.”
She was silent for a while, snuggling closer to his chest.
“So you could find me anywhere,” she said after a while, when she’d stopped shivering so hard.
“...Maybe.” It was an interesting thought. “If I knew you had something specific on you, and if it was a funny shape or something, maybe. I’m not sure I’m good enough for that yet.”
“You will be.” Her voice was subdued with exhaustion, but Mac could recognize the remains of her warm encouragement in her words. “You get better all the time.”
“...Because it’s important,” he murmured after a moment. To keep you all safe. To stay here with you. That’s why I need to get better.
“Hey,” he said suddenly, “are you ever gonna tell me what you can do?”
She didn’t answer.
“Julia?” He pulled back from her a little to try and get a good look at her face, but her eyes were closed and, he realized, her breathing had slowed. She’d fallen asleep. He kissed her gently goodnight and soon followed suit.
---
A loud clatter woke Julia up from her rest. Rubbing her eyes, she crawled dazedly out of bed; there was another, softer clang before she even got to her feet, coming from the direction of her window. A third sounded before she could get the blinds open, but then just below the level of the window pane, there was a wave of blonde hair visible through the glass. With a final, quieter sound, the head of hair rose up, and Julia watched with wide eyes as Mac’s face appeared in her window. He was grinning, and tapped lightly on the glass for her to open it. Too worn out to be shocked, a bewildered Julia slid the window up to let him in. The air was still fairly chilly now at the beginning of March, after all, and there was no point in the both of them being sick.
A slight rattle ran the length of the room as he heaved himself inside, laden with what looked like a heavy backpack, but it subsided as he fully entered her house and got to his feet. She shut the window after him against the cool air.
“What are you doing here?” she whispered urgently. Her voice rasped with the early onset of a sore throat.
“You’re not wondering how I got up?” Mac replied, still grinning as he pulled his backpack around to dig through it.
“I know how you got up,” she responded, still whispering. “Loudly. My parents are home, Mac, what are you doing?”
“Okay, yeah, that was a little loud. Sorry.” From the bag came a pristine-looking notebook, which he offered her. “Here. Chem notes.”
She eyed him suspiciously. “You don’t take chem notes.”
“See what I sacrifice for you?” He grinned wider as a smile began to break her stern expression. “Here, here, take it. I paid attention and everything. Promise.”
With an exaggerated sigh, Julia reached out to accept the book, her smile growing reluctantly as she flipped through the pages. “...Thanks, Mac.”
“No problem! Sorry,” he added, “about the noise. Can’t have bothered them too much if they haven’t made a big deal out of it by now, huh?”
“I guess.” Julia closed the book carefully and set it on her bedside table. “So...how did you get up?”
Mac practically beamed. “Your house has metal siding. A lot of houses do, I didn’t really notice it til a couple weeks ago. Ours is some vinyl stuff or something, so that doesn’t work. It’s hard to practice it, though, so I’m--”
He stopped talking when she suddenly erupted into a coughing fit and watched her worriedly as she groped for a tissue.
“Not feeling any better, huh?”
She shook her head and blew her nose as quietly as she could. “Thanks for stopping by. But you’d better get going, I don’t want to get you sick.”
“Not leaving without a hug,” he threatened, enticing her with a warm smile and open arms.
“Oh...fine. I guess that couldn’t hurt.”
Mac left a kiss on her temple before they broke apart and he re-shouldered his backpack. “Get some rest and feel better soon, okay?”
“I will.” Seated on her bed, she watched him open the window back up. “I wish you had a cell phone so I could call you.”
Mac smiled, and shrugged. “Maybe someday,” he said, without much conviction. “I’ll be back tomorrow if you’re not back in class, okay?”
“Quieter this time...?”
He grinned. “I’ll try.” Carefully, he spread his field out to linger around his feet and hands, and, pulling down the window by the metal locks on its sides, he slowly descended the side of Julia’s house.
He had to go in early, today, before the other students and even some of the teachers arrived. A few weeks ago a letter had summoned him at this hour to the principal’s office, and while at the time he’d been sour about the earlier wake-up, the point was kind of moot considering he hadn’t fallen asleep.
With his backpack slung over one shoulder, he walked in from the approaching morning, the sun having hardly risen above the horizon, to meet with her in her office. He was surprised to find that she had a kind-looking face, round and pale and framed with short, dark hair. “Macbeth Farrow?” she pronounced as he peeked his head inside her office.
He nodded, “Mac.”
“Please come in and have a seat, Mr. Farrow,” she said, gesturing to the upright chair across the desk from her. “I’m Principal Kim.”
“Nice to meet you,” he murmured, coming inside to do as he was told. He hoped that would continue to be the case after their meeting was over.
“I called you in early just to fill out a couple forms.” She had two sheets of paper and a pen on her desk, already facing him, and she slid them forward. “They should take little time. Once we’ve processed them I’ll send you on your way to your first class, though you’ll have to miss homeroom today.”
Shrugging, his bag dropping to the floor, Mac reached forward for the papers. Principal Kim stood and gathered another stack of forms from her desk. “I’ll be back in a little while. Make sure you fill in everything completely.”
He watched her go, then turned back to the forms. After the expected “Name:; Birthdate:; Sex:” spaces, the questions were so startling that Mac had to go back up to the top and read the heading on the forms he had initially ignored.
Knowledge is Power Act NC 1970
Public and private schools in Sternbild City and its outlying territories may elect to implement a mandatory registration for all students who fall in the category of “N.E.X.T.” (“Noted Entities with eXtraordinary Talents”) as a prerequisite for their attendance at the school in question.
Public and private schools in Sternbild City and its outlying territories may elect to implement a mandatory registration for all students who fall in the category of “N.E.X.T.” (“Noted Entities with eXtraordinary Talents”) as a prerequisite for their attendance at the school in question.
So this was it, Mac thought, his lips tightening. He had to let them know what he could do. Well, fine.
With this in mind, he reread the first question, 1. What is your N.E.X.T. ability? “Magnetic,” he answered, in his thin handwriting, and it seemed weird to write it out, to sum it up in one simple word.
2. When did your N.E.X.T. abilities first awaken?
“October NC 1962”
3. In the past, have you intentionally used your N.E.X.T. abilities for criminal or otherwise dishonest purposes? If yes, please explain.
Mac scowled and, pressing harder than before with the pen, wrote, “NO” on the first of the following three blank lines. The heavy word stared back at him, as if accusing him of lying, until he looked away, up at the word “intentionally,” then onto the next question.
4. In the past, have you caused harm to yourself through use of your N.E.X.T. abilities? If yes, please explain.
He stared at the three lines that followed the question and wondered how he could summarize nearly a decade’s worth of harming himself within their boundaries.
“Yes,” he wrote, and leaving the rest blank for now he moved on.
5. In the past, have you intentionally or unintentionally caused property damage through use of your N.E.X.T. abilities? If yes, please explain.
Three more lines. “Oh come on.” Fuck this, next question.
6. In the past, have you intentionally or unintentionally caused harm to others through use of your N.E.X.T. abilities? If yes, please explain.
_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
7. In the past, have you been arrested, locked up, taken in for questioning, placed in front of a school judicial board, or otherwise disciplined or held accountable for something concerning your N.E.X.T. abilities? If so, please explain.
_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
That was the end of page one. With a grimace permanently etched on his face, Mac flipped to the second page, morbidly curious as to what else they could possibly ask him. But there were no questions left.
I, _______________________, do hereby maintain that all answers given to the preceding questions are complete and accurate to the best of my knowledge. I understand that if any of these claims are found false, I will face expulsion from Second Sternbild City Public High School NS and a potential inquiry by the city police.
For the protection and safety of those around me, I hereby grant permission to the Second Sternbild City Public High School NS school board to distribute the information offered herein to the staff, my fellow students, and their families.
I understand that failure to answer any preceding questions and/or failure to sign this document will result in my immediate expulsion from the Second Sternbild City Public High School NS campus, I will be barred from attending classes now and in the future, and a police inquiry may be implemented.
I acknowledge that I have understood and that I agree to the above, and I understand that the completion and signing of this document in no way protects or excludes me from school judiciary and/or police involvement should a future incident concerning my N.E.X.T. abilities occur.
Signed,
________________________________[/center]
______________________
(Name - please print)
Date: ________________
This was too fucking much. Mac dropped the pen on the unsigned page and got to his feet, peeking his head through the cracked-open door. The principal was sorting some papers in a file cabinet, but she looked up when the door opened.
“Finished already?”
Mac ran a hand through his hair, but his expression remained neutral. “No. I have a question about the paperwork.”
“Yes?”
He looked around the office space; several secretaries were working diligently on paperwork and, in one corner, a system of electronics. He took a step back into the office. The principal’s eyes narrowed a little, but she followed him, shutting the door behind her.
“What seems to be the problem?” Her voice was agonizingly calm.
Mac steeled himself, trying not to allow his fury at the papers to cause him to say something he’d regret. “These forms are awful.” He couldn’t think of another way to put it, without resorting to words that would probably get him in trouble.
“Awful?”
Briefly, he squeezed his eyes shut. “I just want to go to school, Ms. Kim,” he said, slowly. “Why does that have to involve sharing my secrets with the entire school?”
“These forms aren’t asking for your ‘secrets,’ Mr. Farrow,” she answered, her voice suddenly so hard that Mac wondered how he had ever considered her kind-looking in the first place.
“I’ve done some bad things in the past!” Mac admitted, his voice rising a little. “But they were accidents! I’ve gotten better, I swear, so there’s no reason to--”
“The people at this school--the people around you--have a right to know what you’re capable of,” the principal interrupted. “That is why this Act was implemented in the first place, and why I elected to have our school participate. If you are going to attend here, you will need to fill out this information, now.”
A lump caught in Mac’s throat. “My parents--”
“Your parents,” she said, “were aware of the Act when they enrolled you here. They have already signed their paperwork. Now it is your turn.”
For a long time, Mac didn’t move. They watched each other, he with growing horror at her unreadable face.
Finally, he sat heavily back in his chair, his head falling forward in defeat. “I’m going to need more paper,” he said.
“I’ll get you some.”
---
Mac walked to his first period class feeling like he’d been punched in the gut--a sensation he was quite familiar with. He couldn’t even remember half of what he had written about; he’d just tried to get it on paper as quickly as possible. Other than insisting in several places that he’d gained more control over himself, he didn’t attempt to sugar-coat what he had done. Filling out the forms was enough work as it was, by the fifth or sixth question he had just about run out of steam. Homeroom had had to be extended while he finished up the forms so they could be typed up, copied, and distributed--or so a tall secretary had informed him when he ventured to ask why he was still sitting in the office so long after he had finished.
He was used to silences falling when he entered classrooms. Class had not quite started, and the usual pre-lecture chatter of the students already sitting at their desks seemed sucked out the door when he entered. He kept his expression steady as he walked to an empty seat in the back corner of the room, trying to pretend he wasn’t bothered by the way they looked at him or by the distinct, goldenrod transcripts of his confession littering their desks, or by the way they looked between the papers and him as if physically connecting the two.
Mac didn’t even have a chance, he realized, busying himself with pulling a notebook from his backpack. His hand brushed against the plastic frames of his shades, shoved into the bag at some point over the summer when he no longer needed them to cover injuries on his face. With eyes forcibly hardened to dissuade interested parties from approaching him, he shoved the shades onto his face, unfolded the notebook on his desk, and didn’t move one muscle more. The room remained silent until the teacher entered, a goldenrod page sticking out of the briefcase he set on his desk.
“Good morning, everyone,” he said, pulling out a stack of papers. At least he had the decency to not sound bored or put upon on the first day of class. “I’m Mr. Gelhart, this is Introduction to Chemistry, and...if Mr. Back-of-the-Room could please remove his sunglasses...? We can get started.”
Scowling, Mac slipped the shades from his face and shoved them into his pants pocket, amidst a scattering of uncomfortable snickers. The teacher began passing out the syllabus for the chemistry class, and Mac, in order to tune out the stares at him from his classmates, had to tune him out, too.
---
“What’s your deal?!”
That was it. All his careful planning on his walk home, the many starts to this conversation, trying to map out the infinite ways it could go, had all come to a head when Mac walked into the kitchen and saw his father’s back, and had been completely abandoned. At that moment, he could think of nothing else to say that summed up his feelings any better.
The dark blonde head turned slowly to reveal his father’s severe face, and Mac instantly regretted it--regretted ever considering speaking to him, in fact, because speaking wasn’t really a thing they did. Not since he was five, and conversations revolved around simple things like little league tee-ball and teaching him how to read.
“Excuse me?”
Mac swallowed. The urge to run was strong, but he had already moved in and he couldn’t back out now.
“Your deal,” he repeated, unwilling to show weakness. Not anymore. Not about this. “You’ve been writing anti-NEXT propaganda since...since before I was born!” Careful research on the library computers during lunch had offered this information quite willingly when he’d searched for his father’s name.
“Someone needs to inform the public of the dangers NEXT present to society,” his father answered, unnervingly calm. Mac’s chest tightened.
“You kept writing them after my powers showed up!”
“NEXT were no less dangerous after you became one.” His father’s dark blonde eyebrow raised a little, sternly appraising. “I daresay they were more.”
Mac’s fury began seeping into his expression, despite his every attempt otherwise. “I want to switch schools,” he asserted, surprising himself with the strength of his own voice. “One that didn’t agree to this stupid Act--”
“That Act is going to spare the people around you a lot of pain and suffering,” returned his father, matching his hard voice with an even harder one. “If we had gotten that Act approved earlier perhaps we could have greatly reduced the amount of people you hurt.”
Mac snapped his mouth shut, speechless.
“You will stay at this school, for as long as you can manage to keep yourself under control,” He began to turn back around.
“No one said a word to me.” The pressure in his chest had moved up to his throat, and it strangled the words out of him. “No one would even go near me. They’re all terrified.”
Mac’s father gave him a long, flat look out of the corner of his eye before returning to the newspaper on the table in front of him. “That should help keep you out of trouble,” he said.
Mac completely forgot to ask after his new brother as he slowly, silently turned to walk out of the kitchen and sequester himself in his room.
---
Rather than remove them from his bag, Mac kept his shades on him and wore them any time he wasn’t expressly told not to. Somewhere in his father’s bigoted proclamations, he had made an important point, Mac had realized; as long as no one wanted to go near him, his objective to stay out of trouble would prove much easier. But sooner or later, the initial fear instilled in his classmates was going to wear off, and when it did, curiosity would get the best of them. One girl in his first period class was already watching him with an expression that seemed intrigued. What if his training weren’t enough? He would just be proving his father right all over again--and worse, this time he would face being sent away.
With the shades, he could be an enigma. A mystery. An intimidating wall that had no wish to talk to anyone, ever. One that neither wanted nor needed friends. One that dragged himself through a solitary life.
It was killing him.
From the backs of classrooms, he watched his classmates work together to solve problems, giggle at teachers behind their backs, ask each other to borrow paper and pencils. From the corner of the cafeteria he observed them eating and talking and laughing together. From behind dark lenses and a flat mouth he watched them learn, mature, date, make bad decisions and mistakes and something inside of him was dying.
---
The occasional group projects were just about the only times he spoke to anyone, and first period was the worst offender. Group labs had begun for chemistry class three weeks into the semester, and normally, having nothing to contribute to the group’s work, Mac would remain impassive, silently doing his part with clear plastic goggles strapped over his shades. It wasn’t until late October that their group work required them to multitask, and after a quiet discussion amongst his three group-mates, two went off to work on the other side of the room, leaving him staring through dark lenses at a slender, blonde girl with wide, searching hazel eyes. She was the girl Mac had caught watching him every once in a while since their first day.
“Are you...um. Are you ready?” she asked. Despite the hesitation her voice, it had a nice smoothness to it, a...texture, thick but soft, that reminded Mac of custard for no explicable reason. He just nodded and joined her at the counter. They were supposed to accurately measure out some chemicals and stir them together to demonstrate chemical changes, or something. It seemed like a waste of time, just like everything else in this class, but Mac would not complain and shatter the fortress he’d built up around himself.
He let the girl measure out liquid into one of the beakers, watching her hands move with certainty. “My name’s Julia,” she offered, watching only what her hands were doing.
Fear struck powerfully through Mac’s chest. Shit, shit, did this mean his facade was wearing off? “I know,” he replied, as deadpan as he could muster. “I’m not deaf.”
That seemed to work for a time. She bit her lower lip and fell silent and Mac, feeling like a gigantic asshole, stepped forward wordlessly to try and prepare another part of the test. You could get a lot out of watching people, he’d learned, and when someone made a habit of watching you, you tended to watch them back. From the clothes she wore, the crowd she moved with, the way she acted, Mac could tell she was well-off, used to having whatever she wanted. In her group she was like the sun around which the others revolved, and she had the smile and radiance to match. Julia liked talking to people, engaging them in conversations, finding out about them. If he were not a NEXT, or if the entire school didn’t know he was, maybe they could have been friends. And maybe I’d hurt her, if we were. It was a nasty thought, he knew, but not impossible. No--it was terribly, completely possible.
“You, um. You don’t talk much, though,” she quietly tried, after a time.
Goddammit.
“No one cares much for talking to me, either,” he returned, pointedly. Please stop trying. Please.
“That’s because everyone’s afraid of you.” She was staring at the third beaker intently, instead of looking at him. Her voice was almost too soft to hear.
“They should be,” he forced out, grabbing at the fourth and final beaker.
He watched her mouth morph into a frown with some weird sense of satisfaction twisted around regret. Silently, she placed the beaker marked “#2” on the combination hot-plate/stirrer resting on the counter and flicked on the second switch to set the white plastic-coated magnetic stirrer spinning. It didn’t move.
“Oh...” Mac watched her face fall further, having never recovered from what he’d said. “Guess we’ll have to ask for another one. Mr. Ge--!”
“Hey.” Reaching for the beaker, Mac stepped between Julia and their teacher, quieting her instantly. She gave up the glass container but blinked at him hesitantly.
“What? We’re supposed to have them stirring while we add--...oh.”
Her lips closed slowly. The bar in the clear liquid began spinning just above his palm when Mac transferred his field from the hot plate to the small magnet. It was a precise, controlled movement and it took up a lot of his concentration. With his eyes on the objects in his hand, he missed what her face looked like as she silently poured the clear contents of the #1 beaker into the one in his hand. The two liquids together turned a deep, wine red as the bar slowly spun to mix them. For a while, the two of them watched the now colored liquid in silence.
“...We’ve gotta pour that into the third beaker,” she offered slowly.
The magnet stopped moving immediately, and Mac placed it back in her hands, taking up the one marked with a “#3.”
“That’s incredible,” she breathed, preparing to pour it into the liquid being stirred in the beaker in his hand.
“No,” Mac replied, acutely regretting that he’d done it in the first place.
“My power isn’t nearly as useful.”
This time, when she poured the red liquid into the clear, the mixture turned a cloudy white. Mac stared at it, eyes widening slightly behind his goggles and shades.
The stirring stopped abruptly, and he set the beaker on the counter with a quiet thunk. After a quick glance at Mr. Gelhart, who was busy leaning over someone’s set of beakers on the other side of the room, Mac pulled his goggles off with one hand and took Julia by the wrist with the other.
“Hey, wai--”
“Shh.” He pulled her, gently, to an empty corner of the classroom and did what he had never done in this school: removed his shades without having to be told to. Her hazel eyes were wide and filled with apprehension as they stared at each other, for what seemed to Mac like hours. But her expression was anxious, and otherwise unreadable.
“You’re lying,” he finally determined lowly, replacing his shades. “Pretty sure they never sent out any yellow flyers about you.”
She bit her lip, her eyes trying to pierce his shield. “That’s because they don’t know. No one knows,” she whispered, earnestly. “Not even my parents know!”
With his blue gaze peeking over the frames of his sunglasses, Mac watched her silently for a while. She was clearly uncomfortable talking about it, fidgeting, with her eyes wider than usual, and Mac found himself wondering how long she had been keeping this secret. Maybe some NEXT powers were easier to hide than others.
“What can you do...?”
She broke their gaze, quickly looking down at her feet. “I don’t...I can’t tell you,” she said, quiet. Any grain of trust that may have entered into Mac’s heart before was quickly filtered out by her avoidant answer. Eyes which had briefly softened grew hard again.
“Yeah, okay.”
“You don’t believe me?”
“You can’t even make up a good lie for that?”
“I’m not lying!” she whispered, with such familiar desperation that Mac took a step back. “It’s just...embarrassing. Okay? It’s not useful like yours, not at all.”
Mac’s lips pressed into a thin line, torn, but before he could answer, Mr. Gelhart called from the other side of the room, “Mr. Farrow! Miss Fontaine! Back to work, please!”
“Maybe I’ll tell you someday,” she whispered, as they hurried back to their spots.
---
“--And then suddenly the bar was spinning, all by itself! I mean, he was making it spin, it was incredible!”
The fair skin of Mac’s cheeks reddened considerably, and his shades were not large enough to hide it all. No one had ever expressed appreciation for what he could do before, and now here Julia was, relaying to a crowd of attentive listeners the story of what had happened in chemistry class that morning. She had dragged him over with a fearlessness that startled him into going with, abandoning the lunch he had no interest in eating anyway. From behind the walls of his shades, he’d watched the crowd’s face go from apprehension, to morbid curiosity, to full-blown interest.
“Show us something, Mac, go on!” Julia urged, smiling up at him so brightly that he had to clench his teeth and steel himself from the staggering intensity of her request.
Eyes darting over to where one of the teachers stood nearby, Mac quickly responded, “No.”
He looked back in time to see her face fall. “Come on, just something small! Like before. We won’t tell...right?”
The crowd nodded and chattered at him, trying to encourage him with their curious interest.
Mac had to work hard to fight them, to quash the urge to show off. In the three months since he’d been here, he’d kept tight reign over his powers. In times of stress, when before his field would rise up like hackles, he’d merely dragged a hand through his hair and squashed it back down, leaving both property and people in tact. He’d been good. He’d been perfect. All his training over the summer had been for this, and until this morning no one and nothing in this school had felt the effects of his powers. And now all of the sudden, because of them, there were ten sets of eyes watching him expectantly, interestedly. Unafraid.
He gave up fighting the strong urge to show off. After all, what were these powers for, if not to use them...? What had all his hard work been for otherwise?
The teacher became distracted, and Mac seized his opportunity. There was metal, a dull ping, but still extant, in the pocket of one of the boys closest to him. He drew it out slowly, raising it up into the air before his face. The boy watched his expensive-looking pen float, adjusting his wire-rimmed glasses as if he couldn’t believe his eyes. Carefully, it traveled over to a folded napkin sitting abandoned on the lunch table, and wrote, messily, How’s this?
It was a gamble; Mac had never tried anything like that before, and it was much harder to read than his own narrow handwriting. Apparently it was legible enough, though, and those who were close enough to see the message took in awed breaths and two of them even clapped, almost noiselessly. Some of them were grinning.
Julia reached forward and picked up the napkin, once Mac had returned the pen to its owner. Her eyes were bright and sparkling as she looked up at him and said with amusement, “You should work on your penmanship.”
His mouth twisted into a frown, briefly, until she brazenly reached up to pull his shades from his face. “Sit with us,” she said, her voice warm with an emotion he couldn’t name, and he did as he was asked.
---
“So there were three nurses in there with me by the fourth day, and I said to them--I was five years old, remember, and I said--‘I guess I’m a chick magnet.’”
The collection of listeners dissolved into laughter, but the only giggles Mac heard were the ones from the girl with the wide hazel eyes, tucked comfortably within his arm. “You’re horrible,” Julia told him, but that warmth in her look and the way she snuggled closer to his side opposed her words.
---
“Thanks,” she said, tying off another garbage bag and setting it aside. “I can’t imagine trying to clean all this up by myself.”
“No problem.” Mac landed a quick kiss on her cheek as he passed by with a stack of empty pizza boxes. “I wasn’t about to just leave you hanging.”
Julia smiled, her eyes following after him as she shook open another bag. He set the pile by the front door and stopped for a moment to stretch. The clock on the wall rang an absurd hour.
“Can you grab those cans for me?” she asked, nodding over at the collection of empty soda cans and the occasional beer can on the table across the room.
“Huh? Oh, sure.” Stepping carefully over a pile of plates they’d yet to pick up, Mac headed for the cans and only noticed her confused expression when he headed towards her open bag with an armful.
“...What?”
“Why didn’t you just...you know?”
Mac chuckled, dropping the cans into the bag and going back for more. “Aluminum’s not magnetic.” She blinked, which made his smile turn sheepish. “Wish it was, though.”
“O-oh. Well, that’s okay,” she insisted after a moment, and watched with a faint smile as he crossed the room three more times to finish collecting the cans. “You’re still amazing.”
She seemed to delight in making him blush; he’d stopped wearing his shades so much these days, so to hide it he had to turn back to finish collecting the trash into a final bag. But he was still grinning a little when he straightened to tie it off.
“That’s everything.” Julia glanced around the room, but their cleaning had been thorough. “I can vacuum tomorrow. Thanks, Mac.”
“Any time.” He wrapped her in his arms briefly, pressing another kiss to the top of her head before letting go. “It’s pretty late, though. I should--”
He stopped. Julia was biting her lower lip, glancing hesitantly between him and her feet. “Mac, could you...could you stay? It’s my birthday, and I don’t want...”
“It stopped being your birthday about three hours ago,” Mac teased gently, to buy himself some time.
“You know what I mean.” She looked up at him with those wide hazel eyes brimming with sadness, and he felt his insides turn into jelly. “I just don’t want to be alone.”
He looked around the room as if he could detect somewhere in it a reason why he shouldn’t. Her parents were gone until Wednesday, a common occurrence for two high-ranking employees at Poseidon Line, and her house felt big and empty now that her party guests had all left.
“Unless your parents would...?”
“They won’t even notice,” Mac answered quickly; as long as he caused no trouble in school, they were content to spend their time and attention doting on his baby brother, and Mac was perfectly fine with that. “I...” Really, there was no reason not to, except that the prospect sort of excited and terrified him at once.
“Okay,” he finally said, her instantly bright smile quite convincing.
She found him a pair of sweatpants and a T-shirt to sleep in from a box of her father’s old clothes, and, stepping into the bathroom to change, Mac took a moment to breathe. Her parents were not aware of his existence, and it had never seemed appropriate for him to spend the night before. The look on his face in the mirror was admittedly a little panicked. It had been almost ten years since he’d had proper friends, and Julia was his first girlfriend, and here he was about to spend the night in her house, and...
...And why was he freaking out about this now? Mac shook his head swiftly and ran both hands through his hair. The prospect of dating a rich girl had been intimidating at first, but it was hard not to be comfortable around Julia. Really, he had no reason to worry.
“Mac...? Is everything okay?”
“Y-yeah,” he stammered, trying to force his expression into something less anxious. Julia’s father’s clothes hung large and heavy from his smaller frame, and they felt to Mac as if they were weighing him down. He turned away from the mirror and tried to pretend he was holding them up, instead, though they lacked any sort of metal by which to do so.
“Well hurry up, aren’t you tired?”
Maybe that was what had him on edge. It was pretty late, and he’d been here for hours, ever since school let out for the weekend. “Sorry. Bet you’re exhausted.” Mac left the bathroom, absently flicking off the light with a turn of his magnetic field. She was waiting for him on the other side, yawning as if to prove him right.
“Yeah. I’m gonna sleep for a week.”
“Maybe two, just to be on the safe side,” he laughed, but the cheerful sound tapered off as he took her hand in his own. “Hey, you’re freezing.”
“It’s cold in here, after everyone left,” she answered, clutching at his arm. Despite the pink-and-white-striped flannel pajamas swaddling her, she was shivering minutely. “Can we just sleep the whole month? Wake me up when it’s March.”
“That’s more than a month.” Mac pulled her into his arms and began leading her towards the door at the end of the hall.
“Only a little.” Her murmur was muffled with sleep as she pulled open the door to her room and they slipped inside, flipping on the light. Mac had been in her room many times before; he was familiar with the pink and white color scheme, the fan that hung now uselessly from the ceiling, the extensive collection of music boxes lining her walls. But he never had cause to pay much attention to her bed. The covers seemed inadequate, suddenly, for how cold she was.
“You know what I think?”
“...Hn?”
Mac shut the door behind them. “I think you don’t have enough blankets.”
Julia’s sleepy eyes were slow to comprehend his meaning, but by the time he had helped her into bed and she looked up at him, she seemed to understand, giving a simple nod of her head. “I think you’re right.”
His earlier hesitation already forgotten, Mac nudged her aside and slid under the covers, squeezing into the twin-sized bed along with her.
“Wait, the light--”
“Shh.” He grinned at her, then lifted a hand and drew his focus across the room at the light switch--a small target, plastic-coated, and far away, but he could still feel, vaguely, the mechanism inside. As Julia watched with sleep-lidded eyes, the switch shuddered--and snapped down. The lights went out, and the fan began spinning.
“Oh--!”
“Shit,” Mac muttered under his breath; as the fan picked up speed, cold air began to swirl down on them. He must have hit both switches at the same time. “Okay, hang on...”
In the darkness, he concentrated again, feeling out the switch panel despite the fact that he could no longer see it. Moments later, the fan slowed to a stop, the lights came back on, and the music box closest to the door, a smaller figure depicting a tiny blonde head with long hair peeking out of a tower window, lifted up into the air briefly before dropping back down with a clatter onto its shelf.
“Oh--!” Julia repeated, more panicked. “Careful...!”
“Sorry--sorry.” Frustrated, and with a frown twisting his mouth, Mac reluctantly slid off the bed again and went to manually turn the lights off. While he still went to the park to practice every once in a while, most of his weekends these days were spent with Julia and her friends. He had sufficient control over his powers now, such that no one at school would have any reason to complain about him, but his precision could still use a lot of work. In little time, with a flick of his hand, darkness once more descended, the fan stilled, and Mac began to pick his way back over to the bed.
“Over here,” said Julia, helpfully, from the direction in which he moved.
“I know.” Chuckling, Mac returned to his spot beside her, tucking the blankets around them both. “I can feel where you are.”
“...Huh?”
“The metal in the bed frame, I mean, it sort of responds to me. Like radar.”
She was silent for a while, snuggling closer to his chest.
“So you could find me anywhere,” she said after a while, when she’d stopped shivering so hard.
“...Maybe.” It was an interesting thought. “If I knew you had something specific on you, and if it was a funny shape or something, maybe. I’m not sure I’m good enough for that yet.”
“You will be.” Her voice was subdued with exhaustion, but Mac could recognize the remains of her warm encouragement in her words. “You get better all the time.”
“...Because it’s important,” he murmured after a moment. To keep you all safe. To stay here with you. That’s why I need to get better.
“Hey,” he said suddenly, “are you ever gonna tell me what you can do?”
She didn’t answer.
“Julia?” He pulled back from her a little to try and get a good look at her face, but her eyes were closed and, he realized, her breathing had slowed. She’d fallen asleep. He kissed her gently goodnight and soon followed suit.
---
A loud clatter woke Julia up from her rest. Rubbing her eyes, she crawled dazedly out of bed; there was another, softer clang before she even got to her feet, coming from the direction of her window. A third sounded before she could get the blinds open, but then just below the level of the window pane, there was a wave of blonde hair visible through the glass. With a final, quieter sound, the head of hair rose up, and Julia watched with wide eyes as Mac’s face appeared in her window. He was grinning, and tapped lightly on the glass for her to open it. Too worn out to be shocked, a bewildered Julia slid the window up to let him in. The air was still fairly chilly now at the beginning of March, after all, and there was no point in the both of them being sick.
A slight rattle ran the length of the room as he heaved himself inside, laden with what looked like a heavy backpack, but it subsided as he fully entered her house and got to his feet. She shut the window after him against the cool air.
“What are you doing here?” she whispered urgently. Her voice rasped with the early onset of a sore throat.
“You’re not wondering how I got up?” Mac replied, still grinning as he pulled his backpack around to dig through it.
“I know how you got up,” she responded, still whispering. “Loudly. My parents are home, Mac, what are you doing?”
“Okay, yeah, that was a little loud. Sorry.” From the bag came a pristine-looking notebook, which he offered her. “Here. Chem notes.”
She eyed him suspiciously. “You don’t take chem notes.”
“See what I sacrifice for you?” He grinned wider as a smile began to break her stern expression. “Here, here, take it. I paid attention and everything. Promise.”
With an exaggerated sigh, Julia reached out to accept the book, her smile growing reluctantly as she flipped through the pages. “...Thanks, Mac.”
“No problem! Sorry,” he added, “about the noise. Can’t have bothered them too much if they haven’t made a big deal out of it by now, huh?”
“I guess.” Julia closed the book carefully and set it on her bedside table. “So...how did you get up?”
Mac practically beamed. “Your house has metal siding. A lot of houses do, I didn’t really notice it til a couple weeks ago. Ours is some vinyl stuff or something, so that doesn’t work. It’s hard to practice it, though, so I’m--”
He stopped talking when she suddenly erupted into a coughing fit and watched her worriedly as she groped for a tissue.
“Not feeling any better, huh?”
She shook her head and blew her nose as quietly as she could. “Thanks for stopping by. But you’d better get going, I don’t want to get you sick.”
“Not leaving without a hug,” he threatened, enticing her with a warm smile and open arms.
“Oh...fine. I guess that couldn’t hurt.”
Mac left a kiss on her temple before they broke apart and he re-shouldered his backpack. “Get some rest and feel better soon, okay?”
“I will.” Seated on her bed, she watched him open the window back up. “I wish you had a cell phone so I could call you.”
Mac smiled, and shrugged. “Maybe someday,” he said, without much conviction. “I’ll be back tomorrow if you’re not back in class, okay?”
“Quieter this time...?”
He grinned. “I’ll try.” Carefully, he spread his field out to linger around his feet and hands, and, pulling down the window by the metal locks on its sides, he slowly descended the side of Julia’s house.
