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Stop thinking. She’s going to think you’re a freak.
“Pretty far,” he said. “My parents moved here when I was four. Michael was eleven—he started middle school as the new kid.” He paused and glanced over. “That’s a tough age for ... ah, people like us. Things are starting to happen—you know.”
“So you get your powers at puberty?”
“Powers.” God, this felt ridiculous, like she expected him to reveal that he secretly wore green spandex and could talk to marine life. “It’s not like in movies. He didn’t dream about earthquakes and wake up to find the house split in two or anything. It’s more like your element calls you to it—speaks to you, I guess—” He broke off and glanced at her.
Again, a mistake. They were rolling past evenly spaced streetlights, turning the lines of her body into a neon sign.
On.
Off.
He swallowed and looked back at the road. “Michael hated school. Too many walls—he wanted to be outside all the time. He’d sneak out of the house and sleep in the yard at night. Things like that.” These memories were hard to piece together sometimes—his four-year-old self hadn’t understood, though he did now.
“My parents knew what he was going through, of course,” he continued. “Especially my father. Dad was an Earth—it was his idea to start the landscaping company. But it was a new town, they’d just started the business, the twins and I were still little kids—they didn’t exactly have a lot of time on their hands. And they didn’t know Michael was a pure Elemental. Not then.”
They’d come to a traffic light on Ritchie Highway, and he looked over. She was watching him, her expression patient. “Is that what you call yourselves? Elementals?”
“We don’t really call ourselves anything—” He shrugged and looked back at the road. She’d said it like it was something impressive. His cheeks felt hot. “But yeah.”
She was frowning a little, but that was ten times better than laughing at him. “Your dad was an Earth ... so it’s not hereditary?”
Wait. She sounded intrigued. He glanced over. “It is. It’s kind of like how brown-eyed parents can have a blue-eyed kid—just, there are five different ... what’s the word?” He should have paid more attention in biology. “Alleles,” he finished. “So even though Mom and Dad were an Earth and an Air, we’re all different.”
“So the twins aren’t really identical.”
Chris shot her a smile. “That’s a point of family debate.” She started frowning again, so he lost the smile. “Whether you think what we are is natural or ... or not.”
Her eyes were big in the darkness of the car. “Or supernatural.”
Chris looked back at the road. She was staring at him again, and her scrutiny sat heavy on his shoulders. He wanted to shrug it off.
She cleared her throat, and he wondered if she was going to ask him to pull over so she could get out.
But then she said, “You were telling me about Tyler.”
Chris nodded. “My parents moved here to be closer to a community of people like us. Their parents had been farmers, so they’d been raised out in the boonies, and they wanted us to be around our own kind. But they didn’t realize how strong Michael would turn out to be. And before they could hide it, the whole community knew.”
“But—I thought it was a good thing to fall on a point.”
She’d paid attention. “It’s a powerful thing. Too powerful.” He paused, wondering how she would take this next part. “What we are—it can be very dangerous.”
“I got that.”
He drew a breath, thinking of Gabriel’s lightning last night. He could still smell the scorched earth, feel the heat on his skin from the explosion. “More than you saw.”
She was silent for a moment. He could practically feel her thinking. “Just ... how dangerous?”
“The elements don’t always want to obey. It’s easy to start something you can’t finish.” His free hand tightened into a fist. He’d lost her in that wave, when the water had been focused on nothing but destruction.
He’d almost drowned her.
“I don’t understand.”
He needed to stop beating around the bush. “We could kill people, Becca. Without meaning to. It’s not as simple as just controlling water or air or whatever. Gabriel can pull power from sunlight to burn someone in the middle of the day. Nick could get pissed and suffocate someone by accident. Michael could have a bad day and trees could rip out of the—”
He stopped. She was looking panicked again.
