“How so?”
“Even when you are at your most upset, peak pissed-off point, on some level you won’t let yourself hurt me.”
My jaw hangs open. “I guess?”
“And it means you have way more control than you ever thought you had.”
“I don’t know.” I blink at the potential this information brings. Could it be possible? That I could simply choose to expel all this weirdness without hurting him. Could I do it at any time? Like at the Quickstop, I wanted to hurt that man, or at least stop him, and now I wanted to keep Nathaniel safe. And maybe combined with the earlier episode in my office it just came out as … arousal?
“It’s amazing,” he says. “You can choose the way to expend the energy you absorb.”
This sure would have been nice to know, oh, say, ten years ago!
Focus on what works.
Grandma Sue comes unbidden into my thoughts. Could she have known? But then why wouldn’t she just tell me? Why did we have to move so often if I could control it?
“Try something else,” he says. “I dunno, just shooting light from your hands. Like practice but harmless? Think you could?”
I had done it before a little in the lab but now I felt more confident, knowing there was no chance I would ever let myself hurt him.
I lift my hand and focus. I feel the heat gather, like in our practices. But then when it feels like it’s about to spill out of my hand, I imagine sparklers from the Fourth of July.
Tiny little sparks shoot out of my hands.
“Whoa,” I say at same time he reaches a finger out.
“Ouch, okay those still hurt.”
“Hmm.” I gather the heat in me again. It’s easy, the most natural thing I can do, like breathing deeply. I feel the energy from the sun absorb into my skin and focus as though I’m letting it flow through my veins. I will it toward my palms and then I think about the few things I know about the electromagnetic spectrum. Right in the middle, what most human see, is harmless visible light.
I sigh as I release the energy from my palms.
“Did you seriously just shoot rainbows from your hands?”
I look over my shoulder with sass. “Don’t be jealous.”
His mood has completely shifted with mine. I can shoot rainbows out of my hands. What the hell is happening? And with every burst of energy I let out, I feel better within. Like burping after chugging a carbonated drink. Not the classiest of examples, but the relief is comparable.
“Okay. This is exactly what I thought!” He’s worked up now.
“What?” I smile big at him.
“You’re a freaking human energy converter. You can absorb energy from the sun, I’m assuming, and translate it to any waves on the electromagnetic spectrum. You are what scientists dream of.”
He grabs my shoulders and shakes me gently, smiling wildly. I spread my hands and do another rainbow, trying to arch it from hand to hand with a big cheesy grin. “Yay!”
He laughs like I haven’t seen in days. I’m happy to have distracted him from the pain. I’d rather be the weirdo shooting rainbows than another source of stress in his life. He laughs and hugs me. I don’t push him away; I bring him close. It occurs to me that his happiness now means more to me than being normal. I’m not even mad about it.
“I bet that’s what causes the fires and hurts the plants. When you are most upset, you default to the most dangerous wavelength—gamma rays. Gamma rays are dangerous but when they’re concentrated and crossed, they are deadly. It would explain why your clothes never burn. It makes sense, doesn’t it? The gamma rays only burn when they cross—when you dance.”
I can hardly follow him; he’s talking so fast. “And that’s why when I’m just starting to get worked up, it’s heat. Visible light.”
He snaps. “Yes! And the shocks! It’s like you’re just shuffling those molecules around. Like a warning system. You were right!”
I cannot help but laugh at his adorkableness.
“Try infrared light,” he says.
