To Make a Difference (Sample)

Chapter Two

All I can do is stare at Iris with my mouth hanging open, "what?"

She looks at me and rolls her eyes, "you've been reading minds all day, darling. Can't you see?"

I shake my head and back away a little, "that's not what that was. Was it?"

"Look. You were right before. I am an aberration, but we can't keep talking about this in public like this. Your house is right around the corner. Let's go."

When we got to my house, we ran upstairs to my room. Lana wouldn't be home for another hour. She slammed the door and fell onto my bed, "what a day."

"Iris!" I yell pulling her off the bed, "you can't just act so casual about this! You're an aberration!? I'm an aberration!?"

She sighs, "I'm sorry I didn't tell you I was an aberration. I was scared."

"How long have you known?"

"A couple of weeks."

I narrow my eyes at her for a moment, but I can see the fear in her eyes again. I sit next to her, "you know you can trust me."

Iris just stares out the window, "aberration is defined as something that has an unwelcome difference and people often try to prevent it by erasing their mistake. They call us aberrations because we are unwelcome mistakes in the world that people are trying to erase. I always hated that they labeled people with the gene "aberrations." Don't you think it makes us seem like a failed science experiment or something?"

I lay my head on her shoulder, "yeah, It does, but to them we might as well be. To them, we aren't even human beings anymore."

She laughs a little, "they call us destructive, but they're the ones who are murdering innocent kids. Why do people still not see it?"

I shrug, "I don't think we will ever understand how some people can think like that. What exactly is your ability, Iris?"

She straightens a little, "watch this."

One moment she's there, and the next, she's gone.

"What the heck. Iris?" I ask standing up and looking around.

She suddenly appears again holding a bag of popcorn from the kitchen.

"Teleportation," she says sitting back down on my bed and grabbing the remote, "it's pretty cool."

"Yeah, it is," I say still trying to process what just happened, "so I can read minds and you can teleport. I wonder who else in our class is an aberration."

"Probably several of us to be honest," she says scrolling through Netflix getting a little annoyed at the fact all her favorite shows have been removed, "I hope those aberration devices don't come out any time soon, or ever."

I stare intently at Iris. She doesn't realize it until she glances at me and get a bit creeped out. She stops scrolling and raises an eyebrow at me, "why are you staring at me?"

"I'm trying to read your mind," I say as a raise my fingers to my temples and concentrate even harder. I saw it in a movie once.

She just rolls her eyes, "obviously you have to make physical contact before you can read anyone's mind."

"When did you get so observant? I always took you as the stereotypical beauty with average intelligence."

"It's always been there. You've just never asked about my grades."

"I just assumed you were making Cs or something."

"Wrong," she points out, "straight As."

I was about to express my surprise even further when I heard a door slam downstairs.