Darrell took a long breath with a satisfied look, then watched me in silence for a handful of seconds before speaking again.

“We need to go back home soon, so today I’m only going to show you the essentials. We have covered most of them already, so, Hayden, what have you learned so far?”

I reflected.

“I learned that to use my power I must hate. I learned that I must not throw the fireballs at the bullies, but I must only show them.” There was still a part of my brain that told me it was something horrible, but I silenced that part immediately: I had enough of bullies, and this was my only opportunity to prevail on them.

“Very well,” Darrell nodded, “what I ask you, now, is to concentrate your mind on the bullies. What are your feelings about them?”

This was even easier. “I hate them.”

“Oh, yes you do. And why do you hate them?”

“I hate them because they make my life awful. When I wake up I feel bad because I know who I’m going to meet. They call me names all times and don’t leave me in peace, and I have no friends because of them, and no adult does anything even when I tell them!” Tears of wrath escaped my eyes. I knew I could let myself go with Darrell.

“Oh yes, you’re right, Hayden. They deserve to pay for it, don’t they?”

“Yes they do!” I shouted. The fireballs reappeared, and vanished again.

Darrell clapped. “Your hate for them is genuine. Now it’s time to make you concentrate on that feeling. The more you can concentrate, the longer the fireballs will remain.”

“What do I have to do?”

“Keep thinking on how much you hate them; this time I will not say anything. Don’t just think of your hate for them: let it invade your whole body.”

I made the best effort I could to keep that hateful feeling alive. I like to imagine my face was very reddish, because I was making noises similar to the ones I did in the bathroom. In little time the fireballs got back on my hands, but once again, as I looked at them, they disappeared in an instant. A wave of delusion took the place of my hateful feelings.

“It’s just a matter of practice,” Darrell explained, “when the fireballs appear, you must not look at them, but keep concentrating. The first times, it’s normal to be amazed, but the more you do it, the less you’ll be fascinated, so you can focus on your emotions and keep them longer.” He looked at the setting sun. “Let’s do it a pair more times and then we’ll go back to the car.”

So I did two more times. I was beginning to feel fatigued. Keeping on thinking about such unpleasant thoughts proved to be tiring. In the meanwhile, the fireballs still didn’t want to remain. I knew I was supposed not to look at them, but it was too hard to resist the temptation: those flames, so perfectly spherical, had a certain beauty. Besides, knowing I had made them gave a certain satisfaction.

“That’s enough for today. Let’s come back home,” he announced finally.

“Let me try again, please...”

“No, it would be too much in one afternoon, and we need to go back. I already revealed you something huge, you need some rest now.”

“OK, then.”

“You will need to make practice with your emotions next days. Whenever you’re with your parents or with me, think intensely of how much you hate those pesky kids. This will help you in getting your emotions in control.”

Shivers crossed my spine. I had to think of them when I was with the only people who really liked me? I thought I would have to do it only when training with him.

“I know it sounds bad, but it actually isn’t. If you trained alone, you’d risk evoking the fireballs when you don’t want them to appear. Instead, doing as I just said, you will counterbalance the hate with the love you feel for me and your parents. Practice as I said, and you’ll be able to control your fireballs in no time.”

“O...only because it’s you, Darrell.”

“That’s a good boy. Now let’s go.”

He began walking back, to the car’s direction. Nobody said anything. My mind was all a buzz of things. Whatever animosity I had felt for Darrell that day, it had disappeared. I loved him already, now I loved him even further. A pair of times, before reaching the car, I hugged him again. Both times Darrell laughed, patting my head and saying he loved me.

When we reached the car, he said two last things. “You mustn’t try to use your powers until you have full control of it. You may evoke a quantity of energy that you can’t control, and that would send you to reformatory forever. Promised?”

“Promised.”

“Another thing: this must remain between us. Not a word with your parents, not a word with your teachers, friends, relatives...no one. Nobody must know it outside of you and me.”

“Yes.” I didn’t put that into question: in all my comics, superheroes had to hide their second identity in normal life. At that moment, I felt like a soon-to-be superhero, though an unusual kind of it.

During all the journey back home, I kept staring at the car window, daydreaming about myself finally winning over the bullies. They would see my fireballs...they wouldn’t dare to get close to me any more...they would finally leave me in peace. Nobody would ever play with me likely, but I didn’t care much: I felt like being destined to have few friends, if none at all. I had Darrell, and that was enough for me.

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*  *  *

The next days were awfully unbearable. I kept being bullied in the playground as usual, lifted by my uniform in the middle of everyone and told things like “Who’s a loser? You’re a loser!” or malicious things about whoever had some sympathy to me; sometimes my parents, too, although they had never met them. Nothing different from the previous days, but this time I had to bear not only the bullies, but the temptation of showing them my awesome fireballs. Only my loyalty to Darrell kept me from trying to unleash them. Reporting everything to my teachers was useless: all they said whenever I told them was “ignore them”. Thinking about it, that was a pretty bad school with pretty bad teachers.

Still, once I almost used my powers. I was lying on the muddy ground, thanks to a guy who was some inches taller than me, when a fireball appeared for a short moment – at least, what I felt was a great heat in both my hands, the same heat I felt when I evoked the fireballs. Instantly, I froze in fear. That’s probably the reason the heat went away instantly, even quicker than that day. However, I was so petrified I almost didn’t feel my bully lifting me up by my uniform for the amusement of his companions. In any case, all the sweat I was releasing gave him the occasion of contemplating how, according to him, I was a ‘smelly chicken’.

Meanwhile, more training sessions with Darrell followed. We couldn’t train every afternoon since we had to wait until both my parents were out for work. But when we did, usually twice a week, they were the only moments I really enjoyed in my life. My bond with him had never been so high. The excuse he provided to my parents was some trips around the countryside, “of course after finishing homework”. Mum and dad never said anything against that: Darrell was a family friend for them as much as for me. I suppose they were just happy I could have a nice time with him while discovering the beauties of South England. We never returned to the same meadow twice: Darrell said that otherwise some countryside folks could get suspicious to see the same two strangers get back regularly. So we would change place each time, in counties like Surrey, Kent or Berkshire, and then look for a large field.

Once finding one, Darrell would repeat me how worth of my hatred were my tormentors. Afterwards, he would stay silent while I did my best to concentrate on said hatred, until the fireballs appeared. Then the hardest part: controlling them. Keeping them alive was less difficult than I thought: before the third lesson, I was able to keep them for a reasonable amount of seconds. Much more difficult was resisting the temptation of throwing them: the feeling of hate dominated my mind, so much that I felt absolutely ready to incinerate something. The first time I held them successfully, instead of being happy for my result, I suddenly threw the fireballs at Darrell. I screamed in horror, but instead of getting out of the flames’ way, he just lifted a hand and the fireballs weren’t there any more.

Fought between shame for myself and amazement for Darrell’s abilities, I barely managed to whisper a weak “sorry”. Darrell didn’t show any emotions and just patted me as always.

“Don’t worry. I expected that to happen, and I was prepared.”

“I tried to kill you...”

He looked around. As always, there was nothing but grass. “I was the only available target. Don’t worry, it was better this way. If you had targeted something else, they would have had no chance to defend themselves.”

“I...see...”

He smiled. “It’s always a matter of concentration. Now that you have learned to hold the fireballs, you just need to keep training, so you’ll control them instead of having them controlling you.”

“When will it happen?”

“With time,” he just said enigmatically.

The shame had been washed out, but there was still the other feeling of amazement. “How did you stop the ball?”

“You’ll learn that one day, too.”

“How?”

“Once you’ll have full control over your emotions, Hayden. This one’s a difficult technique, and I don’t expect you to do it any time soon. But I’ll give you a hint: what’s the only thing that can defeat hate?”

“Love?”

“That’s right. To protect myself from your fireballs, I focused on love, which nullifies the effects of hate. Now, love can only be used for self-defence, as it isn't a destructive emotion; hatred is what you need most.”

“Who were you thinking of when thinking of love?”

He didn’t answer immediately, but waited for a few seconds to pass.

“You.” And he patted my left shoulder. I hugged him happily. After some other two attempts at keeping control of the fireballs, we came back home.

Outside our moments in the countryside, I diligently did the ‘homework’ Darrell had assigned me the first day. But just like real homework, they weren’t funny at all. Whenever I was with my parents, I forced myself into thinking of the kids I hated so much. Thankfully, I never evoked the fireballs in front of them; however, eating dinners became a very unpleasant experience for me. Of course, they could see something was wrong, and they’d ask me if I was alright (I wonder what kind of expressions I was making in those moments), to which I’d just reply I was tired.

As the day passed, the first effects of the training appeared. I’m not talking about the improvement in my control of emotions, rather a mental symptom. I usually felt it when I was alone, mostly when in my room reading my comics: out of nowhere a weak, but persistent burning sensation would disturb my brain. It wasn’t related to remembering my activity with Darrell: it always happened when my mind was focused somewhere else. Neither was the kind of burning hate I felt when I thought about the bullies: I would have recognized it. It was a mild, but persistent sensation of discomfort for something undefined, which would first fade away after a handful of minutes, then around half an hour and finally it started lasting almost half a day.

I refused to associate that sensation to Darrell, though. Darrell for me was the man that made me the happiest in the whole universe, despite the evidence of the opposite. If I had admitted that, it would mean I had no one else to make me happy, apart from my parents. Instead, I tried the best to convince myself our afternoons were now pleasant trips in the countryside.

So my training continued, and finally, after two months, I managed to evoke the fireballs and keep them at a reasonable duration, without throwing them out of rage. If I remember correctly, it was Saturday, and we were in a meadow not far from Cambridge. I called the usual stream of hateful thoughts – by now, it was so natural – and the fireballs, instead of vanishing, remained there, in the palms of my hands. They didn’t become smaller, like in the last sessions before that one, nor did I feel the urge to throw them: they just stayed on my hands.

“Excellent, Hayden!” Darrell clapped: the joy in his face couldn’t have been more evident. “I am so proud of you!”

“T...thank you.” Whatever I could think about how I suffered to achieve that, it was all swept away. Receiving such heartfelt compliments from him was worth everything. It didn’t matter any more that I had felt the disturbance in my mind for the whole duration of the journey in his car: I had done it, I had finally done it.

“Very good, Hayden,” he said again, “you worked hard and you got rewarded. Now those bullies will finally get the scare they deserve, eh?”

I laughed, not much a laugh of contentment rather than a laugh of triumph over an enemy. The moment I had waited so much for was finally arriving.

But still there was something to ask...

“Is it over? Is it all I have to do? Will I never have to throw these fireballs?”

Darrell watched the meadow that extended over the horizon and sighed. “For now, this will suffice. Now you can show those bullies who they called a loser, eh?”

“Yes.”

I couldn’t wait for the next day.