Wild-born (3 page)

“What are you doing?” I asked, trying to keep my tone casual.

“Just reading.” Cat held up a magazine and looked at me apprehensively. Did she already know what I had done? Maybe she thought I was going to throw her again.

“Can we talk?” I asked cautiously.

“Oh, come on, Adrian! It was just a little joke! I promise I won’t do it again, okay?”

“Do what?” I asked, wondering what I had missed.

“You know...” said Cat, and silently mouthed, “Addy-baby.” I was so caught off guard that I actually stared at her for a moment, my mouth hanging open.

“Cat, I—I don’t care about that!” I sputtered. “Call me whatever you want. That’s not what I want to talk to you about.”

Cat gave me a surprised frown. “Oh. Well, what do you want to talk about?”

“Um, yeah... Well, hey, Cat, is your ankle okay? I mean, does it still hurt?”

Cat blinked twice, and then said, “I’m fine. You know that. I was okay at dinner, wasn’t I? You know, you’re acting really strange.”

“Really strange?” I repeated. “No, I’m just getting warmed up.”

After swearing her to absolute secrecy, I told my sister everything that had been happening these last few months. I even gave her a demonstration, first by making an eraser fly around her room, bouncing it off the walls and ceiling, and then by making one of her dolls move through her doll house. I couldn’t actually make the doll walk properly, but Cat got the idea.

“So you threw me out of the pool?” she asked.

“I swear I didn’t mean to,” I said. “It was an accident. I just lost control.”

Cat narrowed her eyes. “You lost control?”

“Yeah. I mean, I wasn’t even trying to use my power on you at all, to catch you or anything. It just, sort of... happened,” I said uneasily. “I’m really sorry, Cat.”

Suddenly Cat grinned widely. “Can you do it again?”

“What?” I asked, incredulous.

“Can you lift me up?” Cat asked excitedly. “Can you make me fly? Like you did with the eraser?”

“Of course I can’t,” I said. “That’s just an eraser. You’re much bigger.”

“But you did it at the pool, didn’t you?”

“I wasn’t trying to, Cat,” I said, shaking my head. “Like I said, it just happened.”

“Come on, Adrian. Can’t you at least try?”

“Cat!”

Cat looked at me imploringly. “I want to fly! Please?”

“So far, I’ve only moved things that aren’t alive, like pencils and cups,” I protested. “I don’t know how it would work on a person. It might really hurt you.”

“You didn’t hurt me at the pool,” said Cat. “I hurt myself when I landed.”

“But it might not be the same this time.”

“Please-please-please! Come on, Adrian! I promise I’ll never call you Addy-baby again.”

I sighed heavily. “You already promised that a moment ago, not to mention like a hundred times this year.”

I knew well enough by now that I was going to lose this argument. If Cat was nothing else, she was persistent. That was probably why my sister so often got her own way in my family.

“Oh, Adrian, you came in to apologize, right?”

“Well, yeah...”

Cat grinned. “Then you can do this for me instead.”

“That makes no sense at all,” I said, scratching the back of my head. “Alright. But don’t say I didn’t warn you!”

Cat jumped up and gave me a big bear hug. My ribs still hurt a bit.

Disentangling myself, I gave her a stern look. “Cat, since you obviously can’t land like one, I want you to go stand on your bed. No, actually, sit down on your bed so there’s more space between you and the ceiling. And take your pillow and hold it over your head.”

Cat did as I told her to, sitting cross-legged on her bed with her giant yellow psychedelic flower-patterned pillow held firmly over her head. She looked like a mushroom.

“Ready for takeoff, Captain!” Cat giggled nervously.

“This probably won’t work, you know.”

Cat gave me an impatient scowl. “Just try!”

At that moment, it occurred to me that the sensible thing to do would be to pretend I tried and failed. I ignored that thought and focused on levitating Cat.

I soon discovered that size did matter. It was like learning my power all over again. The focus had to be just right, evenly spread all over Cat and her crazy pillow. Then it had to be powerful. Just like weightlifting. Minutes went by as I concentrated all of my consciousness on lifting my sister into the air.

“My arms are getting tired holding this pillow,” whined Cat. “Can I just balance it on my head?”

“No,” I breathed through clenched teeth, “and shut up!”

“Adrian! I think it’s working!”

She was right.

Cat was now hovering a few inches off of her mattress. She was still cross-legged, though her feet were sagging down a bit and her toes were lightly touching her bed. I lifted her higher, halfway between her bed and the ceiling.

“Wow!” shrieked Cat. “I’m flying! I’m really flying!”

“Be quiet, Cat!”

I was no longer clenching my teeth, and I realized that I had gotten a little used to her weight.

“But this is so great!” cried Cat.

“Mom and Dad will hear you,” I hissed. “Be quiet!”

Sure enough, there were two rapid knocks on the door and I heard Dad’s voice say, “Cat, what are you doing in there?”

Cat panicked, pulling her pillow off her head, and I panicked, losing control.

Crack!
Cat hit her head hard on the plaster ceiling before falling straight back down onto her mattress.

Dad opened the door just as she landed.

“Cat? Adrian?” he said. “What are you two up to in here?”

Cat got off her bed, wincing painfully, her right hand pressed firmly over what was sure to become a towering bump on her head.

“We were, um... just talking,” I said, trying to look innocent.

“Doesn’t look like it,” said Dad. “What were you talking about?”

“Flying,” Cat said casually.

I froze. Was Cat about to spill the beans on me?

“Flying, huh?” repeated Dad, eyeing Cat’s hand on her head. “You mean you were talking about flying or you really were flying?”

Cat laughed. “Just talking, Dad. You know I can’t really fly.”

Dad gave her a slight frown. “Aren’t you getting a little too big to be jumping up and down on your bed?”

“Sorry,” said Cat. “But Adrian said I’d feel weightlessness if I was falling. Just like an astronaut!”

“Adrian!” said Dad, shaking his head.

“Well, it’s true,” I said lamely. I had, in fact, said that to her once, not too long ago.

“Is your head okay?” asked Dad.

“I read it in my science textbook at the hospital!” I answered defensively.

“I was asking Cat,” Dad said dryly before turning to my sister. “Do you need any ice?”

“No, it’s not that bad, Dad,” said Cat, removing her hand from the bump.

“Okay. Just don’t break the mattress. Or the ceiling,” said Dad, chuckling as he left the room.

Cat and I looked at each other for a moment, and then Cat smiled broadly and whispered, “Ouch.”

We burst out laughing. When we finally stopped, Cat looked at me and said in an awestruck tone, “That was
amazing,
Adrian.”

“Yeah, amazing you didn’t break your neck,” I said, getting up to leave. “We’re not doing that again.”

“Well, not indoors anyway.”

“Nowhere, Cat!” I said firmly. “I mean it! Not until I can control it better.”

Cat smiled playfully. “So you’ll do it again when you can control it better?”

“No promises.”

“Okay, Adrian. But I really had fun. Even at the pool. Hurt my leg and bumped my head, but it was still fun. Really!”

“Glad you enjoyed it,” I said. “You won’t tell anyone?”

“Did I tell Dad just now? Don’t worry. I won’t tell.”

“Okay. Well, goodnight, then, I guess,” I said, walking to the door.

Cat grinned. “Goodnight, Addy-baby.”

“Yeah, whatever. Goodnight, Cat.”

Cat had been my first experiment with the living. In the days that followed, I learned that there wasn’t that much difference in the essence of what I did between living and non-living when it came to moving or lifting them. However, not only did size and weight matter, but the complexity of the object was also important. A table is heavy, but it’s basically a big lump of wood, which is a single material. A person, on the other hand, was much more complex, with skin and bones, muscles and organs, solid and liquid.

There was something else, too. Metal was harder to move than any other material. I first thought that this was because metal was heavier than other materials, but after a few experiments in and around the house, I found that it was easier to levitate a stack of glass plates, a brick, or even a small tree branch than it was to move a handful of coins. Between metals, aluminum was much easier than steel.

And here’s the killer part: My telekinetic power was greatly affected by how much metal was near me. If metal was actually touching my skin, it weakened my power so much that I couldn’t move a single strand of hair. Back at the hospital, I had lived in a cloth gown, and what I thought was a dip in my power after I came home was actually caused by things like the zipper on my jeans, my belt buckle and, worst of all, the stainless steel back of the wristwatch I wore during the day. No wonder I had the strength to throw Cat out of the pool when I was floating in water wearing only swimming trunks, and how I managed to lift her in her room when we were just in our pajamas.

This weakness to metal contact was my first real breakthrough in keeping my power under control. I took a short length of copper wire from Dad’s toolbox and wrapped it around my right ankle, hidden under my sock. The wire completely negated my power, and I was normal again. I was sure that there would be no more accidents like the one at the pool.

Of course, knowing how to limit my power only made me bolder. After all, as long as I was careful to wear the wire when I was with my friends, I could keep practicing when I was alone, or, as often was the case now, with Cat, who stuck around me more than ever. It was easier sharing this secret with someone, even if it was with my little sister. I still occasionally worried that she might tell her friends, but Cat turned out to be a better secret-keeper than I gave her credit for.

One of the few ways in which our parents were really cool was that, ever since I turned eleven, they stopped hiring a babysitter for Cat and me when they left us at home. They weren’t trying to be cheap or anything. After all, they did pay who-knew-how-much for my private hospital room. They just believed in giving us some room to grow, and that philosophy didn’t change even after my car accident. Mom might go ballistic over a broken vase or stained rug from time to time, but provided we didn’t burn down the house, it was ours to do with as we pleased. It was the ideal training ground for secretly developing my powers.

It was now mid-August, and Cat and I were enjoying the last few weeks of summer vacation.

“Higher, Adrian!” cried Cat.

“No! Someone will see you.”

In the fading afternoon light, Cat was zooming around our backyard on my telekinetic roller-coaster ride. I could keep her afloat for nearly two minutes at a time before having to rest and catch my breath. I was exhausted after half an hour of this and I knew that I was losing my concentration, so I set her back down on the lawn as gently as I could. We lay on the grass for a few minutes, breathing heavily. For me, it was more tiring than exciting, but I was happy too. I felt that I had mastered my power at last. I had, in fact, done nothing of the sort, but at the time, I believed that things were going to get better and better. I was actually looking forward to going back to school and attending my next history class, or rather what I was going to do to it.

Suddenly Mom’s voice rang out from inside the house. “Addy! Cat! Dinner!”

My heart missed a beat. I had thought Mom was going to be out until much later. I hadn’t heard her enter the house or cook dinner. I shuddered to think what would have happened if Mom had walked into the backyard mid-Cat-flight.

Cat might think this was just a fun new game, but I was sure Mom would want to have me checked at a hospital. It was all just too unnatural, and I was afraid that if any adults found out what I could do, being called “weird” at school might be the least of my problems.

Cat, apparently unconcerned, skipped up to the path leading around the side of our house, stopped, and smiled mischievously.

“Come on, Addy-baby!” she taunted. “Mom says dinner!”

She took off as soon as I stood up. Knowing perfectly well she expected just that, I sprinted after her. I almost knocked over the TV as I tore through the house trying to catch her, but Cat had a knack for timing, and she was safely seated at the dining table under the watchful protection of Mom by the time I caught up.

As soon as Mom’s back was turned, Cat stuck her tongue out at me. I made a green pea jump up from her plate and hit her nose.

We both laughed.

C
hapter 2: The Berserker

After Mom and Dad had gone to sleep that night, I was standing in the middle of my room making a book fly around me, flapping its covers like a bird. I thought I heard a strangely rough and deep voice off in the distance. I let my book fall to the floor and wondered where the voice had come from.

An instant later, it felt as if someone was stabbing my forehead with a burning hot knife. The headache had come so suddenly that I first thought I was being physically attacked, but I was alone in my room. The stinging pain was unbearable even at the start, but then it got worse. I fell to my knees, clutching my head and trying not to scream.

And suddenly, just when I was about to cry out, the pain vanished as if it had never been there. I looked up, but everything was blurry.

I heard loud knocking on my door and Cat’s worried voice. “Adrian, can I come in? I’m coming in, okay?”

I wiped my eyes and tried to steady my breathing as Cat entered, looking anxious.

“I heard you yell. Are you okay?” asked Cat.

“Yeah, Cat,” I breathed. “I’m okay.” So I guess I did cry out.