My stomach likes to tie itself in knots when I’m really anticipating something. Like showing Evan my Ice power at school on Thursday.
I can barely hold down breakfast, I’m so nervous. I’m on edge as I sit through all my morning classes. By lunchtime, I’m so wired I’m about to explode.
In a very unusual twist of fate, Harris doesn’t come to our usual lunch table first today - Evan does. I think it’s better that way, though. I wanted her to be alone with me when I showed her, so it would seem a bit more special.
But how to lead in to it...that’s my real challenge. I can’t exactly drop this in her lap. That would just be rude.
“Hey there,” I say as Evan takes her seat. “Chilly today, isn’t it?”
“It’s December, it happens.” Evan smiles, pulling a green apple out of her backpack. “What’s with you today? You look kinda funny.”
“I dunno,” I say, glad Mom made a mistake and bought green apples even after I specifically asked her for red. I can now match Evan’s apple again, when I was afraid I might not get another chance to do so before winter break. “I just keep thinkin’ how much fun it would be to quick-freeze these things. Preserve ‘em for future post-apocalyptic archaeological digs, right?”
Evan chokes on her peanut-butter sandwich. “What? Do you have any idea how completely random that is?”
“But now you wanna try it out, don’t you?”
“Um…” A shy smile forms slowly on Evan’s face, and I find myself copying the expression. I did say before that I loved Evan’s shy smile, right?
“Come on,” I say in a singsong voice. “You know you wanna.”
Evan picks up her apple. “It’d be a waste of a good apple.”
“Not really,” I say. “We can unfreeze ‘em after, right?”
“Who says?”
“I says.” I don’t bring up the fact that I was able to pull Ice from my walls last night. That was different only because it was a non-living thing. Evan does bring up a good point, but one I decide to ignore in the excitement of the moment.
“You sound pretty sure of yourself,” Evan laughs.
“And why not?” I say. “Come on, you can freeze mine first. Think fast!” I throw my apple at Evan’s face, and she screams before raising her hand and freezing it. The mini-gust of wind created by her power also sends it flying a few inches back at me, finally coming to rest exactly halfway between us.
“You...you…” Evan can’t even form the words. Or, at least, she’s only pretending to be spitting mad. Given her acting skills, I’m leaning towards the latter. “That’s it, Jay, you brought this upon yourself!”
She grabs her apple and chucks it at my face, only for me to send it flying with a blast of Ice so it lands right next to hers.
Evan’s face shifts from a demonic grin to a shocked jaw-drop. “Holy shit,” she breathes. “Jason...you...how is that possible?”
“You surprised?” I ask. “That’s okay. So was I when I first found out I could do that.”
Evan laughs - I can’t tell if it’s from nerves, adrenaline, amazement, or some combination of the above. “I thought that was impossible, though. Warlocks are only supposed to have one power.”
I smile widely. “Guess again, love.”
“Holy shit,” Evan says again. “That’s so cool. I mean, I’ve heard stories about it all the time, but I never thought they were true.”
“Stories about what?” Harris asks, joining us for the first time today.
“Go on, show him,” Evan says.
I hold up my hand. “It’s okay. He already knows.”
“Really?” Evan turns to Harris. “Why didn’t you tell me? I thought we told each other everything!”
“Since when?” Harris asks. “And I only just found out about this the other day, to be honest.”
“What other day?”
“Would you believe it was when we first went to Elena’s?” I say. “And I wasn’t the only one with a hidden power. Show her, Harris.”
“Only ‘cause you started it,” Harris says, holding up a small, spinning flame in his hand for us to see. “By the way, Jason, in case you’re wondering, Evan’s never seen this before. No one has, except you and Thor.”
“Who’s Thor?” Evan asks.
“This stray dog I sort of adopted,” Harris says. “You’d love him. He’s very affectionate. And not in a bad way, either. He knows how to treat ladies right.”
I roll my eyes. “You sure? From the sound of it, he’s never met any humans besides you and me. For all you know, he could be a serious horndog.”
Harris snorts. “You just had to get that pun in there somewhere, right?”
“At the risk of being violated,” Evan says, “I think I’d very much like to meet this Thor of yours.”
“And meet him you will,” Harris says. “Today okay with you?”
“Well, I still need to pick up Adele and Rachel,” Evan says. “Maybe tomorrow, though, since it’ll be the last day of school before break anyway.”
“Had to try and see if I could do something besides hella studyin’,” Harris says.
“Still haven’t taken that big physics test?” I ask.
“It’s tomorrow,” Harris says. “All my other classes are gonna be celebratin’ the imminent vacation, and Mr. Pegg insists on ruining our last week of school with this monstrosity.”
“I heard nobody ever passes that particular test,” Evan says.
“Again, I have to ask myself, what the hell was I thinkin’, takin’ that class?” Harris drops his head into his hands. “The only really good thing about it is, I get to see Aimee outside of work a bit more often.”
“Is that goin’ well for you?” I ask. “She finally seein’ how awesome you really are?”
“If by ‘awesome,’ you mean ‘unable to understand half the stuff we’re supposed to know for the test,’ then yes.” Harris sighs, rubbing his eyes. “Hell, even Aimee says she’d be lucky to get sixty percent on this test.”
“She really thinks she’s gonna flunk it?” Evan asks.
Harris shakes his head. “Pegg lowers the grading scale so seventy is an A, sixty is a B, and so on. I’m currently averaging 55, so I’m probably lookin’ at a C this semester.”
“At least you’re gonna pass,” I say.
Harris busies himself plucking the pepperoni off his pizza before answering. “Again, warlocks and science. Not a good combination. The only reason I took it was ‘cause I thought it would be easier than bio or chem. And less disgusting than anatomy.”
“Excuse me?” Evan and I say simultaneously. “Jinx!” we cry out, pointing at each other, again in unison.
“Don’t you guys have to dissect a cat, parboil its skeleton, and then glue the bones back together in some kind of pose?” Harris asks.
“That’s not until much later,” I say. “It’s next semester’s project. Right, Evan?”
“Yeah.”
“That’s right,” I say, reaching out for my apple. “Yowch! That’s really cold.”
“Gee, thanks, Captain Obvious,” Evan laughs, knocking on her own apple.
“Let’s fix that,” I say, pulling the Ice off both apples. I’m glad to see the apples are both intact, although still hard as rocks. Harris reaches out and warms them up with some Fire.
“So you can do that after all,” Evan says.
I wave my hands around the Ice so it starts changing shape in midair, like the experimental transformium metal from Age of Extinction. It even starts splitting into these weird, almost CGI-looking lines, just like in that movie.
“I guess it does work when you Ice living things,” I say. “But I still don’t wanna risk freezin’ one of you to really test it out, you know?”
“I get it,” Evan says. “Now don’t hog all the Ice, Jay. Let me have some too!”
“But of course,” I say, breaking my floating ball of shape-shifting Ice in two and pushing one half Evan’s way. I look at the apples and say, “Harris, maybe that’s enough Fire. We don’t wanna burn the fruit, do we?”
Harris taps the apples with his free hand. “They’re still frozen solid,” he says. “Unless you guys want to break your teeth on ‘em?”
“Do we look stupid?” I ask.
Harris pretends to think about the question long and hard. “Mmm...not hardly.”
Evan and I exchange glances. I can tell she’s processing Harris’s answer the same way I am, and that we both come to the conclusion that he’s just insulted us. In response, we both toss our Ice at his head.
Harris ducks to escape our attack, and the Ice sails over his head and hits that of someone else.
For a moment, Nolan Solari looks funny with the Ice balls shattered all over his face, making him look like a muscular teenage Santa Claus. Adding to the warped humor of the moment, he’s blinking hella fast, looking ridiculously surprised.
Then he takes the time to look around, and unfortunately, I catch his eye.
“Oh shit,” I groan as Nolan starts coming our way.
“What’s happening?” Evan asks. “What did we do?”
“We did that,” I say, making a small gesture Nolan’s way. No pointing - I don’t wanna set him off any further than he must already be.
Evan turns around. “Oh. That guy. You never did say why you and him don’t get along.”
“That’s ‘cause it’s really embarrassing,” I say. “Oh, hey there, Nolan!” I chirp as annoyingly as possible when he finally reaches our table. “How’s my favorite Neanderthal today?”
“What? Um, never mind.” Nolan wipes his face clean and holds out the white powder in his hand. “Does this Ice belong to any of you?”
“Me,” I say. “And her,” I add, pointing to Evan. “But mostly mine. Rest assured, buddy, you were not, in fact, our target.”
“Uh-huh,” Nolan says. “Just don’t do it again, okay, guys? I get it, it was an accident. But please, I don’t think usin’ your power all willy-nilly like that is a good idea.”
“We promise we’ll be more responsible in the future,” I say.
“Please do,” Nolan says, handing the Ice back to me. He turns to leave, then does a double take. “Wait a second. I thought...aren’t you that Dark punk who keeps screwin’ around with me?”
I purse my lips. “Hmm, I could be. But I think I’ve outgrown the whole Dark-shield-over-the-lights thing by now.”
“Good to know,” Nolan says.
“Hey, Nolan! You comin’ to eat or what?” A girl waves at Nolan from a nearby table.
“Just a sec, MJ,” he says. He looks at all of us and says, “Okay...um...bye?” Then he turns around and leaves to join MJ.
“Well, that was hella awkward,” Harris says.
“Tell me about it,” I say. “I thought he was gonna kick my ass for sure. Again.”
“So, what, you and Nolan have gotten into fights before?” Evan asks.
I nod, blushing. “Yeah. ‘Fraid so.”
“Why?”
I swallow nervously. The first time I went against Nolan, I actually had a reason to do so, but I’ve never told anyone about that. Then again, nobody knew I ever fought with him until now.
So I proceed to open up about this part of my personal history for the first time.
“Okay,” I say. “You guys remember that girl who disappeared last spring? Dani Cabrera?”
“Yeah,” Evan says. “Your sort-of girlfriend.”
Harris blinks. “She was your girlfriend?”
“Sort of,” I say. “Like Evan said. We were never really exclusive or anything. But she was a really nice, friendly girl. Always up to seein’ a movie with me or goin’ out for coffee. But her parents were...well, to put it bluntly, they treated her like shit.”
“How so?”
“They were in some crazy fundamentalist church or some shit like that, so they firmly believed in the sinfulness of the outside world, blah blah blah. They made her dress all plain and 19th-century-farm-girly, they’d lock her in her room all the time, and they never let her go out anywhere, ever.” I smile a bit, remembering how Dani had first told me she was planning to get her ‘rents to let her out long enough to see The Amazing Spider-Man 2 with me. “The only reason she and I ever got to go anywhere is ‘cause she made up that she was goin’ to a friend’s house to study.”
“Can’t really argue with that,” Harris says. “Study date, anyone? Emphasis on ‘date.’”
“Don’t let Aimee hear you sayin’ that,” I laugh.
“We’re not exclusive, either,” Harris says.
Evan takes her apple from Harris (at least, I think it’s her apple - hers was slightly smaller than mine, if I remember correctly) and crunches into it now that it’s been sufficiently warmed up again. “Does nobody believe in one soul mate for all eternity anymore?” she deadpans.
“Only if you’re Stephenie Meyer, I would think,” Harris says. We all share a laugh at this one.
But then we get back to the more serious topic at hand. “So, basically, the reason why she vanished was because her parents found out about her and I doin’ things together. Naturally, their minds went in all the worst directions imaginable - we were goin’ to bars with fake IDs, gettin’ high, or worse, doin’ the do underage and unmarried.”
Evan and Harris start laughing again. “What’s so funny?”
“It’s just the way you say it,” Evan says. “I dunno why, but I can’t help but laugh at the way you tell the story.”
“In a not-supposed-to-be-funny way, though, right?” Harris asks. “I’m kinda interpreting it as black comedy myself.”
I frown at my own apple before taking a bite from it. It’s nice and well-chilled, surprisingly refreshing even on a cold day like today. “Yeah,” I say after gulping down the chunk of tart green goodness. “I can kinda see the black-comedy side of it.”
“But still, she vanished,” Evan says. “She couldn’t handle her parents anymore? Was that it?”
“Kind of,” I say. “The day before she left, she said her ‘rents were signin’ her up for some all-girls’ school way out in the mountains somewhere. All isolated and sealed off, no outside contact. Especially not with forbidden male companionship.”
“And then she left?” Harris says. He blinks rapidly, and I can see him just starting to tear up. I don’t blame him - I’m doing the same thing.
“At least she said goodbye,” I say. “I’m probably the only one she did that for.”
“You must’ve been really broken up about it,” Evan says, taking my hand. Once again, I feel the tiny, icy-spike sensation in my arm. But this time, I know it’s not the result of me absorbing any of her power. It’s my own Ice power reacting with hers.
“I was,” I say, pushing up my glasses so I can wipe a tear from my eye. “And then, to make me feel worse, one day - I think it was the very last day of school last year - I overheard Nolan talking to his friends about Dani’s disappearance. And he...he said she was just some weird Carrie White girl that nobody knew, and nobody cared about.
“Now that I look back, I don’t think he was tryin’ to be rude about it. He was just statin’ the facts - or, at least, the facts as he knew ‘em. But at the time, I took it as an insult, ‘cause he clearly didn’t know about me, or that I knew and cared about Dani and was praying for her safe return every night.” I laugh harshly. “Let me tell you this right now - I almost never pray. You should’ve seen me sayin’ really awkward stuff to God every night. It’s not like I knew what to say to Him, really.”
“Jesus, does anyone?” Harris remarks.
I nod. “But basically, it really got to me, what Nolan said. I finally realized for the first time that I was pretty much invisible at school, in real life, everything. And the only time I’d ever get noticed is, ironically, if I vanished like Dani.”
“That’s not true,” Evan says automatically.
“Thanks for the sentiment, but that’s not what I was thinkin’ at the time,” I say. “So I decided I’d get some kind of revenge on Nolan for what he said. I decided I’d Dark up the hall while he was at his locker, then try and attack him or something while he was disoriented. And hopefully take a few of his buddies with him, too,” I add with another nasty laugh.
“So what happened?” Harris asks.
“I found him while he was alone, did my thing, and landed a punch on his arm before he turned around and clocked me right in the solar plexus,” I say. “I’ll give the guy this much, though - he’s got great reflexes.”
“I’m guessing that wasn’t enough to get you noticed, though?” Evan clutches her apple tightly, not taking another bite for whatever reason.
“Only by Nolan,” I say. “So every so often, I would attack again, and each time, he’d take me down really fast. But I always felt that I’d at least win the war of words, ‘cause I’d trash-talk him while we were fighting, and he could never come up with a witty comeback.
“Funny thing, is, though...again, I’m lookin’ at all this in hindsight, but I think the real reason why I’d insult Nolan and keep fightin’ him was ‘cause I was projecting all the crap I felt about myself onto him. He was an easy victim for me ‘cause I felt he’d done me wrong, so I wanted to blame him for what had happened.”
“Are you sayin’ you don’t blame him anymore, then?” Evan asks.
“I can’t blame him,” I say. “Not really. He had nothing to do with me before that day when I overheard him, so it can’t possibly be his fault.”
We all take a look at Nolan as he sits and eats with his redhead friend MJ. He looks so ordinary, nothing like the Goliath figure I kept seeing him as whenever I would try and kick his ass.
“You think you should go up to him and explain yourself?” Harris asks.
“That would be a good idea,” I say. “But maybe not now. I think I’ve had enough of him for one day. And I can’t exactly guarantee he won’t kick my ass all over again, you know? He already hates me enough as it is.”
“Just another little problem in your life you’re gonna address later instead of now?” Evan asks.
I wag my finger at her. “I know what you’re thinkin’. Why am I procrastinatin’ on all my issues?”
“That’s exactly what I’m thinking,” Evan says. “Except not in a bad way like you seem to think. I shouldn’t think about it like that, ‘cause I used to do that too.”
“What? Put all your issues aside for another day?”
“What issues, indeed?” Harris asks.
“Oh, I’ve had issues,” Evan says. “I’ve just never really shared ‘em.”
I sigh heavily, letting my shoulders slump a bit. “Wow. Thank you for makin’ me feel horrible for airing my dirty laundry.”
“Don’t feel bad about it,” Evan says. “If you’re feelin’ confess-y, go for it. It’ll probably help you feel better.”
“Cool,” I say.
“Just don’t get all emo over it, though,” Harris says.
“Whoever said anything about emo?”
“Well, don’t emo songs always have some kind of confessional thing about ‘em? Like, ‘If I don’t say this now, I will surely break...’”
I roll my eyes. “The Fray is not emo, dude.”
“Then explain why all their songs are about bein’ abandoned by the ones you love,” Harris says. “I dunno about you, but that seems plenty emo and angsty to me.”
“‘Love Don’t Die’ isn’t all abandonment-issues, though,” Evan says. “Or however you want to put it.”
“Well, that’s the most un-Fray-ish Fray song there is,” I point out. “You want emo? Try this.” I pull my iPod out of my backpack, almost dislodging my picture of Evan in the process. I’m not sure why I still carry it around with me, now that I’m hanging out with her every day. I guess I just haven’t bothered taking the time to put it away somewhere else.
“This,” I say, handing one earbud each to Harris and Evan and starting up “Criminal” by Fiona Apple, “is way more emo than any Fray song.”
They take a good long listen. “Where the heck did you find this?” Harris asks, taking my iPod so he can consult the screen.
“Dani recommended it to me,” I say. “It was basically the first modern music she ever listened to, so it always held a special place in her heart ‘cause it turned her on to all sorts of other semi-obscure stuff from the era of our births.”
Evan’s lips move as she tries to whisper along to the lyrics - probably a few seconds after they come along, too. I’ve done that a lot of times before for songs I’ve never heard before, and then afterwards I completely forget them.
“So this song is about a girl who feels she’s treated her guy like crap?” Evan asks.
“I think we’ve been hangin’ around Ms. Y too long,” I say - Ms. Y never says “boyfriend” or “man,” always “guy,” to describe her significant other.
“But I’m right, right?”
“Sort of,” I say. “I’ve always wondered, though, if Dani ever really felt connected to the song on a personal level. I mean, I doubt it, considering she never had much romantic experience. But still.”
Harris takes the earbud out and hands it back to me. “I can see it bein’ emo ‘cause of the lyrics, but the style is anything but. Unless you consider it an emo song like something Panic! At The Disco would do.” He chomps on his pizza crust, swallows, then continues. “When was this released again?”
“1996,” I say.
Harris smiles. “So it’s older than us? Yep, not emo at all. Pre-emo, probably.”
“Do any of us even know what emo really is?” Evan asks.
“We’re so ready to label anything emo if it’s even remotely negative,” I say. “And that’s probably not the true definition of emo, anyway.”
“Then what is?”
I shake my head and finish my apple. “I have no idea.”
The bell rings, forcing us to pack our stuff in and get ready to go to class.
“Let’s all agree that we don’t know what true emo is,” Harris says, “and put that whole issue behind us. Great song, though. I should look into downloadin’ that one. From iTunes, of course,” he adds, seeing me look at him questioningly.
“I should do that too,” Evan says, humming the song under her breath as she tosses her apple core into the trash can.
“See you tomorrow, Harris,” I say, waving goodbye as he heads in the opposite direction from me and Evan. “Oh, and by the way, don’t ever let us hear you sing again.”
“It only sounded bad there ‘cause I was doin’ a Fray song,” Harris says. “It’s almost impossible to sound normal when you sing those.”
“Sure,” Evan says. “And you don’t sound stoned and nasally when you sing, say, Sara Bareilles?”
“He sings Sara Bareilles?” I grin hugely. “This I gotta hear.”
“Then tomorrow, I shall butcher ‘Love Song,’” Harris says. “Bye, dude! And dudette!”
“Bye,” Evan and I say, again together.
“We’ve gotta stop doin’ that,” I say.
“Tell me about it,” Evan says. “People are gonna start thinkin’ we’re two halves of a whole pod person or something.”