Burnout Read online

  I looked at Delilah and nodded. It was like she had rehearsed that speech. I glared at the officer and he released my arm. How dare he bring up something so completely unrelated? Truthfully, I hated marijuana. I didn't like the anxious feeling it gave me. I knew it wasn't me and it freaked me out.

  I sat in the car, seething with rage and thinking of all the things I should have said until all of the personnel left and Delilah came back out. We pulled out of the parking lot and I noticed we went the wrong way, towards the woods outside of town, which suggested she wanted more time to talk to me. "You need to be more careful. You're eighteen now, so they can really get you in trouble."

  "And it's okay for them to accuse me of doing drugs after everything tonight?"

  Delilah seemed shocked. "Did he really do that?”

  "Yes! He suggested that my eyes weren't even red from crying. I hate them. They always think they're better than everyone else. They're so self-righteous and-"

  Suddenly I felt warm all over.

  I felt myself sinking down in my chair and my clothes becoming lighter. I looked down at my hands and suddenly, I was terrified.

  "Delilah!"

  She screamed and slammed the brakes. The car stopped sideways beside the woods. I opened the door and fell out, the melted leather pulling from the seat with me.

  I was shaking all over. My skin was glowing a bright orange-red. There was a crackling noise as my clothes were all burned off. I began hyperventilating, my tears sizzling as soon as they left my eyes.

  "Delilah, help me. Please." I pleaded in a smaller voice than I had ever spoken in.

  She just stared at me from beside the car, wide-eyed, shaking, and with a hand covering her sobs.

  I was too terrified to stand. My knees buckled and I collapsed onto the ground, face down, the grass and underbrush beneath me bursting into flames on contact. I laid there, naked, unable to move, and sobbed fearfully for what seemed like an hour, with Delilah standing beside the car, as still as a statue could be.

  Finally, my stomach began to ache from crying and I returned to reality. I looked up and saw that I had burned my collapsed shape into the ground. My skin had returned to its normal color, but I was still feeling tremors from fear.

  I looked up at Delilah and she held a beach towel out that she had kept in the trunk. "Are you okay?" She asked.

  I nodded shakily. “I think so”, I whispered, my voice raspy from crying.

  She walked over to me, wrapped me in the towel, and held me silently.

  Chapter 2

  I woke up with a terrible headache. I rubbed my temples and looked in the mirror, recalling the events of last night. I didn’t even want to think about it. Neither my bed, nor my clothes were singed, so I took that as a good sign. My only mission for the day was to learn how to keep this thing in check until I could figure it out. I washed my face in the bathroom and then headed downstairs to get some ibuprofen.

  Delilah was comforting our mother, who was crying on a couch in the living room. I tried to be quiet and avoid them as I walked into the kitchen, lest I be sucked into feigning sympathy.

  “Where the hell did you go last night?” My father shouted at me.

  “Please stop yelling. I have a headache.” Literally the last thing I wanted was a repeat of last night’s episode. I needed to keep my temper at a minimum.

  I walked past him to the medicine cabinet and began to dig for the ibuprofen.

  “What, do you have a hangover? Did you ditch your family when we needed you here to support your sister to go to another party? You couldn't spend one Friday night with your family?”

  Of course he was already too drunk by the time Delilah's party started to remember that I was there. I slammed the cabinet and prepared a comeback, but then rested my head against the wood and breathed deeply to calm myself. Don’t lose it, I thought to myself. I turned back around and faced my father. “I was here until I went with Delilah at Aunt Winona’s house. But I do enough shitty things on a daily basis, so next time you want to criticize me for something, try not to pull it out of your ass, okay?”

  The last sentence felt like I was trying too hard, but it had been a good while since I cursed like that at my father and I knew it would keep him calmed down for a while, as awful as that sounded. I pulled the medicine bottle open and popped two in my mouth, dry-swallowing them and then walking away.

  I went out the back door and into the patch of woods around my house. As much as I didn’t want to, I needed some time in a safe area to think about last night.

  Firstly, it was safe to say that I got Aunt Winona’s power. I had never been on fire before, and the fact that I wasn’t hurt by it completely threw science out the window. Secondly, what did the fact that my “power” was raising my body temperature to impossible levels say about who I was as a person? It couldn’t be a good thing. Winona said that the powers reflect the essence of who you are, so she had to choose someone with a pure heart so they wouldn't get evil, destructive powers. What could be more evil and destructive than fire? I had always liked to believe that I was good like Delilah, I just didn’t show it much. I certainly didn’t want to believe that I was evil. Even a villain had some redeeming qualities, right?

  I stood there and thought for a while until I had an idea. I walked deep enough in the woods that I could safely be alone. I removed my clothes, feeling awkward about being so exposed. I threw them onto a log that had fallen in the last big storm. After pushing aside the underbrush so that I was standing only on dirt, I stood still and tried to remember how it happened last time. I was talking about how much I hated police officers. I was imagining the videos of police officers in riot gear, tasing people and blasting them with smoke bombs. I thought of cities on fire.

  So I tried imagining fire.

  Nothing happened.

  I tried imagining myself on fire.

  Still nothing.

  Frustrated, I sat down on the ground and crossed my legs. There had to be a way. It seemed so easy last night. I did it without even trying. There had to be some sort of trick to it. Then I remember how I felt. I was angry. It only seemed natural that fire comes from anger, so I focused on things that made me angry until I was seething with hate alone in the woods.

  And then I started glowing. I was red, but this time of my own free will. I looked at my body and the coloring was stunning. I felt so powerful. No one could ever hurt me. I leaned forward and touched a leaf, seeing it burst into flames at my touch. I stood up and looked at the greenery around me. It had recently rained, so the chance of my starting a forest fire was relatively low. I began to walk, my footsteps sizzling and leaving singe marks everywhere I stepped.

  For the first time, I felt in tune with my ancestors, the people of the Lakinobe tribe. I felt like I could actually be one of them. I inhaled and exhaled, light wisps of smoke flowing from my lungs, the results of my body evaporating the humidity in the air.

  Now that I knew how to ignite myself, it was time to see if I could make myself go back to normal. After all, the experience wouldn’t be fully enjoyable until I knew how to make it stop. Otherwise, I would just feel like a prisoner to my powers.

  I tried to remember how I cooled down, which wasn’t an easy thing to do, considering it happened while my head was down, so I couldn’t tell exactly when it was. Maybe if being angry ignited me, being calm would cool me off?

  I imagined flowing waves washing up on the beach and instantly began to feel cooler. I pictured myself laying at the edge of the sand, feeling the water brush against my feet. My skin began to fade from red back to its normal color. I smiled at myself, then immediately felt embarrassed, realizing I was standing naked in the middle of the woods. But I was so proud of my progress so far. I didn’t understand why the superheroes in movies took weeks to master their abilities. I was already ready to move on to more difficult things. I remembered that I had school tomorrow, so I couldn’t risk bursting into flames in my classroom. I needed see if I had the abil
ity to only ignite some parts of my body. I knew that would save me a ton of money on new clothes, not to mention the possibilities of what all I could do with my powers. I thought for a moment, then frowned as the only interesting thing I could imagine doing was using my finger to light a cigarette as a party trick. Oh well, self-control was still something I needed to know, especially since I had the ability to light myself on fire.

  I glanced over at my clothes, still lying in a pile a few feet away, wondering if it would ever be completely safe to wear them again. For the sake of my modesty, I hoped so.

  I lit myself on fire again and focused on how it felt to ignite myself. It felt like the chills you get when someone runs their finger up your spine, but all over. However, the feeling was so short-lived that this was the first time I had noticed it. I calmed down and decided to try something different. I imagined feeling the chill, and in the same way that imagining moving your hand actually makes it move, I began glowing with heat.

  I turned the heat off, which was beginning to feel as normal as moving a muscle. I focused on my hands, and sure enough, only my hands began glowing. I smiled at my success and decided I deserved to play around for a while. I had full mobility of my hand while it was on fire. I pressed it against a tree and my handprint sizzled in the wet bark. As I burned leaves with my fingers, I began to wonder how hot I was getting. I was hot enough to melt my sister’s leather seats last night, so I had no idea what I could really do if I tried hard enough. However, I decided not to push my luck this soon. I trusted myself enough at this point to put my clothes back on, so I did it quickly and headed back into my yard, feeling so much more comfortable with myself.

  As I stepped back into my backyard, I noticed my father’s tool shed. It hadn’t been touched in months, thanks to my dad losing the key and being unable to get into it. It was the perfect way to test out my new ability. I approached it and felt the lock. It was a solid metal padlock that held the door shut by connecting two pieces of metal with holes in them. It was thick and rigid, so it made it that much more of a fun challenge to break it. I ignited my right hand and touched the lock. Almost immediately my finger melted an indent into the metal. I pulled my hand away and examined the lock. The metal had hardened back in a warped clump around the dent. I grabbed the lock and pinched it, watching the droplets of metal falling and sizzling on the grass below. The rest of the lock fell to the ground and I left it lying there, hoping my father would see it and come up with an explanation for how someone had melted off the lock on his shed. I looked forward to it.

  I went to Delilah’s room, eager to show her that I had already figured out my powers. Mostly, I was just proud to be able to do something amazing that she could never top. She was laying on her bed with her glasses on, reading a medical terminology book.

  “Guess what,” I taunted, sitting down at the foot of the bed.

  “What is it?” She asked.

  I heated my hand and held it up to her. She screamed and threw her arms out to push me off of the bed, most likely fearing for her own safety. I struggled to cradle my arm so that I wouldn’t accidentally catch anything on fire. “No, Delly, calm down. It’s okay. See?” I said and cooled my hand.

  She looked amazed. “So you can control it?”

  I nodded and smiled. “Pretty cool, right?”

  “Yeah.” Her tone reminded me that I had stolen what should have been her gift. It should be her celebrating her powers, which, although not as cool as mine were, would be something that she could actually use to help people. We both knew that her powers would have had such a better use than mine. How could I have even used my powers to help people?

  I tried again to think of anything good I could do, but the only real thing I could think of is using it to melt locks like my dad’s. As helpful as that would be, I could think of a thousand things I’d rather do than melt locks for people every day. At least the only time I’d used my powers so far has been good. That had to count for something. Then I remembered what I did to my sister’s car last night and my 100% record was completely shot.

  “So, have you read that notebook yet?” I asked.

  “Yeah.” She answered lightly.

  “Can I read it now?”

  “No.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because it wasn’t meant for you.”

  I didn’t like how she was acting. “Why not? I know it was for you, but I’m the one with the powers. Not you. I need to know more about them. You don’t.”

  She gave me a serious look. “No. You can’t read it, it would just upset you.” She grabbed it and held it in her arms, just in case I tried to take it.

  I stood up. “Do you think I can’t handle it? What’s it going to say, huh? How much better off you would be with the powers than I am? How much of a better job you were meant to do? How much of a failure I am at everything?” I clenched my fists in anger and realized too late that it was a bad idea to let myself get upset again.

  I gasped as I saw the carpet beneath my feet burst into flames. Delilah threw a wet towel from her clothes hamper onto me and began trying to fan me off. I needed to stop the flames before I burned my house down.

  “Open the window!” I screamed at Delilah, tears beginning to form on both of our faces. I can only imagine how terrified she was. She slid up her window pane and I dove out, falling from the second story window onto the ground below. I recovered from the ground, surprised that I wasn’t hurt. I got up and ran towards the woods as fast as I could. I reached the clearing I had been in earlier and fell to the ground, sobbing at how utterly out-of-control I actually was.

  I wished I was a good person. Or at least, one that wasn’t a total loose cannon. I didn’t ignite myself on purpose. The fact that it just happened automatically terrified me more than anything. Was it even safe for me to be around people? I thought of how many houses I could burn down completely on accident. Was it safe for me to even be alive? I tried to shake away that thought, but I couldn’t. I decided that in my current state, there was nothing more productive for me to do than to lie in the dirt and cry until I cooled off.

  After what seemed like an eternity later, I heard footsteps approaching. I lacked the energy to get up and run, so I just curled up in a ball and tried to cover myself with my arms and legs.

  “Hey. I thought I might find you out here. I brought you something to wear.”

  I relaxed and thanked Delilah for the clothes.

  “Sorry I took so long. I wanted to give you some time to chill out. No pun intended.” She laughed at her own joke, despite the fact that I didn’t. “By the way, I ordered you something. I overnighted it, so it should be here either tomorrow, Tuesday at the latest.”

  “What is it?” I asked.

  She pulled out her phone and showed me a picture of a sports bra and panties, both a horrible mixture of lime green and blue. “They’re made of the most flame-resistant technology there is. I ordered you two pairs of each. “

  “Look, I appreciate the gesture, but I don’t think you know just how hot I’m getting. I can melt metal on contact. I don’t think anything can withstand that.”

  “You’ll be fine. It was developed by some people at my new school. It was part of a publicity thing, you know? They wanted to see if they could do it. But it got pretty popular with people who just thought it would be cool to have as athletic wear. It can withstand temperatures far greater than anything on earth. If you still don’t believe me, try it on when it gets here.”

  Delilah seemed pretty proud of herself. And I had to give it to her, if this material really worked, it could seriously mean a world of difference for my future. I put on the underwear she had for me, then slinked into the dress and picked out leaves and straw from the fabric as I walked back to my house, already ready to go to sleep, another headache threatening to break out any second.

  When I awoke from my nap, I picked up my phone, squinting at the brightness of the screen. It was already 11 pm. I had slept through the enti
re day. I felt horrible. My television was showing the news, meaning that I had probably accidentally pressed something on the remote while I was sleeping. In my half-awake stupor, I watched a few minutes of it. Celebrity marriages and politics seemed to be all that were relevant.

  I realized that my problems were so much different than theirs. They lived to talk about the lives of the people more popular, rich, or famous than themselves. Their only fear is that people stop being interesting. But what about the people that they talk about? They’re afraid of making a mistake and getting it broadcast for the entire world to see. I’d relate to them more than anything. What would happen if I accidentally showed my powers to anyone? It wasn’t exactly something that was easy to keep secret. Having them out in the open would bring forth a whole world of possibilities, but none of them were particularly pleasant. Even in the best-case scenario, I was still just a sideshow attraction. In the worst-case scenario, I'd get put away forever or killed because I’m unstable. But what would most likely happen is the usual sci-fi scenario: I would get probed by doctors who wanted to fix me or make others like me. It was a terrifying thought.