One Mind

Chapter 1

October 18, 2034

"Why won't you let me play tag with you guys?"

The freckle-faced, red-haired little boy standing before me batted his eyelashes as if he didn't understand the question. But he did. "Because we don't want to play with you."

I frowned, not only because at the time, my mind was too young to grasp the concept that someone didn't want to play with me, but also because I was getting frustrated with this 5-year-old boy who thought he could tell me what to do and who to play with. "But why not? I didn't do anything-"

"Because girls have cooties!"

As I stood there, speechless, processing the words the little boy had just said to me, all I could feel was the sudden rush of anger rise through my veins like a shot of adrenaline. I felt my powers spark to life, just like I could feel the ground beneath my light-up Sketchers. They were right there, just on the tip of my fingers. One touch and the boy would go flying, but from somewhere deep inside my chest, I felt Charlie holding me back.

I hesitated, but not long enough to rationalize with myself.  With all of the strength my little 5-year-old arms could muster, I shoved the boy away from me. My palms hit his shoulders, and the instant they connected, he jumped backwards with a force that wasn't his and then collapsed to the ground, right on his spine.

At first, he was motionless. Even from where I was standing, I noticed how his blue eyes widened helplessly at the sky, sparkling with tears. The pang of guilt in my heart was immediate, and I wanted to go back in time and stop myself from getting so angry, from abusing my powers to hurt him. After a moment of silence, in which all of the other children stopped their lollygagging to come observe the commotion, the red haired boy hoisted himself up off of the layer of wood chips beneath him and ran away, bursting with sobs.

The group of boys who were waiting to play tag stood nearby, stock-still with bewilderment, staring at me, then at the boy I pushed—who was already very far away—and then back at me. And once they realized they could not process what had just happened, they ran after the boy and left me standing there with nothing to feel but my own culpability.

I was still angry (even though most of that frustration was directed at myself), and I wanted to show it. So I stomped away from the scene, my Sketchers glowing with each step, in the opposite direction that the blue-eyed boy and his friends had gone. I stormed past the swing set, past the monkey bars, past the jungle gym and into the little nook of trees behind the school playground where the greenery was so dense that you could not see through it. It was a place where no teachers or other kids would bother to look; not that any of them were looking for me anyways.

I sat down on the long grass that itched my bare legs and crossed my arms over my chest. With a huff, I closed my eyes and forced back the tears that were beginning to sprout there.

"Lisette, there's no need to get upset. They were just being silly."

"Shut up," I snapped back. At the time, I didn't understand that Charlie was correct. He would be correct about a lot of things in the future, too. Yet my stubborn brain was stuck on the single notion that those boys didn't want to play with me just because I had cooties (which, I thought, was something that I definitely did not have). "They were being mean."

"Maybe they were. But you shouldn't let that control your mood. You have the power to feel the way that you feel, and you also have the power to control your anger. You have the power to control your strength," Charlie explained.