Going Your Own Way, but with Magic

Chapter 1

It would also be quite nice to say that it all completely involuntary. It wasn't. I didn't do it on purpose, but I wasn't standing there and then suddenly there was fire. I did something. I don't know want, but I did something. Whatever this something is, I've felt it before. And this time I could move it. Twist it. But the feeling isn't knew. It's anger becoming something different. Becoming power. It's sparkling blue and it feels like all the blood in my veins is being replaced by electricity. It numbs every other emotion until I am cold and clear and empty except for that bright blue. And it came as I was about to boil over with anger.

I looked at Jonah and I wanted to hurt him. Call it what you will – oversensitivity around parents' death, untreated anger issues, the fact that he really was being a colossal asshole – but I did. I'm not proud of it. The power felt different, more malleable this time. I could, with a lot of effort, move it. It felt like pushing a truck up a hill through honey, but I could move it. So I gathered it and threw every bit at Jonah Campbell. All I was trying to do was shove him. And then the fire started.

It took me nearly ten seconds to realise what happened. What I had done. I saw the fire but I couldn't or wouldn't process it. I was still brimming with electricity, that cold blue feeling taking away the need to think. People were screaming. I think that's what finally snapped me out of it. As far away as I'm getting now, I can still hear them. I fell back to Earth, landing painfully. The fire stopped coming from my hands. It wasn't blue, like I felt it to be when I was standing there. It was red and orange and very hot. I ran.

I wanted to scream and throw up and maybe start sobbing, but I wasn't sticking around to get caught. There is a time for being paralysed by guilt and it's after you get the hell out of there. God, that makes me sound cold. I put my hood up. With an effort, I stopped myself from running. It was quite easy to get out, hiding myself amongst the hundreds of terrified people. It's a crowd you can get lost in easily. As soon as I was a decent way out the gates, I started running again. I love running. Even then, it still felt good, to let endorphins melt my thoughts until it was all pounding heart and feet hitting pavement.

I got back far too soon. I wanted to run forever, to run until I either got somewhere or passed out. But all my money and all my (few) possessions were in that house, unfortunately. I couldn't go in. More specifically, I couldn't go in through the front door. My bedroom window, however, was open. I lacerated my knees and elbows climbing up the wall and stuffing myself through the window. At least it was only one floor up. Given that I had about the grace and sneakiness of a medium sized moose, I was lucky everyone was out. I changed my clothes. The grey hoodie I was wearing was too conspicuous, so I put on a slightly darker grey hoodie. I took a water bottle, the money I had managed to save from babysitting and the café, a couple of books and some clothes. That was the sum total of things I even considered taking. The sum total of my life, not even filling a smallish backpack. I don't have heirlooms. I don't have any old letters, I don't have a necklace with some nauseatingly sweet backstory, I don't have an old trinket box to be opened on my eighteenth birthday. I don't even have any photos. My parents either weren't camera people or they all got lost at some point. I don't stay at schools long enough for yearbooks, and most things get lost moving between places. Again, not a pity party. Something depressing I noticed when packing. Still. It means I didn't have to leave anything important behind, and my bag is light. Glass half full, I guess.

I left out the window, landing hard on one leg. I'm going to have a massive bruise tomorrow. That's an oddly comforting thought. Tomorrow is going to happen, and I am going to have a massive bruise. Is this what it feels like to be an optimist? I ran almost to the edge of town and I got on a bus. Not this bus, I changed a couple of times after that. And now that's all taken care of I have to start thinking about what to do next. I've avoided it for as long as I can, but there's no immediate need to get out anymore. I am not running, and now I have to think.

Like I said, I have no idea where I'm going. I know that at some point this bus is going to stop and everyone is going to have to get off and then I'll be alone in some strange place. But I don't want to think about it. The slow movement of the bus makes a nice background for planning. There's something peaceful about it, even with the screaming baby and all the people talking on their phones. There's an old woman in a bright pink fleece sitting next to me, absorbed in a book. She hasn't started screaming or leapt up and demanded an immediate exorcism, so what happened can't have left a physical trace. I feel like it has to be burned into me somehow, a handy little neon sign around my neck telling everyone to stay away. If I am radiating pure evil, the woman doesn't seem to notice. That's good. Okay. Plans. Short term: I need food, clothes, somewhere to stay because the money I've got won't last forever. I'm not too fussed about people finding me. There'll be a cursory attempt to find me when I've been gone for a few days and then everyone'll decide I ran off. Very sad, but what can you do?

They'll find another explanation for the fire. A gas leak and mass hysteria, that'll work. The more the people who were there insist that they saw me shoot fire, the less they'll be believed. It's not the main thing I should be feeling guilty about right now but it is. I know what it's like to have people not believe you when you're telling the truth, and I know what it is like to have things done for your own good. I don't wish that on any of the people there, except possibly Jonah. Mot even Jonah. No one particularly wants to find me and I don't want to be found, so that's all good.

Long term: A lot of stuff that I don't want to think about. Long term covers both the practicalities of how the hell am I supposed to get any semblance of a life now and also what the hell happened. Neither of those are things I have answers to. The short term is easier. The short term is survival. Long term: I need to understand what happened. So I can stop it ever happening again.

My skin crawls a bit when I realise I don't want that at all.

Until this morning in the library, I have felt powerless. I have been powerless. Obviously it made everything worse, but in those few seconds I had everything. Long term: I need to understand what happened. So I can control it. That isn't awful, right?

Long term: Adulthood. The freedom I have wanted for so long, with no official paperwork, or address, or A-levels. I will survive. But survival isn't what I'm worried about. Before, I thought of my life as on pause until I was eighteen. Finish school, get the hell out, and then I can start living. All my plans are shattered now. I have to find a life. I don't know how. There are more things I should be sorting out, but I am at the stage of exhausted where I swear you can feel it in your bones and my eyes are barely open. I rest my head against the window, clutching my bag tight. If it gets stolen I am even more screwed than I am now.

I was going for half an hour of light sleep, but we all knew that wasn't going to happen. I wake up to the old woman shaking my arm gently; the bus route ends here. That was kind of her, especially given that there's quite a high chance I've elbowed her in the face at some point. I am not a peaceful sleeper. If I did, she's being very gracious about it. I want to hug her. No Max, let's avoid assaulting nice old women (more than you already have, anyway).

I get off the bus and try to get my bearings. It looks like the edges of a bigger town or city. A slightly dingy rained-on row of shops with one equally depressing café. I have never been here before, but I've been to a thousand places like it. Calls itself a town but more like a village. Lots of people dedicatedly pretending it's the more interesting place they couldn't afford a flat in. Very proud of its annual cheese festival. More ego than a place like that has any right to. So I should get on another bus. Find somewhere interesting. But something about this place feels right. Not right. I have a feeling. Call it intuition, call it hippy-dippy ridiculousness, but I have a feeling. This town-village-suburb thing is as good a place as any to start over in. A car honks and I jump back as I realise I've been standing in the road. On the very edge, but still. For god's sake, Max. I'm not getting all this way to be run over. I make my heavy limbs walk. One foot in front of the other, ignore the fact you have no idea where you're going. Walk.