Infected

Social Anxiety Attack of the Blondes

"Sarcasm is the lowest form of wit, but the highest form of intelligence."
~Oscar Wilde

"Did you see that?" Helia poked me in the side making contact with my bare skin and I hissed. I knew this bikini was a bad idea. I felt Helia's excitement, apprehension and worry wash over me with her touch.

"Hey, no skin contact," The moment I lifted my head from my book, I regretted it. My short, untamable hair whipped into my face in the sandy wind.

I hated the bloody beach.

"Sorry," she smiled sheepishly at me. "But look!" She pointed excitedly at a surfer coming out of the water. Groaning, I pulled my glasses over my eyes, just to be able to make out that the surfer was a girl, and she was blonde.

Damn my eyesight was bad.

As she got closer, I was able to better examine why she had captured Helia's attention. I didn't see anything out of the ordinary about her; she was tall, tan and athletic, her wet hair pulled into a pony tail atop her head. As she climbed out of her wetsuit, revealing a pink patterned bikini that showed off her flat stomach and toned legs, I instinctively sucked in my own pale stomach.
"What? The surfer girl?"
"Yeah, I saw her manipulate the water." Helia stage-whispered. I rolled my eyes.

I don't know how it happened, but sometime around puberty, when girls normally get really bad acne and menstrual cramps, Helia and I developed...let's call them abilities for lack of a better word.
We still got bad acne and menstrual cramps though.

We found out when we were twelve that the other had unusual abilities. We were in our dorm room, first years at Cunningham Academy, and I got stuck with this really perky, talkative, friendly girl who smiled too much and wouldn't shut up. She rambled on and on about how excited she was and how she was going to send her family photos of everything, and then she got really sad very suddenly, and she was sitting on her bed sniffling and scared, and I panicked and I asked her if she wanted to see something cool.
That's when she found out I had telekinesis.

Just in case it wasn't obvious, that annoying friendly chick was Helia. She showed me how she could make it rain on her command and we've been best friends ever since.
We're probably what would happen if Storm from X-men and Carrie teamed up. I'm not a psychopathic victimized killer with a crazy Catholic mom though, so that was probably a bad analogy. Helia's better at those.

I didn't only have telekinesis. I feel other people's emotions through skin contact as well, so I tend to wear gloves and keep to myself a lot. Which is why a bikini was a bad idea. Helia's bad idea, to be precise.

I glanced back at the surfer chick. Helia had been intent on finding others like us since we met, and to her, everything that looked just a little odd was a person using their perceived powers.
"Helia, the water at the beach moves on its own. Or, the moon moves it, something to do with gravity. Look it up." I buried my nose in my book again, intent on finishing it before my dad called us to get ready for dinner.
Helia didn't say anything after that, so I figured I'd pissed her off again. I'm a horrible person, I know. Trust me, I was more grateful than you could believe that she hadn't ditched me yet.

Helia and I had just finished our sixth year at Cunningham Academy, which meant we only had one more year of hell to go before we escaped into the adult world of taxes and responsibilities. Yippee.

We were on Holiday in Ballito Bay with my over-enthusiastic dad, my stepmother Pamela, and my sister Jessica, who had just finished her first year at Cunningham and got on with Helia like a house on fire.
I didn't know why, but even after blocking out reality and entering the thrilling world of Middle Earth, the image of the surfer girl didn't leave me. Maybe Helia was right, and there were others out there like us.