Authors: Jessica Knauss
So there are precisely twenty of us newbies here. They started the circle with Brian, who was sitting right next to me, but it went in the opposite direction. After Brian said he couldn’t produce flames in the presence of tungsten, eighteen other people went ahead of me. I was getting more nervous by the minute and barely heard what the other people said, with their run-of-the-mill kryptonites like lithium, beryllium, and even krypton, which must be pretty expensive for the school to have on hand. My ears pricked up when a girl named Jill admitted phosphorus took away her powers. I snickered quietly to test whether anyone else would, but there were no takers. Come on, it’s embarrassing to be a pyrokinetic who can’t make a fire around phosphorus, right? The stuff they put in the heads of matches? Doesn’t that seem a little ironic, at least?
“There’s no shame in any kryptonite. We all have one,” said Todd. He looked at me out of the corner of his eye like I was some kind of troublemaker.
So I rolled my eyes to show my disregard for authority to the other new students and held my breath again. Maybe if they didn’t laugh at phosphorus, they wouldn’t laugh at me, either. Maybe. Possibly.
No one was looking at my reddening face because it was Melinda’s turn, whoop de doo. She demurely announced her name and said, “My kryptonite is platinum.” She flashed a smile that I swear cut the air with a knife-sharpening sound. She drew a shiny necklace from under her blouse. “I already wear this all the time, ever since my parents gave it to me. I won’t need a patch.”
A hushed “ooh” went around the circle. Todd was nodding, as if Melinda had already arranged it all with the administration. Brian, right next to me, sucked in air. I couldn’t say exactly what he was thinking, but I knew right then that I liked him. A lot. Unbidden, the image of placing a darkly shiny tungsten wedding band around his finger entered my mind. It helped that he smelled pretty good. Since then, of course, it’s hard to smell anything other than my stupid patch.
Melinda’s act was hard to follow and I didn’t notice what anyone else said, so when it came to me, it still seemed like I had to compare myself to platinum. I covered my mouth to muffle the name of my fire-dampening element, but Todd said, “What was that? Say it again.”
“My name is Kelly,” I repeated, putting my diaphragm into it. “And my kryptonite is sulfur.” I wondered if I’d started a blaze on my face. I couldn’t feel my cheeks as I smiled, bracing myself. It was the same sinking, sick feeling I had with Uncle Jack a month ago. The laughter bubbled under the surface. I could feel it coming.
“Fire, but not brimstone,” Melinda said in a way that questioned the possibility.
Then it started. Todd snorted and the teacher, Ms. Matheson, barked a laugh over the snickering that was growing so sinisterly in volume. She clapped her hands over her mouth and composed herself to say, “There is no shame in any kryptonite. Hush. Quiet! My weakness is lead.”
She reached into her purse beside her—I’d thought she was just kind of weird to keep her purse with her in this situation—and pulled out a key ring with no keys attached to it, but several irregularly shaped rocks that must have been made of lead. She certainly hefted it as if it weighed a ton. “I can’t wear lead against my skin because it would poison me like a regular person, in addition to taking my pyrokinesis away.”
The laughter died down with the new distraction. I thought of getting up and walking out, but Ms. Matheson continued and I had to hear. “I have to carry these pieces of lead with me at all times so I can get to them in an emergency, like a diabetic or something. I can’t even put this charm as far away from me as the conveyor belt when I go through airport security. Believe me, that can add to the difficulties of a trip.” Then she smiled so sweet and silly at all the newbies, they had to chuckle.
I loved Ms. Matheson then. She looked at me and I could tell that was exactly what she wanted—a new friend from among the outcasts. She must be a weirdo in her life, too, with no friends her own age. I looked away and stayed quiet, hoping no one would remember me for the rest of the orientation. When Todd and Ms. Matheson finished explaining about curfews and hall passes and field trips, I stood up as slowly as I could, my every movement calling attention, in my mind, anyway, and slipped out. Without a hall pass.
I hid in the girls’ locker room, pretending I belonged there whenever a class came in to move things in and out of lockers and put on sweat pants. Maybe the leftover humiliation is what gives me a nervous stomach whenever I head off to PE now. Eventually, I checked my phone and it was 4:45, which I’d already noticed was the opening time for the dining hall. I followed the last group of students out of the locker room and fell into the line with the trays, then the silverware (how are you supposed to know what to take before you’ve selected any food?), then the soup station, salad bar, entrees, build your own stir fry (I felt nervous and puzzled by the use of open flame here), dessert cart, and beverages. I was overwhelmed with choices and the tray was preposterously heavy when I turned toward the floor-to-ceiling windows of the dining area. I considered dropping everything and running away when I saw that the tables were built for just two diners, and they were all occupied in that manner. Then I noticed the group I’d come in with and my heart danced. Those eight students had pushed four tables together, boldly asserting their right to change their environment. There was space on the end of their conglomeration, so I marched right up to it and slammed my tray down—because my arms were shaking with the weight, not because I thought it would be a friendly thing to do.
All eight of them looked from the source of the clatter to my hands, and upward along my T-shirt to my reddening face.
“New here?” She had the shiniest, most beautifully tamed black ringlets I’d ever seen. I had plenty of time to wonder how she kept her hair looking like that through a PE class because I didn’t respond. Nope, nothing normal was going to happen to me that day, and it was time I went with the flow and acted like the freak I was.
“Where’s your buddy?” the equally well-coiffed blonde sitting across from her asked.
I hope they didn’t see my flash of bewilderment because of the way my friends have abandoned me since my pyrokinesis manifested. They were all normal, the friends I had before, except that they were unusually afraid of fire and rare Talents. I bet there was a psychic among us, pretending to have no Talent. It would serve them right. But I guess these kids saw the question marks floating over my head because the ringlets girl proceeded to explain that no one was supposed to go anywhere alone on school grounds, for safety purposes. “We use the buddy system,” she said as if she wasn’t sure I could understand the concept. “So, where’s your buddy?”
I looked down at my tray, the steam from a delectable-smelling mulligatawny soup opening up the pores on my nose.
“Where’s your buddy, huh?” one of the boys in the middle of the table goaded. Across from him sat another boy, and suddenly all the tables being for two made sense. I was the odd one out. And I was running out of time.
Were they going to make me say, actually pronounce the syllables, that I had no buddy? Suddenly it came to me: “There’s an odd number of students in my class.” The fib couldn’t last long, but maybe at least I could eat some of this food before they carted me off to liar/firestarter jail.
“So then, there’s a group of three in your class . . .” said the same boy, calculating.
His burly buddy stood up, throwing back his creaky metal chair. “You must have escaped from your orientation. Everyone has at least one buddy.”
I let out a yelp, grabbed a dinner roll from my tray, and made my way to the door as fast as I could through the maze of tables and chairs. The burly guy and his nosy friend were in hot pursuit, but they needn’t have bothered. Instead of fleeing to freedom at the door, I smacked into Ms. Matheson.
“Kelly?” she said. “Where did you go? We looked all over for you. The other students chose their dorm rooms without you, and three of them decided to squeeze into one room. They’re really only made for two, but you missed your chance to choose your buddy.”
“Really?” I said after I caught my breath. A long line of students filed by us, picking up trays, silverware, etc. I guess 4:55 is rush hour in the dining hall. “You really think I could have
chosen
someone to room with? With the rotten egg smell that’s going to accompany me everywhere?”
She looked puzzled. The police twins caught up with us and one grabbed me by the shoulders.
“Ms. Matheson,” he panted. “She doesn’t have a buddy!”
“Because that’s what sulfur smells like. Rotten eggs!” I shouted. The regular din of the eating and conversation silenced.
“No one’s going to be my buddy because when I get my patches, I’m going to reek,” I continued, holding my arms up so no one would wonder who was talking. I still had the bread roll, and I held it aloft as if I were the Statue of Liberty and the roll, my torch. I wished really hard that I could set the bread on fire for effect, but it wasn’t to be.
“My kryptonite is sulfur. Anyone who wants to room with me, please apply at the loony bin,” I concluded.
Security guards arrived and escorted me out of the dining hall, away from both Ms. Matheson’s naïve benevolence and the older boys’ glowering. They showed me to the dorm room that had been left over after everyone else made their pick. It felt like a prison cell, not least because they proceeded to attach an ankle bracelet to me and tell me I had to stay here when I wasn’t in class, and would not be permitted to go on the field trips until all this could be sorted out. I had swallowed the bread roll, and I could feel it in my stomach, a strangely cold mass, sucking the warmth out of me.
That first night, they had a guard at each of the dorm room doors, armed with a fire extinguisher. My door boasted double duty, the two who’d locked me in here. They needn’t have worried about me. I was far too wound up to make a fire. But it seems the other kids can make a fire when they’re stressed out, so I wasn’t about to tell anyone something else weird about me.
I’ve been using this time in solitary confinement to write all this, so at least these pages will know why everyone laughs at me on sight. My tears fall to the table hissing and boil themselves away.
September 24
So this Jill girl, with the phosphorus weakness, isn’t too bad.
Who am I kidding? She saved my life.
After spending a couple of weeks in the forced triple with Melinda and her clone, what’s-her-name, Jill sat across from me at lunch and gave me the hardest stare. I was kind of tired because our first fire drill had taken place the night before, and at 3:00 a.m. I ran out solo to the agreed-upon meeting place on the docks, after the guard fumbled with the controls on the ankle bracelet. Everyone else came out neatly paired off, most holding hands. I waved at people and smiled and laughed silently as if I were included in their early morning jollity. I don’t know who I was performing for, other than the guard, who held my wrist even as I fake waved, but the effort was exhausting.
So I had been looking out the floor-to-ceiling window, as I had every time I’d had to come to the dining hall as a pariah. You could see the tops of the little houses on Rhodes Street and just beyond, the docks and the harbor. I couldn’t take my eyes off the sparks the summer sun made on the water’s surface. But Jill’s stare snapped me right out of it.
“You want a roommate?” she asked. Her head tilted to the left, as if she’d slept in the wrong position.
I finished chewing a lettuce leaf and duly swallowed. I couldn’t keep the tears out of my eyes. “Yes,” I whispered.
There was a lot of phlegm in my throat because the only person I’d spoken to since the incident was my dad, on the phone. Going to class those days was the loneliest time of my life so far. I coughed discreetly into the napkin, hoping I wasn’t being so gross she would change her mind at the last minute.
“I’ve been watching you,” Jill said.
Her attention must have blended in with the constant scrutiny I felt from absolutely everyone else in the entire world, so I hadn’t noticed.
“And?”
“And I think I can help us both out. If I become your buddy, you won’t be such an outcast, and I won’t have to share a triple.”
I wanted to jump for joy and maybe hug her, but I couldn’t let her in so easy. “So you decided living in a sulfurous smog all the time was better than hanging around with Melinda?”
“Yeah. It can’t be that bad.” She gave a wry smile that made me want to cry even more.
“Thank you,” I said, reaching for her hand, but then thinking better of it.
“Cool,” she replied. “I told the principal we might do this, and I think we have enough time to sort it out with the admin office and move me in after lunch if we eat fast. Is that your safety sack?”
“Huh?” It turns out that’s what they call the clump of extra kryptonite they tied up in a little pouch and made me wear on my wrist, visible at all times. I hadn’t realized everyone had one.
“I can take it from you now, and Willa will give you mine at some point.”
“Huh?”
“It’s part of the buddy system,” Jill explained with admirable patience. “In a pair, the partner takes his or her buddy’s safety sack and keeps it available in case the patch fails or there’s a problem in the night. In our group of three, Melinda took Willa’s, Willa took mine, and I took Melinda’s, so everyone has a link to the other two.”
“It sounds a lot like Ms. Matheson’s lead keychain.”
“Well, she would have had to carry her lead the same way we wear a patch, and her buddy would have had to carry another pouch for her when she was in school, too. She just has to keep carrying as an adult. We won’t. So we’ll go get my safety phosphorus for you to carry and Willa can take Melinda’s.”
“Wait,” I said. “Melinda’s kryptonite is platinum. You’re trading platinum for sulfur? Are you sure?”
She undid the knot around my wrist with a pull of the string and brought the porous fabric to her nose.