I reached down and picked up the charred remains of the leaf. It was brittle and difficult to pick up, and my first two attempts left me holding nothing but crumbled ash between my fingers. Eventually, I got hold of the stem and held it up, looking at the work that Kaye's mind-fire had done. I grinned. Pyrokinesis was more than I had dared to hope for.

I looked up at her, my eyes shining. "Can you teach me?" I said.

Kaye looked thoughtful. "I think so." She peered down at my chest. "Wow, but you have a really bright..." She snapped her fingers. "What are you calling this? I don't have an operative word for it." She poked me in my chest.

“Can you actually see that?”

She shook her head, “It’s a feeling. But it’s intense, like a freight train pulling at me. It’s centered in your chest.”

“I’m calling it luck. I’m a luck vampire by the way.”

“Vampire?”

“Yep, no reflection even. Check with your phone.”

She did, first pulling it out and using the black screen to look over her shoulder, then using the camera.

“You… weren’t kidding,” she said.

I looked for Kaye's luck, curious. I blinked twice, not really sure I was seeing what I thought I was. While she didn't have an aura, what she did have was an astonishing amount of luck. She was at plus twenty-four. Two full knots had formed and joined at the center and were spinning gently, a warm glow emanating from them. I don't know how I had missed this the first time we had met.

I explained how I could take luck, but didn’t naturally generate it anymore. Then I told her about the last time I tried to do the doppelganger exchange with her, she had come close to biting my head off.

“I had negative luck when I tried that time. Less than a normal person. I’ve been thinking about it, maybe that train metaphor you mentioned was driving in the other direction. Pushing you away?

Kay nodded. "That makes a strange amount of sense."

"It does?"

"Yeah, what you're talking about is totally not luck. Although I don't know what the right word for it is either. I think luck will do for now. But yeah, if a kid who had a bad feeling about him walked up and brought up my doppelganger phrase and exchange that me and my best friend had made up, I would have gotten upset," she said.

I looked at her. "Why? Were you worried that your best friend had betrayed your confidence?"

Kaye shook her head. "Nope. No danger in that. Not unless she's blabbing to a psychic medium.”

"Oh," I said, getting it now. Understanding why she had gotten upset, I had brought up the words that she and her best friend had made up together. We were quiet for a minute, each lost in our thoughts.

I held up the blackened leaf, hopeful she would still be willing to teach me.

She smirked at me and nodded, making a ‘go ahead’ gesture.

I explained quickly how I used auras from other people with my telekinetic manipulation techniques. I asked how she was using telekinesis, or pyrokinesis for that matter, without an aura.

Kaye laughed. "This," she said, poking me in the chest again. "Have you ever tried to use what you're referring to as luck? I can't imagine trying to use an aura. Goodness, that would be like trying to lift a truck."

"Yeah," I said, "like a truck…”

It had never occurred to me to try using luck instead of aura in order to make telekinesis work. Well, of course it hadn't. This was not what Not-me had showed me. Grumbling under my breath, I applied my will and a strand of my own luck to one of the leaves on the trees. I focused, imagining pushing it down. I felt the leaf on my tongue, then with a slap, it fell from its stem, partially destroyed.

I gaped at the falling debris.

Kaye grinned at me, “Fast learner.”

I began laughing.

That was when the school exploded.

***

The pressure wave and noise hit me at the same time, my shock causing me to stumble and fall. Looking up from where I had fallen in the grass, I could see great tongues of orange flame licking out of the school's windows, the glass now missing from all of them. A good twenty-yard section of the building right in front of me was on fire.

“What…” I said.

My voice sounded weird. I could barely hear myself, like I had cotton stuffed in my ears or I was speaking into a tube and my voice was coming back to me from far away. There was a ringing that, at first, I thought was in my ears, but then I realized it was a fire alarm.

I sat up, only at that moment realizing that my elbow hurt and that something was pressing into my back. I looked down and realized that I had fallen on top of Kaye.

"Are you okay?" I said, realizing after that I was shouting. Kaye didn't seem startled by my shout; she groaned and nodded.

Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.

I turned back towards the building. Sprinklers were battling the blaze from inside every window that I could see, except for one. The window straight in front of me— I could see the sprinklers weren’t turning on for some reason and there was somebody inside. Or maybe it was the flames playing a trick on my eyes. Was I seeing aura?

Then, as the movement got closer to the window, I realized what it was. It was a person. They fell headfirst out of the window, doing some sort of belly flop across the top and then into the grass beyond. I winced as I realized there were still shards of broken glass in that window frame.

Not knowing what I could do, I dashed over to try and help. The heat from the fire was shocking. By the time I was within ten feet of the figure, it was physically painful to step closer. Ignoring this pain, having recently become used to great levels of it, I pushed forward until I reached the black lump lying on the ground.

I had been wrong. This wasn’t a person; it must have been my eyes playing tricks on me, some sort of...

It was in that moment, mid-thought, that the gut-wrenching smell assaulted my nostrils. I was taken back—back to the war— back to when I fought. Back to when I watched people burn. I remembered the smell. There is nothing on earth like the smell of human flesh burning, and those who have partook will never forget. When the world burned, I smelled it everywhere I went. You could smell the cooking meat, the sweet stink of humans burning. The people who had weight on them, like the one in front of me, always smelled sweeter. I hated that I knew that. I hated that it was true.

I fell to my knees.

I remembered their screams.

The figure on the ground reached a blackened hand towards me. I reached down and grasped it. Their skin was crisped, a layer of char making the outer layers crack, angry red showing through from inside. I gingerly held the hand presented to me, trying desperately to offer some comfort. They probably couldn't even my touch.

I realized then the figure was lying face up. Their face had been charred to the point that I hadn’t realized what I was looking at until they opened their eyes and their mouth. They took in a shuddering breath and began to spasm, coughing violently. I knew there was nothing I could do, but I sat with their hand in mine as the horrible realization washed over me. The unrecognizable figure that I was sitting before was Mrs. Streep. It was only her room where the sprinklers had not gone off.

I was still sitting like that when strong hands pulled me away. I don’t remember hearing the sirens, but the fire department showed up at some point.

Then I was sitting on a fire truck. I don’t know how I got there, but someone had wrapped a blanket around me. There was a thick, viscous goo applied to my head; I had apparently received some degree of burn.

I remember seeing Cece. She said something, but I couldn’t track, couldn’t follow what she said. I couldn’t stop thinking about the thousands of dead. I couldn’t get the smell out of my mouth. I couldn’t stop tasting what Mrs. Streep tasted like when she was cooked.

I don’t remember sobbing, but my face was wet, my eyes were puffy. I don’t know when it happened or how long it took, but my mom was there. That stunned me. I realized I hadn’t seen her in more than a month. She hugged me. She said things to me—I can’t remember what they were. And then, at some point, I was lying in my bed.

My own bed.

I was tucked in, but sleep never came. I lay and stared at the ceiling until sometime in the night, it happened, and I was in that hall again.

As I was bumped and jostled by the human river in this all-too-familiar setting, I just couldn't even. I was done. I turned around and headed for the exit. I couldn't stay in this place right now.

And then it occurred to me. I didn't know what day I was in. I had been in my bed.

Turning and heading back into the flow of the hallway, I began looking for familiar auras. One in particular stood out. Sure enough, twelve people in on the left, hugging the locker wall. A boy, maybe fifteen, was walking head down. No screen. An aura almost completely black. I supposed, watching him pass, that it was possible that that boy would walk this hall at a particular time every day.

So I decided to complete the only test I knew that would confirm which day I was in. I went to my locker. I hadn't been there very long when I was hit by the Billy truck.

I let it happen. Unable or unwilling or, I don't know, incapable of defending myself. My head bounced off the locker, and Billy's usual intelligent retort of, "Hey, watch where you're going, nerd!" rang in my ears. I'd heard that so many times.

I turned around and faced him. I couldn't even muster the energy for a bad pun. He was leering at me. There was a weird look in his eyes, and it wasn’t malicious. I'd seen hate on a couple of people before. I remembered that clearly now. This wasn't hate. This was something else. He wanted something. What was it?

I couldn't tell. I just looked at him. Billy seemed puzzled with what to do with me for a minute. Then he decided to shove me in the chest.

"What are you looking at, punk?" he yelled.

I didn't have a response. I felt numb. None of this mattered. What was I doing? Why was I here? The memory of the war surfaced. What was that? Was that World War III? Billy's fist came slamming in, bouncing my head off the locker and knocking me to the ground. I sat where I had fallen, not trying to get up, not trying to be a smartass, not really caring.

Billy stepped in and someone stepped in between us.

"Hey, asshole," they said. "Why don't you try picking on someone your own size? He's just a kid."

Billy pointed past the person standing in the way. "That's no kid. Have you seen him?"

There was an argument.

Billy didn't think I was a kid.

That's weird.

He wasn't wrong, but he had this confrontation with me before this had become true. I wasn't sure what he meant. I couldn't track the argument.

Mr. Pheizer broke it up.

I was in the detention office. There were three people now. Whoever had stepped in to try and break up the fight was now there too. A tall girl, maybe a senior? I don't remember having seen her before.

My mind spun on that.

I hadn’t seen the senior. Seen her. I hadn’t seen the senior. Seen her, senior…. Seignior.

I realized that I was babbling incoherently in my own mind. That wasn't a good sign.

After Mr. Pheizer had some stern words with the girl and Billy, probably me too, I couldn't pay attention.

He left.

The girl and Billy got into a hissing argument. It sounded like a couple of snakes who couldn't agree on something. But I couldn't bring myself to care.

"I feel sick," I said.

I stood up and left the room. Neither Billy nor the girl, whose name I didn't know, made any move to stop me.

I walked to Mrs. Streep's office. When I got there, something caught in my throat, something that felt an awful lot like a choking hand.

I couldn't open the door.

I wanted to see her. I wanted to know that she was okay. I wanted to know that I hadn't done…

I felt it as I was standing there at the door.

Something behind me. Something was watching. Something that wasn't human.

I looked down at my core. "Oh yeah," I said. "I didn't take any luck."

***

Feeling the presence behind me, I knew what was there. Even before I turned, I knew. It was the dark figure in the cloak. The ‘gang enforcer’ for the big-bad as Not me had said.

Maybe this figure in the cloak was a heart attack. Maybe it was something more complicated than that. But I had come to think of it as the Grim Squeezer. And I was ready to fight instead of opening the door in front of me.

Working quickly, I pulled the pen out of my pocket and sketched the symbol on both my palms.

The voice hit me.

I had forgotten how much depth it had. Like it came from a mountain. When it hit me, it felt like it had a physical presence, a weight to it.

"Who are you?" the voice thundered.

Well, it didn't know who I was. That was encouraging. This didn't seem like the sort of fella that I should offer up a name to. Instead, I turned and grinned at the creature.

"Me? I'm just your friendly neighborhood luck-vampire," I said, and I reached both hands for the creature.

I didn't know if creatures had luck. I didn't know if I'd be able to take luck from whatever this was. A spirit? A demon? An entity? A god? I had no idea. But I knew the last time I had encountered this creature, it grabbed hold of my heart and killed me. And so, I wasn't going to let it happen this time without at least trying to fight back.

The result was surprising. The cloaked figure, seven feet of solid black, had luck. Familiar ropes of crystalline, brilliant water, the scintillating dancing forms that seemed to catch an unearthly light and shine with it, leapt to my command. As I reached, I pulled. I pulled as hard as I had ever pulled. The only thing I had gotten good at was being able to take luck and controlling how much luck I took. And I took everything.

I got more than I had from any person. That was the first surprising thing. The second was the creature's reaction.

It screamed.

It screamed like a grinding, screeching car wreck. It screamed so loud, I was sure my ear drums would burst. But apparently, it was screaming on a different plane than my eardrums currently existed on. And then it was gone.

It retreated. I was standing there in the luck cloud as it formed into the familiar medallion knots. Until I was plus thirty-six.

That meant I took seventy-two individual ropes of luck in that moment from that creature.

I stood stunned, not sure what to do with myself.

I felt better.

Something inside of me seemed to be aching still, but I no longer felt like I was stuck in a state of walking torpor. A moment before, I hadn't had the motivation to do anything. I think I had been in shock. I had read about shock before.

I let my mind revisit the idea that I could remember experiencing a war, what looked like a world war, and I was in a country tearing itself apart. I don't know where I was, but it didn't matter.

It was unrecognizable.

The buildings and houses were burned out husks, the people being actively pursued and killed by something….

I needed more detail.

A mouse gremlin broke me out of my thoughts as it scuttled down the hall and up the wall to position itself firmly in my sightline. Its eyes blinked at me twice. Then it said in a voice that reminded me of the chipmunks, "You won't get away with this! You're going to come to regret this! You have made an enemy!" Then it zipped down the wall, down the hall, and was gone.

"I didn't know mouse gremlins could speak," I said.

***