The Wanderers

Chapter 1

An incessant, high-pitched, beeping woke me from a dreamless sleep. I haven’t dreamt since the “accident.” I hated Callie for destroying my old alarm clock, but I could never really hate her, Callie’s all I have.

We had been arguing one morning over something stupid, that never really mattered. Callie had hurled a fire ball at my head. Luckily her thought hit me before the projectile did and I dodged it just in time for it to miss my head and catch everything on top of the dresser on fire, including the alarm clock. As soon as she realized what she had done Callie turned and ran, but this wasn’t the first time she had started a fire and left me to put it out. I held my left hand out over the flames. Slowly water droplets started falling from my fingertips, then my palm. Within seconds it was like a downpour from my hand. I held it there until the fire was out, then willed the water to stop. It still mesmerizes me how easily the liquid flowed from my skin. I knew I could flood the entire house in seconds killing everyone in it, but I would never do that, I loved those people too much. 

I was seventeen. I lived in a home with my eleven year-old sister Callie-Ann Flynt, and several other Wanderer children. They are like my siblings and I am the oldest. My “brothers” are the fifteen year-old twins Levi and Lukas Dackerman, and four year-old Jaxon Soto. Lukas’s power is extreme strength, Levi’s is speed, and then Jaxon’s only ability was being absolutely adorable. I practically raised Jax from when he showed up on the doorstep. The only other girl there was Callie, whose ability is to project fire. We were all taken care of by Mary Graham. She was young, only 32, and a human. Mary was married to a Wanderer named Liam, who was killed by a stray bullet in a bank robbery eight years ago. Mary hadn’t done anything to deserve to be exterminated so they put her in charge of Callie and myself when the “accident” happened. Then more orphaned Wanderers needed help so Mary was quickly put in charge of them as well. 

I quickly shut off the old, annoying, alarm clock that Mary was kind enough to let me borrow, until I could get enough money for a new one. The girls shared a room therefore we also shared an alarm clock, so Callie was paying for her reckless use of her power. 

“Are you awake?”  I said, loud enough to make sure Callie was up as I raided my dresser and headed down the hall for the bathroom. Faintly, I heard her grumble some annoyed words in my direction but she was already out of earshot and I didn’t care enough to tune into Callie’s constant stream of annoyed, preteen, angst-filled thoughts. I never remember being that way when I was eleven, but it must have been hard for Callie to be adjusting to her new found power. 

Being a Wanderer was all I had ever known. I couldn’t remember a time when I didn’t have to be cautious of what I did or said. Always just knowing how to control and use my powers, prevented me from helping Callie. I couldn’t explain how to stop the stream of molten lava spewing from Callie’s palm, I just knew. I couldn’t tell her how to make a ball of flame appear before her, or why it didn’t burn her skin, or anything about what was happening to her. So I couldn’t be too hard on her. She was alone in this aspect of her life. Mary had no idea how a Wanderers’ powers worked and the twins tried to help Callie but they couldn’t explain it either, they had to learn on their own as well. Just like Jax would in several years. It’s something we would all go through and it’s something, no matter how much we wanted to, we couldn’t help each other with. 

I had barely made it down the hall when a flash of a tall, blonde, dark brown-eyed Levi burst out of his room. I got tossed back by the sheer force of the wind his speed generated. Seconds later Lukas was in the doorway looking like he was going to rip out someone’s throat. This was the norm when you lived with Wanderer, teenage, twin boys. Noticing Lukas’s grip starting to tighten around the door frame and knowing Mary couldn’t afford to replace the fourth hole Lukas would have left in the wall that month, I started to slip my way into his mind.