Young Writers Society

"I was going to say powers, but I guess that works," Martin replied.

"Well, nothing now, I think. What is there to do with them. Target them towards helping people, I guess."

"That's so cliched."

"Would you rather be a bad guy?"

"No, not really." Martin sat watching the two girls arguing and eating sweetarts.

"Sorry, guys, the price of spandex uniforms in various eye-popping colors is somewhat beyond my allowance," said Tabitha, popping a blue sweetart in her mouth. "Or Batarangs, pixie boots or shark repellant or anything else."

Martin threw a candy at her.

"Comic book geek! I can't believe you know about that stuff!"

Yera

"Forget the outfits. We have to learn to control these powers first," I decided.

"And how do we do that?" Martin asked, absently scrunching up a sweetie wrapper.

"Well what is it that triggers them?" Tabbitha wondered, throwing the candy back at Martin who countered by throwing the sweet wrapper. As it moved through the air, the tiny paper ball solidified into a bullet.

"Tabitha!" I gasped and, without thinking, I pushed her aside. The bullet touched my forehead, cold metal against warm flesh but then it was a piece of paper again, fluttering towards the floor.

"Could you have cut it any closer?" I demanded, my heart racing.

"I...I didn't know how to stop it and I don't know that I did. I didn't touch it. Don't I have to touch it for my power to work?"

"Food," suggested Tabitha, who had grown pale. "Sugary, high calorie food. Th-thanks, Yera."

"Anytime," said Yera.

"Sorry," said Martin, worried.

"That's OK. We're still all new to this."

"How about," said Tabitha, popping another candy in her mouth and staring, puzzled, out the window, "we give some sort of signal to each other when we realize that the powers are on the wave?"

"What if it's in the middle of the night? Walkie-talkies?" snorted Yera.

"How about notebooks for recording the date, time and strength level of the wave?" suggested Martin. "We can use the raw data from there to find a pattern."

"Math geek!" Tabitha punched him on the arm.

"Elementary, my dear Watson."

"No, that would take too long," said Yera, the ever-cynic.

Yera

"You got a better idea?" Martin asked.

"Maybe they're triggered by thought?" Tabitha suggested.

"Well that's easy to test. Yera, think about putting your hand through the treehouse floor," Martin decided.

"Like that's going to work," I rolled my eyes.

"It's worth a try," Martin insisted.

"Fine," I sighed, "But if I fall through the tree, I'm blaming you." I imagined my hand going through the wooden planks and slowly pressed a finger against the firm surface. I pushed a little harder and then pressed my whole palm against the wood and pushed again.

"So we can only do it when we don't want it to happen?" wondered Tabitha. "But that doesn't work with this afternoon's mock game."

"Well, it should vary from person to person," said Martin reasonably. "If there were more kids our age with the -to use your word- manifestations, we could try to collect data and compute that, but this isn't exactly an epidemic."

"We could text each other," Martin added. Both girls looked at him.

"Hmm...that's not a bad idea," Yera commented.


***Sorry, that's all i got right now.*

"Sorry, I don't have a cell phone." Martin spat out a candy.

"You're NOT serious?"

"'S I am." Tabitha calmly kicked the candy his way. "My dad hates cell phones."

"That idea out the window," said Yera, throwing an imaginary crumpled paper out the treehouse door. "Looks like we might have to use the notebooks and compare data before and after school."

Yera

"Okay. See you at school tomorrow then?" Tabbitha queried in way of goodbye as she climbed out of the tree.

"Yeah," I agreed, following her down. We all said a few goodbyes and then headed for various destinations. I intended to go home but then I bumped into a girl called Trinity. I'd seen her around at school before and she seemed pretty excited about something as she caught my arm and pulled me to a halt. A dark haired boy with intense green eyes was with her.

"Hi Yera," She greeted me.

"Hi. Who's your friend?" I asked.

"Tony. He reads minds and turns invisible," Trinity replied lightly, watching for my reaction. I stared for a moment and then laughed and smiled.

"Sounds pretty cool and what's your power?" I joked, a little nervously.

"She controls plants," Tony replied, "And your mind is really hard to read but I'm sure you was thinking about powers when we were following you," He replied confidently. Wide eyed, I wasn't sure what to do. He advanced towards me, an arm outstretched and I decided to run. I could hear their footsteps close behind me and I wished that I could find somewhere to hide. That was when I noticed that I couldn't see my limbs that should have been visibly straining to reach safety.

"Hey!" A voice called out, "I didn't give you permission to borrow my power."

"Where'd she go?" Martin said, climbing out of the tree house just as Yera disappeared. "And who are you?"

"I'm Tony and this is-"

"Trinity," the girl finished. "And you're Martin."

"You have powers," Tony commented.

"Um...hehe...what're you talking about?"

"I can read minds, and you have some cool power over paper type thing."

"So what if I do?"