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  He nodded. “I guess that’s your mother’s department, anyway.” He pretended to wipe sweat from his forehead in relief. Haven smiled and took a bite of ice cream. “To tell you the truth, kiddo,” he continued, “you have us a little confused. This is the first time we’ve ever heard anything other than high praise from your school. I know you’re still upset because of the move and I hated to take you away from your friends, but my new job is going to give this family a lot of freedom.”

  “It’s just a little healthy rebellion, Dad. That’s all. Didn’t you and Mom ever start trouble for no good reason?”

  “Of course not!” he said, feigning insult. “We were model students in every way. Why? What did you hear about us?”

  She laughed and shook her head. “You’re so corny.”

  “That wasn’t corn. And for the record, I’m a very cool dude.”

  “Riiiight. You just said ‘cool dude’.”

  “Yeah, well, I’m still learning.” He looked at her. “So, everything’s really okay? No drugs, no dropping out, nothing like that?”

  “Everything’s fine, Dad. I promise. I don’t even know why I was acting up. It’s not really me.”

  “Maybe you were testing your limits,” he said.

  “Maybe…I guess.”

  “Which is perfectly normal,” he said. “You need to know how much you can handle. But you also need to do it respectfully. You’re an extremely bright girl, Haven. You surprise me every day, but we can’t handle getting phone calls from the principal like that. Especially your mother. She’s a little scared.”

  “I know. I’m sorry.”

  He ruffled her hair until she pulled away, smiling.

  “So,” he said. “Tell me about the boy you like so much that you wrote his name on the gym wall.”

  “Ew, Dad!”

  She hopped off her stool and hurried upstairs with her bowl of ice cream.

  Haven stopped by the door to Noah’s room. He hugged his favorite blue blanket close to his chest while he slept. He was still young enough to need a night-light and the soft glow cast long shadows over the toys scattered across his cluttered floor.

  Haven stood there watching her brother’s small chest rise up and down with his breathing. She wondered if he was going to have to suffer through all of the same things she was suffering through—confusion about the future, especially. All of the adults at school continuously stressed how important it was for her to know what she wanted to do for the rest of her life before she graduated high school—that she should have known even earlier if possible. How else would she decide what college she wanted to attend or the field of study she wanted to pursue? Haven knew she didn’t want to live in Arizona forever, but she also had no clue where she might want to go.

  It made her head hurt to think of all those things at once. Haven closed her eyes when she felt pressure building behind her forehead and thought of a green meadow bathed in warm sunlight. It was an imaginary place she would envision whenever she felt a migraine fast approaching.

  The meadow was surrounded by a ring of tall trees. Small lights floated around the branches; they moved in different directions and at varying speeds as if each one had a mind of its own. Haven was never able to figure out what the lights were, so after a while she stopped trying. They made her smile, which, in the meadow, was the only thing that mattered.

  She imagined herself lying down in the soft grass and looking up at the blue sky, her reddish brown hair fanned out on the ground above her head. The clouds were light pink and formed funny shapes as they drifted high above. One of them shifted into the shape of a bird and floated gently down to the meadow. Haven smiled and the cloud dropped lower until it hovered right above her. She reached up and ran her hand through the pink fluff. It moved between her fingers and trailed after them when she pulled her hand back.

  In the field, she closed her eyes and took a deep breath.

  When she opened them again, she was standing in front of the door to Noah’s room, holding her bowl of melting ice cream. He still slept soundly in his bed. She had only asked once why her parents chose to have another child so long after having her, but they simply said it felt like the right thing to do at the time.

  Haven closed her door as gently as she could and turned off the light before climbing into bed. She ate her strawberry ice cream while looking out of her window at the countless stars scattered across the night sky.

  A feeling of exposure crept over her, stronger than what she had experienced in the kitchen when she saw the shadow outside. It was as if everyone in the world was suddenly aware of the strange blue light she had produced and had all turned to look at her at the exact same time. For a moment, she thought she saw dark figures standing in the shadows next to her house, watching through her bedroom window and waiting for her to fall asleep. She rubbed her eyes and the shadows melted away into the night—it was just her vision straining against the darkness. Yet the feeling that she was being watched grew stronger.

  Haven shivered and turned away from the window. She set the empty bowl on her nightstand next to a clock that told her it was far too late to still be awake (as it often did), then pulled the bedcovers up under her chin and waited to fall asleep.

  4

  The afternoon that he accidentally killed the lizard had been a particularly hard one for Colton. His mother had abandoned him—and her husband—nine years earlier to the day. Neither of them had heard from her since. Most of the time Colton was able to push thoughts of her out of his mind, but for some reason, on the “anniversary” of her departure, he couldn’t help but dwell on how happy he used to be when she was around.

  Colton shuddered as he walked the streets, remembering the day he discovered his unique ability.

  His father came home drunk from work and continued drinking until he passed out on the couch, shouting insults to Colton and his long-absent, unfaithful mother the entire time. Shortly after his father’s final rant and subsequent blackout, Colton decided to go out onto the back porch to get some fresh air.

  He found the lizard as he slid open the sliding glass door. It didn’t try to escape when Colton reached out and gently scooped it off the glass. It sat there in his palm, staring up at him sideways with one eye. Colton stepped out of the house and walked over to the nearest bush to set down the lizard, but before he got there, the reptile twitched and rolled over onto its back. He watched as the lizard’s skin shrank until it was nothing more than a thin brown layer stretched over a tiny skeleton. It looked as if it had been baking in the sun for weeks.

  Colton shuddered with disgust and threw the dead lizard into the bushes before he went back inside to wash his hands.

  It happened only two or three times over the following few months, and usually with something small, like a fresh vegetable or piece of fruit. Until the incident with Mr. Laretti’s produce stand, Colton had found that he was able to somewhat control the ability. It didn’t always work, but over the past weeks he had failed less and less often.

  He only used fresh produce—no more lizards. The freshness of the object mattered, Colton had discovered. A can of sliced peaches was useless, but a fresh peach from Mr. Laretti worked just as well as the apple.

  Colton didn’t understand the process, but he was getting used to it. The warmth he felt afterward calmed him down, even after the most stressful of days.

  There was already a long line of homeless men and women wrapped around the edge of the shelter when Colton arrived. He squeezed inside and hurried over to the long row of tables at the back of the room.

  A strong odor of cooked vegetables and unwashed clothes hung thick in the air. He grabbed an apron hanging off a hook on the wall and put it on. The latex gloves from the “large” box barely fit his hands, but every volunteer had to wear them. He struggled to pull them down over his fingers as he walked over to the end of the long line of tables.

  The volunteers dipped big ladles into huge pots of steaming soup. On the other side o
f the table, the unceasing line of homeless shuffled past with bowls in hand. Every other volunteer would drop a chunk of stale bread into the soup.

  Colton took his spot at the end of the line and started handing out bread. The volunteer next to him was Sue Wallace, who ran the kitchen.

  “Nice to see you again, Mr. Ross. New haircut?”

  “Yes. Thanks. Sorry I’m late.”

  The elderly woman smiled and the skin at the outside corner of each eye bunched up into a hundred tiny lines. “Honey, the phrase ‘better late than never’ means more at this place than anywhere else I can think of.” She winked at him as she poured some soup into a bowl. “Your haircut looks good, by the way. A little short, but still. You get those nice, dark curls when it’s longer. You really need to let it grow.”

  Colton felt as if he was being lectured by an aging family member. He smiled and added a chunk of bread to another outstretched soup bowl. He nodded politely at each person who came through the line. Most of them seemed surprisingly healthy—Colton had noticed that the men and women who frequented that kitchen were either healthy or sickly in cycles. After a short period of declining health, old faces would never return and new faces would appear in the crowd.

  Maybe he wouldn’t have to use his talent that day, after all. He was starting to think he had destroyed the apple for nothing.

  The front door to the building was closed a few minutes later, signifying the end of lunch. The people still in line within the building would be allowed to stay, but everyone outside had to start looking elsewhere for food.

  “Sweetie,” said Sue. She tapped Colton’s arm and pointed to the old man standing on the other side of the table. He had dark circles under his eyes and his skin clung tightly to his bones.

  “Oh, sorry,” said Colton. He placed a piece of bread into the man’s bowl, then watched as he walked away and sat at a table, alone. The man coughed loudly into his sleeve and had to catch his breath before he could start eating. His breath wheezed as if his throat had all but closed. He ate slowly, raising the soup spoon to his lips with a shaking hand and spilling most of its contents on the way to his mouth.

  “That’s Henry,” whispered Sue. “I don’t think he’ll be around much longer.”

  Colton waited until the last person in line received their bread, then he took off his apron and threw away his gloves. He walked over and sat at the table next to Henry.

  “Hello,” said Colton.

  Henry looked up at him over his empty soup spoon right before he put it in his mouth. He pulled it out slowly and returned it to the bowl, starting the pointless process all over again.

  “My name’s Colton.” He extended his open hand. The homeless man looked at him suspiciously. “It’s okay, Henry. Shake my hand.”

  Henry slowly set his spoon down in the soup bowl and reached out his shaking arm. Colton grasped his hand firmly.

  Ever since he had first discovered what he could do with his ability, Colton had been searching for a way to put it to good use. His desire to make even the smallest difference in the world had originally led him to the homeless shelter, where he spent his time trying to help as many of the helpless as he could. The happiness he felt afterward briefly muted the sadness from his own past.

  Colton felt the warmth in his own palm move to the tips of his fingers and flow outward, toward Henry. He let the energy he had taken from the fruit at the produce stand move into the homeless man—it felt like someone was pulling a strand of yarn from the tip of each finger. There was far more inside of him than Colton was used to transferring, and the results were immediate. The dark circles on Henry’s face lightened and his arm stopped shaking. His breathing cleared and deepened. A tear rolled down his cheek.

  When Colton had no more to give, he stood up from the table.

  “Very nice to meet you,” he said.

  5

  “She is an excellent student, Mrs. Kincaid. We just don’t understand why she continues to act out in such a manner. This is Scottsdale, after all—not Mesa or Casa Grande, for goodness sake! Children here just don’t act this way.”

  Principal Rivera sat behind her desk, hands clasped together atop a manila folder that contained Haven’s school file. She looked at Haven’s mother as if she expected a simple, all-encompassing answer.

  “I don’t understand it either, nor does my husband. Up until we received your call, we never knew that Haven was causing any kind of trouble whatsoever.”

  “Well,” said Principal Rivera with a sigh, “her grades are still exemplary, and if there had been any kind of drop in her performance, I would think there was more to worry about…”

  Haven let the voices drone away into the background. She turned in her chair and looked just past the office door to where her little brother Noah sat playing with a small toy car. He was pretending his legs were ramps and launching the car off one thigh and making it land with a screeching sound effect from his mouth on the other. Their mother had taken half a day off of work at the hospital to come to school for the meeting and picked up Noah from daycare on the way.

  Haven turned back to Principal Rivera.

  “…don’t think we have anything to worry about, really. Haven has indicated to me how bored she is in her current classes, which might be a reason for her recent impulsive behavior.”

  “Well,” said her mother, “she does have a short attention span when it comes to things she isn’t interested in.”

  No kidding, thought Haven.

  Principal Rivera smiled. “Which is why I’ve starting looking into our Advanced Placement courses. I know we are already a few months into the school year and it goes against protocol to change a student’s schedule, but I’m sure the teachers would be more than willing to make an exception in Haven’s case. I think she would do quite well with the added challenge offered by college-level classes.”

  “That sounds like just the thing!” said Haven’s mother. She turned and addressed Haven for the first time during the entire meeting. “I know we talked about this and you wanted to take it easy at your new school, but what do you say to a little extra challenge?”

  Haven barely tried to hide her sarcasm. “Sounds like just the thing.”

  “Excellent,” said Principal Rivera. “I’ll speak with the teachers and get the ball rolling. Unless you have any other questions, I say we let Haven get back to lunch so you can go enjoy the rest of your day.”

  They shook hands and Haven followed her mother and Noah out of the office building.

  “There, now,” said her mother, “that wasn’t so bad, was it?”

  Haven had already started to pull away for fear one of her friends would see her talking to a strange lady. “Yeah, it was great, Mom. I’ll see you when I get home.”

  “Bye, Haven!” said Noah. He waved his toy car in the air in farewell. Haven’s mother held his hand and steered him toward the parking lot.

  “Bye, Noah,” said Haven quietly.

  She smiled as he continued to wave his car in the air long after he said goodbye. Her smile quickly faded when she thought about the meeting and how it made her feel like everyone was talking about her as if she barely existed. A lot of times it seemed like her parents regarded her more as a way to gauge their own progress than as someone who might actually have a problem with the way everything was going in her life.

  Haven walked around the corner of the administration building and headed toward the cafeteria.

  George Walker High School in Scottsdale, Arizona, had no interior hallways. The buildings stood separated by plots of green grass and long concrete sidewalks. Students milled about the commons area; some eating, most simply socializing. They formed loose clusters in the bright midday sunshine, sitting or lying on the grass; laughing, kissing, playing.

  Haven followed a sidewalk past the library and walked into the cafeteria. She smelled fried food and disinfectant. The room rumbled with the sound of a hundred students talking, laughing, shouting, and moving all at
the same time.

  Haven felt a tug on the back of her hair and spun around.

  “How’d the meeting go, troublemaker?” Kayla put her hands on her hips and shook her head as if she were ashamed. Her short black hair bounced lightly against her cheeks.

  “Shoot me now,” said Haven.

  “That bad, huh?”

  They each grabbed a food tray and walked over to the lunch line to see what was available.

  “Probably. I sort of zoned out in the middle. They want me to take Advanced Placement classes.”

  “Ew!” said Kayla. “You can’t switch now, we’re almost out of this dump! Besides, only nerds take college classes in high school.” She spooned a huge portion of white macaroni and cheese onto her tray.

  “And people who want to actually succeed a little bit in life, maybe?” Haven dropped a much smaller helping onto her own tray. She took two pieces of cornbread from a plate at the next window.

  “Well, you know my plan: marry quick and marry rich. I don’t even care what either of ‘em looks like!” Kayla slapped her thigh and fake-laughed at her own joke, which she had told more times than Haven could count.

  The girls had met while working at an ice cream shop downtown during the summer right after Haven first moved to Scottsdale. Her parents told her that it was okay for her to focus on school and worry about getting a job later, but Haven enjoyed the small amount of money—and freedom—that working at the ice cream shop provided. The job also helped to take her mind off the fact that she would probably never see any of her friends again.

  Having her choice of forty ice cream flavors didn’t hurt, either.

  She and Kayla hit it off quickly and soon they were carpooling to work and hanging out whenever they had free time. They didn’t have any of the same classes at school but still saw each other during lunch.

  Kayla plopped a piece of chocolate cake onto her tray as she moved down the line to the cashier.

  “You sure you don’t want more mac and cheese?” asked Haven. “Right now you only have enough for your next three lunches.”