Hours had gone by, and the day turned into night. I sat on the side of my bed and watched as Janet—who was sitting at the computer desk—wrote down the answer to the math problem we had just solved. We were surprisingly getting along.
“I can’t believe we’re halfway done,” I said. “I couldn’t have answered any of these questions without you. I usually cheated off my best friend when it came to math problems like these.”
“Is that her?” Janet asked, pointing at the picture frame on the shelf. “She’s pretty.”
I smiled. “Yeah, and she was really smart. Like, she legit wanted to be a scientist. I so envied her sometimes.”
Janet rose from her seat and picked up the frame. “You said, was. What happened to her if you don’t mind me asking.”
“You don’t know?” I looked down at the rug to gather my thoughts before telling her, “Valeria attempted suicide at our school. She survived, but suffered severe brain damage and hasn’t been responsive since. She lived with abusive foster parents and suffered through depression. I wanted to ask my dad—who’s a social worker—to help her find a better home, but she didn’t wanna risk moving too far away and leaving me and her boyfriend, Tyler. Through it all, I tried my best to make her happy and talk her out of it, but my words weren’t stronger than the demon’s influence.”
My eyes brimmed with tears. Not wanting Janet to see me cry, I walked over to the window and looked out at the empty street.
“I’m sorry about your friend,” she said. “It wasn’t my place to ask. I have to say, though, the way you spoke of a demon, it’s almost as if it were real.”
Wiping my eyes with the back of my hand, I turned to Janet and revealed the truth. “They are real, and I have to deal with them every single day.”
A quick realization shot in my mind that I had just told someone my biggest secret. Her response was even more shocking.
“Sounds like fun. Tell me about’em.”
A surge of excitement took over me. We both sat on the bed before I began. “Okay, uh, I guess I should start from the beginning and explain everything as best as I can. There are people who can make their strongest desire come true without any sort of logical explanation. It’s almost like magic.”
“Sounds like an anime. I’m interested.”
A quick smile turned into laughter at her comment, but my happy expression dwindled at the thought of telling the next part of the story.
“So, these desires have to come from somewhere. They can be personal problems, lifestyle choices, or a bunch of stuff like ambitions, passions, and even past experiences. Part of mine came from what I went through after the Navelwood High School.”
“Now that I actually heard about,” she said. “Were you directly involved?”
“Honestly, I feel like the whole thing was my fault. I was volunteering at the school that morning for a fundraiser partnership between Navelwood High, and our school, Ravenvale High. I didn’t really know where to go, so I ended up in the back of the school and saw some guy banging on the door for me to let him in. I asked who he was, and he said he was a student who forgot his ID at home, so they wouldn’t let him in through the front entrance.”
“You opened it, didn’t you?” she asked. Her question made my eyes drift away from her. “It’s alright. You don’t have to tell me the rest if you don’t want to.”
“It’s fine. About ten minutes after I had let him in, I heard gunshots and people screaming through the building. Everyone around me started running for their lives, and so did I until I spotted my brother in the crowd. His name was Noel, and he was a senior at Navelwood. I called out to him, and I was surprised he heard me through all the commotion. He covered me as we ran toward one of the exits, but I felt his arm slipping off my shoulder. I turned around and saw him lying on the ground, bleeding from a bullet in his back. I leaned over him and cried out for help, but no one came. When I looked up, I… I’m sorry. One second.”
Silence filled the room as I paused and gripped my sheets in frustration. Janet sat attentively with a dreadful stare. It was almost as if my retelling of the past impacted her as much as it did me.
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“I saw the guy who I had let in the building. He was pointing the gun straight at me, and behind him was this hideous, dark creature that terrified me more than anything. I would’ve died that day if a police officer hadn’t entered the school and shot the guy before he pulled the trigger.”
After concluding my story, I caught a glimpse of Janet’s hand reaching over to comfort me before it was jerked back. “I’m sorry you had to experience that,” she said. “And I’m sorry for your loss.”
“You know what was the craziest thing about all that, Janet? The demon. Why was I able to see it but no one else could? I mean, yeah, I’ve always tried to help people ‘fight their demons’ so to speak, but I wouldn’t call it my deepest desire, you know? Especially not before my brother’s death.”
She appeared in deep thought with her legs crossed and her chin resting in her hand. “I think I figured it out. Can you describe your exact thoughts during everything that happened?”
“Well, I remember asking myself what could push a person to do something so horrible. I recall making excuses in my head for why the shooter did what he did, ‘cause I couldn’t understand how someone could be so evil and take so many lives.”
“Bingo,” she shot, breaking me out of my thoughts. “It was that curiosity mixed in with your good nature and desire to help people. It gave you the ability to see what causes violence and corruption: demons. That moment awakened your power.”
In just minutes, Janet may have helped me to understand myself better. Was she someone I could converse with and open up to? Maybe. I wasn’t sure yet, but our friendship was building fast. I liked it.
“I think you’re right,” I told her. “I can’t believe I never thought of it that way before, especially during the grieving stages. I locked myself in my room and started to think life had no meaning—that anyone around me could be just like that guy. Eventually, I got better and started purging demons using this magical light I was given. So yeah, that’s my story. I’m amazed you haven’t called me crazy and ran out the door.”
She chuckled and looked down at her sneakers. “I don’t think you’re crazy. At least you’ve been gifted with something that can help people. I can’t say the same for me.”
Well, it was now or never. I inhaled an air of bravery and exhaled the question, “How is it that you can conjure fire? Usually, someone with a power that strong is being influenced by a demon, but you’re not.”
“I don’t know. Demon or not, this power has caused me to do harmful things to the people around me, and it’s only gotten worse in the last month or so. I don’t even get burned from the flames anymore.”
I could hear the remorse in her voice and sense the sadness from her aura. She needed to release those emotions, and I wanted to help her achieve that.
“Regret from what, exactly?” I asked.
“It’s nothing you or I could change now. It’s best to leave it in the past.”
“Janet, you can talk to me. I sensed the negativity inside of you when you lit Candice’s bag on fire. I know you need help, and you can get it by telling me what happened.”
Her brow twitched as she leered at me with fiery eyes. “I don’t need to tell you anything, first of all. I don’t appreciate you using whatever ability you have to intrude into my emotions, either. Don’t ever do it again.”
I remained silent, not wanting to ignite a fuse that could set my house ablaze. She stood up and gathered her school supplies before walking to my room door.
“Coming here was a mistake,” she mumbled.
I got off my bed and latched onto her arm before she could walk out. “Janet, wait.”
“Don’t touch me.”
A crackling sound made me turn around. The packet Ms. Walters assigned us was burning away in a ball of flames on my desk.
“I’ll get the extinguisher,” I exclaimed, ready to run downstairs.
“You don’t have to.”
Janet approached the fire and extended her hand into it. With a simple touch, the flames evaporated into thin air. I was left speechless at her taming of the blaze. It was illogical and inhuman.
“Now do you see what happens when someone tries to get close to me?” she sneered, gazing into her palm that showed no signs of being burned from the fire. “Don’t try it again.”
“Why are you being like this to me?”
“I’m not being like anything. You’re the one trying to get personal information out of me. Others have tried before you, Aliyah, and it never ends well.”
Those words alone informed me of how troubled she was, and that she had been living with her dark emotions for some time now. If anyone needed my help, it was her.
“If you keep living in this introverted bubble, you’re only going to feel more miserable at the end of the day,” I told her. “That’s when the demons come. They’ll prey on your weaknesses and make you do something you’ll really regret.”
“Then I guess it’s too late for me. ‘Cause I already have.”
Her last words before leaving the room left me in dismay. I rushed downstairs to the savory aroma of my mother’s cooking to chase Janet. To my surprise, she was still in the house, conversing with my mom near the front door.
“Mom?”
“Aliyah, I insist your friend stays for dinner. I’m making the plates now, so you two can go sit down at the dinner table.”
Not good.
“Mom, she’s probably not hungry,” I said, not wanting my mother to test Janet’s patience. “I don’t think you cooked enough for an extra person anyway.”
“Since when do you pay attention to how much food I make? There’s enough. I made a lot in case Lucas was stopping by.”
Janet glared at me as my mother walked into the kitchen. “Is everyone in this family so pushy?”
My nerves tingled as the dreaded feeling in my gut intensified. She was a ticking time bomb waiting to go off. I just prayed no one at the table cut the wrong wire.