Friday afternoon, second slot.

The schedule Miller had given me back on Monday claimed it was “free time.” At lunch, Wes explained that it was really “football.”

“And we mean the good football,” he said.

“Soccer?” I said.

“Calicio!” Scott yelled.

“It’s calcio,” Dustin corrected him.

They wanted me to join in.

They said it was an open game, so I didn’t have to worry about messing up the teams, and everyone from Fox and Salix House could play if they wanted to. If they didn’t want to, they had better have a darn good excuse, or they would be cast out from acceptable society, and it would take a lot of Doritos to redeem them. That meant over a hundred boys could be on the field at the same time.

“A hundred?” I said.

Eric shrugged. “It’s a big field.”

“But—”

“Don’t worry,” Wes assured me, “we have them bring in a new ball for every twenty people.”

“You play with five balls?”

“Neat, huh?” Scott chirped.

I stared at Scott Shipp, the smallest of the group, and tried to calculate his odds of survival.

I didn’t mind that the school was full of thugs and delinquents, and the question of whether or not someone had attacked me seemed like a fading dream—but the idea of that soccer field terrified me.

“No thanks!”

Then the whining began. Eric and Dustin together couldn’t rescue me. Wes and Scott only let up after they’d extracted a promise that I’d at least come to watch.

That’s why I was out on the field on a rainy afternoon, cheering for whatever random group of barbarians was close enough to hear me, and wondering why I still didn’t have a little Union Jack to wave around.

I felt someone tap my shoulder. It was Turner. He was wearing track pants and a rain jacket.

“They pay me to do this,” he said cheerfully. “So what the hell are you doing here?”

“I’m trying to figure out where my friends are. You think it’d be easier since there are only sixty boys.” I squinted into the rain and raised my finger to one of the taller kids in a (formerly) bright yellow scrimmage vest. “I think that mud-slick is Eric Reed, but don’t quote me on it.”

“Is that jacket going to be warm enough for you? Your hood is already drenched.”

“Well, it’s not like it’s going to ruin my hair.”

I smiled when I heard him laugh.

He took a step closer so he could lower his voice. “I heard you were sick yesterday.”

“Yeah. Sorry about that. If the boys ever try to use me to get out of class—”

He waved off my concern. “May I ask what happened?”

I didn’t want to admit that I had collapsed right after I left him. I didn’t see that conversation going anywhere useful. Thankfully, I had already field tested a lie. Never mind that Norris didn’t seem inclined to buy it.

“I have pretty bad anemia. I collapsed—and I know that sounds bad, but it’s not. Not really.”

Turner shook his head. There was a rueful smile on his face. “What are you doing here, Miss Cole?”

“Huh?”

“What is this Torr?” He spat out the word. “Are they making you do this?”

“Turner—Paul—dude, it’s okay. I volunteered to be here.”

He eyed me for a moment, then looked out at the surging masses of mud on the field.

“It’s hard to know what to make of you,” he said.

“Do you have to make anything of me?”

“There’s something about you. You’re the most alive person I’ve ever met.”

My nose wrinkled when I smiled.

He went on, his voice barely louder than the sound of the rain, “But sometimes you look really tired, and you’ve got anemia bad enough you lose consciousness. Does that have anything to do with your hair?”

My mind emptied. I don’t know why my brain was gone for so long, but when it returned, it came back with this highly useful and pertinent thought:

Huh!

It had never occurred to me what my situation might look like to other people.

“You think I’m sick?” I asked.

“Are you?”

“I used to be.” Before he had to go through the torture of trying to decide if it was okay to ask, I said, “Leukemia. But I’m good now.”

After a moment, he nodded. “That makes sense. Forgive me, Miss Cole. It wasn’t my place to ask.”

“Oh, please.” I made a face as I waved away his concern. “Don’t worry about it.”

I couldn’t tell him, but I was actually glad he’d said something. No one in their right mind would dare question the excuse “I’m recovering from cancer.” I couldn’t believe I hadn’t thought of it before! It must have been because I had no personal experience with it.

This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it

“Is that why you seem so alive?” Turner asked. I couldn’t tell if he was teasing me or not.

I would have grinned either way. “Well, there’s nothing like meeting death to make you appreciate being alive.”

And I actually kind of missed seeing his gormless, blank skull.

I ought to send Big Jacky an emoji text, to let him know I’m thinking about him.

I wouldn’t be there to enjoy his befuddlement, but Iset might get a kick out of it.

I was idly watching the field, trying to figure out if Jacky would be home and whether or not he’d be smart enough to take the text to Iset, when the accident happened. Turner saw it too. We both let out the same loud gasp.

One of the boys without a scrimmage vest slid low, trying to tackle the ball away from the yellow team. The rain made the slide too easy. He slammed into his opponent’s legs, one after the other. The kid’s knee bent in a way no knee should ever bend. He collapsed on top of his opponent.

I wonder if other people experience a moment when it really comes home to them that they’ve taken on the mantle of a responsible adult. Mine was that day.

One second.

That’s how long Turner and I waited to see if the boy could get up on his own. Then, without even looking at each other, we both sprinted onto the field.

The ball was forgotten, lost somewhere offsides. The other two balls were ignored. Play had stopped when the rest of the students realized something serious had happened.

As we got closer to the injured boy, I recognized a few of the students. Scott and Dustin, both in yellow, were standing at the edge of the crowd, trying to see what had happened without getting in the way. Wes and Eric, also on the yellow team, were on the ground, next to their injured teammate.

The kid who had done the sliding tackle was standing close by, pale and frowning.

“Jason,” Wes said. “Jason, how bad is it?”

Jason, presumably the injured boy, couldn’t answer. His face was white.

Turner dropped to his knees beside him. I stood nearby, ready to make a run to the school.

“Give me some space, Osborn,” Turner said. “We need to get him on his back.”

Wes scooted away so Turner could work. Eric stood up and turned to the student who’d done the sliding.

“What the fuck was that, Allen?” His voice boomed over the rain, over every other noise on the field.

Allen’s face went red. “An accident.”

“What kind of a tosser would slide like that in the rain?” Eric took a step toward Allen.

Turner was talking on his phone behind me. I stayed focused on the confrontation. Wes stood up and walked toward Eric.

“It was an accident,” Allen shouted.

Wes tried to grab Eric’s arm, but he wasn’t fast enough. Eric advanced on Allen, chest out, talking loud and fast. I couldn’t make out what he said. Two of Allen’s teammates stepped up to his side to defend him.

Eric didn’t care. What were three shouting teenage boys compared to a wolfman? He kept marching forward, snarling words I couldn’t hear, his movement hardly hampered by Wes’s attempt to hold him back.

Scott and Dustin jogged toward us. Wes had one hand on Eric’s arm, the other on his back. He was shouting down Eric, shouting down the other boys, and shouting some more, in case anyone felt left out.

My eyes were locked on the group, reading every face, every movement. It was tense, but everything I saw made me think it was going to be okay. The boys from the non-yellow team were inching away, even though they yelled and postured. Everyone was pulling on their own teammates, checking each other rather than raising a hand to the other team. A few more seconds and it would have been nothing but another yelling match.

Seth Ivers walked up behind Eric and slammed into him, chest to back. There was enough force behind the assault to make Eric’s head whip back as he lurched forward.

The look of smugness, anger, and challenge on Ivers’ face was enough to make my mouth go sour.

Behind me, Turner yelled Ivers’ name. No one heard him.

Eric turned, his eyes wide with outrage and surprise. Wes had lost his grip when Ivers checked Eric, so the only thing holding Eric back was Eric. The thread of his patience was pulled to the breaking point. You could see the punch he wasn’t throwing in how he placed his feet, and how his nostrils flared.

I pushed against the surge of the group, trying to keep them away from Jason, yelling that they were going to step on him. The boys nearest me heard. They pushed too, trying to keep the vital space between them and the injured boy.

The reverse tide shoved Eric closer to Ivers.

Ivers’ expression lost its smugness and anger. There was nothing but the wooden look of challenge that I remembered from every fight I’d ever seen. The moment it appeared, Eric’s expression changed to match it.

Ivers’ arms ignited. Everyone except Wes and Eric took a step back. Turner got to his feet, but it was too late; there was nothing he could yell that would get through to any of the three boys.

“Go ahead,” Ivers yelled at Eric. “Start something!”

Eric stepped forward, ignoring the flames.

Wes grabbed Eric and yanked him back. “What the hell, Ivers!” His voice cracked from the intensity of his scream. “You think you can tell me you’re not doing that on purpose? You think that I’ll believe you?”

“This is my power, Osborn, not yours!”

“And this is my power!” Wes’s body lit up. The fire started in his fingers and rolled from them, up his arms, across his chest and head, and down his legs. “If you want to play that game, I’ll play!”

But Wes wasn’t the only one with powers. There were one hundred and three psychics at Setlan on Lee. How many of them were on the field?

The rain stopped falling. The drops hung in the air, suspended—a million tiny testaments to the stress of the telekinetics. The balls rose until they hovered chest-high, spinning. A trill of electricity buzzed over my wet hands and face. Time stretched away, and a weightless tension grew in my chest. It felt like the moment the roller coaster starts to descend.

Everyone else stepped back. I could get through.

I arrived as Ivers took a step toward Wes, shoulder cocked back and his fist raised. I put myself between them, facing Ivers, and glared.

I was glaring up. The kid was at least five inches taller than me. I couldn’t have fought him even before he had the incendiary advantage—but I wasn’t powerless either.

The whole world stopped to watch me. Including Ivers.

“Go on,” I whispered in the eerie silence. My voice was mocking and light. “Go ahead and hit me. See what happens.”

Dozens of raindrops floated between us, each one showing a distorted reflection of our faces. His—stunned, confused—and mine—serene.

I raised an eyebrow. Having worked with Darius Vasil, I knew what a devastating move it could be.

“I won’t defend myself,” I said. “Not like I could.” I lowered my voice even further. “If it’s that important to you…”

Ivers’ flames dwindled and disappeared. He took a step back.

The weightlessness in my chest vanished. The soccer balls rediscovered gravity. There was the plat of the rain hitting the ground all at once. That sudden shower dropping on my hood felt like a head pat. It was all right. We could breathe again.

A second later, Christopher Norris came running onto the field with a first-aid kit, another teacher, and a plastic stretcher. Turner organized the boys to help carry Jason up to the building. When that was done, he stepped back to let Norris do his work.

He glanced toward me as he did, but now that I knew Jason would be taken care of, I had other things to worry about.

I turned.

All four of the musketeers were behind me. Wes was at the front of the group. The sleeves of his shirt were burnt up to his biceps and stunk of singed polyester. I picked off some of the tiny, dangling bits of charred thread.

“Yeah,” he said. “That wasn’t my best example of control.”

I hummed.

“That was pretty cool, Emerra,” Scott said.

I grinned. “I know, right?”

At five-foot-five, sub-one-hundred pounds, I had stopped the fight. Fainting or not, that made me a hero.

I motioned for Scott and Wes to step aside so I could get to Eric. He glowered as I stood next to him.

“Are you going to lecture me?” he said.

“Excuse me?” I said. “Do I look like a teacher? But I would like to see your arm.”

He didn’t move.

“The one that Wes was holding when he lit up,” I added, in case he needed clarification.

Wes grimaced.

Eric grudgingly put his arm forward. He was wearing a short-sleeve workout shirt. The back of his sleeve had been warped by the heat. And, yes, there, on his arm, above his elbow, was a burn.

Dustin, Wes, and Scott closed in so people wouldn’t see what we were doing.

“I’m sorry,” Wes muttered to Eric. “I wasn’t thinking.”

“None of us were thinking,” Eric said.

“This is going to blister soon,” I said. “We need to cool it down or it can get worse.”

“I’m not going to Norris.”

“How stubborn are you going to be about this?”

“Oh,” Scott said, “One-hundred percent.” He closed one eye and held up the okay hand sign. “Guaranteed.”

I sighed. “Come on.”

The four boys followed me toward the dining hall.

“Where are we going?” Eric asked.

“To the only other place in this school that’s going to be able to treat your burn.”