Lizzy did her own makeup in what I was sure was a world record pace. That still didn’t stop her from saying it was a slow morning for her. She offered to do Lori’s face too, making the small girl shyly decline. Apparently, she wasn’t a fan of getting her makeup done. When I told Lizzy I thought her makeup looked nice, she beamed with so much pride I thought she was going to give me a lecture on everything she knew. I made a quick mental note that complimenting her skills was a great way to get on her good side.
After we made sure Lizzy was good and ready, we made our way back to the training area where we watched Alex and Rosie duke it out in their match. This time, I couldn’t make myself focus on the trip. Just like when I moved to Luna, a sudden wave of anxiety and excitement hit me. With butterflies in my stomach, it took all my focus to put one foot in front of the other and not topple over. My terrible night of sleep didn’t help with my body feeling like it was filled with lead.
“Earth to Ethan!” Lizzy’s voice snapped me out of my fog. I rubbed my eyes and pinched the bridge of my nose, trying to come back to reality completely. “You know you can’t zone out like that if you actually have to fight someone, right? These cats don’t play around when sparring, so you have to take care in our brave new world.”
“Yeah, I’m here, I’m good.” I rubbed my eyes harder, hoping that it might get me back in the right mindset and clear my brain a bit. “Sorry ‘bout that. I didn’t sleep too well with the sudden time change and the move.”
“She’s right, Ethan.” Lori brushed some of her short hair out of her eyes when she chimed in. “You’re not sparring against anyone today, but you really gotta keep focused.”
Itching to change the subject, I directed my attention to the paper that was by the door, noticing that no one else had put their name on it yet. “So just us three today? No trial-by-fire like in a movie?”
“Ha! If you went up against someone like Alex today, you’d stand no chance.” Lizzy patted me on the shoulder and my body tensed up. At least she didn’t mean any harm with what she said. I knew she was right anyhow. That guy would have mopped the floor with me.
Lori jotted all our names down on the paper. Since no one else was around, I wasn’t sure what the point of it was. I figured more people would start using the rooms if the attacks got worse, though that was something we hadn’t seen yet. With just us three, it didn’t seem to make a lot of sense. I began to wonder if there was even anyone who took care of the rooms down here beyond the bare minimum upkeep.
Before I could get lost in my thoughts again, I followed both girls beyond the first door and into the large space. From the spectator area, it looked a lot smaller. The only feature the room contained was a small podium-like structure in the middle. Being inside of it then made that feeling of anxiety come back and my hands started shaking. I gripped my left wrist to try and stop the trembling to little avail. Lizzy already noticed.
“I read once that more people have phobias related to open spaces than they do confined ones,” Lizzy said, a concerned half-smile appearing on her face. “Are you sure you’re going to be okay?”
“No,” I replied, answering quickly. “I’m not sure I am. If I’m not okay now, I won’t be okay in two months when those monsters might have destroyed the planet.”
“Good answer! Let’s get started!” Lizzy slipped a bag that I hadn’t noticed off her shoulder, dumping the contents on the ground. There were about two dozen ice hockey pucks at her feet. She quickly began stacking them into a pyramid on the podium. “Lori told me about your old TV, so I want to try this exercise first. Do what you did to the TV to these pucks. Let me tell you now that any progress is good, even if you can only move one a couple millimeters.”
Both Lizzy and Lori stood behind me, waiting and watching. I grew self-conscious after feeling their stares drill into my back after a few seconds. Since I didn’t even know what I could do, I just sort of stared at the pyramid and focused really hard. I imagined things like lasers coming out of my eyes, my muscles strengthening to unnatural levels, and I even tried to exhale to see if I had any ice or fire breath. Nothing happened. The only thing all my focus and straining gave me was the start of a small headache.
“Is there a trick to this?” I asked, giving up for the moment. I stretched a bit and faced the ladies, Lizzy looking deep in thought. “I’ll be honest, I don’t know how long I can just stare at a pile of rubber before I lose it.”
Lori responded with a small shrug before Lizzy stepped in. “I don’t know if anyone told you, but a lot of the Anomalies are discovered when intense emotions flare up. Not always, but that might be your best bet.”
“Lori did mention something like that,” I said, pulling the conversation up from my memory.
“Then you need to use that as a start. Go back to the time where you broke your TV and try to replicate those feelings.” Lizzy cleared her throat. “Since your Anomaly should have immediate, tangible results, we should know when you use it. It won’t be like mine. I have no idea when I first unlocked it.”
I nodded and resumed focusing on the pucks. I tried to recapture the same feeling of helplessness and despair I felt when all those people were killed in the attacks. There was an uneasy feeling forming in my stomach while my heart thumped hard in my chest. There was still no change in the pucks. I tried to throw on the feelings of losing my parents, failing an exam, and how much it hurt to be scolded by Shelly. Anything that might’ve roused a negative emotion, I tried to use it.
“Jesus, Ethan.” It was Lori’s voice I heard, but I kept my focus on the pucks. “Maybe you’re really not even one of us. You think you can protect yourself—let alone your sister—from McLeod when you can’t even knock over hockey pucks? I guess that I was just sent to get you as a test for myself, because you’re not anything special. You and your family are just going to be ants under that man’s boot.”
As she spoke, I envisioned situations where McLeod was free to murder Shelly and I couldn’t do anything to stop him. Panic and fear seized my heart just imagining losing my only family left. A lump rose up in my throat and I began to shake again. Closing my eyes, I grabbed my wrist in another failed attempt to stop the involuntary response. With all the mental strength I could muster, I pushed the thoughts of being weak and helpless out of my head, and a dull thud jolted me out of my thoughts. In front of me, all but four pucks had been knocked off the podium.
“Yes!” Lori shouted, clapping her hands behind me. I felt her tiny frame wrap around me in an embrace. I was so fixated on the pucks that were scattered everywhere that knowing I was being touched only occupied a small space in my mind. “I’m sorry I said those things, but I didn’t know what else would have helped. You were just...becoming so sad that I couldn’t stand it. I think panic and fear might be your keys to trigger your Anomaly at this stage.”
This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.
She let go of me and I heard her sniffle behind me. Not having the guts to face her, I made my way to the podium and examined the pucks on it. The ones that remained there had all shifted too, and while that didn’t really tell me a whole lot, it did beat destroying a piece of my house. Idly, I picked one of the chunks of rubber up and checked it for damage. I didn’t see any visible chips or scratches, so whatever I hit them with, it wasn’t terribly strong. It’s not like it would have taken me much effort to just knock them over by hand. What broke my TV was far beyond what I’d managed against the pucks.
“Do I have to feel that bad every time I want to break something?” I asked, tossing up and catching the puck with my right hand. “Because if I have to be yelled at every time, I don’t think I’m going to be very useful.”
“No, you shouldn’t.” Lizzy grabbed the one I’d been playing with out of the air and got to work restacking all of them. “It’s usually easier that way to use your powers from the start. Once you get the hang of it, drawing on your power becomes second nature. You have to learn to walk before you can run. This time, try imagining the ‘gift’ I gave you and see if that helps out.”
I took up the same position for a third time and took a deep breath. Closing my eyes, I thought about some of the gifts I’d opened in my life. I started small with some candies that I was given from kids who had leftovers from Valentine’s Day at school. I started working my way up to some bigger gifts given to me by Shelly for my birthday or Christmas. Like before, I tried to force a feeling, this time aiming for excitement. I ran through every memorable and sentimental gift opening that I could recall. When I opened my eyes again, there hadn’t been any change to the pucks.
I started to tap my foot, thinking about what might help me best utilize Lizzy’s power to awaken my own. Since I only had two successful uses, and only one of them done somewhat consciously, I was struggling to find even a simple starting point. I was about to give up and just try to fill my heart with panic and fear again when an idea struck.
When I had knocked the pucks over, I had tried to push my fearful thoughts out of my head, and the result had been something like a physical push in the real world. Instead of trying to use memories I already had, I tried with thoughts. I pictured myself opening a huge giftbox that even matched the colors of the one Lizzy put on my face. But instead of opening it with my hand, I had flung the lid of the box off with just a casual thought.
The impact against the pucks was much louder that time. When I opened my eyes back up, every puck was off the podium. Most had harmlessly fallen to the ground, though I noticed more than a handful had made it a few feet from the podium. Unable to contain it, I cracked a grin at the lesson I managed to teach those dastardly pieces of vulcanized rubber. I tried to look cool about it. I was feeling thrilled that I’d finally used my ability by my own decision, so that didn’t work out too well. I turned around to a big grin from Lizzy and enthusiastic applause from Lori.
“How’d you do it?” Lizzy asked, resting her hands on her hips. Before I could reply, she shook her head and carried on. “Actually, first, what is it?”
“I...I don’t know yet,” I admitted, suddenly embarrassed again. “I think it’s a ‘push’ of some kind, if that makes sense. When Lori prodded me, I had pushed the thoughts out of my head, and that time I imagined myself pushing open a giftbox with only my mind.”
“Maybe it’s telekinesis!” Lizzy yelled, barely letting me finish.
“What? Are you sure?” Lori asked, looking up at the taller girl with wide eyes.
“I don’t think it is,” I said. They both looked at me and I shrugged. “I could be wrong. My gut is just saying it’s something else.”
“Hm, maybe you’re right. I’m usually confident in my guesses, but hey, it’s your power.” Lizzy once again started to pick up the pucks. This time I joined her in grabbing ones farther away from her. “Regardless, you’re doing great. You said it was like a push, right? It’s no different than if you pushed something with his arm. You just did it only with your noggin.”
Hearing her praise and seeing her excitement made me feel good. Her and Lori did well to come up with ideas that would work for me, and the results showed almost immediately. I already felt like I had a solid handle on being able to pull out whatever my power was.
“You know, I think the two of you could make good instructors,” I said, tossing a puck up and down through the air a few times.
Lizzy’s face flushed, and for the first time in the short stretch we’d known each other, she looked completely off guard. She mumbled something of a thanks herself and went back to picking up the hockey pucks. I tried to ignore the few that she dropped. I was about to apologize and ask if she was okay when I heard Lori giggle. Lizzy shot her a glare, but since Lori was laughing good-naturedly about it, I figured that everything was just fine.
“So, what next?” I asked once Lizzy and I had collected all the pucks and restacked them. “Is there something I should be aiming for now?”
“Yeah, doing your push thing,” Lizzy said. When she saw my dejected face, she gave me a light chop on the head. She caught the puck I tossed out of the air. “Remember, walking before running. Try knocking all these over three times. This time, I want you to use different thoughts. Whether I’m right or wrong about the telekinesis, you need to be able to do your push on a moment’s notice.”
Knowing she was right, I sighed. After that, the next two times I got the pucks knocked over much easier. I used both happy and sad thoughts, both accompanied by an imaginary me pushing out with my mind. In a way, it was almost therapeutic, like my power was helping to expel some of the negative thoughts and feelings I’d clung to for so long. For the third time in the exercise, I just gritted my teeth, focused, and simply thought about the idea of pushing things over. To my surprise, it worked, and even the ladies noticed how quickly they were knocked over that time.
“Huh...you picked that up faster than I was expecting, even with the little present I gave you.” Lizzy grabbed all the pucks and returned them to her bag. She walked past me, Lori joined her, and she waved for me to follow suit. “We’re done for the day. If you had knocked down just one stack on purpose, that would have been a win for me.”
“Are you sure I shouldn’t be practicing this more?” I asked. Reluctantly, I followed her out of the room. “If I grabbed it quickly, I would hate for all this time to go to waste.”
Lizzy stopped in her tracks and turned to me with a hard look in her eyes. “You’ll get other chances to practice, trust me. Right now, you need to let your body—and your mind—get rest. Let me put it another way for you.
“If you wanted to hit the gym to start lifting weights, you wouldn’t deadlift two-fifty on the first day. I’ve always thought of these Anomalies as a well that I visit. At first, my control of drawing from that well was poor and erratic, on top of the well was small to boot. Like muscles that you work out at the gym, that well can grow and you can draw more from it with better control.”
“What if my well is huge right now and I’m some sort of prodigy?” I was hoping to defuse some of the tension in the air, and Lizzy did seem to relax her shoulders a bit.
“Anything’s possible, granted. You still need to be careful. I’ll be honest with you, okay? That present I gave you was a test of sorts for me. To relate it back to what I just said, I used about a quarter of what was in my well in that, and my focus was to jumpstart your Anomaly more than just helping you discover it.” She grimaced and hung her head slightly. “I’m sorry for not being totally honest about it.”
Feeling on the spot, I rubbed the back of my neck and looked toward the suddenly interesting lights in the ceiling. “Eh, no harm, no foul. When you put it like that, though, I do think I will take it easy for the rest of the day.”
“That’s the right call, believe me.” Lizzy went to pat my shoulder, only stopping herself an inch away. “You might feel great now. You’re probably hopped up on adrenaline and excitement. Shit, you just confirmed you have superpowers, so you better be a little happy. You’ll be feeling that fatigue later. This is something entirely new for your body. It needs to be paced out carefully.”
This time, it was Lori who made her presence known again. “I’m glad that we’re all on the same page, and since both of you used your Anomalies so well today, I vote we get some food already.”
As if controlled by Lori’s own hunger, both mine and Lizzy’s stomachs growled loudly. With no way for the tension to stay after that, we all shared a laugh and agreed that food would be the next most important part of our improvement.